(calendar custom)
At noon on Shrove Tuesday at Scarborough (Yorkshire), hundreds of local people, of all ages, flock to the Foreshore with their ropes and try their hand at skipping, in groups or solo, which goes on until after dark. In the past the ropes were longer, stretching right across the street, turned by local fishermen, and a dozen or fifteen people could skip in one rope, but nowadays it is more common for people to keep to their family group. The custom still seems popular, but many observers have commented that the local people are gradually losing their skipping skills from lack of practice, and that the accompanying rhymes have all but died out. The earliest known reference to the custom is in 1903, and the local theory of origin is that Shrovetide was the time when the local fishing fleet sorted out their ropes, and discarded any which were worn or otherwise past their prime. An associated part of the day is for boys to grab, and ‘dump’ the girls in the sea—an activity which, from local testimony, goes back at least 30 years, if not before. Similar customs used to take place on Good Friday, and were particularly popular in coastal areas, such as in Sussex where it was reported at Brighton, Alciston, Hastings, Southwick, and South Heighton, where Good Friday was called Long Rope or Long Line Day. The Brighton custom is mentioned as popular in 1863 (N&Q 3s:3 (1863), 444) but it was apparently already on the wane when the closing of the beaches during the Second World War finally killed it. One inland place where Good Friday skipping was popular was Cambridge, where the custom took place on the open space called Parker's Piece, where it seems also to have died out as a regular event during the last war. Other scattered references show that the custom was quite widespread, being reported, for example, at Teignmouth (Devon) in the late 19th century (N&Q 172 (1937), 262).
Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.
- Scarborough: Smith, 1989: 3-8
- Shuel, 1985: 152
- Dalesman (Feb. 1994), 23-4
- Sussex: Simpson, 1973: 111
- Ralph Merrifield, ‘Good Friday Customs in Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections
89 (1950), 85-97 - Wales, 1990: 50-1
- Cambridge: Porter, 1969: 107
- N&Q
172 (1937), 262
