rant of a few coarse and practical jokes
upon occasion, was yet, in some measure, bound to preserve order and
decorum on pain of being degraded from his office. To punish the
refractory, a pair of stone hand-stocks was commonly used, having
digit-holes for every size, from the paws of the ploughman to the taper
fingers of my lady's maiden. This instrument was in the especial keeping
of the dread marshal of these festivities.

The custom of heriotship, or a fine payable on the death of the
landholder to the feudal lord, was then in most cases rigorously
exacted. This claim fell with great severity upon widows in poor
circumstances, who were, in too many instances, thus deprived of their
only means of subsistence. Then came fees and fines to the holy Church,
so that the bereaved and disconsolate creature had need to wish herself
in the dark dwelling beside her husband. Sir David Lindsay may not be
unaptly quoted in illustration of this subject. His poem called "The
Monarch" contains the following frightful picture of the exactions and
enormities committed on these defenceless and unoffending victims of
their rapacity:--

"And also the vicar, as I trow,
Will not fail to take a cow,
And uppermost cloths, though babes them an,
From a poor seely husbandman,
When he lyes ready to dy,
Having small children two or three,
And his three kine withouten mo,--
The vicar must have one of tho,
With the gray cloke that covers the bed,
Howbeit that they be poorly cled;
And if the wife die on the morn,
And all the babes should be forlorn,
The other cow he takes away,
With her poor cote and petycote gray:
And if within two days or three
The eldest child shall happen to dy,
Of the third cow he shall be sure,
When he hath under his cure;
And father and mother both dead be,
Beg must the babes without remedy.
They hold the corse at the church style,
And thare it must remain awhile,
Till they get sufficient surety
For the church right and duty.
Then comes the landlord perforce,
And takes to him the fattest horse;
Poor labourers would that law were down,
Which never was founded by reason.
I heard them say, under confession,
That this law was brother to oppression."

As it drew on towards eventide, the mirth increased. The rude legendary
ballads of Sir Lancelot of the Lake, Beavois of Southampton, Robin Hood,
The