SOULING, CLEMENTING, AND CATTERNING.
THREE NOVEMBER CUSTOMS OF THE WESTERN MIDLANDS.
At the request of our President I am to bring to your notice this morning three customs—or rather three varieties of one custom—practised in the month of November in the counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire, and carried on in recent years within a few miles of the place where we are now assembled. The localities in which these customs have been recorded are marked on the map—Souling with a cross, dementing with a black line, and Catterning with two black lines. You see that each occupies a well-marked area, and each "marches" pretty closely with its neighbours. Trivial though these customs are, and in the last stage of decay, yet nevertheless their history may serve to illustrate the general history of institutions—their growth and decay, the effect upon indigenous custom of the introduction of new ideas, and the result produced by the contact of cultures.
There is one point that is forcibly impressed on the mind by the study of calendar customs, and that point is that, to arrive at a true understanding of our ancient seasonal customs, we must first of all realize that each calendar fast or festival had its economic as well as its social and religious sides, and conversely its religious and
- ↑ Read before Section H. (Anthropology) at the meeting of the British Association, Birmingham, 1913.
