on each corner and in the middle of this should stand a bottle of wine, to be drunk by the singing-men. The canon Bouteille may be legendary, but the wine-bottle figured largely in the festival ceremonies. While the branches were distributed in the bishop’s wood, which came to be known as the _bois de la Bouteille_, the company drank and ate cakes. Two bottle-shaped holes were dug in the earth and filled with sand. On the day of the _obit_ an enormous leather bottle, painted with marmosets, serpents, and other grotesques, was placed in the choir. These rites were still extant at Evreux in 1462, when a fresh attempt to suppress the bell-jangling led to a fresh riot. No explanation is given of the term _procession noire_ as used at Evreux, but a Vienne parallel suggests that, as in some other seasonal festivals, those who took part in the procession had their faces blacked. At Vienne, early on May 1, four men, naked and black, started from the archbishop’s palace and paraded the city. They were chosen respectively by the archbishop, the cathedral chapter, and the abbots of St. Peter’s and St. John’s. Subsequently they formed a _cortège_ for a _rex_, also chosen by the archbishop, and a _regina_ from the convent of St. Andrew’s. A St. Paul, from the hospital dedicated to that saint, also joined in the procession, and carried a cup of ashes which he sprinkled in the faces of those he met. This custom lasted to the seventeenth century[1356]. But the seasonal feasts did not exhaust the activities of the _sociétés_. Occasional events, a national triumph, a royal entry, not to speak of local _faits divers_, found them ready with appropriate celebrations[1357]. The _Infanterie Dijonnaise_ made a solemn function of the admission of new members[1358]. And more than one _société_ picked up from folk-custom the tradition of the _charivari_, constituting itself thus the somewhat arbitrary guardian of burgess morality[1359]. M. Petit de Julleville analyses a curious _jeu_ filled with chaff against an unfortunate M. Du Tillet who underwent the penalty at Dijon in 1579 for the crime of beating his wife in the month of May[1360]. At Lyon, too, _chevauchées_ of a similar type seem to have been much in vogue[1361].