Lent-crocking
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CUSTOM RHYMES
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Popular Rhymes And Nursery Tales
Parties of young people, during Lent, go to the most noted farmhouses,
and sing, in order to obtain a crock of cake, an old song beginning--
I see by the latch
There is something to catch;
I see by the string
The good dame's within;
Give a cake, for I've none;
At the door goes a stone.
Come give, and I'm gone.
"
f invited in," says Mrs. Bray, "a cake, a cup of cider, and a health
followed. If not invited in, the sport consisted in battering the house
door with stones, because not open to hospitality. Then the assailant
would run away, be followed and caught, and brought back again as
prisoner, and had to undergo the punishment of roasting the shoe. This
consisted in an old shoe being hung up before the fire, which the
culprit was obliged to keep in a constant whirl, roasting himself as
well as the shoe, till some damsel took compassion on him, and let him
go; in this case he was to treat her with a little present at the next
fair."