Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/306

298 decked with flowers is seated, whilst around her in a circle stand other girls, also crowned with flowers, who hold hands, and intone, like a Greek chorus,—

"A penny for the May who has neither mantle nor petticoat."

An account of this is to be found in La Encyclopedia of Seville (año V. numero 17).

Riding the Stang at Welburn.—At the Malton Sessions on July 14th, before Mr. E. C. Taylor, Sir W. Worsley, and Mr. Kinnear, five young men of Welburn were charged with obstructing the highway by carrying out an almost obsolete practice known as "riding the stang" thereon, on the 21st of June. It seems that one of the villagers had become notorious as a wife-beater, and the young men took this method of showing their ideas of his conduct. They had dressed up an effigy, and, mounting it in a cart, they yoked a lot of juveniles to the shafts, and paraded the village singing an old doggerel rhyme and beating the effigy, which was ultimately taken into the fields and burnt. P.C. Smith, stationed at Welburn, said that on the 2 1st June, about 8 p.m., he was on duty in the village and he saw the defendants drawing a cart containing an effigy. One man (Bielby) was drawing the cart and the others were inside. They repeated some sort of a speech, stopping at different places, and the road was obstructed—about 200 persons gathering together. Langdale was the man who repeated the speech, but witness could not tell what he said. It was an ordinary farmer's cart that the effigy and the men were in. They went down into a field and burnt the effigy, which was dressed as a man and stood 5ft. 6in. in height, and to the best of witness's belief the effigy had a mask on. Previous to going in the field they called at the man's house for whom they were supposed to be "riding the stang," and they asked him if he was not going to pay for it. The Chairman said: "After considerable hesitation we have this decision to make—that under the circumstances detailed to us this morning we have decided to dismiss the