Fife Folklore - Other Events

Halloween
Halloween was much celebrated. Guisers, masked children wearing fancy dress and carrying turnip-lanterns went round the houses singing and dancing. Payment was made in apples, nuts, and black treacle-toffee called clack. At one time adult guisers had gone round at New Year but this died out in the Twenties. While parties were few and far between, most children had the fun of dookin’ for apples at Halloween.

Jaunts
Summer picnics, generally run by the churches. Although mainly for children, many adults went and they were family affairs. The journey to a field on a nearby farm was made by horse-drawn carts, the favourite being the
corn cairt which had high sides with projecting ledges. The horses were all decorated for the occasion. The programme was simple, a make-shift swing, plenty of jumping-rope games using a huge cart-rope, and races with pennies for prizes. The tea-urn was boiled on a great fire, and everyone sat in a ring for tea and a poke.

Gowk Day 1st April
All Fools Day. Oye gowk! was the phrase shouted
when someone had been tricked, but a trick played on the following day would have the children shouting:

Gowk Day’s past.
An’ you’re the Gowk at last.

Even adults participated, especially in work places, and the new apprentice might be sent to the joiner’s for a long staund, or to the ship- chandler’s for a tin o’ vac’um.

(The cuckoo was not heard in the East Neuk and gowk does not appear to have been used for cuckoo).

Yermouth
This is the East Neuk pronunciation of Yarmouth, Great
Yarmouth in Norfolk, but to fisher-folk, the word signified not only a port but the greatest occasion of the year, when the harbours virtually emptied as the boats left for the great autumn herring season based on Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Boats, gear, bed-clothes and clothing were all prepared as for another New Year; every man took away a large fruit cake to be used for tea on one of the ten Sundays they would be away, and in the East Neuk, the little ceremony of gi’en oot the bakes took place. Every person on the crowded pier, acquaintance or stranger, was given a handful of boat’s biscuits just before the
ropes were cast off and the boats left with whooping sirens. At the end of the season, early in December, traditional gifts were brought home, big boxes of
Yarmouth rock, apples, nuts and pomegranates, and a more personal gift as well. It was from Yerm’uth that fisher bairns got tricycles, or big dolls, fountain pens or beautiful books, and not at Christmas.

The Yermouth Pairtin’ was a special one. The deal was not sent round to the crew as at other times. Instead the men came to the skipper’s home to discuss the year’s work, and to have supper which always consisted of an
aichtpence pie, a large Scotch pie the size of a teaplate. Each man brought a clean red hankie to carry home several of these pies for the family as well.

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