British Popular Customs Present And Past - online book

A calendar of the traditional customs, practices & rituals of the British Isles.

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Oct 31.]                          hallow eve.                                   397
to which the name of revels was given and of which dancing appears to have been the chief. On All Hallows Day, ' the Master (Whiteloeke, then four-and-twenty), as soon as the evening was come, entered the hall followed by sixteen revellers. They were proper, handsome young gentlemen, habited in rich suits, shoes and stockings, hats and great feathers. The master led them in his bar gown, with a white staff in his hand, the music playing before them. They began with the old masques; after which they danced the Brawls* and then the master took his seat, while the revellers flaunted through galliards, corantos, French and country dances, till it grew very late. As might be ex­pected, the reputation of this dancing soon brought a store of other gentlemen and ladies, some of whom were of great quality, and when the ball was over the festive party adjourned to Sir Sydney Montague's chamber, lent for the purpose to our young president. At length the court ladies and grandees were allured, to the contentment of his vanity it may have been, but entailing on him serious expense, and then there was great striving for places to see them on the part of the London citizens. To crown the ambition and vanity of all, a great German lord had a desire to witness the revels, then making such a sensation at court, and the Templars entertained him at great cost to themselves, receiving in exchange that which cost the great noble very little—his avowal that 'Dere was no such nople gollege in Christendom as deirs.' "—Whitelocke's Memoirs of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1860, p. 56 ; quoted in Boole of Days, vol. ii. p. 538.
Nottinghamshire.
If a girl had two lovers, and wished to know which would be the most constant, she procured two brown apple pippins, and sticking one on each cheek (after having named them from her lovers) while she repeated this couplet:
"Pippen, pippen, I stick thee there, That that is true thou may'st declare,"
patiently awaited until one fell off, when the unfortunate * Erroneously written Brantes iu the authority quoted.
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