come within the province of the folklorist. This description is contained in an appendix to Narcissus, a Twelfe Night Merrment, played by youths of the Parish at the College of S. John the Baptist in Oxford, A.D. 1602.[1] It takes the form of a burlesque speech, put into the mouth of the College porter: the cooks, he says, "few of them will take rest this night, & suffer as few to take rest in the morning. They have sett a little porch before so great an house, and have called their show the flye. Some say because a maid comming to towne with butter was mett by a cooke and by him deceaved in a wood neare adioyning, whose laments the dryades and hamadriades of the place, pittieng, turned her into a butterflie; & ever since the cooks are bound to this anniversary celebration of her metamorphosis; but soft, if the cooks heare that the porridgpott of my mouth runnes over soe, they will keele[2] it with the ladle of reprehension: therfore I will make hast away, onely asking this boone, … that your ladyshipps servant Monsieur Piers may ride to-morrowe with the fierye fraternitye of his fellowe cookes, & make upp the worthy companye of the round table, which they are resolvd not to leave till the whole house goe rounde with them."
Writing in 1686–7, Aubrey thus describes the festival as he remembered it in his undergraduate days: "before the Civill warres the custome was that some day of ye Whitsun-holydayes, … the Master-cooke (for that yeare) with the rest of his Brethren were marched in silke doublets on Horseback, and rode (I thinke) to Bartholomews or Bullington-green, fetch in the Flye: the sd master-cooke treated his brethren before they rode out. (At Exeter
