Dorset's history is full of old customs and superstitions. We've been looking at some of the more obscure - is it time to bring some of these back?

Among the more dubious customs by which Shrove Tuesday was marked was cock squailing, or cock shying, which involved throwing sticks at a cockerel tied to a post until it died, to no particular purpose.

The 'sport', which has been linked to our historical animosity towards the French, was particularly popular around Milton Abbas.

Cockfighting was popular elsewhere in the county before it was banned through the 1835 Cruelty to Animals Act. Grammar schools were a popular venue.

Youngsters looking to torment more resilient prey might embark upon a spree of crocking, which saw them rove door to door seeking pancakes and other treats, and pelting the doors of their victims with broken crockery if denied.

Hocktide, the second Monday and Tuesday after Easter, would see men and women 'capture' and bind each other for ransom with a kiss. Or cash.

May Day in Tudor England saw Robin Hood plays performed around the county, while midsummer would be marked by a maiden throwing a hemp seed over her shoulder and saying "hemp-seed I set, hemp-seed I sow, the man that is my true love come after me and mow".

Beating the Bounds, an Anglo-Saxon custom for marking out the territory of a parish, is still practised in Poole. However, in the nineteenth century the scope of those borders would be impressed upon the minds of those taking part with some light-hearted dares, beatings and other such physical aids to memory.

Skimmity riding was particularly popular in Dorset - a punishment for couples where the men let their wives win an argument, or for cuckolds who failed to react to infidelity with sufficient indignation.

Effigies of the couple, and the offenders themselves in bizarre costume, would be paraded through the parish by a mob of revellers with much carousing to mark their passage.

The Devon village of Ottery St Mary still maintains a very popular annual event where participants parade and roll blazing tar barrels to mark Bonfire Night, and the tradition was common around Dorset in the nineteenth century, until the authorities stepped in.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife," said Jane Austen, but in Portland at the time as she was penning her droll prose folk were limited by custom to intermarriage within their small community.

To ensure a successful union, a couple would not be wed until the would-be wife's belly demonstrated clear evidence of their fruitfulness.