Twelve Fires and the Ox’s Cake

On Twelfth Night eve Herefordshire farmers and their servants lit twelve small fires and one large one on the highest part of a wheat field, drank old cider and hallooed, and fifty or sixty other fires might be seen at once across the country. After supper they went to the ox-house, toasted each ox by name and hung a cake with a hole in it on the horn of the best. When the ox was tickled and tossed it, the cake went to the mistress if it fell behind and to the bailiff if it fell in front. At Pauntley in Gloucestershire twelve straw fires were lit the same night to keep smut out of the wheat.