When first we came here "New Year's water" was in vogue; some daring spirit among the boys would hide behind a door, mug and sprig of box in hand, and dash out, sprinkling the water in my face; the joy was to catch one unawares, and in this, as you will guess, they were invariably successful.
There was an old Epiphany observance which I saw but once. A little boy, with coloured paper streamers pinned to his cap, brought in a cage a wren, caught for the purpose and afterwards let go, and repeated something about
Come and make your offering
To the smallest, yet the king,
of which I could learn no more, for he was inaudible outside the door, and within it silent from bashfulness.
The girls used to choose a May-Day queen and bring her round with garlanded hat, the others with posies and singing; the pennies given were spent on a small feast of bread and jam and "lollies," eaten out of doors. But this is falling out of use.
Harvest suppers are not given, there being no employers of regular labour; but each family takes a day at the sea (eight or nine miles off) when the busy time slackens, and invites those who have given help in the field, not owed; for every cottager pays in labour for the privilege of planting one or more rows of potatoes in the farmer's land, the farmer ploughing the ground and carting home the crop. When allotments were offered here they were refused, all preferring this very feudal custom.
A bride may or may not have a bridesmaid, but the bridegroom never attempts to pull through without the support of a best man, called, whatever his trade, "the tailor."
"Why is the mason not here to-day?" "He is gone tailor to Benjy the Bush."
These are not a proverb-loving people, but here is a pithy allusion to the spoiling of an only child: "One child, three fools." And this of second childhood: "Once a man and twice a child, and the last child is the worst." A delicate way of saying that a man drinks: " Too fond of lifting his little finger."
Robeston Wathen, Narberth, Pembrokeshire, April, 1903.
