2. Children born in hot weather are not supposed to live long.
3. Witch-stones are stones with natural holes, often found by the Tees side, and hung over a door to keep out witches.
4. "Peg Powler " drags people under the river (Tees); the foam on it is called Peg Powler's suds. [She is now all but forgotten.]
5. When a boy is taken to be christened, the first woman met must have some of the cake; when a girl, the first man.
6. The bride used to make her own wedding cake, or at least have a hand in it, but now it is generally bought.
7. When the bride returned from church, bits of the cake were put through the ring, and taken by girls to put under their pillows to make them dream of their future husband.
Times of Year.
1. Christmas. Yule cakes are always made and offered to every comer, and it is very unlucky to refuse to eat.
2. Carling Sunday is the fifth in Lent, when carlings (fried peas) are eaten.
3. On Easter Sunday, the boys try to steal girls' shoes, and on Easter Monday the girls steal the boys' caps.
4. "Paste eggs" are rolled by the children on Easter Sunday.
5. Palm crosses used to be made for Palm Sunday, tied up with ribbons; these are almost forgotten, except by Catholics.
6. "Nutcrack Night" (October 31). An old woman, remembered by many living, used to watch in the church porch then, and said she knew who would die that year, but would never say who they were.
7. The same woman kept a bit of every Yule log for luck.
8. Such bits are generally called Yule clogs.
9. People used to eat apples and nuts on Nutcrack Night, throw nutshells at their neighbours' windows, strew bits of glass under, and run away. [Told me by a woman who died in 1885, aged 92, from whom I got many things.]
10. The farmers used to give suppers after harvest called Mell suppers.
