British Popular Customs, Present and Past: Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People. Arranged According to the Calendar of the Year.Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (Thomas Firminger)
History
British Popular Customs, Present and Past: Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People. Arranged According to the Calendar of the Year.
Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (Thomas Firminger)
Folklore -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Social life and customs
As for St. George, O,
St. George he was a knight, O,
Of all the kings in Christendom,
King George is the right, O.
In every land, O,
The land that ere we go
With Hal-an-tow, &c.
God bless Aunt Mary Moses,
With all her power and might, O;
And send us peace in merry England,
Both day and night, O.”
It was a general holiday: so strict, indeed, used the observance of this
jubilee to be held that if any person chanced to be found at work, he
was instantly seized, set astride on a pole, and hurried on men’s
shoulders to the river, where he was sentenced to leap over a wide
space, which if he failed in attempting he of course fell into the
water. There was always, however, a ready compromise of compounding for
a leap. About nine o’clock the revellers appeared before the
grammar-school, and demanded a holiday for the school-boys, after which
they collected money from house to house. They then used to _fadé_ into
the country (_fadé_ being an old English word for to go), and about the
middle of the day returned with flowers and oak-branches in their hats
and caps, and spent the rest of the day until dusk in dancing through
the streets to the sound of the fiddle, playing a particular tune; and
threaded the houses as they chose--claiming a right to go through any
person’s house, in at one door and out of the other. In the afternoon
the ladies and gentlemen visited some farmhouse in the neighbourhood;
whence, after regaling themselves with syllabubs, they returned, after
the fashion of the vulgar, to the town, dancing as briskly the
_fadé-dance_, and entering the houses as unceremoniously. In later times
a select party only made their progress through the streets very late
in the evening, and having quickly vanished from the scene, reappeared
in the ballroom. Here meeting their friends, they went through the usual
routine of dancing till supper; after which they all _faddéd_ it out of
the room, breaking off by degrees to their respective houses. At present
this custom is fast falling into disuse, and the day is only celebrated
by a few of the lower classes.
Murray, in his _Handbook for Cornwall_, 1865, p. 301, says that the
furry festival is in commemoration of the following curious legend:--A
block of granite, which for many years had lain in the yard of the Angel
Inn, was in the year 1783 broken up and used as a part of the building
materials for the assembly-room. This stone, says the legend, was
originally placed at the mouth of hell, from which it was one day
carried away by the devil as he issued forth in a frolicsome mood on an
excursion into Cornwall. Here he traversed the country, playing with his
pebble; but it chanced that St. Michael (who figures conspicuously in
the town arms and is the patron saint of the town) crossed his path; a
combat immediately ensued, and the devil, being worsted, dropped the
_Hell’s stone_ in his flight; hence the name of the town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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