Boy's Bailiff

: CUSTOM RHYMES
: Popular Rhymes And Nursery Tales

An old custom, formerly in vogue at Wenlock, in Shropshire, thus

described by Mr. Collins: "I am old enough to remember an old custom,

and the last time it took place was about sixty years ago; it was called

the 'boy's bailiff,' and was held in the Easter week, Holy Thursday, or

in Whitsun week, and I have no doubt was for the purpose of going a

bannering the extensive boundaries of this franchise, which consists of

ei hteen parishes. It consisted of a man, who wore a hair-cloth gown,

and was called the bailiff, a recorder, justices, town-clerk, sheriff,

treasurer, crier, and other municipal officers. They were a large

retinue of men and boys mounted on horseback, begirt with wooden swords,

which they carried on their right sides, so that they must draw the

swords out of the scabbards with their left hands. They, when I knew

them, did not go the boundary, but used to call at all the gentlemen's

houses in the franchise, where they were regaled with meat, drink, and

money; and before the conclusion they assembled at the pillory, at the

guildhall, where the town-clerk read some sort of rigmarole which they

called their charter, and I remember one part was--



We go from Bickbury and Badger to Stoke on the Clee,

To Monkhopton, Round Acton, and so return we.



Bickbury, Badger, and Stoke on the Clee, were and are the two extreme

points of the franchise, north and south; Monkhopton and Round Acton are

two other parishes on the return from Stoke St. Millborough, otherwise

Stoke on the Clee (or perhaps Milburga, the tutelar saint of the Abbey

of Wenlock), to Much Wenlock. This custom I conceive to have originated

in going a bannering, unless it should have been got up as a mockery to

the magistracy of the franchise; but I rather think the former."