Northumbrian Guisards 205 



lent, yet with big voice as cheery, grey eyes as keen 

 as ever ; a delight yet a terror to the rosy-faced maids. 

 Our host is a lover of old times, old faces and old 

 customs, and at hirings it is a common remark that 

 there is never a vacant place here unless someone 

 dies. But though the guisards are sure of a hearty 

 welcome, it is only after much pushing and urging 

 that the chubby boy, who is the Bessie, shyly ventures 

 into the middle of the hall, reciting : 



Redd sticks, redd stools, 



Here comes in a pack of fools ; 



A pack o' fools behind the door, 



Step in, St. George, and clear the way. 



- 



The familiar lines are scarcely heard amid the 

 farmer's loud laughter and the giggling of the girls : 

 Bessie is so strange and fantastic a figure ; for the 

 child, unconsciously following a custom as old as the 

 Roman Saturnalia, has made a rude attempt to dis- 

 guise his sex, and with the great ' ugly ' of a field- 

 worker on his head, and a home-made broom in his 

 hand, wears a cast-off petticoat belonging to his sister, 

 while the Marchioness herself never had so smudged 

 a face. I am sure his predecessors at the Feast of 

 Fools, the Lord of Misrule and the Abbot of Unreason, 

 bore themselves more confidently. Yet he is all we 

 have left of a character that has probably been repre- 

 sented in England since the days when Druids feasted 

 at the fruit time of their sacred berry, and ' Bessie ' 

 reproduces what seems to have been among early 



