288 So7(/i)ii^; Clenicjiting-, and Cattcrning.
— viz. one at Monmouth,-' one near Sheffield,^ and one at Marton in Lancashire/^ which of course comes within Blount's area. But though I have not heard of any general dole elsewhere, yet cakes are associated with the festival in various places. At Whitby they were called soul-mass loaves, and were believed to be imperishable.
Aubrey records the "rhythm or saying" current in his day as : —
" A Soule-cake, a Soule-cake, Have mercy on all Christen scales for a Soule-cake ! "
which is clearly a reminiscence of the pre-Reformation practice of prayers for the dead. Blount states that the recipients of the dole returned thanks for the gift by the pious aspiration : " God have your soul, bones and all ! " ("beens," i.e. banes, bones). Here, it is the soul of the living donor that is to be benefited by the dole. Several of the present-day versions of the Souling ditty allude to the blessing that will return to the giver: —
" Pray, good people, give us a cake 1
For we are all poor people, well known to you before, So give us a cake, for charity's sake,
And a blessing we'll leave at your door ! "
But the following couplets, which Mr. G. T. Lawley, the historian of Bilston, heard there in 1857, droned out by a party of old women in grey or black cloaks, preserve a distinctly pre-Reformation form: —
" Here we be a-standing round about your door, We be come a-souling, an' we bin very poor !"
" Remember the departed, for holy Mary's sake, And of your charity, pray gi' we a big soul-cake 1 "
The Reformed doctrine, as readers of Macaulay know, never thoroughly leavened Staffordshire, where little groups
'Miss Marie Meek. ■»Ii.F-M. Porter's Hist, of the Fylde.
