Shrovetide is associated with pancakes.  The pancake bell is still rung in many places, and for some occult reason it is the season for some wild football games in the streets and lanes of several towns and villages.  At St. Ives on the Monday there is a grand hurling match, which resembles a Rugby football contest without the kicking of the ball, which is about the size of a cricket-ball, made of cork or light wood.  At Ashbourne on Shrove-Tuesday thousands join in the game, the origin of which is lost in the mists of antiquity.  As the old church clock strikes two a little speech is made, the National Anthem sung, and then some popular devotee of the game is hoisted on the shoulders of excited players and throws up the ball.  “She’s up,” is the cry, and then the wild contest begins, which lasts often till nightfall.  Several efforts have been made to stop the game, and even the judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench had to decide whether it was legal to play the game in the streets.  In spite of some opposition it still flourishes, and is likely to do so for many a long year.  Sedgefield, Chester-le-Street, Alnwick, Dorking also have their famous football fights, which differ much from an ordinary league match.  In the latter thousands look on while twenty-two men show their skill.  In these old games all who wish take part in them, all are keen champions and know nothing of professionalism.

“Ycleping,” or, as it is now called, clipping churches, is another Shrovetide custom, when the children join hands round the church and walk round it.  It has just been revived at Painswick, in the Cotswolds, where after being performed for many hundred years it was discontinued by the late vicar.  On the patron saint’s day (St. Mary’s) the children join hands in a ring round the church and circle round the building singing.  It is the old Saxon custom of “ycleping,” or naming the church on the anniversary of its original dedication.

Simnels on Mothering Sunday still exist, reminding us of Herrick’s lines:—­

        I’ll to thee a Simnel bring,
        ’Gainst thou goes a mothering;
        So that when she blesseth thee
        Half the blessing thou’lt give me.

Palm Sunday brings some curious customs.  At Roundway Hill, and at Martinsall, near Marlborough, the people bear “palms,” or branches of willow and hazel, and the boys play a curious game of knocking a ball with hockey-sticks up the hill; and in Buckinghamshire it is called Fig Sunday, and also in Hertfordshire.  Hertford, Kempton, Edlesborough, Dunstable are homes of the custom, nor is the practice of eating figs and figpies unknown in Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Wilts, and North Wales.  Possibly the custom is connected with the withering of the barren fig-tree.

Good Friday brings hot-cross-buns with the well-known rhyme.  Skipping on that day at Brighton is, I expect, now extinct.  Sussex boys play marbles, Guildford folk climb St. Martha’s Hill, and poor widows pick up six-pences from a tomb in the churchyard of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, on the same Holy Day.