82 
NATURE NOTES. 
ones, nor of course the little toddlers, but the real children — dress 
in their best clothes, and go around the village in groups, each 
carrying its own flower-picture, which they call a “ garland,” to 
show it at the door of every house. It takes two children to 
carry the garland, and the other children of the group walk 
behind it. They knock at a door and the two with the flowers 
stand in front with their garland between them, while the others 
stand around. The people of the houses are all ready to see 
them by nine o’clock, and they expect them and welcome them. 
So the door is soon opened and the flower-picture is looked at. 
Nobody is in a hurry. The children are asked whose boat the 
garland belongs to. The next question is — who holds the purse ? 
for it is held wrong for the purse-bearer to push forward. Then 
the money-bag is held out, and the people of the house put a 
penny or twopence or sixpence in it — ^just what they can afford. 
Very nice and pretty the groups of children, with their beautiful 
“garland” for each, looked, as they stood around the door-step. 
So they move on from house to house, not begging, but of 
course expecting something, which it has been the custom for 
perhaps hundreds of years to give the children on their Garland 
Day. 
The people think kindly of the children, and take great interest 
in the flower-pictures. They don’t look on the custom as one of 
begging in the least, but just as one of kindly good-will towards 
the little ones. So they arrange beforehand how much they can 
give. They know that there are eleven boats (I think it is eleven) 
and a garland with its children for each, and they give as nearly 
as they can the same money to each group. 
By eleven o’clock the different companies have been all round 
the village. By twelve they have to be at the Castle — the great 
house where a kind lord and lady live. The lady — the 
Countess of Ilchester is her title — meets them there, and the 
children show her their garlands, and she puts a gift in every 
purse. 
The Castle is close by the sea, a mile away from the village. 
After the children have been there they go home for dinner, and 
then in the afternoon go back again to the wonderful great 
pebble beach in front of t’ne Castle called the Chesil Bank, 
which is, I think, described in your geography-book. This beach 
is all made up of clean, rounded, lovely pebbles : there is not 
any sand in it, much more no dirt at all, and it rises ever so 
much higher than the waters of the sea rise now, even when the 
tides are at their highest. I should so like to take you on it 
some day, and to talk to 3'ou about it on the ver}'^ place itself. 
God has made that Chesil Bank in a very wonderful way. 
The children of the garlands go back to the sea-side, on this 
lovely pebble beach, in the afternoon and plaj' there until the 
evening, buying cakes and lemonade and sweets — which people 
carry down there in baskets— out of the moneys they have had 
given them in the morning. All the village children come down 
