132 POPULAR ANTIQUITIES. 



Eve, to slink along the streets, and hurl a pitcher, commonly 

 stolen, and filled wdtli unsavoury contents, into any house the door 

 of which may have been incautiously left open. Often, on entering 

 a house, I have stumbled over th^ fragments of a Paul's Pitcher. 

 In "Notes and Queries" (1st Series,' v. Ill, p. 239), is a descrip- 

 tion, by the late esteemed Sir Hugh Molesworth, of the custom 

 as kept at Padstow. AVhilst asking for an explanation, he ventures 

 one of his own, which seems to me far-fetched and improbable. 

 He supposes it to have reference to an expression in St. Paul's 

 Epistle to the Eomans (ch. ix, v. 21) as to the power of the 

 potter to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour. 

 This has none of the claims for continuance that many of our 

 old customs present to our sympathies ; and in a short time, its 

 observance, which is now a mere drunken frcflic, or a piece of 

 boyish mischief, will have disappeared from among us, except in 

 this record. 



Friday in Lide is the name given to the first Friday in March, 

 from lide, an Anglo-Saxon name for this month. I have heard 

 this archaism only among tinners, where it exists in such sayings 

 as this : " Ducks wan't lay till they've a driiik'd lide water." Fri- 

 day in Lide is marked by a serio-comic custom of sending a young- 

 lad on the highest bound, or hillock, of the work, and allowing 

 him to sleep there as long as he can ; the length of his siesfa being 

 the measure of the afternoon nap for the tinners throughout the 

 ensuing twelvemonth. The weather which commonly characterizes 

 Friday in Lide is, it need scarcely be said, not conducive to pro- 

 longed sleep. 



In Saxon times, labourers were usually allowed their mid-day 

 sleep ; and I have observed that it is even now permitted to hus- 

 bandmen in some parts of East CornAvall, during a stated portion 

 of the year. Tusser speaks of it in his " Five Hundred Points of 

 Good Husbandry " : 



" From May to mid August, an houi" or two, 

 Let Patch sleep a snatch, howsoever ye do: 

 Though sleeping one hour refresheth his song, 

 Yet trust not Hob Grouthead, for sleeping too long." 



Midsummer-day, the feast of the Summer Soktice, is marked 



