“‘But others bear a torde, that on a cushion soft they lay; And one there is that with a flap doth keep the flies away: I would there might another be, an officer of those, Whose room might serve to take away the scent from every nose.’”— (Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 66, article “Shrove Tuesday.”) The Puritan’s horror of heathenish rites and superstitious vestiges had for its basis something far above unreasoning fanaticism; he realized, if not through learned study, by an intuition which had all the force of genius, that every unmeaning practice, every rustic observance, which could not prove its title clear to a noble genealogy was a pagan survival, which conscience required him to tear up and destroy, root and branch. The Puritan may have made himself very much of a burden and a nuisance to his neighbors before his self-imposed task was completed, yet it is worthy of remark and of praise that his mission was a most effectual one in wiping from the face of the earth innumerable vestiges of pre-Christian idolatry. This being understood, some importance attaches to the following otherwise vague couplet from “Hudibras.” “Butler mentions the black pudding in his ‘Hudibras,’ speaking of the religious scruples of some of the fanatics of his time:— “‘Some for abolishing black pudding, And eating nothing with the blood in.’”— (Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 400, article “Martinmas.”) These sausages, made in links, certainly suggest the _boudins_ of the Feast of Fools. They were made from the flesh, blood, and entrails of pork killed by several families in common on the 17th day of December, known as “Sow Day.” In the early days of the Reformation in Germany, in the May games, the Pope was “portrayed in his pontificalibus riding on a great sow, and holding before her taster a dirty pudding.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 35.)