[126] Information by Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, formerly a lead-mine owner, aged 88, and given by him to me in 1901. Among the directions which William Percy gave to his executors in 1344 was one which obliged his executors, on peril of their souls, not to let a poor man depart from his funeral without receiving a penny, or the equivalent of a penny in bread.—_Testamenta Ebor._ (Surtees Society), i. p. 6. Mrs. George Middleton, of Smalldale, widow, aged 45, said that her mother used to dress coffins with flowers at Abney, where she lived. But she did not put thyme on them, for she said “they had nothing to do with time.” But she said that whenever one of the Twelve Oddfellows at Bradwell dies, the survivors march before his coffin and sing, each surviving oddfellow carrying a sprig of thyme in his hand, which he drops on the coffin. Mrs. Middleton thought that one of their printed rules provided for this being done, but I did not find it in them. Mrs. Middleton said that her mother was present at all births and laying out of corpses at Abney, not as part of her duty, but because she liked to be there. “Funeral bread,” she said, “was made in a peculiar way.” Mrs. Middleton said it was the custom at Abney to put thyme in a house after a death and before the funeral, and also southern wood, old man, or lad’s love, these being names for the same plant. In Eyam there was a “custom of anointing deceased children with May-dew.”[127] [127] Bagshaw’s _History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Derbyshire_, 1846, p. 497. Wakes At Thornhill near Hope they have two barrels of ale at the wakes, and they feast in a barn. They dance and sing. Mr. Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, aged 88, told me in 1901 that “every day weakened the wake time. A few old women used to stand across the road at Castleton at the end of the wake week with a rope to keep the wakes in. There is only one road in Castleton—that leading from Hope.” Mr. Bradwell said he had never seen a rope tied across the road to keep the wakes in, and that it was a superstition by which they intended to prolong the wakes. I put questions to many people in Castleton about this, but found nobody who had heard of it. At Bradwell wakes, which begin on the second Sunday in July, children got their new clothes, and all sorts of cleaning and whitewashing were done against that time. At Castleton also the children had new clothes, and the houses were whitewashed. They “fettled and cleaned for the wakes.”[128] [128] Mrs. Johnston, of the Peak Hotel, Castleton, told me that at Morley, near Leeds, any neighbour could come into a house on the Sunday morning when the feast began and take a sop out of the pan. They walked straight in and helped themselves. English wakes seem to correspond to the festival of new fruits in other countries. On this subject see Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii., 326 _seq._