has previously been collected to buy two or three cheeses, and lads under sixteen or thereabouts, from the above-named parishes, compete for them. The cheeses are set rolling down the side of the hill, the lads follow, and those who are successful in getting a cheese carry it off home. There is no ceremony of cutting up or distributing the cheeses, but if one happens to break while rolling there is a general scramble for the pieces. One old man always takes the lead in the ceremonies, and starts the cheeses rolling. He lives in a cottage hard by, and the office of leader has been in his family for many years. My informant thought the next oldest in his family would succeed to the office. She also said,—"We do this so that we can keep our right to the Common; if we didn't do it, we should lose our Common." No words or song occur at any part of the Cheese-rolling.[1] The day is kept as the "Feast." Roast beef and plum pudding are eaten, a coin and a ring being put into the pudding.
Village Feasts.—Many Cotswold parishes keep their annual Feast in the autumn, usually on the Sunday after the church dedication festival, which is sometimes observed on the date according to Old Style. There are family gatherings, a special dish for the occasion, and often open house, especially at the smaller public-houses. The dish is pork and turnips at Gloucester (end of September); pig's cheek and parsnips at Bisley (Sunday after 12 Nov.: All Saints, Old Style); leg of mutton and turnips at Haresfield (3rd Sunday in September, though the church dedication is to St. Peter); at Nympsfield, puddings or dumplings are made of wild plums or "heg-pegs." There is a local rhyme, twitting the Nympsfield folks, who are very sensitive on the point:—
Nympsfield is a pretty place,
Built upon a tump,
And what the people live upon
Is heg-peg [or "ag-pag"] dump.
Nympsfield lies between "Hetty Pegler's tump,"—i.e. Uley Bury tumulus,—and Lynch Field; but there is a "Barrow field," of which only the name remains, in the village itself. At Avening,
- ↑ Cf. the cheese-rolling round the Church at Randwick on May morning, County Folk-Lore, vol. i., (Gloucestershire) p. i8. No memory of this custom survives in Randwick to-day.
