asked for money, as the girls did with dolls on the First of May. One party, I remember, carried, not an effigy, but a living man with his face blackened. I heard of a living man being also carried round at Bridgewater in 1910.[1]
There is, I think, good ground for the surmise that "Guy Fawkes" did not originate the Fifth of November celebrations, but merely took over a pre-existing custom observed at the season, and transferred it to a different date. In the first place, the date is popularly known as "Bonfire Day" or "Bonfire Night" equally with "Guy Fawkes' Day," and, further, there is not always a "Guy"! The Folkestone effigies have been dropped, as we have seen, of late years. At Bosham, near Chichester, there is reported to be a procession of "Bonfire Boys" in fancy dress winding up with a bonfire, but there is no "Guy." At Liphook, in Hampshire, the boys "let off fireworks, light a public bonfire, and for days beforehand run about in masks, but they have no Guy."[2] According to the same correspondent, Guy is never seen at Wakefield in Yorkshire either. Another testifies that he is unknown in Swaledale, and the same is averred of Lincolnshire by Miss Peacock in the north of the county, and by a correspondent of Notes and Queries in the south.[3] Unpopular public or local characters are sometimes burnt in effigy, but there is no regular Guy, or at any rate only recently. Neither, says Miss Partridge, are Guys known at Redditch in Worcestershire. When I was making collections for Shropshire Folklore I was told that it was, or had been, customary at the farmhouses to have each one a bonfire on the Fifth of November, which agreed with the impression I had derived in childhood from servants and labourers when
- ↑ At Ramsgate fifty or sixty years ago "boys personated Guy Fawkes, and not lay figures as is usual in most places." J. L. André, in Folk-Lore, vol. v., p. 343.
- ↑ Folk-Lore, vol. xiv., p. 89.
- ↑ County Folklore, vol. v. (Lines.), p. 211.
