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Amongst the cresset lights shot up on hie,
To chase darke night for ever from the skie:
While in the streets the stickelers to and fro,
To keepe decorum, still did come and go;
Where tables set were plentifully spread,
And at each doore neighbor with neighbor fed;
Where modest mirth, attendant at the feast,
With plentye, gave content to every guest;

Where true good will crown'd cups with fruitfull wine,

And neighbors in true love did fast combine;

Where the lawes picke purse, strife 'twixt friend and
friend,

By reconcilement happily tooke end.

A happy time, when men knew how to use
The gifts of happy peace, yet not abuse
Their quiet rest with rust of ease, so farre
As to forget all discipline of warre."

A note says: "King Henrie the Eighth, approving this marching watch, as an auncient commendable custome of this cittie, lest it should decay thro' neglect or covetousnesse, in the first yeare of his reigne came privately disguised in one of his guard's coates into Cheape, on Midsommer Even; and seeing the same at that time performed to his content, to countenance it, and make it more glorious by the presence of his person, came after on St. Peter's Even, with Queen Katherine, attended by a noble traine, riding in royall state to the King's Heade in Cheape, there to behold the same; and after, anno 15 of his reigne, Christerne, King of Denmarke, with his Queene, being then in England, was conducted through the cittie to the King's-heade, in Cheape, there to see the same.”

Douce's MS. notes say, "It appears that a watch was formerly kept in the city of London on Midsummer Eve, probably to prevent any disorders that might be committed on the above occasion. It was laid down in the 20th year of Henry VIII. See Hall's Chronicle at the latter end of the year. The Chronicles of Stow and Byddell assign the sweating sickness as a cause for discontinuing the watch." Niccols says, the watches on Midsummer and St. Peter's Eve were laid down by licence from the king, "for that the cittie had then bin charged with the leavie of a muster of 15,000 men.” We read in Byddell's Chronicle, under the year 1527: "This yere was the sweatinge sicknesse. for the which cause there

was no watche at Mydsommer." See also Grafton's Chronicle, p. 1290, in ann. 1547, when the watch appears to have been kept both on St. John Baptist's Eve and on that of St. Peter.

[It was again prohibited in 1539, and appears to have been discontinued from that period till 1547, when it was revived under the mayoralty of Sir John Gresham, with more than usual splendour. Mr. Gage Rokewode quotes the following entry from Lady Long's household book, relating to this ceremony: "Paid to xxx. men for weying of your La: harneys on Midsommer eve and St. Peter's eve, that is to say x. s. to my Lord Mayor and xx. to Sir Roland Hill."]

Sir John Smythe's "Instructions, Observations, and Orders Militarie," 1595, p. 129, say: "An ensigne-bearer in the field, carrieng his ensigne displayed, ought to carrie the same upright, and never, neither in towne nor field, nor in sport, nor earnest, to fetche flourishes about his head with his ensigne-staff, and taffata of his ensigne, as the ensigne-bearers of London do upon Midsommer Night."

"In Nottingham," says an old authority quoted by Deering, p. 123, "by an antient custom, they keep yearly a general watch every Midsummer Eve at night, to which every inhabitant of any ability sets forth a man, as well voluntaries as those who are charged with arms, with such munition as they have; some pikes, some muskets, calivers, or other guns, some partisans, holberts, and such as have armour send their servants in their armour. The number of these are yearly almost two hundred, who at sun-setting meet on the Row, the most open part of the town, where the Mayor's Serjeant at Mace gives them an oath, the tenor whereof followeth, in these words: "They shall well and truly keep this town till to-morrow at the sun-rising; you shall come into no house without license or cause reasonable. Of all manner of casualties, of fire, of crying of children, you shall due warning make to the parties, as the case shall require. You shall due search make of all manner of affrays, bloudsheds, outcrys, and all other things that be suspected,' &c. Which done, they all march in orderly array through the principal parts of the town, and then they are sorted into several companies, and designed to several parts of the town, where they are to keep the watch until the sun dismiss them in the morning. In

this business the fashion is for every watchman to wear a garland, made in the fashion of a crown imperial, bedeck'd with flowers of various kinds, some natural, some artificial, bought and kept for that purpose, as also ribbans, jewels, and, for the better garnishing whereof, the townsmen use the day before to ransack the gardens of all the gentlemen within six or seven miles about Nottingham, besides what the town itself affords them, their greatest ambition being to outdo one another in the bravery of their garlands. This custom is now quite left off. It used to be kept in this town even so lately as the reign of King Charles I."

Plays appear to have been acted publicly about this time. We read in King's Vale Royal, p. 88, that in 1575, "Sir John Savage, maior, caused the Popish Plays of Chester to be played the Sunday, Munday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after Mid-sommer Day, in contempt of an Inhibition, and the Primat's Letters from York, and from the Earl of Huntingdon." In the same work, p. 199, it is said: Anno 1563, upon the Sunday after Midsummer Day, the History of Eneas and Queen Dido was play'd in the Roods Eye; and were set out by one Willliam Croston, gent. and one Mr. Man, on which triumph there was made two forts and shipping on the water, besides many horsemen, well armed and appointed."

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In Lyte's Translation of Dodoen's Herball, 1578, p. 39, we read: "Orpyne. The people of the countrey delight much to set it in pots and shelles on Midsummer Even, or upon timber, slattes, or trenchers, daubed with clay, and so to set or hang it up in their houses, where as it remayneth greene a long season and groweth, if it be sometimes oversprinckled with water. It floureth most commonly in August." common name for orpine plants was that of Midsummer Men. In one of the Tracts printed about 1800 at the Cheap Repository, was one entitled Tawney Rachel, or the FortuneTeller, said to have been written by Hannah More. Among many other superstitious practices of poor Sally Evans, one of the heroines of the piece, we learn that "she would never go to bed on Midsummer Eve without sticking up in her room the well-known plant called Midsummer Men, as the bending of the leaves to the right, or to the left, would never

fail to tell her whether her lover was true or false." Spenser thus mentions orpine:

"Cool violets, and orpine growing still."

It is thus elegantly alluded to in the Cottage Girl, a poem "written on Midsummer Eve, 1786:"

"The rustic maid invokes her swain,
And hails, to pensive damsels dear,
This Eve, though direst of the year.
Oft on the shrub she casts her eye,
That spoke her true-love's secret sigh;
Or else, alas! too plainly told

Her true-love's faithless heart was cold."

On the 22d of January, 1801, a small gold ring, weighing eleven pennyweights seventeen grains and a half, was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries by John Topham, Esq. It had been found by the Rev. Dr. Bacon, of Wakefield, in a ploughed field near Cawood, in Yorkshire, and had for a device two orpine plants joined by a true-love knot, with this motto above: "Ma fiance velt ;" i. e. My sweetheart wills, or is desirous. The stalks of the plants were bent to each other, in token that the parties represented by them were to come together in marriage. The motto under the ring was, "Joye l'amour feu." From the form of the letters it appeared to have been a ring of the fifteenth century.

The orpine plant also occurs among the following love divinations on Midsummer Eve, preserved in the Connoisseur, No. 56:-"I and my two sisters tried the dumb-cake together you must know, two must make it, two bake it, two break it, and the third put it under each of their pillows (but you must not speak a word all the time), and then you will dream of the man you are to have. This we did: and to be sure I did nothing all night but dream of Mr. Blossom. same night, exactly at twelve o'clock, I sowed hemp-seed in our back yard, and said to myself, 'Hemp-seed I sow, Hempseed I hoe, and he that is my true-love come after me and mow.' 'Will you believe me? I looked back, and saw him

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[Mr. Soane, in his New Curiosities of Literature, i. 210, quotes an old work for this curious custom.]

behind me, as plain as eyes could see him. After that, I took a clean shift and wetted it, and turned it wrong-side out, and hung it to the fire upon the back of a chair; and very likely my sweetheart would have come and turned it right again (for I heard his step), but I was frightened, and could not help speaking, which broke the charm. I likewise stuck up two Midsummer Men, one for myself, and one for him. Now if his had died away, we should never have come together, but I assure you his blowed and turned to mine. Our maid Betty tells me, that if I go backwards, without speaking a word, into the garden, upon Midsummer Eve, and gather a rose, and keep it in a clean sheet of paper, without looking at it till Christmas Day, it will be as fresh as in June; and if I then stick it in my bosom, he that is to be my husband will come and take it out."

The same number of the Connoisseur fixes the time for watching in the church porch on Midsummer Eve: “I am sure my own sister Hetty, who died just before Christmas, stood in the church porch last Midsummer Eve, to see all that were to die that year in our parish; and she saw her own apparition." This superstition was more generally practised, and, I believe, is still retained in many parts on the Eve of St. Mark. (See p. 193.) Cleland, however, in his Institution of a young Nobleman," has a chapter entitled "A Remedie against Love," in which he thus exclaims: "Beware likewise of these fearful superstitions, as to watch upon St. John's evening, and the first Tuesdaye in the month of Marche, to conjure the moon, to lie upon your backe having your ears stopped with laurel leaves, and to fall asleepe, not thinking of God, and such like follies, all forged by the infernal Cyclops and Plutoe's servants."

Grose tells us that any person fasting on Midsummer Eve, and sitting in the church porch, will at midnight see the spirits of the persons of that parish who will die that year, come and knock at the church door, in the order and succession in which they will die. One of these watchers, there being several in company, fell into a sound sleep, so that he could not be waked. Whilst in this state, his ghost, or spirit, was seen by the rest of his companions knocking at the church door. (See Pandemonium, by R. B.) Aubrey, in his Remains of Gentilisme, mentions this custom on Midsummer Eve

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