Lighting the candle from the pole

One of the Christmas games of the country people of west Cornwall was played on a round pole about ten feet long laid between two chairs, with a lighted candle on one of them. A player climbed onto the pole facing the candle, holding a stick with paper tied to it, and had to cross both heels up on the pole and then light the paper from the candle. Most tumbled off in the attempt, and Sandys traced the game back to a fourteenth-century drawing given by Strutt.