Crying Largess

In Suffolk the harvest lord would leave the field to ask any passer-by for a largess, then stand his reapers in a ring and call from a gate post while they answered with a groan and then three great shouts. In Norfolk the men held hands in a circle round a pitcher of horkey ale while one blew a horn and all hallooed largess three times, and in Suffolk and Essex they went up a hill after the horkey and shouted Holla, holla, holla, Largess once for every gift. At the supper the lord went out, put on some sort of disguise and came back crying Largess in a long drawn out call, then took a plate round the guests. In Hertfordshire the men went round the neighbourhood on the morning after harvest home, led by the lord of the harvest, to beg largess, and the money everywhere went on drinking at the alehouse.