On the eve of St Paul’s Day Cornish tinners set up a water pitcher and stoned it to pieces, then spent the evening filling and emptying a new one at the alehouse. They said it marked the day tin was first smelted. Thomas Quiller Couch of Bodmin, quoted by Hazlitt, found the Bodmin boys still hurling pitchers into open doorways in 1859.
Paul’s Pitcher Day among the tinners
24 January · Bodmin, Cornwall
No longer kept
On the day before the Feast of St. Paul, a water-pitcher is set up at a convenient distance, and pelted with stones until entirely demolished.
From Hazlitt's Faiths and Folklore, vol. 2, p. 485. Read the original
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