Everybody was walking about with a rattle, and working it like mad, and all over the city there was a noise like the sound of the back-scratchers at Greenwich Fair, or of an American forest when the woodpeckers are busy.
These little rattles stand for Judas's bones, and all good Catholics express in this odd way their desire to break them.

They do the same thing in Italy, but it is not so prominent a part of the celebration as in Mexico, where old and young, rich and poor, all do their part in it.
As soon as we found out what it all meant, we bought matracas for ourselves, and joined the rest of the world in their noisy occupation.
The breaking of his bones is but a preliminary measure.

In the square a fair is being held, in the booths of which the great articles of trade now are Judas's bones, of many patterns, at all prices, and Judas himself in pasteboard, who is to be carried about and insulted till Saturday morning, and then, hanging up by a string, is to burst asunder by means of a packet of powder and a slow match in his inside, and finally to perish in a bonfire.
The first sight of these pasteboard Judases convinced us of one thing, that we had unexpectedly come upon the old custom, of which our processions and burning of Guy Fawkes in England are merely an adaptation.

After giving up the old custom as a Popish rite, what a blight idea to revive it in this new shape, and to give the boys something to carry about, bang, blow up, and make a final bonfire of, and all in the Protestant interest! There was another thing to be noticed about the Judases.

The makers had evidently tried to vary them as much as they could; and, by that very means, had shown how impossible it was to them to strike out anything new.