352 Collectanea.
Saant's daay, maister? Them cattle 'anna touched a bent all daay."
If a woman's petticoat hang below her dress they say "Your father likes you better than your mother ! "
Ella M. Leather.
HuntingdonsJure.
A farmer's wife from Offord Cluny has given me the following information about local customs : —
The great day of the village year is Feast Sunday, the last Sunday in June, "when all friends meet," and girls in service take a holiday. Scarce a house in the village but has been ' done up,' papered, or painted to be ready for the Feast. Plum puddings are made, and fillets of pork prepared. About two weeks beforehand part of the hind leg is put in salt water; these ' fillets ' are stuffed and boiled, and " everyone reckons to have new potatoes and green peas for the Feast. Things are very backward if they can't have them ready by Feast Sunday." And it is the only Sunday in the year when the bake-house is opened, so that anyone who wants to can have their dinner cooked there. Then on Feast Monday stalls are set up down the village street, and there is dancing in the evening. An old man used to bring his fiddle to the booth. " It is always called a Feast in the villages, and a Fair in the towns where there is a market." On Feast Tuesday the Sunday School children have their treat.
At Offord Darcy they have their Feast on St. Peter's (the following week to that of Offord Cluny), and the stalls are taken over and set up in that village.
Hiring takes place at the Michaelmas Fair in St. Neot's, called the " Stattis Fair." They are hired at " the Stattis," a statue on the market hill.^ Servants go and stand there, and the farmers' wives and all the men, and they are hired for a year.
On Valentine's Day buns are given to the children by the squire's wife (now a widow), and the children must be careful to say ' Thank you ' properly.
Buns with a cross on them are given on Good Friday by the clergyman.
^•' ' Statute ' is a general term for a statutory Fair.
