~Standing Lamp~.]
It will be seen from this engraving that the person, whose business it
was to “watch” and trim the lamp, did not ascend for that purpose by a
ladder, as the gas-lighters do our gas-lamps, or as the lamp-lighter did
the oil-lamps which they superseded, but by climbing the pole, hand and
foot, by means of the projections on each side.
_St. John’s Eve Watch at Nottingham._
The practice of setting the watch, at Nottingham, on St. John’s eve, was
maintained until the reign of Charles I., the manner whereof is thus
described:--
“In Nottingham, by an ancient custom, they keep yearly a general watch
every Midsummer eve at night, to which every inhabitant of any ability
sets forth a man, as well voluntaries as those who are charged with
arms, with such munition as they have; some pikes, some muskets,
calivers, or other guns, some partisans, holberts, and such as have
armour send their servants in their armour. The number of these are
yearly almost two hundred, who, at sun-setting, meet on the Row, the
most open part of the town, where the mayor’s serjeant at mace gives
them an oath, the tenor whereof followeth, in these words: “They shall
well and truly keep this town till to-morrow at the sun-rising; you
shall come into no house without license, or cause reasonable. Of all
manner of casualties, of fire, of crying of children, you shall due
warning make to the parties, as the case shall require you. You shall
due search make of all manner of affrays, bloud-sheds, outcrys, and of
all other things that be suspected,” &c. Which done, they all march in
orderly array through the principal parts of the town, and then they are
sorted into several companies, and designed to several parts of the
town, where they are to keep the watch until the sun dismiss them in the
morning. In this business the fashion is for every watchman to wear a
garland, made in the fashion of a crown imperial, bedeck’d with flowers
of various kinds, some natural, some artificial, bought and kept for
that purpose; as also ribbans, jewels, and, for the better garnishing
whereof, the townsmen use the day before to ransack the gardens of all
the gentlemen within six or seven miles about Nottingham, besides what
the town itself affords them, their greatest ambition being to outdo one
another in the bravery of their garlands.”[183] So pleasant a sight must
have been reluctantly parted with; and accordingly in another place we
find that this Midsummer show was held at a much later period than at
Nottingham, and with more pageantry in the procession.
_St. John’s Eve Watch at Chester._
The annual setting of the watch on St. John’s eve, in the city of
Chester, was an affair of great moment. By an ordinance of the mayor,
aldermen, and common councilmen of that corporation, dated in the year
1564, and preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, a
pageant which is expressly said to be “according to ancient custom,” is
ordained to consist of four giants, one unicorn, one dromedary, one
camel, one luce, one dragon, and six hobby-horses with other figures.
By another MS. in the same library it is said, that Henry Hardware,
Esq., the mayor, in 1599, caused the giants in the Midsummer show to be
broken, “and not to goe _the devil in his feathers_;” and it appears
that he caused a man in complete armour to go in their stead: but in the
year 1601, John Ratclyffe, beer-brewer, being mayor, set out the giants
and Midsummer show as of old it was wont to be kept. In the time of the
commonwealth the show was discontinued, and the giants with the beasts
were destroyed.
At the restoration of Charles II., the citizens of Chester replaced
their pageant, and caused all things to be made new, because the old
models were broken. According to the computation, the four great giants
were to cost five pounds a-piece, at the least, and the four men to
carry them were to have two shillings and six-pence each; the materials
for constructing them were to be hoops of various sizes, deal boards,
nails, pasteboard, scaleboard, paper of various sorts, buckram,
size-cloth, and old sheets for their body-sleeves and shirts, which were
to be coloured; also tinsel, tinfoil, gold and silver leaf, and colours
of various kinds, with glue and paste in abundance. The provision of a
pair of old sheets to cover the “father and mother giants,” and three
yards of buckram for the mother’s and daughter’s hoods, seems to prove
that three of these monstrous pasteboard figures represented females. A
desire to preserve them may be inferred from an entry in the bill of
charges:--“For arsnick to put into the paste, to save the giants from
being eaten by the rats, one shilling and four-pence.” There was an item
in the estimate--“For the new making the city mount, called the maior’s
mount, as auntiently it was, and for hireing of bays for the same, and a
man to carry it, three pounds six shillings and eight-pence.”
Twenty-pence was paid to a joiner for cutting pasteboard into several
images for the “merchant’s mount,” which being made, “as it aunciently
was with a ship to turn round,” cost four pounds, including the hiring
of the “bays,” and five men to carry it. The charge for the ship, and
new dressing it, was five shillings. Strutt, who sets forth these
particulars, conjectures, that the ship was probably made with
pasteboard, that material seeming, to him, to have been a principle
article in the manufacturing of both these movable mountains. The ship
was turned, he says, by means of a swivel, attached to an iron handle
underneath the frame; the “bays” was to hang round the bottom of the
frames to the ground, and so conceal the bearers. Then there was a new
“elephant and castell, and a cupid,” with his bows and arrows, “suitable
to it;” the castle was covered with tin foil, and the cupid with skins,
so as to appear to be naked, and the charge for these, with two men to
carry them, was one pound sixteen shillings and eight-pence. The “four
beastes called the unicorne, the antelop, the flower-de-luce (?) and the
camell,” cost one pound sixteen shillings and four-pence each, and eight
men were paid sixteen shillings to carry them. Four boys for carrying
the four hobby-horses, had four shillings, and the hobby-horses cost six
shillings and eight-pence each. The charge for the new dragon, with six
naked boys to beat at it, was one pound sixteen shillings. Six
morris-dancers, with a pipe and tabret, had twenty shillings; and
“hance-staves, garlands, and balls, for the attendants upon the mayor
and sheriffs cost one pound nineteen shillings.”[184]
These preparations it will be remembered were for the setting forth of
the Midsummer-watch at Chester, so late as the reign of Charles II.
After relating these particulars, Mr. Strutt aptly observes, that
exhibitions of this kind for the diversions of the populace, are well
described in a few lines from a dramatic piece, entitled “A pleasant and
stately Morall of the Three Lordes of London:”--
-----“Let nothing that’s magnifical,
Or that may tend to London’s graceful state,
Be unperformed, as showes and solemne feastes,
Watches in armour, triumphes, cresset lights,
Bonefires, belles, and peales of ordinaunce
And pleasure. See that plaies be published,
Mai-games and maskes, with mirthe and minstrelsie,
Pageants and school-feastes, beares and puppet-plaies.”
_Somersetshire Custom._
In the parishes of Congresbury and Puxton, are two large pieces of
common land, called East and West Dolemoors, (from the Saxon dal, which
signifies a share or portion,) which are divided into single acres, each
bearing a peculiar and different mark cut in the turf; such as a horn,
four oxen and a mare, two oxen and a mare, a pole-axe, cross, dung-fork,
oven, duck’s-nest, hand-reel, and hare’s-tail. On _the Saturday before
Old-Midsummer_, several proprietors of estates in the parishes of
Congresbury, Puxton, and Week St. Lawrence, or their tenants, assemble
on the commons. A number of apples are previously prepared, marked in
the same manner with the before-mentioned acres, which are distributed
by a young lad to each of the commoners from a bag or hat. At the close
of the distribution each person repairs to his allotment, as his apple
directs him, and takes possession for the ensuing year. An adjournment
then takes place to the house of the overseer of Dolemoors, (an officer
annually elected from the tenants,) where four acres, reserved for the
purpose of paying expenses, are let by inch of candle, and the remainder
of the day is spent in that sociability and hearty mirth so congenial to
the soul of a Somersetshire yeoman.[185]
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