but who among the groups that dance before the kern-baby deem that they are treading in the steps of their old British ancestors, as, taught by their Roman conquerors, they danced and bowed before the goddess Ceres? Or, again, of those who at a later period in history paid the same votive honours to the Virgin Mary? Or, who, as they sit at the mell-supper, master and servant on equal terms, imagine that their festival had its origin, it may be, in the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles—it may be, in the Roman Saturnalia? “Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine: and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates.”[1]
A friend from Yorkshire tells me that the mell-doll is now unknown in the north of that county, but with mell-suppers and guisers he is quite familiar. The Yorkshire custom is, that, when in any farm the harvest is won, one of the reapers should mount a wall or bank, and proclaim as follows:
Blest be the day when Christ was born,
We’ve getten mell of (——’s) corn,
Weel bun and better shorn.
Huzza! huzza! huzza!
—every one then joining in the general cheer.[2]
In Cleveland, the mell-supper is still kept up, though with less ceremony than formerly. “Guising” was practised there thirty years ago, but is now discontinued. On forking the last sheaf in the harvest-field they shout in chorus:
Weel bun and better shorn,
Is master (——’s) corn;
We hev her, we hev her,
As fast as a feather.
Hip, hip, hurrah!
Among minor festivals, St. Agnes’ Day is marked in our northern counties by a superstitious observance of its own, called
