apples in it, and sometimes a sixpence or a threepenny piece; and the youngsters strip, and dip their heads into it, and try to pick up the apples or the coin with their mouths.[1] Sometimes a strip of wood is thrust through an apple, and a bit of lighted candle stuck on each projecting end; then the apple is suspended from the ceiling by a doubled piece of string, which is twisted tightly so that it winds and unwinds itself, continually revolving, and the children compete to see who can catch it with their teeth. Needless to say, they more often grip the lighted candle, and get smeared with tallow, which of course is the best part of the fun.
The girls put nine grains of oats in their mouths, and go out without speaking, and walk about till they hear some man's name mentioned; whatever Christian name they first hear will be the name of their future husband.
The boys and young men play practical jokes. If there is a miserly man, a bad neighbour, in the place, they go into his garden and cut the cabbages and give them to some poor man. Then they knock on his door with a cabbage-head, and while he is chasing one party, the rest perhaps try to pull up the remaining cabbages.[2] Sometimes they take the pith out of a cabbage stalk and stuff it with hay, and put in a lighted turf, which makes the hay smoulder, and puff the smoke through the keyhole, filling the house with the disagreeable smell. Another favourite trick is to tie all the door-knockers in a row of houses together, so that when one door is opened all the other knockers begin to rap.
There are no bonfires—those are on Midsummer Eve—nor any hunting or killing of wild creatures, though we hunt the wren on St. Stephen's Day (December 26th).
- ↑ [Extract from an old Notebook. "Malvern, 1st November, 1888. Colonel C.——— G.——— tells me that when he was a boy, I suppose about 1845-48, he stayed in a Denbighshire farmhouse, where the sons (young men) stripped to the waist and 'bobbed' for apples in a tub of water on All Saints Eve. They urged him to join them, in the presence of the full family circle, and laughed at his modest scruples.—C. S. Burne."]
- ↑ [This compares with the licensed poaching on Guy Fawkes' Day in Lincolnshire, vol. xiv., p. 89.—Ed.]
