Year: 1879

We extract the following from story by Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Browns "Schooldays at Rugby'), print ed in S. Nicholas. The story describes the curious English ceremony called Beating the Parish Bounds,n both in London and in the country.

 Peter, Plump and Pip, the aurLor's three boy characters, were three as active young scamps as ever trod shoe leather. One day, they were having the liveliest kind of fun hunting rabbits with a ter Tier, when, in 8 dense copse, they came upon curiously marked stone bedded in the earth. Meeting on the road an old fellow named Gaffer Giles, who was seated on a heap of stones, his legs wide apart, engaged in breaking the bigger ones with long hammer, the boys learned from him that their stone mark ed the parish bounds. The old man was easily persuaded to tell what he knew about it, which, as MT. Hughes relates it, was much as follows

 When he was a little chap at the parish school, they had holiday every year on "Gang Monday.n He didn't just mind when it came round, but some where about Whitsuntide. Well, on Gang Monday morning, all tEe boys went to the churchyard, and there was the lords steward with a map, and the parish constable, and a smart few men and women, too, who had mind to beat the bounds" possessioning' (pro- cessioning) they called it, or some such name. He was no scholard, but minded the name for all that

 So the possessioners' started with the steward in front and the constable ringing bell, and the rest following in a row. They marched all round the parish, and now and again the steward would stop, and sometimes they drove a stake or set up a stone like that one in the copse. That was in places where there was a dispute about the parish line. Then they'd use to catch a boy or two, and take him by the arms and legs and bump him up against the stone or a tree, so as he should remember the place afterward.

 At the brook, too, along that part of it where the parish line struck it, and ran down it for, might be, two or three furlongs, there was a scramble to see who should be pushed in to wade down. It wasn't more than knee-deep for any one as knew which side to keep and where to cross. But now and again some young chap as didn't know would be in, and they as knew called him wrong so as he should go plump into the holes above his middle, for all the folk to laugh at; and sometimes they caught a boy and chucked him in. But the boys mostly were too knowing, and kept away from the men when they got near the brook.

 There was a deal of waste land too, there, and the steward, he had an eye to it all sure enough, as they went along, to see that no poor man had run up a bit of place for his jackass or pig, or fenced round rood of taters or cabbages. He minded one time when they came across bit of stye as Israel Willis, the char coal burner, had put up, and how at the stewards bidding they had pulled it down and chased Israels SOW and her litter on to the common. No, he knew better now. Israel had gone to the bad, and ended in the county jail all along of that business. Twas no business of their'n to help clear the lords waste, and now twas all took in and fenced off these forty year, and no man the better but the lord and no place left tor poor folk to cut bit of furze, or turn out a goose or a pig, or pick few bits of stick for fire.

 Then on Gang Mondays when they got back, there was bread and cheese and ale for all, and buns and glass of ale for the boys, and the bells ringing all the after noon, and two shillings apiece for the ringers. He had heard tell ot piece of land called Gang Mondays land, as was left in old times to pay for beating the parish bounds. What had come of that now? there was no holiday, nor bread and cheese and ale, nor buns nor bell ringing.

 So old Giles crooned on, breaking a stone now and then with whack of his hammer to ease his feelings, and glad of such attentive listeners to his budget of old stories and grievances, as the boys were proving themselves to be.

 They sat about him all ears, till the church-clock in the distance struck five and warned them of teatime at the vicarage. Then they jumped up and hurried off, leaving old Giles sitting on the stone-heap and thwacking away with more than usual diligence, as the thoughts of vanished holidays and the wrongs of the poor came thronging back once more across his awakened memory

 As they trotted along toward the vicarage, the boys banded their chaff as usual backward and forward, agreeing in nothing but this one thing, that it would be great fun-or "real swagger," as Plump would call tito have q Gang Monday next year in Moreton parish.