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But I must not forpret, in this locality, this metropolis, so to speak, of the border 

 and the marshes, one other characteristic custom, of " Flowerinj; Sunday " — 

 decking graves with flowers, especially on Palm Sunday, or, in some cases, Easter 

 Sunday — which is a time-honoured institution still of Dean Forest, in "the Eye 

 between the Severn and the Wye," as it is in many parishes also of Herefordshire. 

 In the former district the eve of Flowering Sunday 30 years ago resembled a 

 crowded fair, each rustic jjarty bringing its baskets of the brightest and sweetest 

 flowers that honour to the dead could raise or purchase, to deck the grave of its 

 " not lost but gone before " ones, in loving simple token of the sure and certain 

 hope of their blossoming anew one day and rising afresh to a revival in life ever- 

 lasting. Each year the same pious task is sped by the same or kindred hands ; 

 and in some instances the flowers are planted and nursed in parterres within the 

 allotted grave enclosures, whilst in others, as I myself witnessed last month in 

 the churchyard of a border parish (English Bicknor), there are evidences of a 

 constant unfailing service of fresh flowers, as the last-placed ones fade, from year's 

 end to year's end. It is at such a service as this that Malkin, the scholarly and. 

 graphic author, in the beginning of this century, of the Scenery Antiquities, and 

 Biography of South Wales, remarks — "My father-in-law's grave in Cowbridge 

 church has been strewed by his surviving servants every Sunday morning for 

 these twenty years." What can be more appropriate or significant than this 

 constant tribute "to fair Fidele's grassy tomb," what better corrective to the 

 selfishness which is apt to bury its dead out of remembrance as well as out of sight, 

 and to regard the floral wreaths and garlands of a decked grave as "sweetness 

 wasted on the desert air " ? Another custom of a kindred kind is the decking 

 houses with green boughs on the first of May. Whether it has gone out of use in 

 the last few years I cannot say, but when as a boy I lived in the town of Kington, 

 no house, I well remember, was without its bough in the doorway, of green birch ; 

 whilst oak-boughs, with oak apples, if there were any, would be seen in the same 

 place, on the 29th of May. Are birches as much planted in these days as in the 

 days when the now almost forgotten institution of flogging, necessitated their 

 growth ? Perhaps not, though there is no prettier or more graceful tree than the 

 "Lady of the woods," nor one which could come into leaf so seasonably for the May- 

 Day door-decking. I have now mentioned most of the customs to which Duncumb 

 refers, that of cutting finger-nails on Mondays by preference, being trivial and 

 obsolete ; that of killing our pigs towards the full of the moon (that the fat of the 

 bacon may not be dissolved in the boiling), a question for housewives, rather 

 than archiEologists ; and that of harvest suppers, a custom still observed, in some 

 neighbourhoods, in connection with the Church's services and thanksgivings, in 

 others independently, and farm by farm. Where a parish is of manageable 

 dimensions, I can conceive nothing better than a combination of the gentry, 

 clergy, and employers, for a united festival .and thanksgiving collectively. But, 

 to pass out of Duncumb's margin, there are one or two customs of singular 

 character which he has strangely overlooked, and a good many which he probably 

 viewed as too much in common with those of other counties to demand notice. 

 And yet in reciting our customs, a Herefordshire man would do wrong to make 



