For some peculiar reason, potatoes, parsnips, and fish, pounded together and mixed with butter, form always the evening meal.--Train, _History of the Isle of Man_, 1845, vol. ii. p. 123. MIDDLESEX. In the reign of Charles I., the young gentlemen of the Middle Temple were accustomed at All Hallow Tide, which they considered the beginning of Christmas, to associate themselves for the festive objects connected with the season. In 1629 they chose Bulstrode Whitelocke as Master of the Revels, and used to meet every evening at St. Dunstan’s Tavern, in a large new room, called “The Oracle of Apollo,” each man bringing friends with him at his own pleasure. It was a kind of mock parliament, where various questions were discussed as in our modern debating societies, but these temperate proceedings were seasoned with mirthful doings, to which the name of revels was given and of which dancing appears to have been the chief. On All Hallows Day, “the Master (Whitelocke, then four-and-twenty), as soon as the evening was come, entered the hall followed by sixteen revellers. They were proper, handsome young gentlemen, habited in rich suits, shoes and stockings, hats and great feathers. The master led them in his bar gown, with a white staff in his hand, the music playing before them. They began with the old masques; after which they danced the _Brawls_,[80] and then the master took his seat, while the revellers flaunted through galliards, corantos, French and country dances, till it grew very late. As might be expected, the reputation of this dancing soon brought a store of other gentlemen and ladies, some of whom were of great quality, and when the ball was over the festive party adjourned to Sir Sydney Montague’s chamber, lent for the purpose to our young president. At length the court ladies and grandees were allured, to the contentment of his vanity it may have been, but entailing on him serious expense, and then there was great striving for places to see them on the part of the London citizens. To crown the ambition and vanity of all, a great German lord had a desire to witness the revels, then making such a sensation at court, and the Templars entertained him at great cost to themselves, receiving in exchange that which cost the great noble very little--his avowal that ‘Dere was no such nople gollege in Christendom as deirs.’”--Whitelocke’s _Memoirs of Bulstrode Whitelocke_, 1860, p. 56; quoted in _Book of Days_, vol. ii. p. 538. [80] Erroneously written _Brantes_ in the authority quoted. NOTTINGHAMSHIRE. If a girl had two lovers, and wished to know which would be the most constant, she procured two brown apple pippins, and sticking one on each cheek (after having named them from her lovers) while she repeated this couplet: “Pippen, pippen, I stick thee there, That that is true thou may’st declare,”