Michaelmas Daisy. _Aster Tradescanti._
Dedicated to _St. Michael and all Angels_.
[331] Golden Legend.
[332] From Times Telescope.
~September 30.~
_St. Jerome_, Priest, Doctor of the Church, A. D. 420. _St. Gregory_,
Bp. surnamed the Apostle of Armenia, and the Illuminator, 4th Cent.
_St. Honorius_, Abp. of Canterbury, A. D. 653.
~St. Jerome.~
This saint is in the church of England calendar and almanacs.
Particulars concerning him will be related hereafter; it is sufficient
to observe, for the present, that the church of England sets him forth
as an authority for reading the Old Testament Apocrypha.
_Custom at Kidderminster._
The annual election of a bailiff at this town, before noticed,[333] is
still accompanied by the rude mirth of the populace. The Editor is
obliged to a lady for the following communication.
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book._
Dear Sir,
I have just cast my eye upon your definition of the term “costermonger,”
and it reminds me of an annual custom at Kidderminster, (my native
town,) which you may perhaps think an account of, a fit subject for
insertion in the _Every-Day Book_.
The magistrate and other officers of the town are annually elected, and
the first Monday after Michaelmas-day is the day of their inauguration,
in celebration of which, they each of them cause to be thrown to the
populace, (who assemble to the amount of some thousands,) from the
windows of their houses, or sometimes from the town-hall, a large
quantity of apples, in the whole often amounting, from twenty to thirty
pots, (baskets containing five pecks each.) This practice occasions, of
course, a kind of prescriptive holiday in the town, and any one having
the temerity to refuse his apprentice or servant leave to attend the
“apple-throwing,” would most probably have cause to repent such an
invasion of right. A rude concourse therefore fills the streets which
are the scenes of action; and as a sort of “safety valve,” if I may
“compare great things with small,” recourse is had by the crowd to the
flinging about of old shoes, cabbage stalks, and almost every accessible
kind of missile; till at length the sashes are raised, and the gifts of
Pomona begin to shower down upon the heads of the multitude. Woe be to
the unlucky wight who may chance to ride through the town during the
introductory part of this custom; no sooner does he appear, than a
thousand aims are taken at him and his horse, or carriage, and the poor
belated rider “sees, or dreams he sees,” (if ignorant of the practice,)
the inhabitants of a whole town raised to oppose his single progress,
without being able to form the most distant idea of their motive for so
doing. At Ludlow there is a custom as ancient and equally foolish, that
of pulling a rope, but of this I know nothing except by report.