ear, plum, or cherry,
Any good thing to make us merry;
A bouncing buck and a velvet chair,
Clement comes but once a year;
Off with the pot and on with the pan,
A good red apple and I'll be gone."{2}

In Worcestershire on St. Clement's Day the boys chanted similar rhymes,
and at the close of their collection they would roast the apples received
and throw them into ale or cider.{3} In the north of England men used to
go about begging drink, and at Ripon Minster the choristers went round
the church offering everyone a rosy apple with a sprig of box on it.{4}
The Cambridge bakers held their annual supper on this day,{5} at Tenby
the fishermen were given a supper,{6} while the blacksmiths' apprentices
at Woolwich had a remarkable ceremony, akin perhaps to the Boy Bishop
customs. One of their number was chosen to play the part of "Old Clem,"
was attired in a great coat, and wore a mask, a long white beard, and an
oakum wig. Seated in a large wooden chair, and surrounded by attendants
bearing banners, torches, and weapons, he was borne about the town on the
shoulders of six men, visiting numerous public-houses and the blacksmiths
and officers of the dockyard. Before him he had a wooden anvil, and in
his hands a pair of tongs and a wooden hammer, the insignia of the
blacksmith's trade.{7}

ST. CATHERINE'S DAY.

November 25 is St. Catherine's Day, and at Woolwich Arsenal a similar
ceremony was then performed: a man was dressed in female attire, with a
large wheel by his side to represent the saint, and was taken round the
town{8} in a wooden chair. At Chatham there was a torchlight procession
on St. Catherine's Day, and a woman in white muslin with a gilt crown was
carried about in a chair. She was said to represent not the saint, but
Queen Catherine.{9}

|213| St. Catherine's Day was formerly a festival for the lacemakers of
Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire. She was the
patroness of spinsters in the literal as well as the modern sense of the
word, and at Peterborough the workhouse girls used to go in procession
round the city on her day, dressed in white with coloured ribbons; the
tallest was chosen as Queen and bore a crown and sceptre. As they went to
beg money of the chief inhabitants they sang a quaint ballad which begins
thus:--

"Here comes Queen Catherine, as fine as any queen,
With a coach and six horses a-coming to be seen,
And a-spinning we will go, will