A mower 4d. per day, with board. ” 6d. ” without ” A reaper or carter 3d. ” with ” ” 5d. ” without ” A woman labourer, or other labourer 2½d. ” with ” ” 4½d. ” without ” The statute which arranged the above rates of payment concluded by saying that “such as deserve less shall take less, and also in places where less is used to be given less shall be given from henceforth;” so that the table just completed would seem to represent the maximum rather than the ordinary scale of wages. This statute also enacted that farm servants who purposed leaving their employers, must engage themselves to other masters and give reasonable warning before leaving their present ones, by which idleness and mendicancy were effectually guarded against. The common pastimes of the inhabitants during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in addition to some of those already enumerated which still held their sway, were club, and trap-ball, bowling, prisoners’-bars, hood-man blind, (a game similar to the modern blindman’s-buff, but entered into by adults alone,) battledore and shuttlecock, and during hard frosts skating, at first by means of the shank bone of a sheep fastened on to the sole of the boot and afterwards with iron-shod skates. Hawking and hunting were confined to the families of position who resided at the ancient Halls of the Fylde and to others of similar social standing, forming but a small proportion of the entire population. At Christmas the largest log obtainable was lighted on the hearth and denominated the yule log. If the mass burned throughout the night and the whole of the next day, it was regarded as an omen of good fortune by the members of the household, but if it were consumed or extinguished before that time had expired, it was looked upon as auguring adversely for their prosperity. The first Monday after Twelfth Day was called Plough Monday, a name still familiar to many an old Fylde man, and was observed as a general holiday by the men whose labours were associated with that instrument, who on this day went about the villages from house to house asking for plough-money to spend in ale. Their processions, if such they could be called, consisted of a plough, which was dragged along by a number of sword-dancers; a labourer, dressed to resemble an old woman; and another, who was clothed in skins, and wore the tail of some animal hanging down his back. These two oddly garbed individuals solicited small contributions from the people whilst the remainder were engaged in dancing, and if anyone refused to disburse some trifling sum when requested, they turned up the ground fronting his doorway with the plough. During Christmas week the country people blackened their faces, and thus disguised committed all sorts of frolics and absurdities