I have before referred to the small and compact district of the Potteries, situated in the middle of North Staffordshire. Now the potters, down to a comparatively recent date, used to engage themselves by the year, like the farmservants, but they entered into their agreements in November; and November is still the settling time, when rates of wages are revised and questions between employer and employed are determined. If Professor Rhys's theory be correct, the occurrence of a sort of oasis of November reckoning in a particular trade in the middle of a general Christmas reckoning is very interesting, as indicating a possible Celtic origin for the local trade. And the potting industry, in a rude and humble form, appears to have existed on the spot from so remote a period that the date of its beginning can only be guessed at, The name of the old Staffordshire many-handled loving-cup, the tyg, has been derived from the Latin tegula, a tile; and the character of the potters certainly accords with a possible Celtic ancestry. They are volatile, impulsive, excitable, endowed with considerable artistic skill and musical talent, qualities certainly not possessed in the same measure by Staffordshire people in general.
Variations of festival custom are also met with. In South Staffordshire, Midlent or Mothering Sunday is a great day, when absent children revisit their parents' home and are feasted on hot roast veal; while in the north of the county the festival passes unnoticed.
In the north (and also in Cheshire and North Shropshire), the festival of All Souls, November 2nd, is celebrated by parties of lads and children going round to all the principal houses begging for apples—and formerly for cakes and ale—and droning out:
"Soul soul, for a apple or two
If ye've got no apples, pears'll do,
Up wi' the kettle and down wi' the pan.
Give us a big 'un, and we'll be gone."
