Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/120

112 I have assisted at these rites about twenty-five years ago, and I expect the young people still practise them.

In St. Cubert's parish, East Cornwall, is a celebrated holy well, so named, the inhabitants say, from its virtues having been discovered on All Hallows-day. It is covered at high spring tides.

St. Just feast (which, when the mines in that district were prosperous, was kept up with more revelry than almost any other) is always held on the nearest Sunday to All Saints-day. Formerly, on the Monday, many games were played, viz. "Kook, a trial of casting quoits farthest and nearest to the goal, now all but forgotten" (Bottrell), wrestling, and kailles, or keels (ninepins), &c. Much beer and "moonshine" (spirit that had not paid the duty) were drunk, and, as the St. Just men are proverbially pugnacious, the sports often ended with a free fight. A paragraph in a local paper for November 1882 described St. Just feast in those days as "A hobble, a squabble, and a 'hubbadullion' altogether." Rich and poor still at this season keep open house, and all the young people from St. Just who are in service for many miles around, if they can possibly be spared, go home on the Saturday and stay until the Tuesday morning. A small fair is held in the streets on Monday evening, when the young men are expected to treat their sweethearts liberally, and a great deal of "foolish money" that can be ill afforded is often spent.

In many Cornish parishes the bells are rung on November 4th, "Ringing night."

The celebration of Gunpowder Plot has quite died out in West Cornwall, but in Launceston, and in other towns in the eastern part of the county, it is still observed. As regularly as the 5th of November comes around, fireworks are let off, and bonfires lit, to lively music played by the local bands.

"This year, 1884, 'Young Stratton' celebrated the Fifth with much more than his customary enthusiasm. A good sum was raised by public subscription by the energy of Mr. C. A. Saunders. The Bude fife and drum band headed a grotesque procession, formed at Howl's Bridge, and second in order came a number of equestrian torch-bearers in all kinds of costumes, furnished by wardrobes of her