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by their desuetude, to our practical growth of common sense and cultivation. I do 

 not doubt that many of the customs I am about to refer to, may have their 

 counterparts in other counties, but it will not be supposed that Herefordshire's 

 title to them is unreal or shadowy, if in each case I can cite a locus in quo within 

 the limits or on the frontier and border of the county in which we are met. In 

 preparing a paper on the subject, it may be premised that I have been much 

 beholden to Duncumb, the historian of the county ; to Brand's Popular Anti- 

 quities; The Book of Daps; and last, not least, to Notes and Queries. 



To begin then with Christmas, and not to dwell on the "waits," whose 

 gatherings at that season, in other counties, are very graphically described in Mr. 

 Hardy's amusing novel. Under the Greemoood Tree, and who seem to have given 

 place, in many parts, to the carollers, who more considerately allow their well-to- 

 do neighbours to sleep till six o'clock in the morning, there are one or two special 

 Herefordshire customs about that season, which still, to our knowledge, survive. 

 On good St. Thomas's Day (December 21), the old wives still go "a-Thomasing," 

 or, as Worcestershire folks would say, " a-corning," in allusion to the custom both 

 in that county and this, of their carrying a bag in which to receive in kind from 

 the farmers and landowners, the contribution of corn, which is, we suspect, now 

 generally commuted for a money dole. It was in my recollection, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Kington, on this day that some of the old women who went 

 "a-Thomasing" used to bring the good lady of the court the yarn which they had 

 spun, and thereout to earn an honest penny in addition to the customary gratuity. 

 I doubt whether mumming is really at all indigenous to Herefordshire ; and of 

 course, the yule log, Christmas carol, and like Christmas customs are too universal 

 to demand special notice. Perhaps we ought to say, that though Herefordshire 

 yields to no county in its customary decking its churches with ivy and holly 

 at Christmas-tide, we have never heard of such a solecism and unseasonable 

 addition as the poet Gay associated with them in his Trivia (ii. 437). The mistle- 

 toe, though that is quite a special growth and almost weed of the county, and not 

 only furnishes truck loads to London, but finds its place in the kitchen, servants' 

 hall, and nursery of most of us, certainly does not help to deck our churches. 

 Duncumb affirms that on Christmas Day it was reckoned bad luck if a female was 

 the first to enter the house in the morning, and the same custom, with variations, 

 is found to have existed in the North and elsewhere. His explanation, that " all 

 thrifty housewives should be at their own household affairs," seems scarcely a 

 reason why the sterner sex should enjoy the monopoly of gadding about on that 

 day especially. Upon the feast of Stephen, it was, and is still in old-fashioned 

 farms, a Herefordshire rule to bleed the cattle ; as it was in the days of John 

 Aubrey, the 17th century chronicler, who, with his sire and kinsfolk, had property 

 in Burghill and elsewhere in this county, to bleed also the cart horses. The true 

 reason for this, is one which in these days we are sorry to find lost sight of. 

 "With St. Stephen's Day, are three days of rest," says a writer of the middle of 

 last century, "or at least two." Are our modern tenants generally learned enough 

 and sufficiently observant in the calendar to see the point of this? A more curious 



