Friar Rush, mentioned in Harsnet's Declaration of Popish Impostures, 1603, as a Christmas game; but its nature is not explained.

Friar Tuck.-Tollett describes this character upon his window as in the full clerical tonsure, with a chaplet of white and red beads in his right hand : and, expressive of his professed humility, his eyes are cast upon the ground. His corded girdle and his russet habit denote him to be of the Franciscan Order, or one of the Grey Friars (the only one exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, as Tollett himself pointed out). His stockings are red, his red girdle is ornamented with a golden twist, and with a golden tassel. At his girdle hangs a wallet for the reception of provision, the only revenue of the mendicant orders of religion, who were named Walleteers or budget-bearers. Steevens supposes this Morris Friar designed for Friar Tuck, of Fountain's Dale, chaplain to Robin Hood, as King of May. The Friar's coat, as appears from some of the extracts of Churchwardens' and Chamberlain's Accounts of Kingston, generally of russet. The original character was one of the heroes of the Robin Hood epic. Hazlitt's National Tales and Legends, 1892, p. 273.

was

Friday (Good). See Good Friday. Friday in Lide. The first Friday in March is so called from Llyd, AngloSaxon for tumult or loud. "This day," says Mr. Couch, "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 siesta 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, scarcely conducive to prolong sleep. In Saxon times the labourers were usually allowed their mid-day sleep; and I have observed that it is even now permitted to husbandmen in some parts of East Cornwall, 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 hour or two,

Let Patch sleep a snatch, howsoeuer ye do:

Though sleeping one hour refresheth his

song,

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

Browne, in the third eclogue of the "Shepheard's Pipe," 1614, clearly alludes to this usage, where he makes Thomalin say:

"

Frindsbury, Kent.—Ireland, in his "Views of the Medway," speaks of a singular custom which used to be annually observed on May Day by the boys of Frindsbury and the neighbouring town of Stroud. They met on Rochester Bridge, where a skirmish ensued between them. This combat probably derived its origin from a drubbing received by the monks of Rochester in the reign of Edward I. These monks, on occasion of a long drought, set out on a procession for Frindsbury to pray for rain; but the day proving windy, they apprehended the lights would be blown out, the banners tossed about, and their order much discomposed. They, therefore, requested of the Master of Stroud Hospital leave to pass through the orchard of permission of his brethren; who, when his house, which he granted without the they had heard what the master had done, instantly hired a company of ribalds, armed with clubs and bats, who way-laid the poor monks in the orchard, and gave them a severe beating. The monks desisted from proceeding that way, but soon by obliging the men of Frindsbury, with after found out a pious mode of revenge, due humility, to come yearly on Whit Monday, with their clubs in procession to Rochester, as a penance for their sins. Hence probably came the by-word of Frindsbury clubs."

Fritters or Frutters Thursday. In Leeds and the neighbourhood, they eat a sort of pancake on the Thurs(fritters) Thursday. The Leeds fritter, day, which in that part they call frutters it is said in the "Dialect of Leeds," 1862, p. 307, is "about one-fourth the size of a pancake, thicker, and has an abundance of currants in it."

Frog in the Middle. A game played by both sexes, and consisting of a the middle (the frog), and was playfully party of four or more, of whom one sat in buffeted by the others, till he or she could catch one of them, who had then to take the place. A representation of the mode of playing this game occurs in Wright's

tian burials of the Anglo-Saxons, to leave the head and shoulders of the corpse uncovered till the time of the burial, that relations, &c., might take a last view of their deceased friend. To this day we yet retain (in our way) this old custom, leaving the coffin of the deceased unscrewed till the time of the burial. They were wont, says Bourne, to sit by the corpse from the time of death till its exportation to the grave, either in the house it died in, or in the church itself. To prove this he cites St. Austin, concerning the watching the dead body of his mother Monica; and Gregory of Tours,concerning that of St. Ambrose, whose body was carried into the church the same hour he died. In the monumental effigy of Berengaria, queen of Richard Cœur de Lion, at Le Mans, the figure holds a book, on the covers of which is embossed a representation of the departed, lying on a bier, with waxen torches burning in candlesticks by her side. Fairholt's Costume in England, 1860, p. 82. This practice was general, and is still in vogue among the Romanists. Pope refers to the practice of setting candles upon the bier during the wake or watching time:

"Ah hopeless lasting flames! like those that burn

To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn."

-Eloisa to Abelard.

66

to the ground,' the minister holds the spade and throws in the first spadeful of earth." He adds: "At Skivog from the Park to the Church I have seen the bier carried by the next of kin, husband, brothers, and father in law. All along from the house to the church yard at every cross-way, the bier is laid down, and the Lord's Prayer rehearsed, and so when they first come into the church yard, before any of the verses appointed in the service be said. There is a custom of ringing a little bell before the corps, from the house to the church yard (Dymerchion.) Some particular places are called restingplaces." "Skyvi'og. When a corpse is carried to church from any part of the town, the bearers take care to carry it so that the corps may be on their right hand, though the way be nearer and it be less trouble to go on the other side; nor will they bring the corps through any other way than the south gate. If it should happen to rain while the corps is carried to church, it is reckoned to bode well to the deceased, whose bier is wet with the dew of Heaven. At church the evening service is read, with the Office of Burial. The minister goes to the altar, and there says the Lord's Prayer, with one of the prayers appointed to be read at the grave: after which the congregation offer upon the altar, or on a little board for that pur pose fixed to the rails of the altar, their benevolence to the officiating minister. A friend of the deceased is appointed to stand at the altar, observing who gives, and how much. When all have given, he counts the money with the minister, and signifies the sum to the congregation, thanking them all for their good will." The same writer informs us that the Scotish and Irish practice of howling or shrieking at burials was equally prevalent in Wales. Tours in Wales, 1810, ii., 175. Not improbably it was a Celtic usage. We learn from the inscription in a copy of the Bowman's Glory, 1682, by W. Wood, that he was buried at Clerkenwell, attended by the Company of Archers, who shouted three times over his grave. Gent. Mag. Lib., (Bibl. Coll., 222). In Thomas Hill's Book on Dreams, signat. Mi., is the following passage: To a sicke person to have or weare on white garments doothe promyse death, for that dead bodyes bee caryed foorth in white clothes. And to weare on a blacke garmente, it doothe promyse, for the more parte, healthe to a sicke person, for that not dead personnes, but suche as mourne for the deade, do use to be clothed in blacke." At the funerals of unmarried persons of both sexes, as well as infants, the scarves, hatbands, and gloves given as mourning are white. Pepys saw in Westminster Hall Mistress Lane

and the rest of the maids, who had been at the funeral service over a young bookseller in the Hall, and who all wore their white scarves. This was in January, 1659-60. Laying out the corpse is an office always performed by women, who claim the linen, &c., about the person of the deceased at the time of performing the ceremony. It would be thought very unlucky to the friends of the person departed, were they to keep back any portion of what is thus found. These women give this away in their turn by small divisions; and they who can obtain any part of it, think it an omen or presage of future good fortune to them or theirs.

The

The following is an extract from the old Register-book of Christ Church, Hants: April 14, 1604. Christian Steevens, the wife of Thomas Steevens, was buried in child-birth, and buried by women, for she was a Papishe." Warner, ii., 130. Pennant states: people kneel, and say the Lord's Prayer on the graves of their dead friends for some Sundays after their interment: and this is done generally upon their first coming to Church, and, after that, they dress the grave with flowers. Llanvechan." Gough adds that in Flintshire they say the prayer as the body leaves the house. Sep. Mon., ii., cciv. In the time of Durandus coals, holy water, and frankincense were, in some places, put into the grave. The holy water was to drive away the devils; the frankincense to counteract the ill smells of the body." Rationale, vii., 35, 38. Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Urne-burial" observes, that "the custom of carrying the corpse as it were out of the world with its feet forward, is not inconsonant to reason, as contrary to the native posture of man, and his production first into it." Macaulay observes: "At the funeral of a yeoman, or farmer, the clergyman generally leads the van in the procession, in his canonical habiliments; and the relations follow the corpse, two and two, of each sex, in the order of proximity, linked in each other's arms. At the funeral of a young man it is customary to have six young women, clad in white, as pall-bearers; and the same number of young men, with white gloves and hatbands, at the funeral of a young woman. But these usages are not so universally prevalent as they were in the days of our fathers." Hist. of Claybrook, 1791, 131. Judging from an illustration in an early Breviary in the British Museum, the body was at first consigned to the ground in the funeral cerements, but without any coffin, and the latter was not introduced down to a comparatively late period. Archaol. Album, 1845, p. 90. A similar practice is followed by the Mohammedans, and ap

a

pears to have prevailed on the European continent, which doubtless derived it from the East, as England may have done from the her immediate neighbours across There is Channel. a story laid in where a woman Picardy, in fact, taken to be dead, but only in lethargy, was followed to the grave, wrapped in a sheet, and the bearers, going too near a hedge, the thorns penetrated the covering, and restored vitality. Hazlitt's Studies in Jocular Literature, 1890, p. 120. It is this tale, to which Tallemant des Reaux seems to refer; but he gives it a various reading. Historiettes, ed. 1854,

i., 437. Speaking of the peculiarities in the conduct of a Cleveland funeral, Mr. Atkinson says (1868): "Till lately, when the corpse of an unmarried female was carried to the churchyard, the bearers were all single, and usually young women dressed in a kind of uniform, in some places all in white, in other in black dresses with white shawls and white straw bonnets trimmed with white. The servers (the young women who wait at the arvalsupper) also always preceded the coffin, as it approached the churchyard, sometimes in white, more usually in black with a broad white ribbon worn scarf-wise over one shoulder, and crossing over the black

shawl; or else with knots or rosettes of white on the breast." In Cornwall, the manner among the lower orders is to bear the coffin almost level with the ground, slung on trestle boards, the members of the procession taking turns; and the dead body occupies the centre of the group. There is no hearse or vehicle of any kind (1875). In the Cotswolds there appears to be a pretty and appropriate custom at the burials of little children, by which the coffin is borne in the case of a boy by four children of that sex in black dresses and white hats, and in that of a girl by as many young females of the village similarly attired. This probably ancient usage will doubtless grow obsolete, as the neighbourhood becomes more cenventional. Graphic, Oct. 25, 1902. At the recent interment of a bailiff, belonging to a farmhouse among the hills on the borders of Devonshire and West Dorsetshire, the body was borne to the churchyard in a waggon decorated with heather, the coffin being hidden under bunches of oats. Three cart-horses, whose manes were embellished with black rosettes, drew the vehicle; the lord of the manor headed the procession on a black hunter, and a hundred labourers from the farm and the neighbourhood followed the remains. Daily Mail, Sept. 5,

1903.

In the heart of London, in the neighbourhood of the Seven Dials, among the costermongers who are of superior standing and means, the last tribute to the defunct often costs a considerable sum, and involves a good deal of ceremony. The body is duly prepared, and laid upon a truck-the one used by the departed-with a pall over it, and the friends having assembled, a procession threads all the adjoining thoroughfares, preparatory to the departure for the place of interment. Where the deceased person was popular, as many as 400 or 500 will attend the committal to the earth, and the funeral cortége will consist of a

dozen well-appointed carriages. It yet (1903) remains a characteristic trait of the English poorer class to expend a disproportionate amount on burials.

a

Grose says: If you meet funeral procession, or one passes by you, always take off your hat: this keeps all evil spirits attending the 'body in good humour, but this, though very usual abroad, is very rarely practised here, at least in large towns."

In relation to the stage of the burial service where the minister says, Earth to Earth, and casts a handful over

the coffin after deposition, there is the passage in Herrick's Hesperides, 1648, where, in speaking of

his youthful years, the poet says, that he shall never again visit Westminster or Cheapside: "Where the earth

Of Julian Herrick gave to me my birth." It is observed that in sandy, wet soils twenty years suffice to obliterate every vestige of a coffin and its contents except perhaps the brass plate and a few nails, where no artificial precautions have been taken. This point may be collated with a familiar passage in Hamlet.

In some excavations undertaken in 1576, according to Stow, in Spitalfields, certain Roman cinerary urns were brought to light, which in company with the ashes, contained a small coin of the contemporary emperor, and in the tomb of Canute, opened at Winchester in modern times, one of the hands held a silver penny of that ruler. The precise object of this practice has not been determined, although it has been suggested that it might have been a tradition from later Hellenic folklore and the ferryman Charon who, however, only accepted fares in the shape of persons canonically buried. A different class of association between coins and the dead was the deposit of money in tombs commemorative of the reign of a sovereign, as in the case of Napoleon at St. Helena in 1821.

Funerals,

Ceremonial Usat. ages When the tomb of King John in Worcester Cathedral was opened in 1797, the remains were found to have been deposited in the earth, habited in the same manner as the monumental effigy outside. The King wore a supertunic of crimson embroidered with gold, with red hose and black shoes; his gilt spurs were fastened to his feet by straps of light blue, striped with green and yellow. The beard was closely trimmed. But the most remarkable variation was that on the head was a monk's cowl, corroborating the statement of the chroniclers, that John had assumed that article of dress in his last moments as a protection from the Devil. Fairholt's Costume in England, 1860, p. 83-4. The identical notion recurs elsewhere, as the subjoined extract shews: "On the 13th May, 1220, (4 Hen. iii.) died Robert the second Lord Berkelye, ætis. 55 or thereabouts, and was buried in the North Isle of the Church of the Monastery of St. Augustines (Bristol) over against the high altar, in a monck's cowle, an usual fashion for great peeres in those tymes, esteemed as an amulet or defensative to the soule, and as a Scala Coeli, a ladder of life eternal." Smyth's Berkeley MSS., i., 117. This was Robert de Ber