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
A correspondent of the _Gent. Mag._ (1783, vol. liii. p. 578) says there
seems to be a trace of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the heads of the
Apostles in what passes at Whitsuntide Fair, in some parts of
Lancashire, where one person holds a stick over the head of another,
whilst a third, unperceived, strikes the stick, and thus gives a smart
blow to the first.
LEICESTERSHIRE.
A fair used to be held on Whitsun Monday at Hinckley, when the millers
from various parts of the country walked in procession dressed in
ribbons, with what they called the _King of the Millers_ at their head.
A writer (in 1787) describing one of these fairs says: To the old
ceremony of riding millers, many improvements were made upon a more
extensive and significant plan: several personages introduced that bore
allusions to the manufacture, and were connected with the place. Old
Hugo Baron de Grentemaisnel, who made his first appearance in 1786,
armed in light and easy pasteboard armour, was this second time armed
cap-a-pie in heavy sinker plate, with pike and shield, on the latter the
arms of the town. The representative baron of Hinckley had the
satisfaction of being accompanied by his lady, the Baroness Adeliza,
habited in the true antique style, with steeple hat, ruff-points,
mantle, &c., all in suitable colours; each riding on nimble white steeds
properly caparisoned; they were preceded by the town banner, and two red
streamers embroidered with their respective names. Several bands of
music gave cheerful spirit to the pageant, but more particularly the
militia band from Leicester. The frame-work knitters, wool-combers,
butchers, carpenters, &c., had each their plays, and rode in companies
bearing devices or allusions to their different trades. Two characters,
well supported, were Bishop Blaise and his chaplain, who figured at the
head of the wool-combers. In their train, appeared a pretty innocent
young pair, a gentle shepherd and shepherdess: the latter carrying a
lamb, the emblem of her little self more than of the trade. Some other
little folks, well dressed, were mounted on ponies, holding instruments,
the marks of their fathers’ businesses, and ornamented with ribbons of
all colours waving in the air.--See Nichols, _History of Hinckley_,
1813, p. 678.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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