It is customary on this day to dress out stools with a cushion of flowers. A layer of clay is placed on the stool, and therein is stuck, with great regularity, an arrangement of all kinds of flowers, so close as to form a beautiful cushion. These are exhibited at the doors of houses in the villages, and at the ends of streets and cross lanes of larger towns, where the attendants beg money from passengers to enable them to have an evening _fête_ and dancing. This custom is evidently derived from the “Ludi Compitalii” of the Romans; this appellation was taken from the _compita_, or cross lanes, where they were instituted and celebrated by the multitude assembled before the building of Rome. It was the feast of the _lares_, or household gods, who presided as well over houses as streets.--Hutchinson’s _History of Northumberland_. OXFORDSHIRE. The following notice of a curious custom, formerly observed at Magdalen College, Oxford, is taken from the _Life of Bishop Horne_, by the Rev. William Jones (Works, vol. xii. p. 131):--“A letter of July the 25th, 1755, informed me that Mr. Horne, according to an established custom at Magdalen College, in Oxford, had begun to preach before the University, on the day of St. John the Baptist. For the preaching of this annual sermon, a permanent pulpit of stone is inserted into a corner of the first quadrangle; and so long as the stone pulpit was in use (of which I have been a witness), the quadrangle was furnished round the sides with a large fence of green boughs, that the preaching might more nearly resemble that of John the Baptist in the wilderness; and a pleasant sight it was: but for many years the custom has been discontinued, and the assembly have thought it safer to take shelter under the roof of the chapel.” At the mowing of _Revel-mede_, a meadow between Bicester and Wendlebury, most of the different kinds of rural sports were usually practised; and in such repute was the holiday, that booths and stalls were erected as if it had been a fair. The origin of the custom is unknown; but as the amusements took place at the time when the meadow became subject to commonage, some have supposed it originated in the rejoicings of the villagers on that account. These sports entirely ceased on the enclosure of Chesterton field.--Dunkin, _History of Bicester_, 1816, p. 269. SOMERSETSHIRE.