Hone, in his _Table Book_, p. 26, gives a description of "Holly Night" at Brough, Westmoreland, in 1838. "Formerly the 'Holly Tree' at Brough was really holly, but ash being abundant, the latter is now substituted. There are two head inns in the town, which provide for the ceremony alternately, although the good townspeople mostly lend their assistance in preparing the tree, to every branch of which they fasten a torch. About eight o'clock in the evening it is taken to a convenient part of the town, where the torches are lighted, the town band accompanying, and playing till all is completed, when it is removed to the lower end of the town; and after divers salutes and huzzas from the spectators, is carried up and down the town in stately procession. The band march behind it, playing their instruments, and stopping every time they reach the town bridge and the cross, where the 'holly' is again greeted with shouts of applause. Many of the inhabitants carry lighted branches and flambeaus; and rockets, squibs, etc., are discharged on the joyful occasion. After the tree is thus carried, and the torches are sufficiently burnt, it is placed in the middle of the town, when it is again cheered by the surrounding populace, and is afterwards thrown among them. They eagerly watch for this opportunity; and, clinging to each end of the tree, endeavour to carry it away to the inn they are contending for, where they are allowed their usual quantum of ale and spirits, and pass a merry night, which seldom breaks up before two in the morning." According to Waldron, in his _Description of the Isle of Man_, 1859, p. 156, the following singular custom is in force on Twelfth day. In this island there is not a barn unoccupied on the whole twelve days after Christmas, every parish hiring fiddlers at the public charge. On Twelfth day the fiddler lays his head in the lap of some one of the wenches, and the _mainstyr fiddler_ asks who such a maid, or such a maid, naming all the girls one after another, shall marry, to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during the time of merriment, and whatever he says is absolutely depended upon as an oracle; and if he couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth; this they call "cutting off the fiddler's head," for after this he is dead for a whole year. CHAPTER XXXII St. Distaff's Day--Plough Monday--Customs on the Day--Feast of the Purification. Here Christ-tide ought to end, and men and women should have returned to their ordinary avocations, but the long holiday demoralised them; and although the women were supposed to set to work on the day succeeding Twelfth day, thence called St. Distaff's day, or Rock[94] day, there was rough play, as Herrick tells us:--