Flitch of bacon custom sites and the Dunmow flitch is referred to in Chaucer. The awarding of a flitch at both sites seems to have been an exceedingly rare event. The Dunmow tradition was revived in Victorian times, largely inspired by a book ("The Flitch of Bacon") by William Harrison Ainsworth. Flitch trials are still held in modern times at Great Dunmow. A counsel is employed to cross-examine the nominated couples and attempt to show they are undeserving of the award. There is evidence that the flitch of bacon tradition existed outside Britain in mainland Europe and some would push its origins back as
A Horsey Name A Horsey Name "A Horsey Name" () is an 1885 short story by Anton Chekhov. According to the writer and memoirist Vladimir Bogoraz, the plotline might have had to with a popular Taganrog anecdote, based on a real life incident when "...the two men, Zherebtsov and Kobylin, well-off, and known in the city, checked into a hotel simultaneously, and their names appeared on the desk, side by side. I remember well how the whole of Taganrog laughed." The story was published for the first time by "Peterburgskaya Gazeta", in its No.183, 7 July 1885, issue, subtitled "A Scene" (Сценка) and