Bruio-ino; in the FlvT 20 ■
reason house-flies disappear in the autumn is that they are all made into pies for Scauby feast." ^^
The Oxford ceremony survived into the eighteenth centur}', for J. Burman, writing in 1705,^° includes "the custom of . . . the Cook's fetching in the F/j'c on May-Day " among those that Dr. Plot had omitted to describe in the first edition of The Natural Histoy of Oxford-shire (1677).
I think it is evident that we have here another instance, like the Boar's Head ceremony at Queen's College, of a folk-custom adopted by and preserved in academic usage, — " a fly in amber."
Percy Manning.
^* folk- Lore, vol. viii., p. 365. Is it a mere coincidence that in the English mummers' play, which centres in the killing and resurrection of a human being at the winter solstice, one of the characters is made to say about the mock victim : —
" I'll cut him as small as flies, And send him to the cook shop To make mince pies " ?
- The Natural History of Oxford-shire (2nd ed.), p. 2 18.
