the risk of appearing egotistical, I will illustrate my meaning from my personal knowledge.
It is generally customary in England to hire farmservants by the year, but the hiring-time varies in different places. In North-east Shropshire the hiring-time is Christmas; in South-west Shropshire it is May. I took great pains to pick out the boundary-line, between these two customs, market-town by market-town, and almost village by village, and I found it coincide almost exactly with the boundary-line of the change of dialect between North-east and South-west, which is very marked; and very fairly also with the boundary between the diocese of Lichfield (the ancient Bishopric of the Mercians) on the North-east, and the Welsh diocese of St. Asaph and the diocese of Hereford (the old kingdom of the Hecanas or Magesætas) on the South-west. Moreover, the South-western custom of hiring prevails, I have ascertained, over a considerable part of North Wales, while hiring at Christmas prevails in Cheshire and North Staffordshire. But the exact conclusions to be drawn from these facts are to me still a mystery, especially as Christmas hiring does not extend beyond Staffordshire eastwards, so that it can hardly be an old Anglian agricultural custom. In Derbyshire, hirings are made at Martinmas, as I believe they are also in Yorkshire. In Northamptonshire, Michaelmas is the hiring time.
Again, “souling”, or begging for apples on the Eve of All Souls’ Day (Nov. 1st), is a common custom in that part of Shropshire where Christmas hirings occur, and in North Staffordshire; but in South Staffordshire I believe the same custom is, or was, observed, not on All Souls’, but on St. Clement’s Eve (Nov. 21st). Once more; in South Staffordshire and in South Shropshire, as far north as Shrewsbury, Mothering Sunday is known, if not much observed; but I have never met with anyone in the north of either county who had heard of it.
Isolated instances of customs which are general in other
