(_For the Mirror_.)
On the Coteswold, Gloucester, is a customary meeting at Whitsuntide,
vulgarly called an _Ale_, or _Whitsun Ale_, resorted to by numbers of
young people. Two persons are chosen previous to the meeting, to be
Lord and Lady of the Ale or Yule, who dress as suitably as they can to
those characters; a large barn, or other building is fitted up with
seats, &c. for the lord's hall. Here they assemble to dance and regale
in the best manner their circumstances and the place will afford; each
man treats his sweetheart with a ribbon or favour. The lord and lady
attended by the steward, sword, purse, and mace-bearer, with their
several badges of office, honour the hall with their presence; they
have likewise, in their suit, a page, or train-bearer, and a jester,
dressed in a parti-coloured jacket. The lord's music, consisting of a
tabor and pipe, is employed to conduct the dance. Companies of
morrice-dancers, attended by the jester and tabor and pipe, go about
the country on Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun week, and collect sums
towards defraying the expenses of the Yule. All the figures of the
lord, &c. of the Yule, handsomely represented in basso-relievo, stand
in the north wall of the nave of Cirencester Church, which vouches for
the antiquity of the custom; and, on many of these occasions, they
erect a may-pole, which denotes its rise in Druidism. The mace is made
of silk, finely plaited with ribbons on the top, and filled with
spices and perfumes for such of the company to smell to as desire it.
Halbert H.
* * * * *