Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/231

Rh hot with butter and sugar; a commoner bun is simply washed over the top with saffron, and has a few currants stuck on it; there is one peculiar, I believe, to Penzance, it is made of a rich currant paste highly coloured with saffron; it is about an eighth of an inch thick, and four inches in diameter, and is marked with a large cross that divides it into four equal portions.

"In some of our farmhouses the Good Friday bun may be seen hanging to a string from the bacon-rack, slowly diminishing until the return of the season replaces it by a fresh one. It is of sovereign good in all manners of diseases afflicting the family or cattle. I have more than once seen a little of this cake grated into a warm mash for a sick cow."—(T. G. Couch, Polperro.) There is a superstition that bread made on this day never grows mouldy.

Many amateur gardeners sow their seeds on Good Friday; superstition says then they will all grow.

Of a custom observed at Little Colan, in East Cornwall, on Palm Sunday, Carew says: "Little Colan is not worth observation, unlesse you will deride or pity their simplicity, who sought at our Lady Nant's well there to foreknowe what fortune should betide them, which was in this manner. Upon Palm Sunday these idle-headed seekers resorted thither with a Palme cross in one hand and an offring in the other. The offring fell to the Priest's share, the crosse they threwe into the well; which if it swamme the party should outline the yeere; if it sunk a short ensuing death was boded; and perhaps not altogether vntimely, while a foolish conceite of this 'halsening' myght the sooner helpe it onwards."

On Easter Monday at Penzance it was the custom within the last twenty years to bring out in the lower part of the town, before the doors, tables, on which were placed thick gingerbread cakes with raisins in them, cups and saucers, &c., to be raffled for with cups and dice, called here "Lilly-bangers." Fifty years since a man, nicknamed Harry Martillo, with his wife, the "lovelee," always kept one of these "lilly-banger stalls" at Penzance on market day. He would call attention to his gaming-table by shouting—