At Castleton on wakes even, _i.e._, on the Saturday night before the feast begins, they pulled trees up in gardens, hung gates in trees, hid the farmers’ carts, and took them anywhere. Offerings to the Fairies A Derbyshire man, aged about 55, said that his grandmother used to tell him that if you made the hearth very tidy before you went to bed, and put a little food on it, you would find the room swept and tidy next morning. He remembers trying this experiment when a boy, and the disappointment he felt when the desired result was not produced. “Sweeping the Girl” on St. Valentine’s Day “If the lass is not kissed, or does not get a visit from her sweetheart on St. Valentine’s Day, she is said to be dusty, and the villagers sweep her with a broom, or a wisp of straw. She is bound, subsequently, to cast lots with other girls, and finally, if she has good luck, draws the name of her future husband out of an old top hat.”[129] [129] From an article on “Superstitions in the Peak,” in the _Sheffield Daily Telegraph_, 14th August, 1906. It was written by Mr. John Pendleton, of Manchester, who has kindly allowed me to mention his name. Mr. Pendleton tells me in a letter that the custom was observed on the morning of St. Valentine’s Day in the middle of the last century. JEDEDIAH STRUTT By the Hon. Frederick Strutt Jedediah Strutt, the second of three sons of William Strutt, a farmer at South Normanton, Derbyshire, was born on July 26th, 1726. His mother was Martha Statham, of Shottie, a hamlet in the parish of Duffield, at which church she and William Strutt were married on February 11th, 1724. Of his elder brother Joseph little is known, except that he went to London, where he started in some commercial business, and that he married a Miss Scott.[130] [130] Joseph Strutt went to London early in life, and we believe ultimately kept a shop there. He married in the year 1755 a Miss Scott, and from this marriage the Strutts known as the Strutts of Tutbury are descended. His two daughters married in succession Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. From the second of these marriages is descended the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, late Secretary of State for the Colonies, etc. Jedediah’s education can have been only that of a country school of those days, though it is but fair to surmise that his father must have been a man superior to the farmers and yeomen of his day, otherwise his sons, Jedediah in particular, could not have been so successful in the respective occupations of their after life.