The ancient custom of marking the parish boundaries by walking round them and hitting the ground.
Venn does not say when the people of Sandford beat their parish bounds, but the traditional time for doing so was Rogationtide – the fifth week after Easter, leading up to Ascension Day.
The picture shown here is a recently-discovered painting of beating the bounds in St George’s Parish, Exeter, said to have been painted in the mid-19th century.1 Brand’s Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain adds a different recollection of the Rogationtide traditions followed in Exeter in the 1750s:
At Exeter, in Devon, the boys have an annual custom of damming up the channel in the streets, at going the bounds of the several parishes in the city, and of splashing the water upon people passing by. Neighbours as well as strangers are forced to compound hostilities by giving the boys of each parish money to pass without ducking : each parish asserting its prerogative in this respect.2
The garland-on-a-pole carried by the man in the Exeter crowd looks similar to the Mid-Lent Day garland shown in this image from Hone’s Every-Day Book – part of a tableau which Hone describes as “Spring allegorized”.3