GUISING AND MUMMING IN DERBYSHIRE. 39 



His body that so swiftly 



Has travelled many miles, 

 Over hedges, over ditches, 



Over five-barred gates and stiles. 

 Poor old, etc. 



Then follows a prose conversation amongst the mummers, 

 which is not worth preserving, because it has been so modern- 

 ised as to have lost all its interest. The end of it is that the 

 horse gets a new lease of life, and attempts to worry a black- 

 smith, who is called upon to shoe him. The play is ended by 

 the following stanza : — 



The man that shod this horse, sir, 



That was no use at all, 

 He likened to worry the blacksmith. 

 His hammer and nails and all. 

 Poor old, etc. 



I have been told by an old man in Eckington, now dead, 

 and by another man in Sheflfield, that formerly the mummers 

 used to find out where an old horse was buried, and dig its 

 head up. I published the version of the ballad here given 

 in 1888.1 



It will be noticed that in North Derbyshire the horse is 

 described as "the old horse." "Throughout Yorkshire," says 

 Mr. Henderson, 2 "the Christmas mummers earn' with them 

 an image of a white horse." In Lancashire " the old horse " 

 was described as " Old Ball," and the ceremony was performed 

 not at Christmas, but at Easter.^ It is said that " old Ball " 

 is a favourite name for a cart-horse in Lancashire, and Dr. 

 Murray, in The New English Dictionary, conjectures that ball 

 means a white-faced horse. He refers to Fitzherbert's 

 Husbandry, 1523, which mentions "a white rase or ball in the 



1 Shejfield Glossary (English Dialect Society), p. 163. I did not, how- 

 ever, give the air. I now regret that I did not take down the prose 

 conversation. 



2 Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, 2nd ed., p. 70. 



* Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-lore, 234. 



