Eton Montem and the salt-bearers

At the Eton Montem the scholars marched in military dress to Salt Hill, while salt-bearers in fancy costume stopped travellers on the roads and gave a pinch of salt to everyone who paid toward the captain’s purse, which could reach a thousand pounds. A boy dressed as a parson once read prayers on the hill and then kicked his clerk down it. Chambers saw the festival as a survival of the boy bishop; in later times it fell on Whit Tuesday, and it was abolished in 1847.