Hampshire Folklore. 325
Willow palms and Palm Sunday have historical connec- tion in the county, for it was a quarrel over the blessing of their palms in the fourteenth century that brought the ill-feeling between the Romsey townsfolk and the con- ventual authorities to a head, and resulted in the former being granted the north aisle of the abbey for their parish church. I believe that palms are still taken to church on that day in some Hampshire villages, and probably the old superstition has not died out that it is unlucky to pick them before Palm Sunday. Just over the Dorset border I met with a variant of this, making it unlucky to bring palms into the house at any time. The same thing was told me in the south of the Forest, but not by a Forest- born woman.
On Good Friday babies should be short-coated, and then they will not catch cold.^
The Whit-Monday holiday was one of the most im- portant of the year. Miss Yonge tells us of the sports at Otterbourne,^^ when the local Friendly Society "walked." "Each member carried a blue staff tipped with red, and had a blue ribbon round his tall hat, and almost all wore the old white round frock." There was cricket and feasting on the village green, " and too much of that which was politely called ' breaking out at tide time.' "
On Midsummer Eve it is said that in the Hursley district lovers test the sincerity of their sweethearts by laying plants of orpine {sediim telephmin), locally known as " Life- long,"^ in pairs. The unfaithful will twist away.^'^
On the eve of St. Peter's Day an old custom at Fareham
mid-Lent wafers, — though this he denied. I believe the same authority is also responsible for a paragraph in an old number of The Antiquary on this subject, in which it is stated that the iron was always heated in a charcoal fire, (vol. xxvii. (1893), p. 188).
^C. Yonge, John KebWs Parishes, p. 175.
'^ An Old IVoman's Outlook etc., pp. 97-9.
^^ Live-long is the usual form.
^YoxigQ,/ohn Kel/le's Parishes, p. 217.
