Gallery: It’s raining sweets in Driffield’s annual scramble

The Driffield “scramble” was first recorded in the 1700s, but its exact origins are unclear.

Children led by civic dignataries took to the town’s main shopping streets to chant an ancient rhyme - and scramble about for handfuls of sweets and chocolate coins thrown in the air by shopkeepers.

As ever proceedings were launched by Driffield resident Kathleen Hubbard, 84, who threw the first sweets.

Deputy mayor Heather Venter said: “It poured with rain non-stop, but the children bravely plodded along and recited the rhyme and then the shopkeepers came out and threw a mixture of chooclate coins and sweets.

“There was one little boy in a cloth chop who could only have been about four and he stood right at the front and they all flew over his head.

“The vast majority of the shops took part, as did a couple of the pubs.”

Shopkeepers used to heat up the coins on shovels before they were thrown, making it more difficult for them to be picked up off the pavements and out of the gutters.

The rhyme passed down down the generations says: “Here we are at our toon’s end wi’ a shoulder o’ mutton and a croon ti spend. Are we doon ’arted? No. Shall we win? Yes.”

The custom, which is thought to be unique to the town, nearly died out in the 1970s but was relaunched by the town council in 1981 in a bid to preserve a quirky aspect of Driffield’s heritage.