"LOVE-BLIGHT."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 228, 27 September 1938, Page 7

"LOVE-BLIGHT."

A 20-YEAR BAN?

"PIFFLE AND BUNKUM."

SOME EMPHATIC COMMENT. (Special.—By Air Mall.) NORTHAMPTON, September 5. Emphatic replies are given by villages to the statement by Mr. R. F. Peel to the British Association that the young men of the Northamptonshire villages of Farthingstone, Everdon, Maidwell and Lamport will not marry girls from certain other villages within a radius of five miles of their homes.

Mr. Peel, who did not give the names of the villages on which the love-blight is alleged to have fallen, is reported to have said that the children of the villages he named repeat uncomplimentary rhymes about the anonymous places and that this ban upon the unfortunate villages has existed for 200 years.

Visits made by a reporter to Farthingstone, Everdon, Maidwell and Lamport, as well as other villages near, levealed not a tittle of evidence to support Mr. Peel's allegation.

The Farthingstone smithy and his striker wiped their brows and read Mr. Peel's remarks. So did the assistant smith.

'•Never heard anything of the sort," said the smith, "and I am 55, born and bred it Farthingstone. Never heard rude rhymes, either."

His assistant had heard nothing of any feud between the villages. "When I were a-courting," he said, "five of us chaps from Everdon came here for Farthingstone girls.

The blacksmith's striker put in: "I am a stranger here," he said, "I come from Norton, five miles away, but the chaps here have fetched girls from our village."

"Ah!" said the assistant smith, "and the chaps have fetched girls from Badby, Wedon, Maidford and Everdon. rThe

chaps will fetch a girl they like from any village. The British Association don't know our chaps."

The vicar of Farthingstone said: "We have had 12 marriages between neighbouring places /in the last 20 months, and I know of no such state of affairs as Mr. Peel described."

"Pifflel" said the vicar of Everdon, the Rev. J. J. A. Stockton. "I have lived in the county for many years and never heard of any such boycott nor of any offensive rhymes."

The vicar of Lamport, the Rev. Mr. Pitchford, said: "I have lived here for 36 years, and have no knowledge of uiv bovcott. It is all bunkum."