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.