LENT-CROCKING.

LENT-CROCKING.

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.

"If 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."