Souling\ Clement iug. and Catternino-. 295
well as Catterninjj Worcestershire, this does not entirely account for it. The needle-making and fish-hook-making of North Worcestershire may have had some effect, and perhaps a custom of the cathedral body of Worcester, which we shall come to presently, ma)' have influenced it. (There was also a local saint, the Blessed Catharine Audley, of Ledbury, Herefordshire, about whom legends seem to have been current in Worcestershire, and whose cult may have promoted that of her own patron saint.)
The special connection of doles with all three festivals remains to be considered.
The feast of Hallowmas was naturall}- shorn of much of its economic importance when the old agricultural seasonal calendar was superseded by the scientific solstitial and equinoctial quarters of the Julian year. Yet some matters of business still continued to be transacted at the ancient date. Indeed, when rents were paid in kind this could hardly fail to be so. They must be paid when crops are ripe, etc., and you cannot alter such dates at pleasure. Even so late as 1695 Bishop White Kennet tells us that the feasts of All Saints and of St. Martin were the times appointed for the payment of such dues as arose from the fruits of the earth. Now it is a matter of common know- ledge that old-fashioned rent days always included some degree of hospitality shown by the landlord to the tenant, or by the tithe-owner to the tithe-payer. And in medieval days at least any sort of feast included a dole, or at least a distribution of the fragments to the poor. I take it that the doles of ale and apples were once part of a custom of this kind, and that they descend from the days when rents and tithes were paid in kind, and the beggar at the gate was admitted to a share of the feast. That the prayers of the poor might thereby be purchased for the benefit of the souls in purgatory, for whose welfare all men would at Hallowmas be specially concerned, would be an additional motive for liberalit}-. This, I take it, is the early history of Souling.
