_Buns_.--It has been suggested by Bryant, though, I believe, not noticed by any writer on popular customs, that the Good Friday cakes, called _Buns_, may have originated in the cakes used in idolatrous worship, and impressed with the figure of an ox, whence they were called [Greek: boun]. The cow or bull was likewise, as Coleridge (_Lit. Rem_. vol. ii. p. 252.) has justly remarked, the {245} symbol of the _Cosmos_, the prolific or generative powers of nature. G.J. _Gloucestershire Custom_.--It is a custom in Gloucestershire, and may be so in other counties, to place loose _straw_ before the door of any man who beats his wife. Is this a general custom?--and if so, what is its origin and meaning? B. _Curious Custom_.--The custom spoken of by "PWCCA" (No. 11 p. 173.) was also commonly practised in one or two places in Lancashire some ten or twelve years back, but is now, I believe, obsolete. The horse was played in a similar way, but the performer was then called "Old Balls." It is no doubt a vestige of the old "hobby-horse,"--as the Norwich "Snap," who kept his place in the procession of the mayor of that good city till the days of municipal reform, was the last representative of his companion the dragon. J.T. [Nathan also informs us "that it is very common in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where a ram's head often takes the place of the horse's skull. Has it not an obvious connection with the 'hobby-horse' of the middle ages, and such mock pageants as the one described in Scott's _Abbot_, vol. i. chap. 14.; the whole being a remnant of the Saturnalia of the ancients?"] * * * * * QUERIES. WHITE HART INN, SCOLE. In _Songs and other Poems_, by Alex. Brome, Gent. Lond. 12mo. 1661, there is (at p. 123.) a ballad upon a sign-post set up by one Mr. Pecke, at Skoale in Norfolk. It appears from this ballad, that the sign in question had figures of Bacchus, Diana, Justice, and Prudence, "a fellow that's small, with a quadrant discerning the wind," Temperance, Fortitude, Time, Charon and Cerberus. This sign is noticed in the _Journal_ of Mr. E. Browne (Sir Thomas Browne's Works, ed. Wilkin, i. 53.). Under date of 4th March, 1663-64, he says:--"About three mile further I came to Scoale, where is very handsome inne, and the noblest sighne post in England, about and upon which are carved a great many stories, as of Charon and Cerberus, of Actaeon and Diana, and many other; the sighne it self is the white harte, which hangs downe carved in a stately wreath." Blomefield, in his _History of Norfolk_ (8vo. edit. i. 130.), speaking of Osmundestone or Scole, has the following passage:--