at Hallowe’en, they like to frighten each other with spooky tales, told softly, in which the
tension builds up until the last word is suddenly and frighteningly shouted. The best
known such tale is undoubtedly,
In the dark, dark wood, there was a dark, dark house,
And in that dark, dark house, there was a dark, dark room,
And in that dark, dark room, there was a dark, dark cupboard,
And in that dark, dark cupboard, there was a dark, dark shelf,
And in that dark, dark shelf, there was a dark, dark box,
And in that dark, dark box, there was a GHOST!In the remoter parts of Britain children mark the seasons by going round to their
neighbours and chanting traditional verses, in expectation of some small reward in
money or kind. For instance, on Exmoor and in the Bredon Hills, at least until the
1950s, the custom of Lent Crocking was still carried out at Shrovetide. Children with
soot-blackened faces went round the farmhouses, and after singing, ‘Tippety, tippety
tin, Give me a pancake and I will come in. Tippety, tippety toe, Give me a pancake and I
will go’, they crept in—if the door was left open—threw a load of broken crocks on the
floor and tried to escape unseen. If the householders caught them they had their faces
further blackened with soot, were given a pancake and allowed to go.
It is difficult to know how many of the little songs asking for a gift in exchange for
seasonal good wishes are still extant. Perhaps those collected in the 1950s as material
for The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Opie and Opie 1959) have disappeared in
response to a new social climate in which children have more money at their disposal,
and are more protected and escorted. Of the various celebrations conducted by children
on their own initiative, at Christmas and New Year, on St Valentine’s Day and May Day,
at All Souls and in the weeks before Guy Fawkes Day, the most likely to have survived is
probably May Day (especially in Manchester), when little groups of girls chose a queen,
visited their neighbours with the maypole they had decorated, and sang a song such as,
Around this merry maypole
And through the livelong day
For gentle
Is crowned the Queen of May.
With hearts and voices ringing
We merrily dance today,
For gentle
Is crowned the Queen of May.The Hallowe’en custom ‘Trick or Treat’, which flourishes in the USA as an occasion for
children to dress up in fancy dress and go round the neighbourhood asking for sweets
and other goodies (the implied threat seldom if ever being carried out) has been
reimported to Britain. It is a development of a darker Celtic belief that evil spirits were
abroad on the eve of All Saints’ Day and that ‘guising’ [disguising] oneself was a way of
178 TYPES AND GENRES