CURATE. Have you heard the nightingale yet? BOY. Please, sir, I don’t know how he hollers. Everything hollers, from a church bell to a mouse in a trap. * * * * * A tenth child, if all the former ones are living, is baptized with a sprig of myrtle in his cap, and the clergyman was supposed to charge himself with his education. * * * * * If possible, a baby was short-coated on Good Friday, to ensure not catching cold. The old custom (now gone out) was that farmers should send their men to church on Good Friday. They used all to appear in their rough dirty smock frocks and go back to work again. Some (of whom it would never have been expected) would fast all day. * * * * * The 29th of May is still called Shick-shack day—why has never been discovered. There must have been some observance earlier than the Restoration, though oak-apples are still worn on that day, and with their oak sprays are called Shick-shack. * * * * * On St. Clement’s Day, the 23rd of November, explosions of gunpowder are made on country blacksmiths’ anvils. It is viewed as the blacksmiths’ holiday. The accepted legend is that St. Clement was drowned with an anchor hung to his neck, and that his body was found in a submarine temple, from which the sea receded every seven years for the benefit of pilgrims. Thus he became the patron of anchor forgers, and thence of smiths in general. Charles Dickens, in _Great Expectations_ describes an Essex blacksmith as working to a chant, the _refrain_ of which was “Old Clem.” I have heard the explosions at Hursley before 1860, but more modern blacksmiths despise the custom. At Twyford, however, the festival is kept, and at the dinner a story is read that after the Temple was finished, Solomon feasted all the artificers except the blacksmiths, but they appeared, and pointed out all that they had done in the way of necessary work, on which they were included with high honour. * * * * * St. Thomas’s Day, 21st December, is still at Otterbourne held as the day for “gooding,” when each poor house-mother can demand sixpence from the well-to-do towards her Christmas dinner. * * * * * Christmas mummers still perambulate the villages, somewhat uncertainly, as their performance depends on the lads willing to undertake it, and the willingness of some woman to undertake the bedizening of them with strips of ribbon or coloured paper; and, moreover, political allusions are sometimes introduced which spoil the simplicity. The helmets are generally made of wallpaper, in a shape like _auto-da-fé_ caps, with long strips hanging over so as to conceal the face, and over the shirts are sewn streamers. Thus tramp seven or eight lads, and stand drawn up in a row, when the foremost advances with, at the top of his hoarse voice: