"Blossom in March, for fruit you may search,
Blossom in April, eat you will,
Blossom in May, eat night and day."
"At one time small sugared cakes were laid on the branches. This
curious custom has been supposed to be a propitiation of some
spirit."--(Mrs. Damant, Cowes, through Folk-Lore Society.)
From Christmas to Twelfth-tide parties of mummers known as 'Goose or
Geese-dancers' paraded the streets in all sorts of disguises, with
masks on. They often behaved in such an unruly manner that women and
children were afraid to venture out. If the doors of the houses were
not locked they would enter uninvited and stay, playing all kinds of
antics, until money was given them to go away. "A well-known character
amongst them, about fifty years ago (1862), was the hobby-horse,
represented by a man carrying a piece of wood in the form of a horse's
head and neck, with some contrivance for opening and shutting the
mouth with a loud snapping noise, the performer being so covered
with a horse-cloth or hide of a horse as to resemble the animal,
whose curvetings, biting and other motions he imitated. Some of these
'guise-dancers' occasionally masked themselves with the skins of the
head of bullocks having the horns on."--(The Land's End District,
by R. Edmonds.)
Sometimes they were more ambitious and acted a version of the old
play, "St. George and the Dragon," which differed but little from
that current in other countries.
Bottrell, in his Traditions in W. Cornwall (2nd series), gives large
extracts from another Christmas-play, "Duffy and the Devil." It turns
upon the legend, common in all countries, of a woman who had sold
herself to a devil, who was to do her knitting or spinning for her. He
was to claim his bargain at the end of three years if she could not
find out his name before the time expired. Of course, she gets it by
stratagem; her husband, who knows nothing of the compact, first meets
the devil, whilst out hunting, the day before the time is up, and makes
him half-drunk. An old woman in Duffy's pay (Witch Bet) completes
the work, and in that state the devil sings the following words,
ending with his name, which Bet remembers and tells her mistress:--
"I've knit and spun for her
Three years to the day;
To-morrow she shall ride with me
Over land and over sea.
Far away! far away!
For she can never know
That my name is 'Tarraway.'"