Souling seems to have been confined to, or at all events to have only survived, in the counties of Cheshire and Shropshire, though why this should be so it is difficult to say. It is also met with in the adjacent counties of Staffordshire and Lancashire, but only because it seems to have drifted over the borders. One curious reference to it occurs in _Tales and Traditions of Tenby_:[58]-- “What was called ‘souling,’ or ‘sowling,’ was practised by the female portion of the poor, who visited their wealthier neighbours, demanding ‘soul’ (possibly from the French _soûl_, signifying ‘one’s fill,’ or from _saouler_, ‘to satisfy with food.’ See Wright’s _Provincial Dictionary_), which signified, in its provincial acceptation, any condiment eaten with bread, such as meat, fish, etc., but especially _cheese_. As the usage was very generally recognised, souling-day proved, and still proves, one of the most profitable days in the calendar.” [58] Published by R. Mason, Tenby, 1858, p. 17. The fanciful derivation of “souling” may be passed by, but it is hard to account for this reference to it in “little England beyond Wales.” At Oswestry, on the Welsh border, it is customary to begin with:-- “Wissal, wassal, bread and possel, Cwrw da, plas yma,[59] Apple or a pear, plum or a cherry, Any good thing that will make us merry.” --_Bye-gones_, December 11, 1872. [59] _i.e._ “good ale (in) this place.” Aubrey wrote regarding Shropshire thus:-- “In Salop the die õnium Animarum (All Soules-day, Novemb. 2d) there is sett on the Board a high heap of soule-cakes lyeing one upon another like the picture of the Sew-bread in the old Bibles. They are about the bignesse of 2d cakes, and n’ly all the visitors that day takes one; and there is an old Rhythm or saying-- ‘A soule-cake, a soule-cake, Have mercy on all Christian soules for a soule-cake.’” “The late Mrs. Gill, of Hopton, near Hodnet, had _soul-cakes_ made in her house to give away to souling children every year up to her death in 1884. They were flat round, (or sometimes oval) cakes, made of very light dough, spiced and sweetened.”[60] [60] Burne-Jackson’s _Shropshire Folk-Lore_, p. 382 _et seq._ Mr. Wirt Sykes, in his _British Goblins_, quotes this, and also the information about Tenby, but adds nothing to our knowledge. We find some of the words of the “Souling Song” in nearly every itinerant begging custom. In Montgomeryshire a New Year’s rhyme is:-- “The road is very dirty, My shoes are very thin; Please give me a penny To put some nails in.” Several of the verses are found in a “Wessel-cup Hymn”--a carol popular in Shropshire thirty years ago--and in customs in Worcestershire and Yorkshire. MARLING The traveller cannot fail to notice the large number of square pits in the green fields of Cheshire, which are very different from the round drinking ponds of the southern shires.