d at once cut the
"idoll Maypole" down, and told the junketers that he hoped to hear of
their "better walking, else they would find their merry mount but a
woful mount."

To eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday was held by the Puritans to be a
heathenish vanity; and yet, apparently with the purpose of annoying good
Boston folk, some attempts were made to observe the day. One year a
young man went through the town "carrying a cock on his back with a bell
in 's hand." Several of his fellows followed him blindfolded, and, under
pretence of striking him with heavy cart-whips, managed to do
considerable havoc in the surrounding crowd. We can well imagine how
odious this horse-play was to the Puritans, aggravated by the fact that
it was done to note a holy day. On Shrove Tuesday, in 1685, there was
"great disorder in town by reason of Cock-skailing." This was the
barbarous game of cock-steling, or cock-throwing, or cock-squoiling--a
game as old as Chaucer's time, a universal pastime on Shrove Tuesday in
England, where scholars also had cock-fights in the school-rooms.

The observance, or even notice, of the first day of the year as a
"gaudy-day"--of New-Year's tides in any way--was thought by Urian Oakes
to savor strongly of superstitious reverence for the heathen god Janus;
the Pilgrims made no note of their first New-Year's Day in the New
World, save by this very prosaic record, "We went to work betimes." Yet
Judge Sewall, as rigid and stern a Puritan as any of the earliest days,
records with some pride his being greeted with a levet, or blast of
trumpets, under his window, early on the morning of January 1, 1697;
while he himself celebrated the opening of the new century with a very
poor poem of his own making, which he caused to be cried or recited
throughout the town of Boston by the town bellman.

Guy Fawkes' Day, or "Pope's Day," was observed with much noise
throughout New England for many years by burning of bonfires, preceded
by parades of young men and boys dressed in fantastic costumes and
carrying "guys" or "popes" of straw. Fires are still lighted on the 5th
of November in New England towns by boys, who know not what they
commemorate. In Newburyport, Mass., and Portsmouth, N. H., Guy Fawkes'
Day is still celebrated. In Newcastle, N. H., it is called "Pork Night."
In New York and Brooklyn, the bonfires on the night of election, and the
importunate begging on Thanksgiving Day of ragged fantastics, usually
children of