New Britain herald., 1930-04-17
Bun, Snpence, and Jumping Rope
 Feature Odd Good Friday Customs

is baked the night before Good Fri day.
 The world puts on a strange carnival on Good Friday. Grown men jump rope; old women bend their aching joints to pick up coins on cold cathedral floors; Spanish senoritas con mourning and beg aims for the poor in the doors of churches; funeral processions pass with yellow torches. But the hot cross bun continues to be the best known factor of the celebration.
 This holds true especially in England.
 Almost before the sun begins to peep over the chimneys of the cottages that live side by side on the narrow English streets, the hun-sellers take up their chant:
 One a penny. two a penny,
 Hot cross buns.
 If you have no daughters
 Give them to your sons.
 If you have none of these
 Merry little elves,
 Then you may keep them
 For yourselves.
 The chant pauscs under the windows in London streets and stays there until the mistress or the cook comes down to buy the spicy, sugary rolls from the bun peddlers. A window goes up, q sleepy voice urges the wandering rhymster to wait minute .. and there are buns for breakfast.
 A Very Old Custom
 The bun sellers who used Q walk back and forth in Piccadilly ing London, carried huge baskets on their arms, and their descend ants still follow the same prac- tice. The buns are covered care fully with flannel and white cloth to keep them fresh and warm.
 The custom of eating hot cross buns on Good Friday is as much a part of tradition as the pro- verbal pumpkin pie at Hal lowe'en.
 Way back in 1712 Chelsea was already famous for it's buns, which were sold at the Old Chel- sea Bun House, in Jews Row. On Good Friday morning sometimes as many as 5o,o0o people came to buy, and 240,oOO were sold in one day.
 The history of the bun which bakeries offer today goes back Q the time of Cccrops, then to the liba offered to Astarte. on through the Jewish Passover cakes. to the eucharistic bread, or cross marked wafers. The name bun is the ob- lique form from beus, which means sacred OK, for the horns of an OK were stamped on the early loaves.
 The Greeks substituted the cross-mark for the horn-mark.
 Originally the home of the English custom of selling buns vas Cambridgeshire and Hert- fordshirc, where the old Roman roads, the Icknicid street and Armynge crossed. An altar had been erected to Diana, at the cross roads, to whom the Romans offered their cakes.
 There are some places in thp world even now where a special cake is still baked on Good Fri day because small pieces of it. placed in water. are thought to have medicinal qualities.
 One of the most interesting of customs still practiced on Good Friday takes place at St. Bar tholonlew church in London early in the morning. During the year the cathedral is practically deserted. but on this particular day huge throngs come to watch 21 aged women bend down to pick up 21 sixpences.
 Sometime before the Great Fire nobody seems to know jul t when any moro . wealthy lady bequcathed some property 10 pcrpetuate this custom. Her grave i' in the floor of the church. The coins are placed on it. and the wo- men whose joints aren't too stiff bend down to receive their reward
 At the Blue Coat school and at the Lanbbourn Ward schools buns and money are given out, in accorl- Gnce with the will Of Peter Sym- onds, who left such a bequest way back in 1887.
 Down at Brighton the anciest custom of skipping rope on Cool Friday continues, six to ten adults standing in the rope tt once. In nearly all Sussex coun- ties men and boys pass the hours playing marbles.
 In Spain the custom differs, Fashionable ladies sit in the door ways of the churches, dressed in funereal garb, and beg aims for the poor,
 Stage Mystery Play
 Monaco stages a mystery play with weird night proccssior, and Palmero, in Sicily, has pro- cessiol of pcnitents, who don masked hoods, with holes fo.' their eyes to look through, anl garlands of thorns. Rope nooses are fastened around their nccks and hands, and the penitents pa rade, marshalled by priests anl monks.
 Many countries use effigies of Christ as q feature of their ccle- bration. In every Christian coun- try church doors are open wide in anticipation of a triumphal entry oi 2000 years ago, whose chorus of hosannas comes cchoing down the windy highways each year