The Children of Westminster Abbey: Studies in English HistoryKingsley, Rose Georgina
History
The Children of Westminster Abbey: Studies in English History
Kingsley, Rose Georgina
Children -- England -- London; Westminster Abbey -- Biography
All English and American children have heard of the Fifth of November.
It was a day of mingled terror and delight in our childhood. Just at
dusk a band of men and boys used to tramp down the road, and gather
close under the windows. They were armed with guns, and bore on poles a
chair upon which was seated a hideous life-size effigy of a man, dressed
in an old tattered coat and battered tall hat. Then they began in
sepulchral voices to repeat the following words, very fast, with no
stops, and in broad Hampshire dialect:
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder trayson and plot.
I know no rayson why gunpowder trayson
Ever should be forgot.
Old Guy Fox and his companions,
With fifty-two barrels of gunpowder
To blow old England up.
Look into your pocket, there's a little chink,
Pray pull it up and give us some drink;
All we wants is a little more money
To kindle up our old Bonfire.
If you won't give us one bavven[71] we'll take two,
The better for we and the wuss for you.
Holler, boys, holler, boys, God save the King!
Holler, boys, holler, boys, make the house ring.
Hip! Hip! hip! Hoorah![72]
And "holler" they did. While the children, knowing what was coming,
cowered shuddering inside the window curtains, frightened to death, and
yet so fascinated with horror they were obliged to look, "Bang, bang,
bang," went all the guns, fired up into the air round old Guy, with
tremendous shouts. But that was not all. In the evening the huge bonfire
twenty feet high down on the Common, for which all the men and boys had
been begging "bavins" or cutting furze for days, was lighted. And round
it every one in the parish assembled.
Ah! the delights of Bonfire Night! the thrill of excitement as the
match was applied to a heap of well-dried sticks and straw in a
sheltered hole on the leeward side. The yells of joy as the furze caught
and crackled as only furze can crackle, and the flames ran up the sides
of the stack and lit up Guy Fawkes, whose effigy, after going the rounds
of the parish, was at length deposited on the top of the bonfire; the
cloud of sparks that streamed out from the cracking, snapping pile; the
squibs and crackers that every body threw at every body else; and then
the climax, when the fire reached old Guy himself, and with a mighty
heave the old fellow sank into his fiery grave in the centre of the
bonfire, the squibs in his hat exploding like a round of musketry, and a
roar rose from the good Hampshire throats as the whole burning mass
collapsed while the flames rushed up fiercely with one last effort high
into the foggy air. Then the good-nights, and the walk home, our hair
and clothes smelling of smoke, and our eyes so dazzled that we stumbled
and staggered along across the Common, while the shouts of the boys,
dancing about the embers of the great fire, gradually died away in the
distance.
What can all this have to do with Prince Henry you may ask?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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