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io8 DRAWING DUN OUT OF THE MIRE |
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(i.) Drawing of water from a well.
(2.) For a devotee at the well.
(3.) Collecting flowers for dressing the well.
(4.) Making of a cake for presentation.
(5.) Gifts to the well [the silver pin, gold ring, and probably the garter].
(6.) Command of silence.
(7.) The presence of the devotee at the sacred bush.
All these are incidents of primitive well-worship (see Gomme's Ethnology and Folk-lore, pp. 82-103). Garland dressing is very general; cakes were eaten at Rorrington well, Shropshire (Burne's Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 433); pins and portions of the dress are very general offerings; silence is strictly enforced in many instances, and a sacred tree or bush is very frequently found near the well.
The tune of the Hampshire game (Miss Mendham's version) is practically the same as that of the " Mulberry Bush."
Newell (Games of American Children, p. 90) gives a version of this game.
Drawing Dun out of the Mire
Brand, quoting from " an old collection of satires, epigrams, &c," says this game is enumerated among other pastimes: At shove-groat, venter-point, or crosse and pile, At leaping o'er a Midsummer bone-fier, Or at the drawing Dun out of the myer. So in the Dutchesse of Suffolke, 1631 :
Well done, my masters, lends your hands,
Draw Dun out of the ditch,
Draw, pull, helpe all, so, so, well done.
[ They pull him out. They had shoved Bishop Bonner into a well, and were pulling him out.
We find this game noticed at least as early as Chaucer's time, in the Manciple's Prologue :
Then gan our hoste to jape and to play, And sayd, sires, what ? Dun is in the mire. Nares (Glossary) says this game was a rural pastime, in |
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