Street and Tontine Street. But I could not learn that the fishing population took any special part, or that there was any feud between them and the landsmen on that occasion. Some five or six years [before my visit] an attempt was made by the Friendly Societies of the town to remedy the disorder by organising a joint procession on the lines of the celebration at Eastbourne, which should occupy the [hooligans] by drawing them to its line of march. They retained the effigies and the bonfire, and paid their expenses and remunerated themselves by the collection made on the way. This only partially succeeded in checking disorder, and when, after November 5th, 1890 (as I understand), there was a difficulty about the accounts, this young man Buzan, and some friends, resolved to reorganise the affair on a plan which he had seen carried out by the Temperance Societies at Ashford, of which place he is a native. They got every society of working men or boys in the town to send delegates to form a Carnival Society, as they drolly call it. Every member of this society pays one penny a week through the year, which entitles him to a ticket for their annual dinner, and leaves a margin for the expenses of the procession. They also obtain subscriptions towards the expenses from the leading men of the town, so that all the money collected on the line of march is clear profit, and is handed over to the Victoria Hospital in the town. They carry no effigies, and 'strictly avoid personalities,' said Mr. Buzan; neither is there any bonfire. The result"
forms a marked contrast to the very decadent survival I witnessed in London ten years later. It
"is curiously like a mediæval [Corpus Christi] trades procession, such as lingered within memory at Shrewsbury, and, as I believe, still exists in some Midland towns. But the present form of the Folkestone custom is quite modern, though"
unconsciously to the performers it reverts to an old type.[1]
- ↑ Folk- Lore, vol. iv., p. 40. The late Mr. Alfred Nutt added this note to the above:—"Substantially the same practices and the same modes of carrying them out obtain at Hampstead. I have, unfortunately, not kept my programme of the last fifth of November procession, but a good account, with illustrations, may be found in the Daily Graphic for November 6th [1893]." Some interesting
