The anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605, is still more or less kept in many parts of Lancashire, in towns by the effigy of Guy Fawkes being paraded about the streets, and burnt at night with great rejoicing; and by the discharge of small cannon, guns, pistols, &c., and of fireworks. In the country the more common celebration is confined to huge bonfires, and the firing of pistols and fireworks. In some places, especially about Blackburn, Burnley, and that district, as well as in villages about Eccles, Worsley, &c., it is customary for boys for some days before the 5th of November, to go round to their friends and neighbours to beg for coals. They generally take their stand before the door, and either say or sing some doggerel, to the following effect:-- "Remember, remember, The Fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot; A stick and a stake, For King George's sake, We hope it will ne'er be forgot." CHRISTMAS. In the olden time, before the Reformation, Christmas was the highest festival of the Church. In some rural parts of Lancashire it is now but little regarded, and many of its customs are observed a week later,--on the eve and day of the New Year. But still there linger in many places some relics of the old observances and festivities, as the carols, the frumenty on Christmas Eve, the mummers, with "old Ball," or the hobby-horse, and the decoration of churches and dwellings with boughs of evergreen shrubs and plants; in the centre of which is still to be found, in many country halls and kitchens, and in some also in the towns, that mystic bough of the mistletoe, beneath whose white berries, it is the custom and licence of the season to steal a kiss from fair maidens, and even from matrons "forty, fat, and fair." CREATURES WORSHIPPING ON CHRISTMAS EVE. I have been told in Lancashire, that at midnight on Christmas Eve the cows fall on their knees, and the bees hum the Hundredth Psalm. I am unwilling to destroy the poetry of these old superstitions; but their origin can, I think, be accounted for. Cows, it is well known, on rising from the ground, get up on their knees first; and a person going into the shippon at midnight would, no doubt, disturb the occupants, and by the time he looked around, they would all be rising on their knees. The buzzing of the bees, too, might easily be formed into a tune, and, with the Hundredth Psalm running in the head of the listener, fancy would supply the rest.[179] CHRISTMAS MUMMING. Mr. J. O. Halliwell, in his _Nursery Rhymes of England_, relates the following as a Christmas custom in Lancashire:--The boys dress themselves up with ribands, and perform various pantomimes, after which one of them, who has a blackened face, a rough skin coat, and a broom in his hand, sings as follows:--