Until about 1914 children in Monmouthshire, Chepstow, and villages of the Wye Valley used to go from house to house early on New Year's Day carrying ‘a monty’, which was an apple or orange standing on three sticks and decorated with holly or box leaves, nuts, tinsel, raisins, etc. In return for a few pence they would display this ‘for luck’, chanting:
Monty, Monty, Happy New Year,
A pocket full of money and a cellar full of beer!
Round St Briavels (Gloucestershire), they were still seen in 1950.
Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.
- Wright and Lones, 1938:
ii. 30-1 I. Waters, Folklore and Dialect of the Wye Valley (1973), 11-13
A Dictionary of English Folklore. Copyright © 2000, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.