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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,
+Christian and Pagan, by Clement A. Miles
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan
+
+Author: Clement A. Miles
+
+Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #19098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS IN RITUAL AND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Starner, Robert Ledger and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Christmas In Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan
+
+by Clement A. Miles
+
+
+Published by T. Fisher Unwin
+
+1912
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (DETAIL).
+
+GENTILE DA FABRIANO
+
+(_Florence: Accademia_)]
+
+|5|
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In this volume I have tried to show how Christmas is or has been kept in
+various lands and ages, and to trace as far as possible the origin of the
+pagan elements that have mingled with the Church's feast of the Nativity.
+
+In Part I. I have dealt with the festival on its distinctively Christian
+side. The book has, however, been so planned that readers not interested
+in this aspect of Christmas may pass over Chapters II.-V., and proceed at
+once from the Introduction to Part II., which treats of pagan survivals.
+
+The book has been written primarily for the general reader, but I venture
+to hope that, with all its imperfections, it may be of some use to the
+more serious student, as a rough outline map of the field of Christmas
+customs, and as bringing together materials hitherto scattered through a
+multitude of volumes in various languages. There is certainly room for a
+comprehensive English book on Christmas, taking account of the results of
+modern historical and folk-lore research.
+
+The writer of a work of this kind necessarily owes an immense debt to the
+labours of others. In my bibliographical notes I have done my best to
+acknowledge the sources from which I have drawn. It is only right that
+I should express here my special obligation, both for information and for
+suggestions, to Mr. E. K. Chambers's "The Mediaeval Stage," an invaluable
+storehouse of fact, theory, and bibliographical references. I also owe
+much to the important monographs of Dr. A. Tille, "Die Geschichte der
+deutschen Weihnacht" and "Yule and Christmas"; to Dr. Feilberg's Danish
+work, "Jul," the fullest account of Christmas |6|  customs yet written;
+and of course, like every student of folk-lore, to Dr. Frazer's "The
+Golden Bough."
+
+References to authorities will be found at the end of the volume, and are
+indicated by small numerals in the text; notes requiring to be read in
+close conjunction with the text are printed at the foot of the pages to
+which they relate, and are indicated by asterisks, &c.
+
+   [Transcriber's Note: The 'small numerals' are represented in this
+   ebook by numbers in {curly braces}. The footnotes appear at the end
+   of the ebook and are indicated by numbers in [square brackets]. Page
+   numbers from the original edition have been retained and appear in
+   the text between |pipe characters|.]
+
+I have to thank Mr. Frank Sidgwick for most kindly reading my proofs and
+portions of my MS., and for some valuable suggestions.
+
+                                                                C. A. M.
+
+|7|
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  PREFACE                                                            5
+
+  CHAPTER I
+  INTRODUCTION                                                       15
+
+    The Origin and Purpose of Festivals--Ideas suggested by
+    Christmas--Pagan and Christian Elements--The Names of the
+    Festival--Foundation of the Feast of the Nativity--Its
+    Relation to the Epiphany--December 25 and the _Natalis
+    Invicti_--The Kalends of January--Yule and Teutonic
+    Festivals--The Church and Pagan Survivals--Two Conflicting
+    Types of Festival--Their Interaction--Plan of the Book.
+
+
+  PART I--THE CHRISTIAN FEAST
+
+  CHAPTER II
+  CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)                                               29
+
+    Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological
+    Character--Humanizing Influence of Franciscanism--Jacopone da
+    Todi's Vernacular Verse--German Catholic Poetry--Mediaeval
+    English Carols.
+
+  CHAPTER III
+  CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)                                              53
+
+    The French _Noël_--Latin Hymnody in Eighteenth-century
+    France--Spanish Christmas Verse--Traditional Carols of Many
+    Countries--Christmas Poetry in Protestant
+    Germany--Post-Reformation Verse in England--Modern English
+    Carols. |8|
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+  CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION                          87
+
+    Advent and Christmas Offices of the Roman Church--The Three
+    Masses of Christmas, their Origin and their Celebration in
+    Rome--The Midnight Mass in Many Lands--Protestant Survivals of
+    the Night Services--Christmas in the Greek Church--The Eastern
+    Epiphany and the Blessing of the Waters--The _Presepio_ or
+    Crib, its Supposed Institution by St. Francis--Early Traces of
+    the Crib--The Crib in Germany, Tyrol, &c.--Cradle-rocking in
+    Mediaeval Germany--Christmas Minstrels in Italy and
+    Sicily--The _Presepio_ in Italy--Ceremonies with the _Culla_
+    and the _Bambino_ in Rome--Christmas in Italian London--The
+    Spanish Christmas--Possible Survivals of the Crib in England.
+
+  CHAPTER V
+  CHRISTMAS DRAMA                                                    119
+
+    Origins of the Mediaeval Drama--Dramatic Tendencies in the
+    Liturgy--Latin Liturgical Plays--The Drama becomes
+    Laicized--Characteristics of the Popular Drama--The Nativity
+    in the English Miracle Cycles--Christmas Mysteries in
+    France--Later French Survivals of Christmas Drama--German
+    Christmas Plays--Mediaeval Italian Plays and Pageants--Spanish
+    Nativity Plays--Modern Survivals in Various Countries--The
+    Star Singers, &c.
+
+  POSTSCRIPT                                                         155
+
+
+  PART II--PAGAN SURVIVALS
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+  PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS                                     159
+
+    The Church and Superstition--Nature of Pagan Survivals--Racial
+    Origins--Roman Festivals of the _Saturnalia_ and Kalends--Was
+    there a Teutonic Midwinter Festival?--The Teutonic, Celtic, and
+    Slav New Year--Customs attracted to Christmas or January 1--
+    The Winter Cycle of Festivals--_Rationale_ of Festival Ritual:
+    (_a_) Sacrifice and Sacrament, (_b_) The Cult of the Dead,
+    (_c_) Omens and Charms for the New Year--Compromise in the
+    Later Middle Ages--The Puritans and Christmas--Decay of Old
+    Traditions. |9|
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+  ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS                                       187
+
+    All Saints' and All Souls' Days, their Relation to a New Year
+    Festival--All Souls' Eve and Tendance of the Departed--Soul
+    Cakes in England and on the Continent--Pagan Parallels of All
+    Souls'--Hallowe'en Charms and Omens--Hallowe'en Fires--Guy
+    Fawkes Day--"Old Hob," the _Schimmelreiter_, and other Animal
+    Masks--Martinmas and its Slaughter--Martinmas Drinking--St.
+    Martin's Fires in Germany--Winter Visitors in the Low
+    Countries and Germany--St. Martin as Gift-bringer--St.
+    Martin's Rod.
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+  ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS                                          209
+
+    St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions--St. Catherine's Day
+    as Spinsters' Festival--St. Andrew's Eve Auguries--The
+    _Klöpfelnächte_--St. Nicholas's Day, the Saint as
+    Gift-bringer, and his Attendants--Election of the Boy
+    Bishop--St. Nicholas's Day at Bari--St. Lucia's Day in Sweden,
+    Sicily, and Central Europe--St. Thomas's Day as School
+    Festival--Its Uncanny Eve--"Going a-Thomassin'."
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+  CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS                                  227
+
+    Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht--Talking Animals
+    and other Wonders of Christmas Eve--Scandinavian Beliefs about
+    Trolls and the Return of the Dead--Traditional Christmas Songs
+    in Eastern Europe--The Twelve Days, their Christian Origin and
+    Pagan Superstitions--The Raging Host--Hints of Supernatural
+    Visitors in England--The German _Frauen_--The Greek
+    _Kallikantzaroi_.
+
+  CHAPTER X
+  THE YULE LOG                                                       249
+
+    The Log as Centre of the Domestic Christmas--Customs of the
+    Southern Slavs--The _Polaznik_--Origin of the Yule
+    Log--Probable Connection with Vegetation-cults or
+    Ancestor-worship--The _Souche de Noël_ in France--Italian and
+    German Christmas Logs--English Customs--The Yule Candle in
+    England and Scandinavia. |10|
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+  THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS                         261
+
+    The Christmas-tree a German Creation--Charm of the German
+    Christmas--Early Christmas-trees--The Christmas
+    Pyramid--Spread of the Tree in Modern Germany and other
+    Countries--Origin of the Christmas-tree--Beliefs about
+    Flowering Trees at Christmas--Evergreens at the
+    Kalends--Non-German Parallels to the Christmas-tree--Christmas
+    Decorations connected with Ancient Kalends Customs--Sacredness
+    of Holly and Mistletoe--Floors strewn with Straw--Christmas
+    and New Year Gifts, their Connection with the Roman _Strenae_
+    and St. Nicholas--Present-giving in Various
+    Countries--Christmas Cards.
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+  CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS                       281
+
+    Prominence of Eating in the English Christmas--The Boar's
+    Head, the Goose, and other Christmas Fare--Frumenty, Sowens,
+    Yule Cakes, and the Wassail Bowl--Continental Christmas
+    Dishes, their Possible Origins--French and German Cakes--The
+    Animals' Christmas Feast--Cakes in Eastern Europe--Relics of
+    Animal Sacrifice--Hunting the Wren--Various Games of
+    Sacrificial Origin.
+
+  CHAPTER XIII
+  MASKING, THE MUMMERS' PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE BOY BISHOP 295
+
+    English Court Masking--"The Lord of Misrule"--The Mummers'
+    Play, the Sword-Dance, and the Morris Dance--Origin of St.
+    George and other Characters--Mumming in Eastern Europe--The
+    Feast of Fools, its History and Suppression--The Boy Bishop,
+    his Functions and Sermons--Modern Survivals of the Boy Bishop.
+
+  CHAPTER XIV
+  ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS' DAYS                309
+
+    Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day--The Swedish St.
+    Stephen--St. John's Wine--Childermas and its Beatings. |11|
+
+  CHAPTER XV
+  NEW YEAR'S DAY                                                     319
+
+    Principle of New Year Customs--The New Year in France,
+    Germany, the United States, and Eastern
+    Europe--"First-footing" in Great Britain--Scottish New Year
+    Practices--Highland Fumigation and "Breast-strip"
+    Customs--Hogmanay and Aguillanneuf--New Year Processions in
+    Macedonia, Roumania, Greece, and Rome--Methods of
+    Augury--Sundry New Year Charms.
+
+  CHAPTER XVI
+  EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS                                              335
+
+    The Twelfth Cake and the "King of the Bean"--French Twelfth
+    Night Customs--St. Basil's Cake in Macedonia--Epiphany and the
+    Expulsion of Evils--The Befana in Italy--The Magi as
+    Present-bringers--Greek Epiphany Customs--Wassailing
+    Fruit-trees--Herefordshire and Irish Twelfth Night
+    Practices--The "Haxey Hood" and Christmas Football--St. Knut's
+    Day in Sweden--Rock Day--Plough Monday--Candlemas, its
+    Ecclesiastical and Folk Ceremonies--Farewells to Christmas.
+
+  CONCLUSION                                                         357
+
+  NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY                                             361
+
+  INDEX                                                              389
+
+|12|
+
+[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD. _By Albrecht Dürer._]
+
+|13|
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (DETAIL)                       Frontispiece
+    Gentile da Fabriano. (_Florence: Accademia_)
+
+  MADONNA AND CHILD                                                  13
+    Albert Dürer
+
+  MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS                           31
+    Pesellino. (_Empoli Gallery_)
+
+  JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN                              40
+    From "Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi" (Florence, 1490)
+
+  THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS                                     55
+    By Fouquet. (_Musée Condé, Chantilly_)
+
+  THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY                         70
+    Master of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. (Also attributed to Joachim
+    Patinir.) (_Vienna: Imperial Gallery_)
+
+  SINGING "VOM HIMMEL HOCH" FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS         71
+    By Ludwig Richter
+
+  THE NATIVITY                                                       89
+    From Add. MS. 32454 in the British Museum. (French, 15th Century)
+
+  A NEAPOLITAN _PRESEPIO_                                            108
+
+  CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS                   112
+    After an Etching by D. Allan. From Hone's "Every-day Book"
+    (London, 1826)
+
+  ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE _PRESEPIO_ AT GRECCIO                   114
+    By Giotto. (_Upper Church of St. Francis, Assisi_)
+
+|14|
+
+  THE _BAMBINO_ OF ARA COELI                                         115
+
+  THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS                                     121
+    From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the Society of
+    Antiquaries at Burlington House
+
+  THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM                                         140
+    From "Le grant Kalendrier & compost des Bergiers" (N. le Rouge,
+    Troyes, 1529)
+
+  THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI                                          154
+    Masaccio. (_Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum_)
+
+  NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA                                      161
+    An Asiatic example of animal masks
+
+  CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE--THE MUMMERS COMING IN                 229
+
+  THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                263
+    From an engraving by Joseph Kellner
+
+  CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA                                 281
+    By Ferdinand Waldmüller (b. 1793)
+
+  YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST. PETER        297
+    From an article by Mr. T. M. Fallow in _The Antiquary_, May, 1895
+
+  THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE                                           337
+
+|15| |16| |17|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+    The Origin and Purpose of Festivals--Ideas suggested by
+    Christmas--Pagan and Christian Elements--The Names of the
+    Festival--Foundation of the Feast of the Nativity--Its Relation to
+    the Epiphany--December 25 and the _Natalis Invicti_--The Kalends of
+    January--Yule and Teutonic Festivals--The Church and Pagan
+    Survivals--Two Conflicting Types of Festival--Their Interaction--Plan
+    of the Book.
+
+It has been an instinct in nearly all peoples, savage or civilized, to
+set aside certain days for special ceremonial observances, attended by
+outward rejoicing. This tendency to concentrate on special times answers
+to man's need to lift himself above the commonplace and the everyday, to
+escape from the leaden weight of monotony that oppresses him. "We tend to
+tire of the most eternal splendours, and a mark on our calendar, or a
+crash of bells at midnight maybe, reminds us that we have only recently
+been created."[1]{1} That they wake people up is the great justification
+of festivals, and both man's religious sense and his joy in life have
+generally tended to rise "into peaks and towers and turrets, into
+superhuman exceptions which really prove the rule."{2} It is difficult
+to be religious, impossible to be merry, at every moment of life, and
+festivals are as sunlit peaks, testifying, above dark valleys, to the
+eternal radiance. This is one view of the purpose and value of festivals,
+and their function of cheering people and giving them larger perspectives
+has no doubt been an important reason for their maintenance in the past.
+If we could trace the custom of festival-keeping back to its origins in
+primitive society |18| we should find the same principle of
+specialization involved, though it is probable that the practice came
+into being not for the sake of its moral or emotional effect, but from
+man's desire to lay up, so to speak, a stock of sanctity, magical not
+ethical, for ordinary days.
+
+The first holy-day-makers were probably more concerned with such material
+goods as food than with spiritual ideals, when they marked with sacred
+days the rhythm of the seasons.{3} As man's consciousness developed, the
+subjective aspect of the matter would come increasingly into prominence,
+until in the festivals of the Christian Church the main object is to
+quicken the devotion of the believer by contemplation of the mysteries of
+the faith. Yet attached, as we shall see, to many Christian festivals,
+are old notions of magical sanctity, probably quite as potent in the
+minds of the common people as the more spiritual ideas suggested by the
+Church's feasts.
+
+In modern England we have almost lost the festival habit, but if there is
+one feast that survives among us as a universal tradition it is
+Christmas. We have indeed our Bank Holidays, but they are mere days of
+rest and amusement, and for the mass of the people Easter and Whitsuntide
+have small religious significance--Christmas alone has the character of
+sanctity which marks the true festival. The celebration of Christmas has
+often little or nothing to do with orthodox dogma, yet somehow the sense
+of obligation to keep the feast is very strong, and there are few English
+people, however unconventional, who escape altogether the spell of
+tradition in this matter.
+
+_Christmas_--how many images the word calls up: we think of carol-singers
+and holly-decked churches where people hymn in time-honoured strains the
+Birth of the Divine Child; of frost and snow, and, in contrast, of warm
+hearths and homes bright with light and colour, very fortresses against
+the cold; of feasting and revelry, of greetings and gifts exchanged; and
+lastly of vaguely superstitious customs, relics of long ago, performed
+perhaps out of respect for use and wont, or merely in jest, or with a
+deliberate attempt to throw ourselves back into the past, to re-enter for
+a moment the mental childhood of the race. These are a few of |19| the
+pictures that rise pell-mell in the minds of English folk at the mention
+of Christmas; how many other scenes would come before us if we could
+realize what the festival means to men of other nations. Yet even these
+will suggest what hardly needs saying, that Christmas is something far
+more complex than a Church holy-day alone, that the celebration of the
+Birth of Jesus, deep and touching as is its appeal to those who hold the
+faith of the Incarnation, is but one of many elements that have entered
+into the great winter festival.
+
+In the following pages I shall try to present a picture, sketchy and
+inadequate though it must be, of what Christmas is and has been to the
+peoples of Europe, and to show as far as possible the various elements
+that have gone into its make-up. Most people have a vague impression that
+these are largely pagan, but comparatively few have any idea of the
+process by which the heathen elements have become mingled with that which
+is obviously Christian, and equal obscurity prevails as to the nature and
+meaning of the non-Christian customs. The subject is vast, and has not
+been thoroughly explored as yet, but the labours of historians and
+folk-lorists have made certain conclusions probable, and have produced
+hypotheses of great interest and fascination.
+
+I have spoken of "Christian"[2] and "pagan" elements. The distinction is
+blurred to some extent by the clothing of heathen customs in a
+superficial Christianity, but on the whole it is clear enough to justify
+the division of this book into two parts, one dealing with the Church's
+feast of the Holy Birth, the other with those remains of pagan winter
+festivals which extend from November to January, but cluster especially
+round Christmas and the Twelve Days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before we pass to the various aspects of the Church's Christmas, we must
+briefly consider its origins and its relation to certain |20| pagan
+festivals, the customs of which will be dealt with in detail in Part II.
+
+The names given to the feast by different European peoples throw a
+certain amount of light on its history. Let us take five of
+them--_Christmas_, _Weihnacht_, _Noël_, _Calendas_, and _Yule_--and see
+what they suggest.
+
+I. The English _Christmas_ and its Dutch equivalent _Kerstmisse_, plainly
+point to the ecclesiastical side of the festival; the German
+_Weihnacht_{4} (sacred night) is vaguer, and might well be either pagan
+or Christian; in point of fact it seems to be Christian, since it does
+not appear till the year 1000, when the Faith was well established in
+Germany.{5} _Christmas_ and _Weihnacht_, then, may stand for the
+distinctively Christian festival, the history of which we may now briefly
+study.
+
+When and where did the keeping of Christmas begin? Many details of its
+early history remain in uncertainty, but it is fairly clear that the
+earliest celebration of the Birth of Christ on December 25 took place at
+Rome about the middle of the fourth century, and that the observance of
+the day spread from the western to the eastern Church, which had before
+been wont to keep January 6 as a joint commemoration of the Nativity and
+the Baptism of the Redeemer.[3]
+
+The first mention of a Nativity feast on December 25 is found in a Roman
+document known as the Philocalian Calendar, dating from the year 354, but
+embodying an older document evidently belonging to the year 336. It is
+uncertain to which date the Nativity reference belongs;[4] but further
+back than 336 at all events the festival cannot be traced.
+
+From Rome, Christmas spread throughout the West, with the |21| conversion
+of the barbarians. Whether it came to England through the Celtic Church
+is uncertain, but St. Augustine certainly brought it with him, and
+Christmas Day, 598, witnessed a great event, the baptism of more than
+ten thousand English converts.{9} In 567 the Council of Tours had
+declared the Twelve Days, from Christmas to Epiphany, a festal tide;{10}
+the laws of Ethelred (991-1016) ordained it to be a time of peace and
+concord among Christian men, when all strife must cease.{11} In Germany
+Christmas was established by the Synod of Mainz in 813;{12} in Norway by
+King Hakon the Good about the middle of the tenth century.{13}
+
+In the East, as has been seen, the Birth of the Redeemer was at first
+celebrated not on December 25, but on January 6, the feast of the
+Epiphany or manifestation of Christ's glory. The Epiphany can be traced
+as far back as the second century, among the Basilidian heretics, from
+whom it may have spread to the Catholic Church. It was with them
+certainly a feast of the Baptism, and possibly also of the Nativity, of
+Christ. The origins of the Epiphany festival{14} are very obscure, nor
+can we say with certainty what was its meaning at first. It may be that
+it took the place of a heathen rite celebrating the birth of the World or
+Æon from the Virgin on January 6.[5] At all events one of its objects was
+to commemorate the Baptism, the appearance of the Holy Dove, and the
+Voice from heaven, "Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased"
+(or, as other MSS. read, "This day have I begotten thee").
+
+|22| In some circles of early Christianity the Baptism appears to have
+been looked upon as the true Birth of Christ, the moment when, filled by
+the Spirit, He became Son of God; and the carnal Birth was regarded as of
+comparatively little significance. Hence the Baptism festival may have
+arisen first, and the celebration of the Birth at Bethlehem may have been
+later attached to the same day, partly perhaps because a passage in St.
+Luke's Gospel was supposed to imply that Jesus was baptized on His
+thirtieth birthday. As however the orthodox belief became more sharply
+defined, increasing stress was laid on the Incarnation of God in Christ
+in the Virgin's womb, and it may have been felt that the celebration of
+the Birth and the Baptism on the same day encouraged heretical views.
+Hence very likely the introduction of Christmas on December 25 as a
+festival of the Birth alone. In the East the concelebration of the two
+events continued for some time after Rome had instituted the separate
+feast of Christmas. Gradually, however, the Roman use spread: at
+Constantinople it was introduced about 380 by the great theologian,
+Gregory Nazianzen; at Antioch it appeared in 388, at Alexandria in 432.
+The Church of Jerusalem long stood out, refusing to adopt the new feast
+till the seventh century, it would seem.{18} One important Church, the
+Armenian, knows nothing of December 25, and still celebrates the Nativity
+with the Epiphany on January 6.{19} Epiphany in the eastern Orthodox
+Church has lost its connection with the Nativity and is now chiefly a
+celebration of the Baptism of Christ, while in the West, as every one
+knows, it is primarily a celebration of the Adoration by the Magi, an
+event commemorated by the Greeks on Christmas Day. Epiphany is, however,
+as we shall see, a greater festival in the Greek Church than Christmas.
+
+Such in bare outline is the story of the spread of Christmas as an
+independent festival. Its establishment fitly followed the triumph of the
+Catholic doctrine of the perfect Godhead or Christ at the Council of
+Nicea in 325.
+
+II. The French _Noël_ is a name concerning whose origin there has been
+considerable dispute; there can, however, be little doubt that it is the
+same word as the Provençal _Nadau_ or _Nadal_, |23| the Italian
+_Natale_, and the Welsh _Nadolig_, all obviously derived from the Latin
+_natalis_, and meaning "birthday." One naturally takes this as referring
+to the Birth of Christ, but it may at any rate remind us of another
+birthday celebrated on the same date by the Romans of the Empire, that of
+the unconquered Sun, who on December 25, the winter solstice according to
+the Julian calendar, began to rise to new vigour after his autumnal
+decline.
+
+Why, we may ask, did the Church choose December 25 for the celebration of
+her Founder's Birth? No one now imagines that the date is supported by a
+reliable tradition; it is only one of various guesses of early Christian
+writers. As a learned eighteenth-century Jesuit{20} has pointed out,
+there is not a single month in the year to which the Nativity has not
+been assigned by some writer or other. The real reason for the choice of
+the day most probably was, that upon it fell the pagan festival just
+mentioned.
+
+The _Dies Natalis Invicti_ was probably first celebrated in Rome by order
+of the Emperor Aurelian (270-5), an ardent worshipper of the Syrian
+sun-god Baal.{21} With the _Sol Invictus_ was identified the figure of
+Mithra, that strange eastern god whose cult resembled in so many ways the
+worship of Jesus, and who was at one time a serious rival of the Christ
+in the minds of thoughtful men.[6]{22} It was the sun-god, poetically
+and philosophically conceived, whom the Emperor Julian made the centre of
+his ill-fated revival of paganism, and there is extant a fine prayer of
+his to "King Sun."{23}
+
+What more natural than that the Church should choose this day to
+celebrate the rising of her Sun of Righteousness with healing in His
+wings, that she should strive thus to draw away to His worship some
+adorers of the god whose symbol and representative was the earthly sun!
+There is no direct evidence of deliberate substitution, but at all events
+ecclesiastical writers soon after the foundation of Christmas made good
+use of the idea |24| that the birthday of the Saviour had replaced the
+birthday of the sun.[7]
+
+Little is known of the manner in which the _Natalis Invicti_ was kept; it
+was not a folk-festival, and was probably observed by the classes rather
+than the masses.{24} Its direct influence on Christmas customs has
+probably been little or nothing. It fell, however, just before a Roman
+festival that had immense popularity, is of great importance for our
+subject, and is recalled by another name for Christmas that must now be
+considered.
+
+III. The Provençal _Calendas_ or _Calenos_, the Polish _Kolenda_, the
+Russian _Kolyáda_, the Czech _Koleda_ and the Lithuanian _Kalledos_, not
+to speak of the Welsh _Calenig_ for Christmas-box, and the Gaelic
+_Calluinn_ for New Year's Eve, are all derived from the Latin _Kalendae_,
+and suggest the connection of Christmas with the Roman New Year's Day,
+the Kalends or the first day of January, a time celebrated with many
+festive customs. What these were, and how they have affected Christmas we
+shall see in some detail in Part II.; suffice it to say here that the
+festival, which lasted for at least three days, was one of riotous life,
+of banqueting and games and licence. It was preceded, moreover, by the
+_Saturnalia_ (December 17 to 23) which had many like features, and must
+have formed practically one festive season with it. The word _Saturnalia_
+has become so familiar in modern usage as to suggest sufficiently the
+character of the festival for which it stands.
+
+|25| Into the midst of this season of revelry and licence the Church
+introduced her celebration of the beginning of man's redemption from the
+bondage of sin. Who can wonder that Christmas contains incongruous
+elements, for old things, loved by the people, cannot easily be uprooted.
+
+IV. One more name yet remains to be considered, _Yule_ (Danish _Jul_),
+the ordinary word for Christmas in the Scandinavian languages, and not
+extinct among ourselves. Its derivation has been widely discussed, but so
+far no satisfactory explanation of it has been found. Professor Skeat in
+the last edition of his Etymological Dictionary (1910) has to admit that
+its origin is unknown. Whatever its source may be, it is clearly the name
+of a Germanic season--probably a two-month tide covering the second half
+of November, the whole of December, and the first half of January.{26}
+It may well suggest to us the element added to Christmas by the barbarian
+peoples who began to learn Christianity about the time when the festival
+was founded. Modern research has tended to disprove the idea that the old
+Germans held a Yule feast at the winter solstice, and it is probable, as
+we shall see, that the specifically Teutonic Christmas customs come from
+a New Year and beginning-of-winter festival kept about the middle of
+November. These customs transferred to Christmas are to a great extent
+religious or magical rites intended to secure prosperity during the
+coming year, and there is also the familiar Christmas feasting,
+apparently derived in part from the sacrificial banquets that marked the
+beginning of winter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have now taken a general glance at the elements which have combined in
+Christmas. The heathen folk-festivals absorbed by the Nativity feast were
+essentially life-affirming, they expressed the mind of men who said "yes"
+to this life, who valued earthly good things. On the other hand
+Christianity, at all events in its intensest form, the religion of the
+monks, was at bottom pessimistic as regards this earth, and valued it
+only as a place of discipline for the life to come; it was essentially a
+religion of renunciation that said "no" to the world. The |26| Christian
+had here no continuing city, but sought one to come. How could the
+Church make a feast of the secular New Year; what mattered to her the
+world of time? her eye was fixed upon the eternal realities--the great
+drama of Redemption. Not upon the course of the temporal sun through the
+zodiac, but upon the mystical progress of the eternal Sun of
+Righteousness must she base her calendar. Christmas and New Year's
+Day--the two festivals stood originally for the most opposed of
+principles.
+
+Naturally the Church fought bitterly against the observance of the
+Kalends; she condemned repeatedly the unseemly doings of Christians in
+joining in heathenish customs at that season; she tried to make the first
+of January a solemn fast; and from the ascetic point of view she was
+profoundly right, for the old festivals were bound up with a lusty
+attitude towards the world, a seeking for earthly joy and well-being.
+
+The struggle between the ascetic principle of self-mortification,
+world-renunciation, absorption in a transcendent ideal, and the natural
+human striving towards earthly joy and well-being, is, perhaps, the most
+interesting aspect of the history of Christianity; it is certainly shown
+in an absorbingly interesting way in the development of the Christian
+feast of the Nativity. The conflict is keen at first; the Church
+authorities fight tooth and nail against these relics of heathenism,
+these devilish rites; but mankind's instinctive paganism is
+insuppressible, the practices continue as ritual, though losing much of
+their meaning, and the Church, weary of denouncing, comes to wink at
+them, while the pagan joy in earthly life begins to colour her own
+festival.
+
+The Church's Christmas, as the Middle Ages pass on, becomes increasingly
+"merry"--warm and homely, suited to the instincts of ordinary humanity,
+filled with a joy that is of this earth, and not only a mystical rapture
+at a transcendental Redemption. The Incarnate God becomes a real child to
+be fondled and rocked, a child who is the loveliest of infants, whose
+birthday is the supreme type of all human birthdays, and may be kept with
+feasting and dance and song. Such is the Christmas of popular tradition,
+the Nativity as it is reflected in the carols, the cradle-rocking, the
+mystery plays of the later Middle Ages. This |27| Christmas, which
+still lingers, though maimed, in some Catholic regions, is strongly
+life-affirming; the value and delight of earthly, material things is
+keenly felt; sometimes, even, it passes into coarseness and riot. Yet a
+certain mysticism usually penetrates it, with hints that this dear life,
+this fair world, are not all, for the soul has immortal longings in her.
+Nearly always there is the spirit of reverence, of bowing down before the
+Infant God, a visitor from the supernatural world, though bone of man's
+bone, flesh of his flesh. Heaven and earth have met together; the rough
+stable is become the palace of the Great King.
+
+This we might well call the "Catholic" Christmas, the Christmas of the
+age when the Church most nearly answered to the needs of the whole man,
+spiritual and sensuous. The Reformation in England and Germany did not
+totally destroy it; in England the carol-singers kept up for a while the
+old spirit; in Lutheran Germany a highly coloured and surprisingly
+sensuous celebration of the Nativity lingered on into the eighteenth
+century. In the countries that remained Roman Catholic much of the old
+Christmas continued, though the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, faced
+by the challenge of Protestantism, made for greater "respectability," and
+often robbed the Catholic Christmas of its humour, its homeliness, its
+truly popular stamp, substituting pretentiousness for simplicity, sugary
+sentiment for naïve and genuine poetry.
+
+Apart from the transformation of the Church's Christmas from something
+austere and metaphysical into something joyous and human, warm and
+kindly, we shall note in our Second Part the survival of much that is
+purely pagan, continuing alongside of the celebration of the Nativity,
+and often little touched by its influence. But first we must consider the
+side of the festival suggested by the English and French names:
+_Christmas_ will stand for the liturgical rites commemorating the wonder
+of the Incarnation--God in man made manifest--_Noël_ or "the Birthday,"
+for the ways in which men have striven to realize the human aspect of the
+great Coming.
+
+How can we reach the inner meaning of the Nativity feast, its
+significance for the faithful? Better, perhaps, by the way of |28|
+poetry than by the way of ritual, for it is poetry that reveals the
+emotions at the back of the outward observances, and we shall understand
+these better when the singers of Christmas have laid bare to us their
+hearts. We may therefore first give attention to the Christmas poetry of
+sundry ages and peoples, and then go on to consider the liturgical and
+popular ritual in which the Church has striven to express her joy at the
+Redeemer's birth. Ceremonial, of course, has always mimetic tendencies,
+and in a further chapter we shall see how these issued in genuine drama;
+how, in the miracle plays, the Christmas story was represented by the
+forms and voices of living men.
+
+|29| |30| |31|
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part I--The Christian Feast
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)[8]{1}
+
+
+    Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological
+    Character--Humanizing Influence of Franciscanism--Jacopone da Todi's
+    Vernacular Verse--German Catholic Poetry--Mediaeval English Carols.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS.
+
+PESELLINO
+
+(_Empoli Gallery_)]
+
+Christmas, as we have seen, had its beginning at the middle of the fourth
+century in Rome. The new feast was not long in finding a hymn-writer to
+embody in immortal Latin the emotions called forth by the memory of the
+Nativity. "Veni, redemptor gentium" is one of the earliest of Latin
+hymns--one of the few that have come down to us from the father of Church
+song, Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan (d. 397). Great as theologian and
+statesman, Ambrose was great also as a poet and systematizer of Church
+music. "Veni, redemptor gentium" is above all things stately and severe,
+in harmony with the austere character of the zealous foe of the Arian
+heretics, the champion of monasticism. It is the theological aspect alone
+of Christmas, the redemption of sinful man by the mystery of the
+Incarnation and the miracle of the Virgin Birth, that we find in St.
+Ambrose's terse and pregnant Latin; there is no feeling for the human
+pathos and poetry of the scene at Bethlehem--
+
+   "Veni, redemptor gentium,
+    Ostende partum virginis;
+    Miretur omne saeculum:
+    Talis decet partus Deum. |32|
+    Non ex virili semine,
+    Sed mystico spiramine,
+    Verbum Dei factum caro,
+    Fructusque ventris floruit."[9]{2}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another fine hymn often heard in English churches is of a slightly later
+date. "Corde natus ex Parentis" ("Of the Father's love begotten") is a
+cento from a larger hymn by the Spanish poet Prudentius (_c._ 348-413).
+Prudentius did not write for liturgical purposes, and it was several
+centuries before "Corde natus" was adopted into the cycle of Latin hymns.
+Its elaborate rhetoric is very unlike the severity of "Veni, redemptor
+gentium," but again the note is purely theological; the Incarnation as a
+world-event is its theme. It sings the Birth of Him who is
+
+   "Corde natus ex Parentis
+    Ante mundi exordium,
+    Alpha et O cognominatus,
+    Ipse fons et clausula
+    Omnium quae sunt, fuerunt,
+    Quaeque post futura sunt
+        Saeculorum saeculis."[10]{3}
+
+Other early hymns are "A solis ortus cardine" ("From east to west, from
+shore to shore"), by a certain Coelius Sedulius (d. _c._ 450), still sung
+by the Roman Church at Lauds on Christmas Day, and "Jesu, redemptor
+omnium" (sixth century), the office hymn at Christmas Vespers. Like the
+poems of Ambrose and Prudentius, they are in classical metres, unrhymed,
+and based upon quantity, not accent, and they have the same general
+character, doctrinal rather than humanly tender.
+
+In the ninth and tenth centuries arose a new form of hymnody, the Prose
+or Sequence sung after the Gradual (the anthem between the Epistle and
+Gospel at Mass). The earliest writer of sequences was Notker, a monk of
+the abbey of St. Gall, near |33| the Lake of Constance. Among those
+that are probably his work is the Christmas "Natus ante saecula Dei
+filius." The most famous Nativity sequence, however, is the "Laetabundus,
+exsultet fidelis chorus" of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), once sung
+all over Europe, and especially popular in England and France. Here are
+its opening verses:--
+
+   "Laetabundus,
+    Exsultet fidelis chorus;
+        Alleluia!
+    Regem regum
+    Intactae profudit thorus;
+        Res miranda!
+
+    Angelus consilii
+    Natus est de Virgine,
+        Sol de stella!
+    Sol occasum nesciens,
+    Stella semper rutilans,
+        Semper clara."[11]{4}
+
+The "Laetabundus" is in rhymed stanzas; in this it differs from most
+early proses. The writing of rhymed sequences, however, became common
+through the example of the Parisian monk, Adam of St. Victor, in the
+second half of the twelfth century. He adopted an entirely new style of
+versification and music, derived from popular songs; and he and his
+successors in |34| the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries wrote
+various proses for the Christmas festival.
+
+If we consider the Latin Christmas hymns from the fourth century to the
+thirteenth, we shall find that however much they differ in form, they have
+one common characteristic: they are essentially theological--dwelling on
+the Incarnation and the Nativity as part of the process of man's
+redemption--rather than realistic. There is little attempt to imagine
+the scene in the stable at Bethlehem, little interest in the Child as a
+child, little sense of the human pathos of the Nativity. The explanation
+is, I think, very simple, and it lights up the whole observance of
+Christmas as a Church festival in the centuries we are considering:
+_this poetry is the poetry of monks, or of men imbued with the monastic
+spirit_.
+
+The two centuries following the institution of Christmas saw the break-up
+of the Roman Empire in the west, and the incursions of barbarians
+threatening the very existence of the Christian civilization that had
+conquered classic paganism. It was by her army of monks that the Church
+tamed and Christianized the barbarians, and both religion and culture
+till the middle of the twelfth century were predominantly monastic. "In
+writing of any eminently religious man of this period" [the eleventh
+century], says Dean Church, "it must be taken almost as a matter of
+course that he was a monk."{5} And a monastery was not the place for
+human feeling about Christmas; the monk was--at any rate in ideal--cut
+off from the world; not for him were the joys of parenthood or tender
+feelings for a new-born child. To the monk the world was, at least in
+theory, the vale of misery; birth and generation were, one may almost
+say, tolerated as necessary evils among lay folk unable to rise to the
+heights of abstinence and renunciation; one can hardly imagine a true
+early Benedictine filled with "joy that a man is born into the world."
+The Nativity was an infinitely important event, to be celebrated with a
+chastened, unearthly joy, but not, as it became for the later Middle Ages
+and the Renaissance, a matter upon which human affection might lavish
+itself, which imagination might deck with vivid concrete detail. In the
+later Christmas |35| the pagan and the Christian spirit, or delight in
+earthly things and joy in the invisible, seem to meet and mingle; to the
+true monk of the Dark and Early Middle Ages they were incompatible.
+
+What of the people, the great world outside the monasteries? Can we
+imagine that Christmas, on its Christian side, had a deep meaning for
+them? For the first ten centuries, to quote Dean Church again,
+Christianity "can hardly be said to have leavened society at all.... It
+acted upon it doubtless with enormous power; but it was as an extraneous
+and foreign agent, which destroys and shapes, but does not mingle or
+renew.... Society was a long time unlearning heathenism; it has not done
+so yet; but it had hardly begun, at any rate it was only just beginning,
+to imagine the possibility of such a thing in the eleventh century."{6}
+
+"The practical religion of the illiterate," says another ecclesiastical
+historian, Dr. W. R. W. Stephens, "was in many respects merely a survival
+of the old paganism thinly disguised. There was a prevalent belief in
+witchcraft, magic, sortilegy, spells, charms, talismans, which mixed
+itself up in strange ways with Christian ideas and Christian worship....
+Fear, the note of superstition, rather than love, which is the
+characteristic of a rational faith, was conspicuous in much of the
+popular religion. The world was haunted by demons, hobgoblins, malignant
+spirits of divers kinds, whose baneful influence must be averted by
+charms or offerings."{7}
+
+The writings of ecclesiastics, the decrees of councils and synods, from
+the fourth century to the eleventh, abound in condemnations of pagan
+practices at the turn of the year. It is in these customs, and in secular
+mirth and revelry, not in Christian poetry, that we must seek for the
+expression of early lay feeling about Christmas. It was a feast of
+material good things, a time for the fulfilment of traditional heathen
+usages, rather than a joyous celebration of the Saviour's birth. No doubt
+it was observed by due attendance at church, but the services in a tongue
+not understanded of the people cannot have been very full of meaning to
+them, and we can imagine |36| their Christmas church-going as rather a
+duty inspired by fear than an expression of devout rejoicing. It is
+noteworthy that the earliest of vernacular Christmas carols known to us,
+the early thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman "Seignors, ore entendez à nus,"
+is a song not of religion but of revelry. Its last verse is typical:
+
+   "Seignors, jo vus di par Noël,
+    E par li sires de cest hostel,
+            Car bevez ben;
+    E jo primes beverai le men,
+    E pois aprèz chescon le soen,
+        Par mon conseil;
+    Si jo vus di trestoz, 'Wesseyl!'
+    Dehaiz eit qui ne dirra, 'Drincheyl!'"[12]{8}
+
+Not till the close of the thirteenth century do we meet with any
+vernacular Christmas poetry of importance. The verses of the
+_troubadours_ and _trouvères_ of twelfth-century France had little to do
+with Christianity; their songs were mostly of earthly and illicit love.
+The German Minnesingers of the thirteenth century were indeed pious, but
+their devout lays were addressed to the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, the
+ideal of womanhood, holding in glory the Divine Child in her arms, rather
+than to the Babe and His Mother in the great humility of Bethlehem.
+
+The first real outburst of Christmas joy in a popular tongue is found in
+Italy, in the poems of that strange "minstrel of the Lord," the
+Franciscan Jacopone da Todi (b. 1228, d. 1306). _Franciscan_, in that
+name we have an indication of the change in religious feeling that came
+over the western world, and |37| especially Italy, in the thirteenth
+century.{9} For the twenty all-too-short years of St. Francis's
+apostolate have passed, and a new attitude towards God and man and the
+world has become possible. Not that the change was due solely to St.
+Francis; he was rather the supreme embodiment of the ideals and
+tendencies of his day than their actual creator; but he was the spark
+that kindled a mighty flame. In him we reach so important a turning-point
+in the history of Christmas that we must linger awhile at his side.
+
+Early Franciscanism meant above all the democratizing, the humanizing of
+Christianity; with it begins that "carol spirit" which is the most
+winning part of the Christian Christmas, the spirit which, while not
+forgetting the divine side of the Nativity, yet delights in its simple
+humanity, the spirit that links the Incarnation to the common life of the
+people, that brings human tenderness into religion. The faithful no
+longer contemplate merely a theological mystery, they are moved by
+affectionate devotion to the Babe of Bethlehem, realized as an actual
+living child, God indeed, yet feeling the cold of winter, the roughness
+of the manger bed.
+
+St. Francis, it must be remembered, was not a man of high birth, but the
+son of a silk merchant, and his appeal was made chiefly to the traders
+and skilled workmen of the cities, who, in his day, were rising to
+importance, coming, in modern Socialist terms, to class-consciousness.
+The monks, although boys of low birth were sometimes admitted into the
+cloister, were in sympathy one with the upper classes, and monastic
+religion and culture were essentially aristocratic. The rise of the
+Franciscans meant the bringing home of Christianity to masses of
+town-workers, homely people, who needed a religion full of vivid
+humanity, and whom the pathetic story of the Nativity would peculiarly
+touch.
+
+Love to man, the sense of human brotherhood--that was the great thing
+which St. Francis brought home to his age. The message, certainly, was
+not new, but he realized it with infectious intensity. The second great
+commandment, "Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself," had not indeed
+been forgotten by |38| mediaeval Christianity; the common life of
+monasticism was an attempt to fulfil it; yet for the monk love to man was
+often rather a duty than a passion. But to St. Francis love was very
+life; he loved not by duty but by an inner compulsion, and his burning
+love of God and man found its centre in the God-man, Christ Jesus. For no
+saint, perhaps, has the earthly life of Christ been the object of such
+passionate devotion as for St. Francis; the Stigmata were the awful, yet,
+to his contemporaries, glorious fruit of his meditations on the Passion;
+and of the ecstasy with which he kept his Christmas at Greccio we shall
+read when we come to consider the _Presepio_. He had a peculiar affection
+for the festival of the Holy Child; "the Child Jesus," says Thomas of
+Celano, "had been given over to forgetfulness in the hearts of many in
+whom, by the working of His grace, He was raised up again through His
+servant Francis."{10}
+
+To the Early Middle Ages Christ was the awful Judge, the _Rex tremendae
+majestatis_, though also the divine bringer of salvation from sin and
+eternal punishment, and, to the mystic, the Bridegroom of the Soul. To
+Francis He was the little brother of all mankind as well. It was a new
+human joy that came into religion with him. His essentially artistic
+nature was the first to realize the full poetry of Christmas--the coming
+of infinity into extremest limitation, the Highest made the lowliest, the
+King of all kings a poor infant. He had, in a supreme degree, the mingled
+reverence and tenderness that inspire the best carols.
+
+Though no Christmas verses by St. Francis have come down to us, there is
+a beautiful "psalm" for Christmas Day at Vespers, composed by him partly
+from passages of Scripture. A portion of Father Paschal Robinson's
+translation may be quoted:--
+
+   "Rejoice to God our helper.
+    Shout unto God, living and true,
+    With the voice of triumph.
+    For the Lord is high, terrible:
+    A great King over all the earth.
+    For the most holy Father of heaven, |39|
+    Our King, before ages sent His Beloved
+      Son from on high, and He
+      was born of the Blessed Virgin,
+      holy Mary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+   This is the day which the Lord
+      hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.
+    For the beloved and most holy
+    Child has been given to us and
+      born for us by the wayside.
+    And laid in a manger because He
+      had no room in the inn.
+    Glory to God in the highest: and
+      on earth peace to men of good will."{11}
+
+[Illustration:
+
+JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN.
+
+From "Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi"
+
+(Florence, 1490).]
+
+It is in the poetry of Jacopone da Todi, born shortly after the death of
+St. Francis, that the Franciscan Christmas spirit finds its most intense
+expression. A wild, wandering ascetic, an impassioned poet, and a soaring
+mystic, Jacopone is one of the greatest of Christian singers, unpolished
+as his verses are. Noble by birth, he made himself utterly as the common
+people for whom he piped his rustic notes. "Dio fatto piccino" ("God made
+a little thing") is the keynote of his music; the Christ Child is for him
+"our sweet little brother"; with tender affection he rejoices in
+endearing diminutives--"Bambolino," "Piccolino," "Jesulino." He sings of
+the Nativity with extraordinary realism.[13] Here, in words, is a picture
+of the Madonna and her Child that might well have inspired an early
+Tuscan artist:--
+
+   "Veggiamo il suo Bambino
+    Gammettare nel fieno,
+    E le braccia scoperte
+    Porgere ad ella in seno, |40|
+    Ed essa lo ricopre
+    El meglio che può almeno,
+    Mettendoli la poppa
+    Entro la sua bocchina.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    A la sua man manca,
+    Cullava lo Bambino,
+    E con sante carole
+    Nenciava il suo amor fino....
+    Gli Angioletti d' intorno
+    Se ne gian danzando,
+    Facendo dolci versi
+    E d' amor favellando."[14]{12}
+
+But there is an intense sense of the divine, as well as the human, in the
+Holy Babe; no one has felt more vividly the paradox of the Incarnation:--
+
+   "Ne la degna stalla del dolce Bambino
+    Gli Angeli cantano d' intorno al piccolino;
+      Cantano e gridano gli Angeli diletti,
+    Tutti riverenti timidi e subietti, |41|
+    Al Bambolino principe de gli eletti,
+    Che nudo giace nel pungente spino.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Il Verbo divino, che è sommo sapiente,
+    In questo dì par che non sappia niente,
+    Guardal su' l fieno, che gambetta piangente,
+    Como elli non fusse huomo divino."[15]{13}
+
+Here, again, are some sweet and homely lines about preparation for the
+Infant Saviour:--
+
+      "Andiamo a lavare
+    La casa a nettare,
+    Che non trovi bruttura.
+      Poi el menaremo,
+    Et gli daremo
+    Ben da ber' e mangiare.
+      Un cibo espiato,
+    Et d' or li sia dato
+    Senza alcuna dimura.
+      Lo cor adempito
+    Dagiamoli fornito
+    Senza odio ne rancura."[16]{14}
+
+|42| There have been few more rapturous poets than Jacopone; men deemed
+him mad; but, "if he is mad," says a modern Italian writer, "he is mad as
+the lark"--"Nessun poeta canta a tutta gola come questo frate minore. S'
+è pazzo, è pazzo come l' allodola."
+
+To him is attributed that most poignant of Latin hymns, the "Stabat Mater
+dolorosa"; he wrote also a joyous Christmas pendant to it:--
+
+   "Stabat Mater speciosa,
+    Juxta foenum gaudiosa,
+      Dum jacebat parvulus.
+    Cujus animam gaudentem,
+    Laetabundam ac ferventem,
+      Pertransivit jubilus."[17]{15}
+
+In the fourteenth century we find a blossoming forth of Christmas poetry
+in another land, Germany.{16} There are indeed Christmas and Epiphany
+passages in a poetical Life of Christ by Otfrid of Weissenburg in the
+ninth century, and a twelfth-century poem by Spervogel, "Er ist gewaltic
+unde starc," opens with a mention of Christmas, but these are of little
+importance for us. The fourteenth century shows the first real outburst,
+and that is traceable, in part at least, to the mystical movement in the
+Rhineland caused by the preaching of the great Dominican, Eckhart of
+Strasburg, and his followers. It was a movement towards inward piety as
+distinguished from, though not excluding, external observances, which
+made its way largely by sermons listened to by great congregations in the
+towns. Its impulse came not from the monasteries proper, but from the
+convents of Dominican friars, and it was for Germany in the fourteenth
+century something like what Franciscanism had been for Italy in the
+thirteenth. One of the central doctrines of the school |43| was that of
+the Divine Birth in the soul of the believer; according to Eckhart the
+soul comes into immediate union with God by "bringing forth the Son"
+within itself; the historic Christ is the symbol of the divine humanity
+to which the soul should rise: "when the soul bringeth forth the Son," he
+says, "it is happier than Mary."{17} Several Christmas sermons by
+Eckhart have been preserved; one of them ends with the prayer, "To this
+Birth may that God, who to-day is new born as man, bring us, that we,
+poor children of earth, may be born in Him as God; to this may He bring
+us eternally! Amen."{18} With this profound doctrine of the Divine
+Birth, it was natural that the German mystics should enter deeply into
+the festival of Christmas, and one of the earliest of German Christmas
+carols, "Es komt ein schif geladen," is the work of Eckhart's disciple,
+John Tauler (d. 1361). It is perhaps an adaptation of a secular song:--
+
+   "A ship comes sailing onwards
+      With a precious freight on board;
+    It bears the only Son of God,
+      It bears the Eternal Word."
+
+The doctrine of the mystics, "Die in order to live," fills the last
+verses:--
+
+   "Whoe'er would hope in gladness
+      To kiss this Holy Child,
+    Must suffer many a pain and woe,
+      Patient like Him and mild;
+
+    Must die with Him to evil
+      And rise to righteousness,
+    That so with Christ he too may share
+      Eternal life and bliss."{19}
+
+To the fourteenth century may perhaps belong an allegorical carol still
+sung in both Catholic and Protestant Germany:--
+
+   "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
+    Aus einer Wurzel zart, |44|
+    Als uns die Alten sungen,
+    Von Jesse kam die Art,
+    Und hat ein Blümlein bracht,
+    Mitten im kalten Winter,
+    Wohl zu der halben Nacht.
+    Das Röslein, das ich meine,
+    Davon Jesajas sagt,
+    Hat uns gebracht alleine
+    Marie, die reine Magd.
+    Aus Gottes ew'gem Rat
+    Hat sie ein Kind geboren
+    Wohl zu der halben Nacht."[18]{20}
+
+In a fourteenth-century Life of the mystic Heinrich Suso it is told how
+one day angels came to him to comfort him in his sufferings, how they
+took him by the hand and led him to dance, while one began a glad song of
+the child Jesus, "In dulci jubilo." To the fourteenth century, then,
+dates back that most delightful of German carols, with its interwoven
+lines of Latin. I may quote the fine Scots translation in the "Godlie and
+Spirituall Sangis" of 1567:--
+
+   "_In dulci Jubilo_, Now lat us sing with myrth and jo
+    Our hartis consolatioun lyis _in praesepio_,
+    And schynis as the Sone, _Matris in gremio_,
+    _Alpha es et O, Alpha es et O._
+    _O Jesu parvule!_ I thrist sore efter thé, |45|
+    Confort my hart and mynde, _O puer optime_,
+    God of all grace sa kynde, _et princeps gloriae_
+    _Trahe me post te, Trahe me post te_.
+    _Ubi sunt gaudia_, in ony place bot thair,
+    Quhair that the Angellis sing _Nova cantica_,
+    Bot and the bellis ring _in regis curia_,
+    God gif I war thair, God gif I war thair."{21}
+
+The music of "In dulci jubilo"[19] has, with all its religious feeling,
+something of the nature of a dance, and unites in a strange fashion
+solemnity, playfulness, and ecstatic delight. No other air, perhaps,
+shows so perfectly the reverent gaiety of the carol spirit.
+
+The fifteenth century produced a realistic type of German carol. Here is
+the beginning of one such:--
+
+   "Da Jesu Krist geboren wart,
+    do was es kalt;
+    in ain klaines kripplein
+    er geleget wart.
+    Da stunt ain esel und ain rint,
+    die atmizten über das hailig kint
+    gar unverborgen.
+    Der ain raines herze hat, der darf nit sorgen."[20]{22}
+
+It goes on to tell in naïve language the story of the wanderings of the
+Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt.
+
+This carol type lasted, and continued to develop, in Austria and the
+Catholic parts of Germany through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
+eighteenth centuries, and even in the nineteenth. In Carinthia in the
+early nineteenth century, almost every parish had its local poet, who
+added new songs to the old treasury.{23} Particularly popular were the
+_Hirtenlieder_ or shepherd songs, in which the peasant worshippers joined
+themselves to the shepherds of Bethlehem, and sought to share their
+devout |46| emotions. Often these carols are of the most rustic
+character and in the broadest dialect. They breathe forth a great
+kindliness and homeliness, and one could fill pages with quotations. Two
+more short extracts must, however, suffice to show their quality.
+
+How warm and hearty is their feeling for the Child:--
+
+   "Du herzliabste Muater, gib Acht auf dös Kind,
+    Es is ja gar frostig, thuas einfatschen gschwind.
+    Und du alter Voda, decks Kindlein schen zua,
+    Sonst hats von der Kölden und Winden kan Ruah.
+    Hiazt nemen mir Urlaub, o gettliches Kind,
+    Thua unser gedenken, verzeich unser Sünd.
+    Es freut uns von Herzen dass d'ankomen bist;
+    Es hätt uns ja niemand zu helfen gewist."[21]{24}
+
+And what fatherly affection is here:--
+
+   "Das Kind is in der Krippen glögn,
+    So herzig und so rar!
+    Mei klâner Hansl war nix dgögn,
+    Wenn a glei schener war.
+    Kolschwarz wie d'Kirchen d'Augen sein,
+    Sunst aber kreidenweiss;
+    Die Händ so hübsch recht zart und fein,
+    I hans angrürt mit Fleiss.
+
+    Aft hats auf mi an Schmutza gmacht,
+    An Höscheza darzue;
+    O warst du mein, hoan i gedacht,
+    Werst wol a munter Bue.
+    Dahoam in meiner Kachelstub
+    Liess i brav hoazen ein,
+    Do in den Stâl kimt überâl
+    Der kalte Wind herein."[22]{25}
+
+|47| We have been following on German ground a mediaeval tradition that
+has continued unbroken down to modern days; but we must now take a leap
+backward in time, and consider the beginnings of the Christmas carol in
+England.
+
+Not till the fifteenth century is there any outburst of Christmas poetry
+in English, though other forms of religious lyrics were produced in
+considerable numbers in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.
+When the carols come at last, they appear in the least likely of all
+places, at the end of a versifying of the whole duty of man, by John
+Awdlay, a blind chaplain of Haghmon, in Shropshire. In red letters he
+writes:--
+
+   "I pray you, sirus, boothe moore and lase,
+    Sing these caroles in Cristëmas,"
+
+and then follows a collection of twenty-five songs, some of which are
+genuine Christmas carols, as one now understands the word.{26}
+
+A carol, in the modern English sense, may perhaps be defined as a
+religious song, less formal and solemn than the ordinary Church hymn--an
+expression of popular and often naïve devotional feeling, a thing
+intended to be sung outside rather than within church walls. There still
+linger about the word some echoes of its original meaning, for "carol"
+had at first a secular or even pagan significance: in twelfth-century
+France it was used to describe the amorous song-dance which hailed the
+coming of spring; in Italian it meant a ring- or song-dance; while by
+English writers from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century it was used
+chiefly of singing joined with dancing, and had no necessary connection
+with religion. Much as the mediaeval Church, with its ascetic tendencies,
+disliked religious dancing, it could not always suppress it; and in
+Germany, as we shall see, there was choral dancing at Christmas round the
+cradle of the Christ Child. Whether Christmas carols were ever danced to
+in England |48| is doubtful; many of the old airs and words have,
+however, a glee and playfulness as of human nature following its natural
+instincts of joy even in the celebration of the most sacred mysteries. It
+is probable that some of the carols are religious parodies of love-songs,
+written for the melodies of the originals, and many seem by their
+structure to be indirectly derived from the choral dances of farm folk, a
+notable feature being their burden or refrain, a survival of the common
+outcry of the dancers as they leaped around.
+
+Awdlay's carols are perhaps meant to be sung by "wassailing neighbours,
+who make their rounds at Christmastide to drink a cup and take a gift,
+and bring good fortune upon the house"{27}--predecessors of those
+carol-singers of rural England in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Hardy
+depicts so delightfully in "Under the Greenwood Tree." Carol-singing by a
+band of men who go from house to house is probably a Christianization of
+such heathen processions as we shall meet in less altered forms in Part
+II.
+
+It must not be supposed that the carols Awdlay gives are his own work;
+and their exact date it is impossible to determine. Part of his book was
+composed in 1426, but one at least of the carols was probably written in
+the last half of the fourteenth century. They seem indeed to be the later
+blossomings of the great springtime of English literature, the period
+which produced Chaucer and Langland, an innumerable company of minstrels
+and ballad-makers, and the mystical poet, Richard Rolle of Hampole.[23]
+
+Through the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, the
+flowering continued; and something like two hundred carols of this period
+are known. It is impossible to attempt here anything like representative
+quotation; I can only sketch in |49| roughest outline the main
+characteristics of English carol literature, and refer the reader for
+examples to Miss Edith Rickert's comprehensive collection, "Ancient
+English Carols, MCCCC-MDCC," or to the smaller but fine selection in
+Messrs. E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick's "Early English Lyrics." Many may
+have been the work of _goliards_ or wandering scholars, and a common
+feature is the interweaving of Latin with English words.
+
+Some, like the exquisite "I sing of a maiden that is makeles,"{29} are
+rather songs to or about the Virgin than strictly Christmas carols; the
+Annunciation rather than the Nativity is their theme. Others again tell
+the whole story of Christ's life. The feudal idea is strong in such lines
+as these:--
+
+   "Mary is quene of allë thinge,
+    And her sone a lovely kinge.
+    God graunt us allë good endinge!
+          _Regnat dei gracia_."{30}
+
+On the whole, in spite of some mystical exceptions, the mediaeval English
+carol is somewhat external in its religion; there is little deep
+individual feeling; the caroller sings as a member of the human race,
+whose curse is done away, whose nature is exalted by the Incarnation,
+rather than as one whose soul is athirst for God:--
+
+   "Now man is brighter than the sonne;
+    Now man in heven an hie shall wonne;
+    Blessëd be God this game is begonne
+      And his moder emperesse of helle."{31}
+
+Salvation is rather an objective external thing than an inward and
+spiritual process. A man has but to pray devoutly to the dear Mother and
+Child, and they will bring him to the heavenly court. It is not so much
+personal sin as an evil influence in humanity, that is cured by the great
+event of Christmas:--
+
+   "It was dark, it was dim,
+    For men that levëd in gret sin;
+    Lucifer was all within,
+      Till on the Cristmes day. |50|
+
+    There was weping, there was wo,
+    For every man to hell gan go.
+    It was litel mery tho,
+      Till on the Cristmes day."{32}
+
+But now that Christ is born, and man redeemed, one may be blithe
+indeed:--
+
+   "Jhesus is that childës name,
+    Maide and moder is his dame,
+    And so oure sorow is turned to game.
+          _Gloria tibi domine._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Now sitte we downe upon our knee,
+    And pray that child that is so free;
+    And with gode hertë now sing we
+          _Gloria tibi domine_."{33}
+
+Sometimes the religious spirit almost vanishes, and the carol becomes
+little more than a gay pastoral song:--
+
+   "The shepard upon a hill he satt;
+    He had on him his tabard and his hat,
+    His tar-box, his pipe, and his flagat;
+    His name was called Joly Joly Wat,
+      For he was a gud herdës boy.
+                  Ut hoy!
+      For in his pipe he made so much joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Whan Wat to Bedlem cum was,
+    He swet, he had gone faster than a pace;
+    He found Jesu in a simpell place,
+    Betwen an ox and an asse.
+                  Ut hoy!
+      For in his pipe he made so much joy.
+
+    'Jesu, I offer to thee here my pipe,
+    My skirt, my tar-box, and my scripe;
+    Home to my felowes now will I skipe,
+    And also look unto my shepe.'
+                  Ut hoy!
+      For in his pipe he made so much joy."{34}
+
+|51| But to others again, especially the lullabies, the hardness of the
+Nativity, the shadow of the coming Passion, give a deep note of sorrow
+and pathos; there is the thought of the sword that shall pierce Mary's
+bosom:--
+
+   "This endris night I saw a sight,
+      A maid a cradell kepe,
+    And ever she song and seid among
+      'Lullay, my child, and slepe.'
+
+    'I may not slepe, but I may wepe,
+      I am so wo begone;
+    Slepe I wold, but I am colde
+      And clothës have I none.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    'Adam's gilt this man had spilt;
+      That sin greveth me sore.
+    Man, for thee here shall I be
+      Thirty winter and more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    'Here shall I be hanged on a tree,
+      And die as it is skill.
+    That I have bought lesse will I nought;
+      It is my fader's will.'"{35}
+
+The lullabies are quite the most delightful, as they are the most human,
+of the carols. Here is an exquisitely musical verse from one of 1530:--
+
+   "In a dream late as I lay,
+    Methought I heard a maiden say
+      And speak these words so mild:
+    'My little son, with thee I play,
+    And come,' she sang, 'by, lullaby.'
+      Thus rockëd she her child.
+
+    _By-by, lullaby, by-by, lullaby,_
+      _Rockëd I my child._
+    _By-by, by-by, by-by, lullaby,_
+      _Rockëd I my child._"{36}
+
+|52| |53| |54| |55|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)
+
+
+    The French _Noël_--Latin Hymnody in Eighteenth-century
+    France--Spanish Christmas Verse--Traditional Carols of Many
+    Countries--Christmas Poetry in Protestant Germany--Post-Reformation
+    Verse in England--Modern English Carols.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.
+
+_By Fouquet._
+
+(Musée Condé, Chantilly.)]
+
+The Reformation marks a change in the character of Christmas poetry in
+England and the larger part of Germany, and, instead of following its
+development under Protestantism, it will be well to break off and turn
+awhile to countries where Catholic tradition remained unbroken. We shall
+come back later to Post-Reformation England and Protestant Germany.
+
+In French{1} there is little or no Christmas poetry, religious in
+character, before the fifteenth century; the earlier carols that have
+come down to us are songs rather of feasting and worldly rejoicing than
+of sacred things. The true _Noël_ begins to appear in fifteenth-century
+manuscripts, but it was not till the following century that it attained
+its fullest vogue and was spread all over the country by the printing
+presses. Such _Noëls_ seem to have been written by clerks or recognized
+poets, either for old airs or for specially composed music. "To a great
+extent," says Mr. Gregory Smith, "they anticipate the spirit which
+stimulated the Reformers to turn the popular and often obscene songs into
+good and godly ballads."{2}
+
+Some of the early _Noëls_ are not unlike the English carols of the
+period, and are often half in Latin, half in French. Here are a few such
+"macaronic" verses:--
+
+   "Célébrons la naissance
+    _Nostri Salvatoris_, |56|
+    Qui fait la complaisance
+    _Dei sui Patris_.
+    Cet enfant tout aimable,
+    _In nocte mediâ_,
+    Est né dans une étable,
+    _De castâ Mariâ_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Mille esprits angéliques,
+    _Juncti pastoribus_,
+    Chantent dans leur musique,
+    _Puer vobis natus_,
+    Au Dieu par qui nous sommes,
+    _Gloria in excelsis_,
+    Et la paix soit aux hommes
+    _Bonae voluntatis_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Qu'on ne soit insensible!
+    _Adeamus omnes_
+    A Dieu rendu passible,
+    _Propter nos mortales_,
+    Et tous, de compagnie,
+    _Deprecemur eum_
+    Qu'à la fin de la vie,
+    _Det regnum beatum_."{3}
+
+The sixteenth century is the most interesting _Noël_ period; we find then
+a conflict of tendencies, a conflict between Gallic realism and broad
+humour and the love of refined language due to the study of the ancient
+classics. There are many anonymous pieces of this time, but three
+important _Noëlistes_ stand out by name: Lucas le Moigne, Curé of Saint
+Georges, Puy-la-Garde, near Poitiers; Jean Daniel, called "Maître Mitou,"
+a priest-organist at Nantes; and Nicholas Denisot of Le Mans, whose
+_Noëls_ appeared posthumously under the pseudonym of "Comte d'Alsinoys."
+
+Lucas le Moigne represents the _esprit gaulois_, the spirit that is often
+called "Rabelaisian," though it is only one side of the genius of
+Rabelais. The good Curé was a contemporary of |57| the author of
+"Pantagruel." His "Chansons de Noëls nouvaulx" was published in 1520, and
+contains carols in very varied styles, some naïve and pious, others
+hardly quotable at the present day. One of his best-known pieces is a
+dialogue between the Virgin and the singers of the carol: Mary is asked
+and answers questions about the wondrous happenings of her life. Here are
+four verses about the Nativity:--
+
+   "Or nous dites, Marie,
+    Les neuf mois accomplis,
+    Naquit le fruit de vie,
+    Comme l'Ange avoit dit?
+    --Oui, sans nulle peine
+    Et sans oppression,
+    Naquit de tout le monde
+    La vraie Rédemption.
+
+      Or nous dites, Marie,
+    Du lieu impérial,
+    Fut-ce en chambre parée,
+    Ou en Palais royal?
+    --En une pauvre étable
+    Ouverte à l'environ
+    Ou n'avait feu, ni flambe
+    Ni latte, ni chevron.
+
+      Or nous dites, Marie,
+    Qui vous vint visiter;
+    Les bourgeois de la ville
+    Vous ont-ils confortée?
+    --Oncque, homme ni femme
+    N'en eut compassion,
+    Non plus que d'un esclave
+    D'étrange région.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Or nous dites, Marie,
+    Des pauvres pastoureaux
+    Qui gardaient ès montagnes
+    Leurs brebis & aigneaux. |58|
+    --Ceux-là m'ont visitée
+    Par grande affection;
+    Moult me fut agréable
+    Leur visitation."{4}
+
+The influence of the "Pléiade," with its care for form, its respect for
+classical models, its enrichment of the French tongue with new Latin
+words, is shown by Jean Daniel, who also owes something to the poets of
+the late fifteenth century. Two stanzas may be quoted from him:--
+
+       "C'est ung très grant mystère
+        Qu'ung roy de si hault pris
+        Vient naistre en lieu austère,
+        En si meschant pourpris:
+    Le Roy de tous les bons espritz,
+        C'est Jésus nostre frère,
+    Le Roy de tous les bons espritz,
+        Duquel sommes apris.
+
+    Saluons le doulx Jésuchrist,
+        Notre Dieu, notre frère,
+    Saluons le doulx Jésuchrist,
+        Chantons Noel d'esprit!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        En luy faisant prière,
+        Soyons de son party,
+        Qu'en sa haulte emperière
+        Ayons lieu de party;
+    Comme il nous a droict apparty,
+        Jésus nostre bon frère,
+    Comme il nous a droict apparty
+        Au céleste convy.
+    Saluons, etc.
+        Amen. Noel."{5}
+
+As for Denisot, I may give two charming verses from one of his
+pastorals:--
+
+   "Suz, Bergiez, en campaigne,
+    Laissez là vos troppeaux, |59|
+    Avant qu'on s'accompaigne,
+    Enflez vos chalumeaux.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Enflez vos cornemuses,
+    Dansez ensemblement,
+    Et vos doucettes muses,
+    Accollez doucement."{6}
+
+One result of the Italian influences which came over France in the
+sixteenth century was a fondness for diminutives. Introduced into carols,
+these have sometimes a very graceful effect:--
+
+   "Entre le boeuf & le bouvet,
+        Noel nouvellet,
+    Voulust Jésus nostre maistre,
+    En un petit hostelet,
+        Noel nouvellet,
+    En ce pauvre monde naistre,
+        O Noel nouvellet!
+
+    Ne couche, ne bercelet,
+        Noel nouvellet,
+    Ne trouvèrent en cette estre,
+    Fors ung petit drappelet,
+        Noel nouvellet,
+    Pour envelopper le maistre,
+        O Noel nouvellet!"{7}
+
+These diminutives are found again, though fewer, in a particularly
+delightful carol:--
+
+      "Laissez paître vos bestes
+    Pastoureaux, par monts et par vaux;
+      Laissez paître vos bestes,
+      Et allons chanter Nau.
+
+    J'ai ouï chanter le rossignol,
+    Qui chantoit un chant si nouveau,
+      Si haut, si beau,
+      Si résonneau, |60|
+
+      Il m'y rompoit la tête,
+    Tant il chantoit et flageoloit:
+      Adonc pris ma houlette
+      Pour aller voir Naulet.
+      Laissez paître, etc."{8}
+
+The singer goes on to tell how he went with his fellow-shepherds and
+shepherdesses to Bethlehem:--
+
+   "Nous dîmes tous une chanson
+    Les autres en vinrent au son,
+        Chacun prenant
+        Son compagnon:
+      Je prendrai Guillemette,
+    Margot tu prendras gros Guillot;
+      Qui prendra Péronelle?
+      Ce sera Talebot.
+      Laissez paître, etc.
+
+    Ne chantons plus, nous tardons trop,
+    Pensons d'aller courir le trot.
+        Viens-tu, Margot?--
+        J'attends Guillot.--
+      J'ai rompu ma courette,
+    Il faut ramancher mon sabot.--
+      Or, tiens cette aiguillette,
+      Elle y servira trop.
+      Laissez paître, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Nous courumes de grand' roideur
+    Pour voir notre doux Rédempteur
+        Et Créateur
+        Et Formateur,
+      Qui était tendre d'aage
+    Et sans linceux en grand besoin,
+      Il gisait en la crêche
+      Sur un botteau de foin.
+      Laissez paître, etc. |61|
+
+    Sa mère avecque lui était:
+    Et Joseph si lui éclairait,
+        Point ne semblait
+        Au beau fillet,
+      Il n'était point son père;
+    Je l'aperçus bien au cameau (_visage_)
+      Il semblait à sa mère,
+      Encore est-il plus beau.
+      Laissez paître, etc."
+
+This is but one of a large class of French _Noëls_ which make the
+Nativity more real, more present, by representing the singer as one of a
+company of worshippers going to adore the Child. Often these are
+shepherds, but sometimes they are simply the inhabitants of a parish, a
+town, a countryside, or a province, bearing presents of their own produce
+to the little Jesus and His parents. Barrels of wine, fish, fowls,
+sucking-pigs, pastry, milk, fruit, firewood, birds in a cage--such are
+their homely gifts. Often there is a strongly satiric note: the
+peculiarities and weaknesses of individuals are hit off; the reputation
+of a place is suggested, a village whose people are famous for their
+stinginess offers cider that is half rain-water; elsewhere the
+inhabitants are so given to law-suits that they can hardly find time to
+go to Bethlehem.
+
+Such _Noëls_ with their vivid local colour, are valuable pictures of the
+manners of their time. They are, unfortunately, too long for quotation
+here, but any reader who cares to follow up the subject will find some
+interesting specimens in a little collection of French carols that can be
+bought for ten _centimes_.{9} They are of various dates; some probably
+were written as late as the eighteenth century. In that century, and
+indeed in the seventeenth, the best Christmas verses are those of a
+provincial and rustic character, and especially those in _patois_; the
+more cultivated poets, with their formal classicism, can ill enter into
+the spirit of the festival. Of the learned writers the best is a woman,
+Françoise Paschal, of Lyons (b. about 1610); in spite of her Latinity she
+shows a real feeling for her subjects. Some of her _Noëls_ are dialogues
+between the sacred personages; one presents |62| Joseph and Mary as
+weary wayfarers seeking shelter at all the inns of Bethlehem and
+everywhere refused by host or hostess:--
+
+        "_Saint Joseph._
+
+    Voyons la _Rose-Rouge_.
+    Madame de céans,
+    Auriez-vous quelque bouge
+    Pour de petites gens?
+
+        _L'Hôtesse._
+
+    Vous n'avez pas la mine
+    D'avoir de grands trésors;
+    Voyez chez ma voisine,
+    Car, quant à moi, je dors.
+
+        _Saint Joseph._
+
+    Monsieur des _Trois-Couronnes_,
+    Avez-vous logement,
+    Chez vous pour trois personnes,
+    Quelque trou seulement.
+
+        _L'Hôte._
+
+    Vous perdez votre peine,
+    Vous venez un peu tard,
+    Ma maison est fort pleine,
+    Allez quelqu'autre part."{10}
+
+The most remarkable of the _patois Noëlistes_ of the seventeenth century
+are the Provençal Saboly and the Burgundian La Monnoye, the one kindly
+and tender, the other witty and sarcastic. Here is one of Saboly's
+Provençal _Noëls_:--
+
+   "Quand la mièjonue sounavo,
+    Ai sautà dóu liech au sòu;
+    Ai vist un bèl ange que cantavo
+    Milo fes pu dous qu'un roussignòu.
+
+    Lei mastin dóu vesinage
+    Se soun toutes atroupa; |63|
+    N'avien jamai vist aquéu visage
+    Se soun tout-d'un-cop mes à japa.
+
+    Lei pastre dessus la paio
+    Dourmien coume de soucas;
+    Quand an aussi lou bru dei sounaio
+    Au cresegu qu'ero lou souiras.
+
+    S'eron de gent resounable,
+    Vendrien sèns èstre envita:
+    Trouvarien dins un petit estable
+    La lumiero emai la verita."[24]{11}
+
+As for La Monnoye, here is a translation of one of his satirical
+verses:--"When in the time of frost Jesus Christ came into the world the
+ass and ox warmed Him with their breath in the stable. How many asses and
+oxen I know in this kingdom of Gaul! How many asses and oxen I know who
+would not have done as much!"{12}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Apart from the rustic _Noëls_, the eighteenth century produced little
+French Christmas poetry of any charm. Some of the carols most sung in
+French churches to-day belong, however, to this period, _e.g._, the
+"Venez, divin Messie" of the Abbé Pellegrin.{13}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One cannot leave the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
+without some mention of its Latin hymnody. From a date near 1700,
+apparently, comes the sweet and solemn "Adeste, fideles"; by its music
+and its rhythm, perhaps, rather than by its actual words it has become
+the best beloved of Christmas hymns. The present writer has heard it sung
+with equal reverence and heartiness in English, German, French, and
+Italian churches, and no other hymn seems so full of the spirit of
+Christmas devotion--wonder, |64| awe, and tenderness, and the sense of
+reconciliation between Heaven and earth. Composed probably in France,
+"Adeste, fideles" came to be used in English as well as French Roman
+Catholic churches during the eighteenth century. In 1797 it was sung at
+the chapel of the Portuguese Embassy in London; hence no doubt its once
+common name of "Portuguese hymn." It was first used in an Anglican church
+in 1841, when the Tractarian Oakley translated it for his congregation at
+Margaret Street Chapel, London.
+
+Another fine Latin hymn of the eighteenth-century French Church is
+Charles Coffin's "Jam desinant suspiria."{14} It appeared in the
+Parisian Breviary in 1736, and is well known in English as "God from on
+high hath heard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Revolution and the decay of Catholicism in France seem to have killed
+the production of popular carols. The later nineteenth century, however,
+saw a revival of interest in the _Noël_ as a literary form. In 1875 the
+bicentenary of Saboly's death was celebrated by a competition for a
+_Noël_ in the Provençal tongue, and something of the same kind has been
+done in Brittany.{15} The _Noël_ has attracted by its aesthetic charm
+even poets who are anything but devout; Théophile Gautier, for instance,
+wrote a graceful Christmas carol, "Le ciel est noir, la terre est
+blanche."
+
+On a general view of the vernacular Christmas poetry of France it must be
+admitted that the devotional note is not very strong; there is indeed a
+formal reverence, a courtly homage, paid to the Infant Saviour, and the
+miraculous in the Gospel story is taken for granted; but there is little
+sense of awe and mystery. In harmony with the realistic instincts of the
+nation, everything is dramatically, very humanly conceived; at times,
+indeed, the personages of the Nativity scenes quite lose their sacred
+character, and the treatment degenerates into grossness. At its best,
+however, the French _Noël_ has a gaiety and a grace, joined to a genuine,
+if not very deep, piety, that are extremely charming. Reading these
+rustic songs, we are carried in imagination to French countrysides; we
+think of the long walk through the snow to the Midnight Mass, the
+cheerful _réveillon_ spread on the |65| return, the family gathered
+round the hearth, feasting on wine and chestnuts and _boudins_, and
+singing in traditional strains the joys of _Noël_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Across the Pyrenees, in Spain, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
+centuries saw a great output of Christmas verse. Among the chief writers
+were Juan López de Ubeda, Francisco de Ocaña, and José de
+Valdivielso.{16} Their _villancicos_ remind one of the paintings of
+Murillo; they have the same facility, the same tender and graceful
+sentiment, without much depth. They lack the homely flavour, the
+quaintness that make the French and German folk-carols so delightful;
+they have not the rustic tang, and yet they charm by their simplicity and
+sweetness.
+
+Here are a few stanzas by Ocaña:--
+
+   "Dentro de un pobre pesebre
+    y cobijado con heno
+    yace Jesus Nazareno.
+
+      En el heno yace echado
+    el hijo de Dios eterno,
+    para librar del infierno
+    al hombre que hubo criado,
+    y por matar el pecado
+    el heno tiene por bueno
+    nuestro Jesus Nazareno.
+
+      Está entre dos animales
+    que le calientan del frio,
+    quien remedia nuestros males
+    con su grande poderío:
+    es su reino y señorío
+    el mundo y el cielo sereno,
+    y agora duerme en el heno.
+
+      Tiene por bueno sufrir
+    el frio y tanta fortuna,
+    sin tener ropa ninguna
+    con que se abrigar ni cubrir, |66|
+    y por darnos el vivir
+    padeció frio en el heno,
+    nuestro Jesus Nazareno."[25]{17}
+
+More of a peasant flavour is found in some snatches of Christmas carols
+given by Fernan Caballero in her sketch, "La Noche de Navidad."
+
+      "Ha nacido en un portal,
+    Llenito de telarañas,
+    Entre la mula y el buey
+    El Redentor de las almas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      En el portal de Belen
+    Hay estrella, sol y luna:
+    La Virgen y San José
+    Y el niño que está en la cuna.
+
+      En Belen tocan á fuego,
+    Del portal sale la llama,
+    Es una estrella del cielo,
+    Que ha caido entre la paja.
+
+      Yo soy un pobre gitano
+    Que vengo de Egipto aquí,
+    Y al niño de Dios le traigo
+    Un gallo quiquiriquí
+
+      Yo soy un pobre gallego
+    Que vengo de la Galicia,
+    Y al niño de Dios le traigo
+    Lienzo para una camisa. |67|
+
+      Al niño recien nacido
+    Todos le traen un don;
+    Yo soy chico y nada tengo;
+    Le traigo mi corazon."[26]{18}
+
+In nearly every western language one finds traditional Christmas carols.
+Europe is everywhere alive with them; they spring up like wild flowers.
+Some interesting Italian specimens are given by Signor de Gubernatis in
+his "Usi Natalizi." Here are a few stanzas from a Bergamesque cradle-song
+of the Blessed Virgin:--
+
+      "Dormi, dormi, o bel bambin,
+    Re divin.
+    Dormi, dormi, o fantolin.
+    Fa la nanna, o caro figlio,
+    Re del Ciel,
+    Tanto bel, grazioso giglio.
+
+      Chiüdi i lümi, o mio tesor,
+    Dolce amor,
+    Di quest' alma, almo Signor;
+    Fa la nanna, o regio infante,
+    Sopra il fien,
+    Caro ben, celeste amante.
+
+      Perchè piangi, o bambinell,
+    Forse il giel
+    Ti dà noia, o l'asinell?
+    Fa la nanna, o paradiso
+    Del mio cor,
+    Redentor, ti bacio il viso."[27]{19}
+
+|68| With this lullaby may be compared a singularly lovely and quite
+untranslatable Latin cradle-song of unknown origin:--
+
+   "Dormi, fili, dormi! mater
+         Cantat unigenito:
+    Dormi, puer, dormi! pater,
+         Nato clamat parvulo:
+    Millies tibi laudes canimus
+         Mille, mille, millies.
+
+    Lectum stravi tibi soli,
+         Dormi, nate bellule!
+    Stravi lectum foeno molli:
+         Dormi, mi animule.
+    Millies tibi laudes canimus
+         Mille, mille, millies.
+
+    Ne quid desit, sternam rosis,
+         Sternam foenum violis,
+    Pavimentum hyacinthis
+         Et praesepe liliis.
+    Millies tibi laudes canimus
+         Mille, mille, millies. |69|
+
+    Si vis musicam, pastores
+        Convocabo protinus;
+    Illis nulli sunt priores;
+        Nemo canit castius.
+    Millies tibi laudes canimus
+        Mille, mille, millies."{21}
+
+Curious little poems are found in Latin and other languages, making a
+dialogue of the cries of animals at the news of Christ's birth.{22} The
+following French example is fairly typical:--
+
+   "Comme les bestes autrefois
+    Parloient mieux latin que françois,
+    Le coq, de loin voyant le fait,
+    S'écria: _Christus natus est._
+    Le boeuf, d'un air tout ébaubi,
+    Demande: _Ubi? Ubi? Ubi?_
+    La chèvre, se tordant le groin,
+    Répond que c'est à _Béthléem_.
+    Maistre Baudet, _curiosus_
+    De l'aller voir, dit: _Eamus_;
+    Et, droit sur ses pattes, le veau
+    Beugle deux fois: _Volo, Volo!_"[28]{23}
+
+In Wales, in the early nineteenth century, carol-singing was more
+popular, perhaps, than in England; the carols were sung to the harp, in
+church at the _Plygain_ or early morning service on Christmas Day, in the
+homes of the people, and at the doors of the houses by visitors.{24} In
+Ireland, too, the custom of carol-singing then prevailed.{25} Dr.
+Douglas Hyde, in his "Religious Songs of Connacht," gives and translates
+an interesting Christmas hymn in Irish, from which two verses may be
+quoted. They set forth the great paradox of the Incarnation:--
+
+   "Little babe who art so great,
+      Child so young who art so old, |70|
+    In the manger small his room,
+      Whom not heaven itself could hold.
+
+    Father--not more old than thou?
+      Mother--younger, can it be?
+    Older, younger is the Son,
+      Younger, older, she than he."{27}
+
+Even in dour Scotland, with its hatred of religious festivals, some kind
+of carolling survived here and there among Highland folk, and a
+remarkable and very "Celtic" Christmas song has been translated from the
+Gaelic by Mr. J. A. Campbell. It begins:--
+
+   "Sing hey the Gift, sing ho the Gift,
+    Sing hey the Gift of the Living,
+    Son of the Dawn, Son of the Star,
+    Son of the Planet, Son of the Far [twice],
+    Sing hey the Gift, sing ho the Gift."{28}
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY
+
+MASTER OF THE SEVEN SORROWS OF MARY (ALSO ATTRIBUTED TO JOACHIM PATINIR)
+
+(_Vienna: Imperial Gallery_)]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+SINGING "VOM HIMMEL HOCH" FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS.
+
+_By Ludwig Richter._]
+
+Before I close this study with a survey of Christmas poetry in England
+after the Reformation, it may be interesting to follow the developments
+in Protestant Germany. The Reformation gave a great impetus to German
+religious song, and we owe to it some of the finest of Christmas hymns.
+It is no doubt largely due to Luther, that passionate lover of music and
+folk-poetry, that hymns have practically become the liturgy of German
+Protestantism; yet he did but give typical expression to the natural
+instincts of his countrymen for song. Luther, though a rebel, was no
+Puritan; we can hardly call him an iconoclast; he had a conservative
+mind, which only gradually became loosened from its old attachments. His
+was an essentially artistic nature: "I would fain," he said, "see all
+arts, especially music, in the service of Him who has given and created
+them," and in the matter of hymnody he continued, in many respects, the
+mediaeval German tradition. Homely, kindly, a lover of children, he had a
+deep feeling for the festival of Christmas; and not only did he translate
+into German "A solis ortus cardine" and "Veni, redemptor |71| gentium,"
+but he wrote for his little son Hans one of the most delightful and
+touching of all Christmas hymns--"Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her."
+
+   "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her,
+    Ich bring euch gute neue Mär,
+    Der guten Mär bring ich so viel,
+    Davon ich singen und sagen will.
+
+    Euch ist ein Kindlein heut gebor'n
+    Von einer Jungfrau auserkor'n,
+    Ein Kindelein so zart und fein,
+    Das soll eu'r Freud und Wonne sein.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Merk auf, mein Herz, und sich dort hin:
+    Was liegt doch in dem Kripplein drin?
+    Wess ist das schöne Kindelein?
+    Es ist das liebe Jesulein.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Ach Herr, du Schöpfer aller Ding,
+    Wie bist du worden so gering,
+    Dass du da liegst auf dürrem Gras,
+    Davon ein Rind und Esel ass?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein,
+    Mach dir ein rein sanft Bettelein,
+    Zu ruhen in mein's Herzens Schrein,
+    Dass ich nimmer vergesse dein.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Davon ich allzeit fröhlich sei,
+    Zu springen, singen immer frei
+    Das rechte Lied dem Gottessohn
+    Mit Herzenslust, den süssen Ton."[29]{29}
+
+|72| "Vom Himmel hoch" has qualities of simplicity, directness, and
+warm human feeling which link it to the less ornate forms of carol
+literature. Its first verse is adapted from a secular song; its melody
+may, perhaps, have been composed by Luther himself. There is another
+Christmas hymn of Luther's, too--"Vom Himmel kam der Engel
+Schar"--written for use when "Vom Himmel hoch" was thought too long, and
+he also composed additional verses for the mediaeval "Gelobet seist du,
+Jesu Christ."
+
+   "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ,
+    Dass du Mensch geboren bist
+    Von einer Jungfrau, das ist wahr,
+    Des freuet sich der Engel Schar.
+              _Kyrieleis!_
+
+    Des ew'gen Vaters einig Kind
+    Jetzt man in der Krippe find't,
+    In unser armes Fleisch und Blut
+    Verkleidet sich das ewig Gut.
+              _Kyrieleis!_ |73|
+
+    Den aller Weltkreis nie beschloss,
+    Der lieget in Marie'n Schoss;
+    Er ist ein Kindlein worden klein,
+    Der alle Ding' erhält allein.
+              _Kyrieleis!_"[30]{31}
+
+The first stanza alone is mediaeval, the remaining six of the hymn are
+Luther's.
+
+The Christmas hymns of Paul Gerhardt, the seventeenth-century Berlin
+pastor, stand next to Luther's. They are more subjective, more finished,
+less direct and forcible. Lacking the finest qualities of poetry, they
+are nevertheless impressive by their dignity and heartiness. Made for
+music, the words alone hardly convey the full power of these hymns. They
+should be heard sung to the old chorales, massive, yet sweet, by the
+lusty voices of a German congregation. To English people they are
+probably best known through the verses introduced into the "Christmas
+Oratorio," where the old airs are given new beauty by Bach's marvellous
+harmonies. The tone of devotion, one feels, in Gerhardt and Bach is the
+same, immeasurably greater as is the genius of the composer; in both
+there is a profound joy in the Redemption begun by the Nativity, a robust
+faith joined to a deep sense of the mystery of suffering, and a keen
+sympathy with childhood, a tender fondness for the Infant King.
+
+|74| The finest perhaps of Gerhardt's hymns is the Advent "Wie soll ich
+dich empfangen?" ("How shall I fitly meet Thee?"), which comes early in
+the "Christmas Oratorio." More closely connected with the Nativity,
+however, are the _Weihnachtslieder_, "Wir singen dir, Emanuel," "O Jesu
+Christ, dein Kripplein ist," "Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen," "Ich
+steh an deiner Krippen hier," and others. I give a few verses from the
+third:--
+
+   "Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen
+            Dieser Zeit,
+            Da für Freud
+            Alle Engel singen.
+    Hört, hört, wie mit vollen Choren
+            Alle Luft
+            Laute ruft:
+            Christus ist geboren.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Nun, er liegt in seiner Krippen,
+            Ruft zu sich
+            Mich und dich,
+            Spricht mit süssen Lippen:
+    Lasset fahrn, O lieben Brüder
+            Was euch quält,
+            Was euch fehlt;
+            Ich bring alles wieder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Süsses Heil, lass dich umfangen;
+            Lass mich dir,
+            Meine Zier,
+            Unverrückt anhangen.
+    Du bist meines Lebens Leben;
+            Nun kann ich
+            Mich durch dich
+            Wohl zufrieden geben."[31]{33}
+
+|75| One more German Christmas hymn must be mentioned, Gerhard
+Tersteegen's "Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Chöre."
+Tersteegen represents one phase of the mystical and emotional reaction
+against the religious formalism and indifference of the eighteenth
+century. In the Lutheran Church the Pietists, though they never seceded,
+somewhat resembled the English Methodists; the Moravians formed a
+separate community, while from the "Reformed" or Calvinistic Church
+certain circles of spiritually-minded people, who drew inspiration from
+the mediaeval mystics and later writers like Böhme and Madame Guyon,
+gathered into more or less independent groups for religious intercourse.
+Of these last Tersteegen is a representative singer. Here are three
+verses from his best known Christmas hymn:--
+
+   "Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Chöre,
+    Singet dem Herrn, dem Heiland der Menschen, zur Ehre:
+           Sehet doch da!
+           Gott will so freundlich und nah
+           Zu den Verlornen sich kehren. |76|
+
+    König der Ehren, aus Liebe geworden zum Kinde,
+    Dem ich auch wieder mein Herz in der Liebe verbinde;
+           Du sollst es sein,
+           Den ich erwähle allein,
+           Ewig entsag' ich der Sünde.
+
+    Treuer Immanuel, werd' auch in mir neu geboren;
+    Komm doch, mein Heiland, und lass mich nicht länger verloren;
+           Wohne in mir,
+           Mach mich ganz eines mit dir,
+           Den du zum Leben erkoren."[32]{35}
+
+The note of personal religion, as distinguished from theological
+doctrine, is stronger in German Christmas poetry than in that of any
+other nation--the birth of Christ in the individual soul, not merely the
+redemption of man in general, is a central idea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We come back at last to England. The great carol period is, as has
+already been said, the fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth,
+century; after the Reformation the English domestic Christmas largely
+loses its religious colouring, and the best carols of the late sixteenth
+and early seventeenth centuries are songs of |77| feasting and pagan
+ceremonies rather than of the Holy Child and His Mother. There is no lack
+of fine Christmas verse in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, but
+for the most part it belongs to the oratory and the chamber rather than
+the hall. The Nativity has become a subject for private contemplation,
+for individual devotion, instead of, as in the later Middle Ages, a
+matter for common jubilation, a wonder-story that really happened, in
+which, all alike and all together, the serious and the frivolous could
+rejoice, something that, with all its marvel, could be taken as a matter
+of course, like the return of the seasons or the rising of the sun on the
+just and on the unjust.
+
+English Christmas poetry after the mid-sixteenth century is, then,
+individual rather than communal in its spirit; it is also a thing less of
+the people, more of the refined and cultivated few. The Puritanism which
+so deeply affected English religion was abstract rather than dramatic in
+its conception of Christianity, it was concerned less with the events of
+the Saviour's life than with Redemption as a transaction between God and
+man; St. Paul and the Old Testament rather than the gospels were its
+inspiration. Moreover, the material was viewed not as penetrated by and
+revealing the spiritual, but as sheer impediment blocking out the vision
+of spiritual things. Hence the extremer Puritans were completely out of
+touch with the sensuous poetry of Christmas, a festival which, as we
+shall see, they actually suppressed when they came into power.
+
+The singing of sacred carols by country people continued, indeed, but the
+creative artistic impulse was lost. True carols after the Reformation
+tend to be doggerel, and no doubt many of the traditional pieces printed
+in such collections as Bramley and Stainer's[33]{37} are debased
+survivals from the Middle Ages, or perhaps new words written for old
+tunes. Such carols as "God rest you merry, gentlemen," have unspeakably
+delightful airs, and the words charm us moderns by their quaintness and
+rusticity, but they are far from the exquisite loveliness of the
+mediaeval |78| things. Gleams of great beauty are, however, sometimes
+found amid matter that in the process of transmission has almost ceased
+to be poetry. Here, for instance, are five stanzas from the traditional
+"Cherry-tree Carol":--
+
+   "As Joseph was a-walking,
+      He heard an angel sing:
+    'This night shall be born
+      Our heavenly King.
+
+    'He neither shall be born
+      In housen nor in hall,
+    Nor in the place of Paradise,
+      But in an ox's stall.
+
+    'He neither shall be clothed
+      In purple nor in pall,
+    But all in fair linen
+      As wear babies all.
+
+    'He neither shall be rocked
+      In silver nor in gold,
+    But in a wooden cradle
+      That rocks on the mould.
+
+    'He neither shall be christened
+      In white wine nor red,
+    But with fair spring water
+      With which we were christened.'"
+
+The old carols sung by country folk have often not much to do with the
+Nativity; they are sometimes rhymed lives of Christ or legends of the
+Holy Childhood. Of the latter class the strangest is "The Bitter Withy,"
+discovered in Herefordshire by Mr. Frank Sidgwick. It tells how the
+little Jesus asked three lads to play with Him at ball. But they
+refused:--
+
+   "'O we are lords' and ladies' sons,
+      Born in bower or in hall;
+    And you are but a poor maid's child,
+      Born in an oxen's stall.' |79|
+
+    'If I am but a poor maid's child,
+      Born in an oxen's stall,
+    I will let you know at the very latter end
+      That I am above you all.'
+
+    So he built him a bridge with the beams of the sun,
+      And over the sea went he,
+    And after followed the three jolly jerdins,
+      And drowned they were all three.
+
+    Then Mary mild called home her child,
+      And laid him across her knee,
+    And with a handful of green withy twigs
+      She gave him slashes three.
+
+    'O the withy, O the withy, O bitter withy
+      That causes me to smart!
+    O the withy shall be the very first tree
+      That perishes at the heart.'"
+
+From these popular ballads, mediaeval memories in the rustic mind, we
+must return to the devotional verse of the late sixteenth and early
+seventeenth centuries. Two of the greatest poets of the Nativity, the
+Roman priests Southwell and Crashaw, are deeply affected by the wave of
+mysticism which passed over Europe in their time. Familiar as is
+Southwell's "The Burning Babe," few will be sorry to find it here:--
+
+   "As I in hoary winter's night
+      Stood shivering in the snow,
+    Surprised I was with sudden heat,
+      Which made my heart to glow;
+    And lifting up a fearful eye
+      To view what fire was near,
+    A pretty Babe all burning bright
+      Did in the air appear;
+    Who, scorchèd with excessive heat,
+      Such floods of tears did shed,
+    As though His floods should quench His flames
+      Which with His tears were fed. |80|
+    'Alas!' quoth He, 'but newly born,
+      In fiery heats I fry,
+    Yet none approach to warm their hearts
+      Or feel my fire, but I!
+    My faultless breast the furnace is,
+      The fuel, wounding thorns;
+    Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,
+      The ashes, shame and scorns;
+    The fuel Justice layeth on,
+      And Mercy blows the coals,
+    The metal in this furnace wrought
+      Are men's defilèd souls,
+    For which, as now on fire I am,
+      To work them to their good,
+    So will I melt into a bath,
+      To wash them in my blood.'
+    With this he vanished out of sight,
+      And swiftly shrunk away:
+    And straight I callèd unto mind
+      That it was Christmas Day."{38}
+
+As for Crashaw,
+
+   "That the great angel-blinding light should shrink
+    His blaze to shine in a poor shepherd's eye,
+    That the unmeasured God so low should sink
+    As Pris'ner in a few poor rags to lie,
+    That from His mother's breast He milk should drink
+    Who feeds with nectar heaven's fair family,
+      That a vile manger His low bed should prove
+      Who in a throne of stars thunders above:
+
+    That He, whom the sun serves, should faintly peep
+    Through clouds of infant flesh; that He the old
+    Eternal Word should be a Child and weep,
+    That He who made the fire should fear the cold:
+    That heaven's high majesty His court should keep
+    In a clay cottage, by each blast controll'd:
+      That glory's self should serve our griefs and fears,
+      And free Eternity submit to years--"{39}
+
+such are the wondrous paradoxes celebrated in his glowing imagery. The
+contrast of the winter snow with the burning |81| heat of Incarnate
+Love, of the blinding light of Divinity with the night's darkness, indeed
+the whole paradox of the Incarnation--Infinity in extremest
+limitation--is nowhere realized with such intensity as by him. Yet,
+magnificent as are his best lines, his verse sometimes becomes too like
+the seventeenth-century Jesuit churches, with walls overladen with
+decoration, with great languorous pictures and air heavy with incense;
+and then we long for the dewy freshness of the early carols.
+
+The representative Anglican poets of the seventeenth century, Herbert and
+Vaughan, scarcely rise to their greatest heights in their treatment of
+Christmas, but with them as with the Romanists it is the mystical note
+that is dominant. Herbert sings:--
+
+   "O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted, light,
+      Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;
+    Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,
+      To man, of all beasts, be not Thou a stranger.
+
+    Furnish and deck my soul, that thou may'st have
+    A better lodging than a rack or grave."{40}
+
+And Vaughan:--
+
+   "I would I had in my best part
+    Fit rooms for Thee! or that my heart
+          Were so clean as
+          Thy manger was!
+    But I am all filth, and obscene:
+    Yet, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make clean.
+
+    Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more
+    This leper haunt and soil thy door!
+          Cure him, ease him,
+          O release him!
+    And let once more, by mystic birth,
+    The Lord of life be born in earth."{41}
+
+In Herrick--how different a country parson from Herbert!--we find a sort
+of pagan piety towards the Divine Infant which, |82| though purely
+English in its expression, makes us think of some French _Noëliste_ or
+some present-day Italian worshipper of the _Bambino_:--
+
+   "Instead of neat enclosures
+    Of interwoven osiers,
+    Instead of fragrant posies
+    Of daffodils and roses,
+    Thy cradle, kingly Stranger,
+        As gospel tells,
+        Was nothing else
+    But here a homely manger.
+
+    But we with silks not crewels,
+    With sundry precious jewels,
+    And lily work will dress Thee;
+    And, as we dispossess Thee
+    Of clouts, we'll make a chamber,
+        Sweet Babe, for Thee,
+        Of ivory,
+    And plaster'd round with amber."{42}
+
+Poems such as Herrick's to the Babe of Bethlehem reveal in their writers
+a certain childlikeness, an _insouciance_ without irreverence, the spirit
+indeed of a child which turns to its God quite simply and naturally,
+which makes Him after its own child-image, and sees Him as a friend who
+can be pleased with trifles--almost, in fact, as a glorious playmate.
+Such a nature has no intense feeling of sin, but can ask for forgiveness
+and then forget; religion for it is rather an outward ritual to be duly
+and gracefully performed than an inward transforming power. Herrick is a
+strange exception among the Anglican singers of Christmas.
+
+Milton's great Nativity hymn, with its wondrous blending of pastoral
+simplicity and classical conceits, is too familiar for quotation here; it
+may be suggested, however, that this work of the poet's youth is far more
+Anglican than Puritan in its spirit.
+
+Sweet and solemn Spenserian echoes are these verses from Giles Fletcher's
+"Christ's Victory in Heaven":-- |83|
+
+   "Who can forget--never to be forgot--
+    The time, that all the world in slumber lies,
+    When, like the stars, the singing angels shot
+    To earth, and heaven awakèd all his eyes
+    To see another sun at midnight rise
+      On earth? Was never sight of pareil fame,
+      For God before man like Himself did frame,
+    But God Himself now like a mortal man became.
+
+    A Child He was, and had not learnt to speak,
+    That with His word the world before did make;
+    His mother's arms Him bore, He was so weak,
+    That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake,
+    See how small room my infant Lord doth take,
+      Whom all the world is not enough to hold!
+      Who of His years, or of His age hath told?
+    Never such age so young, never a child so old."{43}
+
+The old lullaby tradition is continued by Wither, though the infant in
+the cradle is an ordinary human child, who is rocked to sleep with the
+story of his Lord:--
+
+   "A little Infant once was He,
+        And strength in weakness then was laid
+    Upon His virgin-mother's knee,
+        That power to thee might be conveyed.
+            Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;
+            Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Within a manger lodged thy Lord,
+        Where oxen lay and asses fed;
+    Warm rooms we do to thee afford,
+        An easy cradle or a bed.
+            Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;
+            Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep."{44}
+
+When we come to the eighteenth century we find, where we might least
+expect it, among the moral verses of Dr. Watts, a charming cradle-song
+conceived in just the same way:-- |84|
+
+   "Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,
+        Holy angels guard thy bed!
+    Heavenly blessings without number
+        Gently falling on thy head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Soft and easy is thy cradle;
+        Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay.
+    When His birthplace was a stable,
+        And His softest bed was hay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Lo He slumbers in His manger
+        Where the hornèd oxen fed;
+    --Peace, my darling, here's no danger;
+        Here's no ox a-near thy bed."{45}
+
+It is to the eighteenth century that the three most popular of English
+Christmas hymns belong. Nahum Tate's "While shepherds watched their
+flocks by night"--one of the very few hymns (apart from metrical psalms)
+in common use in the Anglican Church before the nineteenth century--is a
+bald and apparently artless paraphrase of St. Luke which, by some
+accident, has attained dignity, and is aided greatly by the simple and
+noble tune now attached to it. Charles Wesley's "Hark, the herald angels
+sing," or--as it should be--"Hark, how all the welkin rings," is much
+admired by some, but to the present writer seems a mere piece of
+theological rhetoric. Byrom's "Christians, awake, salute the happy morn,"
+has the stiffness and formality or its period, but it is not without a
+certain quaintness and dignity. One could hardly expect fine Christmas
+poetry of an age whose religion was on the one hand staid, rational,
+unimaginative, and on the other "Evangelical" in the narrow sense,
+finding its centre in the Atonement rather than the Incarnation.
+
+The revived mediaevalism, religious and aesthetic, of the nineteenth
+century, produced a number of Christmas carols. Some, like Swinburne's
+"Three damsels in the queen's chamber," with |85| its exquisite verbal
+music and delightful colour, and William Morris's less successful
+"Masters, in this hall," and "Outlanders, whence come ye last?" are the
+work of unbelievers and bear witness only to the aesthetic charm of the
+Christmas story; but there are others, mostly from Roman or
+Anglo-Catholic sources, of real religious inspiration.[34] The most
+spontaneous are Christina Rossetti's, whose haunting rhythms and delicate
+feeling are shown at their best in her songs of the Christ Child. More
+studied and self-conscious are the austere Christmas verses of Lionel
+Johnson and the graceful carols of Professor Selwyn Image. In one poem
+Mr. Image strikes a deeper and stronger note than elsewhere; its solemn
+music takes us back to an earlier century:--
+
+   "Consider, O my soul, what morn is this!
+        Whereon the eternal Lord of all things made,
+    For us, poor mortals, and our endless bliss,
+        Came down from heaven; and, in a manger laid,
+        The first, rich, offerings of our ransom paid:
+    Consider, O my soul, what morn is this!"{46}
+
+Not a few contemporary poets have given us Christmas carols or poems.
+Among the freshest and most natural are those of Katharine Tynan, while
+Mr. Gilbert Chesterton has written some Christmas lyrics full of colour
+and vitality, and with a true mystical quality. Singing of Christmas, Mr.
+Chesterton is at his best; he has instinctive sympathy with the spirit of
+the festival, its human kindliness, its democracy, its sacramentalism,
+its exaltation of the child:--
+
+   "The thatch of the roof was as golden
+        Though dusty the straw was and old;
+    The wind had a peal as of trumpets,
+        Though blowing and barren and cold. |86|
+
+    The mother's hair was a glory,
+        Though loosened and torn;
+    For under the eaves in the gloaming
+        A child was born."{47}
+
+Thus opens a fine poem on the Nativity as symbolizing miracle of birth,
+of childhood with its infinite possibilities, eternal renewal of faith
+and hope.
+
+|87| |88| |89|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION
+
+
+    Advent and Christmas Offices of the Roman Church--The Three Masses of
+    Christmas, their Origin and their Celebration in Rome--The Midnight
+    Mass in Many Lands--Protestant Survivals of the Night
+    Services--Christmas in the Greek Church--The Eastern Epiphany and the
+    Blessing of the Waters--The _Presepio_ or Crib, its Supposed
+    Institution by St. Francis--Early Traces of the Crib--The Crib in
+    Germany, Tyrol, &c.--Cradle-rocking in Mediaeval Germany--Christmas
+    Minstrels in Italy and Sicily--The _Presepio_ in Italy--Ceremonies
+    with the _Culla_ and the _Bambino_ in Rome--Christmas in Italian
+    London--The Spanish Christmas--Possible Survivals of the Crib in
+    England.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE NATIVITY.
+
+From Add. MS. 32454 in the British Museum
+
+(French, 15th century).]
+
+From a study of Christmas as reflected in lyric poetry, we now pass to
+other forms of devotion in which the Church has welcomed the Redeemer at
+His birth. These are of two kinds--liturgical and popular; and they
+correspond in a large degree to the successive ways of apprehending the
+meaning of Christmas which we traced in the foregoing chapters. Strictly
+liturgical devotions are little understanded of the people: only the
+clergy can fully join in them; for the mass of the lay folk they are
+mysterious rites in an unknown tongue, to be followed with reverence, as
+far as may be, but remote and little penetrated with humanity. Side by
+side with these, however, are popular devotions, full of vivid colour,
+highly anthropomorphic, bringing the mysteries of religion within the
+reach of the simplest minds, and warm with human feeling. The austere
+Latin hymns of the earlier centuries belong to liturgy; the vernacular
+Christmas poetry of later ages is largely associated with popular
+devotion.
+
+|90| Liturgiology is a vast and complicated, and except to the few, an
+unattractive, subject. To attempt here a survey of the liturgies in their
+relation to Christmas is obviously impossible; we must be content to
+dwell mainly upon the present-day Roman offices, which, in spite of
+various revisions, give some idea of the mediaeval services of Latin
+Christianity, and to cast a few glances at other western rites, and at
+those of the Greek Church.
+
+Whatever may be his attitude towards Catholicism, or, indeed,
+Christianity, no one sensitive to the music of words, or the suggestions
+of poetic imagery, can read the Roman Breviary and Missal without
+profound admiration for the amazing skill with which the noblest passages
+of Hebrew poetry are chosen and fitted to the expression of Christian
+devotion, and the gold of psalmists, prophets, and apostles is welded
+into coronals for the Lord and His saints. The office-books of the Roman
+Church are, in one aspect, the greatest of anthologies.
+
+Few parts of the Roman Breviary have more beauty than the Advent[35]
+offices, where the Church has brought together the majestic imagery of
+the Hebrew prophets, the fervent exhortation of the apostles, to prepare
+the minds of the faithful for the coming of the Christ, for the
+celebration of the Nativity.
+
+Advent begins with a stirring call. If we turn to the opening service of
+the Christian Year, the First Vespers of the First Sunday in Advent, we
+shall find as the first words in the "Proper of the Season" the
+trumpet-notes of St. Paul: "Brethren, it is high time to awake out of
+sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." This, the
+Little Chapter for the office, is followed by the ancient hymn, "Creator
+alme siderum,"{1} chanting in awful tones the two comings of |91|
+Christ, for redemption and for judgment; and then are sung the words that
+strike the keynote of the Advent services, and are heard again and again.
+
+   "_Rorate, coeli, desuper, et nubes pluant Justum_
+    (Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down the
+          Righteous One).
+    _Aperiatur terra et germinet Salvatorem_
+    (Let the earth open, and let her bring forth the Saviour)."
+
+_Rorate, coeli, desuper_--Advent is a time of longing expectancy. It is a
+season of waiting patiently for the Lord, whose coming in great humility
+is to be commemorated at Christmas, to whose coming again in His glorious
+majesty to judge both the quick and the dead the Christian looks forward
+with mingled hope and awe. There are four weeks in Advent, and an ancient
+symbolical explanation interprets these as typifying four comings of the
+Son of God: the first in the flesh, the second in the hearts of the
+faithful through the Holy Spirit, the third at the death of every man,
+and the fourth at the Judgment Day. The fourth week is never completed
+(Christmas Eve is regarded as not part of Advent), because the glory
+bestowed on the saints at the Last Coming will never end.
+
+The great Eucharistic hymn, "Gloria in excelsis," is omitted in Advent,
+in order, say the symbolists, that on Christmas night, when it was first
+sung by the angels, it may be chanted with the greater eagerness and
+devotion. The "Te Deum" at Matins too is left unsaid, because Christ is
+regarded as not yet come. But "Alleluia" is not omitted, because Advent
+is only half a time of penitence: there is awe at the thought of the
+Coming for Judgment, but joy also in the hope of the Incarnation to be
+celebrated at Christmas, and the glory in store for the faithful.{3}
+
+Looking forward is above all things the note of Advent; the Church seeks
+to share the mood of the Old Testament saints, and she draws more now
+than at any other season, perhaps, on the treasures of Hebrew prophecy
+for her lessons, antiphons, versicles, and responds. Looking for the
+glory that shall be revealed, she awaits, at this darkest time of the
+year, the rising |92| of the Sun of Righteousness. _Rorate, coeli,
+desuper_--the mood comes at times to all idealists, and even those
+moderns who hope not for a supernatural Redeemer, but for the triumph of
+social justice on this earth, must be stirred by the poetry of the Advent
+offices.
+
+It is at Vespers on the seven days before Christmas Eve that the Church's
+longing finds its noblest expression--in the antiphons known as the
+"Great O's," sung before and after the "Magnificat," one on each day. "O
+Sapientia," runs the first, "O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of
+the Most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly
+ordering all things: come and teach us the way of prudence." "O Adonai,"
+"O Root of Jesse," "O Key of David," "O Day-spring, Brightness of Light
+Everlasting," "O King of the Nations," thus the Church calls to her Lord,
+"O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations, and their
+Salvation: come and save us, O Lord our God."{4}
+
+At last Christmas Eve is here, and at Vespers we feel the nearness of the
+great Coming. "Lift up your heads: behold your redemption draweth nigh,"
+is the antiphon for the last psalm. "To-morrow shall be done away the
+iniquity of the earth," is the versicle after the Office Hymn. And before
+and after the "Magnificat" the Church sings: "When the sun shall have
+risen, ye shall see the King of kings coming forth from the Father, as a
+bridegroom out of his chamber."
+
+Yet only with the night office of Matins does the glory of the festival
+begin. There is a special fitness at Christmas in the Church's keeping
+watch by night, like the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the office is full
+of the poetry of the season, full of exultant joy. To the "Venite,
+exultemus Domino" a Christmas note is added by the oft-repeated
+Invitatory, "Unto us the Christ is born: O come, let us adore Him."
+Psalms follow--among them the three retained by the Anglican Church in
+her Christmas Matins--and lessons from the Old and New Testaments and the
+homilies of the Fathers, interspersed with Responsories bringing home to
+the faithful the wonders of the Holy Night. Some are almost dramatic;
+this, for instance:-- |93|
+
+ "Whom saw ye, O shepherds? speak; tell us who hath appeared on the earth.
+  We saw the new-born Child, and angels singing praise unto the Lord.
+  Speak, what saw ye? and tell us of the birth of Christ.
+  We saw the new-born Child, and angels singing praise unto the Lord."
+
+It is the wonder of the Incarnation, the marvel of the spotless Birth,
+the song of the Angels, the coming down from heaven of true peace, the
+daybreak of redemption and everlasting joy, the glory of the
+Only-begotten, now beheld by men--the supernatural side, in fact, of the
+festival, that the Church sets forth in her radiant words; there is
+little thought of the purely human side, the pathos of Bethlehem.
+
+It was customary at certain places, in mediaeval times, to lay on the
+altar three veils, and remove one at each nocturn of Christmas Matins.
+The first was black, and symbolised the time of darkness before the
+Mosaic Law; the second white, typifying, it would seem, the faith of
+those who lived under that Law of partial revelation; the third red,
+showing the love of Christ's bride, the Church, in the time of grace
+flowing from the Incarnation.{5}
+
+A stately ceremony took place in England in the Middle Ages at the end of
+Christmas Matins--the chanting of St. Matthew's genealogy of Christ. The
+deacon, in his dalmatic, with acolytes carrying tapers, with thurifer and
+cross-bearer, all in albs and unicles, went in procession to the pulpit
+or the rood-loft, to sing this portion of the Gospel. If the bishop were
+present, he it was who chanted it, and a rich candlestick was held to
+light him.[36] Then followed the chanting of the "Te Deum."{6} The
+ceremony does not appear in the ordinary Roman books, but it is still
+performed by the Benedictines, as one may read in the striking account of
+the monastic Christmas given by Huysmans in "L'Oblat."{7}
+
+|94| Where, as in religious communities, the offices of the Church are
+performed in their full order, there follows on Matins that custom
+peculiar to Christmas, the celebration of Midnight Mass. On Christmas
+morning every priest is permitted to say three Masses, which should in
+strictness be celebrated at midnight, at dawn, and in full daylight. Each
+has its own Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, each its own Introit, Gradual,
+and other anthems. In many countries the Midnight Mass is the distinctive
+Christmas service, a great and unique event in the year, something which
+by its strangeness gives to the feast of the Nativity a place by itself.
+Few Catholic rites are more impressive than this Midnight Mass,
+especially in country places; through the darkness and cold of the
+winter's night, often for long distances, the faithful journey to worship
+the Infant Saviour in the splendour of the lighted church. It is a
+re-enactment of the visit of the shepherds to the cave at Bethlehem,
+aglow with supernatural light.
+
+Various symbolical explanations of the three Masses were given by
+mediaeval writers. The midnight celebration was supposed to represent
+mankind's condition before the Law of Moses, when thick darkness covered
+the earth; the second, at dawn, the time of the Law and the Prophets with
+its growing light; the third, in full daylight, the Christian era of
+light and grace. Another interpretation, adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas,
+is more mystical; the three Masses stand for the threefold birth of
+Christ, the first typifying the dark mystery of the eternal generation of
+the Son, the second the birth of Christ the morning-star within the
+hearts of men, the third the bodily birth of the Son of Mary.{8}
+
+At the Christmas Masses the "Gloria in excelsis" resounds again. This
+song of the angels was at first chanted only at Christmas; it was
+introduced into Rome during the fifth century at Midnight Mass in
+imitation of the custom of the Church of Jerusalem.{9}
+
+It is, indeed, from imitation of the services at Jerusalem and Bethlehem
+that the three Roman Masses of Christmas seem to have sprung. From a late
+fourth-century document known as |95| the "Peregrinatio Silviae," the
+narrative of a pilgrimage to the holy places of the east by a great lady
+from southern Gaul, it appears that at the feast of the Epiphany--when
+the Birth of Christ was commemorated in the Palestinian Church--two
+successive "stations" were held, one at Bethlehem, the other at
+Jerusalem. At Bethlehem the station was held at night on the eve of the
+feast, then a procession was made to the church of the Anastasis or
+Resurrection--where was the Holy Sepulchre--arriving "about the hour when
+one man begins to recognise another, _i.e._, near daylight, but before
+the day has fully broken." There a psalm was sung, prayers were said, and
+the catechumens and faithful were blessed by the bishop. Later, Mass was
+celebrated at the Great Church at Golgotha, and the procession returned
+to the Anastasis, where another Mass was said.{10}
+
+At Bethlehem at the present time impressive services are held on the
+Latin Christmas Day. The Patriarch comes from Jerusalem, with a troop of
+cavalry and Kavasses in gorgeous array. The office lasts from 10 o'clock
+on Christmas Eve until long after midnight. "At the reading of the Gospel
+the clergy and as many of the congregation as can follow leave the
+church, and proceed by a flight of steps and a tortuous rock-hewn passage
+to the Grotto of the Nativity, an irregular subterranean chamber, long
+and narrow. They carry with them a waxen image of an infant--the
+_bambino_--wrap it in swaddling bands and lay it on the site which is
+said to be that of the manger."{11}
+
+The Midnight Mass appears to have been introduced into Rome in the first
+half of the fifth century. It was celebrated by the Pope in the church of
+Santa Maria Maggiore, while the second Mass was sung by him at Sant'
+Anastasia--perhaps because of the resemblance of the name to the
+Anastasis at Jerusalem--and the third at St. Peter's.{12} On Christmas
+Eve the Pope held a solemn "station" at Santa Maria Maggiore, and two
+Vespers were sung, the first very simple, the second, at which the Pope
+pontificated, with elaborate ceremonial. Before the second Vespers, in
+the twelfth century, a good meal had to |96| be prepared for the papal
+household by the Cardinal-Bishop of Albano. After Matins and Midnight
+Mass at Santa Maria Maggiore, the Pope went in procession to Sant'
+Anastasia for Lauds and the Mass of the Dawn. The third Mass, at St.
+Peter's, was an event of great solemnity, and at it took place in the
+year 800 that profoundly significant event, the coronation of Charlemagne
+by Leo III.--a turning-point in European history.{13}
+
+Later it became the custom for the Pope, instead of proceeding to St.
+Peter's, to return to Santa Maria Maggiore for the third Mass. On his
+arrival he was given a cane with a lighted candle affixed to it; with
+this he had to set fire to some tow placed on the capitals of the
+columns.{14} The ecclesiastical explanation of this strange ceremony was
+that it symbolised the end of the world by fire, but one may conjecture
+that some pagan custom lay at its root. Since 1870 the Pope, as "the
+prisoner of the Vatican," has of course ceased to celebrate at Santa
+Maria Maggiore or Sant' Anastasia. The Missal, however, still shows a
+trace of the papal visit to Sant' Anastasia in a commemoration of this
+saint which comes as a curious parenthesis in the Mass of the Dawn.
+
+On Christmas Day in the Vatican the Pope blesses a hat and a sword, and
+these are sent as gifts to some prince. The practice is said to have
+arisen from the mediaeval custom for the Holy Roman Emperor or some other
+sovereign to read one of the lessons at Christmas Matins, in the papal
+chapel, with his sword drawn.{15}
+
+Celebrated in countries as distant from one another, both geographically
+and in character, as Ireland and Sicily, Poland and South America, the
+Midnight Mass naturally varies greatly in its tone and setting. Sometimes
+it is little more than a fashionable function, sometimes the devotion of
+those who attend is shown by a tramp over miles of snow through the
+darkness and the bitter wind.
+
+In some charming memories of the Christmas of her childhood, Madame Th.
+Bentzon thus describes the walk to the Midnight Mass in a French country
+place about sixty years ago:-- |97|
+
+    "I can see myself as a little girl, bundled up to the tip of
+    my nose in furs and knitted shawls, tiny wooden shoes on my feet, a
+    lantern in my hand, setting out with my parents for the Midnight Mass
+    of Christmas Eve.... We started off, a number of us, together in a
+    stream of light.... Our lanterns cast great shadows on the white
+    road, crisp with frost. As our little group advanced it saw others on
+    their way, people from the farm and from the mill, who joined us, and
+    once on the Place de l'Église we found ourselves with all the
+    parishioners in a body. No one spoke--the icy north wind cut short
+    our breath; but the voice of the chimes filled the silence.... We
+    entered, accompanied by a gust of wind that swept into the porch at
+    the same time we did; and the splendours of the altar, studded with
+    lights, green with pine and laurel branches, dazzled us from the
+    threshold."{16}
+
+In devout Tyrol, the scenes on Christmas Eve before the Midnight Mass are
+often extremely impressive, particularly in narrow valleys where the
+houses lie scattered on the mountain slopes. Long before midnight the
+torches lighting the faithful on their way to Mass begin to twinkle;
+downward they move, now hidden in pine-woods and ravines, now reappearing
+on the open hill-side. More and more lights show themselves and throw
+ruddy flashes on the snow, until at last, the floor of the valley
+reached, they vanish, and only the church windows glow through the
+darkness, while the solemn strains of the organ and chanting break the
+silence of the night.{17}
+
+Not everywhere has the great Mass been celebrated amid scenes so still
+and devotional. In Madrid, says a writer of the early nineteenth century,
+"the evening of the vigil is scarcely dark when numbers of men, women,
+and boys are seen traversing the streets with torches, and many of them
+supplied with tambourines, which they strike loudly as they move along in
+a kind of Bacchanal procession. There is a tradition here that the
+shepherds who visited Bethlehem on the day of the Nativity had
+instruments of this sort upon which they expressed the sentiment of joy
+that animated them when they received the intelligence that a Saviour was
+born." At the Midnight Mass crowds of people who, perhaps, had been
+traversing the streets the whole night, came into the church |98| with
+their tambourines and guitars, and accompanied the organ. The Mass over,
+they began to dance in the very body of the church.{18} A later writer
+speaks of the Midnight Mass in Madrid as a fashionable function to which
+many gay young people went in order to meet one another.{19} Such is the
+character of the service in the Spanish-American cities. In Lima the
+streets on Christmas Eve are crowded with gaily dressed and noisy folks,
+many of them masked, and everybody goes to the Mass.{20} In Paris the
+elaborate music attracts enormous and often not very serious crowds. In
+Sicily there is sometimes extraordinary irreverence at the midnight
+services: people take provisions with them to eat in church, and from
+time to time go out to an inn for a drink, and between the offices they
+imitate the singing of birds.{21} We may see in such things the licence
+of pagan festivals creeping within the very walls of the sanctuary.
+
+In the Rhineland Midnight Mass has been abolished, because the
+conviviality of Christmas Eve led to unseemly behaviour at the solemn
+service, but Mass is still celebrated very early--at four or five--and
+great crowds of worshippers attend. It is a stirring thing, this first
+Mass of Christmas, in some ancient town, when from the piercing cold, the
+intense stillness of the early morning, one enters a great church
+thronged with people, bright with candles, warm with human fellowship,
+and hears the vast congregation break out into a slow solemn chorale,
+full of devout joy that
+
+   "In Bethlehem geboren
+    Ist uns ein Kindelein."
+
+It is interesting to trace survivals of the nocturnal Christmas offices
+in Protestant countries. In German "Evangelical" churches, midnight or
+early morning services were common in the eighteenth century; but they
+were forbidden in some places because of the riot and drunkenness which
+accompanied them. The people seem to have regarded them as a part of
+their Christmas revellings rather than as sacred functions; one writer
+compares the congregation to a crowd of wild drunken sailors in a |99|
+tavern, another gives disgusting particulars of disorders in a church
+where the only sober man was the preacher.{22}
+
+In Sweden the Christmas service is performed very early in the morning,
+the chancel is lighted up with many candles, and the celebrant is vested
+in a white chasuble with golden orphreys.{23}
+
+A Midnight Mass is now celebrated in many Anglican churches, but this is
+purely a modern revival. The most distinct British _survival_ is to be
+found in Wales in the early service known as _Plygain_ (dawn), sometimes
+a celebration of the Communion. At Tenby at four o'clock on Christmas
+morning it was customary for the young men of the town to escort the
+rector with lighted torches from his house to the church. Extinguishing
+their torches in the porch, they went in to the early service, and when
+it was ended the torches were relighted and the procession returned to
+the rectory. At St. Peter's Church, Carmarthen, an early service was
+held, to the light of coloured candles brought by the congregation. At
+St. Asaph, Caerwys, at 4 or 5 a.m., _Plygain_, consisting of carols sung
+round the church in procession, was held.{24} The _Plygain_ continued in
+Welsh churches until about the eighteen-fifties, and, curiously enough,
+when the Established Church abandoned it, it was celebrated in
+Nonconformist chapels.{25}
+
+In the Isle of Man on Christmas Eve, or _Oiel Verry_ (Mary's Eve), "a
+number of persons used to assemble in each parish church and proceed to
+shout carols or 'Carvals.' There was no unison or concert about the
+chanting, but a single person would stand up with a lighted candle in his
+or her hand, and chant in a dismal monotone verse after verse of some old
+Manx 'Carval,' until the candle was burnt out. Then another person would
+start up and go through a similar performance. No fresh candles might be
+lighted after the clock had chimed midnight."{26}
+
+One may conjecture that the common English practice of ringing bells
+until midnight on Christmas Eve has also some connection with the
+old-time Midnight Mass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the Greek Church Christmas is a comparatively unimportant festival by
+the side of the Epiphany, the celebration of |100| Christ's Baptism;
+the Christmas offices are, however, full of fine poetry. There is far
+less restraint, far less adherence to the words of Scripture, far greater
+richness of original composition, in the Greek than in the Roman
+service-books, and while there is less poignancy there is more amplitude
+and splendour. Christmas Day, with the Greeks, is a commemoration of the
+coming of the Magi as well as of the Nativity and the adoration of the
+shepherds, and the Wise Men are very prominent in the services. The
+following hymn of St. Anatolius (fifth century), from the First Vespers
+of the feast, is fairly typical of the character of the Christmas
+offices:--
+
+   "When Jesus Our Lord was born of Her,
+    The Holy Virgin, all the universe
+    Became enlightened.
+    For as the shepherds watched their flocks,
+    And as the Magi came to pray,
+    And as the Angels sang their hymn
+    Herod was troubled; for God in flesh appeared,
+    The Saviour of our souls.
+
+    Thy kingdom, Christ our God, the kingdom is
+    Of all the worlds, and Thy dominion
+    O'er every generation bears the sway,
+    Incarnate of the Holy Ghost,
+    Man of the Ever-Virgin Mary,
+    By Thy presence, Christ our God,
+    Thou hast shined a Light on us.
+    Light of Light, the Brightness of the Father,
+    Thou hast beamed on every creature.
+    All that hath breath doth praise Thee,
+    Image of the Father's glory.
+    Thou who art, and wast before,
+    God who shinedst from the Maid,
+    Have mercy upon us.
+
+    What gift shall we bring to Thee,
+    O Christ, since Thou as Man on earth
+    For us hast shewn Thyself? |101|
+    Since every creature made by Thee
+    Brings to Thee its thanksgiving.
+      The Angels bring their song,
+      The Heavens bring their star,
+      The Magi bring their gifts,
+      The Shepherds bring their awe,
+    Earth gives a cave, the wilderness a manger,
+    And we the Virgin-Mother bring.
+    God before all worlds, have mercy upon us!"{27}
+
+A beautiful rite called the "Peace of God" is performed in Slavonic
+churches at the end of the "Liturgy" or Mass on Christmas morning--the
+people kiss one another on both cheeks, saying, "Christ is born!" To this
+the answer is made, "Of a truth He is born!" and the kisses are returned.
+This is repeated till everyone has kissed and been kissed by all
+present.{28}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We must pass rapidly over the feasts of saints within the Octave of the
+western Christmas, St. Stephen (December 26), St. John the Evangelist
+(December 27), the Holy Innocents (December 28), and St. Sylvester
+(December 31). None of these, except the feast of the Holy Innocents,
+have any special connection with the Nativity or the Infancy, and the
+popular customs connected with them will come up for consideration in our
+Second Part.
+
+The commemoration of the Circumcision ("when eight days were accomplished
+for the circumcising of the child") falls naturally on January 1, the
+Octave of Christmas. It is not of Roman origin, and was not observed in
+Rome until it had long been established in the Byzantine and Gallican
+Churches.{29} In Gaul, as is shown by a decree of the Council of Tours
+in 567, a solemn fast was held on the Circumcision and the two days
+following it, in order to turn away the faithful from the pagan
+festivities of the Kalends.{30}
+
+The feast of the Epiphany on January 6, as we have seen, is in the
+eastern Church a commemoration of the Baptism of Christ. In the West it
+has become primarily the festival of the adoration |102| of the Magi,
+the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Still in the Roman offices
+many traces of the baptismal commemoration remain, and the memory of yet
+another manifestation of Christ's glory appears in the antiphon at
+"Magnificat" at the Second Vespers of the feast:--
+
+    "We keep holy a day adorned by three wonders: to-day a star led the
+    Magi to the manger; to-day at the marriage water was made wine;
+    to-day for our salvation Christ was pleased to be baptized of John in
+    Jordan. Alleluia."
+
+On the Octave of the Epiphany at Matins the Baptism is the central idea,
+and the Gospel at Mass bears on the same subject. In Rome itself even the
+Blessing of the Waters, the distinctive ceremony of the eastern Epiphany
+rite, is performed in certain churches according to a Latin ritual.{31}
+At Sant' Andrea della Valle, Rome, during the Octave of the Epiphany a
+Solemn Mass is celebrated every morning in Latin, and afterwards, on each
+of the days from January 7-13, there follows a Mass according to one of
+the eastern rites: Greco-Slav, Armenian, Chaldean, Coptic,
+Greco-Ruthenian, Greco-Melchite, and Greek.{32} It is a week of great
+opportunities for the liturgiologist and the lover of strange ceremonial.
+
+The Blessing of the Waters is an important event in all countries where
+the Greek Church prevails. In Greece the "Great Blessing," as it is
+called, is performed in various ways according to the locality; sometimes
+the sea is blessed, sometimes a river or reservoir, sometimes merely
+water in a church. In seaport towns, where the people depend on the water
+for their living, the celebration has much pomp and elaborateness. At the
+Piraeus enormous and enthusiastic crowds gather, and there is a solemn
+procession of the bishop and clergy to the harbour, where the bishop
+throws a little wooden cross, held by a long blue ribbon, into the water,
+withdraws it dripping wet, and sprinkles the bystanders. This is done
+three times. At Nauplia and other places a curious custom prevails: the
+archbishop throws a wooden cross into the waters of the harbour, and the
+fishermen |103| of the place dive in after it and struggle for its
+possession; he who wins it has the right of visiting all the houses of
+the town and levying a collection, which often brings in a large sum. In
+Samos all the women send to the church a vessel full of water to be
+blessed by the priest; with this water the fields and the trees are
+sprinkled.{33}
+
+The sense attached to the ceremony by the Church is shown in this
+prayer:--
+
+    "Thou didst sanctify the streams of Jordan by sending from Heaven Thy
+    Holy Spirit, and by breaking the heads of the dragons lurking there.
+    Therefore, O King, Lover of men, be Thou Thyself present also now by
+    the visitation of Thy Holy Spirit, and sanctify this water. Give also
+    to it the grace of ransom, the blessing of Jordan: make it a fountain
+    of incorruption; a gift of sanctification; a washing away of sins; a
+    warding off of diseases; destruction to demons; repulsion to the
+    hostile powers; filled with angelic strength; that all who take and
+    receive of it may have it for purification of souls and bodies, for
+    healing of sicknesses, for sanctification of houses, and meet for
+    every need."{34}
+
+Though for the Church the immersion of the cross represents the Baptism
+of Christ, and the blessings springing from that event are supposed to be
+carried to the people by the sprinkling with the water, it is held by
+some students that the whole practice is a Christianization of a
+primitive rain-charm--a piece of sympathetic magic intended to produce
+rain by imitating the drenching which it gives. An Epiphany song from
+Imbros connects the blessing of rain with the Baptism of Christ, and
+another tells how at the river Jordan "a dove came down, white and
+feathery, and with its wings opened; it sent rain down on the Lord, and
+again it rained and rained on our Lady, and again it rained and rained on
+its wings."{35}
+
+The Blessing of the Waters is performed in the Greek church of St.
+Sophia, Bayswater, London, on the morning of the Epiphany, which, through
+the difference between the old and new "styles," falls on our 19th of
+January. All is done within the church; the water to be blessed is placed
+on a table under |104| the dome, and is sanctified by the immersion of
+a small cross; afterwards it is sprinkled on everyone present, and some
+is taken home by the faithful in little vessels.{36}
+
+In Moscow and St. Petersburg the Blessing is a function of great
+magnificence, but it is perhaps even more interesting as performed in
+Russian country places. Whatever may be the orthodox significance of the
+rite, to the country people it is the chasing away of "forest demons,
+sprites, and fairies, once the gods the peasants worshipped, but now
+dethroned from their high estate," who in the long dark winter nights
+bewitch and vex the sons of men. A vivid and imaginative account of the
+ceremony and its meaning to the peasants is given by Mr. F. H. E. Palmer
+in his "Russian Life in Town and Country." The district in which he
+witnessed it was one of forests and of lakes frozen in winter. On one of
+these lakes had been erected "a huge cross, constructed of blocks of ice,
+that glittered like diamonds in the brilliant winter sunlight.... At
+length, far away could be heard the sound of human voices, singing a
+strange, wild melody. Presently there was a movement in the snow among
+the trees, and waving banners appeared as a procession approached, headed
+by the pope in his vestments, and surrounded by the village dignitaries,
+venerable, grey-bearded patriarchs." A wide space in the procession was
+left for "a strange and motley band of gnomes and sprites, fairies and
+wood-nymphs," who, as the peasants believed, had been caught by the holy
+singing and the sacred sign on the waving banner. The chanting still went
+on as the crowd formed a circle around the glittering cross, and all
+looked on with awe while half a dozen peasants with their axes cut a
+large hole in the ice. "And now the priest's voice is heard, deep and
+sonorous, as he pronounces the words of doom. Alas for the poor sprites!
+Into that yawning chasm they must leap, and sink deep, deep below the
+surface of that ice-cold water."{37}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Following these eastern Epiphany rites we have wandered far from the
+cycle of ideas generally associated with Christmas. We |105| must now
+pass to those popular devotions to the Christ Child which, though they
+form no part of the Church's liturgy, she has permitted and encouraged.
+It is in the West that we shall find them; the Latin Church, as we have
+seen, makes far more of Christmas than the Greek.
+
+Rome is often condemned for using in her liturgy the dead language of
+Latin, but it must not be forgotten that in every country she offers to
+the faithful a rich store of devotional literature in their own tongue,
+and that, supplementary to the liturgical offices, there is much public
+prayer and praise in the vernacular. Nor, in that which appeals to the
+eye, does she limit herself to the mysterious symbolism of the sacraments
+and the ritual which surrounds them; she gives to the people concrete,
+pictorial images to quicken their faith. How ritual grew in mediaeval
+times into full-fledged drama we shall see in the next chapter; here let
+us consider that cult of the Christ Child in which the scene of Bethlehem
+is represented not by living actors but in plastic art, often most simple
+and homely.
+
+The use of the "crib" (French _crèche_, Italian _presepio_, German
+_krippe_) at Christmas is now universally diffused in the Roman Church.
+Most readers of this book must have seen one of these structures
+representing the stable at Bethlehem, with the Child in the manger, His
+mother and St. Joseph, the ox and the ass, and perhaps the shepherds, the
+three kings, or worshipping angels. They are the delight of children, who
+through the season of Christmas and Epiphany wander into the open
+churches at all times of day to gaze wide-eyed on the life-like scene and
+offer a prayer to their Little Brother. No one with anything of the
+child-spirit can fail to be touched by the charm of the Christmas crib.
+Faults of artistic taste there may often be, but these are wont to be
+softened down by the flicker of tapers, the glow of ruby lights, amidst
+the shades of some dim aisle or chapel, and the scene of tender humanity,
+gently, mysteriously radiant, as though with "bright shoots of
+everlastingness," is full of religious and poetic suggestions.
+
+The institution of the _presepio_ is often ascribed to St. Francis of
+Assisi, who in the year 1224 celebrated Christmas at Greccio |106| with
+a Bethlehem scene with a real ox and ass. About fifteen days before the
+Nativity, according to Thomas of Celano, the blessed Francis sent for a
+certain nobleman, John by name, and said to him: "If thou wilt that we
+celebrate the present festival of the Lord at Greccio, make haste to go
+before and diligently prepare what I tell thee. For I would fain make
+memorial of that Child who was born in Bethlehem, and in some sort behold
+with bodily eyes His infant hardships; how He lay in a manger on the hay,
+with the ox and the ass standing by." The good man prepared all that the
+Saint had commanded, and at last the day of gladness drew nigh. The
+brethren were called from many convents; the men and women of the town
+prepared tapers and torches to illuminate the night. Finding all things
+ready, Francis beheld and rejoiced: the manger had been prepared, the hay
+was brought, and the ox and ass were led in. "Thus Simplicity was
+honoured, Poverty exalted, Humility commended, and of Greccio there was
+made as it were a new Bethlehem. The night was lit up as the day, and was
+delightsome to men and beasts.... The woodland rang with voices, the
+rocks made answer to the jubilant throng." Francis stood before the
+manger, "overcome with tenderness and filled with wondrous joy"; Mass was
+celebrated, and he, in deacon's vestments, chanted the Holy Gospel in an
+"earnest, sweet, and loud-sounding voice." Then he preached to the people
+of "the birth of the poor King and the little town of Bethlehem."
+"Uttering the word 'Bethlehem' in the manner of a sheep bleating, he
+filled his mouth with the sound," and in naming the Child Jesus "he
+would, as it were, lick his lips, relishing with happy palate and
+swallowing the sweetness of that word." At length, the solemn vigil
+ended, each one returned with joy to his own place.{38}
+
+It has been suggested by Countess Martinengo{39} that this beautiful
+ceremony was "the crystallization of haunting memories carried away by
+St. Francis from the real Bethlehem"; for he visited the east in 1219-20,
+and the Greccio celebration took place in 1224. St. Francis and his
+followers may well have helped greatly to popularize the use of the
+_presepio_, but it can be |107| traced back far earlier than their
+time. In the liturgical drama known as the "Officium Pastorum," which
+probably took shape in the eleventh century, we find a _praesepe_ behind
+the altar as the centre of the action{40}; but long before this
+something of the kind seems to have been in existence in the church of
+Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome--at one time called "Beata Maria ad
+praesepe." Here Pope Gregory III. (731-41) placed "a golden image of the
+Mother of God embracing God our Saviour, in various gems."{41} According
+to Usener's views this church was founded by Pope Liberius (352-66), and
+was intended to provide a special home for the new festival of Christmas
+introduced by him, while an important part of the early Christmas ritual
+there was the celebration of Mass over a "manger" in which the
+consecrated Host was laid, as once the body of the Holy Child in the crib
+at Bethlehem.{42} Further, an eastern homily of the late fourth century
+suggests that the preacher had before his eyes a representation of the
+Nativity. Such material representations, Usener conjectures, may have
+arisen from the devotions of the faithful at the supposed actual
+birthplace at Bethlehem, which would naturally be adorned with the sacred
+figures of the Holy Night.{43}
+
+In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the crib can be traced at
+Milan, Parma, and Modena, and an Italian example carved in 1478 still
+exists.{44} The Bavarian National Museum at Munich has a fine collection
+of cribs of various periods and from various lands--Germany, Tyrol,
+Italy, and Sicily--showing what elaborate care has been bestowed upon the
+preparation of these models. Among them is a great erection made at
+Botzen in the first half of the nineteenth century, and large enough to
+fill a fair-sized room. It represents the central square of a town, with
+imposing buildings, including a great cathedral not unlike our St.
+Paul's. Figures of various sizes were provided to suit the perspective,
+and the crib itself was probably set up in the porch of the church, while
+processions of puppets were arranged on the wide open square. Another,
+made in Munich, shows the adoration of the shepherds in a sort of ruined
+castle, while others, from Naples, lay the scene among remains of
+classical temples. One Tyrolese crib has a wide landscape background with
+a |108| village and mountains typical of the country. The figures are
+often numerous, and, as their makers generally dressed them in the
+costume of their contemporaries, are sometimes exceedingly quaint. An
+angel with a wasp-waist, in a powdered wig, a hat trimmed with big
+feathers, and a red velvet dress with heavy gold embroidery, seems comic
+to us moderns, yet this is how the Ursuline nuns of Innsbruck conceived
+the heavenly messenger. Many of the cribs and figures, however, are of
+fine artistic quality, especially those from Naples and Sicily, and to
+the student of costume the various types of dress are of great
+interest.{45}
+
+The use of the Christmas crib is by no means confined to churches; it is
+common in the home in many Catholic regions, and in at least one
+Protestant district, the Saxon Erzgebirge.{46} In Germany the _krippe_
+is often combined with the Christmas-tree; at Treves, for instance, the
+present writer saw a magnificent tree covered with glittering lights and
+ornaments, and underneath it the cave of the Nativity with little figures
+of the holy persons. Thus have pagan and Christian symbols met together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There grew up in Germany, about the fourteenth century, the extremely
+popular Christmas custom of "cradle-rocking," a response to the people's
+need of a life-like and homely presentation of Christianity. By the
+_Kindelwiegen_ the lay-folk were brought into most intimate touch with
+the Christ Child; the crib became a cradle (_wiege_) that could be
+rocked, and the worshippers were thus able to express in physical action
+their devotion to the new-born Babe. The cradle-rocking seems to have
+been done at first by priests, who impersonated the Virgin and St.
+Joseph, and sang over the Child a duet:--
+
+   "Joseph, lieber neve mîn,
+    Hilf mir wiegen daz kindelîn.
+
+    Gerne, liebe muome mîn,
+    Hilf ich dir wiegen dîn kindelîn."[37]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+A NEAPOLITAN "PRESEPIO."
+
+_Photo_] [_Meisenbach, Riffarth & Co., Munich_.]
+
+|109| The choir and people took their part in the singing; and dancing,
+to the old Germans a natural accompaniment of festive song, became common
+around the cradle, which in time the people were allowed to rock with
+their own hands.{47} "In dulci jubilo" has the character of a dance, and
+the same is true of another delightful old carol, "Lasst uns das Kindlein
+wiegen," still used, in a form modified by later editors, in the churches
+of the Rhineland. The present writer has heard it sung, very slowly, in
+unison, by vast congregations, and very beautiful is its mingling of
+solemnity, festive joy, and tender sentiment:--
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+   "Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen,
+    Das Herz zum Krippelein biegen!
+    Lasst uns den Geist erfreuen,
+    Das Kindlein benedeien:
+    O Jesulein süss! O Jesulein süss!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Lasst uns sein Händel und Füsse,
+    Sein feuriges Herzlein grüssen!
+    Und ihn demütiglich eren
+    Als unsern Gott und Herren!
+    O Jesulein süss! O Jesulein süss!"[38]{48}
+
+Two Latin hymns, "Resonet in laudibus" and "Quem pastores
+laudavere,"{49} were also sung at the _Kindelwiegen_, and |110| a
+charming and quite untranslatable German lullaby has come down to us:--
+
+   "Sausa ninne, gottes minne,
+    Nu sweig und ru!
+    Wen du wilt, so wellen wir deinen willen tun,
+    Hochgelobter edler furst, nu schweig und wein auch nicht,
+    Tûste das, so wiss wir, dass uns wol geschicht."{50}
+
+It was by appeals like this _Kindelwiegen_ to the natural, homely
+instincts of the folk that the Church gained a real hold over the masses,
+making Christianity during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
+centuries a genuinely popular religion in Germany. Dr. Alexander Tille,
+the best historian of the German Christmas, has an interesting passage on
+the subject: "In the dancing and jubilation around the cradle," he
+writes, "the religion of the Cross, however much it might in its inmost
+character be opposed to the nature of the German people and their
+essential healthiness, was felt no longer as something alien. It had
+become naturalized, but had lost in the process its very core. The
+preparation for a life after death, which was its Alpha and Omega, had
+passed into the background. It was not joy at the promised 'Redemption'
+that expressed itself in the dance around the cradle; for the German has
+never learnt to feel himself utterly vile and sinful: it was joy at the
+simple fact that a human being, a particular human being in peculiar
+circumstances, was born into the world.... The Middle Ages showed in the
+cradle-rocking 'a true German and most lovable childlikeness.' The Christ
+Child was the 'universal little brother of all children of earth,' and
+they acted accordingly, they lulled Him to sleep, they fondled and rocked
+Him, they danced before Him and leapt around Him _in dulci jubilo_."{51}
+There is much here that is true of the cult of the Christ Child in other
+countries than Germany, though perhaps Dr. Tille underestimates the
+religious feeling that is often joined to the human sentiment.
+
+The fifteenth century was the great period for the _Kindelwiegen_, the
+time when it appears to have been practised in all the churches of
+Germany; in the sixteenth it began to seem |111| irreverent to the
+stricter members of the clergy, and the figure of the infant Jesus was in
+many places no longer rocked in the cradle but enthroned on the
+altar.{52} This usage is described by Naogeorgus (1553):--
+
+         "A woodden childe in clowtes is on the aultar set,
+    About the which both boyes and gyrles do daunce and trymly jet,
+    And Carrols sing in prayse of Christ, and, for to helpe them heare,
+    The organs aunswere every verse with sweete and solemne cheare.
+    The priestes do rore aloude; and round about the parentes stande
+    To see the sport, and with their voyce do helpe them and their
+          hande."{53}
+
+The placing of a "Holy Child" above the altar at Christmas is still
+customary in many Roman Catholic churches.
+
+Protestantism opposed the _Kindelwiegen_, on the grounds both of
+superstition and of the disorderly proceedings that accompanied it, but
+it was long before it was utterly extinguished even in the Lutheran
+churches. In Catholic churches the custom did not altogether die out,
+though the unseemly behaviour which often attended it--and the growth of
+a pseudo-classical taste--caused its abolition in most places.{54}
+
+At Tübingen as late as 1830 at midnight on Christmas Eve an image of the
+Christ Child was rocked on the tower of the chief church in a small
+cradle surrounded with lights, while the spectators below sang a
+cradle-song.{55} According to a recent writer the "rocking" is still
+continued in the Upper Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of
+Brixen it was once performed every day between Christmas and Candlemas by
+the sacristan or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be
+disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the
+sacristan: "Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the boys
+are often very ill-behaved."{57}
+
+There are records of other curious ceremonies in German or Austrian
+churches. At St. Peter am Windberge in Mühlkreis in Upper Austria, during
+the service on Christmas night a life-sized wooden figure of the Holy
+Child was offered in |112| a basket to the congregation; each person
+reverently kissed it and passed it on to his neighbour. This was done as
+late as 1883.{58} At Crimmitschau in Saxony a boy, dressed as an angel,
+used to be let down from the roof singing Luther's "Vom Himmel hoch," and
+the custom was only given up when the breaking of the rope which
+supported the singer had caused a serious accident.{59}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is in Italy, probably, that the cult of the Christ Child is most
+ardently practised to-day. No people have a greater love of children than
+the Italians, none more of that dramatic instinct which such a form of
+worship demands. "Easter," says Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, "is the
+great popular feast in the eastern Church, Christmas in the
+Latin--especially in Italy. One is the feast of the next world, and the
+other of this. Italians are fond of this world."{60} Christmas is for
+the poorer Italians a summing up of human birthdays, an occasion for
+pouring out on the _Bambino_ parental and fraternal affection as well as
+religious worship.
+
+In Rome, Christmas used to be heralded by the arrival, ten days before
+the end of Advent, of the Calabrian minstrels or _pifferari_ with their
+sylvan pipes (_zampogne_), resembling the Scottish bagpipe, but less
+harsh in sound. These minstrels were to be seen in every street in Rome,
+playing their wild plaintive music before the shrines of the Madonna,
+under the traditional notion of charming away her labour-pains. Often
+they would stop at a carpenter's shop "per politezza al messer San
+Giuseppe."{61} Since 1870 the _pifferari_ have become rare in Rome, but
+some were seen there by an English lady quite recently. At Naples, too,
+there are _zampognari_ before Christmas, though far fewer than there used
+to be; for one _lira_ they will pipe their rustic melodies before any
+householder's street Madonna through a whole _novena_.{62}
+
+[Illustration:
+
+CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS.
+
+_After an Etching by D. Allan._
+
+From Hone's "Every-day Book" (London, 1826).]
+
+In Sicily, too, men come down from the mountains nine days before
+Christmas to sing a _novena_ to a plaintive melody accompanied by 'cello
+and violin. "All day long," writes Signora Caico about Montedoro in
+Caltanissetta, "the melancholy dirge  |113| was sung round the village,
+house after house, always the same minor tune, the words being different
+every day, so that in nine days the whole song was sung out.... I often
+looked out of the window to see them at a short distance, grouped before
+a house, singing their stanzas, well muffled in shawls, for the air is
+cold in spite of the bright sunshine.... The flat, white houses all
+round, the pure sky overhead, gave an Oriental setting to the scene."
+
+Another Christmas custom in the same place was the singing of a _novena_
+not outside but within some of the village houses before a kind of altar
+gaily decorated and bearing at the top a waxen image of the Child Jesus.
+"Close to it the orchestra was grouped--a 'cello, two violins, a guitar,
+and a tambourine. The kneeling women huddled in front of the altar. All
+had on their heads their black _mantelline_. They began at once singing
+the _novena_ stanzas appointed for that day; the tune was primitive and
+very odd: the first half of the stanza was quick and merry, the second
+half became a wailing dirge." A full translation of a long and very
+interesting and pathetic _novena_ is given by Signora Caico.[39]{63}
+
+The _presepio_ both in Rome and at Naples is the special Christmas symbol
+in the home, just as the lighted tree is in Germany. In Rome the Piazza
+Navona is the great place for the sale of little clay figures of the holy
+persons. (Is there perchance a survival here of the _sigillaria_, the
+little clay dolls sold in Rome at the _Saturnalia_?) These are bought in
+the market for two _soldi_ each, and the _presepi_ or "Bethlehems" are
+made at home with cardboard and moss.{64} The home-made _presepi_ at
+Naples are well described by Matilde Serao; they are pasteboard models of
+the landscape of Bethlehem--a hill with the sacred cave beneath it and
+two or three paths leading down to the grotto, a little tavern, a
+shepherd's hut, a few trees, sometimes a stream in glittering glass. The
+ground is made verdant with moss, and there is |114| straw within the
+cave for the repose of the infant Jesus; singing angels are suspended by
+thin wires, and the star of the Wise Men hangs by an invisible thread.
+There is little attempt to realize the scenery of the East; the Child is
+born and the Magi adore Him in a Campanian or Calabrian setting.{66}
+
+Italian churches, as well as Italian homes, have their _presepi_.
+"Thither come the people, bearing humble gifts of chestnuts, apples,
+tomatoes, and the like, which they place as offerings in the hands of the
+figures. These are very often life-size. Mary is usually robed in blue
+satin, with crimson scarf and white head-dress. Joseph stands near her
+dressed in the ordinary working-garb. The onlookers are got up like
+Italian contadini. The Magi are always very prominent in their grand
+clothes, with satin trains borne by black slaves, jewelled turbans, and
+satin tunics all over jewels."{67}
+
+[Illustration:
+
+ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE "PRESEPIO" AT GRECCIO.
+
+_By Giotto._
+
+(Upper Church of St Francis, Assissi)]
+
+[Illustration: THE "BAMBINO" OF ARA COELI.]
+
+In Rome the two great centres of Christmas devotion are the churches of
+Santa Maria Maggiore, where are preserved the relics of the cradle of
+Christ, and Ara Coeli, the home of the most famous _Bambino_ in the
+world. A vivid picture of the scene at Santa Maria Maggiore in the early
+nineteenth century is given by Lady Morgan. She entered the church at
+midnight on Christmas Eve to wait for the procession of the _culla_, or
+cradle. "Its three ample naves, separated by rows of Ionic columns of
+white marble, produced a splendid vista. Thousands of wax tapers marked
+their form, and contrasted their shadows; some blazed from golden
+candlesticks on the superb altars of the lateral chapels.... Draperies of
+gold and crimson decked the columns, and spread their shadows from the
+inter-columniations over the marble pavement. In the midst of this
+imposing display of church magnificence, sauntered or reposed a
+population which displayed the most squalid misery. The haggard natives
+of the mountains ... were mixed with the whole mendicity of Rome.... Some
+of these terrific groups lay stretched in heaps on the ground,
+congregating for warmth; and as their dark eyes scowled from beneath the
+mantle which half hid a sheepskin dress, they had the air of banditti
+awaiting their prey; others with their wives and children knelt, half
+asleep, |115| round the chapel of the _Santa Croce_.... In the centre
+of the nave, multitudes of gay, gaudy, noisy persons, the petty
+shopkeepers, laquais, and _popolaccio_ of the city, strolled and laughed,
+and talked loud." About three o'clock the service began, with a choral
+swell, blazing torches, and a crowded procession of priests of every rank
+and order. It lasted for two hours; then began the procession to the cell
+where the cradle lay, enshrined in a blaze of tapers and guarded by
+groups of devotees. Thence it was borne with solemn chants to the chapel
+of _Santa Croce_. A musical Mass followed, and the _culla_ being at last
+deposited on the High Altar, the wearied spectators issued forth just as
+the dome of St. Peter's caught the first light of the morning.{68}
+
+Still to-day the scene in the church at the five o'clock High Mass on
+Christmas morning is extraordinarily impressive, with the crowds of poor
+people, the countless lights at which the children gaze in open-eyed
+wonder, the many low Masses said in the side chapels, the imposing
+procession and the setting of the silver casket on the High Altar. The
+history of the relics of the _culla_--five long narrow pieces of wood--is
+obscure, but it is admitted even by some orthodox Roman Catholics that
+there is no sufficient evidence to connect them with Bethlehem.{69}
+
+The famous _Bambino_ at the Franciscan church of Ara Coeli on the citadel
+of Rome is "a flesh-coloured doll, tightly swathed in gold and silver
+tissue, crowned, and sparkling with jewels," no thing of beauty, but
+believed to have miraculous powers. An inscription in the sacristy of the
+church states that it was made by a devout Minorite of wood from the
+Mount of Olives, and given flesh-colour by the interposition of God
+Himself. It has its own servants and its own carriage in which it drives
+out to visit the sick. There is a strange story of a theft of the
+wonder-working image by a woman who feigned sickness, obtained permission
+to have the _Bambino_ left with her, and then sent back to the friars
+another image dressed in its clothes. That night the Franciscans heard
+great ringing of bells and knockings at the church door, and found
+outside the true _Bambino_, naked in the wind and rain. Since then it has
+never been allowed out alone.{70}
+
+|116| All through the Christmas and Epiphany season Ara Coeli is
+crowded with visitors to the _Bambino_. Before the _presepio_, where it
+lies, is erected a wooden platform on which small boys and girls of all
+ranks follow one another with little speeches--"preaching" it is
+called--in praise of the infant Lord. "They say their pieces," writes
+Countess Martinengo, "with an infinite charm that raises half a smile and
+half a tear." They have the vivid dramatic gift, the extraordinary
+absence of self-consciousness, typical of Italian children, and their
+"preaching" is anything but a wooden repetition of a lesson learned by
+heart. Nor is there any irksome constraint; indeed to northerners the
+scene in the church might seem irreverent, for the children blow toy
+trumpets and their parents talk freely on all manner of subjects. The
+church is approached by one hundred and twenty-four steps, making an
+extraordinarily picturesque spectacle at this season, when they are
+thronged by people ascending and descending, and by vendors of all sorts
+of Christmas prints and images. On the Octave of the Epiphany there is a
+great procession, ending with the blessing of Rome by the Holy Child. The
+_Bambino_ is carried out to the space at the top of the giddy flight of
+marble steps, and a priest raises it on high and solemnly blesses the
+Eternal City.{71}
+
+A glimpse of the southern Christmas may be had in London in the Italian
+colony in and around Eyre Street Hill, off the Clerkenwell Road, a little
+town of poor Italians set down in the midst of the metropolis. The steep,
+narrow Eyre Street Hill, with its shops full of southern wares, is dingy
+enough by day, but after dark on Christmas Eve it looks like a bit of
+Naples. The windows are gay with lights and coloured festoons, there are
+lantern-decked sweetmeat stalls, one old man has a _presepio_ in his
+room, other people have little altars or shrines with candles burning,
+and bright pictures of saints adorn the walls. It is a strangely pathetic
+sight, this _festa_ of the children of the South, this attempt to keep an
+Italian Christmas amid the cold damp dreariness of a London slum. The
+colony has its own church, San Pietro, copied from some Renaissance
+basilica at Rome, a building half tawdry, half magnificent, which
+transports him who enters it far away to the South. Like every Italian
+church, it is |117| at once the Palace of the Great King and the refuge
+of the humblest--no other church in London is quite so intimately the
+home of the poor. Towards twelve o'clock on Christmas Eve the deep-toned
+bell of San Pietro booms out over the colony, and the people crowd to the
+Midnight Mass, and pay their devotions at a great _presepio_ set up for
+the veneration of the faithful. When on the Octave of the Epiphany[40]
+the time comes to close the crib, an impressive and touching ceremony
+takes place. The afternoon Benediction over, the priest, with the
+acolytes, goes to the _presepio_ and returns to the chancel with the
+_Bambino_. Holding it on his arm, he preaches in Italian on the story of
+the Christ Child. The sermon ended, the notes of "Adeste, fideles" are
+heard, and while the Latin words are sung the faithful kneel at the altar
+rails and reverently kiss the Holy Babe. It is their farewell to the
+_Bambino_ till next Christmas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few details may here be given about the religious customs at Christmas
+in Spain. The Midnight Mass is there the great event of the festival.
+Something has already been said as to its celebration in Madrid. The
+scene at the midnight service in a small Andalusian country town is thus
+described by an English traveller:--"The church was full; the service
+orderly; the people of all classes. There were muleteers, wrapped in
+their blue and white checked rugs; here, Spanish gentlemen, enveloped in
+their graceful capas, or capes ... here, again, were crowds of the
+commonest people,--miners, fruitsellers, servants, and the like,--the
+women kneeling on the rush matting of the dimly-lit church, the men
+standing in dark masses behind, or clustering in groups round every
+pillar.... At last, from under the altar, the senior priest ... took out
+the image of the Babe New-born, reverently and slowly, and held it up in
+his hands for adoration. Instantly every one crossed himself, and fell on
+his knees in silent worship."{72} The crib is very popular in Spanish
+homes and is the delight of children, as may be learnt from Fernan
+Caballero's interesting sketch of Christmas Eve in Spain, "La Noche de
+Navidad."{73}
+
+|118| In England the Christmas crib is to be found nowadays in most
+Roman, and a few Anglican, churches. In the latter it is of course an
+imitation, not a survival. It is, however, possible that the custom of
+carrying dolls about in a box at Advent or Christmas time, common in some
+parts of England in the nineteenth century, is a survival, from the
+Middle Ages, of something like the crib. The so-called "vessel-cup" was
+"a box containing two dolls, dressed up to represent the Virgin and the
+infant Christ, decorated with ribbons and surrounded by flowers and
+apples." The box had usually a glass lid, was covered by a white napkin,
+and was carried from door to door by a woman.{74} It was esteemed very
+unlucky for any household not to be visited by the "Advent images" before
+Christmas Eve, and the bearers sang the well-known carol of the "Joys of
+Mary."{75} In Yorkshire only one image was carried about.{76} At
+Gilmorton, Leicestershire, a friend of the present writer remembers that
+the children used to carry round what they called a "Christmas Vase," an
+open box without lid in which lay three dolls side by side, with oranges
+and sprigs of evergreen. Some people regarded these as images of the
+Virgin, the Christ Child, and Joseph.[41]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In this study of the feast of the Nativity as represented in liturgy and
+ceremonial we have already come close to what may strictly be called
+drama; in the next chapter we shall cross the border line and consider
+the religious plays of the Middle Ages and the relics of or parallels to
+them found in later times.
+
+|119| |120| |121|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CHRISTMAS DRAMA
+
+
+    Origins of the Mediaeval Drama--Dramatic Tendencies in the
+    Liturgy--Latin Liturgical Plays--The Drama becomes
+    Laicized--Characteristics of the Popular Drama--The Nativity in the
+    English Miracle Cycles--Christmas Mysteries in France--Later French
+    Survivals of Christmas Drama--German Christmas Plays--Mediaeval
+    Italian Plays and Pageants--Spanish Nativity Plays--Modern Survivals
+    in Various Countries--The Star-singers, &c.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.
+
+From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries at
+Burlington House (by permission).
+
+(Photo lent by Mr. F. Sidgwick, who has published the print on a modern
+Christmas broadside.)]
+
+In this chapter the Christian side only of the Christmas drama will be
+treated. Much folk-drama of pagan origin has gathered round the festival,
+but this we shall study in our Second Part. Our subject here is the
+dramatic representation of the story of the Nativity and the events
+immediately connected with it. The Christmas drama has passed through the
+same stages as the poetry of the Nativity. There is first a monastic and
+hieratic stage, when the drama is but an expansion of the liturgy, a
+piece of ceremonial performed by clerics with little attempt at
+verisimilitude and with Latin words drawn mainly from the Bible or the
+offices of the Church. Then, as the laity come to take a more personal
+interest in Christianity, we find fancy beginning to play around the
+subject, bringing out its human pathos and charm, until, after a
+transitional stage, the drama leaves the sanctuary, passes from Latin to
+the vulgar tongue, is played by lay performers in the streets and squares
+of the city, and, while its framework remains religious, takes into
+itself episodes of a more or less secular character. The Latin liturgical
+plays are to the "miracles" and "mysteries" of the later Middle Ages as a
+Romanesque church, solemn, oppressive, hieratic, to |122| a Gothic
+cathedral, soaring, audacious, reflecting every phase of the popular
+life.
+
+The mediaeval religious drama{1} was a natural development from the
+Catholic liturgy, not an imitation of classical models. The classical
+drama had expired at the break-up of the Roman Empire; its death was due
+largely, indeed, to the hostility of Christianity, but also to the rude
+indifference of the barbarian invaders. Whatever secular dramatic
+impulses remained in the Dark Ages showed themselves not in public and
+organized performances, but obscurely in the songs and mimicry of
+minstrels and in traditional folk-customs. Both of these classes of
+practices were strongly opposed by the Church, because of their
+connection with heathenism and the licence towards which they tended. Yet
+the dramatic instinct could not be suppressed. The folk-drama in such
+forms as the Feast of Fools found its way, as we shall see, even into the
+sanctuary, and--most remarkable fact of all--the Church's own services
+took on more and more a dramatic character.
+
+While the secular stage decayed, the Church was building up a stately
+system of ritual. It is needless to dwell upon the dramatic elements in
+Catholic worship. The central act of Christian devotion, the Eucharist,
+is in its essence a drama, a representation of the death of the Redeemer
+and the participation of the faithful in its benefits, and around this
+has gathered in the Mass a multitude of dramatic actions expressing
+different aspects of the Redemption. Nor, of course, is there merely
+symbolic _action_; the offices of the Church are in great part
+_dialogues_ between priest and people, or between two sets of singers. It
+was from this antiphonal song, this alternation of versicle and respond,
+that the religious drama of the Middle Ages took its rise. In the ninth
+century the "Antiphonarium" traditionally ascribed to Pope Gregory the
+Great had become insufficient for ambitious choirs, and the practice grew
+up of supplementing it by new melodies and words inserted at the
+beginning or end or even in the middle of the old antiphons. The new
+texts were called "tropes," and from the ninth to the thirteenth century
+many were written. An interesting Christmas |123| example is the
+following ninth-century trope ascribed to Tutilo of St. Gall:--
+
+    "Hodie cantandus est nobis puer, quem gignebat ineffabiliter ante
+    tempora pater, et eundem sub tempore generavit inclyta mater. (To-day
+    must we sing of a Child, whom in unspeakable wise His Father begat
+    before all times, and whom, within time, a glorious mother brought
+    forth.)
+
+    Int[errogatio].
+
+    Quis est iste puer quem tam magnis praeconiis dignum vociferatis?
+    Dicite nobis ut collaudatores esse possimus. (Who is this Child whom
+    ye proclaim worthy of so great laudations? Tell us that we also may
+    praise Him.)
+
+    Resp[onsio].
+
+    Hic enim est quem praesagus et electus symmista Dei ad terram
+    venturum praevidens longe ante praenotavit, sicque praedixit. (This
+    is He whose coming to earth the prophetic and chosen initiate into
+    the mysteries of God foresaw and pointed out long before, and thus
+    foretold.)"
+
+Here followed at once the Introit for the third Mass of Christmas Day,
+"Puer natus est nobis, et filius datus est nobis, &c. (Unto us a child is
+born, unto us a son is given.)" The question and answer were no doubt
+sung by different choirs.{2}
+
+One can well imagine that this might develop into a regular little drama.
+As a matter of fact, however, it was from an Easter trope in the same
+manuscript, the "Quem quaeritis," a dialogue between the three Maries and
+the angel at the sepulchre, that the liturgical drama sprang. The trope
+became very popular, and was gradually elaborated into a short symbolic
+drama, and its popularity led to the composition of similar pieces for
+Christmas and Ascensiontide. Here is the Christmas trope from a St. Gall
+manuscript:--
+
+    "_On the Nativity of the Lord at Mass let there be ready two deacons
+    having on dalmatics, behind the altar, saying_:
+
+    Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite? (Whom seek ye in the
+    manger, say, ye shepherds?) |124|
+
+    _Let two cantors in the choir answer_:
+
+    Salvatorem Christum Dominum, infantem pannis involutum, secundum
+    sermonem angelicum. (The Saviour, Christ the Lord, a child wrapped in
+    swaddling clothes, according to the angelic word.)
+
+    _And the deacons_:
+
+    Adest hic parvulus cum Maria, matre sua, de qua, vaticinando, Isaias
+    Propheta: ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium; et nuntiantes dicite
+    quia natus est. (Present here is the little one with Mary, His
+    Mother, of whom Isaiah the prophet foretold: Behold, a virgin shall
+    conceive, and shall bring forth a son; and do ye say and announce
+    that He is born.)
+
+    _Then let the cantor lift up his voice and say_:
+
+    Alleluia, alleluia, jam vere scimus Christum natum in terris, de quo
+    canite, omnes, cum Propheta dicentes: Puer natus est! (Alleluia,
+    alleluia. Now we know indeed that Christ is born on earth, of whom
+    sing ye all, saying with the Prophet: Unto us a child is born.)"{3}
+
+The dramatic character of this is very marked. A comparison with later
+liturgical plays suggests that the two deacons in their broad vestments
+were meant to represent the midwives mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel
+of St. James, and the cantors the shepherds.
+
+A development from this trope, apparently, was the "Office of the
+Shepherds," which probably took shape in the eleventh century, though it
+is first given in a Rouen manuscript of the thirteenth. It must have been
+an impressive ceremony as performed in the great cathedral, dimly lit
+with candles, and full of mysterious black recesses and hints of
+infinity. Behind the high altar a _praesepe_ or "crib" was prepared, with
+an image of the Virgin. After the "Te Deum" had been sung five canons or
+their vicars, clad in albs and amices, entered by the great door of the
+choir, and proceeded towards the apse. These were the shepherds. Suddenly
+from high above them came a clear boy's voice: "Fear not, behold I bring
+you good tidings of great joy," and the rest of the angelic message. The
+"multitude of the heavenly host" was represented by other boys stationed
+probably |125| in the triforium galleries, who broke out into the
+exultant "Gloria in excelsis." Singing a hymn, "Pax in terris nunciatur,"
+the shepherds advanced towards the crib where two priests--the
+midwives--awaited them. These addressed to the shepherds the question
+"Whom seek ye in the manger?" and then came the rest of the "Quem
+quaeritis" which we already know, a hymn to the Virgin being sung while
+the shepherds adored the Infant. Mass followed immediately, the little
+drama being merely a prelude.{4}
+
+More important than this Office of the Shepherds is an Epiphany play
+called by various names, "Stella," "Tres Reges," "Magi," or "Herodes,"
+and found in different forms at Limoges, Rouen, Laon, Compiègne,
+Strasburg, Le Mans, Freising in Bavaria, and other places. Mr. E. K.
+Chambers suggests that its kernel is a dramatized Offertory. It was a
+custom for Christian kings to present gold, frankincense, and myrrh at
+the Epiphany--the offering is still made by proxy at the Chapel Royal,
+St. James's--and Mr. Chambers takes "the play to have served as a
+substitute for this ceremony, when no king actually regnant was
+present."{5} Its most essential features were the appearance of the Star
+of Bethlehem to the Magi, and their offering of the mystic gifts. The
+star, bright with candles, hung from the roof of the church, and was
+sometimes made to move.
+
+In the Rouen version of the play it is ordered that on the day of the
+Epiphany, Terce having been sung, three clerics, robed as kings, shall
+come from the east, north, and south, and meet before the altar, with
+their servants bearing the offerings of the Magi. The king from the east,
+pointing to the star with his stick, exclaims:--
+
+    "Stella fulgore nimio rutilat. (The star glows with exceeding
+    brightness.)"
+
+The second monarch answers:
+
+    "Quae regem regum natum demonstrat. (Which shows the birth of the
+    King of Kings.)" |126|
+
+And the third:
+
+    "Quem venturum olim prophetiae signaverant. (To whose coming the
+    prophecies of old had pointed.)"
+
+Then the Magi kiss one another and together sing:
+
+    "Eamus ergo et inquiramus eum, offerentes ei munera: aurum, thus, et
+    myrrham. (Let us therefore go and seek Him, offering unto Him gifts:
+    gold, frankincense, and myrrh.)"
+
+Antiphons are sung, a procession is formed, and the Magi go to a certain
+altar above which an image of the Virgin has been placed with a lighted
+star before it. Two priests in dalmatics--apparently the
+midwives--standing on either side of the altar, inquire who the Magi are,
+and receiving their answer, draw aside a curtain and bid them approach to
+worship the Child, "for He is the redemption of the world." The three
+kings do adoration, and offer their gifts, each with a few pregnant
+words:--
+
+     "Suscipe, rex, aurum. (Receive, O King, gold.)"
+     "Tolle thus, tu vere Deus. (Accept incense, Thou very God.)"
+     "Myrrham, signum sepulturae. (Myrrh, the sign of burial.)"
+
+The clergy and people then make their offerings, while the Magi fall
+asleep and are warned by an angel to return home another way. This they
+do symbolically by proceeding back to the choir by a side aisle.{6}
+
+In its later forms the Epiphany play includes the appearance of Herod,
+who is destined to fill a very important place in the mediaeval drama.
+Hamlet's saying "he out-Herods Herod" sufficiently suggests the raging
+tyrant whom the playwrights of the Middle Ages loved. His appearance
+marks perhaps the first introduction into the Christian religious play of
+the evil principle so necessary to dramatic effect. At first Herod holds
+merely a mild conversation with the Magi, begging them to tell him when
+they have found the new-born King; in later versions of the play,
+however, his wrath is shown on learning that the Wise Men have |127|
+departed home by another way; he breaks out into bloodthirsty tirades,
+orders the slaying of the Innocents, and in one form takes a sword and
+brandishes it in the air. He becomes in fact the outstanding figure in
+the drama, and one can understand why it was sometimes named after him.
+
+In the Laon "Stella" the actual murder of the Innocents was represented,
+the symbolical figure of Rachel weeping over her children being
+introduced. The plaint and consolation of Rachel, it should be noted,
+seem at first to have formed an independent little piece performed
+probably on Holy Innocents' Day.{7} This later coalesced with the
+"Stella," as did also the play of the shepherds, and, at a still later
+date, another liturgical drama which we must now consider--the
+"Prophetae."
+
+This had its origin in a sermon (wrongly ascribed to St. Augustine)
+against Jews, Pagans, and Arians, a portion of which was used in many
+churches as a Christmas lesson. It begins with a rhetorical appeal to the
+Jews who refuse to accept Jesus as the Messiah in spite of the witness of
+their own prophets. Ten prophets are made to give their testimony, and
+then three Pagans are called upon, Virgil, Nebuchadnezzar and the
+Erythraean Sibyl. The sermon has a strongly dramatic character, and when
+chanted in church the parts of the preacher and the prophets were
+possibly distributed among different choristers. In time it developed
+into a regular drama, and more prophets were brought in. It was, indeed,
+the germ of the great Old Testament cycles of the later Middle Ages.{8}
+
+An extension of the "Prophetae" was the Norman or Anglo-Norman play of
+"Adam," which began with the Fall, continued with Cain and Abel, and
+ended with the witness of the prophets. In the other direction the
+"Prophetae" was extended by the addition of the "Stella." It so happens
+that there is no text of a Latin drama containing both these extensions
+at the same time, but such a play probably existed. From the
+mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century, indeed, there was a
+tendency for the plays to run together into cycles and become too long
+and too elaborate for performance in church. In the eleventh century,
+even, they had begun to pass out into the churchyard or |128| the
+market-place, and to be played not only by the clergy but by laymen. This
+change had extremely important effects on their character. In the first
+place the vulgar tongue crept in. As early, possibly, as the twelfth
+century are the Norman "Adam" and the Spanish "Misterio de los Reyes
+Magos," the former, as we have seen, an extended vernacular "Prophetae,"
+the latter, a fragment of a highly developed vernacular "Stella." They
+are the first of the popular as distinguished from the liturgical plays;
+they were meant, as their language shows, for the instruction and delight
+of the folk; they were not to be listened to, like the mysterious Latin
+of the liturgy, in uncomprehending reverence, but were to be understanded
+of the people.
+
+The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw a progressive supplanting of
+Latin by the common speech, until, in the great cycles, only a few scraps
+of the church language were left to tell of the liturgical origin of the
+drama. The process of popularization, the development of the plays from
+religious ceremonial to lively drama, was probably greatly helped by the
+_goliards_ or vagabond scholars, young, poor, and fond of amusement, who
+wandered over Europe from teacher to teacher, from monastery to
+monastery, in search of learning. Their influence is shown not merely in
+the broadening of the drama, but also in its passing from the Latin of
+the monasteries to the language of the common folk.
+
+A consequence of the outdoor performance of the plays was that Christmas,
+in the northern countries at all events, was found an unsuitable time for
+them. The summer was naturally preferred, and we find comparatively few
+mentions of plays at Christmas in the later Middle Ages. Whitsuntide and
+Corpus Christi became more popular dates, especially in England, and the
+pieces then performed were vast cosmic cycles, like the York, Chester,
+Towneley, and "Coventry" plays, in which the Christmas and Epiphany
+episodes formed but links in an immense chain extending from the Creation
+to the Last Judgment, and representing the whole scheme of salvation. It
+is in these Nativity scenes, however, that we have the only English
+renderings of the Christmas story in drama,{9} and though they |129|
+were actually performed not at the winter festival[42] but in the summer,
+they give in so striking a way the feelings, the point of view, of our
+mediaeval forefathers in regard to the Nativity that we are justified in
+dealing with them here at some length.
+
+As the drama became laicized, it came to reflect that strange medley of
+conflicting elements, pagan and Christian, materialistic and spiritual,
+which was the actual religion of the folk, as distinguished from the
+philosophical theology of the doctors and councils and the mysticism of
+the ascetics. The popularizing of Christianity had reached its climax in
+most countries of western Europe in the fifteenth century, approximately
+the period of the great "mysteries." However little the ethical teaching
+of Jesus may have been acted upon, the Christian religion on its external
+side had been thoroughly appropriated by the people and wrought into a
+many-coloured polytheism, a true reflection of their minds.
+
+The figures of the drama are contemporaries of the spectators both in
+garb and character; they are not Orientals of ancient times, but
+Europeans of the end of the Middle Ages. Bethlehem is a "faier borow,"
+Herod a "mody king," like unto some haughty, capricious, and violent
+monarch of the time, the shepherds are rustics of England or Germany or
+France or Italy, the Magi mighty potentates with gorgeous trains, and the
+Child Himself is a little being subject to all the pains and necessities
+of infancy, but delighted with sweet and pleasant things like a bob of
+cherries or a ball. The realism of the writers is sometimes astounding,
+and comic elements often appear--to the people of the Middle Ages
+religion was so real and natural a thing that they could laugh at it
+without ceasing to believe in or to love it.
+
+The English mediaeval playwrights, it may safely be said, are surpassed
+by no foreigners in their treatment of Christmas subjects. To illustrate
+their way of handling the scenes I may |130| gather from the four great
+cycles a few of the most interesting passages.
+
+From the so-called "Ludus Coventriae" I take the arrival of Joseph and
+Mary at Bethlehem; they ask a man in the street where they may find an
+inn:--
+
+   "_Joseph._  Heyl, wurchepful sere, and good day!
+      A ceteceyn of this cytë ye seme to be;
+    Of herborwe[43] ffor spowse and me I yow pray,
+      ffor trewly this woman is fful werë,
+              And fayn at reste, sere, wold she be;
+
+    We wolde ffulffylle the byddynge of oure emperoure,
+    ffor to pay tribute, as right is oure,
+    And to kepe oureselfe ffrom dolowre,
+              We are come to this cytë.
+
+    _Cives._  Sere, ostage in this towne know I non,
+      Thin wyff and thou in for to slepe;
+    This cetë is besett with pepyl every won,
+      And yett thei ly withowte fful every strete.
+
+    Withinne no walle, man, comyst thou nowth,
+      Be thou onys[44] withinne the cytë gate;
+    Onethys[45] in the strete a place may be sowth,
+      Theron to reste, withowte debate.
+
+    _Joseph._  Nay, sere, debate that wyl I nowth;
+      Alle suche thyngys passyn my powere:
+    But yitt my care and alle my thought
+      Is for Mary, my derlynge dere.
+
+    A! swete wyff, wat xal we do?
+      Wher xal we logge this nyght?
+    Onto the ffadyr of heffne pray we so,
+      Us to kepe ffrom every wykkyd whyt.
+
+    _Cives._  Good man, o word I wyl the sey,
+      If thou wylt do by the counsel of me;
+    Yondyr is an hous of haras[46] that stant be the wey,
+      Amonge the bestys herboryd may ye be. |131|
+
+    _Maria._  Now the fadyr of hefne he mut yow yelde!
+      His sone in my wombe forsothe he is;
+    He kepe the and thi good be fryth and ffelde!
+      Go we hens, husbond, for now tyme it is."{11}
+
+The scene immediately after the Nativity is delicately and reverently
+presented in the York cycle. The Virgin worships the Child, saluting Him
+thus:--
+
+   "Hayle my lord God! hayle prince of pees!
+    Hayle my fadir, and hayle my sone!
+    Hayle souereyne sege all synnes to sesse!
+    Hayle God and man in erth to wonne![47]
+                Hayle! thurgh whos myht
+    All this worlde was first be-gonne,
+                merkness[48] and light.
+
+    Sone, as I am sympill sugett of thyne,
+    Vowchesaffe, swete sone I pray the,
+    That I myght the take in the[r] armys of mine,
+    And in this poure wede to arraie the;
+                Graunte me thi blisse!
+    As I am thy modir chosen to be
+                in sothfastnesse."
+
+Joseph, who has gone out to get a light, returns, and this dialogue
+follows:--
+
+   "_Joseph._  Say, Marie doghtir, what chere with the?
+    _Mary._    Right goode, Joseph, as has been ay.
+    _Joseph._  O Marie! what swete thyng is that on thy kne?
+    _Mary._    It is my sone, the soth to saye, that is so gud
+    _Joseph._  Wel is me I bade this day, to se this foode![49]
+        Me merueles mekill of this light
+        That thus-gates shynes in this place,
+        For suth it is a selcouth[50] sight! |132|
+    _Mary._    This hase he ordand of his grace, my sone so ying,
+        A starne to be schynyng a space at his bering
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Joseph._ Nowe welcome, floure fairest of hewe,
+        I shall the menske[51] with mayne and myght.
+        Hayle! my maker, hayle Crist Jesu!
+        Hayle, riall king, roote of all right!
+                           Hayle, saueour.
+        Hayle, my lorde, lemer[52] of light,
+                           Hayle, blessid floure!
+
+    _Mary._    Nowe lord! that all this worlde schall wynne,
+        To the my sone is that I saye,
+        Here is no bedde to laye the inne,
+        Therfore my dere sone, I the praye sen it is soo,
+        Here in this cribbe I myght the lay betwene ther bestis two.
+        And I sall happe[53] the, myn owne dere childe,
+        With such clothes as we haue here.
+
+    _Joseph._  O Marie! beholde thes beestis mylde,
+        They make louyng in ther manere as thei wer men.
+        For-sothe it semes wele be ther chere thare lord thei ken.
+
+    _Mary._    Ther lorde thai kenne, that wate I wele,
+        They worshippe hym with myght and mayne;
+        The wedir is colde, as ye may feele,
+        To halde hym warme thei are full fayne, with thare warme
+            breth."{12}
+
+The playwrights are at their best in the shepherd scenes; indeed these
+are the most original parts of the cycles, for here the writers found
+little to help them in theological tradition, and were thrown upon their
+own wit. In humorous dialogue and naïve sentiment the lusty burgesses of
+the fifteenth century were thoroughly at home, and the comedy and pathos
+of these scenes must have been as welcome a relief to the spectators,
+from the |133| long-winded solemnity of many of the plays, as they are
+to modern readers. In the York mysteries the shepherds make uncouth
+exclamations at the song of the angels and ludicrously try to imitate it.
+The Chester shepherds talk in a very natural way of such things as the
+diseases of sheep, sit down with much relish to a meal of "ale of
+Halton," sour milk, onions, garlick and leeks, green cheese, a sheep's
+head soused in ale, and other items; then they call their lad Trowle, who
+grumbles because his wages have not been paid, refuses to eat, wrestles
+with his masters and throws them all. They sit down discomfited; then the
+Star of Bethlehem appears, filling them with wonder, which grows when
+they hear the angels' song of "Gloria in excelsis." They discuss what the
+words were--"glore, glare with a glee," or, "glori, glory, glorious," or,
+"glory, glory, with a glo." At length they go to Bethlehem, and arrived
+at the stable, the first shepherd exclaims:--
+
+   "Sym, Sym, sickerlye
+    Heare I see Marye,
+    And Jesus Christe faste by,
+    Lapped in haye."{13}
+
+Joseph is strangely described:--
+
+   "Whatever this oulde man that heare is,
+    Take heede howe his head is whore,
+    His beirde is like a buske of breyers,
+    With a pound of heaire about his mouth and more."{14}
+
+Their gifts to the Infant are a bell, a flask, a spoon to eat pottage
+with, and a cape. Trowle the servant has nought to offer but a pair of
+his wife's old hose; four boys follow with presents of a bottle, a hood,
+a pipe, and a nut-hook. Quaint are the words of the last two givers:--
+
+        "_The Thirde Boye._
+
+    O, noble childe of thee!
+    Alas! what have I for thee,
+    Save only my pipe? |134|
+    Elles trewly nothinge,
+    Were I in the rockes or in,
+    I coulde make this pippe
+    That all this woode should ringe,
+    And quiver, as yt were.
+
+        _The Fourth Boye._
+
+    Nowe, childe, although thou be comon from God,
+    And be God thy selfe in thy manhoode,
+    Yet I knowe that in thy childehoode
+    Thou wylte for sweete meate loke,
+    To pull downe aples, peares, and plumes,
+    Oulde Joseph shall not nede to hurte his thombes,
+    Because thou hast not pleintie of crombes,
+    I geve thee heare my nutthocke."{15}
+
+Let no one deem this irreverent; the spirit of this adoration of the
+shepherds is intensely devout; they go away longing to tell all the world
+the wonder they have seen; one will become a pilgrim; even the rough
+Trowle exclaims that he will forsake the shepherd's craft and will betake
+himself to an anchorite's hard by, in prayers to "wache and wake."
+
+More famous than this Chester "Pastores" are the two shepherd plays in
+the Towneley cycle.{16} The first begins with racy talk, leading to a
+wrangle between two of the shepherds about some imaginary sheep; then a
+third arrives and makes fun of them both; a feast follows, with much
+homely detail; they go to sleep and are awakened by the angelic message;
+after much debate over its meaning and over the foretellings of the
+prophets--one of them, strangely enough, quotes a Latin passage from
+Virgil--they go to Bethlehem and present to the Child a "lytyll spruse
+cofer," a ball, and a gourd-bottle.
+
+The second play surpasses in humour anything else in the mediaeval drama
+of any country. We find the shepherds first complaining of the cold and
+their hard lot; they are "al lappyd in sorow." They talk, almost like
+modern Socialists, of the oppressions of the rich:--
+
+     "For the tylthe of our landys lyys falow as the floore,
+           As ye ken. |135|
+      We ar so hamyd,[54]
+      For-taxed and ramyd,[55]
+      We ar mayde hand-tamyd,
+        With thyse gentlery men.
+
+    Thus thay refe[56] us our rest, Our Lady theym wary![57]
+    These men that ar lord-fest,[58] they cause the ploghe tary."
+
+To these shepherds joins himself Mak, a thieving neighbour. Going to
+sleep, they make him lie between them, for they doubt his honesty. But
+for all their precautions he manages to steal a sheep, and carries it
+home to his wife. She thinks of an ingenious plan for concealing it from
+the shepherds if they visit the cottage seeking their lost property: she
+will pretend that she is in child-bed and that the sheep is the new-born
+infant. So it is wrapped up and laid in a cradle, and Mak sings a
+lullaby. The shepherds do suspect Mak, and come to search his house; his
+wife upbraids them and keeps them from the cradle. They depart, but
+suddenly an idea comes to one of them:--
+
+     "_The First Shepherd._  Gaf ye the chyld any thyng?
+      _The Second._  I trow not oone farthyng.
+      _The Third._  Fast agane will I flyng,
+          Abyde ye me there. [_He goes back._]
+    Mak, take it to no grefe, if I com to thi barne."
+
+Mak tries to put him off, but the shepherd will have his way:--
+
+   "Gyf me lefe hym to kys, and lyft up the clowtt.
+    What the devill is this? he has a long snowte."
+
+So the secret is out. Mak's wife gives a desperate explanation:--
+
+   "He was takyn with an elfe,
+    I saw it myself.
+    When the clok stroke twelf
+      Was he forshapyn."
+
+|136| Naturally this avails nothing, and her husband is given a good
+tossing by the shepherds until they are tired out and lie down to rest.
+Then comes the "Gloria in excelsis" and the call of the angel:--
+
+   "Ryse, hyrd men heynd! for now is he borne
+    That shall take fro the feynd that Adam had lorne:
+    That warloo[59] to sheynd,[60] this nyght is he borne,
+    God is made youre freynd: now at this morne
+      He behestys,
+    At Bedlem go se,
+    Ther lygys that fre[61]
+    In a cryb fulle poorely,
+      Betwyx two bestys."
+
+The shepherds wonder at the song, and one of them tries to imitate it;
+then they go even unto Bethlehem, and there follows the quaintest and
+most delightful of Christmas carols:--
+
+        "_Primus Pastor._
+
+    Hail, comly and clene,
+      Hail, yong child!
+    Hail, maker, as I meene,
+      Of a maden so milde!
+    Thou has warëd,[62] I weene,
+      The warlo[63] so wilde;
+    The fals giler of teen,[64]
+      Now goes he begilde.
+        Lo! he merys,[65]
+    Lo! he laghës, my sweting.
+    A welfare meting!
+    I have holden my heting.[66]
+    Have a bob of cherys!
+
+        _Secundus Pastor._
+
+    Hail, sufferan Savioure,
+      For thou has us soght!
+    Hail, frely[67] foyde[68] and floure,
+      That all thing has wroght! |137|
+    Hail, full of favoure,
+      That made all of noght!
+    Hail, I kneel and I cowre.
+      A bird have I broght
+        To my barne.
+    Hail, litel tinë mop![69]
+    Of oure crede thou art crop;[70]
+    I wold drink on thy cop,
+        Litel day starne.
+
+            _Tertius Pastor._
+
+    Hail, derling dere,
+      Full of godhede!
+    I pray thee be nere
+      When that I have nede.
+    Hail! swete is thy chere;[71]
+      My hart woldë blede
+    To see thee sitt here
+      In so poorë wede,
+        With no pennys.
+    Hail! Put forth thy dall![72]
+    I bring thee bot a ball;
+    Have and play thee with all,
+        And go to the tenis!"{17}
+
+The charm of this will be felt by every reader; it lies in a curious
+incongruity--extreme homeliness joined to awe; the Infinite is contained
+within the narrowest human bounds; God Himself, the Creator and Sustainer
+of the universe, a weak, helpless child. But a step more, and all would
+have been irreverence; as it is we have devotion, human, naïve, and
+touching.
+
+It would be interesting to show how other scenes connected with Christmas
+are handled in the English miracle-plays: how Octavian (Caesar Augustus)
+sent out the decree that all the world should be taxed, and learned from
+the Sibyl the birth of Christ; how the Magi were led by the star and
+offered their symbolic gifts; how the raging of the boastful tyrant
+Herod, the |138| Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt
+are treated; but these scenes, though full of colour, are on the whole
+less remarkable than the shepherd and Nativity pieces, and space forbids
+us to dwell upon them. They contain many curious anachronisms, as when
+Herod invokes Mahounde, and talks about his princes, prelates, barons,
+baronets and burgesses.[73]
+
+The religious play in England did not long survive the Reformation. Under
+the influence of Protestantism, with its vigilant dread of profanity and
+superstition, the cycles were shorn of many of their scenes, the
+performances became irregular, and by the end of the sixteenth century
+they had mostly ceased to be. Not sacred story, but the play of human
+character, was henceforth the material of the drama. The rich, variegated
+religion of the people, communal in its expression, tinged everywhere
+with human colour, gave place to a sterner, colder, more individual
+faith, fearful of contamination by the use of the outward and visible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is little or no trace in the vernacular Christmas plays of direct
+translation from one language into another, though there was some
+borrowing of motives. Thus the Christmas drama of each nation has its own
+special flavour.
+
+If we turn to France, we find a remarkable fifteenth-century cycle that
+belongs purely to the winter festival, and shows the strictly Christmas
+drama at its fullest development. This great mystery of the "Incarnacion
+et nativité de nostre saulveur et redempteur Jesuchrist" was performed
+out-of-doors at Rouen in 1474, an exceptional event for a northern city
+in winter-time. The twenty-four _establies_ or "mansions" set up for the
+various scenes reached across the market-place from the "Axe and Crown"
+Inn to the "Angel."
+
+|139| After a prologue briefly explaining its purpose, the mystery
+begins, like the old liturgical plays, with the witness of the prophets;
+then follows a scene in Limbo where Adam is shown lamenting his fate, and
+another in Heaven where the Redemption of mankind is discussed and the
+Incarnation decided upon. With the Annunciation and the Visitation of the
+Virgin the first day closed. The second day opened with the ordering by
+Octavian of the world-census. The edict is addressed:--
+
+   "A tous roys, marquis, ducs et contes,
+    Connestables, bailifs, vicomtes
+    Et tous autres generalment
+    Qui sont desoubz le firmament."
+
+Joseph, in order to fulfil the command of Cyrenius, governor of Syria,
+leaves Nazareth for Bethlehem. A comic shepherds' scene follows, with a
+rustic song:--
+
+   "Joyeusement, la garenlo,
+    Chantons en venant a la veille,
+    Puisque nous avons la bouteille
+    Nous y berons jusques a bo."
+
+When Joseph and Mary reach the stable where the Nativity is to take
+place, there is a charming dialogue. Joseph laments over the meanness of
+the stable, Mary accepts it with calm resignation.
+
+        _Joseph._
+
+   "Las! vecy bien povre merrien
+    Pour edifier un hostel
+    Et logis a ung seigneur tel.
+    Il naistra en bien povre place.
+
+        _Marie._
+
+    Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        _Joseph._
+
+    Ou sont ces chambres tant fournies
+    De Sarges, de Tapiceries |140|
+    Batus d'or, ou luyt mainte pierre,
+    Et nates mises sur la terre,
+    Affin que le froit ne mefface?
+
+        _Marie._
+
+    Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        _Joseph._
+
+    Helas! cy gerra povrement
+    Le createur du firmament
+    Celui qui fait le soleil luire,
+    Qui fait la terre fruis produire,
+    Qui tient la mer en son espace.
+
+        _Marie._
+
+    Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face."
+
+At last Christ is born, welcomed by the song of the angels, adored by His
+mother. In the heathen temples the idols fall; Hell mouth opens and shows
+the rage of the demons, who make a hideous noise; fire issues from the
+nostrils and eyes and ears of Hell, which shuts up with the devils within
+it. And then the angels in the stable worship the Child Jesus. The
+adoration of the shepherds was shown with many naïve details for the
+delight of the people, and the performance ended with the offering of a
+sacrifice in Rome by the Emperor Octavian to an image of the Blessed
+Virgin.{19}
+
+The French playwrights, quite as much as the English, love comic shepherd
+scenes with plenty of eating and drinking and brawling. A traditional
+figure is the shepherd Rifflart, always a laughable type. In the strictly
+mediaeval plays the shepherds are true French rustics, but with the
+progress of the Renaissance classical elements creep into the pastoral
+scenes; in a mystery printed in 1507 Orpheus with the Nymphs and Oreads
+is introduced. As might be expected, anachronisms often occur; a
+peculiarly piquant instance is found in the S. Geneviève mystery, where
+Caesar Augustus gets a piece of Latin translated into French for his
+convenience.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM.
+
+From "Le grant Kalendrier compost des Bergiers"
+(N. le Rouge, Troyes, 1529).
+
+(Reproduced from a modern broadside published
+by Mr. F. Sidgwick.)]
+
+|141| Late examples of French Christmas mysteries are the so-called
+"comedies" of the Nativity, Adoration of the Kings, Massacre of the
+Innocents, and Flight into Egypt contained in the "Marguerites"
+(published in 1547) of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, sister of François
+I. Intermingled with the traditional figures treated more or less in the
+traditional way are personified abstractions like Philosophy,
+Tribulation, Inspiration, Divine Intelligence, and Contemplation, which
+largely rob the plays of dramatic effect. There is some true poetry in
+these pieces, but too much theological learning and too little
+simplicity, and in one place the ideas of Calvin seem to show
+themselves.{20}
+
+The French mystery began to fall into decay about the middle of the
+sixteenth century. It was attacked on every side: by the new poets of the
+Renaissance, who preferred classical to Christian subjects; by the
+Protestants, who deemed the religious drama a trifling with the solemn
+truths of Scripture; and even by the Catholic clergy, who, roused to
+greater strictness by the challenge of Protestantism, found the comic
+elements in the plays offensive and dangerous, and perhaps feared that
+too great familiarity with the Bible as represented in the mysteries
+might lead the people into heresy.{21} Yet we hear occasionally of
+Christmas dramas in France in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
+centuries. In the neighbourhood of Nantes, for instance, a play of the
+Nativity by Claude Macée, hermit, probably written in the seventeenth
+century, was commonly performed in the first half of the nineteenth.{22}
+At Clermont the adoration of the shepherds was still performed in 1718,
+and some kind of representation of the scene continued in the diocese of
+Cambrai until 1834, when it was forbidden by the bishop. In the south,
+especially at Marseilles, "pastorals" were played towards the end of the
+nineteenth century; they had, however, largely lost their sacred
+character, and had become a kind of review of the events of the
+year.{23} At Dinan, in Brittany, some sort of Herod play was performed,
+though it was dying out, in 1886. It was acted by young men on the
+Epiphany, and there was an "innocent" whose throat they pretended to cut
+with a wooden sword.{24}
+
+|142| An interesting summary of a very full Nativity play performed in
+the churches of Upper Gascony on Christmas Eve is given by Countess
+Martinengo-Cesaresco.{25} It ranges from the arrival of Joseph and Mary
+at Bethlehem to the Flight into Egypt and the Murder of the Innocents,
+but perhaps the most interesting parts are the shepherd scenes. After the
+message of the angel--a child in a surplice, with wings fastened to his
+shoulders, seated on a chair drawn up to the ceiling and supported by
+ropes--the shepherds leave the church, the whole of which is now regarded
+as the stable of the Divine Birth. They knock for admittance, and Joseph,
+regretting that the chamber is "so badly lighted," lets them in. They
+fall down before the manger, and so do the shepherdesses, who "deposit on
+the altar steps a banner covered with flowers and greenery, from which
+hang strings of small birds, apples, nuts, chestnuts, and other fruits.
+It is their Christmas offering to the curé; the shepherds have already
+placed a whole sheep before the altar, in a like spirit." The play is not
+mere dumb-show, but has a full libretto.
+
+A rather similar piece of dramatic ceremonial is described by Barthélemy
+in his edition of Durandus,{26} as customary in the eighteenth century
+at La Villeneuve-en-Chevrie, near Mantes. At the Midnight Mass a _crèche_
+with a wax figure of the Holy Child was placed in the choir, with tapers
+burning about it. After the "Te Deum" had been sung, the celebrant,
+accompanied by his attendants, censed the _crèche_, to the sound of
+violins, double-basses, and other instruments. A shepherd then prostrated
+himself before the crib, holding a sheep with a sort of little saddle
+bearing sixteen lighted candles. He was followed by two shepherdesses in
+white with distaffs and tapers. A second shepherd, between two
+shepherdesses, carried a laurel branch, to which were fastened oranges,
+lemons, biscuits, and sweetmeats. Two others brought great _pains-bénits_
+and lighted candles; then came four shepherdesses, who made their
+adoration, and lastly twenty-six more shepherds, two by two, bearing in
+one hand a candle and in the other a festooned crook. The same ceremonial
+was practised at the Offertory and after the close of the Mass. All was
+done, it is said, with such piety and edification that |143| St. Luke's
+words about the Bethlehem shepherds were true of these French
+swains--they "returned glorifying and praising God for all the things
+they had heard and seen."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In German there remain very few Christmas plays earlier than the
+fifteenth century. Later periods, however, have produced a multitude, and
+dramatic performances at Christmas have continued down to quite modern
+times in German-speaking parts.
+
+At Oberufer near Pressburg--a German Protestant village in Hungary--some
+fifty years ago, a Christmas play was performed under the direction of an
+old farmer, whose office as instructor had descended from father to son.
+The play took place at intervals of from three to ten years and was acted
+on all Sundays and festivals from Advent to the Epiphany. Great care was
+taken to ensure the strictest piety and morality in the actors, and no
+secular music was allowed in the place during the season for the
+performances. The practices began as early as October. On the first
+Sunday in Advent there was a solemn procession to the hall hired for the
+play. First went a man bearing a gigantic star--he was called the "Master
+Singer"--and another carrying a Christmas-tree decked with ribbons and
+apples; then came all the actors, singing hymns. There was no scenery and
+no theatrical apparatus beyond a straw-seated chair and a wooden stool.
+When the first was used, the scene was understood to be Jerusalem, when
+the second, Bethlehem. The Christmas drama, immediately preceded by an
+Adam and Eve play, and succeeded by a Shrove Tuesday one, followed
+mediaeval lines, and included the wanderings of Joseph and Mary round the
+inns of Bethlehem, the angelic tidings to the shepherds, their visit to
+the manger, the adoration of the Three Kings, and various Herod scenes.
+Protestant influence was shown by the introduction of Luther's "Vom
+Himmel hoch," but the general character was very much that of the old
+mysteries, and the dialogue was full of quaint naïveté.{27}
+
+At Brixlegg, in Tyrol, as late as 1872 a long Christmas play was acted
+under Catholic auspices; some of its dialogue was in |144| the Tyrolese
+_patois_ and racy and humorous, other parts, and particularly the
+speeches of Mary and Joseph--out of respect for these holy
+personages--had been rewritten in the eighteenth century in a very
+stilted and undramatic style. Some simple shepherd plays are said to be
+still presented in the churches of the Saxon Erzgebirge.{28}
+
+The German language is perhaps richer in real Christmas plays, as
+distinguished from Nativity and Epiphany episodes in great cosmic cycles,
+than any other. There are some examples in mediaeval manuscripts, but the
+most interesting are shorter pieces performed in country places in
+comparatively recent times, and probably largely traditional in
+substance. Christianity by the fourteenth century had at last gained a
+real hold upon the German people, or perhaps one should rather say the
+German people had laid a strong hold upon Christianity, moulding it into
+something very human and concrete, materialistic often, yet not without
+spiritual significance. In cradle-rocking and religious dancing at
+Christmas the instincts of a lusty, kindly race expressed themselves, and
+the same character is shown in the short popular Christmas dramas
+collected by Weinhold and others.{29} Many of the little pieces--some
+are rather duets than plays--were sung or acted in church or by the
+fireside in the nineteenth century, and perhaps even now may linger in
+remote places. They are in dialect, and the rusticity of their language
+harmonizes well with their naïve, homely sentiment. In them we behold the
+scenes of Bethlehem as realized by peasants, and their mixture of rough
+humour and tender feeling is thoroughly in keeping with the subject.
+
+One is made to feel very vividly the amazement of the shepherds at the
+wondrous and sudden apparition of the angels:--
+
+   "_Riepl._ Woas is das für a Getümmel,
+             I versteh mi nit in d'Welt.
+    _Jörgl._ Is den heunt eingfalln der Himmel,
+             Fleugn d'Engeln auf unserm Feld?
+    _R._     Thuen Sprüng macha
+    _J._     Von oben acha! |145|
+    _R._     I turft das Ding nit noacha thoan,
+             that mir brechn Hals und Boan."[74]{30}
+
+The cold is keenly brought home to us when they come to the manger:--
+
+   "_J._     Mei Kind, kanst kei Herberg finden?
+             Muest so viel Frost leiden schoan.
+    _R._     Ligst du under kalden Windeln!
+             Lägts ihm doch a Gwandl oan!
+    _J._     Machts ihm d'Füess ein,
+             Hüllts in zue fein!"[75]{31}
+
+Very homely are their presents to the Child:--
+
+   "Ein drei Eier und ein Butter
+    Bringen wir auch, nemt es an!
+    Einen Han zu einer Suppen,
+    Wanns die Mutter kochen kann.
+    Giessts ein Schmalz drein, wirds wol guet sein.
+    Weil wir sonsten gar nix han,
+    Sind wir selber arme Hirten,
+    Nemts den guten Willen an."[76]{32}
+
+One of the dialogues ends with a curious piece of ordinary human
+kindliness, as if the Divine nature of the Infant were quite forgotten
+for the moment:--
+
+   "_J._     Bleib halt fein gsund, mein kloans Liebl,
+             Wannst woas brauchst, so komm ze mir.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _J._     Pfüet di Gôt halt! |146|
+    _R._     Wär fein gross bald!
+    _J._     Kannst in mein Dienst stehen ein,
+             Wann darzu wirst gross gnue sein."[77]{33}
+
+Far more interesting in their realism and naturalness are these little
+plays of the common folk than the elaborate Christmas dramas of more
+learned German writers, Catholic and Lutheran, who in the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries became increasingly stilted and bombastic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Italian religious drama{34} evolved somewhat differently from that
+of the northern countries. The later thirteenth century saw the outbreak
+of the fanaticism of the Flagellants or _Battuti_, vast crowds of people
+of all classes who went in procession from church to church, from city to
+city, scourging their naked bodies in terror and repentance till the
+blood flowed. When the wild enthusiasm of this movement subsided it left
+enduring traces in the foundation of lay communities throughout the land,
+continuing in a more sober way the penitential practices of the
+Flagellants. One of their aids to devotion was the singing or reciting of
+vernacular poetry, less formal than the Latin hymns of the liturgy, and
+known as _laude_.[78] These _laude_ developed a more or less dramatic
+form, which gained the name of _divozioni_.[79] They were, perhaps
+(though not certainly, for there seems to have been another tradition
+derived from the regular liturgical drama), the source from which sprang
+the gorgeously produced _sacre rappresentazioni_ of the fifteenth
+century.
+
+The _sacre rappresentazioni_ corresponded, though with considerable
+differences, to the miracle-plays of England and France. Their great
+period was the fifty years from 1470 to 1520, and |147| they were
+performed, like the _divozioni_, by confraternities of religious laymen.
+The actors were boys belonging to the brotherhoods, and the plays were
+intended to be edifying for youth. They are more refined than the
+northern religious dramas, but only too often fall into insipidity.
+
+Among the texts given by D'Ancona in his collection of _sacre
+rappresentazioni_ is a Tuscan "Natività,"{36} opening with a pastoral
+scene resembling those in the northern mysteries, but far less vigorous.
+It cannot compare, for character and humour, with the Towneley plays.
+Still the shepherds, whose names are Bobi del Farucchio, Nencio di
+Pucchio, Randello, Nencietto, Giordano, and Falconcello, are at least
+meant to have a certain rusticity, as they feast on bread and cheese and
+wine, play to the Saviour on bagpipe or whistle, and offer humble
+presents like apples and cheese. The scenes which follow, the coming of
+the Magi and the Murder of the Innocents, are not intrinsically of great
+interest.
+
+It is possible that this play may have been the spectacle performed in
+Florence in 1466, as recorded by Machiavelli, "to give men something to
+take away their thoughts from affairs of state." It "represented the
+coming of the three Magi Kings from the East, following the star which
+showed the Nativity of Christ, and it was of so great pomp and
+magnificence that it kept the whole city busy for several months in
+arranging and preparing it."{37}
+
+An earlier record of an Italian pageant of the Magi is this account by
+the chronicler Galvano Flamma of what took place at Milan in 1336:--
+
+    "There were three kings crowned, on great horses, ... and an
+    exceeding great train. And there was a golden star running through
+    the air, which went before these three kings, and they came to the
+    columns of San Lorenzo, where was King Herod in effigy, with the
+    scribes and wise men. And they were seen to ask King Herod where
+    Christ was born, and having turned over many books they answered,
+    that He should be born in the city of David distant five miles from
+    Jerusalem. And having heard this, those three kings, crowned with
+    golden crowns, holding in their hands golden cups with gold, incense,
+    |148| and myrrh, came to the church of Sant' Eustorgio, the star
+    preceding them through the air, ... and a wonderful train, with
+    resounding trumpets and horns going before them, with apes, baboons,
+    and diverse kinds of animals, and a marvellous tumult of people.
+    There at the side of the high altar was a manger with ox and ass, and
+    in the manger was the little Christ in the arms of the Virgin Mother.
+    And those kings offered gifts unto Christ; then they were seen to
+    sleep, and a winged angel said to them that they should not return by
+    the region of San Lorenzo but by the Porta Romana; which also was
+    done. There was so great a concourse of the people and soldiers and
+    ladies and clerics that scarce anything like it was ever beheld. And
+    it was ordered that every year this festal show should be
+    performed."{38}
+
+How suggestive this is of the Magi pictures of the fifteenth century,
+with their gorgeous eastern monarchs and retinues of countless servants
+and strange animals. No other story in the New Testament gives such
+opportunity for pageantry as the Magi scene. All the wonder, richness,
+and romance of the East, all the splendour of western Renaissance princes
+could lawfully be introduced into the train of the Three Kings. With
+Gentile da Fabriano and Benozzo Gozzoli it has become a magnificent
+procession; there are trumpeters, pages, jesters, dwarfs, exotic
+beasts--all the motley, gorgeous retinue of the monarchs of the time,
+while the kings themselves are romantic figures in richest attire,
+velvet, brocade, wrought gold, and jewels. It may be that much of this
+splendour was suggested to the painters by dramatic spectacles which
+actually passed before their eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have already alluded to the Spanish "Mystery of the Magi Kings," a mere
+fragment, but of peculiar interest to the historian of the drama as one
+of the two earliest religious plays in a modern European language. Though
+plays are known to have been performed in Spain at Christmas and Easter
+in the Middle Ages,{39} we have no further texts until the very short
+"Representation of the Birth of Our Lord," by Gómez Manrique, Señor de
+Villazopeque (1412-91), acted at the convent at Calabazanos, of which the
+author's sister was Superior. The characters |149| introduced are the
+Virgin, St. Joseph, St. Gabriel, St. Michael, St. Raphael, another angel,
+and three shepherds.{40}
+
+Touched by the spirit of the Renaissance, and particularly by the
+influence of Virgil, is Juan del Encina of Salamanca (1469-1534), court
+poet to the Duke of Alba, and author of two Christmas eclogues.{41} The
+first introduces four shepherds who bear the names of the Evangelists,
+Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and are curiously mixed personages, their
+words being half what might be expected from the shepherds of Bethlehem
+and half sayings proper only to the authors of the Gospels. It ends with
+a _villancico_ or carol. The second eclogue is far more realistic, and
+indeed resembles the English and French pastoral scenes. The shepherds
+grumble about the weather--it has been raining for two months, the floods
+are terrible, and no fords or bridges are left; they talk of the death of
+a sacristan, a fine singer; and they play a game with chestnuts; then
+comes the angel--whom one of them calls a "smartly dressed lad" (_garzon
+repìcado_)--to tell them of the Birth, and they go to adore the Child,
+taking Him a kid, butter-cakes, eggs, and other presents.
+
+Infinitely more ambitious is "The Birth of Christ"{42} by the great Lope
+de Vega (1562-1635). It opens in Paradise, immediately after the
+Creation, and ends with the adoration of the Three Kings. Full of
+allegorical conceits and personified qualities, it will hardly please the
+taste of modern minds. Another work of Lope's, "The Shepherds of
+Bethlehem," a long pastoral in prose and verse, published in 1612,
+contains, amid many incongruities, some of the best of his shorter poems;
+one lullaby, sung by the Virgin in a palm-grove while her Child sleeps,
+has been thus translated by Ticknor:--
+
+   "Holy angels and blest,
+      Through these palms as ye sweep,
+    Hold their branches at rest,
+      For my babe is asleep.
+
+    And ye Bethlehem palm-trees,
+      As stormy winds rush |150|
+    In tempest and fury,
+      Your angry noise hush;
+    Move gently, move gently,
+      Restrain your wild sweep;
+    Hold your branches at rest,
+      My babe is asleep.
+
+    My babe all divine,
+      With earth's sorrows oppressed,
+    Seeks in slumber an instant
+      His grievings to rest;
+    He slumbers, he slumbers,
+      O, hush, then, and keep
+    Your branches all still,
+      My babe is asleep!"{43}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Apart from such modern revivals of the Christmas drama as Mr. Laurence
+Housman's "Bethlehem," Miss Buckton's "Eager Heart," Mrs. Percy Dearmer's
+"The Soul of the World," and similar experiments in Germany and France, a
+genuine tradition has lingered on in some parts of Europe into modern
+times. We have already noticed some French and German instances; to these
+may be added a few from other countries.
+
+In Naples there is no Christmas without the "Cantata dei pastori"; it is
+looked forward to no less than the Midnight Mass. Two or three theatres
+compete for the public favour in the performance of this play in rude
+verse. It begins with Adam and Eve and ends with the birth of Jesus and
+the adoration of the shepherds. Many devils are brought on the stage,
+their arms and legs laden with brass chains that rattle horribly. Awful
+are their names, Lucifero, Satanasso, Belfegor, Belzebù, &c. They not
+only tempt Adam and Eve, but annoy the Virgin and St. Joseph, until an
+angel comes and frightens them away. Two non-Biblical figures are
+introduced, Razzullo and Sarchiapone, who are tempted by devils and aided
+by angels.{44} In Sicily too the Christmas play still lingers under the
+name of _Pastorale_.{45}
+
+|151| A nineteenth-century Spanish survival of the "Stella" is
+described in Fernan Caballero's sketch, "La Noche de Navidad."{46} At
+the foot of the altar of the village church, according to this account,
+images of the Virgin and St. Joseph were placed, with the Holy Child
+between them, lying on straw. On either side knelt a small boy dressed as
+an angel. Solemnly there entered the church a number of men attired as
+shepherds, bearing their offerings to the Child; afterwards they danced
+with slow and dignified movements before the altar. The shepherds were
+followed by the richest men of the village dressed as the Magi Kings,
+mounted on horseback, and followed by their train. Before them went a
+shining star. On reaching the church they dismounted; the first,
+representing a majestic old man with white hair, offered incense to the
+Babe; the others, Caspar and Melchior, myrrh and gold respectively. This
+was done on the feast of the Epiphany.
+
+A remnant possibly of the "Stella" is to be found in a Christmas custom
+extremely widespread in Europe and surviving even in some Protestant
+lands--the carrying about of a star in memory of the Star of Bethlehem.
+It is generally borne by a company of boys, who sing some sort of carol,
+and expect a gift in return.
+
+The practice is--or was--found as far north as Sweden. All through the
+Christmas season the "star youths" go about from house to house. Three
+are dressed up as the Magi Kings, a fourth carries on a stick a paper
+lantern in the form of a six-pointed star, made to revolve and lighted by
+candles. There are also a Judas, who bears the purse for the collection,
+and, occasionally, a King Herod. A doggerel rhyme is sung, telling the
+story of the Nativity and offering good wishes.{47} In Norway and
+Denmark processions of a like character were formerly known.{48}
+
+In Normandy at Christmas children used to go singing through the village
+streets, carrying a lantern of coloured paper on a long osier rod.{49}
+At Pleudihen in Brittany three young men representing the Magi sang
+carols in the cottages, dressed in their holiday clothes covered with
+ribbons.{50}
+
+|152| In England there appears to be no trace of the custom, which is
+however found in Germany, Austria, Holland, Italy, Bohemia, Roumania,
+Poland, and Russia.{51}
+
+In Thuringia a curious carol used to be sung, telling how Herod tried to
+tempt the Wise Men--
+
+   "'Oh, good Wise Men, come in and dine;
+    I will give you both beer and wine,
+    And hay and straw to make your bed,
+    And nought of payment shall be said.'"
+
+But they answer:--
+
+   "'Oh, no! oh, no! we must away,
+    We seek a little Child to-day,
+    A little Child, a mighty King,
+    Him who created everything.'"{52}
+
+In Tyrol the "star-singing" is very much alive at the present day. In the
+Upper Innthal three boys in white robes, with blackened faces and gold
+paper crowns, go to every house on Epiphany Eve, one of them carrying a
+golden star on a pole. They sing a carol, half religious, half
+comic--almost a little drama--and are given money, cake, and drink. In
+the Ilsethal the boys come on Christmas Eve, and presents are given them
+by well-to-do people. In some parts there is but one singer, an old man
+with a white beard and a turban, who twirls a revolving star. A
+remarkable point about the Tyrolese star-singers is that before anything
+is given them they are told to stamp on the snowy fields outside the
+houses, in order to promote the growth of the crops in summer.{53}
+
+In Little Russia the "star" is made of pasteboard and has a transparent
+centre with a picture of Christ through which the light of a candle
+shines. One boy carries the star and another twirls the points.{54} In
+Roumania it is made of wood and adorned with frills and little bells. A
+representation of the "manger," illuminated from behind, forms the
+centre, and the star also shows pictures of Adam and Eve and angels.{55}
+
+|153| A curious traditional drama, in which pagan elements seem to have
+mingled with the Herod story, is still performed by the Roumanians during
+the Christmas festival. It is called in Wallachia "Vicleim" (from
+Bethlehem), in Moldavia and Transylvania "Irozi" (plural from _Irod_ =
+Herod). At least ten persons figure in it: "Emperor" Herod, an old
+grumbling monarch who speaks in harsh tones to his followers; an officer
+and two soldiers in Roman attire; the three Magi, in Oriental garb, a
+child, and "two comical figures--the _paiata_ (the clown) and the
+_mosul_, or old man, the former in harlequin accoutrement, the latter
+with a mask on his face, a long beard, a hunch on his back, and dressed
+in a sheepskin with the wool on the outside. The plot of the play is
+quite simple. The officer brings the news that three strange men have
+been caught, going to Bethlehem to adore the new-born Messiah; Herod
+orders them to be shown in: they enter singing in a choir. Long dialogues
+ensue between them and Herod, who at last orders them to be taken to
+prison. But then they address the Heavenly Father, and shout imprecations
+on Herod, invoking celestial punishment on him, at which unaccountable
+noises are heard, seeming to announce the fulfilment of the curse. Herod
+falters, begs the Wise Men's forgiveness, putting off his anger till more
+opportune times. The Wise Men retire.... Then a child is introduced, who
+goes on his knees before Herod, with his hands on his breast, asking
+pity. He gives clever answers to various questions and foretells the
+Christ's future career, at which Herod stabs him. The whole troupe now
+strikes up a tune of reproach to Herod, who falls on his knees in deep
+repentance." The play is sometimes performed by puppets instead of living
+actors.{56}
+
+Christmas plays performed by puppets are found in other countries too. In
+Poland "during the week between Christmas and New Year is shown the
+_Jaselki_ or manger, a travelling series of scenes from the life of
+Christ or even of modern peasants, a small travelling puppet-theatre,
+gorgeous with tinsel and candles, and something like our 'Punch and Judy'
+show. The market-place of Cracow, especially at night, is a very pretty
+spectacle, its sidewalks all lined with these glittering Jaselki."{57}
+In Madrid |154| at the Epiphany a puppet-play was common, in which the
+events of the Nativity and the Infancy were mimed by wooden figures,{58}
+and in Provence, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Christmas scenes were
+represented in the same way.{59}
+
+Last may be mentioned a curious Mexican mixture of religion and
+amusement, a sort of drama called the "Posadas," described by Madame
+Calderon de la Barca in her "Life in Mexico" (1843).{60} The custom was
+based upon the wanderings of the Virgin and St. Joseph in Bethlehem in
+search of repose. For eight days these wanderings of the holy pair to the
+different _posadas_ were represented. On Christmas Eve, says the
+narrator, "a lighted candle was put into the hand of each lady [this was
+at a sort of party], and a procession was formed, two by two, which
+marched all through the house ... the whole party singing the
+Litanies.... A group of little children, dressed as angels, joined the
+procession.... At last the procession drew up before a door, and a shower
+of fireworks was sent flying over our heads, I suppose to represent the
+descent of the angels; for a group of ladies appeared, dressed to
+represent the shepherds.... Then voices, supposed to be those of Mary and
+Joseph, struck up a hymn, in which they begged for admittance, saying
+that the night was cold and dark, that the wind blew hard, and that they
+prayed for a night's shelter. A chorus of voices from within refused
+admittance. Again those without entreated shelter, and at length declared
+that she at the door, who thus wandered in the night, and had not where
+to lay her head, was the Queen of Heaven! At this name the doors were
+thrown wide open, and the Holy Family entered singing. The scene within
+was very pretty: a _nacimiento_.... One of the angels held a waxen baby
+in her arms.... A padre took the baby from the angel and placed it in the
+cradle, and the _posada_ was completed. We then returned to the
+drawing-room--angels, shepherds, and all, and danced till
+supper-time."{60} Here the religious drama has sunk to little more than
+a "Society" game.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. MASACCIO
+
+(_Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum_)]
+
+|155|
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT
+
+
+Before we pass on to the pagan aspects of Christmas, let us gather up our
+thoughts in an attempt to realize the peculiar appeal of the Feast of the
+Nativity, as it has been felt in the past, as it is felt to-day even by
+moderns who have no belief in the historical truth of the story it
+commemorates.
+
+This appeal of Christmas seems to lie in the union of two modes of
+feeling which may be called the _carol spirit_ and the _mystical spirit_.
+The _carol spirit_--by this we may understand the simple, human
+joyousness, the tender and graceful imagination, the kindly, intimate
+affection, which have gathered round the cradle of the Christ Child. The
+folk-tune, the secular song adapted to a sacred theme--such is the carol.
+What a sense of kindliness, not of sentimentality, but of genuine human
+feeling, these old songs give us, as though the folk who first sang them
+were more truly comrades, more closely knit together than we under modern
+industrialism.
+
+One element in the carol spirit is the rustic note that finds its
+sanction as regards Christmas in St. Luke's story of the shepherds
+keeping watch over their flocks by night. One thinks of the stillness
+over the fields, of the hinds with their rough talk, "simply chatting in
+a rustic row," of the keen air, and the great burst of light and song
+that dazes their simple wits, of their journey to Bethlehem where "the
+heaven-born Child all meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies," of the ox
+and ass linking the beasts of the field to the Christmas adoration of
+mankind.[80]
+
+For many people, indeed, the charm of Christmas is inseparably associated
+with the country; it is lost in London--the city is too vast, too modern,
+too sophisticated. It is bound up with the thought of frosty fields, of
+bells heard far away, of bare trees |156| against the starlit sky, of
+carols sung not by trained choirs but by rustic folk with rough accent,
+irregular time, and tunes learnt by ear and not by book.
+
+Again, without the idea of winter half the charm of Christmas would be
+gone. Transplanted in the imagination of western Christendom from an
+undefined season in the hot East to Europe at midwinter, the Nativity
+scenes have taken on a new pathos with the thought of the bitter cold to
+which the great Little One lay exposed in the rough stable, with the
+contrast between the cold and darkness of the night and the fire of love
+veiled beneath that infant form. _Lux in tenebris_ is one of the
+strongest notes of Christmas: in the bleak midwinter a light shines
+through the darkness; when all is cold and gloom, the sky bursts into
+splendour, and in the dark cave is born the Light of the World.
+
+There is the idea of royalty too, with all it stands for of colour and
+magnificence, though not so much in literature as in painting is this
+side of the Christmas story represented. The Epiphany is the great
+opportunity for imaginative development of the regal idea. Then is seen
+the union of utter poverty with highest kingship; the monarchs of the
+East come to bow before the humble Infant for whom the world has found no
+room in the inn. How suggestive by their long, slow syllables are the
+Italian names of the Magi. Gasparre, Baldassarre, Melchiorre--we picture
+Oriental monarchs in robes mysteriously gorgeous, wrought with strange
+patterns, heavy with gold and precious stones. With slow processional
+motion they advance, bearing to the King of Kings their symbolic gifts,
+gold for His crowning, incense for His worship, myrrh for His mortality,
+and with them come the mystery, colour, and perfume of the East, the
+occult wisdom which bows itself before the revelation in the Child.
+
+Above all, as the foregoing pages have shown, it is the _childhood_ of
+the Redeemer that has won the heart of Europe for Christmas; it is the
+appeal to the parental instinct, the love for the tender, weak, helpless,
+yet all-potential babe, that has given the Church's festival its
+strongest hold. And this side of Christmas is penetrated often by the
+_mystical spirit_--that sense of the Infinite in the finite without which
+the highest human life is impossible.
+
+|157| The feeling for Christmas varies from mere delight in the Christ
+Child as a representative symbol on which to lavish affection, as a child
+delights in a doll, to the mystical philosophy of Eckhart, in whose
+Christmas sermons the Nativity is viewed as a type of the Birth of God in
+the depths of man's being. Yet even the least spiritual forms of the cult
+of the Child are seldom without some hint of the supersensual, the
+Infinite, and even in Eckhart there is a love of concrete symbolism.
+Christmas stands peculiarly for the sacramental principle that the
+outward and visible is a sign and shadow of the inward and spiritual. It
+means the seeing of common, earthly things shot through by the glory of
+the Infinite. "Its note," as has been said of a stage of the mystic
+consciousness, the Illuminative Way, "is sacramental not ascetic. It
+entails ... the discovery of the Perfect One ablaze in the Many, not the
+forsaking of the Many in order to find the One ... an ineffable radiance,
+a beauty and a reality never before suspected, are perceived by a sort of
+clairvoyance shining in the meanest things."{1} Christmas is the
+festival of the Divine Immanence, and it is natural that it should have
+been beloved by the saint and mystic whose life was the supreme
+manifestation of the _Via Illuminativa_, Francis of Assisi.
+
+Christmas is the most human and lovable of the Church's feasts. Easter
+and Ascensiontide speak of the rising and exaltation of a glorious being,
+clothed in a spiritual body refined beyond all comparison with our
+natural flesh; Whitsuntide tells of the coming of a mysterious,
+intangible Power--like the wind, we cannot tell whence It cometh and
+whither It goeth; Trinity offers for contemplation an ineffable paradox
+of Pure Being. But the God of Christmas is no ethereal form, no mere
+spiritual essence, but a very human child, feeling the cold and the
+roughness of the straw, needing to be warmed and fed and cherished.
+Christmas is the festival of the natural body, of this world; it means
+the consecration of the ordinary things of life, affection and
+comradeship, eating and drinking and merrymaking; and in some degree the
+memory of the Incarnation has been able to blend with the pagan joyance
+of the New Year.
+
+|158| |159|
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part II--Pagan Survivals
+
+|160| |161|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS
+
+
+    The Church and Superstition--Nature of Pagan Survivals--Racial
+    Origins--Roman Festivals of the _Saturnalia_ and Kalends--Was there a
+    Teutonic Midwinter Festival?--The Teutonic, Celtic, and Slav New
+    Year--Customs attracted to Christmas or January 1--The Winter Cycle
+    of Festivals--_Rationale_ of Festival Ritual: (_a_) Sacrifice and
+    Sacrament, (_b_) the Cult of the Dead, (_c_) Omens and Charms for the
+    New Year--Compromise in the Later Middle Ages--The Puritans and
+    Christmas--Decay of Old Traditions.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA.
+
+An Asiatic example of animal masks.]
+
+We have now to leave the commemoration of the Nativity of Christ, and to
+turn to the other side of Christmas--its many traditional observances
+which, though sometimes coloured by Christianity, have nothing to do with
+the Birth of the Redeemer. This class of customs has often, especially in
+the first millennium of our era, been the object of condemnations by
+ecclesiastics, and represents the old paganism which Christianity failed
+to extinguish. The Church has played a double part, a part of sheer
+antagonism, forcing heathen customs into the shade, into a more or less
+surreptitious and unprogressive life, and a part of adaptation, baptizing
+them into Christ, giving them a Christian name and interpretation, and
+often modifying their form. The general effect of Christianity upon pagan
+usages is well suggested by Dr. Karl Pearson:--
+
+    "What the missionary could he repressed, the more as his church grew
+    in strength; what he could not repress he adopted or simply left
+    unregarded.... What the missionary tried to repress became mediaeval
+    witchcraft; what he judiciously disregarded survives to this |162|
+    day in peasant weddings and in the folk-festivals at the great
+    changes of season."{1}
+
+We find then many pagan practices concealed beneath a superficial
+Christianity--often under the mantle of some saint--but side by side with
+these are many usages never Christianized even in appearance, and
+obviously identical with heathen customs against which the Church
+thundered in the days of her youth. Grown old and tolerant--except of
+novelties--she has long since ceased to attack them, and they have
+themselves mostly lost all definite religious meaning. As the old pagan
+faith decayed, they tended to become in a literal sense "superstition,"
+something standing over, like shells from which the living occupant has
+gone. They are now often mere "survivals" in the technical folk-lore
+sense, pieces of custom separated from the beliefs that once gave them
+meaning, performed only because in a vague sort of way they are supposed
+to bring good luck. In many cases those who practise them would be quite
+unable to explain how or why they work for good.
+
+Mental inertia, the instinct to do and believe what has always been done
+and believed, has sometimes preserved the animating faith as well as the
+external form of these practices, but often all serious significance has
+departed. What was once religious or magical ritual, upon the due
+observance of which the welfare of the community was believed to depend,
+has become mere pageantry and amusement, often a mere children's
+game.{2}
+
+Sometimes the spirit of a later age has worked upon these pagan customs,
+revivifying and transforming them, giving them charm. Often, however, one
+does not find in them the poetry, the warm humanity, the humour, which
+mark the creations of popular Catholicism. They are fossils and their
+interest is that of the fossil: they are records of a vanished world and
+help us to an imaginative reconstruction of it. But further, just as on a
+stratum of rock rich in fossils there may be fair meadows and gardens and
+groves, depending for their life on the denudation of the rock beneath,
+so have these ancient religious products largely supplied the soil in
+which more spiritual and more |163| beautiful things have flourished.
+Amid these, as has been well said, "they still emerge, unchanged and
+unchanging, like the quaint outcrops of some ancient rock formation amid
+rich vegetation and fragrant flowers."{3}
+
+The survivals of pagan religion at Christian festivals relate not so much
+to the worship of definite divinities--against this the missionaries made
+their most determined efforts, and the names of the old gods have
+practically disappeared--as to cults which preceded the development of
+anthropomorphic gods with names and attributes. These cults, paid to less
+personally conceived spirits, were of older standing and no doubt had
+deeper roots in the popular mind. Fundamentally associated with
+agricultural and pastoral life, they have in many cases been preserved by
+the most conservative element in the population, the peasantry.
+
+Many of the customs we shall meet with are magical, rather than religious
+in the proper sense; they are not directed to the conciliation of
+spiritual beings, but spring from primitive man's belief "that in order
+to produce the great phenomena of nature on which his life depended he
+had only to imitate them."{4} Even when they have a definitely religious
+character, and are connected with some spirit, magical elements are often
+found in them.
+
+Before we consider these customs in detail it will be necessary to survey
+the pagan festivals briefly alluded to in Chapter I., to note the various
+ideas and practices that characterized them, and to study the attitude of
+the Church towards survivals of such practices while the conversion of
+Europe was in progress, and also during the Middle Ages.
+
+The development of religious custom and belief in Europe is a matter of
+such vast complexity that I cannot in a book of this kind attempt more
+than the roughest outline of the probable origins of the observances,
+purely pagan or half-Christianized, clustering round Christmas. It is
+difficult, in the present state of knowledge, to discern clearly the
+contributions of different peoples to the traditional customs of Europe,
+and even, in many cases, to say whether a given custom is "Aryan" or
+pre-Aryan. The proportion of the Aryan military aristocracy to the
+peoples whom they conquered was not uniform in all countries, and |164|
+probably was often small. While the families of the conquerors succeeded
+in imposing their languages, it by no means necessarily follows that the
+folk-practices of countries now Aryan in speech came entirely or even
+chiefly from Aryan sources. Religious tradition has a marvellous power of
+persistence, and it must be remembered that the lands conquered by men of
+Aryan speech had been previously occupied for immense periods.{5}
+Similarly, in countries like our own, which have been successively
+invaded by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, it is often
+extraordinarily hard to say even to what _national_ source a given custom
+should be assigned.
+
+It is but tentatively and with uncertain hands that scholars are trying
+to separate the racial strains in the folk-traditions of Europe, and here
+I can hardly do more than point out three formative elements in Christian
+customs: the ecclesiastical, the classical (Greek and Roman), and the
+barbarian, taking the last broadly and without a minute racial analysis.
+So far, indeed, as ritual, apart from mythology, is concerned, there
+seems to be a broad common ground of tradition among the Aryan-speaking
+peoples. How far this is due to a common derivation we need not here
+attempt to decide. The folk-lore of the whole world, it is to be noted,
+"reveals for the same stages of civilization a wonderful uniformity and
+homogeneity.... This uniformity is not, however, due to necessary
+uniformity of origin, but to a great extent to the fact that it
+represents the state of equilibrium arrived at between minds at a certain
+level and their environment."{6}
+
+The scientific study of primitive religion is still almost in its
+infancy, and a large amount of conjecture must necessarily enter into any
+explanations of popular ritual that can be offered. In attempting to
+account for Christmas customs we must be mindful, therefore, of the
+tentative nature of the theories put forward. Again, it is important to
+remember that ritual practices are far more enduring than the
+explanations given to them. "The antique religions," to quote the words
+of Robertson Smith, "had for the most part no creed; they consisted
+entirely of institutions and practices ... as a rule we find that while
+the practice was |165| rigorously fixed, the meaning attached to it was
+extremely vague, and the same rite was explained by different people in
+different ways."{7}
+
+Thus if we can arrive at the significance of a rite at a given period, it
+by no means follows that those who began it meant the same thing. At the
+time of the conflict of the heathen religions with Christianity elaborate
+structures of mythology had grown up around their traditional ceremonial,
+assigning to it meanings that had often little to do with its original
+purpose. Often, too, when the purpose was changed, new ceremonies were
+added, so that a rite may look very unlike what it was at first.
+
+With these cautions and reservations we must now try to trace the
+connection between present-day or recent goings-on about Christmas-time
+and the festival practices of pre-Christian Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christmas, as we saw in Chapter I., has taken the date of the _Natalis
+Invicti_. We need not linger over this feast, for it was not attended by
+folk-customs, and there is nothing to connect it with modern survivals.
+The Roman festivals that really count for our present purpose are the
+Kalends of January and, probably, the _Saturnalia_. The influence of the
+Kalends is strongest naturally in the Latin countries, but is found also
+all over Europe. The influence of the _Saturnalia_ is less certain; the
+festival is not mentioned in ecclesiastical condemnations after the
+institution of Christmas, and possibly its popularity was not so
+widespread as that of the Kalends. There are, however, some curiously
+interesting Christmas parallels to its usages.
+
+The strictly religious feast of the _Saturnalia_{8} was held on December
+17, but the festal customs were kept up for seven days, thus lasting
+until the day before our Christmas Eve. Among them was a fair called the
+_sigillariorum celebritas_, for the sale of little images of clay or
+paste which were given away as presents.[81] Candles seem also to have
+been given away, perhaps |166| as symbols of, or even charms to ensure,
+the return of the sun's power after the solstice. The most remarkable and
+typical feature, however, of the _Saturnalia_ was the mingling of all
+classes in a common jollity. Something of the character of the
+celebration (in a Hellenized form) may be gathered from the "Cronia" or
+"Saturnalia" of Lucian, a dialogue between Cronus or Saturn and his
+priest. We learn from it that the festivities were marked by "drinking
+and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and
+feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an
+occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water," and that slaves had
+licence to revile their lords.{9}
+
+The spirit of the season may be judged from the legislation which Lucian
+attributes to Cronosolon, priest and prophet of Cronus, much as a modern
+writer might make Father Christmas or Santa Klaus lay down rules for the
+due observance of Yule. Here are some of the laws:--
+
+    "_All business, be it public or private, is forbidden during the
+    feast days, save such as tends to sport and solace and delight. Let
+    none follow their avocations saving cooks and bakers._
+
+    _All men shall be equal, slave and free, rich and poor, one with
+    another._
+
+    _Anger, resentment, threats, are contrary to law._
+
+    _No discourse shall be either composed or delivered, except it be
+    witty and lusty, conducing to mirth and jollity._"
+
+There follow directions as to the sending of presents of money, clothing,
+or vessels, by rich men to poor friends, and as to poor men's gifts in
+return. If the poor man have learning, his return gift is to be "an
+ancient book, but of good omen and festive humour, or a writing of his
+own after his ability.... For the unlearned, let him send a garland or
+grains of frankincense." The "Cronosolon" closes with "Laws of the
+Board," of which the following are a few:--
+
+    "_Every man shall take place as chance may direct; dignities and
+    birth and wealth shall give no precedence._ |167|
+
+    _All shall be served with the same wine.... Every man's
+    portion of meat shall be alike._
+
+    _When the rich man shall feast his slaves, let his friends serve with
+    him._"{11}
+
+Over the whole festival brooded the thought of a golden age in the
+distant past, when Saturn ruled, a just and kindly monarch, when all men
+were good and all men were happy.
+
+A striking feature of the _Saturnalia_ was the choosing by lot of a mock
+king, to preside over the revels. His word was law, and he was able to
+lay ridiculous commands upon the guests; "one," says Lucian, "must shout
+out a libel on himself, another dance naked, or pick up the flute-girl
+and carry her thrice round the house."{12} This king may have been
+originally the representative of the god Saturn himself. In the days of
+the classical writers he is a mere "Lord of Misrule," but Dr. Frazer has
+propounded the very interesting theory that this time of privilege and
+gaiety was once but the prelude to a grim sacrifice in which he had to
+die in the character of the god, giving his life for the world.{13} Dr.
+Frazer's theory, dependent for its evidence upon the narrative of the
+martyrdom of a fourth-century saint, Dasius by name, has been keenly
+criticized by Dr. Warde Fowler. He holds that there is nothing whatever
+to show that the "Saturn" who in the fourth century, according to the
+story, was sacrificed by soldiers on the Danube, had anything to do with
+the customs of ancient Rome.{14} Still, in whatever way the king of the
+_Saturnalia_ may be explained, it is interesting to note his existence
+and compare him with the merry monarchs whom we shall meet at Christmas
+and Twelfth Night.
+
+How far the Saturnalian customs in general were of old Latin origin it is
+difficult to say; the name Saturnus (connected with the root of _serere_,
+to sow) and the date point to a real Roman festival of the sowing of the
+crops, but this was heavily overlaid with Greek ideas and practice.{15}
+It is especially important to bear this in mind in considering Lucian's
+statements.
+
+The same is true of the festival of the January Kalends, a few days after
+the _Saturnalia_. On January 1, the Roman New |168| Year's Day, the new
+consuls were inducted into office, and for at least three days high
+festival was kept. The houses were decorated with lights and
+greenery--these, we shall find, may be partly responsible for the modern
+Christmas-tree. As at the _Saturnalia_ masters drank and gambled with
+slaves. _Vota_, or solemn wishes of prosperity for the Emperor during the
+New Year, were customary, and the people and the Senate were even
+expected to present gifts of money to him. The Emperor Caligula excited
+much disgust by publishing an edict requiring these gifts and by standing
+in the porch of his palace to receive them in person. Such gifts, not
+only presented to the Emperor, but frequently exchanged between private
+persons, were called _strenae_, a name still surviving in the French
+_étrennes_ (New Year's presents).{16}
+
+An interesting and very full account of the Kalends celebrations is given
+in two discourses of Libanius, the famous Greek sophist of the fourth
+century:--
+
+    "The festival of the Kalends," he says, "is celebrated everywhere as
+    far as the limits of the Roman Empire extend.... Everywhere may be
+    seen carousals and well-laden tables; luxurious abundance is found in
+    the houses of the rich, but also in the houses of the poor better
+    food than usual is put upon the table. The impulse to spend seizes
+    everyone. He who the whole year through has taken pleasure in saving
+    and piling up his pence, becomes suddenly extravagant. He who
+    erstwhile was accustomed and preferred to live poorly, now at this
+    feast enjoys himself as much as his means will allow.... People are
+    not only generous towards themselves, but also towards their
+    fellow-men. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides....
+    The highroads and footpaths are covered with whole processions of
+    laden men and beasts.... As the thousand flowers which burst forth
+    everywhere are the adornment of Spring, so are the thousand presents
+    poured out on all sides, the decoration of the Kalends feast. It may
+    justly be said that it is the fairest time of the year.... The
+    Kalends festival banishes all that is connected with toil, and allows
+    men to give themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment. From the minds of
+    young people it removes two kinds of dread: the dread of the
+    schoolmaster and the dread of the stern pedagogue. The slave also it
+    allows, so far as possible, to breathe the air of freedom.... |169|
+    Another great quality of the festival is that it teaches men not to
+    hold too fast to their money, but to part with it and let it pass
+    into other hands."{17}
+
+The resemblances here to modern Christmas customs are very striking. In
+another discourse Libanius speaks of processions on the Eve of the
+festival. Few people, he says, go to bed; most go about the streets with
+singing and leaping and all sorts of mockery. The severest moralist
+utters no blame on this occasion. When morning begins to dawn they
+decorate their houses with laurels and other greenery, and at daybreak
+may go to bed to sleep off their intoxication, for many deem it necessary
+at this feast to follow the flowing bowl. On the 1st of January money is
+distributed to the populace; on the 2nd no more presents are given: it is
+customary to stay at home playing dice, masters and slaves together. On
+the 3rd there is racing; on the 4th the festivities begin to decline, but
+they are not altogether over on the 5th.{18}
+
+Another feature of the Kalends, recorded not in the pages of classical
+writers but in ecclesiastical condemnations, was the custom of dressing
+up in the hides of animals, in women's clothes, and in masks of various
+kinds.{19} Dr. Tille{20} regards this as Italian in origin, but it
+seems likely that it was a native custom in Greece, Gaul, Germany, and
+other countries conquered by the Romans. In Greece the skin-clad mummers
+may have belonged to the winter festivals of Dionysus supplanted by the
+_Kalendae_.{21}
+
+The Church's denunciations of pagan festal practices in the winter season
+are mainly directed against the Kalends celebrations, and show into how
+many regions the keeping of the feast had spread. Complaints of its
+continued observance abound in the writings of churchmen and the decrees
+of councils. In the second volume of his "Mediaeval Stage"{22} Mr.
+Chambers has made an interesting collection of forty excerpts from such
+denunciations, ranging in date from the fourth century to the eleventh,
+and coming from Spain, Italy, Antioch, northern Africa, Constantinople,
+Germany, England, and various districts of what is now France.
+
+|170| As a specimen I may translate a passage describing at some length
+the practices condemned. It is from a sermon often ascribed to St.
+Augustine of Hippo, but probably composed in the sixth century, very
+likely by Caesarius of Arles in southern Gaul:--
+
+    "On those days," says the preacher, speaking of the Kalends of
+    January, "the heathen, reversing the order of all things, dress
+    themselves up in indecent deformities.... These miserable men, and
+    what is worse, some who have been baptized, put on counterfeit forms
+    and monstrous faces, at which one should rather be ashamed and sad.
+    For what reasonable man would believe that any men in their senses
+    would by making a stag (_cervulum_) turn themselves into the
+    appearance of animals? Some are clothed in the hides of cattle;
+    others put on the heads of beasts, rejoicing and exulting that they
+    have so transformed themselves into the shapes of animals that they
+    no longer appear to be men.... How vile, further, it is that those
+    who have been born men are clothed in women's dresses, and by the
+    vilest change effeminate their manly strength by taking on the forms
+    of girls, blushing not to clothe their warlike arms in women's
+    garments; they have bearded faces, and yet they wish to appear
+    women.... There are some who on the Kalends of January practise
+    auguries, and do not allow fire out of their houses or any other
+    favour to anyone who asks. Also they both receive and give diabolical
+    presents (_strenas_). Some country people, moreover, lay tables with
+    plenty of things necessary for eating ... thinking that thus the
+    Kalends of January will be a warranty that all through the year their
+    feasting will be in like measure abundant. Now as for them who on
+    those days observe any heathen customs, it is to be feared that the
+    name of Christian will avail them nought. And therefore our holy
+    fathers of old, considering that the majority of men on those days
+    became slaves to gluttony and riotous living and raved in drunkenness
+    and impious dancing, determined for the whole world that throughout
+    the Churches a public fast should be proclaimed.... Let us therefore
+    fast, beloved brethren, on those days.... For he who on the Kalends
+    shows any civility to foolish men who are wantonly sporting, is
+    undoubtedly a partaker of their sin."{23}
+
+There are several points to be noted here. First, the zeal of the Church
+against the Kalends celebrations as impious relics of |171| heathenism:
+to root them out she even made the first three days of the year a solemn
+fast with litanies.{24} Next, the particular offences should be
+observed. These are: first, the dressing up of men in the hides of
+animals and the clothes of women; next, the New Year auguries and the
+superstition about fire, the giving of presents, and the laying of tables
+with good things; and last, drunkenness and riot in general. All these we
+shall find fully represented in modern Christmas customs.
+
+That Roman customs either spread to Germany, or were paralleled there, is
+shown by a curious letter written in 742 by St. Boniface to Pope
+Zacharias. The saint complained that certain Alamanni, Bavarians, and
+Franks refused to give up various heathen practices because they had seen
+such things done in the sacred city of Rome, close to St. Peter's, and,
+as they deemed, with the sanction of the clergy. On New Year's Eve, it
+was alleged, processions went through the streets of Rome, with impious
+songs and heathen cries; tables of fortune were set up, and at that time
+no one would lend fire or iron or any other article to his neighbour. The
+Pope replied that these things were odious to him, and should be so to
+all Christians; and next year all such practices at the January Kalends
+were formally forbidden by the Council of Rome.{25}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So much for Roman customs; if indeed such practices as beast-masking are
+Roman, and not derived from the religion of peoples conquered by the
+imperial legions. We must now turn to the winter festivals of the
+barbarians with whom the Church began to come into contact soon after the
+establishment of Christmas.
+
+Much attention has been bestowed upon a supposed midwinter festival of
+the ancient Germans. In the mid-nineteenth century it was customary to
+speak of Christmas and the Twelve Nights as a continuation of the holy
+season kept by our forefathers at the winter solstice. The festive fires
+of Christmas were regarded as symbols of the sun, who then began his
+upward journey in the heavens, while the name Yule was traced back to the
+Anglo-Saxon word _hwéol_ (wheel), and connected with the circular |172|
+course of the sun through the wheeling-points of the solstices and
+equinoxes. More recent research, however, has thrown the gravest doubts
+upon the existence of any Teutonic festival at the winter solstice.[82]
+It appears from philology and the study of surviving customs that the
+Teutonic peoples had no knowledge of the solstices and equinoxes, and
+until the introduction of the Roman Calendar divided their year not into
+four parts but into two, three, and six, holding their New Year's Day
+with its attendant festivities not at the end of December or beginning of
+January, but towards the middle of November. At that time in Central
+Europe the first snowfall usually occurred and the pastures were closed
+to the flocks. A great slaughter of cattle would then take place, it
+being impossible to keep the beasts in stall throughout the winter, and
+this time of slaughter would naturally be a season of feasting and
+sacrifice and religious observances.[83]{26}
+
+The Celtic year, like the Teutonic, appears to have begun in November
+with the feast of _Samhain_--a name that may mean either "summer-end" or
+"assembly." It appears to have been in origin a "pastoral and
+agricultural festival, which in time came to be looked upon as affording
+assistance to the powers of growth in their conflict with the powers of
+blight," and to have had many features in common with the Teutonic feast
+at the same season, for instance animal sacrifice, commemoration of the
+dead, and omens and charms for the New Year.{27}
+
+There is some reason also to believe that the New Year |173| festival
+of the Slavs took place in the autumn and that its usages have been
+transferred to the feast of the Nativity.{29} A description based on
+contemporary documents cannot be given of these barbarian festivals; we
+have, rather, to reconstruct them from survivals in popular custom. At
+the close of this book, when such relics have been studied, we may have
+gained some idea of what went on upon these pre-Christian holy-days. It
+is the Teutonic customs that have been most fully recorded and discussed
+by scholars, and these will loom largest in our review; at the same time
+Celtic and Slav practices will be considered, and we shall find that they
+often closely resemble those current in Teutonic lands.
+
+The customs of the old New Year feasts have frequently wandered from
+their original November date, and to this fact we owe whatever elements
+of northern paganism are to be found in Christmas. Some practices seem to
+have been put forward to Michaelmas; one side of the festivals, the cult
+of the dead, is represented especially by All Saints' and All Souls' days
+(November 1 and 2). St. Martin's Day (November 11) probably marks as
+nearly as possible the old Teutonic date, and is still in Germany an
+important folk-feast attended by many customs derived from the
+beginning-of-winter festival. Other practices are found strewn over
+various holy-days between Martinmas and Epiphany, and concentrated above
+all on the Church's feast of the Nativity and the Roman New Year's Day,
+January 1, both of which had naturally great power of attraction.{30}
+
+The progress of agriculture, as Dr. Tille points out,{31} tended to
+destroy the mid-November celebration. In the Carolingian period an
+improvement took place in the cultivation of meadows, and the increased
+quantity of hay made it possible to keep the animals fattening in stall,
+instead of slaughtering them as soon as the pastures were closed. Thus
+the killing-time, with its festivities, became later and later. St.
+Andrew's Day (November 30) and St. Nicholas's (December 6) may mark
+stages in its progress into the winter. In St. Nicholas's Day, indeed, we
+find a feast that closely resembles Martinmas, and seems to be the same
+folk-festival transferred to a later date. Again, as regards England we
+|174| must remember the difference between its climate and that of
+Central Europe. Mid-November would here not be a date beyond which
+pasturing was impossible, and thus the slaughter and feast held then by
+Angles and Saxons in their old German home would tend to be delayed.{32}
+
+Christmas, as will be gathered from the foregoing, cannot on its pagan
+side be separated from the folk-feasts of November and December. The
+meaning of the term will therefore here be so extended as to cover the
+whole period between All Saints' Day and Epiphany. That this is not too
+violent a proceeding will be seen later on.
+
+For the purposes of this book it seems best to treat the winter festivals
+calendarially, so to speak: to start at the beginning of November, and
+show them in procession, suggesting, as far as may be, the probable
+origins of the customs observed. Thus we may avoid the dismemberment
+caused by taking out certain practices from various festivals and
+grouping them under their probable origins, a method which would,
+moreover, be perilous in view of the very conjectural nature of the
+theories offered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before we pass to our procession of festivals, something must be said
+about the general nature and _rationale_ of the customs associated with
+them. For convenience these customs may be divided into three groups:--
+
+  I. _Sacrificial or Sacramental Practices._
+  II. _Customs connected with the Cult of the Dead and the Family Hearth._
+  III. _Omens and Charms for the New Year._
+
+Though these three classes overlap and it is sometimes difficult to place
+a given practice exclusively in one of them, they will form a useful
+framework for a brief account of the primitive ritual which survives at
+the winter festivals.
+
+
+I. SACRIFICIAL AND SACRAMENTAL PRACTICES.
+
+To most people, probably, the word "sacrifice" suggests an offering,
+something presented to a divinity in order to obtain his favour. Such
+seems to have been the meaning generally given to |175| sacrificial
+rites in Europe when Christianity came into conflict with paganism. It
+is, however, held by many scholars that the original purpose of sacrifice
+was sacramental--the partaking by the worshipper of the divine life,
+conceived of as present in the victim, rather than the offering of a gift
+to a divinity.{33}
+
+The whole subject of sacred animals is obscure, and in regard,
+especially, to totemism--defined by Dr. Frazer{34} as "belief in the
+kinship of certain families with certain species of animals" and
+practices based upon that belief--the most divergent views are held by
+scholars. The religious significance which some have seen in totemistic
+customs is denied by others, while there is much disagreement as to the
+probability of their having been widespread in Europe. Still, whatever
+may be the truth about totemism, there is much that points to the
+sometime existence in Europe of sacrifices that were not offerings, but
+solemn feasts of communion in the flesh and blood of a worshipful
+animal.{35} That the idea of sacrificial communion preceded the
+sacrifice-gift is suggested by the fact that in many customs which appear
+to be sacrificial survivals the body of the victim has some kind of
+sacramental efficacy; it conveys a blessing to that which is brought into
+contact with it. The actual eating and drinking of the flesh and blood is
+the most perfect mode of contact, but the same end seems to have been
+aimed at in such customs as the sprinkling of worshippers with blood, the
+carrying of the victim in procession from house to house, the burying of
+flesh in furrows to make the crops grow, and the wearing of hides, heads,
+or horns of sacrificed beasts.{36} We shall meet, during the Christmas
+season, with various practices that seem to have originated either in a
+sacrificial feast or in some such sacramental rites as have just been
+described. So peculiarly prominent are animal masks, apparently derived
+from hide-, head-, and horn-wearing, that we may dwell upon them a little
+at this point.
+
+We have already seen how much trouble the Kalends custom of beast-masking
+gave the ecclesiastics. Its probable origin is thus suggested by
+Robertson Smith:--
+
+    "It is ... appropriate that the worshipper should dress himself in
+    |176| the skin of a victim, and so, as it were, envelop himself in
+    its sanctity. To rude nations dress is not merely a physical comfort,
+    but a fixed part of social religion, a thing by which a man
+    constantly bears on his body the token of his religion, and which is
+    itself a charm and a means of divine protection.... When the dress of
+    sacrificial skin, which at once declared a man's religion and his
+    sacred kindred, ceased to be used in ordinary life, it was still
+    retained in holy and especially in piacular functions; ... examples
+    are afforded by the Dionysiac mysteries and other Greek rites, and by
+    almost every rude religion; while in later cults the old rite
+    survives at least in the religious use of animal masks."[84]{37}
+
+If we accept the animal-worship and sacrificial communion theory, many a
+Christmas custom will carry us back in thought to a stage of religion far
+earlier than the Greek and Roman classics or the Celtic and Teutonic
+mythology of the conversion period: we shall be taken back to a time
+before men had come to have anthropomorphic gods, when they were not
+conscious of their superiority to the beasts of the field, but regarded
+these beings, mysterious in their actions, extraordinary in their powers,
+as incarnations of potent spirits. At this stage of thought, it would
+seem, there were as yet no definite divinities with personal names and
+characters, but the world was full of spirits immanent in animal or plant
+or chosen human being, and able to pass from one incarnation to another.
+Or indeed it may be that animal sacrifice originated at a stage of
+religion before the idea of definite "spirits" had arisen, when man was
+conscious rather of a vague force like the Melanesian _mana_, in himself
+and in almost everything, and "constantly trembling on the verge of
+personality."{38} "_Mana_" better than "god" or "spirit" may express
+that with which the partaker in the communal feast originally sought
+contact. "When you sacrifice," to quote some words of Miss Jane Harrison,
+"you build as it were a bridge between your _mana_, your will, your
+desire, which is weak and impotent, and |177| that unseen outside
+_mana_ which you believe to be strong and efficacious. In the fruits of
+the earth which grow by some unseen power there is much _mana_; you want
+that _mana_. In the loud-roaring bull and the thunder is much _mana_; you
+want that _mana_. It would be well to get some, to eat a piece of that
+bull raw, but it is dangerous, not a thing to do unawares alone; so you
+consecrate the first-fruits, you sacrifice the bull and then in safety
+you--communicate."{39} "Sanctity"--the quality of awfulness and
+mystery--rather than divinity or personality, may have been what
+primitive man saw in the beasts and birds which he venerated in "their
+silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of their limited doings."{40}
+When we use the word "spirit" in connection with the pagan sacramental
+practices of Christmastide, it is well to bear in mind the possibility
+that at the origin of these customs there may have been no notion of
+communion with strictly personal beings, but rather some such _mana_ idea
+as has been suggested above.
+
+It is probable that animal-cults had their origin at a stage of human
+life preceding agriculture, when man lived not upon cultivated plants or
+tamed beasts, but upon roots and fruits and the products of the chase.
+Some scholars, indeed, hold that the domestication of animals for
+practical use was an outcome of the sacred, inviolable character of
+certain creatures: they may originally have been spared not for reasons
+of convenience but because it was deemed a crime to kill them--except
+upon certain solemn occasions--and may have become friendly towards man
+through living by his side.{41} On the other hand it is possible that
+totems were originally staple articles of food, that they were sacred
+because they were eaten with satisfaction, and that the very awe and
+respect attached to them because of their life-giving powers tended to
+remove them from common use and limit their consumption to rare
+ceremonial occasions.
+
+Closely akin to the worship of animals is that of plants, and especially
+trees, and there is much evidence pointing to sacramental cults in
+connection with the plant-world.{42} Some cakes and special vegetable
+dishes eaten on festal days may be survivals of sacramental feasts
+parallel to those upon the flesh and blood of |178| an animal victim.
+Benediction by external contact, again, is suggested by the widespread
+use in various ways of branches or sprigs or whole trees. The
+Christmas-tree and evergreen decorations are the most obvious examples;
+we shall see others in the course of our survey, and in connection with
+plants as well as with animals we shall meet with processions intended to
+convey a blessing to every house by carrying about the sacred
+elements--to borrow a term from Christian theology. Even the familiar
+practice of going carol-singing may be a Christianized form of some such
+perambulation.
+
+It is possible that men and women had originally separate cults. The cult
+of animals, according to a theory set forth by Mr. Chambers, would at
+first belong to the men, who as hunters worshipped the beasts they slew,
+apologizing to them, as some primitive people do to-day, for the
+slaughter they were obliged to commit. Other animals, apparently, were
+held too sacred to be slain, except upon rare and solemn occasions, and
+hence, as we have seen, may have arisen domestication and the pastoral
+life which, with its religious rites, was the affair of the men. To
+women, on the other hand, belonged agriculture; the cult of Mother Earth
+and the vegetation-spirits seems to have been originally theirs. Later
+the two cults would coalesce, but a hint of the time when certain rites
+were practised only by women may be found in that dressing up of men in
+female garments which appears not merely in the old Kalends customs but
+in some modern survivals.[85]{43}
+
+Apart from any special theory of the origin of sacrifice, we may note the
+association at Christmas of physical feasting with religious rejoicing.
+In this the modern European is the heir of an agelong tradition.
+"Everywhere," says Robertson Smith, |179| "we find that a sacrifice
+ordinarily involves a feast, and that a feast cannot be provided without
+a sacrifice. For a feast is not complete without flesh, and in early
+times the rule that all slaughter is sacrifice was not confined to the
+Semites. The identity of religious occasions and festal seasons may
+indeed be taken as the determining characteristic of the type of ancient
+religion generally; when men meet their god they feast and are glad
+together, and whenever they feast and are glad they desire that the god
+should be of the party."{45} To the paganism that preceded Christianity
+we must look for the origin of that Christmas feasting which has not
+seldom been a matter of scandal for the severer type of churchman.
+
+   [Transcriber's Note: The marker for note {44} was not present in
+   the page scan]
+
+A letter addressed in 601 by Pope Gregory the Great to Abbot Mellitus,
+giving him instructions to be handed on to Augustine of Canterbury,
+throws a vivid light on the process by which heathen sacrificial feasts
+were turned into Christian festivals. "Because," the Pope says of the
+Anglo-Saxons, "they are wont to slay many oxen in sacrifices to demons,
+some solemnity should be put in the place of this, so that on the day of
+the dedication of the churches, or the nativities of the holy martyrs
+whose relics are placed there, they may make for themselves tabernacles
+of branches of trees around those churches which have been changed from
+heathen temples, and may celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting.
+Nor let them now sacrifice animals to the Devil, but to the praise of God
+kill animals for their own eating, and render thanks to the Giver of all
+for their abundance; so that while some outward joys are retained for
+them, they may more readily respond to inward joys. For from obdurate
+minds it is undoubtedly impossible to cut off everything at once, because
+he who strives to ascend to the highest place rises by degrees or steps
+and not by leaps."{46}
+
+We see here very plainly the mind of the ecclesiastical compromiser.
+Direct sacrifice to heathen gods the Church of course could not dream of
+tolerating; it had been the very centre of her attack since the days of
+St. Paul, and refusal to take part in it had cost the martyrs their
+lives. Yet the festivity and merrymaking to which it gave occasion were
+to be left to the |180| people, for a time at all events. The policy
+had its advantages, it made the Church festivals popular; but it had also
+its dangers, it encouraged the intrusion of a pagan fleshly element into
+their austere and chastened joys. A certain orgiastic licence crept in,
+an unbridling of the physical appetites, which has ever been a source of
+sorrow and anger to the most earnest Christians and even led the Puritans
+of the seventeenth century to condemn all festivals as diabolical.
+
+Before we leave the subject of sacrificial survivals, it must be added
+that certain Christmas customs may come, little as those who practise
+them suspect it, from that darkest of religious rites, human sacrifice.
+Reference has already been made to Dr. Frazer's view of the Saturnalian
+king and his awful origin. We shall meet with various similar figures
+during the Christmas season--the "King of the Bean," for instance, and
+the "Bishop of Fools." If the theories about human sacrifice set forth in
+"The Golden Bough" be accepted, we may regard these personages as having
+once been mock kings chosen to suffer instead of the real kings, who had
+at first to perish by a violent death in order to preserve from the decay
+of age the divine life incarnate in them. Such mock monarchs, according
+to Dr. Frazer, were exalted for a brief season to the glory and luxury of
+kingship ere their doom fell upon them;{47} in the Christmas "kings" the
+splendour alone has survived, the dark side is forgotten.
+
+
+II. THE CULT OF THE DEAD AND THE FAMILY HEARTH.
+
+Round the winter festival cluster certain customs apparently connected
+with distinctively domestic religion, rather than with such public and
+communal cults as we have considered under the heading of Sacrifice and
+Sacrament. A festival of the family--that is, perhaps, what Christmas
+most prominently is to-day: it is the great season for gatherings "round
+the old fireside"; it is a joyous time for the children of the house, and
+the memory of the departed is vivid then, if unexpressed. Further, by the
+Yule log customs and certain other ceremonies still practised in the
+remoter corners of Europe, we are carried back to a stage of thought at
+which the dead were conceived as hovering about or |181| visiting the
+abodes of the living. Ancestral spirits, it seems, were once believed to
+be immanent in the fire that burned on the hearth, and had to be
+propitiated with libations, while elsewhere the souls of the dead were
+thought to return to their old homes at the New Year, and meat and drink
+had to be set out for them. The Church's establishment of All Souls' Day
+did much to keep practices of tendance of the departed to early November,
+but sometimes these have wandered to later dates and especially to
+Christmas. In folk-practices directed towards the dead two tendencies are
+to be found: on the one hand affection or at all events consideration for
+the departed persists, and efforts are made to make them comfortable; on
+the other, they are regarded with dread, and the sight of them is avoided
+by the living.
+
+In the passage quoted from Caesarius of Arles there was mention of the
+laying of tables with abundance of food at the Kalends. The same practice
+is condemned by St. Jerome in the fifth century, and is by him specially
+connected with Egypt.{48} He, like Caesarius and others, regards it as a
+kind of charm to ensure abundance during the coming year, but it is very
+possible that its real purpose was different, that the food was an
+offering to supernatural beings, the guardians and representatives of the
+dead.{49} Burchardus of Worms in the early eleventh century says
+definitely that in his time tables were laid with food and drink and
+three knives for "those three Sisters whom the ancients in their folly
+called _Parcae_."{50} The _Parcae_ were apparently identified with the
+three "weird" Sisters known in England and in other Teutonic regions, and
+seem to have some connection with the fairies. As we shall see later on,
+it is still in some places the custom to lay out tables for supernatural
+beings, whether, as at All Souls' tide, explicitly for the dead, or for
+Frau Perchta, or for the Virgin or some other Christian figure. Possibly
+the name _Modranicht_ (night of mothers), which Bede gives to Christmas
+Eve,{51} may be connected with this practice.
+
+Not remote, probably, in origin from a belief in "ghosts" is the driving
+away of spirits that sometimes takes place about |182| Christmas-time.
+Many peoples, as Dr. Frazer has shown, have an annual expulsion of
+goblins, ghosts, devils, witches, and evil influences, commonly at the
+end of the Old or beginning of the New Year. Sometimes the beings so
+driven away are definitely the spirits of the departed. An appalling
+racket and a great flare of torches are common features of these
+expulsions, and we shall meet with similar customs during the Christmas
+season. Such purifications, according to Dr. Frazer, are often preceded
+or followed by periods of licence, for when the burden of evil is about
+to be, or has just been, removed, it is felt that a little temporary
+freedom from moral restraints may be allowed with impunity.{52} Hence
+possibly, in part, the licence which has often attended the Christmas
+season.
+
+
+III. OMENS AND CHARMS FOR THE NEW YEAR.
+
+Customs of augury are to be met with at various dates, which may mark the
+gradual shifting of the New Year festival from early November to January
+1, while actual charms to secure prosperity are commonest at Christmas
+itself or at the modern New Year. Magical rather than religious in
+character, they are attempts to discover or influence the future by a
+sort of crude scientific method based on supposed analogies. Beneath the
+charms lie the primitive ideas that like produces like and that things
+which have once been in contact continue to act upon one another after
+they are separated in space.{53} The same ideas obviously underlie many
+of the sacramental practices alluded to a few pages back, and these are
+often of the nature of charms. Probably, too, among New Year charms
+should be included such institutions as the bonfires on Hallowe'en in
+Celtic countries, on Guy Fawkes Day in England, and at Martinmas in
+Germany, for it would seem that they are intended to secure by imitation
+a due supply of sunshine.{54} The principle that "well begun is well
+ended"--or, as the Germans have it, "_Anfang gut, alles gut_"--is
+fundamental in New Year practices: hence the custom of giving presents as
+auguries of wealth during the coming year; hence perhaps partly the heavy
+eating and drinking--a kind of charm to ensure abundance.
+
+|183| Enough has already been said about the attitude of the early
+Church towards traditional folk-customs. Of the position taken up by the
+later mediaeval clergy we get an interesting glimpse in the "Largum Sero"
+of a certain monk Alsso of Brevnov, an account of Christmas practices in
+Bohemia written about the year 1400. It supplies a link between modern
+customs and the Kalends prohibitions of the Dark Ages. Alsso tells of a
+number of laudable Christmas Eve practices, gives elaborate Christian
+interpretations of them, and contrasts them with things done by bad
+Catholics with ungodly intention. Here are some of his complaints:--
+
+    Presents, instead of being given, as they should be, in memory of
+    God's great Gift to man, are sent because he who does not give freely
+    will be unlucky in the coming year. Money, instead of being given to
+    the poor, as is seemly, is laid on the table to augur wealth, and
+    people open their purses that luck may enter. Instead of using fruit
+    as a symbol of Christ the Precious Fruit, men cut it open to predict
+    the future [probably from the pips]. It is a laudable custom to make
+    great white loaves at Christmas as symbols of the True Bread, but
+    evil men set out such loaves that the gods may eat of them.
+
+Alsso's assumption is that the bad Catholics are diabolically perverting
+venerable Christmas customs, but there can be little doubt that precisely
+the opposite was really the case--the Christian symbolism was merely a
+gloss upon pagan practices. In one instance Alsso admits that the Church
+had adopted and transformed a heathen usage: the old _calendisationes_ or
+processions with an idol Bel had been changed into processions of clergy
+and choir-boys with the crucifix. Round the villages on the Eve and
+during the Octave of Christmas went these messengers of God, robed in
+white raiment as befitted the servants of the Lord of purity; they would
+chant joyful anthems of the Nativity, and receive in return some money
+from the people--they were, in fact, carol-singers. Moreover with their
+incense they would drive out the Devil from every corner.{55}
+
+Alsso's attitude is one of compromise, or at least many of the old
+heathen customs are allowed by him, when reinterpreted in a |184|
+Christian sense. Such seems to have been the general tendency of the
+later Catholic Church, and also of Anglicanism in so far as it continued
+the Catholic tradition. It will be seen, however, from what has already
+been said, that the English Puritans were but following early Christian
+precedents when they attacked the paganism that manifested itself at
+Christmas.
+
+A strong Puritan onslaught is to be found in the "Anatomie of Abuses" by
+the Calvinist, Philip Stubbes, first published in 1583. "Especially," he
+says, "in Christmas tyme there is nothing els vsed but cardes, dice,
+tables, maskyng, mumming, bowling, and suche like fooleries; and the
+reason is, that they think they haue a commission and prerogatiue that
+tyme to doe what they list, and to followe what vanitie they will. But
+(alas!) doe they thinke that they are preuiledged at that time to doe
+euill? The holier the time is (if one time were holier than an other, as
+it is not), the holier ought their exercises to bee. Can any tyme
+dispence with them, or giue them libertie to sinne? No, no; the soule
+which sinneth shall dye, at what tyme soeuer it offendeth....
+Notwithstandyng, who knoweth not that more mischeef is that tyme
+committed than in all the yere besides?"{56}
+
+When the Puritans had gained the upper hand they proceeded to the
+suppression not only of abuses, but of the festival itself. An excellent
+opportunity for turning the feast into a fast--as the early Church had
+done, it will be remembered, with the Kalends festival--came in 1644. In
+that year Christmas Day happened to fall upon the last Wednesday of the
+month, a day appointed by the Lords and Commons for a Fast and
+Humiliation. In its zeal against carnal pleasures Parliament published
+the following "Ordinance for the better observation of the Feast of the
+Nativity of Christ":--
+
+    "Whereas some doubts have been raised whether the next Fast shall be
+    celebrated, because it falleth on the day which, heretofore, was
+    usually called the Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour; the lords
+    and commons do order and ordain that public notice be given, that the
+    Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every month, ought
+    to be observed until it be otherwise ordered by both houses; |185|
+    and that this day particularly is to be kept with the more solemn
+    humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins and the sins
+    of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory
+    of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to
+    carnal and sensual delights; being contrary to the life which Christ
+    himself led here upon earth, and to the spiritual life of Christ in
+    our souls; for the sanctifying and saving whereof Christ was pleased
+    both to take a human life, and to lay it down again."{57}
+
+But the English people's love of Christmas could not be destroyed. "These
+poor simple creatures are made after superstitious festivals, after
+unholy holidays," said a speaker in the House of Commons. "I have known
+some that have preferred Christmas Day before the Lord's Day," said
+Calamy in a sermon to the Lords in Westminster Abbey, "I have known those
+that would be sure to receive the Sacrament on Christmas Day though they
+did not receive it all the year after. This was the superstition of this
+day, and the profaneness was as great. There were some that did not play
+cards all the year long, yet they must play at Christmas." Various
+protests were made against the suppression of the festival. Though
+Parliament sat every Christmas Day from 1644 to 1656, the shops in London
+in 1644 were all shut, and in 1646 the people who opened their shops were
+so roughly used that next year they petitioned Parliament to protect them
+in future. In 1647 the shops were indeed all closed, but evergreen
+decorations were put up in the City, and the Lord Mayor and City Marshal
+had to ride about setting fire to them. There were even riots in country
+places, notably at Canterbury. With the Restoration Christmas naturally
+came back to full recognition, though it may be doubted whether it has
+ever been quite the same thing since the Puritan Revolution.{58}
+
+Protestantism, in proportion to its thoroughness and the strength of its
+Puritan elements, has everywhere tended to destroy old pagan traditions
+and the festivals to which they cling. Calvinism has naturally been more
+destructive than Lutheranism, which in the Scandinavian countries has
+left standing many of the externals of Catholicism and also many
+Christmas customs that are purely pagan, while in Germany it has
+tolerated and even hallowed the |186| ritual of the Christmas-tree. But
+more powerful than religious influences, in rooting out the old customs,
+have been modern education and the growth of modern industry, breaking up
+the old traditional country life, and putting in its place the mobile,
+restless life of the great town. Many of the customs we shall have to
+consider belong essentially to the country, and have no relation to the
+life of the modern city. When communal in their character, a man could
+not perform them in separation from his rustic neighbours. Practices
+domestic in their purpose may indeed be transferred to the modern city,
+but it is the experience of folk-lorists that they seldom descend to the
+second generation.
+
+It is in regions like Bavaria, Tyrol, Styria, or the Slav parts of the
+Austrian Empire, or Roumania and Servia, that the richest store of
+festival customs is to be found nowadays. Here the old agricultural life
+has been less interfered with, and at the same time the Church, whether
+Roman or Greek, has succeeded in keeping modern ideas away from the
+people and in maintaining a popular piety that is largely polytheistic in
+its worship of the saints, and embodies a great amount of traditional
+paganism. In our half-suburbanized England but little now remains of
+these vestiges of primitive religion and magic whose interest and
+importance were only realized by students in the later nineteenth
+century, when the wave of "progress" was fast sweeping them away.
+
+Old traditions have a way of turning up unexpectedly in remote corners,
+and it is hard to say for certain that any custom is altogether extinct;
+every year, however, does its work of destruction, and it may well be
+that some of the practices here described in the present tense have
+passed into the Limbo of discarded things.
+
+|187| |188| |189|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS
+
+
+    All Saints' and All Souls' Days, their Relation to a New Year
+    Festival--All Souls' Eve and Tendance of the Departed--Soul Cakes in
+    England and on the Continent--Pagan Parallels of All
+    Souls'--Hallowe'en Charms and Omens--Hallowe'en Fires--Guy Fawkes
+    Day--"Old Hob," the _Schimmelreiter_, and other Animal
+    Masks--Martinmas and its Slaughter--Martinmas Drinking--St. Martin's
+    Fires in Germany--Winter Visitors in the Low Countries and
+    Germany--St. Martin as Gift-bringer--St. Martin's Rod.
+
+
+ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS' DAYS.
+
+In the reign of Charles I. the young gentlemen of the Middle Temple were
+accustomed to reckon All Hallow Tide (November 1) the beginning of
+Christmas.{1} We may here do likewise and start our survey of winter
+festivals with November, in the earlier half of which, apparently, fell
+the Celtic and Teutonic New Year's Days. It is impossible to fix precise
+dates, but there is reason for thinking that the Celtic year began about
+November 1,[86]{2} and the Teutonic about November 11.{3}
+
+On November 1 falls one of the greater festivals of the western Church,
+All Saints'--or, to give it its old English name, All Hallows'--and on
+the morrow is the solemn commemoration of the departed--All Souls'. In
+these two anniversaries the Church has |190| preserved at or near the
+original date one part of the old beginning-of-winter festival--the part
+concerned with the cult of the dead. Some of the practices belonging to
+this side of the feast have been transferred to the season of Christmas
+and the Twelve Days, but these have often lost their original meaning,
+and it is to All Souls' Day that we must look for the most conscious
+survivals of that care for the departed which is so marked a feature of
+primitive religion. Early November, when the leaves are falling, and all
+around speaks of mortality, is a fitting time for the commemoration of
+the dead.
+
+The first clear testimony to All Souls' Day is found at the end of the
+tenth century, and in France. All Saints' Day, however, was certainly
+observed in England, France, and Germany in the eighth century,{5} and
+probably represents an attempt on the part of the Church to turn the
+minds of the faithful away from the pagan belief in and tendance of
+"ghosts" to the contemplation of the saints in the glory of Paradise. It
+would seem that this attempt failed, that the people needed a way of
+actually doing something for their own dead, and that All Souls' Day with
+its solemn Mass and prayers for the departed was intended to supply this
+need and replace the traditional practices.{6} Here again the attempt
+was only partly successful, for side by side with the Church's rites
+there survived a number of usages related not to any Christian doctrine
+of the after-life, but to the pagan idea, widespread among many peoples,
+that on one day or night of the year the souls of the dead return to
+their old homes and must be entertained.
+
+All Souls' Day then appeals to instincts older than Christianity. How
+strong is the hold of ancient custom even upon the sceptical and
+irreligious is shown very strikingly in Roman Catholic countries: even
+those who never go to church visit the graves of their relations on All
+Souls' Eve to deck them with flowers.
+
+The special liturgical features of the Church's celebration are the
+Vespers, Matins, and Lauds of the Dead on the evening of November 1, and
+the solemn Requiem Mass on November 2, with the majestic "Dies irae" and
+the oft-recurrent versicle, "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux
+perpetua luceat |191| eis," that most beautiful of prayers. The priest
+and altar are vested in black, and a catafalque with burning tapers round
+it stands in the body of the church. For the popular customs on the Eve
+we may quote Dr. Tylor's general description:--
+
+    "In Italy the day is given to feasting and drinking in honour of the
+    dead, while skulls and skeletons in sugar and paste form appropriate
+    children's toys. In Tyrol, the poor souls released from purgatory
+    fire for the night may come and smear their burns with the melted fat
+    of the 'soul light' on the hearth, or cakes are left for them on the
+    table, and the room is kept warm for their comfort. Even in Paris the
+    souls of the departed come to partake of the food of the living. In
+    Brittany the crowd pours into the churchyard at evening, to kneel
+    barefoot at the grave of dead kinsfolk, to fill the hollow of the
+    tombstone with holy water, or to pour libations of milk upon it. All
+    night the church bells clang, and sometimes a solemn procession of
+    the clergy goes round to bless the graves. In no household that night
+    is the cloth removed, for the supper must be left for the souls to
+    come and take their part, nor must the fire be put out, where they
+    will come to warm themselves. And at last, as the inmates retire to
+    rest, there is heard at the door a doleful chant--it is the souls,
+    who, borrowing the voices of the parish poor, have come to ask the
+    prayers of the living."{7}
+
+To this may be added some further accounts of All Souls' Eve as the one
+night in the year when the spirits of the departed are thought to revisit
+their old homes.
+
+In the Vosges mountains while the bells are ringing in All Souls' Eve it
+is a custom to uncover the beds and open the windows in order that the
+poor souls may enter and rest. Prayer is made for the dead until late in
+the night, and when the last "De profundis" has been said "the head of
+the family gently covers up the beds, sprinkles them with holy water, and
+shuts the windows."{8}
+
+The Esthonians on All Souls' Day provide a meal for the dead and invite
+them by name. The souls arrive at the first cock-crow and depart at the
+second, being lighted out of the house by the head of the family, who
+waves a white cloth after them and bids them come again next year.{9}
+
+In Brittany, as we have seen, the dead are thought to return at |192|
+this season. It is believed that on the night between All Saints' and All
+Souls' the church is lighted up and the departed attend a nocturnal Mass
+celebrated by a phantom priest. All through the week, in one district,
+people are afraid to go out after nightfall lest they should see some
+dead person.{10} In Tyrol it is believed that the "poor souls" are
+present in the howling winds that often blow at this time.{11}
+
+In the Abruzzi on All Souls' Eve "before people go to sleep they place on
+the table a lighted lamp or candle and a frugal meal of bread and water.
+The dead issue from their graves and stalk in procession through every
+street of the village.... First pass the souls of the good, and then the
+souls of the murdered and the damned."{12}
+
+In Sicily a strange belief is connected with All Souls' Day (_jornu di li
+morti_): the family dead are supposed, like Santa Klaus in the North, to
+bring presents to children; the dead relations have become the good
+fairies of the little ones. On the night between November 1 and 2 little
+Sicilians believe that the departed leave their dread abode and come to
+town to steal from rich shopkeepers sweets and toys and new clothes.
+These they give to their child relations who have been "good" and have
+prayed on their behalf. Often they are clothed in white and wear silken
+shoes, to elude the vigilance of the shopkeepers. They do not always
+enter the houses; sometimes the presents are left in the children's shoes
+put outside doors and windows. In the morning the pretty gifts are
+attributed by the children to the _morti_ in whose coming their parents
+have taught them to believe.{13}
+
+A very widespread custom at this season is to burn candles, perhaps in
+order to lighten the darkness for the poor souls. In Catholic Ireland
+candles shine in the windows on the Vigil of All Souls',{14} in Belgium
+a holy candle is burnt all night, or people walk in procession with
+lighted tapers, while in many Roman Catholic countries, and even in the
+Protestant villages of Baden, the graves are decked with lights as well
+as flowers.{15}
+
+Another practice on All Saints' and All Souls' Days, curiously |193|
+common formerly in Protestant England, is that of making and giving
+"soul-cakes." These and the quest of them by children were customary in
+various English counties and in Scotland.{16} The youngsters would beg
+not only for the cakes but also sometimes for such things as "apples and
+strong beer," presumably to make a "wassail-bowl" of "lambswool," hot
+spiced ale with roast apples in it.{17} Here is a curious rhyme which
+they sang in Shropshire as they went round to their neighbours,
+collecting contributions:--
+
+   "Soul! soul! for a soul-cake!
+    I pray, good missis, a soul-cake!
+    An apple or pear, a plum or a cherry,
+    Any good thing to make us merry.
+    One for Peter, two for Paul,
+    Three for Him who made us all.
+    Up with the kettle, and down with the pan,
+    Give us good alms, and we'll be gone."{18}
+
+Shropshire is a county peculiarly rich in "souling" traditions, and one
+old lady had cakes made to give away to the souling-children up to the
+time of her death in 1884. At that period the custom of "souling" had
+greatly declined in the county, and where it still existed the rewards
+were usually apples or money. Grown men, as well as children, sometimes
+went round, and the ditties sung often contained verses of good-wishes
+for the household practically identical with those sung by wassailers at
+Christmas.{19}
+
+The name "soul-cake" of course suggests that the cakes were in some way
+associated with the departed, whether given as a reward for prayers for
+souls in Purgatory, or as a charity for the benefit of the "poor souls,"
+or baked that the dead might feast upon them.[87] It seems most probable
+that they were relics of a feast once laid out for the souls. On the
+other hand it is just possible that they were originally a sacrament of
+the corn-spirit. |194| A North Welsh tradition recorded by Pennant may
+conceivably have preserved a vague memory of some agricultural
+connection: he tells us that on receiving soul-cakes the poor people used
+to pray to God to bless the next crop of wheat.{20}
+
+Not in Great Britain alone are soul-cakes found; they are met with in
+Belgium, southern Germany, and Austria. In western Flanders children set
+up on All Souls' Eve little street altars, putting a crucifix or Madonna
+with candles on a chair or stool, and begging passers-by for money "for
+cakes for the souls in Purgatory." On All Souls' morning it is customary,
+all over the Flemish part of Belgium, to bake little cakes of finest
+white flour, called "soul-bread." They are eaten hot, and a prayer is
+said at the same time for the souls in Purgatory. It is believed that a
+soul is delivered for every cake eaten. At Antwerp the cakes are coloured
+yellow with saffron to suggest the Purgatorial flames. In southern
+Germany and Austria little white loaves of a special kind are baked; they
+are generally oval in form, and are usually called by some name into
+which the word "soul" enters. In Tyrol they are given to children by
+their godparents; those for the boys have the shape of horses or hares,
+those for the girls, of hens. In Tyrol the cakes left over at supper
+remain on the table and are said to "belong to the poor souls."{21}
+
+In Friuli in the north-east of Italy there is a custom closely
+corresponding to our "soul-cakes." On All Souls' Day every family gives
+away a quantity of bread. This is not regarded as a charity; all the
+people of the village come to receive it and before eating it pray for
+the departed of the donor's family. The most prosperous people are not
+ashamed to knock at the door and ask for this _pane dei morti_.{22}
+
+In Tyrol All Souls' is a day of licensed begging, which has become a
+serious abuse. A noisy rabble of ragged and disorderly folk, with bags
+and baskets to receive gifts, wanders from village to village, claiming
+as a right the presents of provisions that were originally a freewill
+offering for the benefit of the departed, and angrily abusing those who
+refuse to give.{23}
+
+The New Year is the time for a festival of the dead in many parts of the
+world.{24} I may quote Dr. Frazer's account of what |195| goes on in
+Tonquin; it shows a remarkable likeness to some European customs[88]:--
+
+    "In Tonquin, as in Sumba, the dead revisit their kinsfolk and their
+    old homes at the New Year. From the hour of midnight, when the New
+    Year begins, no one dares to shut the door of his house for fear of
+    excluding the ghosts, who begin to arrive at that time. Preparations
+    have been made to welcome and refresh them after their long journey.
+    Beds and mats are ready for their weary bodies to repose upon, water
+    to wash their dusty feet, slippers to comfort them, and canes to
+    support their feeble steps."{25}
+
+In Lithuania, the last country in Europe to be converted to Christianity,
+heathen traditions lingered long, and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
+travellers give accounts of a pagan New Year's feast which has great
+interest. In October, according to one account, on November 2, according
+to another, the whole family met together, strewed the tables with straw
+and put sacks on the straw. Bread and two jugs of beer were then placed
+on the table, and one of every kind of domestic animal was roasted before
+the fire after a prayer to the god Zimiennik (possibly an ancestral
+spirit), asking for protection through the year and offering the animals.
+Portions were thrown to the corners of the room with the words "Accept
+our burnt sacrifice, O Zimiennik, and kindly partake thereof." Then
+followed a great feast. Further, the spirits of the dead were invited to
+leave their graves and visit the bath-house, where platters of food were
+spread out and left for three days. At the end of this time the remains
+of the repast were set out over the graves and libations poured.{26}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The beginning of November is not solely a time of memory of the dead;
+customs of other sorts linger, or until lately used to linger, about it,
+especially in Scotland, northern England, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, and
+the West Midlands. One may conjecture that these are survivals from the
+Celtic New Year's Day, for most of them are of the nature of omens or
+charms. Apples and nuts are prominent on Hallowe'en, the Eve of All
+|196| Saints;[89] they may be regarded either as a kind of sacrament of
+the vegetation-spirit, or as simply intended by homoeopathic magic to
+bring fulness and fruitfulness to their recipients. A custom once common
+in the north of England{27} and in Wales{28} was to catch at apples
+with the mouth, the fruit being suspended on a string, or on one end of a
+large transverse beam with a lighted candle at the other end. In the
+north apples and nuts were the feature of the evening feast, hence the
+name "Nutcrack night."{29}
+
+Again, at St. Ives in Cornwall every child is given a big apple on
+Allhallows' Eve--"Allan Day" as it is called.{30} Nuts and apples were
+also used as means of forecasting the future. In Scotland for instance
+nuts were put into the fire and named after particular lads and lasses.
+"As they burn quietly together or start from beside one another, the
+course and issue of the courtship will be."{31} On Hallowe'en in
+Nottinghamshire if a girl had two lovers and wanted to know which would
+be the more constant, she took two apple-pips, stuck one on each cheek
+(naming them after her lovers) and waited for one to fall off. The poet
+Gay alludes to this custom:--
+
+   "See from the core two kernels now I take,
+    This on my cheek for Lubberkin is worn,
+    And Booby Clod on t'other side is borne;
+    But Booby Clod soon falls upon the ground,
+    A certain token that his love's unsound;
+    While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last;
+    Oh! were his lips to mine but joined so fast."{32}
+
+In Nottinghamshire apples are roasted and the parings thrown over the
+left shoulder. "Notice is taken of the shapes which the parings assume
+when they fall to the ground. Whatever letter a paring resembles will be
+the initial letter of the Christian name of the man or woman whom you
+will marry."{33}
+
+|197| Hallowe'en is indeed in the British Isles the favourite time for
+forecasting the future, and various methods are employed for this
+purpose.
+
+A girl may cross her shoes upon her bedroom floor in the shape of a T and
+say these lines:--
+
+   "I cross my shoes in the shape of a T,
+    Hoping this night my true love to see,
+    Not in his best or worst array,
+    But in the clothes of every day."
+
+Then let her get into bed backwards without speaking any more that night,
+and she will see her future husband in her dreams.{34}
+
+"On All Hallowe'en or New Year's Eve," says Mr. W. Henderson, "a Border
+maiden may wash her sark, and hang it over a chair to dry, taking care to
+tell no one what she is about. If she lie awake long enough, she will see
+the form of her future spouse enter the room and turn the sark. We are
+told of one young girl who, after fulfilling this rite, looked out of bed
+and saw a coffin behind the sark; it remained visible for some time and
+then disappeared. The girl rose up in agony and told her family what had
+occurred, and the next morning she heard of her lover's death."{35}
+
+In Scotland{36} and Ireland{37} other methods of foreseeing the future
+are practised on Hallowe'en; we need not consider them here, for we shall
+have quite enough of such auguries later on. (Some Scottish customs are
+introduced by Burns into his poem "Hallowe'en.") I may, however, allude
+to the custom formerly prevalent in Wales for women to congregate in the
+church on this "Night of the Winter Kalends," in order to discover who of
+the parishioners would die during the year.{38} East of the Welsh
+border, at Dorstone in Herefordshire, there was a belief that on All
+Hallows' Eve at midnight those who were bold enough to look through the
+windows would see the church lighted with an unearthly glow, and Satan in
+monk's habit fulminating anathemas from the pulpit and calling out the
+names of those who were to render up their souls.{39}
+
+|198| Again, there are numerous Hallowe'en fire customs, probably
+sun-charms for the New Year, a kind of homoeopathic magic intended to
+assist the sun in his struggle with the powers of darkness. To this day
+great bonfires are kindled in the Highlands, and formerly brands were
+carried about and the new fire was lit in each house.{40} It would seem
+that the Yule log customs (see Chapter X.) are connected with this new
+lighting of the house-fire, transferred to Christmas.
+
+In Ireland fire was lighted at this time at a place called Tlachtga, from
+which all the hearths in Ireland are said to have been annually
+supplied.{41} In Wales the habit of lighting bonfires on the hills is
+perhaps not yet extinct.{42} Within living memory when the flames were
+out somebody would raise the cry, "May the tailless black sow seize the
+hindmost," and everyone present would run for his life.{43} This may
+point to a former human sacrifice, possibly of a victim laden with the
+accumulated evils of the past year.{44}
+
+In North Wales, according to another account, each family used to make a
+great bonfire in a conspicuous place near the house. Every person threw
+into the ashes a white stone, marked; the stones were searched for in the
+morning, and if any one were missing the person who had thrown it in
+would die, it was believed, during the year.{45} The same belief and
+practice were found at Callander in Perthshire.{46}
+
+Though, probably, the Hallowe'en fire rites had originally some
+connection with the sun, the conscious intention of those who practised
+them in modern times was often to ward off witchcraft. With this object
+in one place the master of the family used to carry a bunch of burning
+straw about the corn, in Scotland the red end of a fiery stick was waved
+in the air, in Lancashire a lighted candle was borne about the fells, and
+in the Isle of Man fires were kindled.{47}
+
+
+GUY FAWKES DAY.
+
+Probably the burning of Guy Fawkes on November 5 is a survival of a New
+Year bonfire. There is every reason to think that the commemoration of
+the deliverance from "gunpowder |199| treason and plot" is but a modern
+meaning attached to an ancient traditional practice, for the burning of
+the effigy has many parallels in folk-custom. Dr. Frazer{48} regards
+such effigies as representatives of the spirit of vegetation--by burning
+them in a fire that represented the sun men thought they secured sunshine
+for trees and crops. Later, when the ideas on which the custom was based
+had faded away, people came to identify these images with persons whom
+they regarded with aversion, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther (in Catholic
+Tyrol), and, apparently, Guy Fawkes in England. At Ludlow in Shropshire,
+it is interesting to note, if any well-known local man had aroused the
+enmity of the populace his effigy was substituted for, or added to, that
+of Guy Fawkes. Bonfire Day at Ludlow is marked by a torchlight procession
+and a huge conflagration.{49} At Hampstead the Guy Fawkes fire and
+procession are still in great force. The thing has become a regular
+carnival, and on a foggy November night the procession along the steep
+curving Heath Street, with the glare of the torches lighting up the faces
+of dense crowds, is a strangely picturesque spectacle.[90]
+
+
+ANIMAL MASKS.
+
+On All Souls' Day in Cheshire there began to be carried about a curious
+construction called "Old Hob," a horse's head enveloped in a sheet; it
+was taken from door to door, and accompanied by the singing of begging
+rhymes.{50} Old Hob, who continued to appear until Christmas, is an
+English parallel to the German _Schimmel_ or white horse. We have here to
+do with one of those strange animal forms which are apparently relics of
+sacrificial customs. They come on various days in the winter festival
+season, and also at other times, and may as well be considered at this
+point. In some cases they are definitely imitations of animals, and may
+have replaced real sacrificial beasts taken about in procession, in
+others they are simply men wearing the head, horn, hide, or tail of a
+beast, like the worshippers at many |200| a heathen sacrifice to-day.
+(Of the _rationale_ of masking something has already been said in Chapter
+VI.)
+
+The mingling of Roman and non-Roman customs makes it very hard to
+separate the different elements in the winter festivals. In regard
+particularly to animal masks it is difficult to pronounce in favour of
+one racial origin rather than another; we may, however, infer with some
+probability that when a custom is attached not to Christmas or the
+January Kalends but to one of the November or early December feasts, it
+is not of Roman origin. For, as the centuries have passed, Christmas and
+the Kalends--the Roman festivals ecclesiastical and secular--have
+increasingly tended to supplant the old northern festal times, and a
+transference of, for instance, a Teutonic custom from Martinmas to
+Christmas or January 1, is far more conceivable than the attraction of a
+Roman practice to one of the earlier and waning festivals.
+
+Let us take first the horse-forms, seemingly connected with that
+sacrificial use of the horse among the Teutons to which Tacitus and other
+writers testify.{51} "Old Hob" is doubtless one form of the hobby horse,
+so familiar in old English festival customs. His German parallel, the
+_Schimmel_, is mostly formed thus in the north: a sieve with a long pole
+to whose end a horse's head is fastened, is tied beneath the chest of a
+young man, who goes on all fours, and some white cloths are thrown over
+the whole. In Silesia the _Schimmel_ is formed by three or four youths.
+The rider is generally veiled, and often wears on his head a pot with
+glowing coals shining forth through openings that represent eyes and a
+mouth.{52} In Pomerania the thing is called simply _Schimmel_,{53} in
+other parts emphasis is laid upon the rider, and the name
+_Schimmelreiter_ is given. Some mythologists have seen in this rider on a
+white horse an impersonation of Woden on his great charger; but it is
+more likely that the practice simply originated in the taking round of a
+real sacrificial horse.{54} The _Schimmelreiter_ is often accompanied by
+a "bear," a youth dressed in straw who plays the part of a bear tied to a
+pole.{55} He may be connected with some such veneration of the animal as
+is suggested by the custom still surviving at Berne, of keeping bears at
+the public expense.
+
+To return to Great Britain, here is an account of a so-called |201|
+"hodening" ceremony once performed at Christmas-time at Ramsgate: "A
+party of young people procure the head of a dead horse, which is affixed
+to a pole about four feet in length, a string is tied to the lower jaw, a
+horse-cloth is then attached to the whole, under which one of the party
+gets, and by frequently pulling the string keeps up a loud snapping noise
+and is accompanied by the rest of the party grotesquely habited and
+ringing hand-bells. They thus proceed from house to house, sounding their
+bells and singing carols and songs."{56}
+
+Again, in Wales a creature called "the Mari Llwyd" was known at
+Christmas. A horse's skull is "dressed up with ribbons, and supported on
+a pole by a man who is concealed under a large white cloth. There is a
+contrivance for opening and shutting the jaws, and the figure pursues and
+bites everybody it can lay hold of, and does not release them except on
+payment of a fine."{57} The movable jaws here give the thing a likeness
+to certain Continental figures representing other kinds of animals and
+probably witnessing to their former sacrificial use. On the island of
+Usedom appears the _Klapperbock_, a youth who carries a pole with the
+hide of a buck thrown over it and a wooden head at the end. The lower jaw
+moves up and down and clatters, and he charges at children who do not
+know their prayers by heart.{58} In Upper Styria we meet the
+_Habergaiss_. Four men hold on to one another and are covered with white
+blankets. The foremost one holds up a wooden goat's head with a movable
+lower jaw that rattles, and he butts children.{59} At Ilsenburg in the
+Harz is found the _Habersack_, formed by a person taking a pole ending in
+a fork, and putting a broom between the prongs so that the appearance of
+a head with horns is obtained. The carrier is concealed by a sheet.{60}
+
+In connection with horns we must not forget the "horn-dance" at Abbots
+Bromley in Staffordshire, held now in September, but formerly at
+Christmas. Six of the performers wear sets of horns kept from year to
+year in the church.{61} Plot, in his "Natural History of Staffordshire"
+(1686, p. 434) calls it a "_Hobby-horse Dance_ from a person who carried
+the image of a horse between his legs, made of thin boards."{62}
+
+|202| In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway creatures resembling both the
+_Schimmelreiter_ and the _Klapperbock_ are or were to be met with at
+Christmas. The name _Julebuk_ (yule buck) is used for various objects:
+sometimes for a person dressed up in hide and horns, or with a buck's
+head, who "goes for" little boys and girls; sometimes for a straw puppet
+set up or tossed about from hand to hand; sometimes for a cake in the
+form of a buck. People seem to have had a bad conscience about these
+things, for there are stories connecting them with the Devil. A girl, for
+instance, who danced at midnight with a straw _Julebuk_, found that her
+partner was no puppet but the Evil One himself. Again, a fellow who had
+dressed himself in black and put horns on his head, claws on his hands,
+and fiery tow in his mouth, was carried off by the Prince of Darkness
+whose form he had mimicked.{63} The association of animal maskings with
+the infernal powers is doubtless the work of the Church. To the zealous
+missionary the old heathen ritual was no mere foolish superstition but a
+service of intensely real and awful beings, the very devils of hell, and
+one may even conjecture that the traditional Christian devil-type, half
+animal half human, was indirectly derived from skin-clad worshippers at
+pagan festivals.
+
+
+MARTINMAS.
+
+Between All Souls' Day and Martinmas (November 11) there are no
+folk-festivals of great importance, though on St. Hubert's Day, November
+3, in Flemish Belgium special little cakes are made, adorned with the
+horn of the saint, the patron of hunting, and are eaten not only by human
+beings but by dogs, cats, and other domestic animals.{64} The English
+Guy Fawkes Day has already been considered, while November 9, Lord
+Mayor's Day, the beginning of the municipal year, may remind us of the
+old Teutonic New Year.
+
+Round Martinmas popular customs cluster thickly, as might be expected,
+since it marks as nearly as possible the date of the old
+beginning-of-winter festival, the feast perhaps at which Germanicus
+surprised the Marsi in A.D. 14.{65}
+
+The most obvious feature of Martinmas is its physical feasting. |203|
+Economic causes, as we saw in Chapter VI., must have made the middle of
+November a great killing season among the old Germans, for the snow which
+then began rendered it impossible longer to pasture the beasts, and there
+was not fodder enough to keep the whole herd through the winter. Thus it
+was a time of feasting on flesh, and of animal sacrifices, as is
+suggested by the Anglo-Saxon name given to November by Bede,
+_Blot-monath_, sacrifice-month.{66}
+
+Christmas does not seem to have quickly superseded the middle of November
+as a popular feast in Teutonic countries; rather one finds an outcome of
+the conciliatory policy pursued by Gregory the Great (see Chapter VI.) in
+the development of Martinmas. Founded in the fifth century, it was made a
+great Church festival by Pope Martin I. (649-654),{67} and it may well
+have been intended to absorb and Christianize the New Year festivities of
+the Teutonic peoples. The veneration of St. Martin spread rapidly in the
+churches of northern Europe, and he came to be regarded as one of the
+very chief of the saints.{68} His day is no longer a Church feast of
+high rank, but its importance as a folk festival is great.
+
+The tradition of slaughter is preserved in the British custom of killing
+cattle on St. Martin's Day--"Martlemas beef"{69}--and in the German
+eating of St. Martin's geese and swine.{70} The St. Martin's goose,
+indeed, is in Germany as much a feature of the festival as the English
+Michaelmas goose is of the September feast of the angels.
+
+In Denmark too a goose is eaten at Martinmas, and from its breast-bone
+the character of the coming winter can be foreseen. The white in it is a
+sign of snow, the brown of very great cold. Similar ideas can be traced
+in Germany, though there is not always agreement as to what the white and
+the brown betoken.{71}
+
+At St. Peter's, Athlone, Ireland, a very obviously sacrificial custom
+lasted on into the nineteenth century. Every household would kill an
+animal of some kind, and sprinkle the threshold with its blood. A cow or
+sheep, a goose or turkey, or merely a cock or hen, was used according to
+the means of the family.{72} It seems that the animal was actually
+offered to St. Martin, apparently as |204| the successor of some god,
+and bad luck came if the custom were not observed. Probably these rites
+were transferred to Martinmas from the old Celtic festival of _Samhain_.
+Again, in a strange Irish legend the saint himself is said to have been
+cut up and eaten in the form of an ox.{73}
+
+In the wine-producing regions of Germany Martinmas was the day for the
+first drinking of the new wine, and the feasting in general on his day
+gave the saint the reputation of a guzzler and a glutton; it even became
+customary to speak of a person who had squandered his substance in
+riotous living as a _Martinsmann_.{74} As we have seen survivals of
+sacrifice in the Martinmas slaughter, so we may regard the _Martinsminne_
+or toast as originating in a sacrifice of liquor.{75} In the Böhmerwald
+it is believed that wine taken at Martinmas brings strength and beauty,
+and the lads and girls gather in the inns to drink, while a common German
+proverb runs:--
+
+   "Heb an Martini,
+    Trink Wein per circulum anni."[91]{76}
+
+Here, by the way, is a faint suggestion that Martinmas is regarded as the
+beginning of the year; as such it certainly appears in a number of legal
+customs, English, French, and German, which existed in the Middle Ages
+and in some cases in quite recent times. It was often at Martinmas that
+leases ended, rents had to be paid, and farm-servants changed their
+places.{77}
+
+There is a survival, perhaps, of a cereal sacrifice or sacrament in the
+so-called "Martin's horns," horseshoe pastries given at Martinmas in many
+parts of Germany.{78} Another kind of sacrifice is suggested by a Dutch
+custom of throwing baskets of fruit into Martinmas bonfires, and by a
+German custom of casting in empty fruit-baskets.{79} In Venetia the
+peasants keep over from the vintage a few grapes to form part of their
+Martinmas supper, and as far south as Sicily it is considered essential
+to taste the new wine at this festival.{80}
+
+Bonfires appear at Martinmas in Germany, as at All Hallows tide in the
+British Isles. On St. Martin's Eve in the Rhine |205| Valley between
+Cologne and Coblentz, numbers of little fires burn on the heights and by
+the river-bank,{81} the young people leap through the flames and dance
+about them, and the ashes are strewn on the fields to make them
+fertile.{82} Survivals of fire-customs are found also in other regions.
+In Belgium, Holland, and north-west Germany processions of children with
+paper or turnip lanterns take place on St. Martin's Eve. In the Eichsfeld
+district the little river Geislede glows with the light of candles placed
+in floating nutshells. Even the practice of leaping through the fire
+survives in a modified form, for in northern Germany it is not uncommon
+for people on St. Martin's Day or Eve to jump over lighted candles set on
+the parlour floor.{83} In the fifteenth century the Martinmas fires were
+so many that the festival actually got the name of _Funkentag_ (Spark
+Day).{84}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On St. Martin's Eve in Germany and the Low Countries we begin to meet
+those winter visitors, bright saints and angels on the one hand,
+mock-terrible bogeys and monsters on the other, who add so much to the
+romance and mystery of the children's Christmas. Such visitors are to be
+found in many countries, but it is in the lands of German speech that
+they take on the most vivid and picturesque forms. St. Martin, St.
+Nicholas, Christkind, Knecht Ruprecht, and the rest are very real and
+personal beings to the children, and are awaited with pleasant
+expectation or mild dread. Often they are beheld not merely with the
+imagination but with the bodily eye, when father or friend is wondrously
+transformed into a supernatural figure.
+
+What are the origins of these holy or monstrous beings? It is hard to say
+with certainty, for many elements, pagan and Christian, seem here to be
+closely blended. It is pretty clear, however, that the grotesque
+half-animal shapes are direct relics of heathendom, and it is highly
+probable that the forms of saints or angels--even, perhaps, of the Christ
+Child Himself--represent attempts of the Church to transform and sanctify
+alien things which she could not suppress. What some of these may have
+been we shall tentatively guess as we go along. Though no grown-up person
+would take the mimic Martin or Nicholas |206| seriously nowadays, there
+seem to be at the root of them things once regarded as of vital moment.
+Just as fairy-tales, originally serious attempts to explain natural
+facts, have now become reading for children, so ritual practices which
+our ancestors deemed of vast importance for human welfare have become
+mere games to amuse the young.
+
+On St. Martin's Eve, to come back from speculation to the facts of
+popular custom, the saint appears in the nurseries of Antwerp and other
+Flemish towns. He is a man dressed up as a bishop, with a pastoral staff
+in his hand. His business is to ask if the children have been "good," and
+if the result of his inquiries is satisfactory he throws down apples,
+nuts, and cakes. If not, it is rods that he leaves behind. At Ypres he
+does not visibly appear, but children hang up stockings filled with hay,
+and next morning find presents in them, left by the saint in gratitude
+for the fodder provided for his horse. He is there imagined as a rider on
+a white horse, and the same conception prevails in Austrian Silesia,
+where he brings the "Martin's horns" already mentioned.{85} In Silesia
+when it snows at Martinmas people say that the saint is coming on his
+white horse, and there, it may be noted, the _Schimmelreiter_ appears at
+the same season.{86} In certain respects, it has been suggested, St.
+Martin may have taken the place of Woden.{87} It is perhaps not without
+significance that, like the god, he is a military hero, and conceived as
+a rider on horseback. At Düsseldorf he used to be represented in his
+festival procession by a man riding on another fellow's back.{88}
+
+At Mechlin and other places children go round from house to house,
+singing and collecting gifts. Often four boys with paper caps on their
+heads, dressed as Turks, carry a sort of litter whereon St. Martin sits.
+He has a long white beard of flax and a paper mitre and stole, and holds
+a large wooden spoon to receive apples and other eatables that are given
+to the children, as well as a leather purse for offerings of money.{89}
+
+In the Ansbach region a different type of being used to
+appear--Pelzmärten (Skin Martin) by name; he ran about and frightened the
+children, before he threw them their apples and nuts. In several places
+in Swabia, too, Pelzmärte was known; |207| he had a black face, a
+cow-bell hung on his person, and he distributed blows as well as nuts and
+apples.{90} In him there is obviously more of the pagan mummer than the
+Christian bishop.
+
+In Belgium St. Martin is chiefly known as the bringer of apples and nuts
+for children; in Bavaria and Austria he has a different aspect: a _gerte_
+or rod, supposed to promote fruitfulness among cattle and prosperity in
+general, is connected with his day. The rods are taken round by the
+neatherds to the farmers, and one is given to each--two to rich
+proprietors; they are to be used, when spring comes, to drive out the
+cattle for the first time. In Bavaria they are formed by a birch-bough
+with all the leaves and twigs stripped off--except at the top, to which
+oak-leaves and juniper-twigs are fastened. At Etzendorf a curious old
+rhyme shows that the herdsman with the rod is regarded as the
+representative of St. Martin.{91}
+
+Can we connect this custom with the saint who brings presents to
+youngsters?[92] There seems to be a point of contact when we note that at
+Antwerp St. Martin throws down rods for naughty children as well as nuts
+and apples for good ones, and that Pelzmärte in Swabia has blows to
+bestow as well as gifts. St. Martin's main functions--and, as we shall
+see, St. Nicholas has the same--are to beat the bad children and reward
+the good with apples, nuts, and cakes. Can it be that the ethical
+distinction is of comparatively recent origin, an invention perhaps for
+children when the customs came to be performed solely for their benefit,
+and that the beating and the gifts were originally shared by all alike
+and were of a sacramental character? We shall meet with more whipping
+customs later on, they are common enough in folk-ritual, and are not
+punishments, but kindly services; their purpose is to drive away evil
+influences, and to bring to the flogged one the life-giving virtues of
+the tree from which the twigs or boughs are taken.{92} Both the flogging
+and the eating of fruit may, indeed, be means of contact with the
+vegetation-spirit, the one in |208| an external, the other in a more
+internal way. Or possibly the rod and the fruit may once have been
+conjoined, the beating being performed with fruit-laden boughs in order
+to produce prosperity. It is noteworthy that at Etzendorf so many head of
+cattle and loads of hay are augured for the farmer as there are
+juniper-_berries_ and twigs on St. Martin's _gerte_.{94}
+
+Attempts to account for the figures of SS. Martin and Nicholas in
+northern folk-customs have been made along various lines. Some scholars
+regard them as Christianizations of the pagan god Woden; but they might
+also be taken as akin to the "first-foots" whom we shall meet on January
+1--visitors who bring good luck--or as maskers connected with animal
+sacrifices (Pelzmärte suggests this), or again as related to the Boy
+Bishop, the Lord of Misrule and the Twelfth Night King. May I suggest
+that some at least of their aspects could be explained on the supposition
+that they represent administrants of primitive vegetation sacraments, and
+that these administrants, once ordinary human beings, have taken on the
+name and attributes of the saint who under the Christian dispensation
+presides over the festival? In any case it is a strange irony of history
+that around the festival of Martin of Tours, the zealous soldier of
+Christ and deadly foe of heathenism, should have gathered so much that is
+unmistakably pagan.
+
+|209| |210| |211|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS
+
+
+    St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions--St. Catherine's Day as
+    Spinsters' Festival--St. Andrew's Eve Auguries--The
+    _Klöpfelnächte_--St. Nicholas's Day, the Saint as Gift-bringer, and
+    his Attendants--Election of the Boy Bishop--St. Nicholas's Day at
+    Bari--St. Lucia's Day in Sweden, Sicily, and Central Europe--St.
+    Thomas's Day as School Festival--Its Uncanny Eve--"Going
+    a-Thomassin'."
+
+
+ST. CLEMENT'S DAY.
+
+The next folk-feast after Martinmas is St. Clement's Day, November 23,
+once reckoned the first day of winter in England.{1} It marks apparently
+one of the stages in the progress of the winter feast towards its present
+solstitial date. In England some interesting popular customs existed on
+this day. In Staffordshire children used to go round to the village
+houses begging for gifts, with rhymes resembling in many ways the
+"souling" verses I have already quoted. Here is one of the Staffordshire
+"clemencing" songs:--
+
+   "Clemany! Clemany! Clemany mine!
+    A good red apple and a pint of wine,
+    Some of your mutton and some of your veal,
+    If it is good, pray give me a deal;
+    If it is not, pray give me some salt.
+    Butler, butler, fill your bowl;
+    If thou fill'st it of the best,
+    The Lord'll send your soul to rest;
+    If thou fill'st it of the small,
+    Down goes butler, bowl and all. |212|
+
+    Pray, good mistress, send to me
+    One for Peter, one for Paul,
+    One for Him who made us all;
+    Apple, pear, plum, or cherry,
+    Any good thing to make us merry;
+    A bouncing buck and a velvet chair,
+    Clement comes but once a year;
+    Off with the pot and on with the pan,
+    A good red apple and I'll be gone."{2}
+
+In Worcestershire on St. Clement's Day the boys chanted similar rhymes,
+and at the close of their collection they would roast the apples received
+and throw them into ale or cider.{3} In the north of England men used to
+go about begging drink, and at Ripon Minster the choristers went round
+the church offering everyone a rosy apple with a sprig of box on it.{4}
+The Cambridge bakers held their annual supper on this day,{5} at Tenby
+the fishermen were given a supper,{6} while the blacksmiths' apprentices
+at Woolwich had a remarkable ceremony, akin perhaps to the Boy Bishop
+customs. One of their number was chosen to play the part of "Old Clem,"
+was attired in a great coat, and wore a mask, a long white beard, and an
+oakum wig. Seated in a large wooden chair, and surrounded by attendants
+bearing banners, torches, and weapons, he was borne about the town on the
+shoulders of six men, visiting numerous public-houses and the blacksmiths
+and officers of the dockyard. Before him he had a wooden anvil, and in
+his hands a pair of tongs and a wooden hammer, the insignia of the
+blacksmith's trade.{7}
+
+
+ST. CATHERINE'S DAY.
+
+November 25 is St. Catherine's Day, and at Woolwich Arsenal a similar
+ceremony was then performed: a man was dressed in female attire, with a
+large wheel by his side to represent the saint, and was taken round the
+town{8} in a wooden chair. At Chatham there was a torchlight procession
+on St. Catherine's Day, and a woman in white muslin with a gilt crown was
+carried about in a chair. She was said to represent not the saint, but
+Queen Catherine.{9}
+
+|213| St. Catherine's Day was formerly a festival for the lacemakers of
+Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire. She was the
+patroness of spinsters in the literal as well as the modern sense of the
+word, and at Peterborough the workhouse girls used to go in procession
+round the city on her day, dressed in white with coloured ribbons; the
+tallest was chosen as Queen and bore a crown and sceptre. As they went to
+beg money of the chief inhabitants they sang a quaint ballad which begins
+thus:--
+
+   "Here comes Queen Catherine, as fine as any queen,
+    With a coach and six horses a-coming to be seen,
+        And a-spinning we will go, will go, will go,
+        And a-spinning we will go."{10}
+
+We may perhaps see in this Saint or Queen Catherine a female counterpart
+of the Boy Bishop, who began his career on St. Nicholas's Day. Catherine,
+it must be remembered, is the patron saint of girls as Nicholas is of
+boys. In Belgium her day is still a festival for the "young person" both
+in schools and in families.{11} Even in modern Paris the
+dressmaker-girls celebrate it, and in a very charming way, too.
+
+"At midday the girls of every workroom present little mob-caps trimmed
+with yellow ribbons to those of their number who are over twenty-five and
+still unmarried. Then they themselves put on becoming little caps with
+yellow flowers and yellow ribbons and a sprig of orange blossom on them,
+and out they go arm-in-arm to parade the streets and collect a tribute of
+flowers from every man they meet.... Instead of working all the
+afternoon, the midinettes entertain all their friends (no men admitted,
+though, for it is the day of St. Catherine) to concerts and even to
+dramatic performances in the workrooms, where the work-tables are turned
+into stages, and the employers provide supper."{12}
+
+
+ST. ANDREW'S DAY.
+
+The last day of November is the feast of St. Andrew. Of English customs
+on this day the most interesting perhaps are those connected with the
+"Tander" or "Tandrew" merrymakings |214| of the Northamptonshire
+lacemakers. A day of general licence used to end in masquerading. Women
+went about in male attire and men and boys in female dress.{13} In Kent
+and Sussex squirrel-hunting was practised on this day{14}--a survival
+apparently of some old sacrificial custom comparable with the hunting of
+the wren at Christmas (see Chapter XII.).
+
+In Germany St. Andrew's Eve is a great occasion for prognostications of
+the future. Indeed, like Hallowe'en in Great Britain, _Andreasabend_ in
+Germany seems to have preserved the customs of augury connected with the
+old November New Year festival.{15} To a large extent the practices are
+performed by girls anxious to know what sort of husband they will get.
+Many and various are the methods.
+
+Sometimes it suffices to repeat some such rhyme as the following before
+going to sleep, and the future husband will appear in a dream:--
+
+   "St. Andrew's Eve is to-day,
+    Sleep all people,
+    Sleep all children of men,
+    Who are between heaven and earth,
+    Except this only man,
+    Who may be mine in marriage."{16}
+
+Again, at nightfall let a girl shut herself up naked in her bedroom, take
+two beakers, and into one pour clear water, into the other wine. These
+let her place on the table, which is to be covered with white, and let
+the following words be said:--
+
+   "My dear St. Andrew!
+    Let now appear before me
+    My heart's most dearly beloved.
+    If he shall be rich,
+    He will pour a cup of wine;
+    If he is to be poor,
+    Let him pour a cup of water."
+
+This done, the form of the future husband will enter and drink |215| of
+one of the cups. If he is poor, he will take the water; if rich, the
+wine.{17}
+
+One of the most common practices is to pour molten lead or tin through a
+key into cold water, and to discover the calling of the future husband by
+the form it takes, which will represent the tools of his trade. The white
+of an egg is sometimes used for the same purpose.{18} Another very
+widespread custom is to put nutshells to float on water with little
+candles burning in them. There are twice as many shells as there are
+girls present; each girl has her shell, and to the others the names of
+possible suitors are given. The man and the girl whose shells come
+together will marry one another. Sometimes the same method is practised
+with little cups of silver foil.{19}
+
+On the border of Saxony and Bohemia, a maiden who wishes to know the
+bodily build of her future husband goes in the darkness to a stack of
+wood and draws out a piece. If the wood is smooth and straight the man
+will be slim and well built; if it is crooked, or knotted, he will be
+ill-developed or even a hunchback.{20}
+
+These are but a few of the many ways in which girls seek to peer into the
+future and learn something about the most important event in their lives.
+Far less numerous, but not altogether absent on this night, are other
+kinds of prognostication. A person, for instance, who wishes to know
+whether he will die in the coming year, must on St. Andrew's Eve before
+going to bed make on the table a little pointed heap of flour. If by the
+morning it has fallen asunder, the maker will die.{21}
+
+The association of St. Andrew's Eve with the foreseeing of the future is
+not confined to the German race; it is found also on Slavonic and
+Roumanian ground. In Croatia he who fasts then will behold his future
+wife in a dream,{22} and among the Roumanians mothers anxious about
+their children's luck break small sprays from fruit-trees, bind them
+together in bunches, one for each child, and put them in a glass of
+water. The branch of the lucky one will blossom.{23}
+
+In Roumania St. Andrew's Eve is a creepy time, for on it vampires are
+supposed to rise from their graves, and with coffins |216| on their
+heads walk about the houses in which they once lived. Before nightfall
+every woman takes some garlic and anoints with it the door locks and
+window casements; this will keep away the vampires. At the cross-roads
+there is a great fight of these loathsome beings until the first cock
+crows; and not only the dead take part in this, but also some living men
+who are vampires from their birth. Sometimes it is only the souls of
+these living vampires that join in the fight; the soul comes out through
+the mouth in the form of a bluish flame, takes the shape of an animal,
+and runs to the crossway. If the body meanwhile is moved from its place
+the person dies, for the soul cannot find its way back.{24}
+
+St. Andrew's Day is sometimes the last, sometimes the first important
+festival of the western Church's year. It is regarded in parts of Germany
+as the beginning of winter, as witness the saying:--
+
+   "Sünten-Dres-Misse,
+    es de Winter gewisse."[93]{25}
+
+The nights are now almost at their longest, and as November passes away,
+giving place to the last month of the year, Christmas is felt to be near
+at hand.
+
+In northern Bohemia it is customary for peasant girls to keep for
+themselves all the yarn they spin on St. Andrew's Eve, and the _Hausfrau_
+gives them also some flax and a little money. With this they buy coffee
+and other refreshments for the lads who come to visit the parlours where
+in the long winter evenings the women sit spinning. These evenings, when
+many gather together in a brightly lighted room and sing songs and tell
+stories while they spin, are cheerful enough, and spice is added by the
+visits of the village lads, who in some places come to see the girls
+home.{26}
+
+
+THE KLÖPFELNÄCHTE.
+
+On the Thursday nights in Advent it is customary in southern Germany for
+children or grown-up people to go from house |217| to house, singing
+hymns and knocking on the doors with rods or little hammers, or throwing
+peas, lentils, and the like against the windows. Hence these evenings
+have gained the name of _Klöpfel_ or _Knöpflinsnächte_ (Knocking
+Nights).{27} The practice is described by Naogeorgus in the sixteenth
+century:--
+
+   "Three weekes before the day whereon was borne the Lord of Grace,
+    And on the Thursdaye Boyes and Girles do runne in every place,
+    And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps,
+    And crie, the Advent of the Lorde not borne as yet perhaps.
+    And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell,
+    A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well:
+    Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee,
+    For these three nightes are alwayes thought, unfortunate to bee;
+    Wherein they are afrayde of sprites and cankred witches' spight,
+    And dreadfull devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest
+          might."{28}
+
+With it may be compared the Macedonian custom for village boys to go in
+parties at nightfall on Christmas Eve, knocking at the cottage doors with
+sticks, shouting _Kolianda! Kolianda!_ and receiving presents,{29} and
+also one in vogue in Holland between Christmas and the Epiphany. There
+"the children go out in couples, each boy carrying an earthenware pot,
+over which a bladder is stretched, with a piece of stick tied in the
+middle. When this stick is twirled about, a not very melodious grumbling
+sound proceeds from the contrivance, which is known by the name of
+'Rommelpot.' By going about in this manner the children are able to
+collect some few pence."{30}
+
+Can such practices have originated in attempts to drive out evil spirits
+from the houses by noise? Similar methods are used for that purpose by
+various European and other peoples.{31} Anyhow something mysterious
+hangs about the _Klöpfelnächte_. They are occasions for girls to learn
+about their future husbands, and upon them in Swabia goes about
+Pelzmärte, whom we already know.{32}
+
+|218| In Tyrol curious mummeries are then performed. At Pillersee in
+the Lower Innthal two youths combine to form a mimic ass, upon which a
+third rides, and they are followed by a motley train. The ass falls sick
+and has to be cured by a "vet," and all kinds of satirical jokes are made
+about things that have happened in the parish during the year. Elsewhere
+two men dress up in straw as husband and wife, and go out with a masked
+company. The pair wrangle with one another and carry on a play of wits
+with the peasants whose house they are visiting. Sometimes the satire is
+so cutting that permanent enmities ensue, and for this reason the
+practice is gradually being dropped.{33}
+
+
+ST. NICHOLAS'S DAY.
+
+On December 6 we reach the most distinctive children's festival of the
+whole year, St. Nicholas's Day. In England it has gone out of mind, and
+in the flat north of Germany Protestantism has largely rooted it out, as
+savouring too much of saint-worship, and transferred its festivities to
+the more Evangelical season of Christmas.{34} In western and southern
+Germany, however, and in Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, it
+is still a day of joy for children, though in some regions even there its
+radiance tends to pale before the greater glory of the Christmas-tree.
+
+It is not easy either to get at the historic facts about St. Nicholas,
+the fourth-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, or to ascertain why he
+became the patron saint of boys. The legends of his infant piety and his
+later wondrous works for the benefit of young people may either have
+given rise, or be themselves due to, his connection with children.{35}
+In eastern Europe and southern Italy he is above all things the saint of
+seafaring men, and among the Greeks his cult has perhaps replaced that of
+Artemis as a sea divinity.{36} This aspect of him does not, however,
+appear in the German festival customs with which we are here chiefly
+concerned.
+
+It has already been hinted that in some respects St. Nicholas is a
+duplicate of St. Martin. His feast, indeed, is probably a later
+beginning-of-winter festival, dating from the period when |219|
+improved methods of agriculture and other causes made early December,
+rather than mid-November, the time for the great annual slaughter and its
+attendant rejoicings. Like St. Martin he brings sweet things for the good
+children and rods for the bad.
+
+St. Nicholas's Eve is a time of festive stir in Holland and Belgium; the
+shops are full of pleasant little gifts: many-shaped biscuits, gilt
+gingerbreads, sometimes representing the saint, sugar images, toys, and
+other trifles. In many places, when evening comes on, people dress up as
+St. Nicholas, with mitre and pastoral staff, enquire about the behaviour
+of the children, and if it has been good pronounce a benediction and
+promise them a reward next morning. Before they go to bed the children
+put out their shoes, with hay, straw, or a carrot in them for the saint's
+white horse or ass. When they wake in the morning, if they have been
+"good" the fodder is gone and sweet things or toys are in its place; if
+they have misbehaved themselves the provender is untouched and no gift
+but a rod is there.{37}
+
+In various parts of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria St. Nicholas is
+mimed by a man dressed up as a bishop.{38} In Tyrol children pray to the
+saint on his Eve and leave out hay for his white horse and a glass of
+_schnaps_ for his servant. And he comes in all the splendour of a
+church-image, a reverend grey-haired figure with flowing beard,
+gold-broidered cope, glittering mitre, and pastoral staff. Children who
+know their catechism are rewarded with sweet things out of the basket
+carried by his servant; those who cannot answer are reproved, and St.
+Nicholas points to a terrible form that stands behind him with a rod--the
+hideous Klaubauf, a shaggy monster with horns, black face, fiery eyes,
+long red tongue, and chains that clank as he moves.{39}
+
+In Lower Austria the saint is followed by a similar figure called Krampus
+or Grampus;{40} in Styria this horrible attendant is named Bartel;{41}
+all are no doubt related to such monsters as the _Klapperbock_ (see
+Chapter VII.). Their heathen origin is evident though it is difficult to
+trace their exact pedigree. Sometimes St. Nicholas himself appears in a
+non-churchly form like Pelzmärte, with a bell,{42} or with a sack of
+ashes which gains him the name of Aschenklas.{43}
+
+|220| Not only by hideous figures is St. Nicholas attended. Sometimes,
+as at Warnsdorf near Rumburg, there come with him the forms of Christ
+Himself, St. Peter, an angel, and the famous Knecht Ruprecht, whom we
+shall meet again on Christmas Eve. They are represented by children, and
+a little drama is performed, one personage coming in after the other and
+calling for the next in the manner of the English mummers' play. St.
+Nicholas, St. Peter, and Ruprecht accuse the children of all kinds of
+naughtiness, the "Heiliger Christ" intercedes and at last throws nuts
+down and receives money from the parents.{44} In Tyrol there are St.
+Nicholas plays of a more comic nature, performed publicly by large
+companies of players and introducing a number of humorous characters and
+much rude popular wit.{45}
+
+Sometimes a female bogey used to appear: Budelfrau in Lower Austria,
+Berchtel in Swabia, Buzebergt in the neighbourhood of Augsburg.{46} The
+last two are plainly variants of Berchte, who is specially connected with
+the Epiphany. Berchtel used to punish the naughty children with a rod,
+and reward the good with nuts and apples; Buzebergt wore black rags, had
+her face blackened and her hair hanging unkempt, and carried a pot of
+starch which she smeared upon people's faces.{47}
+
+As Santa Klaus St. Nicholas is of course known to every English child,
+but rather as a sort of incarnation of Christmas than as a saint with a
+day of his own. Santa Klaus, probably, has come to us _viâ_ the United
+States, whither the Dutch took him, and where he has still immense
+popularity.
+
+In the Middle Ages in England as elsewhere the Eve of St. Nicholas was a
+day of great excitement for boys. It was then that the small choristers
+and servers in cathedral and other churches generally elected their "Boy
+Bishop" or "Nicholas."{48} He had in some places to officiate at First
+Vespers and at the services on the festival itself. As a rule, however,
+the feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, was probably the most
+important day in the Boy Bishop's career, and we may therefore postpone
+our consideration of him. We will here only note his connection with the
+festival of the patron saint of boys, a connection perhaps implying a
+common origin for him and |221| for the St. Nicholases who in bishops'
+vestments make their present-giving rounds.
+
+The festival of St. Nicholas is naturally celebrated with most splendour
+at the place where his body lies, the seaport of Bari in south-eastern
+Italy. The holy bones are preserved in a sepulchre beneath a crypt of
+rich Saracenic architecture, above which rises a magnificent church.
+Legend relates that in the eleventh century they were stolen by certain
+merchants of Bari from the saint's own cathedral at Myra in Asia Minor.
+The tomb of St. Nicholas is a famous centre for pilgrimages, and on the
+6th of December many thousands of the faithful, bearing staves bound with
+olive and pine, visit it. An interesting ceremony on the festival is the
+taking of the saint's image out to sea by the sailors of the port. They
+return with it at nightfall, and a great procession escorts it back to
+the cathedral with torches and fireworks and chanting.{49} Here may be
+seen the other, the seafaring, aspect of St. Nicholas; by this mariners'
+cult we are taken far away from the present-giving saint who delights the
+small children of the North.
+
+
+ST. LUCIA'S DAY.
+
+The only folk-festivals of note between St. Nicholas's Day and Christmas
+are those of St. Lucia (December 13) and St. Thomas the Apostle (December
+21).
+
+In Sweden St. Lucia's Day was formerly marked by some interesting
+practices. It was, so to speak, the entrance to the Christmas festival,
+and was called "little Yule."{50} At the first cock-crow, between 1 and
+4 a.m., the prettiest girl in the house used to go among the sleeping
+folk, dressed in a white robe, a red sash, and a wire crown covered with
+whortleberry-twigs and having nine lighted candles fastened in it. She
+awakened the sleepers and regaled them with a sweet drink or with
+coffee,[94] sang a special song, and was named "Lussi" or "Lussibruden"
+(Lucy bride). When everyone was dressed, breakfast was taken, the room
+being lighted by many candles. The domestic animals |222| were not
+forgotten on this day, but were given special portions. A peculiar
+feature of the Swedish custom is the presence of lights on Lussi's crown.
+Lights indeed are the special mark of the festival; it was customary to
+shoot and fish on St. Lucy's Day by torchlight, the parlours, as has been
+said, were brilliantly illuminated in the early morning, in West Gothland
+Lussi went round the village preceded by torchbearers, and in one parish
+she was represented by a cow with a crown of lights on her head. In
+schools the day was celebrated with illuminations.{51}
+
+What is the explanation of this feast of lights? There is nothing in the
+legend of the saint to account for it; her name, however, at once
+suggests _lux_--light. It is possible, as Dr. Feilberg supposes, that the
+name gave rise to the special use of lights among the Latin-learned monks
+who brought Christianity to Sweden, and that the custom spread from them
+to the common people. A peculiar fitness would be found in it because St.
+Lucia's Day according to the Old Style was the shortest day of the year,
+the turning-point of the sun's light.{52}
+
+In Sicily also St. Lucia's festival is a feast of lights. After sunset on
+the Eve a long procession of men, lads, and children, each flourishing a
+thick bunch of long straws all afire, rushes wildly down the streets of
+the mountain village of Montedoro, as if fleeing from some danger, and
+shouting hoarsely. "The darkness of the night," says an eye-witness, "was
+lighted up by this savage procession of dancing, flaming torches, whilst
+bonfires in all the side streets gave the illusion that the whole village
+was burning." At the end of the procession came the image of Santa Lucia,
+holding a dish which contained her eyes.[95] In the midst of the _piazza_
+a great mountain of straw had been prepared; on this everyone threw his
+own burning torch, and the saint was placed in a spot from which she
+could survey the vast bonfire.{53}
+
+In central Europe we see St. Lucia in other aspects. In the Böhmerwald
+she goes round the village in the form of a nanny-goat with horns, gives
+fruit to the good children, and threatens to rip open the belly of the
+naughty. Here she is evidently related |223| to the pagan monsters
+already described. In Tyrol she plays a more graceful part: she brings
+presents for girls, an office which St. Nicholas is there supposed to
+perform for boys only.{55}
+
+In Lower Austria St. Lucia's Eve is a time when special danger from
+witchcraft is feared and must be averted by prayer and incense. A
+procession is made through each house to cense every room. On this
+evening, too, girls are afraid to spin lest in the morning they should
+find their distaffs twisted, the threads broken, and the yarn in
+confusion. (We shall meet with like superstitions during the Twelve
+Nights.) At midnight the girls practise a strange ceremony: they go to a
+willow-bordered brook, cut the bark of a tree partly away, without
+detaching it, make with a knife a cross on the inner side of the cut
+bark, moisten it with water, and carefully close up the opening. On New
+Year's Day the cutting is opened, and the future is augured from the
+markings found. The lads, on the other hand, look out at midnight for a
+mysterious light, the _Luzieschein_, the forms of which indicate coming
+events.{56}
+
+In Denmark, too, St. Lucia's Eve is a time for seeing the future. Here is
+a prayer of Danish maids: "Sweet St. Lucy let me know: whose cloth
+I shall lay, whose bed I shall make, whose child I shall bear, whose
+darling I shall be, whose arms I shall sleep in."{57}
+
+
+ST. THOMAS'S DAY.
+
+Many and various are the customs and beliefs associated with the feast of
+St. Thomas (December 21). In Denmark it was formerly a great children's
+day, unique in the year, and rather resembling the mediaeval Boy Bishop
+festival. It was the breaking-up day for schools; the children used to
+bring their master an offering of candles and money, and in return he
+gave them a feast. In some places it had an even more delightful side:
+for this one day in the year the children were allowed the mastery in the
+school. Testimonials to their scholarship and industry were made out, and
+elaborate titles were added to their names, as exalted sometimes as
+"Pope," "Emperor," or "Empress." Poor children used to go about showing
+these |224| documents and collecting money. Games and larks of all
+sorts went on in the schools without a word of reproof, and the children
+were wont to burn their master's rod.{58}
+
+In the neighbourhood of Antwerp children go early to school on St.
+Thomas's Day, and lock the master out, until he promises to treat them
+with ale or other drink. After this they buy a cock and hen, which are
+allowed to escape and have to be caught by the boys or the girls
+respectively. The girl who catches the hen is called "queen," the boy who
+gets the cock, "king." Elsewhere in Belgium children lock out their
+parents, and servants their masters, while schoolboys bind their teacher
+to his chair and carry him over to the inn. There he has to buy back his
+liberty by treating his scholars with punch and cakes. Instead of the
+chase for the fowls, it was up to 1850 the custom in the Ardennes for the
+teacher to give the children hens and let them chop the heads off.{59}
+Some pagan sacrifice no doubt lies at the root of this barbarous
+practice, which has many parallels in the folk-lore of western and
+southern Europe.{60}
+
+As for schoolboys' larks with their teachers, the custom of "barring out
+the master" existed in England, and was practised before Christmas{61}
+as well as at other times of the year, notably Shrove Tuesday. At
+Bromfield in Cumberland on Shrove Tuesday there was a regular siege, the
+school doors were strongly barricaded within, and the boy-defenders were
+armed with pop-guns. If the master won, heavy tasks were imposed, but if,
+as more often happened, he was defeated in his efforts to regain his
+authority, he had to make terms with the boys as to the hours of work and
+play.{62}
+
+St. Thomas's Eve is in certain regions one of the uncanniest nights in
+the year. In some Bohemian villages the saint is believed to drive about
+at midnight in a chariot of fire. In the churchyard there await him all
+the dead men whose name is Thomas; they help him to alight and accompany
+him to the churchyard cross, which glows red with supernatural radiance.
+There St. Thomas kneels and prays, and then rises to bless his namesakes.
+This done, he vanishes beneath the cross, and each Thomas returns to his
+grave. The saint here seems to have taken over |225| the character of
+some pagan god, who, like the Teutonic Odin or Woden, ruled the souls of
+the departed. In the houses the people listen with awe for the sound of
+his chariot, and when it is heard make anxious prayer to him for
+protection from all ill. Before retiring to rest the house-father goes to
+the cowhouse with holy water and consecrated salt, asperges it from
+without, and then entering, sprinkles every cow. Salt is also thrown on
+the head of each animal with the words, "St. Thomas preserve thee from
+all sickness." In the Böhmerwald the cattle are fed on this night with
+consecrated bayberries, bread, and salt, in order to avert disease.{63}
+
+In Upper and Lower Austria St. Thomas's Eve is reckoned as one of the
+so-called _Rauchnächte_ (smoke-nights) when houses and farm-buildings
+must be sanctified with incense and holy water, the other nights being
+the Eves of Christmas, the New Year, and the Epiphany.{64}
+
+In Germany St. Thomas's, like St. Andrew's Eve, is a time for forecasting
+the future, and the methods already described are sometimes employed by
+girls who wish to behold their future husbands. A widely diffused custom
+is that of throwing shoes backwards over the shoulders. If the points are
+found turned towards the door the thrower is destined to leave the house
+during the year; if they are turned away from it another year will be
+spent there. In Westphalia a belief prevails that you must eat and drink
+heartily on this night in order to avert scarcity.{65}
+
+In Lower Austria it is supposed that sluggards can cure themselves of
+oversleeping by saying a special prayer before they go to bed on St.
+Thomas's Eve, and in Westphalia in the mid-nineteenth century the same
+association of the day with slumber was shown by the schoolchildren's
+custom of calling the child who arrived last at school _Domesesel_
+(Thomas ass). In Holland, again, the person who lies longest in bed on
+St. Thomas's Day is greeted with shouts of "lazybones." Probably the fact
+that December 21 is the shortest day is enough to account for this.{66}
+
+In England there was divination by means of "St. Thomas's onion." Girls
+used to peel an onion, wrap it in a handkerchief and put it under their
+heads at night, with a prayer to the satin |226| to show them their
+true love in a dream.{67} The most notable English custom on this day,
+however, was the peregrinations of poor people begging for money or
+provisions for Christmas. Going "a-gooding," or "a-Thomassin'," or
+"a-mumping," this was called. Sometimes in return for the charity
+bestowed a sprig of holly or mistletoe was given.{68} Possibly the sprig
+was originally a sacrament of the healthful spirit of growth: it may be
+compared with the olive- or cornel-branches carried about on New Year's
+Eve by Macedonian boys,{69} and also with the St. Martin's rod (see last
+chapter).
+
+One more English custom on December 21 must be mentioned--it points to a
+sometime sacrifice--the bull-baiting practised until 1821 at Wokingham in
+Berkshire. Its abolition in 1822 caused great resentment among the
+populace, although the flesh continued to be duly distributed.{70}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are now four days from the feast of the Nativity, and many things
+commonly regarded as distinctive of Christmas have already come under
+notice. We have met, for instance, with several kinds of present-giving,
+with auguries for the New Year, with processions of carol-singers and
+well-wishers, with ceremonial feasting that anticipates the Christmas
+eating and drinking, and with various figures, saintly or monstrous,
+mimed or merely imagined, which we shall find reappearing at the greatest
+of winter festivals. These things would seem to have been attracted from
+earlier dates to the feast of the Nativity, and the probability that
+Christmas has borrowed much from an old November festival gradually
+shifted into December, is our justification for having dwelt so long upon
+the feasts that precede the Twelve Days.
+
+|227| |228| |229|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS
+
+
+    Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht--Talking Animals and
+    other Wonders of Christmas Eve--Scandinavian Beliefs about Trolls and
+    the Return of the Dead--Traditional Christmas Songs in Eastern
+    Europe--The Twelve Days, their Christian Origin and Pagan
+    Superstitions--The Raging Host--Hints of Supernatural Visitors in
+    England--The German _Frauen_--The Greek _Kallikantzaroi_.
+
+[Illustration: CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE--THE MUMMERS COMING IN]
+
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE.
+
+Christmas in the narrowest sense must be reckoned as beginning on the
+evening of December 24. Though Christmas Eve is not much observed in
+modern England, throughout the rest of Europe its importance so far as
+popular customs are concerned is far greater than that of the Day itself.
+Then in Germany the Christmas-tree is manifested in its glory; then, as
+in the England of the past, the Yule log is solemnly lighted in many
+lands; then often the most distinctive Christmas meal takes place.
+
+We shall consider these and other institutions later; though they appear
+first on Christmas Eve, they belong more or less to the Twelve Days as a
+whole. Let us look first at the supernatural visitors, mimed by human
+beings, who delight the minds of children, especially in Germany, on the
+evening of December 24, and at the beliefs that hang around this most
+solemn night of the year.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+First of all, the activities of St. Nicholas are not confined to his own
+festival; he often appears on Christmas Eve. We have already seen how he
+is attended by various companions, including |230| Christ Himself, and
+how he comes now vested as a bishop, now as a masked and shaggy figure.
+The names and attributes of the Christmas and Advent visitors are rather
+confused, but on the whole it may be said that in Protestant north
+Germany the episcopal St. Nicholas and his Eve have been replaced by
+Christmas Eve and the Christ Child, while the name Klas has become
+attached to various unsaintly forms appearing at or shortly before
+Christmas.
+
+We can trace a deliberate substitution of the Christ Child for St.
+Nicholas as the bringer of gifts. In the early seventeenth century a
+Protestant pastor is found complaining that parents put presents in their
+children's beds and tell them that St. Nicholas has brought them. "This,"
+he says, "is a bad custom, because it points children to the saint, while
+yet we know that not St. Nicholas but the holy Christ Child gives us all
+good things for body and soul, and He alone it is whom we ought to call
+upon."{1}
+
+The ways in which the figure, or at all events the name, of Christ
+Himself, is introduced into German Christmas customs, are often
+surprising. The Christ Child, "Christkind," so familiar to German
+children, has now become a sort of mythical figure, a product of
+sentiment and imagination working so freely as almost to forget the
+sacred character of the original. Christkind bears little resemblance to
+the Infant of Bethlehem; he is quite a tall child, and is often
+represented by a girl dressed in white, with long fair hair. He hovers,
+indeed, between the character of the Divine Infant and that of an angel,
+and is regarded more as a kind of good fairy than as anything else.
+
+In Alsace the girl who represents Christkind has her face "made up" with
+flour, wears a crown of gold paper with lighted candles in it--a parallel
+to the headgear of the Swedish Lussi; in one hand she holds a silver
+bell, in the other, a basket of sweetmeats. She is followed by the
+terrible Hans Trapp, dressed in a bearskin, with blackened face, long
+beard, and threatening rod. He "goes for" the naughty children, who are
+only saved by the intercession of Christkind.{2}
+
+In the Mittelmark the name of _de hêle_ (holy) _Christ_ is strangely
+|231| given to a skin- or straw-clad man, elsewhere called Knecht
+Ruprecht, Klas, or Joseph.{3} In the Ruppin district a man dresses up in
+white with ribbons, carries a large pouch, and is called _Christmann_ or
+_Christpuppe_. He is accompanied by a _Schimmelreiter_ and by other
+fellows who are attired as women, have blackened faces, and are named
+_Feien_ (we may see in them a likeness to the Kalends maskers condemned
+by the early Church). The procession goes round from house to house. The
+_Schimmelreiter_ as he enters has to jump over a chair; this done, the
+_Christpuppe_ is admitted. The girls present begin to sing, and the
+_Schimmelreiter_ dances with one of them. Meanwhile the _Christpuppe_
+makes the children repeat some verse of Scripture or a hymn; if they know
+it well, he rewards them with gingerbreads from his wallet; if not, he
+beats them with a bundle filled with ashes. Then both he and the
+_Schimmelreiter_ dance and pass on. Only when they are gone are the
+_Feien_ allowed to enter; they jump wildly about and frighten the
+children.{4}
+
+Knecht Ruprecht, to whom allusion has already been made, is a prominent
+figure in the German Christmas. On Christmas Eve in the north he goes
+about clad in skins or straw and examines children; if they can say their
+prayers perfectly he rewards them with apples, nuts and gingerbreads; if
+not, he punishes them. In the Mittelmark, as we have seen, a personage
+corresponding to him is sometimes called "the holy Christ"; in
+Mecklenburg he is "rû Klas" (rough Nicholas--note his identification with
+the saint); in Brunswick, Hanover, and Holstein "Klas," "Klawes," "Klas
+Bûr" and "Bullerklas"; and in Silesia "Joseph." Sometimes he wears bells
+and carries a long staff with a bag of ashes at the end--hence the name
+"Aschenklas" occasionally given to him.{5} An ingenious theory connects
+this aspect of him with the _polaznik_ of the Slavs, who on Christmas Day
+in Crivoscian farms goes to the hearth, takes up the ashes of the Yule
+log and dashes them against the cauldron-hook above so that sparks fly
+(see Chapter X.).{6} As for the name "Ruprecht" the older mythologists
+interpreted it as meaning "shining with glory," _hruodperaht_, and
+identified its owner with the god Woden.{7} Dr. Tille, however, regards
+him |232| as dating only from the seventeenth century.{8} It can
+hardly be said that any satisfactory account has as yet been given of the
+origins of this personage, or of his relation to St. Nicholas, Pelzmärte,
+and monstrous creatures like the _Klapperbock_.
+
+In the south-western part of Lower Austria, both St. Nicholas--a proper
+bishop with mitre, staff, and ring--and Ruprecht appear on Christmas Eve,
+and there is quite an elaborate ceremonial. The children welcome the
+saint with a hymn; then he goes to a table and makes each child repeat a
+prayer and show his lesson-books. Meanwhile Ruprecht in a hide, with
+glowing eyes and a long red tongue, stands at the door to overawe the
+young people. Each child next kneels before the saint and kisses his
+ring, whereupon Nicholas bids him put his shoes out-of-doors and look in
+them when the clock strikes ten. After this the saint lays on the table a
+rod dipped in lime, solemnly blesses the children, sprinkling them with
+holy water, and noiselessly departs. The children steal out into the
+garden, clear a space in the snow, and set out their shoes; when the last
+stroke of ten has sounded they find them filled with nuts and apples and
+all kinds of sweet things.{9}
+
+In the Troppau district of Austrian Silesia, three figures go round on
+Christmas Eve--Christkindel, the archangel Gabriel, and St. Peter--and
+perform a little play before the presents they bring are given.
+Christkindel announces that he has gifts for the good children, but the
+bad shall feel the rod. St. Peter complains of the naughtiness of the
+youngsters: they play about in the streets instead of going straight to
+school; they tear up their lesson-books and do many other wicked things.
+However, the children's mother pleads for them, and St. Peter relents and
+gives out the presents.{10}
+
+In the Erzgebirge appear St. Peter and Ruprecht, who is clad in skin and
+straw, has a mask over his face, a rod, a chain round his body, and a
+sack with apples, nuts, and other gifts; and a somewhat similar
+performance is gone through.{11}
+
+If we go as far east as Russia we find a parallel to the girl Christkind
+in Kolyáda, a white-robed maiden driven about in a sledge from house to
+house on Christmas Eve. The young people who attended her sang carols,
+and presents were given |233| them in return. _Kolyáda_ is the name for
+Christmas and appears to be derived from _Kalendae_, which probably
+entered the Slavonic languages by way of Byzantium. The maiden is one of
+those beings who, like the Italian Befana, have taken their names from
+the festival at which they appear.{12}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No time in all the Twelve Nights and Days is so charged with the
+supernatural as Christmas Eve. Doubtless this is due to the fact that the
+Church has hallowed the night of December 24-5 above all others in the
+year. It was to the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks _by night_
+that, according to the Third Evangelist, came the angelic message of the
+Birth, and in harmony with this is the unique Midnight Mass of the Roman
+Church, lending a peculiar sanctity to the hour of its celebration. And
+yet many of the beliefs associated with this night show a large admixture
+of paganism.
+
+First, there is the idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve animals have
+the power of speech. This superstition exists in various parts of Europe,
+and no one can hear the beasts talk with impunity. The idea has given
+rise to some curious and rather grim tales. Here is one from Brittany:--
+
+"Once upon a time there was a woman who starved her cat and dog. At
+midnight on Christmas Eve she heard the dog say to the cat, 'It is quite
+time we lost our mistress; she is a regular miser. To-night burglars are
+coming to steal her money; and if she cries out they will break her
+head.' ''Twill be a good deed,' the cat replied. The woman in terror got
+up to go to a neighbour's house; as she went out the burglars opened the
+door, and when she shouted for help they broke her head."{13}
+
+Again a story is told of a farm servant in the German Alps who did not
+believe that the beasts could speak, and hid in a stable on Christmas Eve
+to learn what went on. At midnight he heard surprising things. "We shall
+have hard work to do this day week," said one horse. "Yes, the farmer's
+servant is heavy," answered the other. "And the way to the churchyard is
+long and steep," said the first. The servant was buried that day
+week.{14}
+
+|234| It may well have been the traditional association of the ox and
+ass with the Nativity that fixed this superstition to Christmas Eve, but
+the conception of the talking animals is probably pagan.
+
+Related to this idea, but more Christian in form, is the belief that at
+midnight all cattle rise in their stalls or kneel and adore the new-born
+King. Readers of Mr. Hardy's "Tess" will remember how this is brought
+into a delightful story told by a Wessex peasant. The idea is widespread
+in England and on the Continent,{15} and has reached even the North
+American Indians. Howison, in his "Sketches of Upper Canada," relates
+that an Indian told him that "on Christmas night all deer kneel and look
+up to Great Spirit."{16} A somewhat similar belief about bees was held
+in the north of England: they were said to assemble on Christmas Eve and
+hum a Christmas hymn.{17} Bees seem in folk-lore in general to be
+specially near to humanity in their feelings.
+
+It is a widespread idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve all water turns
+to wine. A Guernsey woman once determined to test this; at midnight she
+drew a bucket from the well. Then came a voice:--
+
+   "Toute l'eau se tourne en vin,
+    Et tu es proche de ta fin."
+
+She fell down with a mortal disease, and died before the end of the year.
+In Sark the superstition is that the water in streams and wells turns
+into blood, and if you go to look you will die within the year.{18}
+
+There is also a French belief that on Christmas Eve, while the genealogy
+of Christ is being chanted at the Midnight Mass, hidden treasures are
+revealed.{19} In Russia all sorts of buried treasures are supposed to be
+revealed on the evenings between Christmas and the Epiphany, and on the
+eves of these festivals the heavens are opened, and the waters of springs
+and rivers turn into wine.{20}
+
+Another instance of the supernatural character of the night is found in a
+Breton story of a blacksmith who went on working after the sacring bell
+had rung at the Midnight Mass. To him |235| came a tall, stooping man
+with a scythe, who begged him to put in a nail. He did so; and the
+visitor in return bade him send for a priest, for this work would be his
+last. The figure disappeared, the blacksmith felt his limbs fail him, and
+at cock-crow he died. He had mended the scythe of the _Ankou_--Death the
+reaper.{21}
+
+In the Scandinavian countries simple folk have a vivid sense of the
+nearness of the supernatural on Christmas Eve. On Yule night no one
+should go out, for he may meet uncanny beings of all kinds. In Sweden the
+Trolls are believed to celebrate Christmas Eve with dancing and revelry.
+"On the heaths witches and little Trolls ride, one on a wolf, another on
+a broom or a shovel, to their assemblies, where they dance under their
+stones.... In the mount are then to be heard mirth and music, dancing and
+drinking. On Christmas morn, during the time between cock-crowing and
+daybreak, it is highly dangerous to be abroad."{22}
+
+Christmas Eve is also in Scandinavian folk-belief the time when the dead
+revisit their old homes, as on All Souls' Eve in Roman Catholic lands.
+The living prepare for their coming with mingled dread and desire to make
+them welcome. When the Christmas Eve festivities are over, and everyone
+has gone to rest, the parlour is left tidy and adorned, with a great fire
+burning, candles lighted, the table covered with a festive cloth and
+plentifully spread with food, and a jug of Yule ale ready. Sometimes
+before going to bed people wipe the chairs with a clean white towel; in
+the morning they are wiped again, and, if earth is found, some kinsman,
+fresh from the grave, has sat there. Consideration for the dead even
+leads people to prepare a warm bath in the belief that, like living
+folks, the kinsmen will want a wash before their festal meal.[96] Or
+again beds were made ready for them while the living slept on straw. Not
+always is it consciously the dead for whom these preparations are made,
+sometimes they are said to be for the Trolls and sometimes even for
+|236| the Saviour and His angels.{24} (We may compare with this
+Christian idea the Tyrolese custom of leaving some milk for the Christ
+Child and His Mother{25} at the hour of Midnight Mass, and a Breton
+practice of leaving food all through Christmas night in case the Virgin
+should come.{26})
+
+It is difficult to say how far the other supernatural beings--their name
+is legion--who in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland are believed to
+come out of their underground hiding-places during the long dark
+Christmas nights, were originally ghosts of the dead. Twenty years ago
+many students would have accounted for them all in this way, but the
+tendency now is strongly against the derivation of all supernatural
+beings from ancestor-worship. Elves, trolls, dwarfs, witches, and other
+uncanny folk--the beliefs about their Christmas doings are too many to be
+treated here; readers of Danish will find a long and very interesting
+chapter on this subject in Dr. Feilberg's "Jul."{27} I may mention just
+one familiar figure of the Scandinavian Yule, Tomte Gubbe, a sort of
+genius of the house corresponding very much to the "drudging goblin" of
+Milton's "L'Allegro," for whom the cream-bowl must be duly set. He may
+perhaps be the spirit of the founder of the family. At all events on
+Christmas Eve Yule porridge and new milk are set out for him, sometimes
+with other things, such as a suit of small clothes, spirits, or even
+tobacco. Thus must his goodwill be won for the coming year.{28}
+
+In one part of Norway it used to be believed that on Christmas Eve, at
+rare intervals, the old Norse gods made war on Christians, coming down
+from the mountains with great blasts of wind and wild shouts, and
+carrying off any human being who might be about. In one place the memory
+of such a visitation was preserved in the nineteenth century. The people
+were preparing for their festivities, when suddenly from the mountains
+came the warning sounds. "In a second the air became black, peals of
+thunder echoed among the hills, lightning danced about the buildings, and
+the inhabitants in the darkened rooms heard the clatter of hoofs and the
+weird shrieks of the hosts of the gods."{29}
+
+|237| The Scandinavian countries, Protestant though they are, have
+retained many of the outward forms of Catholicism, and the sign of the
+cross is often used as a protection against uncanny visitors. The
+cross--perhaps the symbol was originally Thor's hammer--is marked with
+chalk or tar or fire upon doors and gates, is formed of straw or other
+material and put in stables and cowhouses, or is smeared with the remains
+of the Yule candle on the udders of the beasts--it is in fact displayed
+at every point open to attack by a spirit of darkness.{30}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christmas Eve is in Germany a time for auguries. Some of the methods
+already noted on other days are practised upon it--for instance the
+pouring of molten lead into water, the flinging of shoes, the pulling out
+of pieces of wood, and the floating of nutshells--and there are various
+others which it might be tedious to describe.{31}
+
+Among the southern Slavs if a girl wants to know what sort of husband she
+will get, she covers the table on Christmas Eve, puts on it a white loaf,
+a plate, and a knife, spoon, and fork, and goes to bed. At midnight the
+spirit of her future husband will appear and fling the knife at her. If
+it falls without injuring her she will get a good husband and be happy,
+but if she is hurt she will die early. There is a similar mode of
+divination for a young fellow. On Christmas Eve, when everybody else has
+gone to church, he must, naked and in darkness, sift ashes through a
+sieve. His future bride will then appear, pull him thrice by the nose,
+and go away.{32}
+
+In eastern Europe Christmas, and especially Christmas Eve, is the time
+for the singing of carols called in Russian _Kolyádki_, and in other Slav
+countries by similar names derived from _Kalendae_.{33} More often than
+not these are without connection with the Nativity; sometimes they have a
+Christian form and tell of the doings of God, the Virgin and the saints,
+but frequently they are of an entirely secular or even pagan character.
+Into some the sun, moon, and stars and other natural objects are
+introduced, and they seem to be based on myths to which a Christian
+appearance has been given by a sprinkling of names of holy persons of the
+|238| Church. Here for instance is a fragment from a Carpathian song:--
+
+   "A golden plough goes ploughing,
+    And behind that plough is the Lord Himself.
+    The holy Peter helps Him to drive,
+    And the Mother of God carries the seed corn,
+    Carries the seed corn, prays to the Lord God,
+    'Make, O Lord, the strong wheat to grow,
+    The strong wheat and the vigorous corn!
+    The stalks then shall be like reeds!'"{34}
+
+Often they contain wishes for the prosperity of the household and end
+with the words, "for many years, for many years." The Roumanian songs are
+frequently very long, and a typical, oft-recurring refrain is:--
+
+   "This evening is a great evening,
+        White flowers;
+    Great evening of Christmas,
+        White flowers."{35}
+
+Sometimes they are ballads of the national life.
+
+In Russia a carol beginning "Glory be to God in heaven, Glory!" and
+calling down blessings on the Tsar and his people, is one of the most
+prominent among the _Kolyádki_, and opens the singing of the songs called
+_Podblyudnuiya_. "At the Christmas festival a table is covered with a
+cloth, and on it is set a dish or bowl (_blyudo_) containing water. The
+young people drop rings or other trinkets into the dish, which is
+afterwards covered with a cloth, and then the _Podblyudnuiya_ Songs
+commence. At the end of each song one of the trinkets is drawn at random,
+and its owner deduces an omen from the nature of the words which have
+just been sung."{36}
+
+
+THE TWELVE DAYS.
+
+Whatever the limits fixed for the beginning and end of the Christmas
+festival, its core is always the period between Christmas |239| Eve and
+the Epiphany--the "Twelve Days."[97] A cycle of feasts falls within this
+time, and the customs peculiar to each day will be treated in calendarial
+order. First, however, it will be well to glance at the character of the
+Twelve Days as a whole, and at the superstitions which hang about the
+season. So many are these superstitions, so "bewitched" is the time, that
+the older mythologists not unnaturally saw in it a Teutonic festal
+season, dating from pre-Christian days. In point of fact it appears to be
+simply a creation of the Church, a natural linking together of Christmas
+and Epiphany. It is first mentioned as a festal tide by the eastern
+Father, Ephraem Syrus, at the end of the fourth century, and was declared
+to be such by the western Council of Tours in 567.{37}
+
+While Christmas Eve is the night _par excellence_ of the supernatural,
+the whole season of the Twelve Days is charged with it. It is hard to see
+whence Shakespeare could have got the idea which he puts into the mouth
+of Marcellus in "Hamlet":--
+
+   "Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
+    Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
+    The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
+    And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
+    The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
+    No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
+    So hallow'd and so gracious is the time."{38}
+
+Against this is the fact that in folk-lore Christmas is a quite
+peculiarly uncanny time. Not unnatural is it that at this midwinter
+season of darkness, howling winds, and raging storms, men should have
+thought to see and hear the mysterious shapes and voices of dread beings
+whom the living shun.
+
+Throughout the Teutonic world one finds the belief in a "raging |240|
+host" or "wild hunt" or spirits, rushing howling through the air on
+stormy nights. In North Devon its name is "Yeth (heathen) hounds";{40}
+elsewhere in the west of England it is called the "Wish hounds."{41} It
+is the train of the unhappy souls of those who died unbaptized, or by
+violent hands, or under a curse, and often Woden is their leader.{42} At
+least since the seventeenth century this "raging host" (_das wüthende
+Heer_) has been particularly associated with Christmas in German
+folk-lore,{43} and in Iceland it goes by the name of the "Yule
+host."{44}
+
+In Guernsey the powers of darkness are supposed to be more than usually
+active between St. Thomas's Day and New Year's Eve, and it is dangerous
+to be out after nightfall. People are led astray then by Will o' the
+Wisp, or are preceded or followed by large black dogs, or find their path
+beset by white rabbits that go hopping along just under their feet.{45}
+
+In England there are signs that supernatural visitors were formerly
+looked for during the Twelve Days. First there was a custom of cleansing
+the house and its implements with peculiar care. In Shropshire, for
+instance, "the pewter and brazen vessels had to be made so bright that
+the maids could see to put their caps on in them--otherwise the fairies
+would pinch them, but if all was perfect, the worker would find a coin in
+her shoe." Again in Shropshire special care was taken to put away any
+suds or "back-lee" for washing purposes, and no spinning might be done
+during the Twelve Days.{46} It was said elsewhere that if any flax were
+left on the distaff, the Devil would come and cut it.{47}
+
+The prohibition of spinning may be due to the Church's hallowing of the
+season and the idea that all work then was wrong. This churchly hallowing
+may lie also at the root of the Danish tradition that from Christmas till
+New Year's Day nothing that runs round should be set in motion,{48} and
+of the German idea that no thrashing must be done during the Twelve Days,
+or all the corn within hearing will spoil. The expectation of uncanny
+visitors in the English traditions calls, however, for special attention;
+it is perhaps because of their coming that the house must be left
+spotlessly clean and with as little as possible about on which they can
+work mischief.{49} Though I know of no distinct English belief in the
+|241| return of the family dead at Christmas, it may be that the fairies
+expected in Shropshire were originally ancestral ghosts. Such a
+derivation of the elves and brownies that haunt the hearth is very
+probable.{50}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The belief about the Devil cutting flax left on the distaff links the
+English superstitions to the mysterious _Frau_ with various names, who in
+Germany is supposed to go her rounds during the Twelve Nights. She has a
+special relation to spinning, often punishing girls who leave their flax
+unspun. In central Germany and in parts of Austria she is called Frau
+Holle or Holda, in southern Germany and Tyrol Frau Berchta or Perchta, in
+the north down to the Harz Mountains Frau Freen or Frick, or Fru Gode or
+Fru Harke, and there are other names too.{51} Attempts have been made to
+dispute her claim to the rank of an old Teutonic goddess and to prove her
+a creation of the Middle Ages, a representative of the crowd of ghosts
+supposed to be specially near to the living at Christmastide.{52} It is
+questionable whether she can be thus explained away, and at the back of
+the varying names, and much overlaid no doubt with later superstitions,
+there may be a traditional goddess corresponding to that old divinity
+Frigg to whom we owe the name of Friday. The connection of Frick with
+Frigg is very probable, and Frick shares characteristics with the other
+_Frauen_.{53}
+
+All are connected with spinning and spinsters (in the literal sense). Fru
+Frick or Freen in the Uckermark and the northern Harz permits no spinning
+during the time when she goes her rounds, and if there are lazy spinsters
+she soils the unspun flax on their distaff. In like manner do Holda,
+Harke, Berchta, and Gode punish lazy girls.{54}
+
+The characters of the _Frauen_ can best be shown by the things told of
+them in different regions. They are more dreaded than loved, but if
+severe in their chastisements they are also generous in rewarding those
+who do them service.
+
+Frau Gaude (also called Gode, Gaue, or Wode) is said in Mecklenburg to
+love to drive through the village streets on the Twelve Nights with a
+train of dogs. Wherever she finds a street-door open she sends a little
+dog in. Next morning he wags his |242| tail at the inmates and whines,
+and will not be driven away. If killed, he turns into a stone by day;
+this, though it may be thrown away, always returns and is a dog again by
+night. All through the year he whines and brings ill luck upon the house;
+so people are careful to keep their street-doors shut during the Twelve
+Nights.{55}
+
+Good luck, however, befalls those who do Frau Gaude a service. A man who
+put a new pole to her carriage was brilliantly repaid--the chips that
+fell from the pole turned to glittering gold. Similar stories of golden
+chips are told about Holda and Berchta.{56}
+
+A train of dogs belongs not only to Frau Gaude but also to Frau Harke;
+with these howling beasts they go raging through the air by night.{57}
+The _Frauen_ in certain aspects are, indeed, the leaders of the "Wild
+Host."
+
+Holda and Perchta, as some strange stories show, are the guides and
+guardians of the _heimchen_ or souls of children who have died
+unbaptized. In the valley of the Saale, so runs a tale, Perchta, queen of
+the _heimchen_, had her dwelling of old, and at her command the children
+watered the fields, while she worked with her plough. But the people of
+the place were ungrateful, and she resolved to leave their land. One
+night a ferryman beheld on the bank of the Saale a tall, stately lady
+with a crowd of weeping children. She demanded to be ferried across, and
+the children dragged a plough into the boat, crying bitterly. As a reward
+for the ferrying, Perchta, mending her plough, pointed to the chips. The
+man grumblingly took three, and in the morning they had turned to
+gold-pieces.{58}
+
+Holda, whose name means "the kindly one," is the most friendly of the
+_Frauen_. In Saxony she brings rewards for diligent spinsters, and on
+every New Year's Eve, between nine and ten o'clock, she drives in a
+carriage full of presents through villages where respect has been shown
+to her. At the crack of her whip the people come out to receive her
+gifts. In Hesse and Thuringia she is imagined as a beautiful woman clad
+in white with long golden hair, and, when it snows hard, people say,
+"Frau Holle is shaking her featherbed."{59}
+
+|243| More of a bugbear on the whole is Berchte or Perchte (the name is
+variously spelt). She is particularly connected with the Eve of the
+Epiphany, and it is possible that her name comes from the old German
+_giper(c)hta Na(c)ht_, the bright or shining night, referring to the
+manifestation of Christ's glory.{60} In Carinthia the Epiphany is still
+called _Berchtentag_.{61}
+
+Berchte is sometimes a bogey to frighten children. In the mountains round
+Traunstein children are told on Epiphany Eve that if they are naughty she
+will come and cut their stomachs open.{62} In Upper Austria the girls
+must finish their spinning by Christmas; if Frau Berch finds flax still
+on their distaffs she will be angered and send them bad luck.{63}
+
+In the Orlagau (between the Saale and the Orle) on the night before
+Twelfth Day, Perchta examines the spinning-rooms and brings the spinners
+empty reels with directions to spin them full within a very brief time;
+if this is not done she punishes them by tangling and befouling the flax.
+She also cuts open the body of any one who has not eaten _zemmede_
+(fasting fare made of flour and milk and water) that day, takes out any
+other food he has had, fills the empty space with straw and bricks, and
+sews him up again.{64} And yet, as we have seen, she has a kindly
+side--at any rate she rewards those who serve her--and in Styria at
+Christmas she even plays the part of Santa Klaus, hearing children repeat
+their prayers and rewarding them with nuts and apples.{65}
+
+There is a charming Tyrolese story about her. At midnight on Epiphany Eve
+a peasant--not too sober--suddenly heard behind him "a sound of many
+voices, which came on nearer and nearer, and then the Berchtl, in her
+white clothing, her broken ploughshare in her hand, and all her train of
+little people, swept clattering and chattering close past him. The least
+was the last, and it wore a long shirt which got in the way of its little
+bare feet, and kept tripping it up. The peasant had sense enough left to
+feel compassion, so he took his garter off and bound it for a girdle
+round the infant, and then set it again on its way. When the Berchtl saw
+what he had done, she turned back and thanked him, and told him that in
+return for his compassion his children should never come to want."{66}
+
+|244| In Tyrol, by the way, it is often said that the Perchtl is
+Pontius Pilate's wife, Procula.{67} In the Italian dialects of south
+Tyrol the German Frau Berchta has been turned into _la donna Berta_.{68}
+If one goes further south, into Italy itself, one meets with a similar
+being, the Befana, whose name is plainly nothing but a corruption of
+_Epiphania_. She is so distinctly a part of the Epiphany festival that we
+may leave her to be considered later.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all supernatural Christmas visitors, the most vividly realized and
+believed in at the present day are probably the Greek _Kallikantzaroi_ or
+_Karkantzaroi_.{69} They are the terror of the Greek peasant during the
+Twelve Days; in the soil of his imagination they flourish luxuriantly,
+and to him they are a very real and living nuisance.
+
+Traditions about the _Kallikantzaroi_ vary from region to region, but in
+general they are half-animal, half-human monsters, black, hairy, with
+huge heads, glaring red eyes, goats' or asses' ears, blood-red tongues
+hanging out, ferocious tusks, monkeys' arms, and long curved nails, and
+commonly they have the foot of some beast. "From dawn till sunset they
+hide themselves in dark and dank places ... but at night they issue forth
+and run wildly to and fro, rending and crushing those who cross their
+path. Destruction and waste, greed and lust mark their course." When a
+house is not prepared against their coming, "by chimney and door alike
+they swarm in, and make havoc of the home; in sheer wanton mischief they
+overturn and break all the furniture, devour the Christmas pork, befoul
+all the water and wine and food which remains, and leave the occupants
+half dead with fright or violence." Many like or far worse pranks do they
+play, until at the crowing of the third cock they get them away to their
+dens. The signal for their final departure does not come until the
+Epiphany, when, as we saw in Chapter IV., the "Blessing of the Waters"
+takes place. Some of the hallowed water is put into vessels, and with
+these and with incense the priests sometimes make a round of the village,
+sprinkling the people and their houses. The fear of the |245|
+_Kallikantzaroi_ at this purification is expressed in the following
+lines:--
+
+   "Quick, begone! we must begone,
+    Here comes the pot-bellied priest,
+    With his censer in his hand
+    And his sprinkling-vessel too;
+    He has purified the streams
+    And he has polluted us."
+
+Besides this ecclesiastical purification there are various Christian
+precautions against the _Kallikantzaroi_--_e.g._, to mark the house-door
+with a black cross on Christmas Eve, the burning of incense and the
+invocation of the Trinity--and a number of other means of aversion: the
+lighting of the Yule log, the burning of something that smells strong,
+and--perhaps as a peace-offering--the hanging of pork-bones, sweetmeats,
+or sausages in the chimney.
+
+Just as men are sometimes believed to become vampires temporarily during
+their lifetime, so, according to one stream of tradition, do living men
+become _Kallikantzaroi_. In Greece children born at Christmas are thought
+likely to have this objectionable characteristic as a punishment for
+their mothers' sin in bearing them at a time sacred to the Mother of God.
+In Macedonia{70} people who have a "light" guardian angel undergo the
+hideous transformation.
+
+Many attempts have been made to account for the _Kallikantzaroi_. Perhaps
+the most plausible explanation of the outward form, at least, of the
+uncanny creatures, is the theory connecting them with the masquerades
+that formed part of the winter festival of Dionysus and are still to be
+found in Greece at Christmastide. The hideous bestial shapes, the noise
+and riot, may well have seemed demoniacal to simple people slightly
+"elevated," perhaps, by Christmas feasting, while the human nature of the
+maskers was not altogether forgotten.{71} Another theory of an even more
+prosaic character has been propounded--"that the Kallikantzaroi are
+nothing more than established nightmares, limited like indigestion to the
+twelve days of feasting. This view is |246| taken by Allatius, who says
+that a Kallikantzaros has all the characteristics of nightmare, rampaging
+abroad and jumping on men's shoulders, then leaving them half senseless
+on the ground."{72}
+
+Such theories are ingenious and suggestive, and may be true to a certain
+degree, but they hardly cover all the facts. It is possible that the
+_Kallikantzaroi_ may have some connection with the departed; they
+certainly appear akin to the modern Greek and Slavonic vampire, "a corpse
+imbued with a kind of half-life," and with eyes gleaming like live
+coals.{73} They are, however, even more closely related to the werewolf,
+a man who is supposed to change into a wolf and go about ravening. It is
+to be noted that "man-wolves" ([Greek: lykanthrôpoi]) is the very name
+given to the _Kallikantzaroi_ in southern Greece, and that the word
+_Kallikantzaros_ itself has been conjecturally derived by Bernhard
+Schmidt from two Turkish words meaning "black" and "werewolf."{74} The
+connection between Christmas and werewolves is not confined to Greece.
+According to a belief not yet extinct in the north and east of Germany,
+even where the real animals have long ago been extirpated, children born
+during the Twelve Nights become werewolves, while in Livonia and Poland
+that period is the special season for the werewolf's ravenings.{75}
+
+Perhaps on no question connected with primitive religion is there more
+uncertainty than on the ideas of early man about the nature of animals
+and their relation to himself and the world. When we meet with
+half-animal, half-human beings we must be prepared to find much that is
+obscure.
+
+With the _Kallikantzaroi_ may be compared some goblins of the Celtic
+imagination; especially like is the Manx _Fynnodderee_ (lit. "the
+hairy-dun one"), "something between a man and a beast, being covered with
+black shaggy hair and having fiery eyes," and prodigiously strong.{76}
+The Russian _Domovy_ or house-spirit is also a hirsute creature,{77} and
+the Russian _Ljeschi_, goat-footed woodland sprites, are, like the
+_Kallikantzaroi_, supposed to be got rid of by the "Blessing of the
+Waters" at the Epiphany.{78} Some of the monstrous German figures
+already dealt with here |247| bear strong resemblances to the Greek
+demons. And, of course, on Greek ground one cannot help thinking of Pan
+and the Satyrs and Centaurs.[98]
+
+|248| |249| |250| |251|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE YULE LOG
+
+
+    The Log as Centre of the Domestic Christmas--Customs of the Southern
+    Slavs--The _Polaznik_--Origin of the Yule Log--Probable Connection
+    with Vegetation-cults or Ancestor-worship--The _Souche de Noël_ in
+    France--Italian and German Christmas Logs--English Customs--The Yule
+    Candle in England and Scandinavia.
+
+The peoples of Europe have various centres for their Christmas rejoicing.
+In Spain and Italy the crib is often the focus of the festival in the
+home as well as the church. In England--after the old tradition--, in
+rural France, and among the southern Slavs, the centre is the great log
+solemnly brought in and kindled on the hearth, while in Germany, one need
+hardly say, the light-laden tree is the supreme symbol of Christmas. The
+crib has already been treated in our First Part, the Yule log and the
+Christmas-tree will be considered in this chapter and the next.
+
+The log placed on the fire on the Vigil of the Nativity no longer forms
+an important part of the English Christmas. Yet within the memory of many
+it was a very essential element in the celebration of the festival, not
+merely as giving out welcome warmth in the midwinter cold, but as
+possessing occult, magical properties. In some remote corners of England
+it probably lingers yet. We shall return to the traditional English Yule
+log after a study of some Continental customs of the same kind.
+
+First, we may travel to a part of eastern Europe where the log ceremonies
+are found in their most elaborate form. Among the Serbs and Croats on
+Christmas Eve two or three young oaks are felled for every house, and, as
+twilight comes on, are brought in and laid on the fire. (Sometimes there
+is one for each male |252| member of the family, but one large log is
+the centre of the ritual.) The felling takes place in some districts
+before sunrise, corn being thrown upon the trees with the words, "Good
+morning, Christmas!" At Risano and other places in Lower Dalmatia the
+women and girls wind red silk and gold wire round the oak trunks, and
+adorn them with leaves and flowers. While they are being carried into the
+house lighted tapers are held on either side of the door. As the
+house-father crosses the threshold in the twilight with the first log,
+corn--or in some places wine--is thrown over him by one of the family.
+The log or _badnjak_ is then placed on the fire. At Ragusa the
+house-father sprinkles corn and wine upon the _badnjak_, saying, as the
+flame shoots up, "Goodly be thy birth!" In the mountains above Risano he
+not only pours corn and wine but afterwards takes a bowl of corn, an
+orange, and a ploughshare, and places them on the upper end of the log in
+order that the corn may grow well and the beasts be healthy during the
+year. In Montenegro, instead of throwing corn, he more usually breaks a
+piece of unleavened bread, places it upon the log, and pours over it a
+libation of wine.{1}
+
+The first visit on Christmas Day is considered important--we may compare
+this with "first-footing" in the British Isles on January 1--and in order
+that the right sort of person may come, some one is specially chosen to
+be the so-called _polaznik_. No outsider but this _polaznik_ may enter a
+house on Christmas Day, where the rites are strictly observed. He appears
+in the early morning, carries corn in his glove and shakes it out before
+the threshold with the words, "Christ is born," whereupon some member of
+the household sprinkles him with corn in return, answering, "He is born
+indeed." Afterwards the _polaznik_ goes to the fire and makes sparks fly
+from the remains of the _badnjak_, at the same time uttering a wish for
+the good luck of the house-father and his household and farm. Money and
+sometimes an orange are then placed on the _badnjak_. It is not allowed
+to burn quite away; the last remains of the fire are extinguished and the
+embers are laid between the branches of young fruit-trees to promote
+their growth.{2}
+
+How shall we interpret these practices? Mannhardt regards the log as an
+embodiment of the vegetation-spirit, and its burning |253| as an
+efficacious symbol of sunshine, meant to secure the genial vitalizing
+influence of the sun during the coming year.{3} It is, however, possible
+to connect it with a different circle of ideas and to see in its burning
+the solemn annual rekindling of the sacred hearth-fire, the centre of the
+family life and the dwelling-place of the ancestors. Primitive peoples in
+many parts of the world are accustomed to associate fire with human
+generation,{4} and it is a general belief among Aryan and other peoples
+that ancestral spirits have their seat in the hearth. In Russia, for
+instance, "in the Nijegorod Government it is still forbidden to break up
+the smouldering faggots in a stove, because to do so might cause the
+ancestors to fall through into hell. And when a Russian family moves from
+one house to another, the fire is conveyed to the new one, where it is
+received with the words, 'Welcome, grandfather, to the new home!'"{5}
+
+Sir Arthur Evans in three articles in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for 1881{6}
+gave a minute account of the Christmas customs of the Serbian highlanders
+above Risano, who practise the log-rites with elaborate ceremonial, and
+explained them as connected in one way or other with ancestor-worship,
+though the people themselves attach a Christian meaning to many of them.
+He pointed to the following facts as showing that the Serbian Christmas
+is at bottom a feast of the dead:--(1) It is said on Christmas Eve,
+"To-night Earth is blended with Paradise" [_Raj_, the abode of the dead
+among the heathen Slavs]. (2) There is talk of unchristened folk beneath
+the threshold wailing "for a wax-light and offerings to be brought them;
+when that is done they lie still enough"--here there may be a modified
+survival of the idea that ancestral spirits dwell beneath the doorway.
+(3) The food must on no account be cleared away after the Christmas meal,
+but is left for three days, apparently for the house-spirits. (4)
+Blessings are invoked upon the "Absent Ones," which seems to mean the
+departed, and (5) a toast is drunk and a bread-cake broken in memory of
+"the Patron Namegiver of all house-fathers," ostensibly Christ but
+perhaps originally the founder of the family. Some of these customs
+resemble those we have noted on All Souls' Eve and--in Scandinavia--on
+Christmas Eve; other parallels we shall meet |254| with later. Among
+the Slav races the old organization of the family under an elective
+house-elder and holding things in common has been faithfully preserved,
+and we might expect to find among the remote Serbian highlanders
+specially clear traces of the old religion of the hearth. One remarkable
+point noted by Sir Arthur Evans was that in the Crivoscian cottage where
+he stayed the fire-irons, the table, and the stools were removed to an
+obscure corner before the logs were brought in and the Christmas rites
+began--an indication apparently of the extreme antiquity of the
+celebration, as dating from a time when such implements were unknown.{7}
+
+If we take the view that ancestral spirits are the centre of the
+_badnjak_ observances, we may regard the libations upon the fire as
+intended for their benefit. On the sun and vegetation hypothesis,
+however, the libations would be meant to secure, by homoeopathic magic,
+that sunshine should alternate with the rain necessary for the welfare of
+plants.[99]{8} The fertilizing powers possessed by the sparks and ashes
+of the Christmas log appear frequently in folk-lore, and may be explained
+either by the connection of fire with human generation already noted, or,
+on the other theory, by the burning log being a sort of sacrament of
+sunshine. It is not perhaps necessary to exclude the idea of the log's
+connection with the vegetation-spirit even on the ancestral cult
+hypothesis, for the tree which furnished the fuel may have been regarded
+as the source of the life of the race.{9} The Serbian rites certainly
+suggest very strongly some sort of veneration for the log itself as well
+as for the fire that it feeds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We may now return to western Europe. In France the Christmas log or
+_souche de Noël_ is common in the less modernized places, particularly in
+the south. In Dauphiné it is called _chalendal_, |255| in Provence
+_calignaou_ (from _Kalendae_, of course) or _tréfoir_, in Orne
+_tréfouet_. On Christmas Eve in Provence the whole family goes solemnly
+out to bring in the log. A carol meanwhile is sung praying for blessings
+on the house, that the women may bear children, the nanny-goats kids, and
+the ewes lambs, that corn and flour may abound, and the cask be full of
+wine. Then the youngest child in the family pours wine on the log in the
+name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The log is then thrown upon the
+fire, and the charcoal is kept all the year and used as a remedy for
+various ills.{11}
+
+Another account is given in his Memoirs by Frédéric Mistral, the
+Provençal poet. On Christmas Eve everyone, he says, speaking of his
+boyhood, sallied forth to fetch the Yule log, which had to be cut from a
+fruit-tree:--
+
+    "Walking in line we bore it home, headed by the oldest at one end,
+    and I, the last born, bringing up the rear. Three times we made the
+    tour of the kitchen, then, arrived at the flagstones of the hearth,
+    my father solemnly poured over the log a glass of wine, with the
+    dedicatory words:
+
+    'Joy, joy. May God shower joy upon us, my dear children. Christmas
+    brings us all good things. God give us grace to see the New Year, and
+    if we do not increase in numbers may we at all events not decrease.'
+
+    In chorus we responded:
+
+    'Joy, joy, joy!' and lifted the log on the fire dogs. Then as the
+    first flame leapt up my father would cross himself, saying, 'Burn the
+    log, O fire,' and with that we all sat down to the table."{12}
+
+In some places the _tréfoir_ or _tison de Noël_ is burnt every evening
+during the Thirteen Nights. If put under the bed its charcoal protects
+the house all the year round from lightning; contact with it preserves
+people from chilblains and animals from various diseases; mixed with
+fodder it makes cows calve; its brands thrown into the soil keep the corn
+healthy. In Périgord the portion which has not been burnt is used to form
+part of a plough, and is believed to make the seed prosper; women also
+keep some fragments until Epiphany that their poultry may thrive.{13} In
+|256| Brittany the _tison_ is a protection against lightning and its
+ashes are put in wells to keep the water good.{14}
+
+In northern Italy also the _ceppo_ or log is (or was) known--the
+Piedmontese call it _suc_--and in Tuscany Christmas is called after it
+_Festa di Ceppo_. In the Val di Chiana on Christmas Eve the family
+gathers, a great log is set on the fire, the children are blindfolded and
+have to beat it with tongs, and an _Ave Maria del Ceppo_ is sung.{15}
+Under the name in Lombardy of _zocco_, in Tuscany of _ciocco_, _di
+Natale_, the Yule log was in olden times common in Italian cities; the
+custom can there be traced back to the eleventh century. A little book
+probably printed in Milan at the end of the fifteenth century gives
+minute particulars of the ritual observed, and we learn that on Christmas
+Eve the father, or the head of the household, used to call all the family
+together and with great devotion, in the name of the Holy Trinity, take
+the log and place it on the fire. Juniper was put under it, and on the
+top money was placed, afterwards to be given to the servants. Wine in
+abundance was poured three times on the fire when the head of the house
+had drunk and given drink to all present. It was an old Italian custom to
+preserve the ashes of the _zocco_ as a protection against hail. A modern
+superstition is to keep some splinters of the wood and burn them in the
+fires made for the benefit of silkworms; so burnt, they are supposed to
+keep ills away from the creatures.{16}
+
+In many parts of Germany Yule log customs can be traced. In Hesse and
+Westphalia, for instance, it was the custom on Christmas Eve or Day to
+lay a large block of wood on the fire and, as soon as it was charred a
+little, to take it off and preserve it. When a storm threatened, it was
+kindled again as a protection against lightning. It was called the
+_Christbrand_.{17} In Thuringia a _Christklotz_ (Christ log) is put on
+the fire before people go to bed, so that it may burn all through the
+night. Its remains are kept to protect the house from fire and ill-luck.
+In parts of Thuringia and in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, East Prussia,
+Saxony, and Bohemia, the fire is kept up all night on Christmas or New
+Year's Eve, and the ashes are used to rid cattle of vermin and protect
+plants and fruit-trees from insects, while in the country between the
+Sieg |257| and Lahn the powdered ashes of an oaken log are strewn
+during the Thirteen Nights on the fields, to increase their
+fertility.{18} In Sweden, too, some form of Yule log was known,{19} and
+in Greece, as we have seen, the burning of a log is still supposed to be
+a protection against _Kallikantzaroi_.
+
+As for the English customs, they can hardly be better introduced than in
+Herrick's words:--
+
+     "Come, bring, with a noise,
+      My merry, merry boys,
+    The Christmas Log to the firing:
+      While my good Dame she
+      Bids ye all be free,
+    And drink to your hearts' desiring.
+
+      With the last year's Brand
+      Light the new Block, and
+    For good success in his spending,
+      On your psaltries play,
+      That sweet luck may
+    Come while the log is a-teending."[100]{20}
+
+We may note especially that the block must be kindled with last year's
+brand; here there is a distinct suggestion that the lighting of the log
+at Christmas is a shrunken remnant of the keeping up of a perpetual fire,
+the continuity being to some extent preserved by the use of a brand from
+last year's blaze.
+
+Another tradition and its origin are thus described by Sir Laurence
+Gomme:--
+
+    "From there being an ever-burning fire, it has come to be that the
+    fire must not be allowed to be extinguished on the last day of the
+    old year, so that the old year's fire may last into the new year. In
+    Lanarkshire it is considered unlucky to give out a light to any one
+    on the morning of the new year, and therefore if the house-fire has
+    been allowed to become extinguished recourse must be had to the
+    embers of |258| the village pile [for on New Year's Eve a great
+    public bonfire is made]. In some places the self-extinction of the
+    yule-log at Christmas is portentous of evil."{21}
+
+In the north of England in the days of tinder-boxes, if any one could not
+get a light it was useless to ask a neighbour for one, so frightfully
+unlucky was it to allow any light to leave the house between Christmas
+Eve and New Year's Day.{22} The idea of the unluckiness of giving out
+fire at the Kalends of January can be traced back to the eighth century
+when, as we saw in Chapter VI., St. Boniface alluded to this superstition
+among the people or Rome.
+
+In Shropshire the idea is extended even to ashes, which must not be
+thrown out of the house on Christmas Day, "for fear of throwing them in
+Our Saviour's face." Perhaps such superstitions may originally have had
+to do with dread that the "luck" of the family, the household spirit,
+might be carried away with the gift of fire from the hearth.{23}
+
+When Miss Burne wrote in the eighties there were still many West
+Shropshire people who could remember seeing the "Christmas Brand" drawn
+by horses to the farmhouse door, and placed at the back of the wide open
+hearth, where the flame was made up in front of it. "The embers," says
+one informant, "were raked up to it every night, and it was carefully
+tended that it might not go out during the whole season, during which
+time no light might either be struck, given, or borrowed." At Cleobury
+Mortimer in the south-east of the county the silence of the curfew bell
+during "the Christmas" points to a time when fires might not be
+extinguished during that season.{24}
+
+The place of the Yule log in Devonshire is taken by the "ashen [sometimes
+"ashton"] faggot," still burnt in many a farm on Christmas Eve. The
+sticks of ash are fastened together by ashen bands, and the traditional
+custom is for a quart of cider to be called for and served to the
+merrymaking company, as each band bursts in the flames.{25}
+
+In England the Yule log was often supplemented or replaced |259| by a
+great candle. At Ripon in the eighteenth century the chandlers sent their
+customers large candles on Christmas Eve, and the coopers, logs of
+wood.{26} Hampson, writing in 1841, says:--
+
+    "In some places candles are made of a particular kind, because the
+    candle that is lighted on Christmas Day must be so large as to burn
+    from the time of its ignition to the close of the day, otherwise it
+    will portend evil to the family for the ensuing year. The poor were
+    wont to present the rich with wax tapers, and yule candles are still
+    in the north of Scotland given by merchants to their customers. At
+    one time children at the village schools in Lancashire were required
+    to bring each a mould candle before the _parting_ or separation for
+    the Christmas holidays."[101]{27}
+
+In the Scandinavian countries the Yule candle is, or was, very prominent
+indeed. In West Jutland (Denmark) two great tallow candles stood on the
+festive board. No one dared to touch or extinguish them, and if by any
+mischance one went out it was a portent of death. They stood for the
+husband and wife, and that one of the wedded pair whose candle burnt the
+longer would outlive the other.{28}
+
+In Norway also two lights were placed on the table.{29} All over the
+Scandinavian lands the Yule candle had to burn throughout the night; it
+was not to be extinguished till the sun rose or--as was said
+elsewhere--till the beginning of service on Christmas Day. Sometimes the
+putting-out had to be done by the oldest member of the family or the
+father of the household. In Norway the candle was lighted every evening
+until New Year's Day. While it foreshadowed death if it went out, so long
+as it duly burned it shed a blessing with its light, and, in order to
+secure abundance of good things, money, clothes, food, and drink were
+spread out that its rays might fall upon them. The remains of the candle
+were used in various ways to benefit man and beast. Sometimes a cross was
+branded with them upon the animals on Christmas morning; in Sweden the
+plough was smeared with |260| the tallow, when used for the first time
+in spring. Or again the tallow was given to the fowls; and, lastly, in
+Denmark the ends were preserved and burnt in thundery weather to protect
+the house from lightning.{30} There is an analogy here with the use of
+the Christmas log, and also of the candles of the Purification (see
+Chapter XVI.).
+
+|261| |262| |263|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS
+
+
+    The Christmas-tree a German Creation--Charm of the German
+    Christmas--Early Christmas-trees--The Christmas Pyramid--Spread of
+    the Tree in Modern Germany and other Countries--Origin of the
+    Christmas-tree--Beliefs about Flowering Trees at
+    Christmas--Evergreens at the Kalends--Non-German Parallels to the
+    Christmas-tree--Christmas Decorations connected with Ancient Kalends
+    Customs--Sacredness of Holly and Mistletoe--Floors strewn with
+    Straw--Christmas and New Year Gifts, their Connection with the Roman
+    _Strenae_ and St. Nicholas--Present-giving in Various
+    Countries--Christmas Cards.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+From an engraving by Joseph Kellner.]
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS-TREE.
+
+The most widespread, and to children the most delightful, of all festal
+institutions is the Christmas-tree. Its picturesqueness and gay charm
+have made it spread rapidly all over Europe without roots in national
+tradition, for, as most people know, it is a German creation, and even in
+Germany it attained its present immense popularity only in the nineteenth
+century. To Germany, of course, one should go to see the tree in all its
+glory. Many people, indeed, maintain that no other Christmas can compare
+with the German _Weihnacht_. "It is," writes Miss I. A. R. Wylie, "that
+childish, open-hearted simplicity which, so it seems to me, makes
+Christmas essentially German, or at any rate explains why it is that
+nowhere else in the world does it find so pure an expression. The German
+is himself simple, warm-hearted, unpretentious, with something at the
+bottom of him which is childlike in the best sense. He is the last
+'Naturmensch' in civilization." Christmas suits him "as well as a play
+suits an actor for whose character and temperament it has been especially
+written."{1}
+
+|264| In Germany the Christmas-tree is not a luxury for well-to-do
+people as in England, but a necessity, the very centre of the festival;
+no one is too poor or too lonely to have one. There is something about a
+German _Weihnachtsbaum_--a romance and a wonder--that English
+Christmas-trees do not possess. For one thing, perhaps, in a land of
+forests the tree seems more in place; it is a kind of sacrament linking
+mankind to the mysteries of the woodland. Again the German tree is simply
+a thing of beauty and radiance; no utilitarian presents hang from its
+boughs--they are laid apart on a table--and the tree is purely splendour
+for splendour's sake. However tawdry it may look by day, at night it is a
+true thing of wonder, shining with countless lights and glittering
+ornaments, with fruit of gold and shimmering festoons of silver. Then
+there is the solemnity with which it is surrounded; the long secret
+preparations behind the closed doors, and, when Christmas Eve arrives,
+the sudden revelation of hidden glory. The Germans have quite a religious
+feeling for their _Weihnachtsbaum_, coming down, one may fancy, from some
+dim ancestral worship of the trees of the wood.
+
+As Christmas draws near the market-place in a German town is filled with
+a miniature forest of firs; the trees are sold by old women in quaint
+costumes, and the shop-windows are full of candles and ornaments to deck
+them. Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in her "Home Life in Germany" gives a
+delightful picture of such a Christmas market in "one of the old German
+cities in the hill country, when the streets and the open places are
+covered with crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white with it....
+The air is cold and still, and heavy with the scent of the
+Christmas-trees brought from the forest for the pleasure of the children.
+Day by day you see the rows of them growing thinner, and if you go to the
+market on Christmas Eve itself you will find only a few trees left out in
+the cold. The market is empty, the peasants are harnessing their horses
+or their oxen, the women are packing up their unsold goods. In every home
+in the city one of the trees that scented the open air a week ago is
+shining now with lights and little gilded nuts and apples, and is helping
+to make that Christmas smell, all compact of the pine forest, wax |265|
+candles, cakes and painted toys, you must associate so long as you live
+with Christmas in Germany."{2}
+
+Even in London one may get a glimpse of the Teutonic Christmas in the
+half-German streets round Fitzroy Square. They are bald and drab enough,
+but at Christmas here and there a window shines with a lighted tree, and
+the very prosaic Lutheran church in Cleveland Street has an unwonted
+sight to show--two great fir-trees decked with white candles, standing
+one on each side of the pulpit. The church of the German Catholics, too,
+St. Boniface's, Whitechapel, has in its sanctuary two Christmas-trees
+strangely gay with coloured glistening balls and long strands of gold and
+silver _engelshaar_. The candles are lit at Benediction during the
+festival, and between the shining trees the solemn ritual is performed by
+the priest and a crowd of serving boys in scarlet and white with tapers
+and incense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a pretty story about the institution of the _Weihnachtsbaum_ by
+Martin Luther: how, after wandering one Christmas Eve under the clear
+winter sky lit by a thousand stars, he set up for his children a tree
+with countless candles, an image of the starry heaven whence Christ came
+down. This, however, belongs to the region of legend; the first
+historical mention of the Christmas-tree is found in the notes of a
+certain Strasburg citizen of unknown name, written in the year 1605. "At
+Christmas," he writes, "they set up fir-trees in the parlours at
+Strasburg and hang thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples,
+wafers, gold-foil, sweets, &c."{3}
+
+We next meet with the tree in a hostile allusion by a distinguished
+Strasburg theologian, Dr. Johann Konrad Dannhauer, Professor and Preacher
+at the Cathedral. In his book, "The Milk of the Catechism," published
+about the middle of the seventeenth century, he speaks of "the
+Christmas- or fir-tree, which people set up in their houses, hang with
+dolls and sweets, and afterwards shake and deflower." "Whence comes the
+custom," he says, "I know not; it is child's play.... Far better were it
+to point the children to the spiritual cedar-tree, Jesus Christ."{4}
+
+In neither of these references is there any mention of candles--the
+|266| most fascinating feature of the modern tree. These appear,
+however, in a Latin work on Christmas presents by Karl Gottfried Kissling
+of the University of Wittenberg, written in 1737. He tells how a certain
+country lady of his acquaintance set up a little tree for each of her
+sons and daughters, lit candles on or around the trees, laid out presents
+beneath them, and called her children one by one into the room to take
+the trees and gifts intended for them.{5}
+
+With the advance of the eighteenth-century notices of the
+_Weihnachtsbaum_ become more frequent: Jung Stilling, Goethe, Schiller,
+and others mention it, and about the end of the century its use seems to
+have been fairly general in Germany.{6} In many places, however, it was
+not common till well on in the eighteen hundreds: it was a Protestant
+rather than a Catholic institution, and it made its way but slowly in
+regions where the older faith was held.{7} Well-to-do townspeople
+welcomed it first, and the peasantry were slow to adopt it. In Old
+Bavaria, for instance, in 1855 it was quite unknown in country places,
+and even to-day it is not very common there, except in the towns.{8} "It
+is more in vogue on the whole," wrote Dr. Tille in 1893, "in the
+Protestant north than in the Catholic south,"{9} but its popularity was
+rapidly growing at that time.
+
+A common substitute for the Christmas-tree in Saxony during the
+nineteenth century, and one still found in country places, was the
+so-called "pyramid," a wooden erection adorned with many-coloured paper
+and with lights. These pyramids were very popular among the smaller
+_bourgeoisie_ and artisans, and were kept from one Christmas to
+another.{10} In Berlin, too, the pyramid was once very common. It was
+there adorned with green twigs as well as with candles and coloured
+paper, and had more resemblance to the Christmas-tree.{11} Tieck refers
+to it in his story, "Weihnacht-Abend" (1805).{12}
+
+Pyramids, without lights apparently, were known in England before 1840.
+In Hertfordshire they were formed of gilt evergreens, apples, and nuts,
+and were carried about just before Christmas for presents. In
+Herefordshire they were known at the New Year.{13}
+
+|267| The Christmas-tree was introduced into France in 1840, when
+Princess Helene of Mecklenburg brought it to Paris. In 1890 between
+thirty and thirty-five thousand of the trees are said to have been sold
+in Paris.{14}
+
+In England it is alluded to in 1789,{15} but its use did not become at
+all general until about the eighteen-forties. In 1840 Queen Victoria and
+Prince Albert had a Christmas-tree, and the fashion spread until it
+became completely naturalized.{16} In Denmark and Norway it was known in
+1830, and in Sweden in 1863 (among the Swedish population on the coast of
+Finland it seems to have been in use in 1800).{17} In Bohemia it is
+mentioned in 1862.{18} It is also found in Russia, the United States,
+Spain, Italy, and Holland,{19} and of course in Switzerland and Austria,
+so largely German in language and customs. In non-German countries it is
+rather a thing for the well-to-do classes than for the masses of the
+people.
+
+The Christmas-tree is essentially a domestic institution. It has,
+however, found its way into Protestant churches in Germany and from them
+into Catholic churches. Even the Swiss Zwinglians, with all their
+Puritanism, do not exclude it from their bare, white-washed fanes. In the
+Münsterthal, for instance, a valley of Romonsch speech, off the Lower
+Engadine, a tree decked with candles, festoons, presents, and
+serpent-squibs, stands in church at Christmas, and it is difficult for
+the minister to conduct service, for all the time, except during the
+prayers, the people are letting off fireworks. On one day between
+Christmas Eve and New Year there is a great present-giving in
+church.{20}
+
+In Munich, and doubtless elsewhere, the tree appears not only in the
+church and in the home, but in the cemetery. The graves of the dead are
+decked on Christmas Eve with holly and mistletoe and a little
+Christmas-tree with gleaming lights, a touching token of remembrance, an
+attempt, perhaps, to give the departed a share in the brightness of the
+festival.{21}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The question of the origin of Christmas-trees is of great interest.
+Though their affinity to other sacraments of the |268| vegetation-spirit
+is evident, it is difficult to be certain of their exact ancestry. Dr.
+Tille regards them as coming from a union of two elements: the old Roman
+custom of decking houses with laurels and green trees at the Kalends of
+January, and the popular belief that every Christmas Eve apple and other
+trees blossomed and bore fruit.{22}
+
+Before the advent of the Christmas-tree proper--a fir with lights and
+ornaments often imitating and always suggesting flowers and fruit--it
+was customary to put trees like cherry or hawthorn into water or into
+pots indoors, so that they might bud and blossom at New Year or
+Christmas.{23} Even to-day the practice of picking boughs in order that
+they may blossom at Christmas is to be found in some parts of Austria.
+In Carinthia girls on St. Lucia's Day (December 13) stick a
+cherry-branch into wet sand; if it blooms at Christmas their wishes will
+be fulfilled. In other parts the branches--pear as well as cherry--are
+picked on St. Barbara's Day (December 4), and in South Tyrol
+cherry-trees are manured with lime on the first Thursday in Advent so
+that they may blossom at Christmas.{24} The custom may have had to do
+with legendary lore about the marvellous transformation of Nature on the
+night of Christ's birth, when the rivers ran wine instead of water and
+trees stood in full blossom in spite of ice and snow.{25}
+
+In England there was an old belief in trees blossoming at Christmas,
+connected with the well-known legend of St. Joseph of Arimathea. When the
+saint settled at Glastonbury he planted his staff in the earth and it put
+forth leaves; moreover it blossomed every Christmas Eve. Not only the
+original thorn at Glastonbury but trees of the same species in other
+parts of England had this characteristic. When in 1752 the New Style was
+substituted for the Old, making Christmas fall twelve days earlier, folks
+were curious to see what the thorns would do. At Quainton in
+Buckinghamshire two thousand people, it is said, went out on the new
+Christmas Eve to view a blackthorn which had the Christmas blossoming
+habit. As no sign of buds was visible they agreed that the new Christmas
+could not be right, and refused to keep it. At Glastonbury itself nothing
+|269| happened on December 24, but on January 5, the right day according
+to the Old Style, the thorn blossomed as usual.[102]{26}
+
+Let us turn to the customs of the Roman Empire which may be in part
+responsible for the German Christmas-tree. The practice of adorning
+houses with evergreens at the January Kalends was common throughout the
+Empire, as we learn from Libanius, Tertullian, and Chrysostom. A grim
+denunciation of such decorations and the lights which accompanied them
+may be quoted from Tertullian; it makes a pregnant contrast of pagan and
+Christian. "Let them," he says of the heathen, "kindle lamps, they who
+have no light; let them fix on the doorposts laurels which shall
+afterwards be burnt, they for whom fire is close at hand; meet for them
+are testimonies of darkness and auguries of punishment. But thou," he
+says to the Christian, "art a light of the world and a tree that is ever
+green; if thou hast renounced temples, make not a temple of thy own
+house-door."{27}
+
+That these New Year practices of the Empire had to do with the
+_Weihnachtsbaum_ is very possible, but on the other hand it has closer
+parallels in certain folk-customs that in no way suggest Roman or Greek
+influence. Not only at Christmas are ceremonial "trees" to be found in
+Germany. In the Erzgebirge there is dancing at the summer solstice round
+"St. John's tree," a pyramid decked with garlands and flowers, and lit up
+at night by candles.{28} At midsummer "in the towns of the Upper Harz
+Mountains tall fir-trees, with the bark peeled off their lower trunks,
+were set up in open places and decked with flowers and eggs, which were
+painted yellow and red. Round these trees the young folk danced by day
+and the old folk in the evening";{29} while on Dutch ground in
+Gelderland and Limburg at the beginning of May trees were adorned with
+lights.{30}
+
+Nearer to Christmas is a New Year's custom found in some |270| Alsatian
+villages: the adorning of the fountain with a "May." The girls who visit
+the fountain procure a small fir-tree or holly-bush, and deck it with
+ribbons, egg-shells, and little figures representing a shepherd or a man
+beating his wife. This is set up above the fountain on New Year's Eve. On
+the evening of the next day the snow is carefully cleared away and the
+girls dance and sing around the fountain. The lads may only take part in
+the dance by permission of the girls. The tree is kept all through the
+year as a protection to those who have set it up.{31}
+
+In Sweden, before the advent of the German type of tree, it was customary
+to place young pines, divested of bark and branches, outside the houses
+at Christmastide.{32} An English parallel which does not suggest any
+borrowing from Germany, was formerly to be found at Brough in
+Westmoreland on Twelfth Night. A holly-tree with torches attached to its
+branches was carried through the town in procession. It was finally
+thrown among the populace, who divided into two parties, one of which
+endeavoured to take the tree to one inn, and the other, to a rival
+hostelry.{33} We have here pretty plainly a struggle of two
+factions--perhaps of two quarters of a town that were once separate
+villages--for the possession of a sacred object.[103]
+
+We may find parallels, lastly, in two remote corners of Europe. In the
+island of Chios--here we are on Greek ground--tenants are wont to offer
+to their landlords on Christmas morning a _rhamna_, a pole with wreaths
+of myrtle, olive, and orange leaves bound around it; "to these are fixed
+any flowers that may be found--geraniums, anemones, and the like, and, by
+way of further decoration, oranges, lemons, and strips of gold and
+coloured paper."[104]{34} Secondly, among the Circassians in the early
+half of the nineteenth century, a young pear-tree used to be carried into
+each house at an autumn festival, to the sound of music and joyous cries.
+It was covered with candles, and a cheese was fastened to its top. Round
+about it they ate, drank, and sang. Afterwards it was |271| removed to
+the courtyard, where it remained for the rest of the year.{36}
+
+Though there is no recorded instance of the use of a tree at Christmas in
+Germany before the seventeenth century, the _Weihnachtsbaum_ may well be
+a descendant of some sacred tree carried about or set up at the
+beginning-of-winter festival. All things considered, it seems to belong
+to a class of primitive sacraments of which the example most familiar to
+English peoples is the May-pole. This is, of course, an early summer
+institution, but in France and Germany a Harvest May is also known--a
+large branch or a whole tree, which is decked with ears of corn, brought
+home on the last waggon from the harvest field, and fastened to the roof
+of farmhouse or barn, where it remains for a year.{37} Mannhardt has
+shown that such sacraments embody the tree-spirit conceived as the spirit
+of vegetation in general, and are believed to convey its life-giving,
+fructifying influences. Probably the idea of contact with the spirit of
+growth lay also beneath the Roman evergreen decorations, so that whether
+or not we connect the Christmas-tree with these, the principle at the
+bottom is the same.
+
+Certain Christian ideas, finally, besides that of trees blossoming on the
+night of the Nativity, may have affected the fortunes of the
+Christmas-tree. December 24 was in old Church calendars the day of Adam
+and Eve, the idea being that Christ the second Adam had repaired by His
+Incarnation the loss caused by the sin of the first. A legend grew up
+that Adam when he left Paradise took with him an apple or sprout from the
+Tree of Knowledge, and that from this sprang the tree from which the
+Cross was made. Or it was said that on Adam's grave grew a sprig from the
+Tree of Life, and that from it Christ plucked the fruit of redemption.
+The Cross in early Christian poetry was conceived as the Tree of Life
+planted anew, bearing the glorious fruit of Christ's body, and repairing
+the mischief wrought by the misuse of the first tree. We may recall a
+verse from the "Pange, lingua" of Passiontide:--
+
+   "Faithful Cross! above all other,
+      One and only noble tree! |272|
+    None in foliage, none in blossom,
+      None in fruit thy peer may be:
+    Sweetest wood and sweetest iron!
+      Sweetest weight is hung on thee."
+
+In the religious Christmas plays the tree of Paradise was sometimes shown
+to the people. At Oberufer, for instance, it was a fine juniper-tree,
+adorned with apples and ribbons. Sometimes Christ Himself was regarded as
+the tree of Paradise.{38} The thought of Him as both the Light of the
+World and the Tree of Life may at least have given a Christian meaning to
+the light-bearing tree, and helped to establish its popularity among
+pious folk.
+
+
+CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.
+
+We have seen that the Christmas-tree may be a development, partly at
+least, from the custom of decorating buildings with evergreens at the New
+Year, and that such decorations were common throughout the Roman
+Empire.[105] Some further consideration may now be given to the subject
+of Christmas decorations in various lands. In winter, when all is brown
+and dead, the evergreens are manifestations of the abiding life within
+the plant-world, and they may well have been used as sacramental means of
+contact with the spirit of growth and fertility, threatened by the powers
+of blight. Particularly precious would be plants like the holly, the ivy,
+and the mistletoe, which actually bore fruit in the winter-time.{39}
+
+In spite of ecclesiastical condemnations of Kalends decorations--as late
+as the sixth century the _capitula_ of Bishop Martin of Braga forbid the
+adorning of houses with laurels and green trees{40}--the custom has
+found its way even into churches, and nowhere more than in England. At
+least as far back as the fifteenth century, according to Stow's "Survay
+of London," it was the custom at Christmas for "every man's house, as
+also the parish churches," to be "decked with holm, ivy, bays, and
+whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green. The conduits and
+|273| standards in the streets were likewise garnished."{41} Many
+people of the last generation will remember the old English mode of
+decoration--how sprigs of holly and yew, stuck into holes in the high
+pews, used to make the churches into miniature forests. Only upon the
+mistletoe does a trace of the ecclesiastical taboo remain, and even that
+is not universal, for at York Minster, for instance, some was laid upon
+the altar.{42}
+
+English popular custom has connected particular plants with the winter
+festival in a peculiarly delightful way; at the mere mention of holly or
+mistletoe the picture of Christmas with its country charm rises to the
+mind--we think of snowy fields and distant bells, of warm hearths and
+kindly merrymaking.
+
+It is no wonder that the mistletoe has a special place in Christmas
+decorations, for it is associated with both Teutonic myth and Celtic
+ritual. It was with mistletoe that the beloved Balder was shot, and the
+plant played an important part in a Druidic ceremony described by Pliny.
+A white-robed Druid climbed a sacred oak and cut the mistletoe with a
+golden sickle. As it fell it was caught in a white cloth, and two white
+bulls were then sacrificed, with prayer. The mistletoe was called
+"all-healer" and was believed to be a remedy against poison and to make
+barren animals fruitful.{43} The significance of the ritual is not easy
+to find. Pliny's account, Dr. MacCulloch has suggested, may be
+incomplete, and the cutting of the mistletoe may have been a preliminary
+to some other ceremony--perhaps the felling of the tree on which it grew,
+whose soul was supposed to be in it, or perhaps the slaying of a
+representative of the tree-spirit; while the white oxen of Pliny's time
+may have replaced a human victim.{44}
+
+It is interesting to find that the name "all-healer" is still given to
+the mistletoe in Celtic speech,[106]{45} and that in various European
+countries it is believed to possess marvellous powers of healing sickness
+or averting misfortune.{46}
+
+|274| It is hard to say exactly what is the origin of the English
+"kissing under the mistletoe," but the practice would appear to be due to
+an imagined relation between the love of the sexes and the spirit of
+fertility embodied in the sacred bough, and it may be a vestige of the
+licence often permitted at folk-festivals. According to one form of the
+English custom the young men plucked, each time they kissed a girl, a
+berry from the bough. When the berries were all picked, the privilege
+ceased.{48}
+
+Sometimes a curious form, reminding one both of the German Christmas-tree
+and of the _Krippe_, is taken by the "kissing bunch." Here is an account
+from Derbyshire:--
+
+    "The 'kissing bunch' is always an elaborate affair. The size depends
+    upon the couple of hoops--one thrust through the other--which form
+    its skeleton. Each of the ribs is garlanded with holly, ivy, and
+    sprigs of other greens, with bits of coloured ribbons and paper
+    roses, rosy-cheeked apples, specially reserved for this occasion, and
+    oranges. Three small dolls are also prepared, often with much taste,
+    and these represent our Saviour, the mother of Jesus, and Joseph.
+    These dolls generally hang within the kissing bunch by strings from
+    the top, and are surrounded by apples, oranges tied to strings, and
+    various brightly coloured ornaments. Occasionally, however, the dolls
+    are arranged in the kissing bunch to represent a manger-scene....
+    Mistletoe is not very plentiful in Derbyshire; but, generally, a bit
+    is obtainable, and this is carefully tied to the bottom of the
+    kissing bunch, which is then hung in the middle of the house-place,
+    the centre of attention during Christmastide."{49}
+
+Kissing under the mistletoe seems to be distinctively English. There is,
+however, a New Year's Eve custom in Lower Austria and the Rhaetian Alps
+that somewhat resembles our mistletoe bough practices. People linger late
+in the inns, the walls and windows of which are decorated with green
+pine-twigs. In the centre of the inn-parlour hangs from a roof-beam a
+wreath of the same greenery, and in a dark corner hides a masked figure
+known as "Sylvester," old and ugly, with a flaxen beard and _a wreath of
+mistletoe_. If a youth or maiden happens to pass under the pine wreath
+Sylvester springs out and imprints a rough kiss. When midnight comes he
+is driven out as the representative of the old year.{50}
+
+|275| There are traces in Britain of the sacredness of holly as well as
+mistletoe. In Northumberland it is used for divination: nine leaves are
+taken and tied with nine knots into a handkerchief, and put under the
+pillow by a person who desires prophetic dreams.{51} For this purpose
+smooth leaves (without prickles) must be employed, and it is to be noted
+that at Burford in Shropshire smooth holly only was used for the
+Christmas decorations.{52} Holly is hated by witches,{53} but perhaps
+this may be due not to any pre-Christian sanctity attached to it but to
+the association of its thorns and blood-red berries with the Passion--an
+association to which it owes its Danish name, _Kristdorn_.
+
+In some old English Christmas carols holly and ivy are put into a curious
+antagonism, apparently connected with a contest of the sexes. Holly is
+the men's plant, ivy the women's, and the carols are debates as to the
+respective merits of each. Possibly some sort of rude drama may once have
+been performed.{54} Here is a fifteenth-century example of these
+carols:--
+
+   "Holly and Ivy made a great party,
+    Who should have the mastery,
+      In landës where they go.
+
+    Then spoke Holly, 'I am free and jolly,
+    I will have the mastery,
+      In landës where we go.'
+
+    Then spake Ivy, 'I am lov'd and prov'd,
+    And I will have the mastery,
+      In landës where we go.'
+
+    Then spake Holly, and set him down on his knee,
+    'I pray thee, gentle Ivy,
+    Say me no villainy,
+      In landës where we go.'"{55}
+
+The sanctity of Christmas house-decorations in England is shown by the
+care taken in disposing of them when removed from the walls. In
+Shropshire old-fashioned people never threw them away, for fear of
+misfortune, but either burnt them or gave them to the cows; it was very
+unlucky to let a piece |276| fall to the ground. The Shropshire custom
+was to leave the holly and ivy up until Candlemas, while the
+mistletoe-bough was carefully preserved until the time came for a new one
+next year. West Shropshire tradition, by the way, connects the mistletoe
+with the New Year rather than with Christmas; the bough ought not to be
+put up until New Year's Eve.{56}
+
+In Sweden green boughs, apparently, are not used for decoration, but the
+floor of the parlour is strewn with sprigs of fragrant juniper or
+spruce-pine, or with rye-straw.{57} The straw was probably intended
+originally to bring to the house, by means of sacramental contact, the
+wholesome influences of the corn-spirit, though the common people connect
+it with the stable at Bethlehem. The practice of laying straw and the
+same Christian explanation are found also in Poland{58} and in
+Crivoscia.{59} In Poland before the cloth is laid on Christmas Eve, the
+table is covered with a layer of hay or straw, and a sheaf stands in the
+corner. Years ago straw was also spread on the floor. Sometimes it is
+given to the cattle as a charm and sometimes it is used to tie up
+fruit-trees.{60}
+
+Dr. Frazer conjectures that the Swedish Yule straw comes in part at least
+from the last sheaf at harvest, to which, as embodying the corn-spirit, a
+peculiar significance is attached. The Swedish, like the Polish, Yule
+straw has sundry virtues; scattered on the ground it will make a barren
+field productive; and it is used to bind trees and make them
+fruitful.{61} Again the peasant at Christmas will sit on a log and throw
+up Yule straws one by one to the roof; as many as lodge in the rafters,
+so many will be the sheaves of rye at harvest.{62}
+
+
+CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR GIFTS.
+
+We have come across presents of various kinds at the pre-Christmas
+festivals; now that we have reached Christmastide itself we may dwell a
+little upon the festival as the great present-giving season of the year,
+and try to get at the origins of the custom.
+
+The Roman _strenae_ offered to the Emperor or exchanged between private
+citizens at the January Kalends have already |277| been noted.
+According to tradition they were originally merely branches plucked from
+the grove of the goddess Strenia, and the purpose of these may well have
+been akin to that of the greenery used for decorations, viz., to secure
+contact with a vegetation-spirit. In the time of the Empire, however, the
+_strenae_ were of a more attractive character, "men gave honeyed things,
+that the year of the recipient might be full of sweetness, lamps that it
+might be full of light, copper and silver and gold that wealth might flow
+in amain."{63} Such presents were obviously a kind of charm for the New
+Year, based on the principle that as the beginning was, so would the rest
+of the year be.
+
+With the adoption of the Roman New Year's Day its present-giving customs
+appear to have spread far and wide. In France, where the Latin spirit is
+still strong, January 1 is even now the great day for presents, and they
+are actually called _étrennes_, a name obviously derived from _strenae_.
+In Paris boxes of sweets are then given by bachelors to friends who have
+entertained them at their houses during the year--a survival perhaps of
+the "honeyed things" given in Roman times.
+
+In many countries, however, present-giving is attached to the
+ecclesiastical festival of Christmas. This is doubtless largely due to
+attraction from the Roman New Year's Day to the feast hallowed by the
+Church, but readers of the foregoing pages will have seen that Christmas
+has also drawn to itself many practices of a November festival, and it is
+probable that German Christmas presents, at least, are connected as much
+with the apples and nuts of St. Martin and St. Nicholas[107] as with the
+Roman _strenae_. It has already been pointed out that the German St.
+Nicholas as present-giver appears to be a duplicate of St. Martin, and
+that St. Nicholas himself has often wandered from his own day to
+Christmas, or has been replaced by the Christ Child. We have also noted
+the rod associated with the two saints, and seen reason for thinking that
+its original purpose was not disciplinary but health-giving.
+
+|278| It is interesting to find that while, if we may trust tradition,
+the Roman _strenae_ were originally twigs, Christmas gifts in
+sixteenth-century Germany showed a connection with the twigs or rods of
+St. Martin and St. Nicholas. The presents were tied together in a bundle,
+and a twig was added to them.{65} This was regarded by the pedagogic
+mind of the period not as a lucky twig but as a rod in the sinister
+sense. In some Protestant sermons of the latter half of the century there
+are curious detailed references to Christmas presents. These are supposed
+to be brought to children by the Saviour Himself, strangely called the
+_Haus-Christ_. Among the gifts mentioned as contained in the
+"Christ-bundles" are pleasant things like money, sugar-plums, cakes,
+apples, nuts, dolls; useful things like clothes; and also things "that
+belong to teaching, obedience, chastisement, and discipline, as A.B.C.
+tablets, Bibles and handsome books, writing materials, paper, &c., _and
+the_ '_Christ-rod_.'"{66}
+
+A common gift to German children at Christmas or the New Year was an
+apple with a coin in it; the coin may conceivably be a Roman
+survival,{67} while the apple may be connected with those brought by St.
+Nicholas.
+
+The Christ Child is still supposed to bring presents in Germany; in
+France, too, it is sometimes _le petit Jésus_ who bears the welcome
+gifts.{68} In Italy we shall find that the great time for children's
+presents is Epiphany Eve, when the Befana comes, though in the northern
+provinces Santa Lucia is sometimes a gift-bringer.{69} In Sicily the
+days for gifts and the supposed bringers vary; sometimes, as we have
+already seen, it is the dead who bring them, on All Souls' Eve; sometimes
+it is _la Vecchia di Natali_--the Christmas old woman--who comes with
+them on Christmas Eve; sometimes they are brought by the old woman
+Strina--note the derivation from _strenae_--at the New Year; sometimes by
+the Befana at the Epiphany.{70}
+
+A curious mode of giving presents on Christmas Eve belongs particularly
+to Sweden, though it is also found--perhaps borrowed--in Mecklenburg,
+Pomerania, and other parts of Germany. The so-called _Julklapp_ is a gift
+wrapped up in innumerable coverings. The person who brings it raps
+noisily at |279| the door, and throws or pushes the _Julklapp_ into the
+room. It is essential that he should arrive quite unexpectedly, and come
+and go like lightning without revealing his identity. Great efforts are
+made to conceal the gift so that the recipient after much trouble in
+undoing the covering may have to search and search again to find it.
+Sometimes in Sweden a thin gold ring is hidden away in a great heavy box,
+or a little gold heart is put in a Christmas cake. Occasionally a man
+contrives to hide in the _Julklapp_ and thus offer himself as a Christmas
+present to the lady whom he loves. The gift is often accompanied by some
+satirical rhyme, or takes a form intended to tease the recipient.{71}
+
+Another custom, sometimes found in "better-class" Swedish households, is
+for the Christmas presents to be given by two masked figures, an old man
+and an old woman. The old man holds a bell in his hand and rings it, the
+old woman carries a basket full of sealed packets, which she delivers to
+the addressees.{72}
+
+There is nothing specially interesting in modern English modes of
+present-giving. We may, however, perhaps see in the custom of Christmas
+boxes, inexorably demanded and not always willingly bestowed, a
+degeneration of what was once friendly entertainment given in return for
+the good wishes and the luck brought by wassailers. Instances of gifts to
+calling neighbours have already come before our notice at several
+pre-Christmas festivals, notably All Souls', St. Clement's, and St.
+Thomas's. As for the name "Christmas box," it would seem to have come
+from the receptacles used for the gifts. According to one account
+apprentices, journeymen, and servants used to carry about earthen boxes
+with a slit in them, and when the time for collecting was over, broke
+them to obtain the contents.{73}
+
+The Christmas card, a sort of attenuated present, seems to be of quite
+modern origin. It is apparently a descendant of the "school pieces" or
+"Christmas pieces" popular in England in the first half of the nineteenth
+century--sheets of writing-paper with designs in pen and ink or
+copper-plate headings. The first Christmas card proper appears to have
+been issued in 1846, but it was not till about 1862 that the custom of
+card-sending obtained any foothold.{74}
+
+|280|
+
+[Illustration:
+
+CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA.
+
+_By Ferdinand Waldmûller (b. 1793)._]
+
+|281| |282| |283|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS
+
+
+    Prominence of Eating in the English Christmas--The Boar's Head, the
+    Goose, and other Christmas Fare--Frumenty, Sowens, Yule Cakes, and
+    the Wassail Bowl--Continental Christmas Dishes, their Possible
+    Origins--French and German Cakes--The Animals' Christmas Feast--Cakes
+    in Eastern Europe--Relics of Animal Sacrifice--Hunting the
+    Wren--Various Games of Sacrificial Origin.
+
+
+FEASTING CUSTOMS.
+
+In the mind of the average sensual Englishman perhaps the most vivid
+images called up by the word Christmas are those connected with eating
+and drinking. "Ha più da fare che i forni di Natale in Inghilterra,"[108]
+an Italian proverb used of a very busy person, sufficiently suggests the
+character of our Christmas.[109] It may be that the Christmas dinner
+looms larger among the English than among most other peoples, but in
+every country a distinctive meal of some kind is associated with the
+season. We have already seen how this illustrates the immemorial
+connection between material feasting and religious rejoicing.
+
+Let us note some forms of "Christmas fare" and try to get an idea of
+their origin. First we may look at English feasting customs, though, as
+they have been pretty fully described by |284| previous writers, no
+very elaborate account of them need be given.
+
+The gross eating and drinking in former days at Christmas, of which our
+present mild gluttony is but a pale reflection, would seem to be
+connected with the old November feast, though transferred to the season
+hallowed by Christ's birth. The show of slaughtered beasts, adorned with
+green garlands, in an English town just before Christmas, reminds one
+strongly of the old November killing. In displays of this kind the pig's
+head is specially conspicuous, and points to the time when the swine was
+a favourite sacrificial animal.{1} We may recall here the traditional
+carol sung at Queen's College, Oxford, as the boar's head is solemnly
+brought in at Christmas, and found elsewhere in other forms:--
+
+   "The boar's head in hand bear I,
+    Bedeck'd with bays and rosemary;
+    And I pray you, my masters, be merry,
+      _Quot estis in convivio._
+      _Caput apri defero,_
+      _Reddens laudes Domino._"{2}
+
+The Christmas bird provided by the familiar "goose club" may be compared
+with the German Martinmas goose. The more luxurious turkey must be
+relatively an innovation, for that bird seems not to have been introduced
+into England until the sixteenth century.{3}
+
+Cakes and pies, partly or wholly of vegetable origin, are, of course, as
+conspicuous at the English Christmas as animal food. The peculiar
+"luckiness" attached to some of them (as when mince-pies, eaten in
+different houses during the Twelve Days, bring a happy month each) makes
+one suspect some more serious original purpose than mere gratification of
+the appetite. A sacrificial or sacramental origin is probable, at least
+in certain cases; a cake made of flour, for instance, may well have been
+regarded as embodying the spirit immanent in the corn.{4} Whether any
+mystic significance ever belonged to the plum-pudding it is hard to say,
+though the sprig of holly stuck into its |285| top recalls the lucky
+green boughs we have so often come across, and a resemblance to the
+libations upon the Christmas log might be seen in the burning brandy.
+
+A dish once prominent at Christmas was "frumenty" or "furmety" (variously
+spelt, and derived from the Latin _frumentum_, corn). It was made of
+hulled wheat boiled in milk and seasoned with cinnamon, sugar, &c.{5}
+This too may have been a cereal sacrament. In Yorkshire it was the first
+thing eaten on Christmas morning, just as ale posset was the last thing
+drunk on Christmas Eve. Ale posset was a mixture of beer and milk, and
+each member of the family in turn had to take a "sup," as also a piece of
+a large apple-pie.{6}
+
+In the Highlands of Scotland, among those who observed Christmas, a
+characteristic dish was new sowens (the husks and siftings of oatmeal),
+given to the family early on Christmas Day in their beds. They were
+boiled into the consistence of molasses and were poured into as many
+bickers as there were people to partake of them. Everyone on despatching
+his bicker jumped out of bed.{7} Here, as in the case of the Yorkshire
+frumenty, the eating has a distinctly ceremonial character.
+
+In the East Riding of Yorkshire a special Yule cake was eaten on
+Christmas Eve, "made of flour, barm, large cooking raisins, currants,
+lemon-peel, and nutmeg," and about as large as a dinner-plate.{8} In
+Shropshire "wigs" or caraway buns dipped in ale were eaten on Christmas
+Eve.{9} Again elsewhere there were Yule Doughs or Dows, little images of
+paste, presented by bakers to their customers.{10} We shall see plenty
+of parallels to these on the Continent. When they are in animal or even
+human form they may in some cases have taken the place of actual
+sacrificial victims.{11}
+
+In Nottinghamshire the Christmas cake was associated with the
+wassail-bowl in a manner which may be compared with the Macedonian custom
+described later; it was broken up and put into the bowl, hot ale was
+poured over it, and so it was eaten.{12}
+
+The wassail-bowl--one cannot leave the subject of English Yuletide
+feasting without a few words upon this beloved beaker of hot spiced ale
+and toasted apples ("lambswool"). _Wassail_ is |286| derived from the
+Anglo-Saxon _wes hál_ = be whole, and wassailing is in its essence the
+wishing of a person's very good health. The origin of drinking healths is
+not obvious; perhaps it may be sacramental: the draught may have been at
+first a means of communion with some divinity, and then its consumption
+may have come to be regarded not only as benefiting the partaker, but as
+a rite that could be performed for the welfare of another person. Apart
+from such speculations, we may note the frequent mention of wassailing in
+old English carols of the less ecclesiastical type; the singers carried
+with them a bowl or cup which they expected their wealthier neighbours to
+fill with drink.{13} Sometimes the bowl was adorned with ribbons and had
+a golden apple at the top,{14} and it is a noteworthy fact that the box
+with the Christmas images, mentioned in Chapter IV. (p. 118), is
+sometimes called "the Vessel [Wassail] Cup."{15}
+
+The various Christmas dishes of Europe would form an interesting subject
+for exhaustive study. To suggest a religious origin for each would be
+going too far, for merely economic considerations must have had much to
+do with the matter, but it is very probable that in some cases they are
+relics of sacrifices or sacraments.
+
+The pig is a favourite food animal at Christmas in other countries than
+our own, a fact probably connected with sacrificial customs. In Denmark
+and Sweden a pig's head was one of the principal articles of the great
+Christmas Eve repast.{16} In Germany it is a fairly widespread custom to
+kill a pig shortly before Christmas and partake of it on Christmas Day;
+its entrails and bones and the straw which has been in contact with it
+are supposed to have fertilizing powers.{17} In Roumania a pig is the
+Christmas animal _par excellence_,{18} in Russia pigs' trotters are a
+favourite dish at the New Year,{19} and in every Servian house roast pig
+is the principal Christmas dish.{20}
+
+In Upper Bavaria there is a custom which almost certainly has at its root
+a sacrifice: a number of poor people club together at Christmas-time and
+buy a cow to be killed and eaten at a common feast.{21}
+
+More doubtful is the sacrificial origin of the dishes of certain |287|
+special kinds of fish on Christmas Eve. In Saxony and Thuringia herring
+salad is eaten--he who bakes it will have money all the year--and in many
+parts of Germany and also in Styria carp is then consumed.{22} Round
+Ercé in Brittany the family dish is cod.{23} In Italy the _cenone_ or
+great supper held on Christmas Eve has fish for its animal basis, and
+stewed eels are particularly popular. It is to be remembered that in
+Catholic countries the Vigil of the Nativity is a fast, and meat is not
+allowed upon it; this alone would account for the prominence of fish on
+Christmas Eve.
+
+We have already come across peculiar cakes eaten at various pre-Christmas
+festivals; at Christmas itself special kinds of bread, pastry, and cakes
+abound on the Continent, and in some cases at least may have a religious
+origin.
+
+In France various sorts of cakes and loaves are known at the season of
+_Noël_. In Berry on Christmas morning loaves called _cornaboeux_, made in
+the shape of horns or a crescent, are distributed to the poor. In
+Lorraine people give one another _cognés_ or _cogneux_, a kind of pastry
+in the shape of two crescents back to back, or else long and narrow in
+form and with a crescent at either end. In some parts of France the
+_cornaboeux_ are known as _hôlais_, and ploughmen give to the poor as many
+of these loaves as they possess oxen and horses.{24} These horns may be
+substitutes for a sacrifice of oxen.
+
+Sometimes the French Christmas cakes have the form of complete oxen or
+horses--such were the thin unleavened cakes sold in the early nineteenth
+century at La Châtre (Indre). In the neighbourhood of Chartres there are
+_cochenilles_ and _coquelins_ in animal and human shapes. Little cakes
+called _naulets_ are sold by French bakers, and actually represent the
+Holy Child. With them may be compared the _coignoles_ of French Flanders,
+cakes of oblong form adorned with the figure of the infant Jesus in
+sugar.{25} Sometimes the Christmas loaf or cake in France has healing
+properties; a certain kind of cake in Berry and Limousin is kept all
+through the year, and a piece eaten in sickness has marvellous
+powers.{26}
+
+Cortet gives an extraordinary account of a French custom |288|
+connected with eating and drinking. At Mouthe (Doubs) there used to be
+brought to the church at Christmas pies, cakes, and other eatables, and
+wine of the best. They were called the "De fructu," and when at Vespers
+the verse "De fructu ventris tui ponam super sedem tuam" was reached, all
+the congregation made a rush for these refreshments, contended for them,
+and carried them off with singing and shouting.{27}
+
+The most remarkable of Christmas cakes or loaves is the Swedish and
+Danish "Yule Boar," a loaf in the form of a boar-pig, which stands on the
+table throughout the festal season. It is often made from the corn of the
+last sheaf of the harvest, and in it Dr. Frazer finds a clear expression
+of the idea of the corn-spirit as embodied in pig form. "Often it is kept
+till sowing-time in spring, when part of it is mixed with the seed corn
+and part given to the ploughman and plough-horses or plough-oxen to eat,
+in the expectation of a good harvest." In some parts of the Esthonian
+island of Oesel the cake has not the form of a boar, but bears the same
+name, and on New Year's Day is given to the cattle. In other parts of the
+island the "Yule Boar" is actually a little pig, roasted on Christmas Eve
+and set up on the table.{28}
+
+In Germany, besides _stollen_--a sort of plum-loaf--biscuits, often of
+animal or human shape, are very conspicuous on Christmas Eve. Any one who
+has witnessed a German Christmas will remember the extraordinary variety
+of them, _lebkuchen_, _pfeffernüsse_, _printen_, _spekulatius_ biscuits,
+&c. In Berlin a great pile of biscuits heaped up on your plate is an
+important part of the Christmas Eve supper. These of course are nowadays
+mere luxuries, but they may well have had some sort of sacrificial
+origin. An admirable and exhaustive study of Teutonic Christmas cakes and
+biscuits has been made, with infinite pains, by an Austrian professor,
+Dr. Höfler, who reproduces some curious old biscuits, stamped with highly
+artistic patterns, preserved in museums.{29}
+
+Among unsophisticated German peasants there is a belief in magical powers
+possessed by bread baked at Christmas, particularly when moistened by
+Christmas dew. (This dew is held to be peculiarly sacred, perhaps on
+account of the words "Rorate, coeli, |289| desuper" used at the Advent
+Masses.) In Franconia such bread, thrown into a dangerous fire, stills
+the flames; in the north of Germany, if put during the Twelve Days into
+the fodder of the cattle, it makes them prolific and healthy throughout
+the year.{30}
+
+It is pleasant to note that animals are often specially cared for at
+Christmas. Up till the early nineteenth century the cattle in Shropshire
+were always better fed at Christmas than at other times, and Miss Burne
+tells of an old gentleman in Cheshire who used then to give his poultry a
+double portion of grain, for, he said, "all creation should rejoice at
+Christmas, and the dumb creatures had no other manner of doing so."{31}
+The saying reminds one of that lover of Christmas and the animals, St.
+Francis of Assisi. It will be remembered how he wished that oxen and
+asses should have extra corn and hay at Christmas, "for reverence of the
+Son of God, whom on such a night the most Blessed Virgin Mary did lay
+down in the stall betwixt the ox and the ass."{32} It was a gracious
+thought, and no doubt with St. Francis, as with the old Cheshireman, it
+was a purely Christian one; very possibly, however, the original object
+of such attention to the dumb creatures was to bring to the animals, by
+means of the corn, the influence of the spirit of fertility.
+
+In Silesia on Christmas night all the beasts are given wheat to make them
+thrive, and it is believed that if wheat be kept in the pocket during the
+Christmas service and then given to fowls, it will make them grow fat and
+lay many eggs.{33} In Sweden on Christmas Eve the cattle are given the
+best forage the house can afford, and afterwards a mess of all the viands
+of which their masters have partaken; the horses are given the choicest
+hay and, later on, ale; and the other animals are treated to good
+things.{34}
+
+At Loblang in Hungary the last sheaf at harvest is kept, and given on New
+Year's morning to the wild birds.{35} In southern Germany corn is put on
+the roof for them on Christmas Eve, or,{36} as also in Sweden,{37} an
+unthreshed sheaf is set on a pole. In these cases it is possible that the
+food was originally an offering to ancestral or other spirits.
+
+_Revenons à nos gâteaux._ In Rome and elsewhere in Italy an important
+article of Christmas food is the _panettone_, a currant loaf. |290|
+Such loaves are sent as presents to friends. In eastern Europe, too,
+Christmas loaves or cakes are very conspicuous. The _chesnitza_ and
+_kolatch_ cakes among the southern Slavs are flat and wheel-like, with a
+circular hole in the middle and a number of lines radiating from it. In
+the central hole is sometimes placed a lighted taper or a small
+Christmas-tree hung with ribbons, tinsel, and sweetmeats. These cakes,
+made with elaborate ceremonial early in the morning, are solemnly broken
+by the house-father on Christmas Day, and a small piece is eaten by each
+member of the family. In some places one is fixed on the horn of the
+"eldest ox," and if he throws it off it is a good sign.{38} The last
+practice may be compared with a Herefordshire custom which we shall meet
+with on Twelfth Night (p. 346).
+
+In southern Greece a special kind of flat loaves with a cross on the top
+is made on Christmas Eve. The name given is "Christ's Loaves." "The cloth
+is not removed from the table; but everything is left as it is in the
+belief that 'Christ will come and eat' during the night."{39} Probably
+Christ has here taken the place of ancestral spirits.
+
+In Tyrol peasants eat at Christmastide the so-called _zelten_, a kind of
+pie filled with dried pear-slices, nuts, figs, raisins, and the like. It
+is baked on the Eve of St. Thomas, and its filling is as important an
+event for the whole family as was the plum-pudding and mincemeat making
+in old-fashioned English households. When the _zelten_ is filled the sign
+of the cross is made upon it and it is sprinkled with holy water and put
+in the oven. When baked and cooled, it is laid in the family stock of rye
+and is not eaten until St. Stephen's Day or Epiphany. Its cutting by the
+father of the family is a matter of considerable solemnity. Smaller pies
+are made at the same time for the maid-servants, and a curious custom is
+connected with them. It is usual for the maids to visit their relations
+during the Christmas holidays and share with them their _zelten_. A young
+man who wishes to be engaged to a maid should offer to carry her pie for
+her. This is his declaration of love, and if she accepts the offer she
+signifies her approval of him. To him falls the duty or privilege of
+cutting the _zelten_.{40}
+
+|291| Other cake customs are associated with the Epiphany, and will be
+considered in connection with that festival. We may here in conclusion
+notice a few further articles of Christmas good cheer.
+
+In Italy and Spain{41} a sort of nougat known as _torrone_ or _turron_
+is eaten at Christmas. You may buy it even in London in the Italian
+quarter; in Eyre Street Hill it is sold on Christmas Eve on little
+gaily-decked street stalls. Its use may well be a survival of the Roman
+custom of giving sweet things at the Kalends in order that the year might
+be full of sweetness.
+
+Some Little Russian feasting customs are probably pagan in origin, but
+have received a curious Christian interpretation. All Little Russians sit
+down to honey and porridge on Christmas Eve. They call it _koutia_, and
+cherish the custom as something that distinguishes them from Great and
+White Russians. Each dish is said to represent the Holy Crib. First
+porridge is put in, which is like putting straw in the manger; then each
+person helps himself to honey and fruit, and that symbolizes the Babe. A
+place is made in the porridge, and then the honey and fruit are poured
+in; the fruit stands for the body, the honey for the spirit or the
+blood.{42}
+
+Something like this is the special dish eaten in every Roumanian peasant
+household on Christmas Eve--the _turte_. It is made up of a pile of thin
+dry leaves of dough, with melted sugar or honey, or powdered walnut, or
+the juice of the hemp-seed. The _turte_ are traditionally said to
+represent the swaddling clothes of the Holy Child.{43}
+
+In Poland a few weeks before Christmas monks bring round small packages
+of wafers made of flour and water, blessed by a priest, and with figures
+stamped upon them. No Polish family is without these _oplatki_; they are
+sent in letters to relations and friends, as we send Christmas cards.
+When the first star appears on Christmas Eve the whole family, beginning
+with the eldest member, break one of these wafers between themselves, at
+the same time exchanging good wishes. Afterwards the master and mistress
+go to the servants' quarters to divide the wafer there.{44}
+
+|292|
+
+
+RELICS OF SACRIFICE.
+
+We have noted a connection, partial at least, between Christmas good
+cheer and sacrifice; let us now glance at a few customs of a different
+character but seemingly of sacrificial origin.
+
+Traces of sacrifices of cats and dogs are to be found in Germany and
+Bohemia. In Lauenburg and Mecklenburg on Christmas morning, before the
+cattle are watered, a dog is thrown into their drinking water, in order
+that they may not suffer from the mange. In the Uckermark a cat may be
+substituted for the dog. In Bohemia a black cat is caught, boiled, and
+buried by night under a tree, to keep evil spirits from injuring the
+fields.{45}
+
+A strange Christmas custom is the "hunting of the wren," once widespread
+in England and France and still practised in Ireland. In the Isle of Man
+very early on Christmas morning, when the church bells had rung out
+midnight, servants went out to hunt the wren. They killed the bird,
+fastened it to the top of a long pole, and carried it in procession to
+every house, chanting these words:--
+
+   "We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
+      We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can,
+    We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
+      We hunted the wren for every one."
+
+At each house they sought to collect money. At last, when all had been
+visited, they laid the wren on a bier, carried it to the churchyard, and
+buried it with the utmost solemnity, singing Manx dirges. Another
+account, from the mid-nineteenth century, describes how on St. Stephen's
+Day Manx boys went from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs in
+the centre of two hoops crossing one another at right angles and
+decorated with evergreens and ribbons. In exchange for a small coin they
+would give a feather of the wren, which was carefully kept as a
+preservative against shipwreck during the year.[110]{46} |293| There
+are also traces of a Manx custom of boiling and eating the bird.{48}
+
+The wren is popularly called "the king of birds," and it is supposed to
+be highly unlucky to kill one at ordinary times. Probably it was once
+regarded as sacred, and the Christmas "hunting" is the survival of an
+annual custom of slaying the divine animal, such as is found among
+primitive peoples.{49} The carrying of its body from door to door is
+apparently intended to convey to each house a portion of its virtues,
+while the actual eating of the bird would be a sort of communion feast.
+Perhaps the custom, in a Cornish village, of eating blackbird pie on
+Twelfth Day should be explained in the same way.{50}
+
+I can here hardly do more than allude to the many games{51} that were
+traditional in England at Christmas--hoodman-blind, shoe the wild mare,
+hot cockles, steal the white loaf, snap-dragon, and the rest. To attempt
+to describe and explain them would lead me too far, but it is highly
+probable that some at least might be traced to an origin in sacrificial
+ritual. The degeneration of religious rites into mere play is, indeed, as
+we have seen, a process illustrated by the whole history of Christmas.
+
+Only two British Christmas games can be discussed in this book:
+blindman's buff and football. An account of a remarkable Christmas
+football match will be found in the chapter on Epiphany customs, where it
+is brought into connection with that closely related game, the "Haxey
+hood."
+
+As for blindman's buff, it is distinctly a Christmas sport, and it is
+known nearly all over Europe by names derived from animals, _e.g._,
+"blind cow" and "blind mouse." Mr. N. W. Thomas has suggested that "the
+explanation of these names is that the players originally wore masks; the
+game is known in some cases as the 'blinde Mumm,' or blind mask.... The
+player who is 'it' seems to be the sacrificer; he bears the same name as
+the victim, just as in agricultural customs the reaper of the last corn
+bears the same name as the last sheaf."{52}
+
+The Scandinavian countries are very rich in Christmas games and
+dances,{53} of which it would be interesting to attempt explanations if
+space allowed. One Swedish song and dance game--it |294| may be related
+to the sword-dance (see Chapter XIII.)--is obviously sacrificial. Several
+youths, with blackened faces and persons disguised, are the performers.
+One of them is put to death with a knife by a woman in hideous attire.
+Afterwards, with gross gestures, she dances with the victim.{54}
+According to another account, from Gothland, the victim sits clad in a
+skin, holding in his mouth a wisp of straw cut sharp at the ends and
+standing out. It has been conjectured that this is meant to resemble a
+swine's bristles, and that the man represents a hog sacrificed to
+Frey.{55}
+
+Lastly a Russian game may be mentioned, though it has no sacrificial
+suggestion. During the Christmas season girls play at what is called "the
+Burial of the Gold." They form a circle, with one girl standing in the
+centre, and pass from hand to hand a gold ring, which the maiden inside
+tries to detect. Meanwhile a song is sung, "Gold I bury, gold I bury."
+Some imaginative mythologists interpret the ring as representing the sun,
+buried by the clouds of winter.{56}
+
+|295| |296| |297|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MASKING, THE MUMMERS' PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE BOY BISHOP
+
+
+    English Court Masking--"The Lord of Misrule"--The Mummers' Play, the
+    Sword-Dance, and the Morris Dance--Origin of St. George and other
+    Characters--Mumming in Eastern Europe--The Feast of Fools, its
+    History and Suppression--The Boy Bishop, his Functions and
+    Sermons--Modern Survivals of the Boy Bishop.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST. PETER.
+
+From an article by Mr. T. M. Fallow in _The Antiquary_, May, 1895.
+
+(By permission of Messrs. Elliot Stock.)]
+
+We have already seen a good deal of masking in connection with St.
+Nicholas, Knecht Ruprecht, and other figures of the German Christmas; we
+may next give some attention to English customs of the same sort during
+the Twelve Days, and then pass on to the strange burlesque ceremonies of
+the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop, ceremonies which show an intrusion
+of pagan mummery into the sanctuary itself.
+
+
+CHRISTMAS MASKING.
+
+The custom of Christmas masking, "mumming," or "disguising" can be traced
+at the English court as early as the reign of Edward III. It is in all
+probability connected with that wearing of beasts' heads and skins of
+which we have already noted various examples--its origin in folk-custom
+seems to have been the coming of a band of worshippers clad in this
+uncouth but auspicious garb to bring good luck to a house.{1} The most
+direct English survival is found in the village mummers who still call
+themselves "guisers" or "geese-dancers" and claim the right to enter
+every house. These will be dealt with shortly, after a consideration of
+more courtly customs of the same kind.
+
+|298| In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the English
+court masque reached its greatest developments; the fundamental idea was
+then generally overlaid with splendid trappings, the dresses and the
+arrangements were often extremely elaborate, and the introduction of
+dialogued speech made these "disguises" regular dramatic performances. A
+notable example is Ben Jonson's "Masque of Christmas."{2} Shakespeare,
+however, gives us in "Henry VIII."{3} an example of a simpler impromptu
+form: the king and a party dressed up as shepherds break in upon a
+banquet of Wolsey's.
+
+In this volume we are more concerned with the popular Christmas than with
+the festivities of kings and courts and grandees. Mention must, however,
+be made of a personage who played an important part in the Christmas of
+the Tudor court and appeared also in colleges, Inns of Court, and the
+houses of the nobility--the "Lord of Misrule."{4} He was annually
+elected to preside over the revels, had a retinue of courtiers, and was
+surrounded by elaborate ceremonial. He seems to be the equivalent and was
+probably the direct descendant of the "Abbot" or "Bishop" of the Feast of
+Fools, who will be noticed later in this chapter. Sometimes indeed he is
+actually called "Abbot of Misrule." A parallel to him is the Twelfth
+Night "king," and he appears to be a courtly example of the temporary
+monarch of folk-custom, though his name is sometimes extended to "kings"
+of quite vulgar origin elected not by court or gentry but by the common
+people. The "Lord of Misrule" was among the relics of paganism most
+violently attacked by Puritan writers like Stubbes and Prynne, and the
+Great Rebellion seems to have been the death of him.
+
+
+MUMMERS' PLAYS AND MORRIS DANCES.
+
+Let us turn now to the rustic Christmas mummers, to-day fast
+disappearing, but common enough in the mid-nineteenth century. Their
+goings-on are really far more interesting, because more traditional, than
+the elaborate shows and dressings-up of the court. Their names vary:
+"mummers" and "guisers" are the commonest; in Sussex they are
+"tipteerers," perhaps because of |299| the perquisites they collect, in
+Cornwall "geese-dancers" ("geese" no doubt comes from "disguise"), in
+Shropshire "morris"--or "merry"--"dancers."{5} It is to be noted that
+they are unbidden guests, and enter your house as of right.{6} Sometimes
+they merely dance, sing, and feast, but commonly they perform a rude
+drama.{7}
+
+The plays acted by the mummers{8} vary so much that it is difficult to
+describe them in general terms. There is no reason to suppose that the
+words are of great antiquity--the earliest form may perhaps date from the
+seventeenth century; they appear to be the result of a crude dramatic and
+literary instinct working upon the remains of traditional ritual, and
+manipulating it for purposes of entertainment. The central figure is St.
+George (occasionally he is called Sir, King, or Prince George), and the
+main dramatic substance, after a prologue and introduction of the
+characters, is a fight and the arrival of a doctor to bring back the
+slain to life. At the close comes a _quête_ for money. The name George is
+found in all the Christmas plays, but the other characters have a
+bewildering variety of names ranging from Hector and Alexander to
+Bonaparte and Nelson.
+
+Mr. Chambers in two very interesting and elaborately documented chapters
+has traced a connection between these St. George players and the
+sword-dancers found at Christmas or other festivals in Germany, Spain,
+France, Italy, Sweden, and Great Britain. The sword-dance in its simplest
+form is described by Tacitus in his "Germania": "they have," he says of
+the Germans, "but one kind of public show: in every gathering it is the
+same. Naked youths, who profess this sport, fling themselves in dance
+among swords and levelled lances."{9} In certain forms of the dance
+there are figures in which the swords are brought together on the heads
+of performers, or a pretence is made to cut at heads and feet, or the
+swords are put in a ring round a person's neck. This strongly suggests
+that an execution, probably a sacrifice, lies at the bottom of the
+dances. In several cases, moreover, they are accompanied by sets of
+verses containing the incident of a quarrel and the violent death of one
+of the performers. The likeness to the central feature of the |300|
+St. George play--the slaying--will be noticed. In one of the dances, too,
+there is even a doctor who revives the victim.
+
+In England the sword-dance is found chiefly in the north, but with it
+appear to be identical the morris-dances--characterized by the wearing of
+jingling bells--which are commoner in the southern counties. Blackened
+faces are common in both, and both have the same grotesque figures, a man
+and a woman, often called Tommy and Bessy in the sword-dance and "the
+fool" and Maid Marian in the morris. Moreover the morris-dancers in
+England sometimes use swords, and in one case the performers of an
+undoubted sword-dance were called "morrice" dancers in the eighteenth
+century. Bells too, so characteristic of the morris, are mentioned in
+some Continental accounts of the sword-dance.[111]
+
+Intermediate between these dances and the fully developed St. George
+dramas are the plays performed on Plough Monday in Lincolnshire and the
+East Midlands. They all contain a good deal of dancing, a violent death
+and a revival, and grotesques found both in the dances and in the
+Christmas plays.
+
+The sword-dance thus passes by a gradual transition, the dancing
+diminishing, the dramatic elements increasing, into the mummers' plays of
+St. George. The central motive, death and revival, Mr. Chambers regards
+as a symbol of the resurrection of the year or the spirit of
+vegetation,[112] like the Thuringian custom of executing a "wild man"
+covered with leaves, whom a doctor brings to life again by bleeding. This
+piece of ritual has apparently been attracted to Christmas from an early
+feast of spring, and Plough Monday, when the East Midland plays take
+place, is just such an early spring feast. Again, in some places the
+|301| St. George play is performed at Easter, a date alluded to in the
+title, "Pace-eggers'" or "Pasque-eggers'" play.{13}
+
+Two grotesque figures appear with varying degrees of clearness and with
+various names in the dances and in the plays--the "fool" (Tommy) who
+wears the skin and tail of a fox or other animal, and a man dressed in
+woman's clothes (Bessy). In these we may recognize the skin-clad mummer
+and the man aping a woman whom we meet in the old Kalends denunciations.
+Sometimes the two are combined, while a hobby-horse also not unfrequently
+appears.{14}
+
+How exactly St. George came to be the central figure of the Christmas
+plays is uncertain; possibly they may be a development of a dance in
+which appeared the "Seven Champions," the English national heroes--of
+whom Richard Johnson wrote a history in 1596--with St. George at their
+head. It is more probable, however, that the saint came in from the
+mediaeval pageants held on his day in many English towns.{15}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Can it be that the German St. Nicholas plays are more Christianized and
+sophisticated forms of folk-dramas like in origin to those we have been
+discussing? They certainly resemble the English plays in the manner in
+which one actor calls in another by name; while the grotesque figures
+introduced have some likeness to the "fool" of the morris.
+
+Christmas mumming, it may be added, is found in eastern as well as
+western Europe. In Greece, where ecclesiastical condemnations of such
+things can be traced with remarkable clearness from early times to the
+twelfth century, it takes sundry forms. "At Pharsala," writes Mr. J. C.
+Lawson, "there is a sort of play at the Epiphany, in which the mummers
+represent bride, bridegroom, and 'Arab'; the Arab tries to carry off the
+bride, and the bridegroom defends her.... Formerly also at 'Kozane and in
+many other parts of Greece,' according to a Greek writer in the early
+part of the nineteenth century, throughout the Twelve Days boys carrying
+bells used to go round the houses, singing songs and having 'one or more
+of their company dressed up with masks and bells and foxes' brushes and
+other such things to give them a weird and monstrous look.'"{16}
+
+|302| In Russia, too, mummers used to go about at Christmastide,
+visiting houses, dancing, and performing all kinds of antics. "Prominent
+parts were always played by human representatives of a goat and a bear.
+Some of the party would be disguised as 'Lazaruses,' that is, as blind
+beggars." A certain number of the mummers were generally supposed to play
+the part of thieves anxious to break in.{17} Readers of Tolstoy's "War
+and Peace" may remember a description of some such maskings in the year
+1810.
+
+
+THE FEAST OF FOOLS.
+
+So far, in this Second Part, we have been considering customs practised
+chiefly in houses, streets, and fields. We must now turn to certain
+festivities following hard upon Christmas Day, which, though pagan in
+origin and sometimes even blasphemous, found their way in the Middle Ages
+within the walls of the church.
+
+Shortly after Christmas a group of _tripudia_ or revels was held by the
+various inferior clergy and ministrants of cathedrals and other churches.
+These festivals, of which the best known are the Feast of Fools and the
+Boy Bishop ceremonies, have been so fully described by other writers, and
+my space here is so limited, that I need but treat them in outline, and
+for detail refer the reader to such admirable accounts as are to be found
+in Chapters XIII., XIV., and XV. of Mr. Chamber's "The Mediaeval
+Stage."{18}
+
+Johannes Belethus, Rector of Theology at Paris towards the end of the
+twelfth century, speaks of four _tripudia_ held after Christmas:--those
+of the deacons on St. Stephen's Day, the priests on St. John's, the
+choir-boys on Holy Innocents', and the subdeacons on the Circumcision,
+the Epiphany, or the Octave of the Epiphany. The feast of subdeacons,
+says Belethus, "we call that of fools." It is this feast which, though
+not apparently the earliest in origin of the four, was the most riotous
+and disorderly, and shows most clearly its pagan character. Belethus'
+mention of it is the first clear notice, though disorderly revels of the
+same kind seem to have existed at Constantinople as early as the ninth
+century. At first confined to the subdeacons, the Feast of Fools became
+in its later developments a festival not only of that order but of the
+|303| inferior clergy in general, of the vicars choral, the chaplains,
+and the choir-clerks, as distinguished from the canons. For this rabble
+of poor and low-class clergy it was no doubt a welcome relaxation, and
+one can hardly wonder that they let themselves go in burlesquing the
+sacred but often wearisome rites at which it was their business to be
+present through many long hours, or that they delighted to usurp for once
+in a way the functions ordinarily performed by their superiors. The
+putting down of the mighty from their seat and the exalting of them of
+low degree was the keynote of the festival. While "Deposuit potentes de
+sede: et exaltavit humiles" was being sung at the "Magnificat," it would
+appear that the precentor's _baculus_ or staff was handed over to the
+clerk who was to be "lord of the feast" for the year, and throughout the
+services of the day the inferior clergy predominated, under the
+leadership of this chosen "lord." He was usually given some title of
+ecclesiastical dignity, "bishop," "prelate," "archbishop," "cardinal," or
+even "pope," was vested in full pontificals, and in some cases sat on the
+real bishop's throne, gave benedictions, and issued indulgences.
+
+These lower clergy, it must be remembered, belonged to the peasant or
+small _bourgeois_ class and were probably for the most part but
+ill-educated. They were likely to bring with them into the Church the
+superstitions floating about among the people, and the Feast of Fools may
+be regarded as a recoil of paganism upon Christianity in its very
+sanctuary. "An ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock" it has
+been called by Mr. Chambers, and many of its usages may be explained by
+the reaction of coarse natures freed for once from restraint. It brought
+to light, however, not merely personal vulgarity, but a whole range of
+traditional customs, derived probably from a fusion of the Roman feast of
+the Kalends of January with Teutonic or Celtic heathen festivities.
+
+A general account of its usages is given in a letter addressed in 1445 by
+the Paris Faculty of Theology to the bishops and chapters of France:--
+
+    "Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages
+    at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as |304|
+    women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black
+    puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying Mass.
+    They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the
+    soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a
+    blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its
+    theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their
+    fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent
+    gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste."{19}
+
+The letter also speaks of "bishops" or "archbishops" of Fools, who wore
+mitres and held pastoral staffs. We here see clearly, besides mere
+irreverence, an outcrop of pagan practices. Topsy-turvydom, the temporary
+exaltation of inferiors, was itself a characteristic of the Kalends
+celebrations, and a still more remarkable feature of them was, as we have
+seen, the wearing of beast-masks and the dressing up of men in women's
+clothes. And what is the "bishop" or "archbishop" but a parallel to, and,
+we may well believe, an example of, the mock king whom Dr. Frazer has
+traced in so many a folk-festival, and who is found at the _Saturnalia_?
+
+One more feature of the Feast of Fools must be considered, the Ass who
+gave to it the not uncommon title of _asinaria festa_. At Bourges, Sens,
+and Beauvais, a curious half-comic hymn was sung in church, the so-called
+"Prose of the Ass." It begins as follows:--
+
+   "Orientis partibus
+     Adventavit Asinus,
+     Pulcher et fortissimus,
+     Sarcinis aptissimus.
+     Hez, Sir Asnes, car chantez,
+     Belle bouche rechignez,
+     Vous aurez du foin assez
+     Et de l'avoine a plantez."
+
+And after eight verses in praise of the beast, with some mention of his
+connection with Bethlehem and the Wise Men, it closes thus:--
+
+   "Amen dicas, Asine,
+    Iam satur de gramine, |305|
+    Amen, Amen, itera,
+    Aspernare vetera.
+    Hez va, hez va! hez va, hez!
+    Bialx Sire Asnes, car allez:
+    Belle bouche, car chantez."{20}
+
+An ass, it would seem, was actually brought into church, at Beauvais at
+all events, during the singing of this song on the feast of the
+Circumcision. On January 14 an extraordinary ceremony took place there. A
+girl with a child in her arms rode upon an ass into St. Stephen's church,
+to represent the Flight into Egypt. The Introit, "Kyrie," "Gloria," and
+"Credo" at Mass ended in a bray, and at the close of the service the
+priest instead of saying "Ite, missa est," had to bray three times, and
+the people to respond in like manner. Mr. Chambers's theory is that the
+ass was a descendant of the _cervulus_ or hobby-buck who figures so
+largely in ecclesiastical condemnations of Kalends customs.
+
+The country _par excellence_ of the Feast of the Fools was France. It can
+also be traced in Germany and Bohemia, while in England too there are
+notices of it, though far fewer than in France. Its abuses were the
+subject of frequent denunciations by Church reformers from the twelfth to
+the fifteenth century. The feast was prohibited at various times, and
+notably by the Council of Basle in 1435, but it was too popular to be
+quickly suppressed, and it took a century and a half to die out after
+this condemnation by a general council of the Church. In one cathedral,
+Amiens, it even lingered until 1721.
+
+When in the fifteenth century and later the Feast of Fools was expelled
+from the churches of France, associations of laymen sprang up to carry on
+its traditions outside. It was indeed a form of entertainment which the
+townsfolk as well as the lower clergy thoroughly appreciated, and they
+were by no means willing to let it die. A _Prince des Sots_ took the
+place of the "bishop," and was chosen by _sociétés joyeuses_ organized by
+the youth of the cities for New Year merrymaking. Gradually their
+activities grew, and their celebrations came to take place at other
+festive times beside the Christmas season. The _sots_ had a distinctive
+dress, its |306| most characteristic feature being a hood with asses'
+ears, probably a relic of the primitive days when the heads of sacrificed
+animals were worn by festal worshippers.{21}
+
+
+THE BOY BISHOP.
+
+Of older standing than the Feast of Fools were the Christmas revels of
+the deacons, the priests, and the choir-boys. They can be traced back to
+the early tenth century, and may have originated at the great song-school
+of St. Gall near Constance. The most important of the three feasts was
+that of the boys on Holy Innocents' Day, a theoretically appropriate
+date. Corresponding to the "lord" of the Feast of Fools was the famous
+"Boy Bishop," a choir-boy chosen by the lads themselves, who was vested
+in cope and mitre, held a pastoral staff, and gave the benediction. Other
+boys too usurped the dignities of their elders, and were attired as dean,
+archdeacons, and canons. Offices for the festival, in which the Boy
+Bishop figures largely, are to be found in English, French, and German
+service-books, the best known in this country being those in the Sarum
+Processional and Breviary. In England these ceremonies were far more
+popular and lasting than the Feast of Fools, and, unlike it, they were
+recognized and approved by authority, probably because boys were more
+amenable to discipline than men, and objectionable features could be
+pruned away with comparative ease. The festivities must have formed a
+delightful break in the year of the mediaeval schoolboy, for whom
+holidays, as distinguished from holy-days for church-going, scarcely
+existed. The feast, as we shall see, was by no means confined within the
+church walls; there was plenty of merrymaking and money-making outside.
+
+Minute details have been preserved of the Boy Bishop customs at St.
+Paul's Cathedral in the thirteenth century. It had apparently been usual
+for the "bishop" to make the cathedral dignitaries act as taper- and
+incense-bearers, thus reversing matters so that the great performed the
+functions of the lowly. In 1263 this was forbidden, and only clerks of
+lower rank might be chosen for these offices. But the "bishop" had the
+right to demand |307| after Compline on the Eve of the Innocents a
+supper for himself and his train from the Dean or one of his canons. The
+number of his following must, however, be limited; if he went to the
+Dean's he might take with him a train of fifteen: two chaplains, two
+taper-bearers, five clerks, two vergers, and four residentiary canons; if
+to a lesser dignitary his attendants were to be fewer.
+
+On Innocents' Day he was given a dinner, after which came a cavalcade
+through the city, that the "bishop" might bless the people. He had also
+to preach a sermon--no doubt written for him.
+
+Examples of such discourses are still extant,{22} and are not without
+quaint touches. For instance the bidding prayer before one of them
+alludes to "the ryghte reverende fader and worshypfull lorde my broder
+Bysshopp of London, your dyoceasan," and "my worshypfull broder [the]
+Deane of this cathedrall chirche,"{23} while in another the preacher
+remarks, speaking of the choristers and children of the song-school, "Yt
+is not so long sens I was one of them myself."{24}
+
+In some places it appears, though this is by no means certain, that the
+boy actually sang Mass. The "bishop's" office was a very desirable one
+not merely because of the feasting, but because he had usually the right
+to levy contributions on the faithful, and the amounts collected were
+often very large. At York, for instance, in 1396 the "bishop" pocketed
+about £77, all expenses paid.
+
+The general parallelism of the Boy Bishop customs and the Feast of Fools
+is obvious, and no doubt they had much the same folk-origin. One point,
+already mentioned, should specially be noticed: the election of the Boy
+Bishop generally took place on December 5, the Eve of St. Nicholas,
+patron of children; he was often called "Nicholas bishop"; and sometimes,
+as at Eton and Mayence, he exercised episcopal functions at divine
+service on the eve and the feast itself. It is possible, as Mr. Chambers
+suggests, that St. Nicholas's Day was an older date for the boys'
+festival than Holy Innocents', and that from the connection with St.
+Nicholas, the bishop saint _par excellence_ (he was said to have been
+consecrated by divine command when still a mere layman), sprang |308|
+the custom of giving the title "bishop" to the "lord" first of the boys'
+feast and later of the Feast of Fools.
+
+In the late Middle Ages the Boy Bishop was found not merely in cathedral,
+monastic, and collegiate churches but in many parish churches throughout
+England and Scotland. Various inventories of the vestments and ornaments
+provided for him still exist. With the beginnings of the Reformation came
+his suppression: a proclamation of Henry VIII., dated July 22, 1541,
+commands "that from henceforth all suche superstitions be loste and
+clyerlye extinguisshed throughowte all this his realmes and dominions,
+forasmoche as the same doo resemble rather the unlawfull superstition of
+gentilitie [paganism], than the pure and sincere religion of
+Christe."{25} In Mary's reign the Boy Bishop reappeared, along with
+other "Popish" usages, but after Elizabeth's accession he naturally fell
+into oblivion. A few traces of him lingered in the seventeenth century.
+"The Schoole-boies in the west," says Aubrey, "still religiously observe
+St. Nicholas day (Decemb. 6th), he was the Patron of the Schoole-boies.
+At Curry-Yeovill in Somersetshire, where there is a Howschole (or schole)
+in the Church, they have annually at that time a Barrell of good Ale
+brought into the church; and that night they have the priviledge to
+breake open their Masters Cellar-dore."{26}
+
+In France he seems to have gradually vanished, as, after the Reformation,
+the Catholic Church grew more and more "respectable," but traces of him
+are to be found in the eighteenth century at Lyons and Rheims; and at
+Sens, even in the nineteenth, the choir-boys used to play at being
+bishops on Innocents' Day and call their "archbishop" _âne_--a memory
+this of the old _asinaria festa_.{27} In Denmark a vague trace of him
+was retained in the nineteenth century in a children's game. A boy was
+dressed up in a white shirt, and seated on a chair, and the children sang
+a verse beginning, "Here we consecrate a Yule-bishop," and offered him
+nuts and apples.{28}
+
+|309| |310| |311|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS' DAYS
+
+
+    Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day--The Swedish St. Stephen--St.
+    John's Wine--Childermas and its Beatings.
+
+The three saints' days immediately following Christmas--St. Stephen's
+(December 26), St. John the Evangelist's (December 27), and the Holy
+Innocents' (December 28)--have still various folk-customs associated with
+them, in some cases purely secular, in others hallowed by the Church.
+
+
+ST. STEPHEN'S DAY.
+
+In Tyrolese churches early in the morning of St. Stephen's Day there
+takes place a consecration of water and of salt brought by the people.
+The water is used by the peasants to sprinkle food, barns, and fields in
+order to avert the influence of witches and evil spirits, and bread
+soaked in it is given to the cattle when they are driven out to pasture
+on Whit Monday. The salt, too, is given to the beasts, and the peasants
+themselves partake of it before any important journey like a pilgrimage.
+Moreover when a storm is threatening some is thrown into the fire as a
+protection against hail.{1}
+
+The most striking thing about St. Stephen's Day, however, is its
+connection with horses. St. Stephen is their patron; in England in former
+times they were bled on his festival in the belief that it would benefit
+them,{2} and the custom is still continued in some parts of Austria.{3}
+In Tyrol it is the custom not only to |312| bleed horses on St.
+Stephen's Day, but also to give them consecrated salt and bread or oats
+and barley.{4}
+
+In some of the Carinthian valleys where horse-breeding is specially
+carried on, the young men ride into the village on their unsaddled
+steeds, and a race is run four or five times round the church, while the
+priest blesses the animals, sprinkling them with holy water and
+exorcizing them.{5}
+
+Similar customs are or were found in various parts of Germany. In Munich,
+formerly, during the services on St. Stephen's Day more than two hundred
+men on horseback used to ride three times round the interior of a church.
+The horses were decorated with many-coloured ribbons, and the practice
+was not abolished till 1876.{6} At Backnang in Swabia horses were ridden
+out, as fast as possible, to protect them from the influence of witches,
+and in the Hohenlohe region men-servants were permitted by their masters
+to ride in companies to neighbouring places, where much drinking went
+on.{7} In Holstein the lads on Stephen's Eve used to visit their
+neighbours in a company, groom the horses, and ride about in the
+farmyards, making a great noise until the people woke up and treated them
+to beer and spirits.{8} At the village of Wallsbüll near Flensburg the
+peasant youths in the early morning held a race, and the winner was
+called Steffen and entertained at the inn. At Viöl near Bredstadt the
+child who got up last on December 26 received the name of Steffen and had
+to ride to a neighbour's house on a hay-fork. In other German districts
+the festival was called "the great horse-day," consecrated food was given
+to the animals, they were driven round and round the fields until they
+sweated violently, and at last were ridden to the blacksmith's and bled,
+to keep them healthy through the year. The blood was preserved as a
+remedy for various illnesses.{9}
+
+It is, however, in Sweden that the "horsy" aspect of the festival is most
+obvious.{10} Formerly there was a custom, at one o'clock on St.
+Stephen's morning, for horses to be ridden to water that flowed
+northward; they would then drink "the cream of the water" and flourish
+during the year. There was a violent race to the water, and the servant
+who got there first was rewarded by a drink of something stronger. Again,
+early that morning one |313| peasant would clean out another's stable,
+often at some distance from his home, feed, water, and rub down the
+horses, and then be entertained to breakfast. In olden times after
+service on St. Stephen's Day there was a race home on horseback, and it
+was supposed that he who arrived first would be the first to get his
+harvest in. But the most remarkable custom is the early morning jaunt of
+the so-called "Stephen's men," companies of peasant youths, who long
+before daybreak ride in a kind of race from village to village and awaken
+the inhabitants with a folk-song called _Staffansvisa_, expecting to be
+treated to ale or spirits in return.
+
+The cavalcade is supposed to represent St. Stephen and his followers, yet
+the saint is not, as might be expected, the first martyr of the New
+Testament, but a dauntless missionary who, according to old legends, was
+one of the first preachers of the Gospel in Sweden, and was murdered by
+the heathen in a dark forest. A special trait, his love of horses,
+connects him with the customs just described. He had, the legends tell,
+five steeds: two red, two white, one dappled; when one was weary he
+mounted another, making every week a great round to preach the Word.
+After his death his body was fastened to the back of an unbroken colt,
+which halted not till it came near Norrala, his home. There he was
+buried, and a church built over his grave became a place of pilgrimage to
+which sick animals, especially horses, were brought for healing.
+
+Mannhardt and Feilberg hold that this Swedish St. Stephen is not a
+historical personage but a mythical figure, like many other saints, and
+that his legend, so bound up with horses, was an attempt to account for
+the folk-customs practised on the day dedicated to St. Stephen the first
+martyr. It is interesting to note that legendary tradition has played
+about a good deal with the New Testament Stephen; for instance an old
+English carol makes him a servant in King Herod's hall at the time of
+Christ's birth:--
+
+   "Stephen out of kitchen came,
+        With boarës head on hand,
+     He saw a star was fair and bright
+        Over Bethlehem stand."
+
+|314| Thereupon he forsook King Herod for the Child Jesus, and was
+stoned to death.{11}
+
+To return, however, to the horse customs of the day after Christmas, it
+is pretty plain that they are of non-Christian origin. Mannhardt has
+suggested that the race which is their most prominent feature once formed
+the prelude to a ceremony of lustration of houses and fields with a
+sacred tree. Somewhat similar "ridings" are found in various parts of
+Europe in spring, and are connected with a procession that appears to be
+an ecclesiastical adaptation of a pre-Christian lustration-rite.{12} The
+great name of Mannhardt lends weight to this theory, but it seems a
+somewhat roundabout way of accounting for the facts. Perhaps an
+explanation of the "horsiness" of the day might be sought in some
+pre-Christian sacrifice of steeds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have already noted that St. Stephen's Day is often the date for the
+"hunting of the wren" in the British Isles; it was also in England
+generally devoted to hunting and shooting, it being held that the game
+laws were not in force on that day.{13} This may be only an instance of
+Christmas licence, but it is just possible that there is here a survival
+of some tradition of sacrificial slaughter.
+
+
+ST. JOHN'S DAY.
+
+An ecclesiastical adaptation of a pagan practice may be seen in the
+_Johannissegen_ customary on St. John's Day in many parts of Catholic
+Germany and Austria. A quantity of wine is brought to church to be
+blessed by the priest after Mass, and is taken away by the people to be
+drunk at home. There are many popular beliefs about the magical powers of
+this wine, beliefs which can be traced back through at least four
+centuries. In Tyrol and Bavaria it is supposed to protect its drinker
+from being struck by lightning, in the Rhenish Palatinate it is drunk in
+order that the other wine a man possesses may be kept from injury, or
+that next year's harvest may be good. In Nassau, Carinthia, and other
+regions some is poured into the wine-casks to preserve the precious drink
+from harm, while in Bavaria some is kept for use as medicine in sickness.
+|315| In Syria St. John's wine is said to keep the body sound and
+healthy, and on his day even babes in the cradle are made to join in the
+family drinking.{14}
+
+It appears that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a
+great drinking on St. John's Day of ordinary, as well as consecrated,
+wine, often to excess, and scholars of that time seriously believed that
+_Weihnacht_, the German name for Christmas, should properly be spelt
+_Weinnacht_.{15} The _Johannissegen_, or _Johannisminne_ as it was
+sometimes called, seems, all things considered, to be a survival of an
+old wine sacrifice like the _Martinsminne_. That it does not owe its
+origin to the legend about the cup of poison drunk by St. John is shown
+by the fact that a similar custom was in old times practised in Germany
+and Sweden on St. Stephen's Day.{16}
+
+
+HOLY INNOCENTS' DAY.
+
+Holy Innocents' Day or Childermas, whether or not because of Herod's
+massacre, was formerly peculiarly unlucky; it was a day upon which no
+one, if he could possibly avoid it, should begin any piece of work. It is
+said of that superstitious monarch, Louis XI. of France, that he would
+never do any business on that day, and of our own Edward IV. that his
+coronation was postponed, because the date originally fixed was
+Childermas. In Cornwall no housewife would scour or scrub on Childermas,
+and in Northamptonshire it was considered very unlucky to begin any
+undertaking or even to do washing throughout the year on the day of the
+week on which the feast fell. Childermas was there called Dyzemas and a
+saying ran: "What is begun on Dyzemas Day will never be finished." In
+Ireland it was called "the cross day of the year," and it was said that
+anything then begun must have an unlucky ending.{17}
+
+In folk-ritual the day is remarkable for its association with whipping
+customs. The seventeenth-century writer Gregorie mentions a custom of
+whipping up children on Innocents' Day in the morning, and explains its
+purpose as being that the memory of Herod's "murther might stick the
+closer; and, in a moderate proportion, to act over the crueltie again in
+kind."{18}
+
+|316| This explanation will hardly hold water; the many and various
+examples of the practice of whipping at Christmas collected by
+Mannhardt{19} show that it is not confined either to Innocents' Day or
+to children. Moreover it is often regarded not as a cruel infliction, but
+as a service for which return must be made in good things to eat.
+
+In central and southern Germany the custom is called "peppering"
+(_pfeffern_) and also by other names. In the Orlagau the girls on St.
+Stephen's, and the boys on St. John's Day beat their parents and
+godparents with green fir-branches, while the menservants beat their
+masters with rosemary sticks, saying:
+
+   "Fresh green! Long life!
+     Give me a bright _thaler_ [or nuts, &c.]."
+
+They are entertained with plum-loaf or gingerbreads and brandy. In the
+Saxon Erzgebirge the young fellows whip the women and girls on St.
+Stephen's Day, if possible while they are still in bed, with birch-rods,
+singing the while:
+
+   "Fresh green, fair and fine,
+     Gingerbread and brandy-wine";
+
+and on St. John's Day the women pay the men back. At several places in
+the Thuringian Forest children on Innocents' Day beat passers-by with
+birch-boughs, and get in return apples, nuts, and other dainties. Various
+other German examples of the same class of practice are given by
+Mannhardt.{20}
+
+In France children who let themselves be caught in bed on the morning of
+Holy Innocents' came in for a whipping from their parents; while in one
+province, Normandy, the early risers among the young people themselves
+gave the sluggards a beating. The practice even gave birth to a
+verb--_innocenter_.{21}
+
+There can be little doubt that the Innocents' Day beating is a survival
+of a pre-Christian custom. Similar ritual scourging is found in many
+countries at various seasons of the year, and is by no means confined to
+Europe.{22} As now practised, it has |317| often a harsh appearance,
+or has become a kind of teasing, as when in Bohemia at Easter young men
+whip girls until they give them something. Its original purpose, however,
+as we have seen in connection with St. Martin's rod, seems to have been
+altogether kindly. The whipping was not meant as a punishment or
+expiation or to harden people to pain, but either to expel harmful
+influences and drive out evil spirits or to convey by contact the virtues
+of some sacred tree.
+
+|318| |319| |320| |321|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+NEW YEAR'S DAY
+
+
+    Principle of New Year Customs--The New Year in France, Germany, the
+    United States, and Eastern Europe--"First-footing" in Great
+    Britain--Scottish New Year Practices--Highland Fumigation and
+    "Breast-strip" Customs--Hogmanay and Aguillanneuf--New Year
+    Processions in Macedonia, Roumania, Greece, and Rome--Methods of
+    Augury--Sundry New Year Charms.
+
+Coming to January 1, the modern and the Roman New Year's Day, we shall
+find that most of its customs have been anticipated at earlier festivals;
+the Roman Kalends practices have often been shifted to Christmas, while
+old Celtic and Teutonic New Year practices have frequently been
+transferred to the Roman date.[113]
+
+The observances of New Year's Day mainly rest, as was said in Chapter
+VI., on the principle that "a good beginning makes a good ending," that
+as the first day is so will the rest be. If you would have plenty to eat
+during the year, dine lavishly on New Year's Day, if you would be rich
+see that your pockets are not empty at this critical season, if you would
+be lucky avoid like poison at this of all times everything of ill omen.
+
+"On the Borders," says Mr. W. Henderson, "care is taken that no one
+enters a house empty-handed on New Year's Day. A visitor must bring in
+his hand some eatable; he will be doubly welcome if he carries in a hot
+stoup or 'plotie.' Everybody |322| should wear a new dress on New
+Year's Day, and if its pockets contain money of every description they
+will be certain not to be empty throughout the year."{2}
+
+The laying of stress on what happens on New Year's Day is by no means
+peculiarly European. Hindus, for instance, as Mr. Edgar Thurston tells
+us, "are very particular about catching sight of some auspicious object
+on the morning of New Year's Day, as the effects of omens seen on that
+occasion are believed to last throughout the year." It is thought that a
+man's whole prosperity depends upon the things that he then happens to
+fix his eyes upon.{3}
+
+Charms, omens, and good wishes are naturally the most prominent customs
+of January 1 and its Eve. The New Year in England can hardly be called a
+popular festival; there is no public holiday and the occasion is more
+associated with penitential Watch Night services and good resolutions
+than with rejoicing. But let the reader, if he be in London, pay a visit
+to Soho at this time, and he will get some idea of what the New Year
+means to the foreigner. The little restaurants are decorated with gay
+festoons of all colours and thronged with merrymakers, the shop-windows
+are crowded with all manner of _recherché_ delicacies; it is the gala
+season of the year.
+
+In France January 1 is a far more festal day than Christmas; it is then
+that presents are given, family gatherings held, and calls paid. In the
+morning children find their stockings filled with gifts, and then rush
+off to offer good wishes to their parents. In the afternoon the younger
+people call upon their older relations, and in the evening all meet for
+dinner at the home of the head of the family.{4}
+
+In Germany the New Year is a time of great importance. Cards are far more
+numerous than at Christmas, and "New Year boxes" are given to the
+tradespeople, while on the Eve (_Sylvesterabend_) there are dances or
+parties, the custom of forecasting the future by lead-pouring is
+practised, and at the stroke of midnight there is a general cry of
+"Prosit Neu Jahr!", a drinking of healths, and a shaking of hands.{5}
+
+New Year wishes and "compliments of the season" are |323| familiar to
+us all, but in England we have not that custom of paying formal calls
+which in France is so characteristic of January 1, when not only
+relations and personal friends, but people whose connection is purely
+official are expected to visit one another. In devout Brittany the wish
+exchanged takes a beautiful religious form--"I wish you a good year and
+Paradise at the end of your days."{6}
+
+New Year calling is by no means confined to France. In the United States
+it is one of the few traces left by the early Dutch settlers on American
+manners. The custom is now rapidly falling into disuse,{7} but in New
+York up to the middle of the nineteenth century "New Year's Day was
+devoted to the universal interchange of visits. Every door was thrown
+wide open. It was a breach of etiquette to omit any acquaintance in these
+annual calls, when old friendships were renewed and family differences
+amicably settled. A hearty welcome was extended even to strangers of
+presentable appearance." At that time the day was marked by tremendous
+eating and drinking, and its visiting customs sometimes developed into
+wild riot. Young men in barouches would rattle from one house to another
+all day long. "The ceremony of calling was a burlesque. There was a noisy
+and hilarious greeting, a glass of wine was swallowed hurriedly,
+everybody shook hands all round, and the callers dashed out and rushed
+into the carriage and were driven rapidly to the next house."{8}
+
+The New Year calling to offer good wishes resembles in some respects the
+widespread custom of "first-footing," based on the belief that the
+character of the first visitor on New Year's Day affects the welfare of
+the household during the year. We have already met with a "first-foot" in
+the _polaznik_ of the southern Slavs on Christmas Day. It is to be borne
+in mind that for them, or at all events for the Crivoscian highlanders
+whose customs are described by Sir Arthur Evans, Christmas is essentially
+the festival of the New Year: New Year's Day is not spoken of at all, its
+name and ceremonies being completely absorbed by the feasts of "Great"
+and "Little" Christmas.{9}
+
+The "first-foot" superstition is found in countries as far apart as
+|324| Scotland and Macedonia. Let us begin with some English examples of
+it. In Shropshire the most important principle is that if luck is to rest
+on a house the "first-foot" must not be a woman. To provide against such
+an unlucky accident as that a woman should call first, people often
+engage a friendly man or boy to pay them an early visit. It is
+particularly interesting to find a Shropshire parallel to the
+_polaznik's_ action in going straight to the hearth and striking sparks
+from the Christmas log,[114] when Miss Burne tells us that one old man
+who used to "let the New Year in" "always entered without knocking or
+speaking, and silently stirred the fire before he offered any greeting to
+the family."{10}
+
+In the villages of the Teme valley, Worcestershire and Herefordshire, "in
+the old climbing-boy days, chimneys used to be swept on New Year's
+morning, that one of the right sex should be the first to enter; and the
+young urchins of the neighbourhood went the round of the houses before
+daylight singing songs, when one of their number would be admitted into
+the kitchen 'for good luck all the year.'" In 1875 this custom was still
+practised; and at some of the farmhouses, if washing-day chanced to fall
+on the first day of the year, it was either put off, or to make sure,
+before the women could come, the waggoner's lad was called up early that
+he might be let out and let in again.{11}
+
+The idea of the unluckiness of a woman's being the "first-foot" is
+extraordinarily widespread; the present writer has met with it in an
+ordinary London restaurant, where great stress was laid upon a man's
+opening the place on New Year's morning before the waitresses arrived. A
+similar belief is found even in far-away China: it is there unlucky on
+New Year's Day to meet a woman on first going out.{12} Can the belief be
+connected with such ideas about dangerous influences proceeding from
+women as have been described by Dr. Frazer in Vol. III. of "The Golden
+Bough,"{13} or does it rest merely on a view of woman as the inferior
+sex? The unluckiness of first meeting a woman is, we may note, not
+confined to, but merely intensified on New Year's Day; in Shropshire{14}
+and in Germany{15} it belongs to any ordinary day.
+
+|325| As to the general attitude towards woman suggested by these
+superstitions I may quote a striking passage from Miss Jane Harrison's
+"Themis." "Woman to primitive man is a thing at once weak and magical, to
+be oppressed, yet feared. She is charged with powers of child-bearing
+denied to man, powers only half understood, forces of attraction, but
+also of danger and repulsion, forces that all over the world seem to fill
+him with dim terror. The attitude of man to woman, and, though perhaps in
+a less degree, of woman to man, is still to-day essentially
+magical."{16}
+
+"First-foot" superstitions flourish in the north of England and in
+Scotland. In the northern counties a man is often specially retained as
+"first-foot" or "lucky bird"; in some parts he must be a bachelor, and he
+is often expected to bring a present with him--a shovelful of coals, or
+some eatable, or whisky.{17} In the East Riding of Yorkshire a boy
+called the "lucky bird" used to come at dawn on Christmas morning as well
+as on New Year's Day, and bring a sprig of evergreens{18}--an offering
+by now thoroughly familiar to us. In Scotland, especially in Edinburgh,
+it is customary for domestic servants to invite their sweethearts to be
+their "first-foots." The old Scotch families who preserve ancient customs
+encourage their servants to "first-foot" them, and grandparents like
+their grandchildren to perform for them the same service.{19} In
+Aberdeenshire it is considered most important that the "first-foot"
+should not come empty-handed. Formerly he carried spiced ale; now he
+brings a whisky-bottle. Shortbread, oat-cakes, "sweeties," or sowens,
+were also sometimes brought by the "first-foot," and occasionally the
+sowens were sprinkled on the doors and windows of the houses visited--a
+custom strongly suggesting a sacramental significance of some sort.{20}
+
+Before we leave the subject of British "first-footing" we may notice one
+or two things that have possibly a racial significance. Not only must the
+"first-foot" be a man or boy, he is often required to be dark-haired; it
+is unlucky for a fair- or red-haired person to "let in" the New
+Year.{21} It has been suggested by Sir John Rhys that this idea rested
+in the first instance upon |326| racial antipathy--the natural
+antagonism of an indigenous dark-haired people to a race of blonde
+invaders.{22} Another curious requirement--in the Isle of Man and
+Northumberland--is that the "first-foot" shall not be flat-footed: he
+should be a person with a high-arched instep, a foot that "water runs
+under." Sir John Rhys is inclined to connect this also with some racial
+contrast. He remarks, by way of illustration, that English shoes do not
+as a rule fit Welsh feet, being made too low in the instep.{23}
+
+Some reference has already been made to Scottish New Year customs. In
+Scotland, the most Protestant region of Europe, the country in which
+Puritanism abolished altogether the celebration of Christmas, New Year's
+Day is a great occasion, and is marked by various interesting usages, its
+importance being no doubt largely due to the fact that it has not to
+compete with the Church feast of the Nativity. Nowadays, indeed, the
+example of Anglicanism is affecting the country to a considerable extent,
+and Christmas Day is becoming observed in the churches. The New Year,
+however, is still the national holiday, and January 1 a great day for
+visiting and feasting, the chief, in fact, of all festivals.{24} New
+Year's Day and its Eve are often called the "Daft Days"; cakes and pastry
+of all kinds are eaten, healths are drunk, and calls are paid.{25}
+
+In Edinburgh there are striking scenes on New Year's Eve. "Towards
+evening," writes an observer, "the thoroughfares become thronged with the
+youth of the city.... As the midnight hour approaches, drinking of
+healths becomes frequent, and some are already intoxicated.... The eyes
+of the immense crowd are ever being turned towards the lighted clock-face
+of 'Auld and Faithful'' Tron [Church], the hour approaches, the hands
+seem to stand still, but in one second more the hurrahing, the cheering,
+the hand-shaking, the health-drinking, is all kept up as long as the
+clock continues to ring out the much-longed-for midnight hour.... The
+crowds slowly disperse, the much-intoxicated and helpless ones being
+hustled about a good deal, the police urging them on out of harm's way.
+The first-footers are off and away, flying in every direction through the
+city, singing, cheering, and shaking hands with all and sundry."{26}
+
+|327| One need hardly allude to the gathering of London Scots around
+St. Paul's to hear the midnight chime and welcome the New Year with the
+strains of "Auld Lang Syne," except to say that times have changed and
+Scotsmen are now lost in the swelling multitude of roysterers of all
+nationalities.
+
+Drinking is and was a great feature of the Scottish New Year's Eve. "On
+the approach of twelve o'clock, a _hot pint_ was prepared--that is, a
+kettle or flagon full of warm, spiced, and sweetened ale, with an
+infusion of spirits. When the clock had struck the knell of the departed
+year, each member of the family drank of this mixture 'A good health and
+a happy New Year and many of them' to all the rest, with a general
+hand-shaking." The elders of the family would then sally out to visit
+their neighbours, and exchange greetings.{27}
+
+At Biggar in Lanarkshire it was customary to "burn out the old year" with
+bonfires, while at Burghead in Morayshire a tar-barrel called the
+"Clavie" was set on fire and carried about the village and the fishing
+boats. Its embers were scrambled for by the people and carefully kept as
+charms against witchcraft.{28} These fire-customs may be compared with
+those on Hallowe'en, which, as we have seen, is probably an old New
+Year's Eve.
+
+Stewart in his "Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland" tells
+how on the last night of the year the Strathdown Highlanders used to
+bring home great loads of juniper, which on New Year's Day was kindled in
+the different rooms, all apertures being closed so that the smoke might
+produce a thorough fumigation. Not only human beings had to stand this,
+but horses and other animals were treated in the same way to preserve
+them from harm throughout the year. Moreover, first thing on New Year's
+morning, everybody, while still in bed, was asperged with a large
+brush.{29} There is a great resemblance here to the Catholic use of
+incense and holy water in southern Germany and Austria on the
+_Rauchnächte_ (see also Chapter VIII.). In Tyrol these nights are
+Christmas, New Year's, and Epiphany Eves. When night falls the Tyrolese
+peasant goes with all his household through each room and outhouse, his
+wife bearing the holy water vessel and the censer. Every corner of the
+buildings, every animal, |328| every human being is purified with the
+sacred smoke and the holy sprinkling, and even the Christmas pie must be
+hallowed in this way. In Orthodox Greek countries something of the same
+kind takes place, as we shall see, at the Epiphany. To drive away evil
+spirits is no doubt the object of all these rites.{30}
+
+The most interesting of Scottish New Year customs, considered as
+religious survivals, is a practice found in the Highlands on New Year's
+Eve, and evidently of sacrificial origin. It has been described by
+several writers, and has various forms. According to one account the hide
+of the mart or winter cow was wrapped round the head of one of a company
+of men, who all made off belabouring the hide with switches. The
+disorderly procession went three times _deiseal_ (according to the course
+of the sun) round each house in the village, striking the walls and
+shouting on coming to a door a rhyme demanding admission. On entering,
+each member of the party was offered refreshments, and their leader gave
+to the goodman of the house the "breast-stripe" of a sheep, deer, or
+goat, wrapped round the point of a shinty stick.{31}
+
+We have here another survival of that oft-noted custom of skin-wearing,
+which, as has been seen, originated apparently in a desire for contact
+with the sanctity of the sacrificed victim. Further, the "breast-stripe"
+given to the goodman of each house is evidently meant to convey the
+hallowed influences to each family. It is an oval strip, and no knife may
+be used in removing it from the flesh. The head of the house sets fire to
+it, and it is given to each person in turn to smell. The inhaling of its
+fumes is a talisman against fairies, witches, and demons. In the island
+of South Uist, according to a quite recent account, each person seizes
+hold of it as it burns, making the sign of the cross, if he be a
+Catholic, in the name of the Trinity, and it is put thrice sun-wise about
+the heads of those present. If it should be extinguished it is a bad omen
+for the New Year.{32}
+
+The writer of the last account speaks of the "breast-strip" as the
+"Hogmanay," and it is just possible that the well-known Hogmanay
+processions of children on New Year's Eve (in Scotland and elsewhere) may
+have some connection with the ritual above described. It is customary for
+the poorer children to |329| swaddle themselves in a great sheet,
+doubled up in front so as to form a vast pocket, and then go along the
+streets in little bands, calling out "Hogmanay" at the doors of the
+wealthier classes, and expecting a dole of oaten bread. Each child gets a
+quadrant of oat-cake (sometimes with cheese), and this is called the
+"Hogmanay." Here is one of the rhymes they sing:--
+
+   "Get up, goodwife, and shake your feathers,
+    And dinna think that we are beggars;
+    For we are bairns come out to play,
+    Get up and gie's our hogmanay!"{33}
+
+The word _Hogmanay_--it is found in various forms in the northern English
+counties as well as in Scotland--has been a puzzle to etymologists. It is
+used both for the last day of the year and for the gift of the oaten cake
+or the like; and, as we have seen, it is shouted by the children in their
+quest. Exactly corresponding to it in sense and use is the French word
+_aguillanneuf_, from which it appears to be derived. Although the
+phonetic difference between this and the Scottish word is great, the
+Norman form _hoguinané_ is much closer. There is, moreover, a Spanish
+word _aguinaldo_ (formerly _aguilando_) = Christmas-box. The popular
+explanation of the French term as _au-guy-l'an-neuf_ (to the mistletoe
+the New Year) is now rejected by scholars, and it seems likely that the
+word is a corruption of the Latin _Kalendae_.{34}
+
+A few instances of _aguillanneuf_ customs may be given. Here are
+specimens of rhymes sung by the New Year _quêteurs_:--
+
+   "Si vous veniez à la dépense,
+    À la dépense de chez nous,
+    Vous mangeriez de bons choux,
+    On vous servirait du rost.
+            Hoguinano.
+
+    Donnez-moi mes hoguignettes
+    Dans un panier que voicy.
+    Je l'achetai samedy
+    D'un bon homme de dehors;
+    Mais il est encore à payer.
+            Hoguinano."{35}
+
+|330| Formerly at Matignon and Ploubalay in Brittany on Christmas Eve
+the boys used to get together, carry big sticks and wallets, and knock at
+farmhouse doors. When the inmates called out, "Who's there?" they would
+answer, "The _hoguihanneu_," and after singing something they were given
+a piece of lard. This was put on a pointed stick carried by one of the
+boys, and was kept for a feast called the _bouriho_.{36} Elsewhere in
+Brittany poor children went round crying "_au guyané_," and were given
+pieces of lard or salt beef, which they stuck on a long spit.{37} In
+Guernsey the children's quest at the New Year was called _oguinane_. They
+chanted the following rhyme:--
+
+   "Oguinâni! Oguinâno!
+     Ouvre ta pouque, et pis la recclios."[115]{38}
+
+Similar processions are common in eastern Europe at the New Year. In some
+parts of Macedonia on New Year's Eve men or boys go about making a noise
+with bells. In other districts, early on New Year's morning, lads run
+about with sticks or clubs, knock people up, cry out good wishes, and
+expect to be rewarded with something to eat. Elsewhere again they carry
+green olive- or cornel-boughs, and touch with them everyone they
+meet.{39} We have already considered various similar customs, the noise
+and knocking being apparently intended to drive away evil spirits, and
+the green boughs to bring folks into contact with the spirit of growth
+therein immanent.
+
+In Roumania on New Year's Eve there is a custom known as the "little
+plough." Boys and men go about after dark from house to house, with long
+greetings, ringing of bells, and cracking of whips. On New Year's morning
+Roumanians throw handfuls of corn at one another with some appropriate
+greeting, such as:--
+
+   "May you live,
+    May you flourish
+    Like apple-trees, |331|
+    Like pear-trees
+    In springtime,
+    Like wealthy autumn,
+    Of all things plentiful."
+
+Generally this greeting is from the young to the old or from the poor to
+the rich, and a present in return is expected.{40}
+
+In Athens models of war-ships are carried round by waits, who make a
+collection of money in them. "St. Basil's ships" they are called, and
+they are supposed to represent the vessel on which St. Basil, whose feast
+is kept on January 1, sailed from Caesarea.{41} It is probable that this
+is but a Christian gloss on a pagan custom. Possibly there may be here a
+survival of an old Greek practice of bearing a ship in procession in
+honour of Dionysus,{42} but it is to be noted that similar observances
+are found at various seasons in countries like Germany and Belgium where
+no Greek influence can be traced. The custom is widespread, and it has
+been suggested by Mannhardt that it was originally intended either to
+promote the success of navigation or to carry evil spirits out to
+sea.{43}
+
+It is interesting, lastly, to read a mediaeval account of a New Year
+_quête_ in Rome. "The following," says the writer, "are common Roman
+sports at the Kalends of January. On the Eve of the Kalends at a late
+hour boys arise and carry a shield. One of them wears a mask; they
+whistle and beat a drum, they go round to the houses, they surround the
+shield, the drum sounds, and the masked figure whistles. This playing
+ended, they receive a present from the master of the house, whatever he
+thinks fit to give. So they do at every house. On that day they eat all
+kinds of vegetables. And in the morning two of the boys arise, take
+olive-branches and salt, enter into the houses, and salute the master
+with the words, 'Joy and gladness be in the house, so many sons, so many
+little pigs, so many lambs,' and they wish him all good things. And
+before the sun rises they eat either a piece of honeycomb or something
+sweet, that the whole year may pass sweetly, without strife and great
+trouble."{44}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Various methods of peering into the future, more or less like |332|
+those described at earlier festivals, are practised at the New Year.
+Especially popular at German New Year's Eve parties is the custom of
+_bleigiessen_. "This ceremony consists of boiling specially prepared
+pieces of lead in a spoon over a candle; each guest takes his spoonful
+and throws it quickly into the basin of water which is held ready.
+According to the form which the lead takes so will his future be in the
+coming year ... ships (which indicate a journey), or hearts (which have,
+of course, only one meaning), or some other equally significant shape is
+usually discerned."{45}
+
+In Macedonia St. Basil's Eve (December 31) is a common time for
+divination: a favourite method is to lay on the hot cinders a pair of
+wild-olive-leaves to represent a youth and a maid. If the leaves crumple
+up and draw near each other, it is concluded that the young people love
+one another dearly, but if they recoil apart the opposite is the case. If
+they flare up and burn, it is a sign of excessive passion.{46}
+
+In Lithuania on New Year's Eve nine sorts of things--money, cradle,
+bread, ring, death's head, old man, old woman, ladder, and key--are baked
+of dough, and laid under nine plates, and every one has three grabs at
+them. What he gets will fall to his lot during the year.{47}
+
+Lastly, in Brittany it is supposed that the wind which prevails on the
+first twelve days of the year will blow during each of the twelve months,
+the first day corresponding to January, the second to February, and so
+on.{48} Similar ideas of the prophetic character of Christmastide
+weather are common in our own and other countries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Practically all the customs discussed in this chapter have been of the
+nature of charms; one or two more, practised on New Year's Day or Eve,
+may be mentioned in conclusion.
+
+There are curious superstitions about New Year water. At Bromyard in
+Herefordshire it was the custom, at midnight on New Year's Eve, to rush
+to the nearest spring to snatch the "cream of the well"--the first
+pitcherful of water--and with it the prospect of the best luck.{49} A
+Highland practice was to send |333| some one on the last night of the
+year to draw a pitcherful of water in silence, and without the vessel
+touching the ground. The water was drunk on New Year's morning as a charm
+against witchcraft and the evil eye.{50} A similar belief about the
+luckiness of "new water" exists at Canzano Peligno in the Abruzzi. "On
+New Year's Eve, the fountain is decked with leaves and bits of coloured
+stuff, and fires are kindled round it. As soon as it is light, the girls
+come as usual with their copper pots on their head; but the youths are on
+this morning guardians of the well, and sell the 'new water' for nuts and
+fruits--and other sweet things."{51}
+
+In some of the Aegean islands when the family return from church on New
+Year's Day, the father picks up a stone and leaves it in the yard, with
+the wish that the New Year may bring with it "as much gold as is the
+weight of the stone."{52} Finally, in Little Russia "corn sheaves are
+piled upon a table, and in the midst of them is set a large pie. The
+father of the family takes his seat behind them, and asks his children if
+they can see him. 'We cannot see you,' they reply. On which he proceeds
+to express what seems to be a hope that the corn will grow so high in his
+fields that he may be invisible to his children when he walks there at
+harvest-time."{53}
+
+With a curious and beautiful old carol from South Wales I must bring this
+chapter to a close. It was formerly sung before dawn on New Year's Day by
+poor children who carried about a jug of water drawn that morning from
+the well. With a sprig of box or other evergreen they would sprinkle
+those they met, wishing them the compliments of the season. To pay their
+respects to those not abroad at so early an hour, they would serenade
+them with the following lines, which, while connected with the "new
+water" tradition, contain much that is of doubtful interpretation, and
+are a fascinating puzzle for folk-lorists:--
+
+   "Here we bring new water
+      From the well so clear,
+    For to worship God with,
+      This happy New Year. |334|
+    Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew,
+      The water and the wine;
+    The seven bright gold wires
+      And the bugles they do shine.
+
+    Sing reign of Fair Maid,
+      With gold upon her toe,--
+    Open you the West Door,
+      And turn the Old Year go:
+    Sing reign of Fair Maid,
+      With gold upon her chin,--
+    Open you the East Door,
+      And let the New Year in."{54}
+
+|335| |336| |337|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS
+
+
+    The Twelfth Cake and the "King of the Bean"--French Twelfth Night
+    Customs--St. Basil's Cake in Macedonia--Epiphany and the Expulsion of
+    Evils--The Befana in Italy--The Magi as Present-bringers--Greek
+    Epiphany Customs--Wassailing Fruit-trees--Herefordshire and Irish
+    Twelfth Night Practices--The "Haxey Hood" and Christmas Football--St.
+    Knut's Day in Sweden--Rock Day--Plough Monday--Candlemas, its
+    Ecclesiastical and Folk Ceremonies--Farewells to Christmas.
+
+[Illustration: THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE.]
+
+
+THE EPIPHANY.
+
+Though the Epiphany has ceased to be a popular festival in England, it
+was once a very high day indeed, and in many parts of Europe it is still
+attended by folk-customs of great interest.[116] For the peasant of
+Tyrol, indeed, it is New Year's Day, the first of January being kept only
+by the townsfolk and modernized people.{1}
+
+To Englishmen perhaps the best known feature of the secular festival is
+the Twelfth Cake. Some words of Leigh Hunt's will show what an important
+place this held in the mid-nineteenth century:--
+
+    "Christmas goes out in fine style,--with Twelfth Night. It is a
+    finish worthy of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the
+    season; New Year's Day the middle of it, or noon; Twelfth Night is
+    the night, brilliant with innumerable planets of Twelfth-cakes. The
+    whole island keeps court; nay, all Christendom. All the world are
+    |338| kings and queens. Everybody is somebody else, and learns at
+    once to laugh at, and to tolerate, characters different from his own,
+    by enacting them. Cakes, characters, forfeits, lights, theatres,
+    merry rooms, little holiday-faces, and, last not least, the painted
+    sugar on the cakes, so bad to eat but so fine to look at, useful
+    because it is perfectly useless except for a sight and a moral--all
+    conspire to throw a giddy splendour over the last night of the
+    season, and to send it to bed in pomp and colours, like a
+    Prince."{2}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For seventeenth-century banqueting customs and the connection of the cake
+with the "King of the Bean" Herrick may be quoted:--
+
+     "Now, now the mirth comes
+      With the cake full of plums,
+    Where bean's the king of the sport here;
+      Besides we must know,
+      The pea also
+    Must revel as queen in the court here.
+
+      Begin then to choose
+      This night as ye use,
+    Who shall for the present delight here
+      Be a king by the lot,
+      And who shall not
+    Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here
+
+      Which known, let us make
+      Joy-sops with the cake;
+    And let not a man then be seen here,
+      Who unurg'd will not drink,
+      To the base from the brink,
+    A health to the king and the queen here."{3}
+
+There are many English references to the custom of electing a Twelfth Day
+monarch by means of a bean or pea, and this "king" is mentioned in royal
+accounts as early as the reign of Edward II.{4} He appears, however, to
+have been even more popular in France than in England.
+
+|339| The method of choosing the Epiphany king is thus described by the
+sixteenth-century writer, Étienne Pasquier:--
+
+    "When the cake has been cut into as many portions as there are
+    guests, a small child is put under the table, and is interrogated by
+    the master under the name of Phebé [Phoebus], as if he were a child
+    who in the innocence of his age represented a kind of Apollo's
+    oracle. To this questioning the child answers with a Latin word:
+    _Domine_. Thereupon the master calls on him to say to whom he shall
+    give the piece of cake which he has in his hand: the child names
+    whoever comes into his head, without respect of persons, until the
+    portion where the bean is given out. He who gets it is reckoned king
+    of the company, although he may be a person of the least importance.
+    This done, everyone eats, drinks, and dances heartily."{5}
+
+In Berry at the end of the festive repast a cake is brought before the
+head of the household, and divided into as many portions as there are
+guests, plus one. The youngest member of the family distributes them. The
+portion remaining is called _la part du bon Dieu_ and is given to the
+first person who asks for it. A band of children generally come to claim
+it, with a leader who sings a little song.{6} There was formerly a
+custom of dressing up a king in full robes. He had a fool to amuse him
+during the feast, and shots were fired when he drank.{7}
+
+Here is a nineteenth-century account from Lorraine:--
+
+    "On the Vigil of the Epiphany all the family and the guests assemble
+    round the table, which is illuminated by a lamp hanging above its
+    centre. Lots are cast for the king of the feast, and if the head of
+    anyone present casts no shadow on the wall it is a sign that he will
+    die during the year. Then the king chooses freely his queen: they
+    have the place of honour, and each time they raise their glasses to
+    their mouths cries of 'The king drinks, the queen drinks!' burst
+    forth on all sides.... The next day an enormous cake, divided into
+    equal portions, is distributed to the company by the youngest boy.
+    The first portion is always for _le bon Dieu_, the second for the
+    Blessed Virgin (these two portions are always given to the first poor
+    person who presents himself); then come those of relations, servants,
+    and visitors. He who finds a bean in his portion is proclaimed king;
+    if it is a lady she chooses her |340| king, and he invites the
+    company to a banquet on the Sunday following, at which black kings
+    are made by rubbing the face with a burnt cork."{8}
+
+The use of the _gâteau des Rois_ goes pretty far back. At the monastery
+of Mont-St.-Michel in the thirteenth century the Epiphany king was chosen
+from among the monks by means of a number of cakes in one of which a bean
+was placed. At Matins, High Mass, and Vespers he sat upon a special
+throne.{9}
+
+It may be added that there is a quaint old story of a curate "who having
+taken his preparations over evening, when all men cry (as the manner is)
+_the king drinketh_, chanting his Masse the next morning, fell asleep in
+his Memento: and, when he awoke, added with a loud voice, _The king
+drinketh_."{10}
+
+One more French "king" custom may be mentioned, though it relates to
+Christmas Day, not Epiphany. At Salers in the centre of France there were
+formerly a king and queen whose function was to preside over the
+festival, sit in a place of honour in church, and go first in the
+procession. The kingship was not elective, but was sold by auction at the
+church door, and it is said to have been so much coveted that worthy
+citizens would sell their heritage in order to purchase it.{11}
+
+It may be remarked that Epiphany kings and cakes similar to the French
+can be traced in Holland and Germany,{12} and that the "King of the
+Bean" is known in modern Italy, though there he may be an importation
+from the north.{13}
+
+How is this merry monarch to be accounted for? His resemblance to the
+king of the _Saturnalia_, who presided over the fun of the feast in the
+days of imperial Rome, is certainly striking, but it is impossible to say
+whether he derives directly from that personage. No doubt his association
+with the feast of the Three Kings has helped to maintain his rule. As for
+the bean, it appears to have been a sacred vegetable in ancient times.
+There is a story about the philosopher Pythagoras, how, when flying
+before a host of rebels, he came upon a field of beans and refused to
+pass through it for fear of crushing the plants, thus enabling his
+pursuers to overtake him. Moreover, the _flamen dialis_ in Rome was
+forbidden to eat or even name the vegetable, and the |341| name of the
+Fabii, a Roman _gens_, suggests a totem tribe of the bean.{14}
+
+In eastern Europe, though I know of no election of a king, there are New
+Year customs with cakes, closely resembling some of the French practices
+described a page or two back. "St. Basil's Cake" on New Year's Eve in
+Macedonia is a kind of shortbread with a silver coin and a cross of green
+twigs in it. When all are seated round the table the father and mother
+take the cake, "and break it into two pieces, which are again subdivided
+by the head of the family into shares. The first portion is destined for
+St. Basil, the Holy Virgin, or the patron saint whose icon is in the
+house. The second stands for the house itself. The third for the cattle
+and domestic animals belonging thereto. The fourth for the inanimate
+property, and the rest for each member of the household according to age.
+Each portion is successively dipped in a cup of wine." He who finds the
+cross or the coin in his share of the cake will prosper during the year.
+The money is considered sacred and is used to buy a votive taper.{15}
+
+In Macedonia when the New Year's supper is over, the table, with the
+remnants of the feast upon it, is removed to a corner of the room in
+order that St. Basil may come and partake of the food.{16} He appears to
+have been substituted by the Church for the spirits of the departed, for
+whom, as we have seen, food is left in the West on All Souls' and
+Christmas Eves. Probably the Macedonian practice of setting aside a
+portion of the cake for a saint, and the pieces cut in France for _le bon
+Dieu_ and the Virgin or the three Magi, have a like origin. One may
+compare them with the Serbian breaking of the _kolatch_ cake in honour of
+Christ "the Patron Namegiver." Is it irrelevant, also, to mention here
+the Greek Church custom, at the preparation of the elements for the
+Eucharist, of breaking portions of the bread in memory of the Virgin and
+other saints?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In many countries the Epiphany is a special time for the expulsion of
+evils. At Brunnen in Switzerland boys go about in procession on Twelfth
+Night, with torches and lanterns, and make a great noise with horns,
+bells, whips, &c., in order to |342| frighten away two wood-spirits. In
+Labruguière in southern France on the Eve of Twelfth Day the inhabitants
+rush through the streets, making discordant noises and a huge uproar,
+with the object of scaring away ghosts and devils.{17}
+
+In parts of the eastern Alps there takes place what is called
+_Berchtenlaufen_. Lads, formerly to the number of two or three hundred,
+rush about in the strangest masks, with cowbells, whips, and all sorts of
+weapons, and shout wildly.{18} In Nuremberg up to the year 1616 on
+_Bergnacht_ or Epiphany Eve boys and girls used to run about the streets
+and knock loudly at the doors.{19} Such knocking, as we have seen, may
+well have been intended to drive away spirits from the houses.
+
+At Eschenloh near Partenkirchen in Upper Bavaria three women used to
+_berchten_ on that evening. They all had linen bags over their heads,
+with holes for the mouth and eyes. One carried a chain, another a rake,
+and the third a broom. Going round to the houses, they knocked on the
+door with the chain, scraped the ground with the rake, and made a noise
+of sweeping with the broom.{20} The suggestion of a clearing away of
+evils is here very strong.
+
+In connection with the _Kallikantzaroi_ mention has already been made of
+the purification of houses with holy water, performed by Greek priests on
+the Epiphany. In Roumania, where a similar sprinkling is performed, a
+curious piece of imitative magic is added--the priest is invited to sit
+upon the bed, in order that the brooding hen may sit upon her eggs.
+Moreover there should be maize grains under the mattress; then the hen
+will lay eggs in abundance.{21}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We noted in an earlier chapter the name _Berchtentag_ applied in southern
+Germany and in Austria to the Epiphany, and we saw also how the
+mysterious Frau Berchta was specially connected with the day. On the
+Epiphany and its Eve in the Möllthal in Carinthia a female figure, "the
+Berchtel," goes the round of the houses. She is generally dressed in a
+hide, wears a hideous wooden mask, and hops wildly about, inquiring as to
+the behaviour of children, and demanding gifts.{22}
+
+|343| Something of the terrible, as well as the beneficent, belongs to
+the "Befana," the Epiphany visitor who to Italian children is the great
+gift-bringer of the year, the Santa Klaus of the South. "Delightful," say
+Countess Martinengo, "as are the treasures she puts in their shoes when
+satisfied with their behaviour, she is credited with an unpleasantly
+sharp eye for youthful transgressions."{23} Mothers will sometimes warn
+their children that if they are naughty the Befana will fetch and eat
+them. To Italian youngsters she is a very real being, and her coming on
+Epiphany Eve is looked forward to with the greatest anxiety. Though she
+puts playthings and sweets in the stockings of good children, she has
+nothing but a birch and coal for those who misbehave themselves.{24}
+
+Formerly at Florence images of the Befana were put up in the windows of
+houses, and there were processions through the streets, guys being borne
+about, with a great blowing of trumpets.{25} Toy trumpets are still the
+delight of little boys at the Epiphany in Italy.
+
+The Befana's name is obviously derived from _Epiphania_. In Naples the
+little old woman who fills children's stockings is called "Pasqua
+Epiphania,"[117] the northern contraction not having been acclimatized
+there.{26}
+
+In Spain as well as Italy the Epiphany is associated with presents for
+children, but the gift-bringers for little Spaniards are the Three Holy
+Kings themselves. There is an old Spanish tradition that the Magi go
+every year to Bethlehem to adore the infant Jesus, and on their way visit
+children, leaving sweets and toys for them if they have behaved well. On
+Epiphany Eve the youngsters go early to bed, put out their shoes on the
+window-sill or balcony to be filled with presents by the Wise Men, and
+provide a little straw for their horses.{27}
+
+It is, or was, a custom in Madrid to look out for the Kings on Epiphany
+Eve. Companies of men go out with bells and pots and pans, and make a
+great noise. There is loud shouting, and torches cast a fantastic light
+upon the scene. One of the men carries a large ladder, and mounts it to
+see if the Kings are |344| coming. Here, perhaps, some devil-scaring
+rite, resembling those described above, has been half-Christianized.{28}
+
+In Provence, too, there was a custom of going to meet the Magi. In a
+charming chapter of his Memoirs Mistral tells us how on Epiphany Eve all
+the children of his countryside used to go out to meet the Kings, bearing
+cakes for the Magi, dried figs for their pages, and handfuls of hay for
+their horses. In the glory and colour of the sunset young Mistral thought
+he saw the splendid train; but soon the gorgeous vision died away, and
+the children stood gaping alone on the darkening highway--the Kings had
+passed behind the mountain. After supper the little ones hurried to
+church, and there in the Chapel of the Nativity beheld the Kings in
+adoration before the Crib.{29}
+
+At Trest not only did the young people carry baskets or dried fruit, but
+there were three men dressed as Magi to receive the offerings and accept
+compliments addressed to them by an orator. In return they presented him
+with a purse full of counters, upon which he rushed off with the treasure
+and was pursued by the others in a sort of dance.{30} Here again the
+Magi are evidently mixed up with something that has no relation to
+Christianity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We noted in Chapter IV. the elaborate ceremonies connected in Greece with
+the Blessing of the Waters at the Epiphany, and the custom of diving for
+a cross. It would seem, as was pointed out, that the latter is an
+ecclesiastically sanctioned form of a folk-ceremony. This is found in a
+purer state in Macedonia, where, after Matins on the Epiphany, it is the
+custom to thrust some one into water, be it sea or river, pond or well.
+On emerging he has to sprinkle the bystanders.{31} The rite may be
+compared with the drenchings of human beings in order to produce rain
+described by Dr. Frazer in "The Magic Art."{32}
+
+Another Greek custom combines the purifying powers of Epiphany water with
+the fertilizing influences of the Christmas log--round Mount Olympos
+ashes are taken from the hearth where a cedar log has been burning since
+Christmas, and are baptized in the blessed water of the river. They are
+then borne |345| to the vineyards, and thrown at their four corners,
+and also at the foot of apple- and fig-trees.{33}
+
+This may remind us that in England fruit-trees used to come in for
+special treatment on the Vigil of the Epiphany. In Devonshire the farmer
+and his men would go to the orchard with a large jug of cider, and drink
+the following toast at the foot of one of the best-bearing apple-trees,
+firing guns in conclusion:--
+
+           "Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
+    Whence thou may'st bud, and whence thou may'st blow!
+    And whence thou may'st bear apples enow!
+            Hats full! caps full!
+            Bushel!--bushel--sacks full,
+            And my pockets full too! Huzza!"{34}
+
+In seventeenth-century Somersetshire, according to Aubrey, a piece of
+toast was put upon the roots.{35} According to another account each
+person in the company used to take a cupful of cider, with roasted apples
+pressed into it, drink part of the contents, and throw the rest at the
+tree.{36} The custom is described by Herrick as a Christmas Eve
+ceremony:--
+
+   "Wassail the trees, that they may bear
+    You many a plum and many a pear;
+    For more or less fruits they will bring,
+    As you do give them wassailing."{37}
+
+In Sussex the wassailing (or "worsling") of fruit-trees took place on
+Christmas Eve, and was accompanied by a trumpeter blowing on a cow's
+horn.{38}
+
+The wassailing of the trees may be regarded as either originally an
+offering to their spirits or--and this seems more probable--as a
+sacramental act intended to bring fertilizing influences to bear upon
+them. Customs of a similar character are found in Continental countries
+during the Christmas season. In Tyrol, for instance, when the Christmas
+pies are a-making on St. Thomas's Eve, the maids are told to go
+out-of-doors and put their arms, sticky with paste, round the
+fruit-trees, in order that they |346| may bear well next year.{39} The
+uses of the ashes of the Christmas log have already been noticed.
+
+Sometimes, as in the Thurgau, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and Tyrol, the
+trees are beaten to make them bear. On New Year's Eve at Hildesheim
+people dance and sing around them,{40} while the Tyrolese peasant on
+Christmas Eve will go out to his trees, and, knocking with bent fingers
+upon them, will bid them wake up and bear.{41} There is a Slavonic
+custom, on the same night, of threatening apple-trees with a hatchet if
+they do not produce fruit during the year.{42}
+
+Another remarkable agricultural rite was practised on Epiphany Eve in
+Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. The farmer and his servants would meet
+in a field sown with wheat, and there light thirteen fires, with one
+larger than the rest. Round this a circle was formed by the company, and
+all would drink a glass of cider to the success of the harvest.[118] This
+done, they returned to the farm, to feast--in Gloucestershire--on cakes
+made with caraways, and soaked in cider. The Herefordshire accounts give
+particulars of a further ceremony. A large cake was provided, with a hole
+in the middle, and after supper everyone went to the wain-house. The
+master filled a cup with strong ale, and standing opposite the finest ox,
+pledged him in a curious toast; the company followed his example with the
+other oxen, addressing each by name. Afterwards the large cake was put on
+the horn of the first ox.{43}
+
+It is extremely remarkable, and can scarcely be a mere coincidence, that
+far away among the southern Slavs, as we saw in Chapter XII., a Christmas
+cake with a hole in its centre is likewise put upon the horn of the chief
+ox. The wassailing of the animals is found there also. On Christmas Day,
+Sir Arthur |347| Evans relates, the house-mother "entered the stall set
+apart for the goats, and having first sprinkled them with corn, took the
+wine-cup in her hand and said, 'Good morning, little mother! The Peace of
+God be on thee! Christ is born; of a truth He is born. May'st thou be
+healthy. I drink to thee in wine; I give thee a pomegranate; may'st thou
+meet with all good luck!' She then lifted the cup to her lips, took a
+sup, tossed the pomegranate among the herd, and throwing her arms round
+the she-goat, whose health she had already drunk, gave it the 'Peace of
+God'--kissed it, that is, over and over again." The same ceremony was
+then performed for the benefit of the sheep and cows, and all the animals
+were beaten with a leafy olive-branch.{44}
+
+As for the fires, an Irish custom to some extent supplies a parallel. On
+Epiphany Eve a sieve of oats was set up, "and in it a dozen of candles
+set round, and in the centre one larger, all lighted." This was said to
+be in memory of the Saviour and His apostles, lights of the world.{45}
+Here is an account of a similar custom practised in Co. Leitrim:--
+
+    "A piece of board is covered with cow-dung, and twelve rushlights are
+    stuck therein. These are sprinkled with ash at the top, to make them
+    light easily, and then set alight, each being named by some one
+    present, and as each dies so will the life of its owner. A ball is
+    then made of the dung, and it is placed over the door of the cowhouse
+    for an increase of cattle. Sometimes mud is used, and the ball placed
+    over the door of the dwelling-house."{46}
+
+There remains to be considered under Epiphany usages an ancient and very
+remarkable game played annually on January 6 at Haxey in Lincolnshire. It
+is known traditionally as "Haxey Hood," and its centre is a struggle
+between the men of two villages for the possession of a roll of sacking
+or leather called the "hood." Over it preside the "boggans" or "bullocks"
+of Plough Monday (see p. 352), headed by a figure known as "My Lord," who
+is attended by a fool. The proceedings are opened on the village green by
+a mysterious speech from the fool:--
+
+"Now, good folks, this is Haxa' Hood. We've killed two |348| bullocks
+and a half, but the other half we had to leave running about field: we
+can fetch it if it's wanted. Remember it's--
+
+   'Hoose agin hoose, toon agin toon,
+    And if you meet a man knock him doon.'"
+
+Then, in an open field, the hoods--there are six of them, one apparently
+for each of the chief hamlets round--are thrown up and struggled for.
+"The object is to carry them off the field away from the boggans. If any
+of these can get hold of them, or even touch them, they have to be given
+up, and carried back to My Lord. For every one carried off the field the
+boggans forfeit half-a-crown, which is spent in beer, doubtless by the
+men of the particular hamlet who have carried off the hood." The great
+event of the day is the struggle for the last hood--made of
+leather--between the men of Haxey and the men of Westwoodside--"that is
+to say really between the customers of the public-houses there--each
+party trying to get it to his favourite 'house.' The publican at the
+successful house stands beer."{47}
+
+Mr. Chambers regards the fool's strange speech as preserving the
+tradition that the hood is the half of a bullock--the head of a
+sacrificial victim, and he explains both the Haxey game and also the
+familiar games of hockey and football as originating in a struggle
+between the people of two villages to get such a head, with all its
+fertilizing properties, over their own boundary.{48} At Hornchurch in
+Essex, if we may trust a note given by Hone, an actual boar's head was
+wrestled for on Christmas Day, and afterwards feasted upon at one of the
+public-houses by the victor and his friends.{49}
+
+One more feature of the Haxey celebration must be mentioned (it points
+apparently to a human sacrifice): the fool, the morning after the game,
+used to be "smoked" over a straw fire. "He was suspended above the fire
+and swung backwards and forwards over it until almost suffocated; then
+allowed to drop into the smouldering straw, which was well wetted, and to
+scramble out as he could."{50}
+
+Returning to the subject of football, I may here condense an |349|
+account of a Welsh Christmas custom quoted by Sir Laurence Gomme, in his
+book "The Village Community," from the _Oswestry Observer_ of March 2,
+1887:--"In South Cardiganshire it seems that about eighty years ago the
+population, rich and poor, male and female, of opposing parishes, turned
+out on Christmas Day and indulged in the game of football with such
+vigour that it became little short of a serious fight." Both in north and
+south Wales the custom was found. At one place, Llanwenog near Lampeter,
+there was a struggle between two parties with different traditions of
+race. The Bros, supposed to be descendants from Irish people, occupied
+the high ground of the parish; the Blaenaus, presumably pure-bred
+Brythons, occupied the lowlands. After morning service on Christmas Day,
+"the whole of the Bros and Blaenaus, rich and poor, male and female,
+assembled on the turnpike road which divided the highlands from the
+lowlands." The ball was thrown high in the air, "and when it fell Bros
+and Blaenaus scrambled for its possession.... If the Bros, by hook or by
+crook, could succeed in taking the ball up the mountain to their hamlet
+of Rhyddlan they won the day, while the Blaenaus were successful if they
+got the ball to their end of the parish at New Court." Many severe kicks
+were given, and the whole thing was taken so keenly "that a Bro or a
+Blaenau would as soon lose a cow from his cowhouse as the football from
+his portion of the parish." There is plainly more than a mere pastime
+here; the thing appears to have been originally a struggle between two
+clans.{51}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Anciently the Carnival, with its merrymaking before the austerities of
+Lent, was held to begin at the Epiphany. This was the case in Tyrol even
+in the nineteenth century.{52} As a rule, however, the Carnival in Roman
+Catholic countries is restricted to the last three days before Ash
+Wednesday. The pagan origin of its mummeries and licence is evident, but
+it is a spring rather than a winter festival, and hardly calls for
+treatment here.
+
+The Epiphany is in many places the end of Christmas. In Calvados,
+Normandy, it is marked by bonfires; red flames mount |350| skywards,
+and the peasants join hands, dance, and leap through blinding smoke and
+cinders, shouting these rude lines:--
+
+   "Àdieu les Rois
+    Jusqu'à douze mois,
+    Douze mois passés
+    Les bougelées."{53}
+
+Another French Epiphany _chanson_, translated by the Rev. R. L. Gales, is
+a charming farewell to Christmas:--
+
+   "Noël is leaving us,
+    Sad 'tis to tell,
+    But he will come again,
+    Adieu, Noël.
+
+    His wife and his children
+    Weep as they go:
+    On a grey horse
+    They ride thro' the snow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The Kings ride away
+    In the snow and the rain,
+    After twelve months
+    We shall see them again."{54}
+
+
+POST-EPIPHANY FESTIVALS.
+
+Though with Twelfth Day the high festival of Christmas generally ends,
+later dates have sometimes been assigned as the close of the season. At
+the old English court, for instance, the merrymaking was sometimes
+carried on until Candlemas, while in some English country places it was
+customary, even in the late nineteenth century, to leave Christmas
+decorations up, in houses and churches, till that day.{55} The whole
+time between Christmas and the Presentation in the Temple was thus
+treated as sacred to the Babyhood of Christ; the withered evergreens
+would keep alive memories of Christmas joys, even, sometimes, after
+Septuagesima had struck the note of penitence.
+
+Before we pass on to a short notice of Candlemas, we may |351| glance
+at a few last sparks, so to speak, of the Christmas blaze, and then at
+the English festivals which marked the resumption of work after the
+holidays.
+
+In Sweden Yule is considered to close with the Octave of the Epiphany,
+January 13, "St. Knut's Day," the twentieth after Christmas.
+
+   "Twentieth day Knut
+    Driveth Yule out"
+
+sing the old folks as the young people dance in a ring round the festive
+Yule board, which is afterwards robbed of the viands that remain on it,
+including the Yule boar. On this day a sort of mimic fight used to take
+place, the master and servants of the house pretending to drive away the
+guests with axe, broom, knife, spoon, and other implements.{56} The
+name, "St. Knut's Day," is apparently due to the fact that in the laws of
+Canute the Great (1017-36) it is commanded that there is to be no fasting
+from Christmas to the Octave of the Epiphany.{57}
+
+In England the day after the Epiphany was called St. Distaff's or Rock
+Day (the word Rock is evidently the same as the German _Rocken_ =
+distaff). It was the day when the women resumed their spinning after the
+rest and gaiety of Christmas. From a poem of Herrick's it appears that
+the men in jest tried to burn the women's flax, and the women in return
+poured water on the men:--
+
+   "Partly work, and partly play
+    You must on St. Distaff's day:
+    From the plough soon free your team,
+    Then come home and fother them;
+    If the maids a-spinning go,
+    Burn the flax and fire the tow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Bring in pails of water then,
+    Let the maids bewash the men;
+    Give St. Distaff all the right,
+    Then bid Christmas sport good night;
+    And next morrow, every one
+    To his own vocation."{58}
+
+|352| A more notable occasion was Plough Monday, the first after
+Twelfth Day. Men's labour then began again after the holidays.{59} We
+have already seen that it is sometimes associated with the mummers'
+plays. Often, however, its ritual is not developed into actual drama, and
+the following account from Derbyshire gives a fairly typical description
+of its customs:--
+
+    "On Plough Monday the 'Plough bullocks' are occasionally seen; they
+    consist of a number of young men from various farmhouses, who are
+    dressed up in ribbons.... These young men yoke themselves to a
+    plough, which they draw about, preceded by a band of music, from
+    house to house, collecting money. They are accompanied by the Fool
+    and Bessy; the fool being dressed in the skin of a calf, with the
+    tail hanging down behind, and Bessy generally a young man in female
+    attire. The fool carries an inflated bladder tied to the end of a
+    long stick, by way of whip, which he does not fail to apply pretty
+    soundly to the heads and shoulders of his team. When anything is
+    given a cry of 'Largess!' is raised, and a dance performed round the
+    plough. If a refusal to their application for money is made they not
+    unfrequently plough up the pathway, door-stone, or any other portion
+    of the premises they happen to be near."{60}
+
+By Plough Monday we have passed, it seems probable, from New Year
+festivals to one that originally celebrated the beginning of spring. Such
+a feast, apparently, was kept in mid-February when ploughing began at
+that season; later the advance of agriculture made it possible to shift
+it forward to early January.{61}
+
+
+CANDLEMAS.
+
+Nearer to the original date of the spring feast is Candlemas, February 2;
+though connected with Christmas by its ecclesiastical meaning, it is
+something of a vernal festival.{62}
+
+The feast of the Purification of the Virgin or Presentation of Christ in
+the Temple was probably instituted by Pope Liberius at Rome in the fourth
+century. The ceremonial to which it owes its popular name, Candlemas, is
+the blessing of candles in church and the procession of the faithful,
+carrying them lighted in their hands. During the blessing the "Nunc
+dimittis" is chanted, |353| with the antiphon "Lumen ad revelationem
+gentium et gloriam plebis tuae Israel," the ceremony being thus brought
+into connection with the "light to lighten the Gentiles" hymned by
+Symeon. Usener has however shown reason for thinking that the Candlemas
+procession was not of spontaneous Christian growth, but was inspired by a
+desire to Christianize a Roman rite, the _Amburbale_, which took place at
+the same season and consisted of a procession round the city with lighted
+candles.{63}
+
+The Candlemas customs of the sixteenth century are thus described by
+Naogeorgus:
+
+   "Then numbers great of Tapers large, both men and women beare
+    To Church, being halowed there with pomp, and dreadful words to heare.
+    This done, eche man his Candell lightes, where chiefest seemeth hee,
+    Whose taper greatest may be seene, and fortunate to bee,
+    Whose Candell burneth cleare and brighte; a wondrous force and might
+    Doth in these Candells lie, which if at any time they light,
+    They sure beleve that neyther storme or tempest dare abide,
+    Nor thunder in the skies be heard, nor any devils spide,
+    Nor fearefull sprites that walke by night, nor hurts of frost or
+          haile."{64}
+
+Still, in many Roman Catholic regions, the candles blessed in church at
+the Purification are believed to have marvellous powers. In Brittany,
+Franche-Comté, and elsewhere, they are preserved and lighted in time of
+storm or sickness.{65} In Tyrol they are lighted on important family
+occasions such as christenings and funerals, as well as on the approach
+of a storm{66}; in Sicily in time of earthquake or when somebody is
+dying.{67}
+
+In England some use of candles on this festival continued long after the
+Reformation. In 1628 the Bishop of Durham gave serious offence by
+sticking up wax candles in his cathedral at the Purification; "the number
+of all the candles burnt that evening was two hundred and twenty, besides
+sixteen torches; sixty of |354| those burning tapers and torches
+standing upon and near the high Altar."{68} Ripon Cathedral, as late as
+the eighteenth century, was brilliantly illuminated with candles on the
+Sunday before the festival.{69} And, to come to domestic customs, at
+Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire the person who bought the wood-ashes of a
+family used to send a present of a large candle at Candlemas. It was
+lighted at night, and round it there was festive drinking until its going
+out gave the signal for retirement to rest.{70}
+
+There are other British Candlemas customs connected with fire. In the
+western isles of Scotland, says an early eighteenth-century writer, "as
+Candlemas Day comes round, the mistress and servants of each family
+taking a sheaf of oats, dress it up in woman's apparel, and after putting
+it in a large basket, beside which a wooden club is placed, they cry
+three times, 'Briid is come! Briid is welcome!' This they do just before
+going to bed, and as soon as they rise in the morning, they look among
+the ashes, expecting to see the impression of Briid's club there, which
+if they do, they reckon it a true presage of a good crop and prosperous
+year, and the contrary they take as an ill-omen."{71} Sir Laurence Gomme
+regards this as an illustration of belief in a house-spirit whose
+residence is the hearth and whose element is the ever-burning sacred
+flame. He also considers the Lyme Regis custom mentioned above to be a
+modernized relic of the sacred hearth-fire.{72}
+
+Again, the feast of the Purification was the time to kindle a "brand"
+preserved from the Christmas log. Herrick's Candlemas lines may be
+recalled:--
+
+   "Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
+      Till sunne-set let it burne;
+    Which quencht, then lay it up agen,
+      Till Christmas next returne.
+
+    Part must be kept wherewith to teend
+      The Christmas Log next yeare;
+    And where 'tis safely kept, the Fiend
+      Can do no mischiefe there."{73}
+
+|355| Candlemas Eve was the moment for the last farewells to Christmas;
+Herrick sings:--
+
+   "End now the White Loafe and the Pye,
+     And let all sports with Christmas dye,"
+
+and
+
+   "Down with the Rosemary and Bayes,
+       Down with the Misleto;
+     Instead of Holly, now up-raise
+       The greener Box for show.
+
+     The Holly hitherto did sway;
+       Let Box now domineere
+     Until the dancing Easter Day,
+       Or Easter's Eve appeare."{74}
+
+An old Shropshire servant, Miss Burne tells us, was wont, when she took
+down the holly and ivy on Candlemas Eve, to put snow-drops in their
+place.{75} We may see in this replacing of the winter evergreens by the
+delicate white flowers a hint that by Candlemas the worst of the winter
+is over and gone; Earth has begun to deck herself with blossoms, and
+spring, however feebly, has begun. With Candlemas we, like the older
+English countryfolk, may take our leave of Christmas.
+
+|356| |357|
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+The reader who has had patience to persevere will by now have gained some
+idea of the manner in which Christmas is, and has been, kept throughout
+Europe. We have traced the evolution of the festival, seen it take its
+rise soon after the victory of the Catholic doctrine of Christ's person
+at Nicea, and spread from Rome to every quarter of the Empire, not as a
+folk-festival but as an ecclesiastical holy-day. We have seen the Church
+condemn with horror the relics of pagan feasts which clung round the same
+season of the year; then, as time went on, we have found the two
+elements, pagan and Christian, mingling in some degree, the pagan losing
+most of its serious meaning, and continuing mainly as ritual performed
+for the sake of use and wont or as a jovial tradition, the Christian
+becoming humanized, the skeleton of dogma clothed with warm flesh and
+blood.
+
+We have considered, as represented in poetry and liturgy, the strictly
+ecclesiastical festival, the commemoration of the Nativity as the
+beginning of man's redemption. We have seen how in the carols, the cult
+of the _presepio_, and the religious drama, the Birth of the King of
+Glory in the stable at midwinter has presented itself in concrete form to
+the popular mind, calling up a host of human emotions, a crowd of quaint
+and beautiful fancies. Lastly we have noted the survival, in the most
+varied degrees of transformation, of things which are alien to
+Christianity and in some cases seem to go back to very primitive stages
+of thought and feeling. An antique reverence for the plant-world may lie,
+as we have seen, beneath the familiar institution of the Christmas-tree,
+some sort of animal-worship may be at the bottom of the |358|
+beast-masks common at winter festivals, survivals of sacrifice may linger
+in Christmas feasting, and in the family gatherings round the hearth may
+be preserved a dim memory of ancient domestic rites.
+
+Christmas, indeed, regarded in all its aspects, is a microcosm of
+European religion. It reflects almost every phase of thought and feeling
+from crude magic and superstition to the speculative mysticism of
+Eckhart, from mere delight in physical indulgence to the exquisite
+spirituality and tenderness of St. Francis. Ascetic and _bon-vivant_,
+mystic and materialist, learned and simple, noble and peasant, all have
+found something in it of which to lay hold. It is a river into which have
+flowed tributaries from every side, from Oriental religion, from Greek
+and Roman civilization, from Celtic, Teutonic, Slav, and probably
+pre-Aryan, society, mingling their waters so that it is often hard to
+discover the far-away springs.
+
+We have seen how the Reformation broke up the great mediaeval synthesis
+of paganism and Christianity, how the extremer forms of Protestantism
+aimed at completely destroying Christmas, and how the general tendency of
+modern civilization, with its scientific spirit, its popular education,
+its railways, its concentration of the people in great cities, has been
+to root out traditional beliefs and customs both Christian and pagan, so
+that if we would seek for relics of the old things we must go to the
+regions of Europe that are least industrially and intellectually
+"advanced." Yet amongst the most sceptical and "enlightened" of moderns
+there is generally a large residuum of tradition. "Emotionally," it has
+been said, "we are hundreds of thousands of years old; rationally we are
+embryos"{1}; and many people who deem themselves "emancipated" are
+willing for once in the year to plunge into the stream of tradition,
+merge themselves in inherited social custom, and give way to sentiments
+and impressions which in their more reflective moments they spurn. Most
+men are ready at Christmas to put themselves into an instinctive rather
+than a rational attitude, to drink of the springs of wonder, and return
+in some degree to earlier, less intellectual stages of human
+development--to become in fact children again.
+
+|359| Many elements enter into the modern Christmas. There is the
+delight of its warmth and brightness and comfort against the bleak
+midwinter. A peculiar charm of the northern Christmas lies in the thought
+of the cold barred out, the home made a warm, gay place in contrast with
+the cheerless world outside. There is the physical pleasure of "good
+cheer," of plentiful eating and drinking, joined to, and partly resulting
+in, a sense of goodwill and expansive kindliness towards the world at
+large, a temporary feeling of the brotherhood of man, a desire that the
+poor may for once in the year "have a good time." Here perhaps we may
+trace the influence of the _Saturnalia_, with its dreams of the age of
+gold, its exaltation of them of low degree. Mixed with a little
+sentimental Christianity this is the Christmas of Dickens--the Christmas
+which he largely helped to perpetuate in England.
+
+Each nation, naturally, has fashioned its own Christmas. The English have
+made it a season of solid material comfort, of good-fellowship and
+"charity," with a slight flavour of soothing religion. The modern French,
+sceptical and pagan, make little of Christmas, and concentrate upon the
+secular celebration of the _jour de l'an_. For the Scandinavians
+Christmas is above all a time of sport, recreation, good living, and
+social gaiety in the midst of a season when little outdoor work can be
+done and night almost swallows up day. The Germans, sentimental and
+childlike, have produced a Christmas that is a very Paradise for children
+and at which the old delight to play at being young again around the
+Tree. For the Italians Christmas is centred upon the cult of the
+_Bambino_, so fitted to their dramatic instincts, their love of display,
+their strong parental affection. (How much of the sentiment that
+surrounds the _presepio_ is, though religiously heightened, akin to the
+delight of a child in its doll!) If the Germans may be called the good,
+industrious, sentimental children of Europe, making the most of simple
+things, the Italians are the lively, passionate, impulsive children,
+loving gay clothes and finery; and the contrast shows in their keeping of
+Christmas.
+
+The modern Christmas is above all things a children's feast, and the
+elders who join in it put themselves upon their children's |360| level.
+We have noted how ritual acts, once performed with serious purpose, tend
+to become games for youngsters, and have seen many an example of this
+process in the sports and mummeries kept up by the elder folk for the
+benefit of the children. We have seen too how the radiant figure of the
+Christ Child has become a gift-bringer for the little ones. At no time in
+the world's history has so much been made of children as to-day, and
+because Christmas is their feast its lustre continues unabated in an age
+upon which dogmatic Christianity has largely lost its hold, which laughs
+at the pagan superstitions of its forefathers. Christmas is the feast of
+beginnings, of instinctive, happy childhood; the Christian idea of the
+Immortal Babe renewing weary, stained humanity, blends with the thought
+of the New Year, with its hope and promise, laid in the cradle of Time.
+
+|361| |362| |363|
+
+
+
+
+NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTION
+
+1.  #G. K. Chesterton# in #"The Daily News,"# Dec. 26, 1903.
+
+2.  _Ibid._ Dec. 23, 1911.
+
+3.  Cf. #J. E. Harrison, "Themis: a Study of the Social Origins of Greek
+    Religion"# (Cambridge, 1912), 139, 184.
+
+4.  Or plural _Weihnachten_. The name _Weihnachten_ was applied in five
+    different ways in mediaeval Germany: (1) to Dec. 25, (2) to Dec.
+    25-8, (3) to the whole Christmas week, (4) to Dec. 25 to Jan. 6, (5)
+    to the whole time from Christmas to the Octave of the Epiphany. #G.
+    Bilfinger, "Das germanische Julfest"# (Stuttgart, 1901), 39.
+
+5.  #A. Tille, "Die Geschichte der deutschen Weihnacht"# (Leipsic, 1893),
+    22. [Referred to as "D. W."]
+
+6.  #H. Usener, "Das Weihnachtsfest"# (Kap. i., bis. iii. 2nd Edition,
+    Bonn, 1911), 273 f.
+
+7.  #L. Duchesne, "Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution"# (Eng.
+    Trans., Revised Edition, London, 1912), 257 f.
+
+8.  #J. Hastings, "Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics"# (Edinburgh,
+    1910), iii. 601 f.
+
+9.  #E. K. Chambers, "The Mediaeval Stage"# (Oxford, 1903), i. 244.
+    [Referred to as "M. S."]
+
+10. #A. Tille, "Yule and Christmas: their Place in the Germanic Year"#
+    (London, 1899), 122. [Referred to as "Y. & C."]
+
+11. _Ibid._ 164.
+
+12. Tille, "D. W.," 21.
+
+13. Tille, "Y. & C.," 203.
+
+14. #K. Lake# in Hastings's "Encyclopædia" and in #"The Guardian,"# Dec.
+    29, 1911; #F. C. Conybeare#, Preface to #"The Key of Truth, a Manual
+    of the Paulician Church of Armenia"# (Oxford, 1898), clii. f.;
+    Usener, 18 f.
+
+15. Usener, 27 f.
+
+16. _Ibid._ 31; #J. E. Harrison, "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
+    Religion"# (Cambridge, 1903), 550.
+
+17. Harrison, "Prolegomena," 402 f., 524 f., 550. |364|
+
+18. #Lake#, and #G. Rietschel, "Weihnachten in Kirche, Kunst and
+    Volksleben"# (Bielefeld and Leipsic, 1902), 10.
+
+19. Conybeare, lxxviii.
+
+20. #A. Lupi, "Dissertazioni, lettere ed altre operette"# (Faenza, 1785),
+    i. 219 f., mentioned in article "Nativity" in #T. K. Cheyne's
+    "Encyclopædia Biblica"# (London, 1902), iii. 3346.
+
+21. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 234.
+
+22. _Ibid._ i. 235; #F. Cumont, "The Monuments of Mithra"# (Eng. Trans.,
+    London, 1903), 190.
+
+23. #G. Negri, "Julian the Apostate"# (Eng. Trans., London, 1905),
+    i. 240 f.
+
+24. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 235.
+
+25. Duchesne, "Christian Worship," 265.
+
+26. Tille, "Y. & C.," 146.
+
+
+PART I.--THE CHRISTIAN FEAST
+
+
+CHAPTER II.--CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)
+
+1.  See especially for Latin, German, and English hymnody #J. Julian, "A
+    Dictionary of Hymnology"# (New Edition, London, 1907), and the
+    #Historical Edition of "Hymns Ancient and Modern"# (London, 1909).
+
+2.  #H. C. Beeching, "A Book of Christmas Verse"# (London, 1895), 3.
+
+3.  Beeching, 8.
+
+4.  #A. Gastoué, "Noël"# (Paris, 1907), 38.
+
+5.  #R. W. Church, "St. Anselm"# (London, 1870), 6.
+
+6.  _Ibid._ 3 f.
+
+7.  #W. R. W. Stephens, "The English Church from the Norman Conquest to
+    the Accession of Edward I."# (London, 1901), 309.
+
+8.  #W. Sandys, "Christmastide: its History, Festivities, and Carols"#
+    (London, n.d.), 216; #E. Rickert, "Ancient English Carols.
+    MCCCC-MDCC"# (London, 1910), 133.
+
+9.  For the Franciscan influence on poetry and art see: #Vernon Lee,
+    "Renaissance Fancies and Studies"# (London, 1895); #H. Thode, "Franz
+    von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien"#
+    (Berlin, 1885); #A. Macdonell, "Sons of Francis"# (London, 1902); #J.
+    A. Symonds, "The Renaissance in Italy. Italian Literature,"# Part I.
+    (New Edition, London, 1898).
+
+10. #Thomas of Celano, "Lives of St. Francis"# (Eng. Trans. by A. G.
+    Ferrers Howell, London, 1908), 84.
+
+11. #P. Robinson, "Writings of St. Francis"# (London, 1906), 175.
+
+12. #"Le poesie spirituali del B. Jacopone da Todi,"# con annotationi di
+    Fra Francesco Tresatti (Venice, 1617), 266.
+
+13. _Ibid._ 275.
+
+14. _Ibid._ 867.
+
+15. #"Stabat Mater speciosa,"# trans. and ed. by J. M. Neale (London,
+    1866). |365|
+
+16. For German Christmas poetry see, besides Julian: #Hoffmann von
+    Fallersleben, "Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes bis auf Luthers
+    Zeit"# (2nd Edition, Hanover, 1854); #P. Wackernagel, "Das deutsche
+    Kirchenlied"# (Leipsic, 1867); and #C. Winkworth, "Christian Singers
+    of Germany"# (London, n.d.).
+
+17. #R. M. Jones, "Studies in Mystical Religion"# (London, 1909), 235,
+    237.
+
+18. #"Meister Eckharts Schriften und Predigten,"# edited by H. Buttner
+    (Leipsic, 1903), i. 44.
+
+19. Translation by C. Winkworth, "Christian Singers," 84. German text in
+    Wackernagel, ii. 302 f.
+
+20. #"Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch"# (Hamburg-Grossborstel, 1907), 125.
+
+21. #"A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs,"# reprinted from
+    the Edition of 1567 by A. F. Mitchell (Edinburgh and London, 1897),
+    53. This translation is abridged and Protestantized. The mediaeval
+    German text, which is partly addressed to the Virgin, is given in
+    #Hoffmann von Fallersleben, "In Dulci Jubilo"# (Hanover, 1854), 46.
+    For the music see #G. R. Woodward, "The Cowley Carol Book"# (New
+    Edition, London, 1909), 20 f. [a work peculiarly rich in old German
+    airs].
+
+22. #K. Weinhold, "Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus Süddeutschland und
+    Schlesien"# (2nd Edition, Vienna, 1875), 385.
+
+23. _Ibid._ 396. [For help in the translation of German dialect I am
+    indebted to Dr. M. A. Mügge.]
+
+24. _Ibid._ 400.
+
+25. _Ibid._ 417.
+
+26. E. K. Chambers, essay on "Some Aspects of Mediæval Lyric" in #"Early
+    English Lyrics,"# chosen by #E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick# (London,
+    1907), 290. [Twenty-five of Awdlay's carols were printed by Messrs.
+    #Chambers and Sidgwick# in #"The Modern Language Review"#
+    (Cambridge), Oct., 1910, and Jan., 1911.]
+
+27. _Ibid._ 293.
+
+28. Quoted by #J. J. Jusserand, "A Literary History of the English
+    People"# (2nd Edition, London, 1907), i. 218.
+
+29. Rickert, 6; Beeching, 13.
+
+30. No. lv. in Chambers and Sidgwick, "Early English Lyrics."
+
+31. No. lix., _ibid._
+
+32. No. lxi., _ibid._
+
+33. No. lxx., _ibid._
+
+34. No. lxvii., _ibid._
+
+35. No. lxiii., _ibid._
+
+36. Rickert, 67.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.--CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)
+
+1.  #Noël Hervé, "Les Noëls français"# (Niort, 1905), Gastoué, 57 f.; #G.
+    Gregory Smith, "The Transition Period"# (Edinburgh and London, 1900),
+    217.
+
+2.  Gregory Smith, 217.
+
+3.  #H. Lemeignen, "Vieux Noëls composés en l'honneur de la Naissance de
+    Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ"# (Nantes, 1876), iii. 2 f.
+
+4.  _Ibid._ i. 10, 11.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ ii. 93, 95.
+
+6.  Hervé, 46.
+
+7.  Lemeignen, i. 55. |366|
+
+8.  Lemeignen, i. 29.
+
+9.  #"Les Vieux Noëls,"# in #"Nouvelle Bibliothèque Populaire"#
+    (published by Henri Gautier, 55 Quai des Grands Augustins, Paris).
+
+10. Lemeignen, i. 93.
+
+11. #H. J. L. J. Massé, "A Book Of Old Carols"# (London, 1910), i. 21.
+
+12. Hervé, 86.
+
+13. Lemeignen, i. 71.
+
+14. "Hymns Ancient and Modern" (Historical Edition), 79. Translation is
+    No. 58 in Ordinary Edition.
+
+15. Hervé, 132.
+
+16. A great number of these _villancicos_ and _romances_ may be found in
+    #Justo de Sancha, "Romancero y Cancionero Sagrados"# (Madrid,
+    1855, vol. 35 of Rivadeneyra's Library of Spanish Authors), and there
+    are some good examples in #J. N. Böhl de Faber, "Rimas Antiguas
+    Castellanas"# (Hamburg, 1823).
+
+17. Böhl de Faber, ii. 36.
+
+18. #F. Caballero, "Elia y La Noche de Navidad"# (Leipsic, 1864), 210.
+
+19. #A. de Gubernatis, "Storia Comparata degli Usi Natalizi"# (Milan,
+    1878), 90.
+
+20. These three verses are taken from #Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco's#
+    charming translation of the poem, in her #"Essays in the Study of
+    Folk-Songs"# (London, 1886), 304 f.
+
+21. Martinengo, "Folk-Songs," 302 f.
+
+22. Latin text in Tille, "D. W.," 311; Italian game in De Gubernatis, 93.
+
+23. Hervé, 115 f.
+
+24. #W. Hone, "The Ancient Mysteries Described"# (London, 1823), 103.
+
+25. _Ibid._ 103.
+
+26. See Note 11.
+
+27. #D. Hyde, "Religious Songs of Connacht"# (London, 1906), ii. 225 f.
+
+28. #"The Vineyard"# (London), Dec., 1910, 144.
+
+29. "Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch," 120 f.
+
+30. "A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs," 49 f. (spelling
+    here modernized); Rickert, 82 f.
+
+31. "Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch," 123, and most German Protestant
+    hymnbooks.
+
+32. Translation by Miles Coverdale, in Rickert, 192 f.
+
+33. No. 5 in #Paulus Gerhardt, "Geistliche Lieder,"# ed. by P.
+    Wackernagel and W. Tümpel (9th Edition, Gütersloh, 1907).
+
+34. Translation by #C. Winkworth# in #"Lyra Germanica"# (New Edition,
+    London, 1869), ii. 13 f.
+
+35. "Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch," 128 f.
+
+36. Translation (last verse altered) in #"The British Herald"# (London),
+    Sept., 1866, 329.
+
+37. #"Christmas Carols New and Old,"# the words edited by #H. R.
+    Bramley#, the music edited by #Sir John Stainer# (London, n.d.).
+
+38. Beeching, 27 f.
+
+39. _Ibid._ 67.
+
+40. _Ibid._ 49.
+
+41. _Ibid._ 76.
+
+42. _Ibid._ 48.
+
+43. _Ibid._ 45.
+
+44. _Ibid._ 42 f. |367|
+
+45. Beeching, 85 f.
+
+46. #Selwyn Image, "Poems and Carols"# (London, 1894), 25.
+
+47. #G. K. Chesterton# in #"The Commonwealth"# (London), Dec., 1902, 353.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.--CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION
+
+1.  Translation, "Creator of the starry height," in "Hymns A. and M."
+    (Ordinary Edition), No. 45.
+
+2.  #J. Dowden, "The Church Year and Kalendar"# (Cambridge, 1910), 76 f.
+
+3.  #"Rational ou Manuel des divins Offices de Guillaume Durand, Évèque
+    de Mende au treizième siècle,"# traduit par #M. C. Barthélemy#
+    (Paris, 1854), iii. 155 f.
+
+4.  See translation of the Great O's in "The English Hymnal," No. 734.
+
+5.  Barthélemy, iii. 220 f.
+
+6.  #D. Rock, "The Church of Our Fathers"# (London, 1853), vol. iii. pt.
+    ii. 214.
+
+7.  #J. K. Huysmans, "L'Oblat"# (Paris, 1903), 194.
+
+8.  Gastoué, 44 f.
+
+9.  #E. G. C. F. Atchley, "Ordo Romanus Primus"# (London, 1905), 71.
+
+10. #"The Pilgrimage of S. Silvia of Aquitaine"# (Eng. Trans. by J. H.
+    Bernard, London, 1891), 50 f.
+
+11. #S. D. Ferriman# in #"The Daily News,"# Dec. 25, 1911.
+
+12. #G. Bonaccorsi, "Il Natale: appunti d'esegesi e di storia"# (Rome,
+    1903), 73.
+
+13. Gastoué, 41 f.
+
+14. Bonaccorsi, 75.
+
+15. #H. Malleson and M. A. R. Tuker, "Handbook to Christian and
+    Ecclesiastical Rome"# (London, 1897), pt. ii. 211.
+
+16. #Th. Bentzon, "Christmas In France"# in #"The Century Magazine"# (New
+    York), Dec., 1901, 170 f.
+
+17. #L. von Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben"# (Stuttgart, 1909), 232.
+
+18. #M. J. Quin, "A Visit to Spain"# (2nd Edition, London, 1824), 126 f.
+
+19. #"Madrid in 1835,"# by a #Resident Officer# (London, 1836), i. 395 f.
+
+20. #W. S. Walsh, "Curiosities of Popular Customs"# (London, 1898), 237.
+
+21. #G. Pitrè, "Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane"# (Palermo, 1880),
+    444.
+
+22. Tille, "D. W.," 70 f.
+
+23. #F. H. Woods, "Sweden and Norway"# (London, 1882), 209; #L. Lloyd,
+    "Peasant Life in Sweden"# (London, 1870), 201 f.
+
+24. #J. E. Vaux, "Church Folklore"# (London, 1894), 222 f.
+
+25. #M. Trevelyan, "Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales"# (London, 1909),
+    28.
+
+26. Vaux, 262 f.
+
+27. #R. F. Littledale, "Offices from the Service-Books of the Holy
+    Eastern Church"# (London, 1863), 174 f.
+
+28. #[Sir] A. J. Evans, "Christmas and Ancestor Worship in the Black
+    Mountain,"# in #"Macmillan's Magazine"# (London), vol. xliii., 1881,
+    228.
+
+29. Duchesne, 273.
+
+30. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 245.
+
+31. #"The Roman Breviary,"# translated by #John, Marquess of Bute# (New
+    Edition Edinburgh and London, 1908), 186.
+
+32. See announcement in #"The Roman Mail"# in Jan., 1912. |368|
+
+33. #Mary Hamilton, "Greek Saints and their Festivals"# (London, 1910),
+    113 f.
+
+34. #H. Holloway, "An Eastern Epiphany Service"# in #"Pax"# (the Magazine
+    of the Caldey Island Benedictines), Dec., 1910.
+
+35. Hamilton, 119 f.
+
+36. Holloway, as above.
+
+37. #F. H. E. Palmer, "Russian Life in Town and Country"# (London, 1901),
+    176 f.
+
+38. Thomas of Celano, trans. by Howell, 82 f.
+
+39. #Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, "Puer Parvulus"# in #"The Outdoor
+    Life in the Greek and Roman Poets"# (London, 1911), 248.
+
+40. Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 41.
+
+41. Bonaccorsi, 85; Usener, 298.
+
+42. Usener, 290.
+
+43. _Ibid._ 295, 299.
+
+44. Rietschel, 55.
+
+45. _Ibid._ 56 f.
+
+46. _Ibid._ 60.
+
+47. _Ibid._ 69 f.; Tille, "D. W.," 59 f.
+
+48. Music from #Trier "Gesangbuch"# (1911), No. 18, where a very much
+    weakened text is given. Text from Weinhold, 114. Another form of the
+    air is given in "The Cowley Carol Book," No. 36.
+
+49. Text and music in Massé, i. 6.
+
+50. Tille, "D. W.," 60.
+
+51. _Ibid._ 61 f.
+
+52. _Ibid._ 63.
+
+53. #Thomas Naogeorgus, "The Popish Kingdome,"# Englyshed by Barnabe
+    Googe, 1570 (ed. by R. C. Hope, London, 1880), 45.
+
+54. Tille, "D. W.," 68.
+
+55. _Ibid._ 68.
+
+56. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 235.
+
+57. _Ibid._ 235.
+
+58. Tille, "D. W.," 64.
+
+59. Rietschel, 75.
+
+60. Martinengo, "Outdoor Life," 249.
+
+61. #Lady Morgan, "Italy"# (New Edition, London, 1821), iii. 72.
+
+62. #Matilde Serao, "La Madonna e i Santi"# (Naples, 1902), 223 f.
+
+63. #L. Caico, "Sicilian Ways and Days"# (London, 1910), 192 f.
+
+64. Information kindly given to the author by Mrs. C. G. Crump.
+
+65. Information derived by the author from a resident in Messina.
+
+66. Serao, _see_ Note 62.
+
+67. #W. H. D. Rouse, "Religious Tableaux in Italian Churches,"# in
+    #"Folk-Lore"# (London), vol. v., 1894, 6 f.
+
+68. Morgan, iii. 76 f.
+
+69. Bonaccorsi, 45 f.
+
+70. #A. J. C. Hare, "Walks in Rome"# (11th Edition, London, 1883), 157.
+
+71. Martinengo, "Outdoor Life," 253; Bonaccorsi, 110 f.; #R. Ellis
+    Roberts, "A Roman Pilgrimage"# (London, 1911), 185 f.
+
+72. #H. J. Rose, "Untrodden Spain"# (London, 1875), 276.
+
+73. See Note 18 to Chapter III. |369|
+
+74. #T. F. Thiselton Dyer, "British Popular Customs"# (London, 1876),
+    464.
+
+75. Vaux, 216.
+
+76. Dyer, 464.
+
+77. Cf. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 120.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.--CHRISTMAS DRAMA
+
+1.  This account of the mediaeval Christmas drama owes much to Chambers,
+    "The Mediaeval Stage," especially chaps. xviii. to xx., and to #W.
+    Creizenach, "Geschichte des neueren Dramas"# (Halle a/S.,
+    1893), vol. i., bks. ii.-iv. See also: #Karl Pearson#, essay on #"The
+    German Passion Play"# in #"The Chances of Death, and other Studies in
+    Evolution"# (London, 1897), ii. 246 f.; #E. Du Méril, "Origines
+    latines du théâtre moderne"# (Paris, 1849); #L. Petit de Julleville,
+    "Histoire du théâtre en France au moyen âge. I. Les Mystères"#
+    (Paris, 1880); and other works cited later.
+
+2.  Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 8 f.
+
+3.  _Ibid._ ii. 11.
+
+4.  Du Méril, 147.
+
+5.  Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 52.
+
+6.  Text in Du Méril, 153 f.
+
+7.  Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 44.
+
+8.  _Ibid._ ii. 52 f.
+
+9.  On the English plays see: Chambers, "M. S.," chaps. xx. and xxi.; #A.
+    W. Ward, "A History of English Dramatic Literature"# (London,
+    1875), vol. i. chap. i.; Creizenach, vol. i.; #K. L. Bates, "The
+    English Religious Drama"# (London, 1893).
+
+10. Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 129, 131, 139.
+
+11. #"Ludus Coventriae,"# ed. by J. O. Halliwell (London, 1841), 146 f.
+
+12. #"York Plays,"# ed. by L. Toulmin Smith (Oxford, 1885), 114 f.
+
+13. #"The Chester Plays,"# ed. by T. Wright (London, 1843), 137.
+
+14. _Ibid._ 138.
+
+15. _Ibid._ 143.
+
+16. #"The Towneley Plays,"# ed. by George England, with Introduction by
+    A. W. Pollard (London, 1897). The first Shepherds' Play is on p.
+    100 f., the second on p. 116 f.
+
+17. Text from Chambers and Sidgwick, "Early English Lyrics," 124 f.
+
+18. Text in #T. Sharp, "A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic
+    Mysteries anciently performed at Coventry"# (Coventry, 1825).
+
+19. Petit de Julleville, ii. 36 f and 431 f.
+
+20. _Ibid._ ii. 620 f.; #"Les marguerites de la Marguerite des
+    princesses,"# ed. from the edition of 1547 by F. Frank (Paris, 1873),
+    ii. 1 f.
+
+21. Petit de Julleville, i. 441.
+
+22. _Ibid._ i. 455. Text in Lemeignen, ii. 1 f.
+
+23. Petit de Julleville, i. 79 f.
+
+24. #P. Sébillot, "Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne"# (Paris,
+    1886), 177.
+
+25. Martinengo, "Folk-Songs," xxxiii. f. In her essay, "Puer Parvulus,"
+    in "The Outdoor Life," 260 f., the Countess gives a charming
+    description of a somewhat similar Piedmontese play.
+
+26. Barthélemy, iii. 411 f. |370|
+
+27. Rietschel, 88 f.; #O. von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, "Das festliche
+    Jahr"# (2nd Edition, Leipsic, 1898), 439 f.
+
+28. Rietschel, 92 f.
+
+29. An interesting book on popular Christmas plays is #F. Vogt, "Die
+    schlesischen Weihnachtspiele"# (Leipsic, 1901).
+
+30. Weinhold, 94.
+
+31. _Ibid._ 95 f.
+
+32. _Ibid._ 100 f.
+
+33. _Ibid._ 96 f.
+
+34. See Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 91 f.; Symonds, "Renaissance," iv. 242,
+    272 f.; #A. d'Ancona, "Origini del Teatro italiano"# (Florence,
+    1877), i. 87 f.
+
+35. D'Ancona, "Origini," i. 126 f.
+
+36. #A. d'Ancona, "Sacre Rappresentazioni dei secoli xiv, xv e xvi"#
+    (Florence, 1872), i. 191 f.
+
+37. _Ibid._ i. 192.
+
+38. Latin original quoted by D'Ancona, "Origini," i. 91, and Chambers,
+    "M. S.," ii. 93.
+
+39. Creizenach, i. 347.
+
+40. #J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, "A History of Spanish Literature"# (London,
+    1898), 113.
+
+41. #Juan del Encina, "Teatro Completo"# (Madrid, 1893), 3 f., 137 f.
+
+42. See #G. Ticknor, "History of Spanish Literature"# (6th American
+    Edition, Boston, 1888), ii. 283 f.
+
+43. _Ibid._ ii. 208.
+
+44. #"Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari"# (Palermo and
+    Turin), vol. xxi., 1902, 381.
+
+45. Pitrè, 448.
+
+46. Fernan Caballero, "Elia y La Noche de Navidad," 222 f.
+
+47. Lloyd, 213 f.
+
+48. #H. F. Feilberg, "Jul"# (Copenhagen, 1904), ii. 242 f.
+
+49. #E. Cortet, "Essai sur les fêtes religieuses"# (Paris, 1867), 38.
+
+50. Sébillot, 215.
+
+51. Feilberg, ii. 250; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 31 f.; #T. Stratilesco,
+    "From Carpathian to Pindus: Pictures of Roumanian Country Life"#
+    (London, 1906), 195 f.; #E. van Norman, "Poland: the Knight among
+    Nations"# (London and New York, 3rd Edition, n.d.), 302; #S. Graham,
+    "A Vagabond in the Caucasus. With some Notes of his Experiences among
+    the Russians"# (London, 1910), 28.
+
+52. Translation in #Karl Hase, "Miracle Plays and Sacred Dramas"# (Eng.
+    Trans., London, 1880), 9; German text in Weinhold, 132.
+
+53. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 247 f.
+
+54. Graham, 28.
+
+55. Stratilesco, 195 f.
+
+56. _Ibid._ 355 f.
+
+57. Van Norman, 302.
+
+58. Cortet, 42.
+
+59. Barthélemy, iii. 411 f.
+
+60. #Madame Calderon de la Barca, "Life in Mexico"# (London, 1843),
+    237 f.
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT
+
+1.  #E. Underhill, "Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of
+    Man's Spiritual Consciousness"# (London, 1911), 305. |371|
+
+
+PART II.--PAGAN SURVIVALS
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.--PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS
+
+1.  #Karl Pearson#, essay on #"Woman as Witch"# in #"The Chances of Death
+    and other Studies in Evolution"# (London, 1897), ii. 16.
+
+2.  Cf. #J. G. Frazer, "The Dying God"# (London, 1911), 269.
+
+3.  #J. A. MacCulloch, "The Religion of the Ancient Celts"# (Edinburgh,
+    1911), 278.
+
+4.  Frazer, "Dying God," 266.
+
+5.  #E. Anwyl, "Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times"# (London, 1906),
+    1 f.
+
+6.  _Ibid._ 20; cf. #E. K. Chambers, "The Mediaeval Stage"# (Oxford,
+    1903), i. 100 f. [Referred to as "M. S."]
+
+7.  #W. Robertson Smith, "Lectures on the Religion of the Semites"# (New
+    Edition, London, 1894), 16.
+
+8.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 236; #W. W. Fowler, "The Roman Festivals of the
+    Period of the Republic"# (London, 1899), 272.
+
+9.  #"The Works of Lucian of Samosata"# (Eng. Trans. by H. W. and F. G.
+    Fowler, Oxford, 1905), iv. 108 f.
+
+10. #John Brand, "Observations on Popular Antiquities"# (New Edition,
+    with the Additions of Sir Henry Ellis, London, Chatto & Windus,
+    1900), 283.
+
+11. "Works of Lucian," iv. 114 f.
+
+12. _Ibid._ iv. 109.
+
+13. #J. G. Frazer, "The Golden Bough"# (2nd Edition, London, 1900), iii.
+    138 f., and #"The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kingship"# (London,
+    1911), ii. 310 f.
+
+14. #W. W. Fowler, "The Religious Experience of the Roman People"#
+    (London, 1911), 107, 112.
+
+15. Fowler, "Roman Festivals," 268, and "Religious Experience," 107; #C.
+    Bailey, "The Religion of Ancient Rome"# (London, 1907), 70.
+
+16. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 237 f.; Fowler, "Roman Festivals," 278.
+
+17. Quoted from #"Libanii Opera,"# ed. by Reiske, i. 256 f., by #G.
+    Bilfinger, "Das germanische Julfest"# (vol. ii. of "Untersuchungen
+    über die Zeitrechnung der alten Germanen," Stuttgart, 1901), 41 f.
+
+18. "Libanii Opera," iv. 1053 f., quoted by Bilfinger, 43 f.
+
+19. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 237 f., 258.
+
+20. #A. Tille, "Yule and Christmas"# (London, 1899), 96. [Referred to as
+    "Y. & C."]
+
+21. #J. C. Lawson, "Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion"#
+    (Cambridge, 1910), 221 f. Cf. #M. Hamilton, "Greek Saints and their
+    Festivals"# (London, 1910), 98.
+
+22. Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 290 f.
+
+23. Latin text in Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 297 f.
+
+24. _Ibid._ i. 245.
+
+25. Tille, "Y. & C.," 88 f.; Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 303 f. |372|
+
+26. Tille, "Y. & C.," throughout; Chambers, "M. S.," i. 288 f.;
+    #Chantepie de la Saussaye, "The Religion of the Ancient Teutons"#
+    (Boston, 1902), 382. Cf. #O. Schrader#, in #Hastings's "Encyclopædia
+    of Religion and Ethics"# (Edinburgh, 1909), ii. 47 f.
+
+27. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 258 f. Cf. Chambers, "M.
+    S.," i. 228, 234.
+
+28. Tille, "Y. & C.," 203.
+
+29. #[Sir] A. J. Evans, "Christmas and Ancestor Worship in the Black
+    Mountain,"# in #"Macmillan's Magazine"# (London), vol. xliii., 1881,
+    363.
+
+30. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 247.
+
+31. Tille, "Y. & C.," 64.
+
+32. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 232.
+
+33. _Ibid._ i. 130; W. Robertson Smith, 213 f.
+
+34. Frazer, "Dying God," 129 f.
+
+35. See #N. W. Thomas# in #"Folk-Lore"# (London), vol. xi., 1900, 227 f.
+
+36. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 132 f.
+
+37. W. Robertson Smith, 437 f.
+
+38. #J. E. Harrison, "Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek
+    Religion"# (Cambridge, 1912), 67. Cf. #E. F. Ames, "The Psychology of
+    Religious Experience"# (London and Boston, 1910), 95 f.
+
+39. Harrison, "Themis," 137.
+
+40. _Ibid._ 110.
+
+41. #S. Reinach, "Cultes, mythes, et religions"# (Paris, 1905), i. 93.
+    For the theory that totems were originally food-objects, see Ames,
+    118 f.
+
+42. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 133.
+
+43. _Ibid._ i. 105 f., 144.
+
+44. Harrison, "Themis," 507.
+
+45. W. Robertson Smith, 255.
+
+46. #Bede, "Historia Ecclesiastica,"# lib. i. cap. 30. Latin text in
+    Bede's Works, edited by J. A. Giles (London, 1843), vol. ii. p. 142.
+
+47. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 143.
+
+48. #Jerome, "Comm. in Isaiam,"# lxv. 11. Latin text in Chambers, "M. S.,"
+    ii. 294.
+
+49. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 266.
+
+50. Latin text in Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 306.
+
+51. #Bede, "De Temporum Ratione,"# cap. 15, quoted by Chambers, i. 231.
+    See also Tille, "Y. & C.," 152 f., and Bilfinger, 131, for other
+    views.
+
+52. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 70 f.
+
+53. See Frazer, "Magic Art," i. 52.
+
+54. Cf. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 300 f.
+
+55. Latin text in #H. Usener, "Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen,"#
+    part ii. (Bonn, 1889), 43 f. See also #A. Tille, "Die Geschichte der
+    deutschen Weihnacht"# (Leipsic, 1893), 44 f. [Referred to as "D. W."]
+
+56. #Philip Stubbs, "Anatomie Of Abuses"# (Reprint of 3rd Edition of
+    1585, edited by W. B. Turnbull, London, 1836), 205.
+
+57. Quoted by #J. Ashton, "A righte Merrie Christmasse!!"#
+    (London, n.d.), 26 f.
+
+58. _Ibid._ 27 f. |373|
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.--ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS
+
+1.  #R. Chambers, "The Book Of Days"# (London, n.d.), ii. 538 [referred
+    to as "B. D."]; #T. F. Thiselton Dyer, "British Popular Customs"#
+    (London, 1876), 396 f.
+
+2.  #[Sir] J. Rhys, "Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
+    illustrated by Celtic Heathendom"# (London, 1888), 514, #"Celtic
+    Folklore: Welsh and Manx"# (Oxford, 1901), i. 321.
+
+3.  Tille, "Y. & C.," 57 f.
+
+4.  Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 315 f.
+
+5.  #J. Dowden, "The Church Year and Kalendar"# (Cambridge, 1910), 23 f.
+
+6.  Cf. #J. G. Frazer, "Adonis, Attis, Osiris"# (2nd Edition, London,
+    1907), 315 f.
+
+7.  #E. B. Tylor, "Primitive Culture"# (3rd Edition, London, 1891),
+    ii. 38.
+
+8.  Frazer, "Adonis," 310.
+
+9.  _Ibid._ 312 f.
+
+10. #P. Sébillot, "Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne"# (Paris,
+    1886), 206.
+
+11. #L. von Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben"# (Stuttgart, 1909), 193.
+
+12. Frazer, "Adonis," 315.
+
+13. #G. Pitrè, "Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane"# (Palermo, 1880),
+    393 f. Cf. #H. F. Feilberg, "Jul"# (Copenhagen, 1904), i. 67.
+
+14. #"Notes and Queries"# (London), 3rd Series, vol. i. 446; Dyer, 408.
+
+15. Frazer, "Adonis," 250.
+
+16. Dyer, 405 f.
+
+17. _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. iv. 381; Dyer, 407.
+
+18. #C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, "Shropshire Folk-Lore"# (London,
+    1883), 383.
+
+19. _Ibid._ 381 f.
+
+20. Quoted by Dyer, 410.
+
+21. #O. von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, "Das festliche Jahr der germanischen
+    Völker"# (2nd Edition, Leipsic, 1898), 390.
+
+22. #"Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari"#
+    (Palermo), vol. viii. 574.
+
+23. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 189 f.
+
+24. Frazer, "Adonis," 303 f.
+
+25. _Ibid._ 306 f.
+
+26. Evans, 363 f.
+
+27. Dyer, 394.
+
+28. _Ibid._ 398.
+
+29. _Ibid._ 394. Cf. Chambers, "B. D.," ii. 519 f.
+
+30. Dyer, 395.
+
+31. _Ibid._ 399.
+
+32. _Ibid._ 397 f.
+
+33. #S. O. Addy, "Household Tales, with other Traditional Remains.
+    Collected in the Counties of Lincoln, Derby, and Nottingham"# (London
+    and Sheffield, 1895), 82.
+
+34. _Ibid._ 85.
+
+35. #W. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the
+    Borders"# (2nd Edition, London, 1879), 101.
+
+36. Dyer, 399.
+
+37. _Ibid._ 403. |374|
+
+38. Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 321, "Celtic Heathendom," 514.
+
+39. Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 328.
+
+40. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 259, 261.
+
+41. Rhys, "Celtic Heathendom," 515.
+
+42. _Ibid._ 515.
+
+43. _Ibid._ 515, "Celtic Folklore," i. 225.
+
+44. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 262.
+
+45. Brand, 211.
+
+46. Dyer, 402.
+
+47. _Ibid._ 394 f.
+
+48. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 299 f.
+
+49. Burne and Jackson, 389.
+
+50. Dyer, 409.
+
+51. #J. Grimm, "Teutonic Mythology"# (Eng. Trans. by J. S. Stallybrass,
+    London, 1880-8), i. 47.
+
+52. #K. Weinhold, "Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus Süddeutschland und
+    Schlesien"# (Vienna, 1875), 6.
+
+53. #U. Jahn, "Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht"#
+    (Breslau, 1884), 262.
+
+54. _Ibid._ 262.
+
+55. Weinhold, 6.
+
+56. Dyer, 472.
+
+57. _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. i. 173; Dyer, 486.
+
+58. Weinhold, 7.
+
+59. _Ibid._ 10.
+
+60. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 449.
+
+61. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 166.
+
+62. Dyer, 480.
+
+63. Feilberg, ii. 228 f.
+
+64. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 393.
+
+65. #Tacitus, "Annales,"# lib. i. cap. 50, quoted by Tille, "Y. & C.,"
+    25.
+
+66. Tille, "Y. & C.," 26.
+
+67. _Ibid._ 52.
+
+68. _Ibid._ 27.
+
+69. Brand, 216 f.
+
+70. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 401 f. For German Martinmas feasting, see also
+    Jahn, 229 f.
+
+71. Grimm, iv. 1838, for Danish custom; Jahn, 235 f., for German.
+
+72. #"The Folk-Lore Record"# (London), vol. iv., 1881, 107; Dyer, 420.
+
+73. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 260.
+
+74. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 403.
+
+75. Jahn, 246 f.
+
+76. _Ibid._ 246; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 403.
+
+77. Tille, "Y. & C.," 34 f.
+
+78. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 404; Jahn, 250.
+
+79. Jahn, 247.
+
+80. Angela Nardo-Cibele in _Archivio trad. pop._, vol. v. 238 f., for
+    Venetia; Pitrè, 411 f., for Sicily.
+
+81. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 405. |375|
+
+82. Jahn, 240.
+
+83. _Ibid._ 241 f.
+
+84. _Ibid._ 241.
+
+85. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 404.
+
+86. Weinhold, 7.
+
+87. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 268; Weinhold, 7; Tille, "D. W.," 25.
+
+88. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, illustration facing p. 406.
+
+89. _Ibid._ 405.
+
+90. _Ibid._ 404.
+
+91. _Ibid._ 410; Tille, "D. W.," 26 f.; #W. Mannhardt, "Der Baumkultus
+    der Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme"# (Berlin, 1875. Vol. i. of
+    "Wald- und Feldkulte"), 273.
+
+92. Cf. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 303, and Reinach, i. 180.
+
+93. _Archivio trad. pop._, vol. v. 238 f., 358 f.
+
+94. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 274.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS
+
+1.  Dyer, 423.
+
+2.  _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. viii. 618; Dyer, 425.
+
+3.  Brand, 222 f.
+
+4.  Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 97.
+
+5.  _Notes and Queries_, 3rd Series, vol. iv. 492; Dyer, 423.
+
+6.  Dyer, 425.
+
+7.  Brand, 222.
+
+8.  _Ibid._ 223.
+
+9.  _Notes and Queries_, 2nd Series, vol. v. 47; Dyer, 427.
+
+10. Dyer, 426 f.
+
+11. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 415.
+
+12. #J. N. Raphael# in #"The Daily Express,"# Nov. 28, 1911.
+
+13. Dyer, 430.
+
+14. _Ibid._ 429.
+
+15. Tille, "D. W.," 148.
+
+16. #B. Thorpe, "Northern Mythology"# (London, 1852), iii. 143.
+
+17. _Ibid._ iii. 144.
+
+18. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 416 f. Cf. Grimm, iv. 1800.
+
+19. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 417. Cf. Thorpe, iii. 145.
+
+20. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 418.
+
+21. Thorpe, iii. 145.
+
+22. #F. S. Krauss, "Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven"# (Vienna, 1885), 179.
+
+23. #T. Stratilesco, "From Carpathian to Pindus: Pictures of Roumanian
+    Country Life"# (London, 1906), 189.
+
+24. _Ibid._ 188 f.
+
+25. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 416.
+
+26. _Ibid._ 420 f.
+
+27. _Ibid._ 425. |376|
+
+28. #Thomas Naogeorgus, "The Popish Kingdome,"# Englyshed by Barnabe
+    Googe, 1570 (ed. by R. C. Hope, London, 1880), 44.
+
+29. #G. F. Abbott, "Macedonian Folklore"# (Cambridge, 1903), 76.
+
+30. #P. M. Hough, "Dutch Life in Town and Country"# (London, 1901), 96.
+
+31. Cf. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 90, and also the Epiphany
+    noise-makings described in the present volume.
+
+32. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 426.
+
+33. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 218 f.
+
+34. Tille, "D. W.," 30.
+
+35. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 370.
+
+36. Hamilton, 30. Cf. article on St. Nicholas by Professor Anichkof in
+    _Folk-Lore_, vol. v., 1894, 108 f.
+
+37. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 428 f.
+
+38. Tille, "D. W.," 35 f.; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 430.
+
+39. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 209 f.
+
+40. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 430.
+
+41. Weinhold, 9.
+
+42. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 326.
+
+43. Weinhold, 9.
+
+44. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 431 f.
+
+45. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 212 f.
+
+46. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 433.
+
+47. _Ibid._ 433.
+
+48. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 369.
+
+49. #W. S. Walsh, "Curiosities of Popular Customs"# (London, 1898),
+    753 f. Cf. Chambers, "B. D.," ii. 664.
+
+50. Feilberg, i. 165, 170.
+
+51. _Ibid._ i. 169 f.
+
+52. _Ibid._ i. 171.
+
+53. #L. Caico, "Sicilian Ways and Days"# (London, 1910), 188 f.
+
+54. Feilberg, i. 168.
+
+55. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 434.
+
+56. _Ibid._ 434 f.
+
+57. Grimm, iv. 1867.
+
+58. Feilberg, i. 108 f.
+
+59. _Ibid._ i. 111.
+
+60. N. W. Thomas in _Folk-Lore_, vol. xi., 1900, 252.
+
+61. Ashton, 52.
+
+62. Dyer, 72 f.
+
+63. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 436 f.
+
+64. _Ibid._ 437.
+
+65. _Ibid._ 438.
+
+66. _Ibid._ 439.
+
+67. Dyer, 439.
+
+68. _Ibid._ 438 f.; Chambers, "B. D.," ii. 724.
+
+69. Abbott, 81.
+
+70. _Notes and Queries_, 2nd Series, vol. v. 35; Dyer, 439. |377|
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.--CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS
+
+1.  Tille, "D. W.," 32 f.
+
+2.  Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 446.
+
+3.  _Ibid._ 448.
+
+4.  _Ibid._ 449.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ 448; Weinhold, 8 f.
+
+6.  Evans, 229.
+
+7.  Weinhold, 8.
+
+8.  Tille, "Y. & C.," 116.
+
+9.  Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 444 f.
+
+10. _Ibid._ 442 f.
+
+11. _Ibid._ 444.
+
+12. #W. R. S. Ralston, "Songs of the Russian People"# (1st Edition,
+    London, 1872), 186 f.
+
+13. Sébillot, 216.
+
+14. Walsh, 232.
+
+15. Burne and Jackson, 406; Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern
+    Counties," 311; #Sir Edgar MacCulloch, "Guernsey Folk Lore"# (London,
+    1903), 34; Thorpe, ii. 272.
+
+16. Walsh, 232.
+
+17. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 311.
+
+18. MacCulloch, "Guernsey Folk Lore," 34 f. Cf. for Germany, Grimm,
+    iv. 1779, 1809.
+
+19. Grimm, iv. 1840.
+
+20. Ralston, 201.
+
+21. #A. Le Braz, "La Légende de la Mort chez les Bretons armoricains"#
+    (Paris, 1902), i. 114 f.
+
+22. Thorpe, ii. 89.
+
+23. Lloyd, 171.
+
+24. Feilberg, ii. 7 f.
+
+25. _Ibid._ ii. 14.
+
+26. Bilfinger, 52.
+
+27. Feilberg, ii. 3 f.
+
+28. _Ibid._ ii. 20 f.
+
+29. #A. F. M. Ferryman, "In the Northman's Land"# (London, 1896), 112.
+
+30. Feilberg, ii. 64.
+
+31. Grimm, iv. 1781, 1783, 1793, 1818.
+
+32. Krauss, 181.
+
+33. Accounts of the carols used in Little Russia are given by Mr.
+    Ralston, 186 f., while those sung by the Roumanians are described by
+    Mlle. Stratilesco, 192 f., and those customary in Dalmatia by Sir A.
+    J. Evans, 224 f.
+
+34. Ralston, 193.
+
+35. Stratilesco, 192.
+
+36. Ralston, 197.
+
+37. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 244.
+
+38. #Shakespeare, "Hamlet," Act I. Sc. 1.#
+
+39. Bilfinger, 37 f.
+
+40. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 132. |378|
+
+41. Tylor, i. 362.
+
+42. #W. Golther, "Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie"# (Leipsic, 1895),
+    283 f.
+
+43. Tille, "D. W.," 173.
+
+44. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 132.
+
+45. MacCulloch, "Guernsey Folk Lore," 33 f.
+
+46. Burne and Jackson, 396 f., 403.
+
+47. #R. T. Hampson, "Medii Aevi Kalendarium"# (London, 1841), i. 90.
+
+48. Grimm, iv. 1836; Thorpe, ii. 272.
+
+49. Burne and Jackson, 405.
+
+50. _Ibid._ 405; MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 166.
+
+51. #E. H. Meyer, "Mythologie der Germanen"# (Strassburg, 1903), 424;
+    Golther, 491; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 22 f.
+
+52. Golther, 493.
+
+53. Meyer, 425 f.
+
+54. _Ibid._ 425 f.
+
+55. Grimm, iii. 925 f.
+
+56. _Ibid._ i. 268, 275 f.
+
+57. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 22.
+
+58. Grimm, i. 275; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 23.
+
+59. _Ibid._ 23.
+
+60. Meyer, 425; Grimm, i. 281.
+
+61. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 21.
+
+62. Golther, 493.
+
+63. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 24.
+
+64. Grimm, i. 274.
+
+65. Meyer, 428.
+
+66. #R. H. Busk, "The Valleys of Tirol"# (London, 1874), 116.
+
+67. _Ibid._ 118.
+
+68. _Ibid._ 417.
+
+69. The details given about the _Kallikantzaroi_ are taken, unless
+    otherwise stated, from Lawson, 190 f.
+
+70. Abbott, 74.
+
+71. Hamilton, 108 f.
+
+72. _Ibid._ 109.
+
+73. Abbott, 218.
+
+74. _Ibid._ 73 f.
+
+75. Meyer, 85 f.
+
+76. #G. Henderson, "Survivals of Belief among the Celts"# (Glasgow, 1911),
+    178.
+
+77. _Ibid._ 177.
+
+78. #F. H. E. Palmer, "Russian Life In Town and Country"# (London, 1901),
+    178.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.--THE YULE LOG
+
+1.  Evans, 221 f.; Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 224 f. Cf. the account of the
+    Servian Christmas in #Chedo Mijatovitch, "Servia and the Servians"#
+    (London, 1908), 98 f.
+
+2.  Same sources. |379|
+
+3.  Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 236.
+
+4.  Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 208.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ ii. 232.
+
+6.  Evans, 219, 295, and 357.
+
+7.  _Ibid._ 222.
+
+8.  Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 237.
+
+9.  Cf. Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 233.
+
+10. _Ibid._ ii. 365 f.
+
+11. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 226 f.
+
+12. #"Memoirs of Mistral"# (Eng. Trans. by C. E. Maud, London, 1907),
+    29 f.
+
+13. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 226 f.
+
+14. Sébillot, 218.
+
+15. #A. de Gubernatis, "Storia Comparata degli Usi Natalizi"# (Milan,
+    1878), 112.
+
+16. C. Casati in _Archivio trad. pop._, vol. vi. 168 f.
+
+17. Jahn, 253.
+
+18. _Ibid._ 254.
+
+19. _Ibid._ 257.
+
+20. Brand, 245; Dyer, 466.
+
+21. #[Sir] G. L. Gomme, "Folk Lore Relics of Early Village Life"# (London
+    1883), 99.
+
+22. Ashton, 111.
+
+23. Burne and Jackson, 402.
+
+24. _Ibid._ 398 f.
+
+25. _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. iv. 309; Dyer, 446 f.
+
+26. #"The Gentleman's Magazine,"# 1790, 719.
+
+27. Hampson, i. 109.
+
+28. Feilberg, i. 118 f.
+
+29. _Ibid._ i. 146.
+
+30. _Ibid._ ii. 66 f.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.--THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS
+
+1.  #I. A. R. Wylie, "My German Year"# (London, 1910), 68.
+
+2.  #Mrs. A. Sidgwick, "Home Life in Germany"# (London, 1908), 176.
+
+3.  Tille, "D. W.," 258. For the history and associations of the
+    Christmas-tree see also #E. M. Kronfeld, "Der Weihnachtsbaum"#
+    (Oldenburg, 1906).
+
+4.  Tille, "D. W.," 259.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ 261.
+
+6.  _Ibid._ 261 f.
+
+7.  #G. Rietschel, "Weihnachten in Kirche, Kunst und Volksleben"#
+    (Bielefeld and Leipsic, 1902), 153.
+
+8.  _Ibid._, 153.
+
+9.  Tille, "D. W.," 270.
+
+10. Rietschel, 151.
+
+11. _Ibid._ 151.
+
+12. Tille, "D. W.," 267. |380|
+
+13. Dyer, 442; E. M. Leather, #"The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire"# (London,
+    1912), 90.
+
+14. Rietschel, 154.
+
+15. Ashton, 189.
+
+16. _Ibid._ 190.
+
+17. Tille, "D. W.," 271.
+
+18. _Ibid._ 272.
+
+19. _Ibid._ 277; Rietschel, 254.
+
+20. Information supplied by the Rev. E. W. Lummis, who a few years ago
+    was a pastor in the Münsterthal.
+
+21. #L. Macdonald# in #"The Pall Mall Gazette"# (London), Dec. 28, 1911.
+
+22. Tille, "Y. & C.," 174.
+
+23. _Ibid._ 175 f.
+
+24. Rietschel, 141.
+
+25. Tille, "Y. & C.," 175.
+
+26. _Ibid._ 172 f.; Chambers, "B. D.," ii. 759.
+
+27. Latin text in Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 290.
+
+28. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 244.
+
+29. Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 65.
+
+30. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 244.
+
+31. _Ibid._ 241; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 18.
+
+32. Lloyd, 168.
+
+33. Dyer, 35.
+
+34. #W. F. Dawson, "Christmas: its Origin and Associations"# (London,
+    1902), 325.
+
+35. Harrison, "Themis," 321.
+
+36. Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 55 f.
+
+37. Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 48.
+
+38. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 242 f.
+
+39. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 251.
+
+40. Latin text, _ibid._ ii. 300.
+
+41. #J. Stow, "A Survay of London,"# edited by Henry Morley (London,
+    1893), 123.
+
+42. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 251.
+
+43. Grimm, iii. 1206; Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 327; MacCulloch,
+    "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 162, 205.
+
+44. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 162 f.
+
+45. Grimm, iii. 1206.
+
+46. Burne and Jackson, 246; #Laisnel de la Salle, "Croyances et légendes
+    du centre de la France"# (Paris, 1875), i. 58.
+
+47. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 451 f.
+
+48. #Washington Irving, "The Sketch-Book"# (Revised Edition, New York,
+    1860), 245.
+
+49. _Notes and Queries_, 5th Series, vol. viii. 481.
+
+50. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 472.
+
+51. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 100.
+
+52. Burne and Jackson, 245.
+
+53. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 226.
+
+54. #E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, "Early English Lyrics"# (London,
+    1907), 293; #E. Rickert, "Ancient English Carols"# (London, 1910),
+    262. |381|
+
+55. Rickert, 262.
+
+56. Burne and Jackson, 245 f., 397, 411.
+
+57. Lloyd, 169.
+
+58. Van Norman, 300.
+
+59. Evans, 222.
+
+60. Van Norman, 300 f.
+
+61. Frazer, "Golden Bough," ii. 286 f.
+
+62. Grimm, iv. 1831.
+
+63. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 238. Cf. Tille, "Y. & C.," 104.
+
+64. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 420.
+
+65. Tille, "D. W.," 195.
+
+66. _Ibid._ 197.
+
+67. Bilfinger, 48.
+
+68. #Th. Bentzon, "Christmas in France"# in #"The Century Magazine"# (New
+    York), Dec., 1901, 173.
+
+69. Feilberg, ii. 179 f.
+
+70. Pitrè, 167, 404.
+
+71. Feilberg, i. 196; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 453 f.; Wylie, 77 f.
+
+72. Lloyd, 172.
+
+73. #W. Sandys, "Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern"# (London, 1833),
+    xcv.
+
+74. Walsh, 240 f.; Ashton, 194 f.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.--CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS
+
+1.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 257.
+
+2.  Rickert, 259.
+
+3.  #W. Sandys, "Christmastide: its History, Festivities, and Carols"#
+    (London, n.d.), 112.
+
+4.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 133.
+
+5.  #J. A. H. Murray, "A New English Dictionary"# (Oxford, 1888, &c.)
+    iv. (1) 577.
+
+6.  Addy, 103.
+
+7.  Dawson, 254.
+
+8.  Addy, 104.
+
+9.  Burne and Jackson, 407.
+
+10. Brand, 283.
+
+11. Cf. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xi., 1900, 260.
+
+12. Addy, 103.
+
+13. Cf. carols in Brand, 3, and Rickert, 243 f.
+
+14. Brand, 3.
+
+15. Dyer, 464.
+
+16. Feilberg, i. 119, 184; Lloyd, 173.
+
+17. Jahn, 265.
+
+18. Stratilesco, 190.
+
+19. Ralston, 193, 203.
+
+20. Mijatovich, 98.
+
+21. Jahn, 261.
+
+22. Rietschel, 106. Cf. Weinhold, 25, and Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 463.
+
+23. Sébillot, 217. |382|
+
+24. Laisnel, i. 7 f.
+
+25. _Ibid._ i. 12 f.
+
+26. _Ibid._ i. 11.
+
+27. #E. Cortet, "Essai sur les Fêtes religieuses"# (Paris, 1867), 265.
+
+28. Frazer, "Golden Bough," ii. 286 f.
+
+29. #M. Höfler, "Weihnachtsgebäcke. Eine vergleichende Studie der
+    germanischen Gebildbrote zur Weihnachtszeit"# in #"Zeitschrift für
+    österreichische Volkskunde,"# Jahrg. 11, Supplement-Heft 3 (Vienna,
+    1905).
+
+30. Jahn, 280 f.
+
+31. Burne and Jackson, 406 f.
+
+32. #"The Mirror of Perfection,"# trans. by Sebastian Evans (London,
+    1898), 206.
+
+33. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 233 f.
+
+34. Lloyd, 170 f.
+
+35. Jahn, 276.
+
+36. _Ibid._ 276.
+
+37. Lloyd, 168.
+
+38. Evans, 231 f.; for the ox-custom, see Evans, 233.
+
+39. Abbott, 76.
+
+40. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 244 f., 238, 245.
+
+41. Dawson, 339.
+
+42. #S. Graham, "A Vagabond in the Caucasus. With some Notes of his
+    Experiences among the Russians"# (London, 1910), 25 f.
+
+43. Stratilesco, 190.
+
+44. Van Norman, 299 f.
+
+45. Jahn, 267.
+
+46. Frazer, "Golden Bough," ii. 442 f., where other examples, British and
+    Continental, of the wren-hunt are given. Cf. Dyer, 494 f.
+
+47. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xviii., 1907, 439 f.
+
+48. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 221.
+
+49. See Frazer, "Golden Bough," ii. 380, 441, for examples of similar
+    practices with sacred animals.
+
+50. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xi., 1900, 259.
+
+51. Brand, 272.
+
+52. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xi., 1900, 262.
+
+53. Lloyd, 181 f.
+
+54. _Ibid._ 181.
+
+55. Thorpe, ii. 49 f.
+
+56. Ralston, 200.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.--MASKING, THE MUMMERS' PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE
+                 BOY BISHOP
+
+1.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 390 f.
+
+2.  #The Works Of Ben Jonson#, ed. by Barry Cornwall (London, 1838), 600.
+
+3.  #Shakespeare, "Henry VIII.,"# Act I. Sc. IV.
+
+4.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 403 f.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ i. 227, 402.
+
+6.  _Ibid._ i. 402. Cf. Burne and Jackson, 410.
+
+7.  For a bibliography of texts of the mummers' plays see Chambers,
+    "M. S.," i. 205 f. |383|
+
+8.  This account of the plays and dances is based upon Chambers, "M. S.,"
+    i. 182 f. (chapters ix. and x.).
+
+9.  #Tacitus, "Germania,"# cap. xxiv. (Eng. Trans. by W. Hamilton Fyfe,
+    Oxford, 1908).
+
+10. Cf. Harrison, "Themis," 43 f.
+
+11. Professor Gilbert Murray in "Themis," 341 f.
+
+12. Harrison, "Themis," 232.
+
+13. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 226.
+
+14. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 192, 213 f.
+
+15. _Ibid._ i. 220 f.
+
+16. Lawson, 223 f.
+
+17. _Notes and Queries_, 5th Series, vol. x. 482.
+
+18. This account of the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop is mainly
+    derived from Chambers, "M. S.," i. 274-371, and from #Mr. A. F.
+    Leach's# article, #"The Schoolboys' Feast,"# in #"The Fortnightly
+    Review"# (London), vol. lix., 1896, 128 f.
+
+19. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 294.
+
+20. Full text in Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 280 f.
+
+21. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 372 f.
+
+22. #"Two Sermons preached by the Boy Bishop at St. Paul's,"# ed. by J.
+    G. Nichols, with an Introduction by E. F. Rimbault (London, printed
+    for the Camden Society, 1875).
+
+23. _Ibid._ 3.
+
+24. Quoted by #F. J. Snell, "The Customs Of Old England"# (London, 1911),
+    44.
+
+25. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 366.
+
+26. #J. Aubrey, "Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme"# (1686-7), ed. by
+    J. Britten (London, 1881), 40 f.
+
+27. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 350.
+
+28. Feilberg, ii. 254.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.--ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS' DAYS
+
+1.  Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 237 f.
+
+2.  Dyer, 492.
+
+3.  #L. von Hörmann, "Das Tiroler Bauernjahr"# (Innsbruck, 1899), 204.
+
+4.  _Ibid._ 204.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ 204 f.
+
+6.  Feilberg, i. 212.
+
+7.  Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 402.
+
+8.  Feilberg, i. 211.
+
+9.  Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 402 f.
+
+10. _Ibid._ 402 f.; Feilberg, i. 204 f.; Lloyd, 203 f.
+
+11. #H. C. Beeching, "A Book of Christmas Verse"# (London, 1895), 21 f.
+
+12. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 406.
+
+13. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 67.
+
+14. Jahn, 269 f.
+
+15. _Ibid._ 270 f.
+
+16. _Ibid._ 273. |384|
+
+17. Dyer, 497 f.
+
+18. _Ibid._ 498; Brand, 290.
+
+19. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 264 f.
+
+20. _Ibid._ 265 f.
+
+21. _Ibid._ 268.
+
+22. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 129 f.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.--NEW YEAR'S DAY
+
+1.  Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 320 f.
+
+2.  Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 72.
+
+3.  #E. Thurston, "Omens and Superstitions of Southern India"# (London,
+    1912), 17 f.
+
+4.  Walsh, 742.
+
+5.  Wylie, 81.
+
+6.  Sébillot, 176.
+
+7.  #A. Maurice Low, "The American People"# (London, 1911), ii. 6.
+
+8.  Walsh, 739 f.
+
+9.  Evans, 229.
+
+10. Burne and Jackson, 315 f.
+
+11. _Notes and Queries_, 5th Series, vol. iii. 6.
+
+12. Information given by the Rev. E. J. Hardy, formerly Chaplain to the
+    Forces at Hongkong.
+
+13. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 204 f.
+
+14. Burne and Jackson, 265.
+
+15. Grimm, iv. 1784.
+
+16. Harrison, "Themis," 36.
+
+17. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 72 f.
+
+18. Addy, 205.
+
+19. G. Hastie in _Folk-Lore_, vol. iv., 1893, 309 f.
+
+20. J. E. Crombie in same volume, 316 f.
+
+21. Addy, 106; Burne and Jackson, 314; Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 337.
+
+22. Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 339.
+
+23. _Ibid._ 339 f.; W. Henderson, 74. Cf. _Folk-Lore_, vol. iii., 1892,
+    253 f.; vol. iv., 1893, 309 f.
+
+24. Hastie (see Note 19), 311.
+
+25. Walsh, 738.
+
+26. Hastie, 312.
+
+27. Chambers, "B. D.," i. 28.
+
+28. _Ibid._ ii. 789 f.; _Notes and Queries_, 2nd Series, vol. ix., 322;
+    Dyer, 506.
+
+29. Ashton, 228.
+
+30. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 230 f.
+
+31. #J. G. Campbell, "Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and
+    Islands of Scotland"# (Glasgow, 1902), 232. Cf. the account given by
+    Dr. Johnson, in Brand, 278.
+
+32. Henderson, "Survivals of Belief among the Celts," 263 f.
+
+33. #R. Chambers, "Popular Rhymes of Scotland"# (Edinburgh, 1847), 296,
+    and "B. D.," ii. 788. |385|
+
+34. "New English Dictionary," v. (1) 327.
+
+35. Cortet, 18.
+
+36. Sébillot, 213.
+
+37. _Ibid._ 213.
+
+38. MacCulloch, "Guernsey Folk Lore," 37.
+
+39. Abbott, 80 f.
+
+40. Stratilesco, 197 f.
+
+41. Hamilton, 103.
+
+42. _Ibid._ 104.
+
+43. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 593 f.
+
+44. Latin text from Ducange in Chambers, "M. S.," i. 254.
+
+45. Wylie, 81.
+
+46. Abbott, 78.
+
+47. Grimm, iv. 1847.
+
+48. Sébillot, 171.
+
+49. Dyer, 7.
+
+50. Ashton, 228.
+
+51. #A. Macdonell, "In the Abruzzi"# (London, 1908), 102.
+
+52. Abbott, 77.
+
+53. Ralston, 205.
+
+54. #"The Athenæum"# (London), Feb. 5, 1848; _Notes and Queries_, 1st
+    Series, vol. v., 5.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.--EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS
+
+1.  Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 240 f.
+
+2.  #Leigh Hunt, "The Seer; or, Common-Places Refreshed"# (London, 1850),
+    part ii. 31.
+
+3.  Beeching, 148 f.
+
+4.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 261.
+
+5.  #E. Pasquier, "Les Recherches de la France"# (Paris, 1621), livre
+    iv., chap. ix. p. 375.
+
+6.  Cortet, 33.
+
+7.  _Ibid._ 34.
+
+8.  _Ibid._ 43.
+
+9.  #E. Du Méril, "Origines latines du théâtre moderne"# (Paris, 1849),
+    26 f.
+
+10. Brand, 13.
+
+11. #A. de Nore, "Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de
+    France"# (Paris, 1846), 173.
+
+12. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 29 f.; Brand, 13.
+
+13. #Matilde Serao, "La Madonna e i Santi"# (Naples, 1902), 128.
+
+14. Reinach, i. 45 f.
+
+15. Abbott, 77.
+
+16. _Ibid._ 78.
+
+17. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 93.
+
+18. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 246; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 21.
+
+19. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 21.
+
+20. _Ibid._ 21 f. |386|
+
+21. Stratilesco, 198.
+
+22. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 21.
+
+23. #Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, "Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs"#
+    (London, 1886), 334.
+
+24. #D. N. Lees, "Tuscan Feasts and Tuscan Friends"# (London, 1907), 87.
+
+25. _Ibid._ 83.
+
+26. Serao, 127 f.
+
+27. #E. de Olavarría y Huarte, "El Folk-Lore de Madrid,"# 90. [Vol. ii.
+    of "Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Españolas" (Seville,
+    1884).]
+
+28. _Ibid._ 92.
+
+29. "Memoirs of Mistral," 32 f.
+
+30. Nore, 17.
+
+31. Abbott, 87.
+
+32. Frazer, "Magic Art," i. 275 f.
+
+33. Hamilton, 118.
+
+34. Brand, 16; Chambers, "B. D.," i. 56; Dyer, 21.
+
+35. Aubrey, 40.
+
+36. Brand, 16.
+
+37. Beeching, 147.
+
+38. Ashton, 87 f.
+
+39. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 225.
+
+40. Tille, "D. W.," 254.
+
+41. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 230.
+
+42. #W. S. Lach-Szyrma# in #"The Folk-Lore Record"# (London), vol. iv.,
+    1881, 53.
+
+43. Brand, 17; Chambers, "B. D.," i. 55 f.; Dyer, 22 f. Several accounts
+    have been collected by Mrs. Leather, "Folk-Lore of Herefordshire,"
+    93 f.
+
+44. Evans, 228.
+
+45. Dyer, 24.
+
+46. _Folk-Lore_, vol. v., 1894, 192.
+
+47. _Ibid._ vol. vii., 1896, 340 f.
+
+48. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 149 f.
+
+49. W. Hone, "Every Day Book" (London, 1838), ii. 1649.
+
+50. _Folk-Lore_, vol. vii., 1896, 342.
+
+51. #[Sir] G. L. Gomme, "The Village Community"# (London, 1890), 242 f.
+
+52. Busk, 99.
+
+53. Dawson, 320.
+
+54. #"The Nation"# (London), Dec. 10, 1910.
+
+55. Burne and Jackson, 411.
+
+56. Lloyd, 217.
+
+57. Bilfinger, 24.
+
+58. Brand, 18 f.
+
+59. Dyer, 37.
+
+60. Quoted from #"Journal of the Archæological Association,"# vol. vii.,
+    1852, 202, by Dyer, 39.
+
+61. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 113.
+
+62. _Ibid._ i. 114.
+
+63. Usener, 310 f.
+
+64. Naogeorgus, 48.
+
+65. Sébillot, 179 f. |387|
+
+66. Hörmann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 7.
+
+67. Usener, 321.
+
+68. Brand, 25. Cf. #G. W. Kitchin, "Seven Sages Of Durham"# (London,
+    1911), 113.
+
+69. _The Gentleman's Magazine_, 1790, 719.
+
+70. Dyer, 55 f.
+
+71. Quoted by Dyer, 57, from #Martin's "Description of the Western Isles
+    of Scotland"# (1703), 119.
+
+72. Gomme, "Folk-Lore Relics," 95.
+
+73. Brand, 26.
+
+74. _Ibid._ 26.
+
+75. Burne and Jackson, 411.
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+1.  E. Clodd in Presidential Address to the Folk-Lore Society, 1894. See
+    _Folk-Lore_, vol. vi., 1895, 77.
+
+|388| |389| |390| |391|
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Abbots Bromley, horn-dance at, 201
+
+Abruzzi, All Souls' Eve in, 192;
+    "new water" in, 333
+
+"Adam," drama, 127-8
+
+Adam and Eve, their Day, 271
+
+Adam of St. Victor, 33-4
+
+"Adeste, fideles," 63-4
+
+Advent, 90-2;
+    "Advent images," 118;
+    _Klöpfelnächte_, 216-8
+
+Alexandria, pagan rites at, 20
+
+All Saints' Day, and the cult of the dead, 173, 189-90
+
+All Souls' Day, and the cult of the dead, 173, 181, 189-95
+
+Alsace, Christkind in, 230;
+    New Year's "May" in, 269-70
+
+Alsso of Brevnov, 183
+
+Ambrose, St., 31-2
+
+_Amburbale_, 353
+
+Amiens, Feast of Fools at, 305
+
+Anatolius, St., hymn of, 100
+
+Ancestor-worship, 181, 253-4, 290, 341
+
+Andrew, St., his Day, 173, 213-6, 277
+
+Animals, carol of, 69;
+    ox and ass at the Nativity, 155;
+    cult of, 174-8;
+    masks of, 175-6, 199-202;
+    on Christmas Eve, 233-4;
+    specially fed at Christmas, 289;
+    wassailing, 346-7
+
+Ansbach, Martinmas in, 206
+
+Antwerp, soul-cakes at, 194;
+    St. Martin at, 206-7;
+    St. Thomas's Day at, 224
+
+Apples, customs with, 195-6, 207, 278
+
+Ara Coeli, Rome, 115-6
+
+Ardennes, St. Thomas's Day in, 224
+
+Armenian Church, Epiphany in, 22
+
+Artemis and St. Nicholas, 218
+
+Aryan and pre-Aryan customs, 163-4
+
+Aschenklas, 219, 231
+
+Ashes, superstition about, 258
+
+Ass, Prose of the, 304-5
+
+Athens, New Year in, 331
+
+Aubrey, J., 308
+
+Augury, 182, 195-8, 214-5, 225, 237, 321-33
+
+Augustine, St. (of Canterbury), 21, 179
+
+Aurelian, 23
+
+Austria, Christmas poetry in, 45-46;
+    Christmas drama in, 143-6;
+    soul-cakes in, 194;
+    St. Nicholas in, 218-20;
+    St. Lucia's Eve in, 223;
+    St. Thomas's Eve in, 225;
+    Frau Perchta, etc., in, 241-4, 342;
+    Sylvester in, 274.
+    _See also_ Bohemia, Carinthia, Styria, Tyrol
+
+Awdlay, John, 47-8
+
+
+Bach, J. S., 73-4
+
+Baden, All Souls' Eve in, 192
+
+Balder, 273
+
+Baptism of Christ, celebrated at Epiphany, 20-2, 101-4
+
+Barbara, St., her festival, 268
+
+Bari, festival of St. Nicholas at, 221
+
+Barring out the master, 224
+
+Bartel, 219
+
+Basil, St., his festival, 331
+
+Basilidians, 21
+
+Basle, Council of, 305
+
+Bavaria, St. Martin's rod in, 207;
+    Christmas-trees in, 266-7;
+    sacrificial feast in, 286;
+    St. John's wine in, 314
+
+Beauvais, Feast of the Ass at, 305
+
+Bede, Venerable, 181, 203 |392|
+
+Bees on Christmas Eve, 234
+
+Befana, 244, 278, 343
+
+Belethus, Johannes, 302
+
+Belgium, All Souls' Eve in, 192, 194;
+    St. Hubert's Day in, 202;
+    Martinmas in, 204-7;
+    St. Catherine's Day in, 213;
+    St. Nicholas in, 219;
+    St. Thomas's Day in, 224
+
+Bentzon, Madame Th., 96-7
+
+Berchta. _See_ Perchta
+
+Berlin, pyramids in, 266;
+    biscuits in, 288
+
+Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, 33
+
+Berry, cake customs in, 287, 339
+
+Bethlehem, Christmas at, 94-5, 107
+
+Biggar, bonfires at, 327
+
+Bilfinger, Dr. G., 172
+
+Birds fed at Christmas, 289
+
+Blindman's buff, 293
+
+Boar's head, 284, 348
+
+Bohemia, the "star" in, 152;
+    fifteenth-century Christmas customs in, 183;
+    St. Andrew's Eve in, 215-6;
+    St. Thomas's Eve in, 224-5
+
+Boniface, St., 171
+
+Boy Bishop, 212-3, 306-8;
+    connection with St. Nicholas, 220-1, 307-8
+
+"Breast-strip" rites, 328
+
+Breviary, the Roman, 90
+
+Briid, 354
+
+Brimo, 21
+
+Brittany, Herod play in, 141;
+    Magi actors in, 151;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 191-2;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 233-5, 236;
+    Christmas log in, 256;
+    New Year in, 323;
+    _aguillanneuf_ in, 330;
+    weather superstition in, 332
+
+Brixen, cradle-rocking at, 111
+
+Brixlegg, Christmas play at, 143 f.
+
+Bromfield, Cumberland, barring out the master at, 224
+
+Brough, Westmoreland, Twelfth Night tree at, 270
+
+Brunnen, Epiphany at, 341
+
+Budelfrau, 220
+
+Burchardus of Worms, 181
+
+Burford, Christmas holly at, 275
+
+Burghead, "Clavie" at, 327
+
+Burns, Robert, 197
+
+"Bush, burning the," 346
+
+Buzebergt, 220
+
+Byrom, John, 84
+
+
+Caballero, Fernan, 66-7, 117, 151
+
+Caesarius of Arles, 170-1, 181
+
+Cakes, "feasten," 177;
+    soul, 192-4;
+    St. Hubert's, 202;
+    Martin's horns, 204;
+    Christmas, 287-8, 289-90;
+    Twelfth Night, 337-40, 346;
+    St. Basil's, 341
+
+Calabrian minstrels, 112
+
+Calamy, 185
+
+Caligula, 168
+
+Callander, Hallowe'en at, 198
+
+Cambridge, St. Clement's Day at, 212
+
+Canada, Christmas Eve superstition in, 234
+
+Candlemas, 350, 352-5
+
+Candles, on St. Lucia's Day, 212-2;
+    Yule, 258-60
+
+Cards, Christmas, 279
+
+Carinthia, St. Stephen's Day in, 312
+
+Carnival, 300, 349
+
+Carols, meaning of the word, 47-8;
+    English sacred, 47-51, 76-8, 84-5;
+    Welsh, 69;
+    Irish, 69-70;
+    Highland, 70
+
+Catholicism and Christmas, 27, 186
+
+Celtic New Year, 172, 189, 195, 203-4, 321
+
+Centaurs, 247
+
+Cereal sacraments, 177-8.
+    _See also_ Cakes
+
+Chambers, Mr. E. K., 5, 125, 299-300, 302-7, 348
+
+Charlemagne, coronation of, 96
+
+Charms, New Year, 182, 195-8, 321-34
+
+Cheshire, Old Hob in, 199;
+    poultry specially fed at Christmas, 289
+
+Chester plays, 128, 133-4
+
+Chesterton, Mr. G. K., 85-6
+
+Childermas, 315
+
+Children's festivals, 205-7, 218-20, 223-4, 359-60
+
+China, New Year in, 324
+
+Chios, Christmas _rhamna_ in, 270
+
+Christkind as gift-bringer, 205, 230, 277-8
+
+Christmas, pagan and Christian elements in, 18-28, 161-86, 357-60;
+    names of, 20-5;
+    establishment of, 20-2; |393|
+    its connection with earlier festivals, 20-8;
+    becomes humanized, 25-7, 34-8;
+    in poetry, 31-86;
+    liturgical aspects of, 89-101;
+    in popular devotion, 104-18;
+    in drama, 121-54;
+    its human appeal, 155-7, 357-60;
+    attracts customs from other festivals, 173, 226, 277-8, 284;
+    decorations, 178, 272-6;
+    feasting, 178-80, 283-91;
+    presents, 276-9;
+    masking customs, 297-308;
+    log, _see_ Yule Log
+
+Christmas Eve, 229-38;
+    superstitions about the supernatural, 233-7;
+    log customs, 251-8;
+    fish supper on, 286-7
+
+Christmas-tree, 168, 178, 263-72;
+    its origin, 267-72
+
+Christpuppe, 231
+
+Chrysostom, 269
+
+Church, Dean, 34
+
+Circumcision, Feast of, 101, 302.
+    _See also_ New Year's Day
+
+Clement, St., his Day, 211-2
+
+Cleobury Mortimer, curfew at, 258
+
+Clermont, shepherd play at, 141
+
+Coffin, Charles, 64
+
+Communion, sacrificial, 174-8
+
+"Comte d'Alsinoys," 56, 58-9
+
+Cornwall, Hallowe'en custom in, 196;
+    blackbird pie in, 293;
+    Childermas in, 315
+
+Coventry plays, 128, 130-1, 138
+
+Cradle-rocking, 108-11
+
+Crashaw, 79-81
+
+Crib, Christmas, 105-8, 113-8;
+    possible survivals in England, 118, 274
+
+Crimmitschau, 112
+
+Crivoscian customs, 231, 253-4, 276, 346-7
+
+Croatia, St. Andrew's Eve in, 215;
+    Christmas log customs in, 251
+
+_Cronia_, 166
+
+
+Dalmatia, Yule log customs in, 252
+
+Dancing, 47-8, 293-4, 298-300, 302
+
+Daniel, Jean, 56, 58
+
+Dannhauer, J. K., 265
+
+Dasius, St., 167
+
+Dead, feasts of the, 173, 180-1, 189-95, 235-6, 240, 253-4, 341
+
+Decorations, evergreen, 168, 178, 350, 355
+
+Denisot, Nicholas, 56, 58-9
+
+Denmark, "star-singing" in, 151;
+    animal masks in, 202;
+    Martinmas goose in, 203;
+    St. Lucia's Eve in, 223;
+    St. Thomas's Day in, 223-4;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 235-6;
+    Yule candles in, 259-60;
+    Christmas-tree in, 267;
+    pig's head eaten in, 286;
+    Yule-bishop in, 308
+
+Derbyshire, "kissing-bunch" in, 274;
+    Plough Monday in, 352
+
+Devil, and beast masks, 202;
+    and flax, 240
+
+Devon, "Yeth hounds" in, 240;
+    "ashton faggot" in, 258;
+    wassailing fruit-trees in, 345
+
+Dew, Christmas, 288-9
+
+Dickens, Charles, 359
+
+Dinan, Herod play at, 141
+
+Dionysus, as child-god, 21;
+    winter festivals of, 169, 331
+
+Dorstone, Hallowe'en at, 197
+
+Drama, Christmas, in Latin, 121-7;
+    in English, 128-38;
+    in French, 128, 138-43;
+    in Spanish, 128, 148-50;
+    in German, 143-6;
+    in Italian, 147-8, 150;
+    survivals of, 150-4;
+    St. Nicholas plays, 220, 232;
+    pagan folk-drama, 298-302
+
+Drinking customs, 36, 204, 285-6, 314-5, 327
+
+Druids and mistletoe, 273
+
+Duchesne, Monsignor, 20, 24
+
+Durham, Candlemas at, 353-4
+
+Düsseldorf, Martinmas at, 206
+
+Dyzemas, 315
+
+
+Eckhart, 42-3, 157
+
+Edinburgh, New Year in, 325-6
+
+_Eiresione_, 270
+
+Encina, Juan del, 149
+
+England, Christmas poetry in, 47-51, 76-86;
+    Midnight Mass in, 99;
+    possible survivals of the Christmas crib in, 118, 274;
+    the Nativity in the miracle cycles, 128-38;
+    "souling" in, 192-4;
+    Hallowe'en in, 195-8;
+    Guy Fawkes Day in, 198-9;
+    animal masks in, 199-201; |394|
+    Martinmas in, 203;
+    St. Clement's Day in, 211-2;
+    St. Catherine's Day in, 212-3;
+    St. Andrew's Day in, 213-4;
+    St. Thomas's Day in, 225-6;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 234;
+    Yule log in, 257-8;
+    Yule candle in, 259;
+    pyramids and Christmas-trees in, 266-7, 270;
+    the Holy Thorn in, 268-9;
+    evergreen decorations in, 272-6;
+    Christmas boxes in, 279;
+    Christmas fare in, 283-6;
+    sacrificial survivals and Christmas games in, 292-3;
+    mummers and sword-dancers in, 297-301;
+    Feast of Fools in, 305;
+    Boy Bishop in, 220, 306-8;
+    St. Stephen's Day in, 292, 311-4;
+    Holy Innocents' Day in, 315;
+    New Year's Day in, 321-9, 332;
+    Epiphany customs in, 337-8, 345-8;
+    Candlemas in, 350, 353-5;
+    Rock Day in, 351;
+    Plough Monday in, 352
+
+Ephraem Syrus, 31, 239
+
+Epiphanius, 21
+
+Epiphany, early history of the festival, 20-2;
+    in the Roman Church, 101-2;
+    in the Greek Church, 102-4;
+    Blessing of the Waters at, 102-4, 244, 246, 344;
+    Italian religious ceremonies at, 116-7;
+    in drama, 125-8;
+    old German name for, 243;
+    folk customs on, 293;
+    Twelfth Night cakes and kings, 337-41;
+    expulsion of evils, 341-2;
+    the Befana and the Magi, 343-4;
+    wassailing, 345-7;
+    "Haxey Hood," 347-8;
+    farewells to Christmas, 349-50
+
+Erzgebirge, Christmas plays in, 144, 232;
+    St. John's tree in, 269;
+    _pfeffern_ in, 316
+
+Eschenloh, _berchten_ at, 342
+
+Esthonians, All Souls' Day among, 191
+
+Ethelred, laws of, 21
+
+Etzendorf, St. Martin's rod at, 207-8
+
+Evans, Sir Arthur, 253-4
+
+Eves, importance of for festival customs, 196
+
+Expulsion rites, 104, 181-2, 217, 327-8, 341-2, 344
+
+
+Fabriano, Gentile da, 148
+
+Fare, Christmas, 283-91
+
+Feasting, connected with sacrifice, 178-9, 284;
+    at Martinmas, 202-4;
+    at Christmas, 283-91;
+    at New Year, 321-3;
+    at Epiphany, 337-41
+
+_Feien_, 231
+
+Feilberg, Dr. H. F., 6, 236, 313-4
+
+Festivals, origin and purpose of, 17-8;
+    relation of pagan and Christian, 19-27, 169-74
+
+Fire, not given out at Christmas or New Year, 170-1, 257-8;
+    bonfires, 182, 198-9, 204-5, 327, 346-50;
+    new fire lit, 198;
+    Christmas log and ancestor-worship, 251-4;
+    the Yule log and candle in western Europe, 254-60;
+    Candlemas fires and lights, 352-4
+
+"First-foots," 208, 252, 323-6
+
+Fish eaten on Christmas Eve, 287
+
+Flagellants, 146
+
+Flamma, Galvano, 147-8
+
+Fletcher, Giles, 82-3
+
+Florence, Nativity plays at, 147;
+    Befana at, 343
+
+Fools, Feast of, 180, 302-6
+
+Football, 349
+
+Fowler, Dr. W. Warde, 167
+
+France, Christmas poetry in, 55-65;
+    Midnight Mass in, 96-8;
+    Christmas drama in, 124-7, 138-43;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 191-2;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 234-5;
+    Christmas log in, 254-6;
+    Christmas-tree in, 267;
+    Harvest May in, 271;
+    presents brought by _le petit Jésus_, 278;
+    Christmas cakes in, 287-8;
+    Feast of Fools in, 302-6;
+    Boy Bishop in, 308;
+    Innocents' Day in, 316;
+    New Year in, 322-3;
+    _aguillanneuf_ in, 329-30;
+    Epiphany in, 339-42, 344, 349-50;
+    Candlemas candles in, 353
+
+Francis, St. (of Assisi), and Christmas, 36-8, 105-6, 157, 289
+
+Frazer, Dr. J. G., 6, 167, 180, 182, 199, 276, 288, 324
+
+Frick, Frau, 241
+
+Frigg, 241
+
+Friuli, All Souls' Day in, 194
+
+Frumenty, 285
+
+
+Games, Christmas, 293-4 |395|
+
+Gaude, Frau, 241-2
+
+Gautier, Théophile, 64
+
+Gay, 196
+
+Geese-dancers, 299
+
+Genealogy, chanting of the, 93
+
+George, St., in mummers' plays, 299-301
+
+Gerhardt, Paul, 73-4
+
+Germanicus, 202
+
+Germany, Christmas established in, 21;
+    Christmas poetry in Catholic, 42-7;
+    Protestant hymns in, 70-6;
+    Christmas services in, 98-9;
+    the crib and _Kindelwiegen_ in, 107-12;
+    Christmas drama in, 143-6;
+    "star-singing" in, 152;
+    Roman customs in, 171;
+    pre-Christian New Year in, 171-4;
+    soul-cakes in, 194;
+    the _Schimmel_ and other animal masks in, 199-201;
+    Martinmas customs in, 202-8;
+    St. Andrew's Eve in, 214-6;
+    St. Nicholas in, 218-9, 229-32;
+    St. Thomas's Eve in, 225;
+    Christmas Eve in, 229, 237;
+    Twelve Days superstitions in, 240-3;
+    Frau Berchta, etc., in, 241-3;
+    werewolves in, 246;
+    Christmas log in, 256;
+    Christmas-tree in, 263-7, 359;
+    Harvest May in, 271;
+    Christmas presents in, 277-9;
+    Christmas fare in, 286-9;
+    sacrificial relics in, 292;
+    St. Stephen's Day in, 312, 315-6;
+    St. John's Day in, 314-6;
+    Holy Innocents' Day in, 316;
+    New Year in, 322, 332
+
+Gilmorton, "Christmas Vase" at, 118
+
+Glastonbury thorns, 268-9
+
+"Gloria in excelsis," 91, 94
+
+Goethe, 266
+
+_Goliards_, 49, 128
+
+Gomme, Sir Laurence, 257-8, 354
+
+Goose, Martinmas, 203;
+    Christmas, 284
+
+Gozzoli, Benozzo, 148
+
+Grampus, 219
+
+Greece, Epiphany ceremonies in, 102-3, 244-5, 344;
+    winter festivals of Dionysus in, 169, 245;
+    _Kallikantzaroi_ in, 244-7, 257;
+    Christmas log in, 257, 344;
+    _rhamna_ in Chios, 270;
+    "Christ's Loaves" in, 290;
+    folk-plays in, 300-1;
+    New Year in, 331, 333
+
+Greek Church, Epiphany in, 22, 102-4;
+    Christmas in, 22, 99-101;
+    Advent in, 90
+
+Gregorie, 315
+
+Gregory III., 107
+
+Gregory the Great, letter to Mellitus, 179, 203
+
+Guernsey, Christmas superstitions in, 234, 240;
+    _oguinane_ in, 330
+
+Guisers, 297-8
+
+Guy Fawkes Day, 182, 198-9
+
+
+_Habergaiss_, 201
+
+_Habersack_, 201
+
+Hakon the Good, 21, 172
+
+Hallowe'en, 182, 195-8
+
+Hampstead, Guy Fawkes Day at, 199
+
+Hans Trapp, 230
+
+Hardy, Mr. Thomas, 48, 234
+
+Harke, Frau, 241
+
+Harrison, Miss Jane, 21, 176-7, 325
+
+"Haxey Hood," 347-8
+
+Herbert, George, 81
+
+Herefordshire, Hallowe'en in, 197;
+    pyramids in, 266;
+    Holy Thorn in, 269;
+    New Year water in, 332;
+    Epiphany and New Year ceremonies in, 346
+
+Herod plays, 126-7, 129, 141, 153
+
+Herrick, 81-2, 257, 338, 345, 354-5
+
+Hertfordshire, pyramids in, 266
+
+Hindu New Year, 322
+
+Höfler, Dr., 288
+
+Hogmanay, 328-30
+
+Holda, Frau, 241-2
+
+Holland, the "star" in, 152;
+    Martinmas in, 204-5;
+    _Rommelpot_ in, 217;
+    St. Nicholas in, 219;
+    St. Thomas's Day in, 225
+
+Holly, 272, 275-6
+
+Holy Innocents' Day, 127, 302, 306-8, 315-7
+
+Horn-cakes, 202, 204
+
+Hornchurch, boar's head at, 348
+
+Horn-dance, 201
+
+Horse, as a sacrificial animal, 200;
+    hobby-horse, hodening, and the _Schimmel_, 199-201;
+    customs on St. Stephen's Day, 311-4 |396|
+
+Howison, 234
+
+Hubert, St., his Day, 202
+
+Hunt, Leigh, 337-8
+
+Huysmans, J. K., 93
+
+Hymns, Latin, 31-4, 42
+
+
+Iceland, "Yule host" in, 240
+
+Image, Prof. Selwyn, 85
+
+"In dulci jubilo," 44-5
+
+Incense used for purification, 183, 225, 244-5, 327-8
+
+Ireland, Christmas carols in, 69-70;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 192;
+    Hallowe'en customs in, 197-8;
+    Martinmas slaughter in, 203-4;
+    "hunting of the wren" in, 292;
+    Holy Innocents' Day in, 315;
+    Epiphany in, 350
+
+Italy, Christmas poetry in, 36-42, 67;
+    _presepio_ in, 105-7, 112-6, 359;
+    Christmas drama in, 146-8, 152;
+    All Souls' in, 192, 194;
+    Martinmas in, 204;
+    Christmas log in, 256;
+    Santa Lucia in, 278;
+    Christmas fare in, 287, 289-91;
+    Epiphany in, 343
+
+Ivy, 272, 275-6
+
+
+Jacopone da Todi, 36, 39-42, 146
+
+James, St., Gospel of, 124
+
+Jerome, St., 181
+
+Jerusalem, Christmas at, 22, 94-5
+
+John, St., Evangelist, his Day, 302, 314-5
+
+Johnson, Lionel, 85
+
+Johnson, Richard, 301
+
+Jonson, Ben, 298
+
+_Julebuk_, 202
+
+Julian the Apostate, 23
+
+_Julklapp_, 278-9
+
+
+Kalends of January, the Roman festival, 24, 165, 167-71, 200, 269;
+    made a fast, 101, 170-1.
+    _See also_ New Year's Day
+
+_Kallikantzaroi_, 244-7
+
+_Kindelwiegen_, 108-11
+
+King of the Bean, 180, 338-41
+
+"Kissing-bunch," 274
+
+Kissling, K. G., 266
+
+_Klapperbock_, 201
+
+Klaubauf, 219
+
+_Klöpfelnächte_, 216-7
+
+Knecht Ruprecht, 220, 231-2
+
+Kore, 21
+
+Krampus, 219
+
+
+Labruguière, Epiphany in, 342
+
+Lake, Prof. K., 20, 24
+
+La Monnoye, 62-3
+
+Lancashire, Hallowe'en in, 198
+
+Latin Christmas poetry, 31-4, 42, 63-4, 68-9
+
+Lawson, Mr. J. C., 247, 301
+
+Lead-pouring, 215, 237, 332
+
+Leather, Mrs., 269, 346
+
+Le Moigne, Lucas, 56-8
+
+Libanius, 168-9, 269
+
+Liberius, Pope, 107, 352-3
+
+Lima, Christmas Eve at, 98
+
+Lithuania, feast of the dead in, 195;
+    New Year's Eve in, 332
+
+Log customs. _See_ Yule log
+
+Lombardy, Christmas log in, 256
+
+London, Greek Epiphany ceremonies in, 103;
+    Italian Christmas in, 116-7, 291;
+    Christmas in, under Puritans, 185;
+    German Christmas in, 265;
+    Boy Bishop in, 306-7;
+    New Year in, 322, 327
+
+Lord Mayor's day, 202
+
+Lord of Misrule, 298
+
+Lorraine, cake customs in, 287, 339-40
+
+Lucia, St., her festival, 221-3, 268
+
+Lucian, 166-7
+
+Ludlow, Guy Fawkes Day at, 199
+
+Lullabies, 51, 67-9, 83-4, 109-10
+
+Luther, Martin, 70-3, 265
+
+Lyme Regis, Candlemas at, 354
+
+
+Macedonia, Christmas Eve in, 217;
+    New Year's Eve in, 226, 330, 332;
+    _Kallikantzaroi_ in, 245;
+    folk-play in, 300;
+    Epiphany in, 344
+
+Macée, Claude, 141
+
+Madrid, 97-8, 153, 343
+
+Magi in drama, 125-6, 128-9, 151-3;
+    as present-bringers, 343
+
+Magic, 163
+
+Man, Isle of, carol-singing in, 99;
+    _Hollantide_ in, 189, 198, 321; |397|
+    _Fynnodderee_ in, 246;
+    "hunting of the wren" in, 292-3
+
+_Mana_, 176-7
+
+Mannhardt, W., 252-3, 313-4
+
+Marguerite of Navarre, 141
+
+Marseilles, "pastorals" at, 141
+
+Martin of Braga, 272
+
+Martin I., Pope, 203
+
+Martinengo-Cesaresco, Countess, 106, 112, 142
+
+Martinmas, an old winter festival, 173, 182, 200, 202-3;
+    its feasting customs, 202-4;
+    its bonfires, 204-5;
+    St. Martin as gift-bringer, and his relation to St. Nicholas, 205-8,
+      218-9, 277-8
+
+Masking customs, 169-71, 175-6, 199-202, 206, 219, 230-2, 245, 297-302,
+    304-305, 352
+
+Mass, Midnight, 94-9;
+    the three Christmas Masses, 94-6
+
+Mechlin, Martinmas at, 206
+
+Mellitus, Abbot, 179
+
+Mexico, Christmas drama in, 154
+
+Michaelmas, 173
+
+Milan, Epiphany play at, 147-8
+
+Milton, 82
+
+Mince-pies, 284
+
+Minnesingers, 36
+
+"Misterio de los Reyes Magos," 128
+
+Mistletoe, 272-4, 276
+
+Mistral, Frédéric, 255
+
+Mithra, 23
+
+_Modranicht_, 181
+
+Monasticism and Christmas, 34-5
+
+Mont-St.-Michel, Epiphany king at, 340
+
+Montenegro, Christmas log customs in, 252
+
+Morgan, Lady, 114-5
+
+Morris, William, 85
+
+Morris-dancers, 299-301
+
+Mouthe, "De fructu" at, 288
+
+Mummers' plays, 297-302
+
+Munich, Bavarian National Museum at, 107-8;
+    Christmas-tree at, 267;
+    St. Stephen's Day at, 312
+
+Murillo, 65
+
+Mythology, in relation to ritual, 164-5, 176
+
+
+Naogeorgus, 111, 217, 353
+
+Naples, _zampognari_ at, 112;
+    _presepio_ at, 113-4;
+    Christmas plays at, 150;
+    Epiphany at, 343
+
+_Natalis Invicti_, 23-4, 165
+
+New Year's Day, in Roman Empire, 24, 167-71, 276-7;
+    opposed in character to Christmas, 25-6;
+    Teutonic and Celtic, 25, 171-3, 189, 202-4;
+    Slav, 173;
+    January 1 made a fast, 101, 170-1;
+    customs attracted to January 1, 173, 189, 200, 321;
+    fire not given out, 170-1, 257-8;
+    charms, omens, and other customs, 182, 321-34;
+    presents, 168-71, 276-7;
+    mistletoe connected with, 276
+
+Nicea, Council of, 22
+
+Nicholas, St., his Day related to Martinmas, 173, 207-8, 277-8;
+    as patron of boys, 218, 220,
+    of sailors, 218, 221;
+    his festival, 218-21;
+    on Christmas Eve, 229-32
+
+_Noël_, origin of the name, 22;
+    the French carol, 55-65
+
+Normandy, "star-singing" in, 151;
+    Innocents' Day in, 316;
+    Epiphany in, 349-50
+
+Northamptonshire, St. Catherine's and St. Andrew's Days in, 213-4;
+    Dyzemas in, 315
+
+Northumberland, holly in, 275
+
+Norway, Christmas established in, 21;
+    "star-singing" in, 151;
+    pre-Christian Yule festival in, 172;
+    animal masks in, 202;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 235-6;
+    Yule candles in, 259-60
+
+Notker, 32
+
+Nottinghamshire, Hallowe'en customs in, 196;
+    Christmas cake and wassail-bowl in, 285
+
+Nuremberg, Epiphany at, 342
+
+Nuts, customs with, 195-6, 207
+
+
+"O's," Great, 92
+
+Oak as a sacred tree, 254
+
+Oberufer, Christmas play at, 143, 272
+
+Ocaña, F. de, 65-6
+
+Oesel, "Yule Boar" in, 288
+
+Old Hob, 199-200 |398|
+
+Otfrid of Weissenburg, 42
+
+Oxford, boars head at, 284
+
+
+Palmer, Mr. F. H. E., 104
+
+_Parcae_, 181
+
+Paris, Christmas in, 98;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 191;
+    St. Catherine's Day in, 213;
+    Christmas-tree in, 267;
+    New Year in, 277;
+    Feast of Fools in, 302-3
+
+Paschal, Françoise, 61-2
+
+Pasquier, Étienne, 339
+
+Pearson, Dr. Karl, 161-2
+
+Pellegrin, Abbé, 63
+
+Pelzmärte, 206-8, 217
+
+Perchta, 181, 241-4, 342
+
+Perun, 254
+
+Peterborough, St. Catherine's Day at, 213
+
+Philocalian Calendar, 20
+
+_Pifferari_, 112
+
+Pillersee, Advent mummeries at, 218
+
+Pliny, 273
+
+Plough Monday, 300
+
+Plum-pudding, 284-5
+
+_Plygain_, 99
+
+Poland, the "star" in, 152;
+    puppet-shows in, 153;
+    werewolves in, 246;
+    Christmas straw in, 276;
+    Christmas wafers in, 291
+
+_Polaznik_, 231, 252, 323-4
+
+Presents, at the Roman Kalends, 168-71, 276-7;
+    on All Souls' Eve, 192;
+    at Martinmas, 205-8;
+    on St. Nicholas's Day, 218-20;
+    at Christmas, 183, 230, 277-9;
+    at New Year and other seasons, 277-8;
+    at Epiphany, 343
+
+_Presepio._ _See_ Crib
+
+"Prophetae," 127
+
+Protestantism, effects of, on Christmas, 27, 70-8, 111, 138, 141, 185-6,
+    229-30
+
+Provence, remains of Christmas drama in, 141, 154;
+    Christmas log in, 255;
+    Magi in, 344
+
+Prudentius, 32
+
+Puppet-plays, 153 f.
+
+Purification, feast of the. _See_ Candlemas
+
+Puritans, their attitude towards Christmas, 77, 180, 184-5, 298
+
+Pyramids, 266
+
+
+Quainton, blossoming thorn at, 268
+
+
+"Raging host," 240, 242
+
+Ragusa, Christmas log customs at, 252
+
+Ramsgate, hodening at, 200-1
+
+_Rauchnächte_, 225, 327-8
+
+Rhys, Sir John, 189, 321, 325-6
+
+Ripon, St. Clement's Day at, 212;
+    Yule candles at, 259;
+    Candlemas at, 354
+
+Risano, Christmas log customs at, 252
+
+Rolle, Richard, 48
+
+Rome, Christmas established in, 20-1;
+    pagan winter festivals in, 23-4, 165-71;
+    Christmas services and customs in, 95-6, 112-6, 289-90;
+    mediaeval New Year _quête_ in, 331
+
+Rossetti, Christina, 85
+
+Rouen, religious plays at, 124-5, 138-40
+
+Roumania, the "star" in, 152;
+    Christmas drama in, 153;
+    St. Andrew's Eve in, 215-6;
+    Christmas songs in, 238;
+    Christmas fare in, 287, 291;
+    New Year in, 330-1;
+    Epiphany in, 342
+
+Russia, Epiphany ceremonies in, 104, 246;
+    the "star" in, 152;
+    Christmas Eve in, 232-3, 237;
+    fire superstitions in, 253;
+    Christmas fare in, 287, 291;
+    Christmas games in, 294;
+    mummers in, 302;
+    New Year in, 333
+
+
+Saboly, 62
+
+Sacrifice, theories of, 174-8;
+    connected with festivals, 178-9;
+    survivals of, 199, 283-7, 292-4, 328, 347-9
+
+Salers, Christmas king at, 340
+
+_Samhain_, 172, 204
+
+Sant' Andrea della Valle, Rome, 102
+
+Santa Klaus, 220
+
+Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, 95-6, 107, 114-5
+
+_Saturnalia_, 24, 113, 165-7, 180, 359
+
+Schiller, 266
+
+_Schimmel_ and _Schimmelreiter_, 199-200, 206, 231
+
+Schoolboys' festival, 223-4.
+    _See also_ Boy Bishop
+
+Scotland, Christmas carols in, 70;
+    Hallowe'en customs in, 197-8;
+    sowens eaten in, 285;
+    "first-foot" in, 325-6;
+    other New Year customs in, 326-9, 332-3;
+    Candlemas in, 354 |399|
+
+Sedulius, Coelius, 32
+
+Sequences, 32-3
+
+Serao, Matilde, 113
+
+Serbs, Christmas customs of, 251-4, 341
+
+Shakespeare, 239, 298
+
+Shepherds in Christmas drama, 123-4, 132-7, 139-43
+
+Shropshire, soul-cakes in, 192-3;
+    Guy Fawkes Day at Ludlow, 199;
+    Twelve Days superstitions in, 240-1, 258;
+    Christmas Brand in, 258;
+    Christmas decorations in, 275-6, 355;
+    "wigs" in, 285;
+    cattle specially fed at Christmas, 289;
+    morris-dancers in, 299;
+    New Year in, 324;
+    Candlemas in, 355
+
+Sicily, Midnight Mass in, 98;
+    Christmas _novena_ in, 112-3;
+    Christmas procession at Messina, 113;
+    Christmas plays in, 150;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 192;
+    Martinmas in, 204;
+    St. Lucia's Eve in, 222;
+    presents in, 278;
+    Candlemas candles in, 353
+
+Sidgwick, Mr. F., 6, 77-8
+
+Sidgwick, Mrs. Alfred, 264
+
+Silesia, _Schimmel_ in, 200;
+    Martinmas in, 206;
+    Christmas Eve in, 232;
+    animals specially fed at Christmas, 289
+
+Slav New Year, 172-3;
+    Christmas songs and customs, 237-8, 251-4, 290, 341.
+    _See also_ Bohemia, Crivoscia, Poland, Russia
+
+Smith, W. Robertson, 164-5, 175-6, 178-9
+
+Somersetshire wassailing, 345
+
+Soul cakes, 192-4
+
+South America, Christmas in, 98
+
+Southwell, 79-80
+
+Sowens eaten, 285, 325
+
+Spain, Christmas poetry in, 65-7;
+    Midnight Mass in, 97-8, 117;
+    the crib in, 117;
+    Christmas drama in, 128, 148-51, 153;
+    _turron_ in, 291;
+    Epiphany in, 343-4
+
+Spervogel, 42
+
+Spinning, during Twelve Days, 240-3
+
+Staffordshire, St. Clement's Day in, 211-2
+
+"Star-singing," 151-2
+
+"Stella," 125-7, 129
+
+Stephen, St., his festival, 292, 302, 311-6
+
+Stephens, Dean, 35
+
+Stow's "Survay," 272
+
+Strasburg, early Christmas-trees at, 265-6
+
+_Strenae_, 168, 277-8
+
+Stubbes, Philip, 184, 298
+
+Styles, Old and New, 268-9
+
+Styria, _Habergaiss_ in, 201;
+    Perchta in, 243;
+    St. John's wine in, 315
+
+Sun, the, December 25 as festival of, 23;
+    Yule not connected with, 171-2;
+    sun-charms, 182, 198, 252, 254
+
+Suso, 44
+
+Sussex, squirrel-hunting in, 214;
+    tipteerers in, 298;
+    wassailing fruit-trees in, 345
+
+Swabia, Pelzmärte in, 206-7, 217
+
+Sweden, Christmas service in, 99;
+    "star-singing" in, 151;
+    animal masks in, 202;
+    St. Lucia's Day in, 221-4;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 235-6;
+    Yule log in, 257;
+    Yule candles in, 259-60;
+    Christmas-trees in, 267, 270;
+    Yule straw in, 276;
+    Christmas presents in, 278-9;
+    pig's head eaten in, 286;
+    dances in, 293-4;
+    St. Stephen's Day in, 312-3, 315;
+    "St. Knut's Day" in, 351
+
+Swinburne, 84-5
+
+Swine as sacrificial animal, 284, 286
+
+Switzerland, St. Nicholas in, 218-9;
+    Christmas-tree in, 267;
+    birds fed at Christmas, 289
+
+Sword-dance, 294, 299-301
+
+_Sylvesterabend_, 274, 322
+
+
+Tacitus, 200, 299
+
+Tate, Nahum, 84
+
+Tauler, 43
+
+Teme valley, "first-footing" in, 324
+
+Tenby, _Plygain_ at, 99;
+    St. Clement's Day at, 212
+
+Tersteegen, Gerhard, 75-6
+
+Tertullian, 269
+
+Teutonic New Year, 171-3, 189, 202-4
+
+Thomas of Celano, 38
+
+Thomas, Mr. N. W., 293
+
+Thomas, St., his festival, 223-6
+
+"Thomassin'," 226
+
+Thurston, Mr. Edgar, 322
+
+Tieck, 266 |400|
+
+Tille, Dr. A., 5, 110, 169, 172-3, 231-2, 268
+
+Tipteerers, 298
+
+Tolstoy's "War and Peace," 302
+
+Tomte Gubbe, 236
+
+Tonquin, feast of the dead in, 195
+
+Totemism, 175-8
+
+Tours, Council of, 21, 101, 239
+
+Towneley plays, 128, 134-7
+
+Trees, sacred, 177-8, 254, 269-71;
+    flowering at Christmas, 268-9;
+    Christian symbols, 271-2
+
+Trest, Epiphany at, 344
+
+Trolls on Christmas Eve, 235-6
+
+Troppau, Christmas Eve at, 232
+
+Troubadours, 36
+
+Tübingen, cradle-rocking at, 111
+
+Tuscany, Christmas log in, 256
+
+Tutilo of St. Gall, 123
+
+Twelfth Night. _See_ Epiphany
+
+Twelve Days, declared a festal tide, 21, 239;
+    variously reckoned, 239;
+    supernatural visitors on, 239-47
+
+Tylor, Dr. E. B., 191
+
+Tynan, Katharine, 85
+
+Tyrol, Midnight Mass in, 97;
+    the crib in, 107-8;
+    cradle-rocking in, 111;
+    Christmas drama in, 143;
+    "star-singing" in, 152;
+    All Souls in, 191-2, 194;
+    _Klöpfelnächte_ in, 218;
+    St. Nicholas in, 220;
+    St. Lucia in, 223;
+    Christmas Eve in, 236, 346;
+    Berchta in, 243-4;
+    customs with fruit-trees in, 268;
+    Christmas pie in, 290, 345-6;
+    St. Stephen's Day in, 311-2;
+    St. John's Day in, 314;
+    Epiphany in, 337;
+    Carnival in, 349;
+    Purification candles in, 353
+
+
+Ubeda, J. L. de, 65
+
+Uist, South, "breast-strip" in, 328
+
+United States, Santa Klaus in, 220;
+    New Year in, 323
+
+Usedom, 201
+
+Usener, H., 20, 107
+
+
+Valdivielso, J. de, 65
+
+Vampires, 215-6, 245-6
+
+Vaughan, Henry, 81
+
+Vega, Lope de, 149-50
+
+Vegetation-cults, 177-8
+
+Venetia, Martinmas in, 204, 207
+
+Vessel-cup, 118
+
+Villazopeque, 148-9
+
+Vosges mountains, All Souls' Eve in, 191
+
+
+Wales, Christmas carols in, 69;
+    _Plygain_ in, 99;
+    soul-cakes in, 193-4;
+    Hallowe'en in, 189, 196-8;
+    the "Mari Llwyd" in, 201;
+    "new water" carol in, 333-4;
+    Christmas football in, 349
+
+Warnsdorf, St. Nicholas play at, 220
+
+Wassail-bowl, 193, 285-6
+
+Water, New Year, 332-4
+
+Watts, Isaac, 83-4
+
+Weather, ideas about, 203, 332
+
+_Weihnacht_, origin of the name, 20
+
+Werewolves, 246
+
+Wesley, Charles, 84
+
+Westermarck, Dr. E., 176
+
+Westphalia, St. Thomas's Day in, 225
+
+Whipping customs, 207-8, 315-7, 330
+
+"Wild hunt," 239-40
+
+Wine, Martinmas, 204;
+    St. John's and St. Stephen's, 314-5
+
+"Wish hounds," 240
+
+Wither, George, 83
+
+Woden, 200, 206, 208, 231, 240
+
+Women, their clothes worn by men at folk-festivals, 178, 301, 304;
+    unlucky at New Year, 324-5
+
+Woolwich, St. Clement's and St. Catherine's Days at, 212
+
+Worcestershire. St. Clement's Day in, 212;
+    New Year in, 324
+
+Wormesley, Holy Thorn at, 269
+
+Wren, hunting of, 292-3
+
+Wylie, Miss I. A. R., 263
+
+
+"Yeth hounds," 240
+
+York Minster, mistletoe at, 273;
+    Boy Bishop at, 307
+
+York plays, 128, 131-3
+
+Yorkshire, possible survival of the crib in, 118;
+    frumenty, ale posset, and Yule cakes in, 285;
+    "lucky bird" in, 325
+
+Ypres, St. Martin at, 206
+
+Yule, origin of the name, 25, 171-2
+
+"Yule Boar," 288
+
+Yule log, 180, 245, 251-8, 344, 354
+
+
+Zacharias, Pope, 171
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[1]   For an explanation of the small numerals in the text see Preface.
+
+      [Transcriber's Note: In this edition the numerals are enclosed in
+      {curly brackets}, so they will not be confused with footnotes.]
+
+[2]   "Christianity," as here used, will stand for the system of
+      orthodoxy which had been fixed in its main outlines when the
+      festival of Christmas took its rise. The relation of the orthodox
+      creed to historical fact need not concern us here, nor need we for
+      the purposes of this study attempt to distinguish between the
+      Christianity of Jesus and ecclesiastical accretions around his
+      teaching.
+
+[3]   Whether the Nativity had previously been celebrated at Rome on
+      January 6 is a matter of controversy; the affirmative view was
+      maintained by Usener in his monograph on Christmas,{6} the
+      negative by Monsignor Duchesne.{7} A very minute, cautious, and
+      balanced study of both arguments is to be found in Professor
+      Kirsopp Lake's article on Christmas in Hastings's "Encyclopædia of
+      Religion and Ethics,"{8} and a short article was contributed by
+      the same writer to _The Guardian_, December 29, 1911. Professor
+      Lake, on the whole, inclines to Usener's view. The early history of
+      the festival is also treated by Father Cyril Martindale in "The
+      Catholic Encyclopædia" (article "Christmas").
+
+[4]   Usener says 354, Duchesne 336.
+
+[5]   The eastern father, Epiphanius (fourth century), gives a strange
+      account of a heathen, or perhaps in reality a Gnostic, rite held at
+      Alexandria on the night of January 5-6. In the temple of Kore--the
+      Maiden--he tells us, worshippers spent the night in singing and
+      flute-playing, and at cock-crow brought up from a subterranean
+      sanctuary a wooden image seated naked on a litter. It had the sign
+      of the cross upon it in gold in five places--the forehead, the
+      hands, and the knees. This image was carried seven times round the
+      central hall of the temple with flute-playing, drumming, and hymns,
+      and then taken back to the underground chamber. In explanation of
+      these strange actions it was said: "To-day, at this hour, hath Kore
+      (the Maiden) borne the Æon."{15} Can there be a connection between
+      this festival and the Eleusinian mysteries? In the latter there was
+      a nocturnal celebration with many lights burning, and the cry went
+      forth, "Holy Brimo (the Maiden) hath borne a sacred child,
+      Brimos."{16} The details given by Miss Harrison in her
+      "Prolegomena" of the worship of the child Dionysus{17} are of
+      extraordinary interest, and a minute comparison of this cult with
+      that of the Christ Child might lead to remarkable results.
+
+[6]   Mithraism resembled Christianity in its monotheistic tendencies,
+      its sacraments, its comparatively high morality, its doctrine of an
+      Intercessor and Redeemer, and its vivid belief in a future life and
+      judgment to come. Moreover Sunday was its holy-day dedicated to the
+      Sun.
+
+[7]   This is the explanation adopted by most scholars (cf. Chambers, "M.
+      S.," i., 241-2). Duchesne suggests as an explanation of the choice
+      of December 25 the fact that a tradition fixed the Passion of
+      Christ on March 25. The same date, he thinks, would have been
+      assigned to His Conception in order to make the years of His life
+      complete, and the Birth would come naturally nine months after the
+      Conception. He, however, "would not venture to say, in regard to
+      the 25th of December, that the coincidence of the _Sol novus_
+      exercised no direct or indirect influence on the ecclesiastical
+      decision arrived at in regard to the matter."{25} Professor Lake
+      also, in his article in Hastings's "Encyclopædia," seeks to account
+      for the selection of December 25 without any deliberate competition
+      with the _Natalis Invicti_. He points out that the Birth of Christ
+      was fixed at the vernal equinox by certain early chronologists, on
+      the strength of an elaborate and fantastic calculation based on
+      Scriptural data, and connecting the Incarnation with the Creation,
+      and that when the Incarnation came to be viewed as beginning at the
+      Conception instead of the Birth, the latter would naturally be
+      placed nine months later.
+
+[8]   Cf. chap. xviii. of Dr. Yrjö Hirn's "The Sacred Shrine" (London,
+      1912). Dr. Hirn finds a solitary anticipation of the Franciscan
+      treatment of the Nativity in the Christmas hymns of the
+      fourth-century eastern poet, Ephraem Syrus.
+
+[9]   No. 55 in "Hymns Ancient and Modern" (Ordinary Edition).
+
+[10]  No. 56 in "Hymns Ancient and Modern" (Ordinary Edition).
+
+[11]
+
+         "Come rejoicing,
+          Faithful men, with rapture singing
+              Alleluya!
+          Monarch's Monarch,
+          From a holy maiden springing,
+              Mighty wonder!
+
+          Angel of the Counsel here,
+          Sun from star, he doth appear,
+              Born of maiden:
+          He a sun who knows no night,
+          She a star whose paler light
+              Fadeth never."
+
+      (Translation in "The English Hymnal," No. 22.)
+
+[12]
+
+         "Lords, by Christmas and the host
+          Of this mansion hear my toast--
+                  Drink it well--
+          Each must drain his cup of wine,
+          And I the first will toss off mine:
+                Thus I advise.
+          Here then I bid you all _Wassail_,
+          Cursed be he who will not say, _Drinkhail!_"
+
+      (Translation by F. Douce.)
+
+[13]  It is difficult to be sure of the authenticity of the verse
+      attributed to Jacopone. Many of the poems in Tresatti's edition,
+      from which the quotations in the text are taken, may be the work of
+      his followers.
+
+[14]
+
+         "Come and look upon her child
+          Nestling in the hay!
+          See his fair arms opened wide,
+          On her lap to play!
+          And she tucks him by her side,
+          Cloaks him as she may!
+          Gives her paps unto his mouth,
+          Where his lips are laid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          She with left hand cradling
+          Rocked and hushed her boy,
+          And with holy lullabies
+          Quieted her toy....
+          Little angels all around
+          Danced, and carols flung;
+          Making verselets sweet and true,
+          Still of love they sung."
+
+      (Translation by John Addington Symonds in "The Renaissance in
+      Italy. Italian Literature" [1898 Edn.], Part I., 468.)
+
+[15]  "In the worthy stable of the sweet baby the angels are singing
+      round the little one; they sing and cry out, the beloved angels,
+      quite reverent, timid and shy round the little baby Prince of the
+      Elect who lies naked among the prickly hay.... The Divine Verb,
+      which is highest knowledge, this day seems as if He knew nothing of
+      anything. Look at Him on the hay, crying and kicking as if He were
+      not at all a divine man."
+
+      (Translation by Vernon Lee in "Renaissance Fancies and Studies," 34.)
+
+[16]
+
+         "Sweep hearth and floor;
+          Be all your vessel's store
+          Shining and clean.
+          Then bring the little guest
+          And give Him of your best
+          Of meat and drink. Yet more
+          Ye owe than meat.
+          One gift at your King's feet
+          Lay now. I mean
+          A heart full to the brim
+          Of love, and all for Him,
+          And from all envy clean."
+
+      (Translation by Miss Anne Macdonell, in "Sons of Francis," 372.)
+
+[17]
+
+         "Full of beauty stood the Mother,
+          By the Manger, blest o'er other,
+            Where her little One she lays.
+          For her inmost soul's elation,
+          In its fervid jubilation,
+            Thrills with ecstasy of praise."
+
+      (Translation by J. M. Neale.)
+
+[18]
+
+         "A spotless Rose is blowing,
+            Sprung from a tender root,
+          Of ancient seers' foreshowing,
+            Of Jesse promised fruit;
+          Its fairest bud unfolds to light
+            Amid the cold, cold winter,
+          And in the dark midnight.
+
+          The Rose which I am singing,
+            Whereof Isaiah said,
+          Is from its sweet root springing
+            In Mary, purest Maid;
+          For through our God's great love and might
+            The Blessed Babe she bare us
+          In a cold, cold winter's night."
+
+      (Translation by C. Winkworth, "Christian Singers," 85.)
+
+[19]  The tune is often used in England for Neale's carol, "Good
+      Christian men, rejoice."
+
+[20]  "When Jesus Christ was born, then was it cold; in a little crib He
+      was laid. There stood an ass and an ox which breathed over the Holy
+      Child quite openly. He who has a pure heart need have no care."
+
+[21]  "Dearest mother, take care of the Child; it is freezing hard, wrap
+      Him up quickly. And you, old father, tuck the little one up, or the
+      cold and the wind will give Him no rest. Now we must take our
+      leave, O divine Child, remember us, pardon our sins. We are
+      heartily glad that Thou art come; no one else could have helped
+      us."
+
+[22]  "The Child is laid in the crib, so hearty and so rare! My little
+      Hans would be nothing by His side, were he finer than he is.
+      Coal-black as cherries are His eyes, the rest of Him is white as
+      chalk. His pretty hands are right tender and delicate, I touched
+      Him carefully. Then He gave me a smile and a deep sigh too. If you
+      were mine, thought I, you'd grow a merry boy. At home in the
+      kitchen I'd comfortably house you; out here in the stable the cold
+      wind comes in at every corner."
+
+[23]  Richard Rolle, poet, mystic, and wandering preacher, in many ways
+      reminds us of Jacopone da Todi. Though he has left no Christmas
+      verses, some lovely words of his show how deeply he felt the wonder
+      and pathos of Bethlehem: "Jhesu es thy name. A! A! that wondryrfull
+      name! A! that delittabyll name! This es the name that es above all
+      names.... I yede [went] abowte be Covaytyse of riches and I fand
+      noghte Jhesu. I satt in companyes of Worldly myrthe and I fand
+      noghte Jhesu.... Therefore I turnede by anothire waye, and I rane
+      a-bowte be Poverte, and I fande Jhesu pure borne in the worlde,
+      laid in a crybe and lappid in clathis."{28}
+
+[24]  "When midnight sounded I leapt from my bed to the floor, and I saw
+      a beautiful angel who sang a thousand times sweeter than a
+      nightingale. The watch-dogs of the neighbourhood all came up. Never
+      had they seen such a sight, and they suddenly began to bark. The
+      shepherds under the straw were sleeping like logs: when they heard
+      the sound of the barking they thought it was the wolves. They were
+      reasonable folk; they came without waiting to be asked. They found
+      in a little stable the Light, even the Truth."
+
+[25]  "Within a poor manger and covered with hay lies Jesus of Nazareth.
+      In the hay lies stretched the Eternal Son of God; to deliver from
+      hell man whom He had created, and to kill sin, our Jesus of
+      Nazareth is content with the hay. He rests between two animals who
+      warm Him from the cold, He who remedies our ills with His great
+      power; His kingdom and seigniory are the world and the calm heaven,
+      and now He sleeps in the hay. He counts it good to bear the cold
+      and fare thus, having no robe to protect or cover Him, and to give
+      us life He suffered cold in the hay, our Jesus of Nazareth."
+
+[26]  "In a porch, full of cobwebs, between the mule and the ox, the
+      Saviour of souls is born.... In the porch at Bethlehem are star,
+      sun, and moon: the Virgin and St. Joseph and the Child who lies in
+      the cradle. In Bethlehem they touch fire, from the porch the flame
+      issues; it is a star of heaven which has fallen into the straw.
+      I am a poor gipsy who come hither from Egypt, and bring to God's
+      Child a cock. I am a poor Galician who come from Galicia, and bring
+      to God's Child linen for a shift. To the new-born Child all bring a
+      gift; I am little and have nothing; I bring him my heart."
+
+[27]
+
+         "Sleep, oh sleep, dear Baby mine,
+          King Divine;
+          Sleep, my Child, in sleep recline;
+          Lullaby, mine Infant fair,
+                 Heaven's King,
+                 All glittering,
+          Full of grace as lilies rare.
+
+          Close thine eyelids, O my treasure,
+                 Loved past measure,
+          Of my soul, the Lord, the pleasure;
+          Lullaby, O regal Child,
+                 On the hay
+                 My joy I lay;
+          Love celestial, meek and mild.
+
+          Why dost weep, my Babe? alas!
+                 Cold winds that pass
+          Vex, or is't the little ass?
+          Lullaby, O Paradise;
+                 Of my heart
+                 Thou Saviour art;
+          On thy face I press a kiss."{20}
+
+      (Translation by Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco.)
+
+[28]  A Bas-Querçy bird-carol of this kind is printed by Mr. H. J. L. J.
+      Massé in his delightful "Book of Old Carols,"{26} a collection of
+      the words and music of Christmas songs in many languages--English,
+      Latin, German, Flemish, Basque, Swedish, Catalan, Provençal, and
+      French of various periods and dialects.
+
+[29]
+
+         "I come from heaven to tell
+          The best nowells that ever befell;
+          To you thir tidings true I bring,
+          And I will of them say and sing.
+
+          This day to you is born ane child,
+          Of Mary meek and virgin mild,
+          That blessed bairn, benign and kind,
+          Sall you rejoice, baith heart and mind.
+
+          My soul and life, stand up and see
+          What lies in ane crib of tree [wood].
+          What Babe is that, so gude and fair?
+          It is Christ, Goddis Son and Heir.
+
+          O God! that made all creature,
+          How art Thou now become so puir,
+          That on the hay and stray will lie,
+          Among the asses, oxen, and kye?
+
+          O, my dear heart, young Jesus sweet,
+          Prepare Thy cradle in my spreit,
+          And I sall rock Thee in my heart,
+          And never mair from Thee depart
+
+          But I sall praise Thee ever moir,
+          With sangis sweet unto Thy gloir;
+          The knees of my heart sall I bow,
+          And sing that richt Balulalow."{30}
+
+[30]
+
+         "Now blessed be Thou, Christ Jesu,
+          Thou art man born, this is true;
+          The angels made a merry noise,
+          Yet have we more cause to rejoice,
+                  _Kirieleyson_.
+
+          The blessed Son of God only,
+          In a crib full poor did lie,
+          With our poor flesh and our poor blood,
+          Was clothed that everlasting Good.
+                  _Kirieleyson._
+
+          He that made heaven and earth of nought,
+          In our flesh hath our health brought,
+          For our sake made He Himself full small,
+          That reigneth Lord and King over all.
+                  _Kirieleyson._"{32}
+
+[31]
+
+         "All my heart this night rejoices,
+                  As I hear,
+                  Far and near,
+          Sweetest angel voices;
+          'Christ is born,' their choirs are singing,
+                  Till the air
+                  Everywhere
+          Now with joy is ringing.
+
+          Hark! a voice from yonder manger,
+                  Soft and sweet,
+                  Doth entreat,
+          'Flee from woe and danger;
+          Brethren, come, from all doth grieve you
+                  You are freed,
+                  All you need
+          I will surely give you.'
+
+          Blessed Saviour, let me find Thee!
+                  Keep Thou me
+                  Close to Thee,
+          Call me not behind Thee!
+          Life of life, my heart Thou stillest,
+                  Calm I rest
+                  On Thy breast,
+          All this void Thou fillest."{34}
+
+[32]
+
+         "Triumph, ye heavens! rejoice ye with high adoration!
+          Sing to the Lord, to the Saviour, in glad exultation!
+                 Angels, give ear!
+                 God unto man hath drawn near,
+                 Bringing to lost ones salvation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          King of the Glory! what grace in Thy humiliation!
+          Thou wert a child! who of old wert the Lord of creation.
+                 Thee will I own,
+                 Thee would I follow, alone,
+                 Heir of Thy wondrous salvation.
+
+          Faithful Immanuel! let me Thy glories be telling,
+          Come, O my Saviour, be born, in mine inmost heart dwelling,
+                 In me abide.
+                 Make me with Thee unified,
+                 Where the life-fountain is welling."{36}
+
+[33]  A few of the best traditional pieces have been published by Mr. F.
+      Sidgwick in one of his charming "Watergate Booklets" under the
+      title of "Popular Carols." The two next quotations are from this
+      source.
+
+[34]  Browning's great poem, "Christmas Eve," is philosophical rather
+      than devotional, and hardly comes within the scope of this chapter.
+
+[35]  The first mention of a season corresponding to Advent is at the
+      Council of Tours, about 567, when a fast for monks in December is
+      vaguely indicated. At the Council of Mâcon (581) it is enjoined
+      that from Martinmas the second, fourth, and sixth days of the week
+      should be fasting days; and at the close of the sixth century Rome,
+      under Gregory the Great, adopted the rule of the four Sundays in
+      Advent. In the next century it became prevalent in the West. In the
+      Greek Church, forty days of fasting are observed before Christmas;
+      this custom appears to have been established in the thirteenth
+      century. In the Roman Church the practice as to fasting varies: in
+      the British Isles Wednesday and Friday are observed, but in some
+      countries no distinction is made between Advent and ordinary weeks
+      of the year.{2}
+
+[36]  Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, bequeathed to his cathedral a
+      Christmas candlestick of silver-gilt, on the base of which was an
+      image of St. Mary with her Son lying in the crib.
+
+[37]  "Joseph, dear nephew mine, help me to rock the Child." "Gladly,
+      dear aunt, will I help thee to rock thy Child." (Note the curious
+      words of relationship; Joseph and Mary were both of the seed of
+      David.)
+
+[38]  "Let us rock the Child and bow our hearts before the crib! Let us
+      delight our spirits and bless the Child: sweet little Jesu! sweet
+      little Jesu!... Let us greet His little hands and feet, His little
+      heart of fire, and reverence Him humbly as our Lord and God! Sweet
+      little Jesu! sweet little Jesu!"
+
+[39]  Turning for a moment from Sicilian domestic celebrations to a
+      public and communal action, I may mention a strange ceremony that
+      takes place at Messina in the dead of night; at two o'clock on
+      Christmas morning a naked _Bambino_ is carried in procession from
+      the church of Santa Lucia to the cathedral and back.{65}
+
+[40]  Or on the Sunday following the Octave, if the Octave itself is a
+      week-day.
+
+[41]  Tempting as it is to connect these dolls with the crib, it is
+      possible that their origin should be sought rather in
+      anthropomorphic representations of the spirits of vegetation, and
+      that they are of the same nature as the images carried about with
+      garlands in May and at other seasons.{77}
+
+[42]  Though no texts are extant of religious plays in English acted at
+      Christmastide, there are occasional records of such
+      performances:--at Tintinhull for instance in 1451 and at Dublin in
+      1528, while at Aberdeen a processional "Nativity" was performed at
+      Candlemas. And the "Stella," whether in English or Latin it is
+      uncertain, is found at various places between 1462 and 1579.{10}
+
+[43]  Lodging.
+
+[44]  Once.
+
+[45]  Scarcely.
+
+[46]  Horses. Hous of haras = stable.
+
+[47]  Dwell.
+
+[48]  Darkness.
+
+[49]  Being.
+
+[50]  Wonderful.
+
+[51]  Worship.
+
+[52]  Shedder.
+
+[53]  Wrap.
+
+[54]  Crippled.
+
+[55]  Overreached.
+
+[56]  Deprive of.
+
+[57]  Curse.
+
+[58]  Strong in lordliness.
+
+[59]  Wizard.
+
+[60]  Shame.
+
+[61]  Noble being.
+
+[62]  Cursed.
+
+[63]  Warlock.
+
+[64]  Sorrow.
+
+[65]  Grows merry.
+
+[66]  Promise.
+
+[67]  Noble.
+
+[68]  Child.
+
+[69]  Baby.
+
+[70]  Head.
+
+[71]  Face.
+
+[72]  Hand.
+
+[73]  Besides the Nativity plays in the four great cycles there exists a
+      "Shearmen and Tailors' Play" which undoubtedly belongs to Coventry,
+      unlike the "Ludus Coventriae," whose connection with that town is,
+      to say the least, highly doubtful. It opens with a prologue by the
+      prophet Isaiah, and in a small space presents the events connected
+      with the Incarnation from the Annunciation to the Murder of the
+      Innocents. The Nativity and shepherd scenes have less character and
+      interest than those in the great cycles, and need not be dealt with
+      here.{18}
+
+[74]
+
+         "_Riepl._  What a noise there is. Everything seems so strange
+                      to me!
+          _Jörgl._  Have the heavens fallen to-day; are the angels flying
+                      over our field?
+          _R._  They are leaping
+          _J._  Down from above.
+          _R._  I couldn't do the thing; 'twould break my neck and legs."
+
+[75]
+
+         "_J._  My child, canst find no lodging? Must Thou bear such
+                  frost and cold?
+          _R._  Thou liest in cold swaddling-clothes! Come, put a
+                  garment about Him!
+          _J._  Cover His feet up; wrap Him up delicately!"
+
+[76]  "Three eggs and some butter we bring, too; deign to accept it! A
+      fowl to make some broth if Thy mother can cook it--put some
+      dripping in, and 'twill be good. Because we've nothing else--we are
+      but poor shepherds--accept our goodwill."
+
+[77]
+
+         "_J._  The best of health to thee ever, my little dear; when
+                  thou wantest anything, come to me.
+          _J._  God keep thee ever!
+          _R._  Grow up fine and tall soon!
+          _J._  I'll take thee into service when thou'rt big enough."
+
+[78]  Jacopone da Todi, whose Christmas songs we have already considered,
+      was probably connected with the movement.
+
+[79]  An interesting and pathetic Christmas example is given by Signor
+      D'Ancona in his "Origini del Teatro in Italia."{35}
+
+[80]  Though the ox and ass are not mentioned by St. Luke, it is an easy
+      transition to them from the idea of the manger. Early Christian
+      writers found a Scriptural sanction for them in two passages in the
+      prophets: Isaiah i. 3, "The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his
+      master's crib," and Habakkuk iii. 2 (a mistranslation), "In the
+      midst of two beasts shall Thou be known."
+
+[81]  With this may be compared the fair still held in Rome in the Piazza
+      Navona just before Christmas, at which booths are hung with little
+      clay figures for use in _presepi_ (see p. 113). One cannot help
+      being reminded too, though probably there is no direct connection,
+      of the biscuits in human shapes to be seen in German markets and
+      shops at Christmas, and of the paste images which English bakers
+      used to make at this season.{10}
+
+[82]  Among the Scandinavians, who were late in their conversion, a
+      pre-Christian Yule feast seems to have been held in the ninth
+      century, but it appears to have taken place not in December but
+      about the middle of January, and to have been transferred to
+      December 25 by the Christian king Hakon the Good of Norway
+      (940-63).{28}
+
+[83]  It is only right to mention here Professor G. Bilfinger's monograph
+      "Das germanische Julfest" (Stuttgart, 1901), where it is maintained
+      that the only festivals from which the Christmas customs of the
+      Teutonic peoples have sprung are the January Kalends of the Roman
+      Empire and the Christian feast of the Nativity. Bilfinger holds
+      that there is no evidence either of a November beginning-of-winter
+      festival or of an ancient Teutonic midwinter feast. Bilfinger's is
+      the most systematic of existing treatises on Christmas origins, but
+      the considerations brought forward in Tille's "Yule and Christmas"
+      in favour of the November festival are not lightly to be set aside,
+      and while recognizing that its celebration must be regarded rather
+      as a probable hypothesis than an established fact, I shall here
+      follow in general the suggestions of Tille and try to show the
+      contributions of this northern New Year feast to Christmas customs.
+
+[84]  Accounts of such maskings are to be found in innumerable books of
+      travel. In _Folk-Lore_, June 30, 1911, Professor Edward Westermarck
+      gives a particularly full and interesting description of Moroccan
+      customs of this sort. He describes at length various masquerades in
+      the skins and heads of beasts, accompanied often by the dressing-up
+      of men as women and by gross obscenities.
+
+[85]  Another suggested explanation connects the change of clothes with
+      rites of initiation at the passage from boyhood to manhood.
+      "Manhood, among primitive peoples, seems to be envisaged as ceasing
+      to be a woman.... Man is born of woman, reared of woman. When he
+      passes to manhood, he ceases to be a woman-thing, and begins to
+      exercise functions other and alien. That moment is one naturally of
+      extreme peril; he at once emphasizes it and disguises it. He wears
+      woman's clothes." From initiation rites, according to this theory,
+      the custom spread to other occasions when it was desirable to
+      "change the luck."
+
+[86]  According to Sir John Rhys, in the Isle of Man _Hollantide_
+      (November 1, Old Style, therefore November 12) is still to-day the
+      beginning of a new year. But the ordinary calendar is gaining
+      ground, and some of the associations of the old New Year's Day are
+      being transferred to January 1, the Roman date. "In Wales this must
+      have been decidedly helped by the influence of Roman rule and Roman
+      ideas; but even there the adjuncts of the Winter Calends have never
+      been wholly transferred to the Calends of January."{4}
+
+[87]  In Burne and Jackson's "Shropshire Folk-Lore" (p. 305 f.) there are
+      details about cakes and other doles given to the poor at funerals.
+      These probably had the same origin as the November "soul-cakes."
+
+[88]  Cf. pp. 191-2 and 235-6 of this volume.
+
+[89]  The prominence of "Eves" in festival customs is a point specially
+      to be noticed; it is often to them rather than to the actual feast
+      days that old practices cling. This is perhaps connected with the
+      ancient Celtic and Teutonic habit of reckoning by nights instead of
+      days--a trace of this is left in our word "fortnight"--but it must
+      be remembered that the Church encouraged the same tendency by her
+      solemn services on the Eves of festivals, and that the Jewish
+      Sabbath begins on Friday evening.
+
+[90]  Attempts are being made to suppress the November carnival at
+      Hampstead, and perhaps the 1911 celebration may prove to have been
+      the last.
+
+[91]  "Raise the glass at Martinmas, drink wine all through the year."
+
+[92]  It is interesting to note that in the Italian province of Venetia,
+      as well as in more northerly regions, Martinmas is especially a
+      children's feast. In the sweetshops are sold little sugar images of
+      the saint on horseback with a long sword, and in Venice itself
+      children go about singing, playing on tambourines, and begging for
+      money.{93}
+
+[93]  "At St. Andrew's Mass winter is certain."
+
+[94]  This custom may be compared with the Scotch eating of sowans in bed
+      on Christmas morning (see Chapter XII.).
+
+[95]  In a legend of the saint she is said to have plucked out her own
+      eyes when their beauty caused a prince to seek to ravish her away
+      from her convent.{54}
+
+[96]  The bath-house in the old-fashioned Swedish farm is a separate
+      building to which everyone repairs on Christmas Eve, but which is,
+      or was, seldom used except on this one night of the year.{23}
+
+[97]  Sometimes Christmas is reckoned as one of the Twelve Days,
+      sometimes not. In the former case, of course, the Epiphany is the
+      thirteenth day. In England we call the Epiphany Twelfth Day, in
+      Germany it is generally called Thirteenth; in Belgium and Holland
+      it is Thirteenth; in Sweden it varies, but is usually Thirteenth.
+      Sometimes then the Twelve Days are spoken of, sometimes the
+      Thirteen. "The Twelve Nights," in accordance with the old Teutonic
+      mode of reckoning by nights, is a natural and correct term.{39}
+
+[98]  Those who wish to pursue further the study of the _Kallikantzaroi_
+      should read the elaborate and fascinating, if not altogether
+      convincing, theories of Mr. J. C. Lawson in his "Modern Greek
+      Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion." He distinguishes two classes
+      of _Kallikantzaroi_, one of which he identifies with ordinary
+      werewolves, while the other is the type of hairy, clawed demons
+      above described. He sets forth a most ingenious hypothesis
+      connecting them with the Centaurs.
+
+[99]  It is to be borne in mind that the oak was a sacred tree among the
+      heathen Slavs; it was connected with the thunder-god Perun, the
+      counterpart of Jupiter, and a fire of oak burned night and day in
+      his honour. The neighbours of the Slavs, the Lithuanians, had the
+      same god, whom they called Perkunas; they too kept up a perpetual
+      oak-fire in his honour, and in time of drought they used to pour
+      beer on the flames, praying to Perkunas to send showers.{10} The
+      libations of wine on the Yule log may conceivably have had a
+      similar purpose.
+
+[100] Kindling.
+
+[101] The custom referred to in the last sentence may be compared with
+      the Danish St. Thomas's Day practice (see Chapter VIII.).
+
+[102] At Wormesley in Herefordshire there is a Holy Thorn which is still
+      believed to blossom exactly at twelve o'clock on Twelfth Night.
+      "The blossoms are thought to open at midnight, and drop off about
+      an hour afterwards. A piece of thorn gathered at this hour brings
+      luck, if kept for the rest of the year." As recently as 1908 about
+      forty people went to see the thorn blossom at this time (see E. M.
+      Leather, "The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire" [London, 1912], 17).
+
+[103] Compare the struggle for the "Haxey hood," described in Chapter
+      XVI., p. 347.
+
+[104] This may be compared with the ancient Greek _Eiresione_, "a
+      portable May-pole, a branch hung about with wool, acorns, figs,
+      cakes, fruits of all sorts and sometimes wine-jars."{35}
+
+[105] It by no means necessarily follows, of course, that they were
+      exclusively Roman in origin.
+
+[106] In Welsh it has also the name of "the tree of pure gold," a rather
+      surprising title for a plant with green leaves and white berries.
+      Dr. Frazer has sought to explain this name by the theory that in a
+      roundabout way the sun's golden fire was believed to be an
+      emanation from the mistletoe, in which the life of the oak, whence
+      fire was kindled, was held to reside.{47}
+
+[107] In the neighbourhood of Reichenberg children hang up their
+      stockings at the windows on St. Andrew's Eve, and in the morning
+      find them filled with apples and nuts{64}--a parallel to Martinmas
+      and St. Nicholas customs, at a date intermediate between the two
+      festivals.
+
+[108] "He has more to do than the ovens in England at Christmas."
+
+[109] The following quotation from an ancient account book is tersely
+      suggestive of the English Christmas:--
+
+                                         s.  d.
+          "Item payd to the preacher     vi  ii
+           Item payd to the minstrell   xii   o
+           Item payd to the coke         xv   o"
+
+[110] In County Louth, Ireland, boys used to carry about a thorn-bush
+      decked with streamers of coloured paper and with a wren tied to one
+      of the branches.{47}
+
+[111] Dancing is, as everyone knows, a common and indeed a central
+      feature of primitive festivals; and such dancing is wont to take a
+      dramatic form, to be mimetic, whether re-enacting some past event
+      or _pre_-doing something with magical intent to produce it.{10}
+      The Greek tragedy itself probably sprang from a primitive dance of
+      a dramatic and magical character, centred in a death and
+      re-birth.{11}
+
+[112] In Thessaly and Macedonia at Carnival time folk-plays of a somewhat
+      similar character are performed, including a quarrel, a death, and
+      a miraculous restoration to life--evidently originating in magical
+      ritual intended to promote the fertility of vegetation.{12}
+      Parallels can be found in the Carnival customs of other countries.
+
+[113] A remarkably clear instance of the transference of customs from
+      Hollantide Eve (Hallowe'en) to the modern New Year is given by Sir
+      John Rhys. Certain methods of prognostication described by him are
+      practised by some people in the Isle of Man on the one day and by
+      some on the other, and the Roman date is gaining ground.{1}
+
+[114] See p. 252.
+
+[115] "Ope thy purse, and shut it then."
+
+[116] It is probable that some customs practised at the Epiphany belong
+      in reality to Christmas Day, Old Style.
+
+[117] _Pasqua_ is there used for great festivals in general, not only for
+      Easter.
+
+[118] The custom of "burning the bush," still surviving here and there in
+      Herefordshire, shows a certain resemblance to this. The "bush," a
+      globe made of hawthorn, hangs throughout the year in the farmhouse
+      kitchen, with the mistletoe. Early on New Year's Day it "is carried
+      to the earliest sown wheat field, where a large fire is lighted, of
+      straw and bushes, in which it is burnt. While it is burning, a new
+      one is made; in making it, the ends of the branches are scorched in
+      the fire." Burning straw is carried over twelve ridges of the
+      field, and then follow cider-drinking and cheering. (See Leather,
+      "Folk-Lore of Herefordshire," 91 f.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,
+Christian and Pagan, by Clement A. Miles
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS IN RITUAL AND ***
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,
+Christian and Pagan, by Clement A. Miles
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan
+
+Author: Clement A. Miles
+
+Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #19098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS IN RITUAL AND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Starner, Robert Ledger and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1><br />Christmas In Ritual and Tradition,</h1>
+
+<h1>Christian and Pagan<br /></h1>
+
+
+<h3>by Clement A. Miles<br /></h3>
+
+<h3>Published by<br />
+T. Fisher Unwin<br />
+1912</h3>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image01" name="image01" href="images/image01.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image01.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (DETAIL)."
+      title="THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (DETAIL)." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (DETAIL).</p>
+
+<p>GENTILE DA FABRIANO</p>
+<p>(<i>Florence: Accademia</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_5" id="Page_5" href="#Page_5">5</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>In this volume I have tried to show how Christmas is or has
+been kept in various lands and ages, and to trace as far as possible
+the origin of the pagan elements that have mingled with the
+Church's feast of the Nativity.</p>
+
+<p>In Part I. I have dealt with the festival on its distinctively
+Christian side. The book has, however, been so planned that
+readers not interested in this aspect of Christmas may pass over
+<a href="#Chapter_II">Chapters II.-V.</a>, and proceed at once from the Introduction to
+<a href="#Part_II">Part II.</a>, which treats of pagan survivals.</p>
+
+<p>The book has been written primarily for the general reader,
+but I venture to hope that, with all its imperfections, it may be
+of some use to the more serious student, as a rough outline map
+of the field of Christmas customs, and as bringing together
+materials hitherto scattered through a multitude of volumes in
+various languages. There is certainly room for a comprehensive
+English book on Christmas, taking account of the results of
+modern historical and folk-lore research.</p>
+
+<p>The writer of a work of this kind necessarily owes an immense
+debt to the labours of others. In my bibliographical notes I have
+done my best to acknowledge the sources from which I have
+drawn. It is only right that I should express here my special
+obligation, both for information and for suggestions, to Mr. E. K.
+Chambers's &ldquo;The Mediaeval Stage,&rdquo; an invaluable storehouse of
+fact, theory, and bibliographical references. I also owe much to
+the important monographs of Dr. A. Tille, &ldquo;Die Geschichte
+der deutschen Weihnacht&rdquo; and &ldquo;Yule and Christmas&rdquo;; to Dr.
+Feilberg's Danish work, &ldquo;Jul,&rdquo; the fullest account of Christmas<a class="pagenum" name="Page_6" id="Page_6" href="#Page_6">6</a>
+customs yet written; and of course, like every student of folk-lore,
+to Dr. Frazer's &ldquo;The Golden Bough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>References to authorities will be found at the end of the
+volume, and are indicated by small numerals in the text; notes
+requiring to be read in close conjunction with the text are
+printed at the foot of the pages to which they relate, and are
+indicated by asterisks, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>   [Transcriber's Note: The 'small numerals' are represented in this
+   ebook by numbers in {curly braces}. The footnotes appear at the end
+   of the ebook and are indicated by numbers in [square brackets].]
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I have to thank Mr. Frank Sidgwick for most kindly reading
+my proofs and portions of my MS., and for some valuable suggestions.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">C. A. M.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_7" id="Page_7" href="#Page_7">7</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="contents">
+
+<h3 class="title">PREFACE<a class="pgref" href="#PREFACE">5</a></h3>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+<h3 class="title">INTRODUCTION<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_I">15</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+The Origin and Purpose of Festivals&#xfeff;&mdash;Ideas suggested by Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Pagan
+and Christian Elements&#xfeff;&mdash;The Names of the Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;Foundation
+of the Feast of the Nativity&#xfeff;&mdash;Its Relation to the Epiphany&#xfeff;&mdash;December&nbsp;25
+and the <i>Natalis Invicti</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;The Kalends of January&#xfeff;&mdash;Yule and Teutonic
+Festivals&#xfeff;&mdash;The Church and Pagan Survivals&#xfeff;&mdash;Two Conflicting Types
+of Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;Their Interaction&#xfeff;&mdash;Plan of the Book.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="title2">PART I&#xfeff;&mdash;THE CHRISTIAN FEAST</h3>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+<h3 class="title">CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_II">29</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological Character&#xfeff;&mdash;Humanizing
+Influence of Franciscanism&#xfeff;&mdash;Jacopone da Todi's Vernacular
+Verse&#xfeff;&mdash;German Catholic Poetry&#xfeff;&mdash;Mediaeval English Carols.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+<h3 class="title">CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_III">53</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+The French <i>No&euml;l</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;Latin Hymnody in Eighteenth-century France&#xfeff;&mdash;Spanish
+Christmas Verse&#xfeff;&mdash;Traditional Carols of Many Countries&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas
+Poetry in Protestant Germany&#xfeff;&mdash;Post-Reformation Verse in
+England&#xfeff;&mdash;Modern English Carols.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_8" id="Page_8" href="#Page_8">8</a>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+<h3 class="title">CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_IV">87</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+Advent and Christmas Offices of the Roman Church&#xfeff;&mdash;The Three Masses
+of Christmas, their Origin and their Celebration in Rome&#xfeff;&mdash;The Midnight
+Mass in Many Lands&#xfeff;&mdash;Protestant Survivals of the Night Services&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas
+in the Greek Church&#xfeff;&mdash;The Eastern Epiphany and the Blessing
+of the Waters&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Presepio</i> or Crib, its Supposed Institution by St.
+Francis&#xfeff;&mdash;Early Traces of the Crib&#xfeff;&mdash;The Crib in Germany, Tyrol, &amp;c.&#xfeff;&mdash;Cradle-rocking
+in Mediaeval Germany&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas Minstrels in Italy and
+Sicily&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Presepio</i> in Italy&#xfeff;&mdash;Ceremonies with the <i>Culla</i> and the <i>Bambino</i>
+in Rome&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas in Italian London&#xfeff;&mdash;The Spanish Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Possible
+Survivals of the Crib in England.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+<h3 class="title">CHRISTMAS DRAMA<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_V">119</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+Origins of the Mediaeval Drama&#xfeff;&mdash;Dramatic Tendencies in the Liturgy&#xfeff;&mdash;Latin
+Liturgical Plays&#xfeff;&mdash;The Drama becomes Laicized&#xfeff;&mdash;Characteristics
+of the Popular Drama&#xfeff;&mdash;The Nativity in the English Miracle Cycles&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas
+Mysteries in France&#xfeff;&mdash;Later French Survivals of Christmas
+Drama&#xfeff;&mdash;German Christmas Plays&#xfeff;&mdash;Mediaeval Italian Plays and Pageants&#xfeff;&mdash;Spanish
+Nativity Plays&#xfeff;&mdash;Modern Survivals in Various Countries&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+Star Singers, &amp;c.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3 class="title">POSTSCRIPT<a class="pgref" href="#POSTSCRIPT">155</a></h3>
+
+
+<h3 class="title2">PART II&#xfeff;&mdash;PAGAN SURVIVALS</h3>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+<h3 class="title">PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_VI">159</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+The Church and Superstition&#xfeff;&mdash;Nature of Pagan Survivals&#xfeff;&mdash;Racial Origins&#xfeff;&mdash;Roman
+Festivals of the <i>Saturnalia</i> and Kalends&#xfeff;&mdash;Was there a Teutonic
+Midwinter Festival?&#xfeff;&mdash;The Teutonic, Celtic, and Slav New Year&#xfeff;&mdash;Customs
+attracted to Christmas or January&nbsp;1&#xfeff;&mdash;The Winter Cycle of
+Festivals&#xfeff;&mdash;<i>Rationale</i> of Festival Ritual: (<i>a</i>) Sacrifice and Sacrament,
+(<i>b</i>) The Cult of the Dead, (<i>c</i>) Omens and Charms for the New Year&#xfeff;&mdash;Compromise
+in the Later Middle Ages&#xfeff;&mdash;The Puritans and Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Decay
+of Old Traditions.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_9" id="Page_9" href="#Page_9">9</a>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+<h3 class="title">ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_VII">187</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+All Saints' and All Souls' Days, their Relation to a New Year Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;All
+Souls' Eve and Tendance of the Departed&#xfeff;&mdash;Soul Cakes in England and
+on the Continent&#xfeff;&mdash;Pagan Parallels of All Souls'&#xfeff;&mdash;Hallowe'en Charms
+and Omens&#xfeff;&mdash;Hallowe'en Fires&#xfeff;&mdash;Guy Fawkes Day&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Old Hob,&rdquo; the
+<i>Schimmelreiter</i>, and other Animal Masks&#xfeff;&mdash;Martinmas and its Slaughter&#xfeff;&mdash;Martinmas
+Drinking&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Martin's Fires in Germany&#xfeff;&mdash;Winter Visitors
+in the Low Countries and Germany&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Martin as Gift-bringer&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+Martin's Rod.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+<h3 class="title">ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_VIII">209</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Catherine's Day as
+Spinsters' Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Andrew's Eve Auguries&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Kl&ouml;pfeln&auml;chte</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+Nicholas's Day, the Saint as Gift-bringer, and his Attendants&#xfeff;&mdash;Election
+of the Boy Bishop&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Nicholas's Day at Bari&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Lucia's Day
+in Sweden, Sicily, and Central Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Thomas's Day as School
+Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;Its Uncanny Eve&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Going a-Thomassin'.&rdquo;
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+<h3 class="title">CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_IX">227</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht&#xfeff;&mdash;Talking Animals and
+other Wonders of Christmas Eve&#xfeff;&mdash;Scandinavian Beliefs about Trolls and
+the Return of the Dead&#xfeff;&mdash;Traditional Christmas Songs in Eastern
+Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;The Twelve Days, their Christian Origin and Pagan Superstitions&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+Raging Host&#xfeff;&mdash;Hints of Supernatural Visitors in England&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+German <i>Frauen</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;The Greek <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER X</h3>
+<h3 class="title">THE YULE LOG<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_X">249</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+The Log as Centre of the Domestic Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Customs of the Southern
+Slavs&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Polaznik</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;Origin of the Yule Log&#xfeff;&mdash;Probable Connection
+with Vegetation-cults or Ancestor-worship&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Souche de No&euml;l</i> in
+France&#xfeff;&mdash;Italian and German Christmas Logs&#xfeff;&mdash;English Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+Yule Candle in England and Scandinavia.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_10" id="Page_10" href="#Page_10">10</a>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XI</h3>
+<h3 class="title">THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_XI">261</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+The Christmas-tree a German Creation&#xfeff;&mdash;Charm of the German Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Early
+Christmas-trees&#xfeff;&mdash;The Christmas Pyramid&#xfeff;&mdash;Spread of the
+Tree in Modern Germany and other Countries&#xfeff;&mdash;Origin of the Christmas-tree&#xfeff;&mdash;Beliefs
+about Flowering Trees at Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Evergreens at the
+Kalends&#xfeff;&mdash;Non-German Parallels to the Christmas-tree&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas
+Decorations connected with Ancient Kalends Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;Sacredness of
+Holly and Mistletoe&#xfeff;&mdash;Floors strewn with Straw&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas and New
+Year Gifts, their Connection with the Roman <i>Strenae</i> and St. Nicholas&#xfeff;&mdash;Present-giving
+in Various Countries&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas Cards.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XII</h3>
+<h3 class="title">CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_XII">281</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+Prominence of Eating in the English Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;The Boar's Head, the
+Goose, and other Christmas Fare&#xfeff;&mdash;Frumenty, Sowens, Yule Cakes, and the
+Wassail Bowl&#xfeff;&mdash;Continental Christmas Dishes, their Possible Origins&#xfeff;&mdash;French
+and German Cakes&#xfeff;&mdash;The Animals' Christmas Feast&#xfeff;&mdash;Cakes in
+Eastern Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;Relics of Animal Sacrifice&#xfeff;&mdash;Hunting the Wren&#xfeff;&mdash;Various
+Games of Sacrificial Origin.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+<h3 class="title">MASKING, THE MUMMERS' PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE BOY BISHOP<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_XIII">295</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+English Court Masking&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;The Lord of Misrule&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;The Mummers' Play,
+the Sword-Dance, and the Morris Dance&#xfeff;&mdash;Origin of St. George and other
+Characters&#xfeff;&mdash;Mumming in Eastern Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;The Feast of Fools, its
+History and Suppression&#xfeff;&mdash;The Boy Bishop, his Functions and Sermons&#xfeff;&mdash;Modern
+Survivals of the Boy Bishop.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+<h3 class="title">ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS' DAYS<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_XIV">309</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day&#xfeff;&mdash;The Swedish St. Stephen&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+John's Wine&#xfeff;&mdash;Childermas and its Beatings.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_11" id="Page_11" href="#Page_11">11</a>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XV</h3>
+<h3 class="title">NEW YEAR'S DAY<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_XV">319</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+Principle of New Year Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;The New Year in France, Germany,
+the United States, and Eastern Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;First-footing&rdquo; in Great Britain&#xfeff;&mdash;Scottish
+New Year Practices&#xfeff;&mdash;Highland Fumigation and &ldquo;Breast-strip&rdquo;
+Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;Hogmanay and Aguillanneuf&#xfeff;&mdash;New Year Processions
+in Macedonia, Roumania, Greece, and Rome&#xfeff;&mdash;Methods of Augury&#xfeff;&mdash;Sundry
+New Year Charms.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI</h3>
+<h3 class="title">EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS<a class="pgref" href="#Chapter_XVI">335</a></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+The Twelfth Cake and the &ldquo;King of the Bean&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;French Twelfth Night
+Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Basil's Cake in Macedonia&#xfeff;&mdash;Epiphany and the Expulsion
+of Evils&#xfeff;&mdash;The Befana in Italy&#xfeff;&mdash;The Magi as Present-bringers&#xfeff;&mdash;Greek
+Epiphany Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;Wassailing Fruit-trees&#xfeff;&mdash;Herefordshire and Irish
+Twelfth Night Practices&#xfeff;&mdash;The &ldquo;Haxey Hood&rdquo; and Christmas Football&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+Knut's Day in Sweden&#xfeff;&mdash;Rock Day&#xfeff;&mdash;Plough Monday&#xfeff;&mdash;Candlemas,
+its Ecclesiastical and Folk Ceremonies&#xfeff;&mdash;Farewells to Christmas.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3 class="title">CONCLUSION<a class="pgref" href="#CONCLUSION">357</a></h3>
+
+<h3 class="title">NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY<a class="pgref" href="#NOTES_AND_BIBLIOGRAPHY">361</a></h3>
+
+<h3 class="title">INDEX<a class="pgref" href="#INDEX">389</a></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_12" id="Page_12" href="#Page_12">12</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image02" name="image02" href="images/image02.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image02.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="MADONNA AND CHILD."
+      title="MADONNA AND CHILD." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">MADONNA AND CHILD.</p>
+
+<p><i>By Albrecht D&uuml;rer.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_13" id="Page_13" href="#Page_13">13</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="contents">
+
+<h3 class="title">THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (<span class="smcap">Detail</span>)<a class="pgref" href="#image01">Frontispiece</a></h3>
+<p>Gentile da Fabriano. (<i>Florence:&nbsp;Accademia</i>)</p>
+
+
+<h3 class="title">MADONNA AND CHILD<a class="pgref" href="#image02">13</a></h3>
+<p>Albert D&uuml;rer</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS<a class="pgref" href="#image03">31</a></h3>
+<p>Pesellino. (<i>Empoli Gallery</i>)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN<a class="pgref" href="#image04">40</a></h3>
+<p>From &ldquo;Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi&rdquo; (Florence, 1490)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS<a class="pgref" href="#image05">55</a></h3>
+<p>By Fouquet. (<i>Mus&eacute;e Cond&eacute;, Chantilly</i>)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY<a class="pgref" href="#image06">70</a></h3>
+<p>Master of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. (Also attributed to Joachim Patinir.) (<i>Vienna:&nbsp;Imperial&nbsp;Gallery</i>)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">SINGING &ldquo;VOM HIMMEL HOCH&rdquo; FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS<a class="pgref" href="#image07">71</a></h3>
+<p>By Ludwig Richter</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE NATIVITY<a class="pgref" href="#image08">89</a></h3>
+<p>From Add. MS. 32454 in the British Museum. (French,&nbsp;15th&nbsp;Century)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">A NEAPOLITAN <i>PRESEPIO</i><a class="pgref" href="#image09">108</a></h3>
+
+<h3 class="title">CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS<a class="pgref" href="#image11">112</a></h3>
+<p>After an Etching by D. Allan. From Hone's &ldquo;Every-day Book&rdquo; (London,&nbsp;1826)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE <i>PRESEPIO</i> AT GRECCIO<a class="pgref" href="#image12">114</a></h3>
+<p>By Giotto. (<i>Upper Church of St. Francis, Assisi</i>)<a class="pagenum" name="Page_14" id="Page_14" href="#Page_14">14</a></p>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE <i>BAMBINO</i> OF ARA COELI<a class="pgref" href="#image13">115</a></h3>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS<a class="pgref" href="#image14">121</a></h3>
+<p>From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM<a class="pgref" href="#image15">140</a></h3>
+<p>From &ldquo;Le grant Kalendrier &amp; compost des Bergiers&rdquo; (N.&nbsp;le&nbsp;Rouge, Troyes,&nbsp;1529)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI<a class="pgref" href="#image16">154</a></h3>
+<p>Masaccio. (<i>Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum</i>)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA<a class="pgref" href="#image17">161</a></h3>
+<p>An Asiatic example of animal masks</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE&#xfeff;&mdash;THE MUMMERS COMING&nbsp;IN<a class="pgref" href="#image18">229</a></h3>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY<a class="pgref" href="#image19">263</a></h3>
+<p>From an engraving by Joseph Kellner</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA<a class="pgref" href="#image20">281</a></h3>
+<p>By Ferdinand Waldm&uuml;ller (b. 1793)</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST. PETER<a class="pgref" href="#image21">297</a></h3>
+<p>From an article by Mr. T. M. Fallow in <i>The Antiquary</i>, May,&nbsp;1895</p>
+
+<h3 class="title">THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE<a class="pgref" href="#image22">337</a></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_15" id="Page_15" href="#Page_15">15</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_16" id="Page_16" href="#Page_16">16</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_17" id="Page_17" href="#Page_17">17</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_I" id="Chapter_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>The Origin and Purpose of Festivals&#xfeff;&mdash;Ideas suggested by Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Pagan and
+Christian Elements&#xfeff;&mdash;The Names of the Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;Foundation of the Feast of the
+Nativity&#xfeff;&mdash;Its Relation to the Epiphany&#xfeff;&mdash;December&nbsp;25 and the <i>Natalis Invicti</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+Kalends of January&#xfeff;&mdash;Yule and Teutonic Festivals&#xfeff;&mdash;The Church and Pagan
+Survivals&#xfeff;&mdash;Two Conflicting Types of Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;Their Interaction&#xfeff;&mdash;Plan of
+the Book.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>It has been an instinct in nearly all peoples, savage or civilized,
+to set aside certain days for special ceremonial observances,
+attended by outward rejoicing. This tendency to concentrate
+on special times answers to man's need to lift himself above the
+commonplace and the everyday, to escape from the leaden weight
+of monotony that oppresses him. &ldquo;We tend to tire of the most
+eternal splendours, and a mark on our calendar, or a crash of bells
+at midnight maybe, reminds us that we have only recently been
+created.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-1" id="Nanchor_1-1" href="#Note_1-1">{1}</a>
+ That they wake people up is the great justification of
+festivals, and both man's religious sense and his joy in life have
+generally tended to rise &ldquo;into peaks and towers and turrets, into
+superhuman exceptions which really prove the rule.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-2" id="Nanchor_1-2" href="#Note_1-2">{2}</a>
+ It is
+difficult to be religious, impossible to be merry, at every moment
+of life, and festivals are as sunlit peaks, testifying, above dark
+valleys, to the eternal radiance. This is one view of the purpose
+and value of festivals, and their function of cheering people and
+giving them larger perspectives has no doubt been an important
+reason for their maintenance in the past. If we could trace the
+custom of festival-keeping back to its origins in primitive society
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_18" id="Page_18" href="#Page_18">18</a>we should find the same principle of specialization involved, though
+it is probable that the practice came into being not for the sake of
+its moral or emotional effect, but from man's desire to lay up, so
+to speak, a stock of sanctity, magical not ethical, for ordinary
+days.</p>
+
+<p>The first holy-day-makers were probably more concerned with
+such material goods as food than with spiritual ideals, when they
+marked with sacred days the rhythm of the seasons.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-3" id="Nanchor_1-3" href="#Note_1-3">{3}</a>
+ As man's
+consciousness developed, the subjective aspect of the matter
+would come increasingly into prominence, until in the festivals of
+the Christian Church the main object is to quicken the devotion
+of the believer by contemplation of the mysteries of the faith.
+Yet attached, as we shall see, to many Christian festivals, are old
+notions of magical sanctity, probably quite as potent in the minds
+of the common people as the more spiritual ideas suggested by
+the Church's feasts.</p>
+
+<p>In modern England we have almost lost the festival habit, but
+if there is one feast that survives among us as a universal tradition
+it is Christmas. We have indeed our Bank Holidays, but they
+are mere days of rest and amusement, and for the mass of the
+people Easter and Whitsuntide have small religious significance&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas
+alone has the character of sanctity which marks the true
+festival. The celebration of Christmas has often little or nothing
+to do with orthodox dogma, yet somehow the sense of obligation
+to keep the feast is very strong, and there are few English people,
+however unconventional, who escape altogether the spell of
+tradition in this matter.</p>
+
+<p><i>Christmas</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;how many images the word calls up: we think of
+carol-singers and holly-decked churches where people hymn in
+time-honoured strains the Birth of the Divine Child; of frost and
+snow, and, in contrast, of warm hearths and homes bright with
+light and colour, very fortresses against the cold; of feasting and
+revelry, of greetings and gifts exchanged; and lastly of vaguely
+superstitious customs, relics of long ago, performed perhaps out of
+respect for use and wont, or merely in jest, or with a deliberate
+attempt to throw ourselves back into the past, to re-enter for a
+moment the mental childhood of the race. These are a few of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_19" id="Page_19" href="#Page_19">19</a>the pictures that rise pell-mell in the minds of English folk at the
+mention of Christmas; how many other scenes would come
+before us if we could realize what the festival means to men of
+other nations. Yet even these will suggest what hardly needs
+saying, that Christmas is something far more complex than a
+Church holy-day alone, that the celebration of the Birth of Jesus,
+deep and touching as is its appeal to those who hold the faith of
+the Incarnation, is but one of many elements that have
+entered into the great winter festival.</p>
+
+<p>In the following pages I shall try to present a picture, sketchy
+and inadequate though it must be, of what Christmas is and has
+been to the peoples of Europe, and to show as far as possible the
+various elements that have gone into its make-up. Most people
+have a vague impression that these are largely pagan, but comparatively
+few have any idea of the process by which the heathen
+elements have become mingled with that which is obviously
+Christian, and equal obscurity prevails as to the nature and
+meaning of the non-Christian customs. The subject is vast,
+and has not been thoroughly explored as yet, but the
+labours of historians and folk-lorists have made certain conclusions
+probable, and have produced hypotheses of great interest
+and fascination.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of &ldquo;Christian&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a> and &ldquo;pagan&rdquo; elements. The
+distinction is blurred to some extent by the clothing of heathen
+customs in a superficial Christianity, but on the whole it is clear
+enough to justify the division of this book into two parts, one
+dealing with the Church's feast of the Holy Birth, the other with
+those remains of pagan winter festivals which extend from
+November to January, but cluster especially round Christmas and
+the Twelve Days.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Before we pass to the various aspects of the Church's Christmas,
+we must briefly consider its origins and its relation to certain
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_20" id="Page_20" href="#Page_20">20</a>pagan festivals, the customs of which will be dealt with in detail
+in Part II.</p>
+
+<p>The names given to the feast by different European peoples
+throw a certain amount of light on its history. Let us take five
+of them&#xfeff;&mdash;<i>Christmas</i>, <i>Weihnacht</i>, <i>No&euml;l</i>, <i>Calendas</i>, and <i>Yule</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;and
+see what they suggest.</p>
+
+<p>I. The English <i>Christmas</i> and its Dutch equivalent <i>Kerstmisse</i>,
+plainly point to the ecclesiastical side of the festival; the German
+<i>Weihnacht</i>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-4" id="Nanchor_1-4" href="#Note_1-4">{4}</a>
+ (sacred night) is vaguer, and might well be either
+pagan or Christian; in point of fact it seems to be Christian, since
+it does not appear till the year 1000, when the Faith was well
+established in Germany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-5" id="Nanchor_1-5" href="#Note_1-5">{5}</a>
+ <i>Christmas</i> and <i>Weihnacht</i>, then, may
+stand for the distinctively Christian festival, the history of which
+we may now briefly study.</p>
+
+<p>When and where did the keeping of Christmas begin? Many
+details of its early history remain in uncertainty, but it is fairly
+clear that the earliest celebration of the Birth of Christ on
+December&nbsp;25 took place at Rome about the middle of the fourth
+century, and that the observance of the day spread from the
+western to the eastern Church, which had before been wont
+to keep January&nbsp;6 as a joint commemoration of the Nativity and
+the Baptism of the Redeemer.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>The first mention of a Nativity feast on December&nbsp;25 is found
+in a Roman document known as the Philocalian Calendar, dating
+from the year 354, but embodying an older document evidently
+belonging to the year 336. It is uncertain to which date the
+Nativity reference belongs;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a> but further back than 336 at all
+events the festival cannot be traced.</p>
+
+<p>From Rome, Christmas spread throughout the West, with the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_21" id="Page_21" href="#Page_21">21</a>conversion of the barbarians. Whether it came to England
+through the Celtic Church is uncertain, but St. Augustine
+certainly brought it with him, and Christmas Day, 598, witnessed
+a great event, the baptism of more than ten thousand English
+converts.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-9" id="Nanchor_1-9" href="#Note_1-9">{9}</a>
+ In 567 the Council of Tours had declared the
+Twelve Days, from Christmas to Epiphany, a festal tide;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-10" id="Nanchor_1-10" href="#Note_1-10">{10}</a>
+ the
+laws of Ethelred (991-1016) ordained it to be a time of peace
+and concord among Christian men, when all strife must cease.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-11" id="Nanchor_1-11" href="#Note_1-11">{11}</a>
+
+In Germany Christmas was established by the Synod of Mainz in
+813;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-12" id="Nanchor_1-12" href="#Note_1-12">{12}</a>
+ in Norway by King Hakon the Good about the middle
+of the tenth century.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-13" id="Nanchor_1-13" href="#Note_1-13">{13}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the East, as has been seen, the Birth of the Redeemer was
+at first celebrated not on December&nbsp;25, but on January&nbsp;6, the
+feast of the Epiphany or manifestation of Christ's glory. The
+Epiphany can be traced as far back as the second century, among
+the Basilidian heretics, from whom it may have spread to the
+Catholic Church. It was with them certainly a feast of the
+Baptism, and possibly also of the Nativity, of Christ. The
+origins of the Epiphany festival&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-14" id="Nanchor_1-14" href="#Note_1-14">{14}</a>
+ are very obscure, nor can we say
+with certainty what was its meaning at first. It may be that it
+took the place of a heathen rite celebrating the birth of the
+World or &AElig;on from the Virgin on January&nbsp;6.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5">[5]</a> At all events one
+of its objects was to commemorate the Baptism, the appearance
+of the Holy Dove, and the Voice from heaven, &ldquo;Thou art my
+beloved son, in whom I am well pleased&rdquo; (or, as other MSS.
+read, &ldquo;This day have I begotten thee&rdquo;).</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_22" id="Page_22" href="#Page_22">22</a>In some circles of early Christianity the Baptism appears to
+have been looked upon as the true Birth of Christ, the moment
+when, filled by the Spirit, He became Son of God; and the
+carnal Birth was regarded as of comparatively little significance.
+Hence the Baptism festival may have arisen first, and the
+celebration of the Birth at Bethlehem may have been later
+attached to the same day, partly perhaps because a passage in
+St. Luke's Gospel was supposed to imply that Jesus was baptized
+on His thirtieth birthday. As however the orthodox belief
+became more sharply defined, increasing stress was laid on the
+Incarnation of God in Christ in the Virgin's womb, and it may
+have been felt that the celebration of the Birth and the Baptism
+on the same day encouraged heretical views. Hence very likely
+the introduction of Christmas on December&nbsp;25 as a festival of the
+Birth alone. In the East the concelebration of the two events
+continued for some time after Rome had instituted the separate
+feast of Christmas. Gradually, however, the Roman use spread:
+at Constantinople it was introduced about 380 by the great
+theologian, Gregory Nazianzen; at Antioch it appeared in 388,
+at Alexandria in 432. The Church of Jerusalem long stood out,
+refusing to adopt the new feast till the seventh century, it would
+seem.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-18" id="Nanchor_1-18" href="#Note_1-18">{18}</a>
+ One important Church, the Armenian, knows nothing of
+December&nbsp;25, and still celebrates the Nativity with the Epiphany
+on January&nbsp;6.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-19" id="Nanchor_1-19" href="#Note_1-19">{19}</a>
+ Epiphany in the eastern Orthodox Church
+has lost its connection with the Nativity and is now chiefly
+a celebration of the Baptism of Christ, while in the West, as
+every one knows, it is primarily a celebration of the Adoration by
+the Magi, an event commemorated by the Greeks on Christmas
+Day. Epiphany is, however, as we shall see, a greater festival
+in the Greek Church than Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>Such in bare outline is the story of the spread of Christmas as
+an independent festival. Its establishment fitly followed the
+triumph of the Catholic doctrine of the perfect Godhead or
+Christ at the Council of Nicea in 325.</p>
+
+<p>II. The French <i>No&euml;l</i> is a name concerning whose origin
+there has been considerable dispute; there can, however, be little
+doubt that it is the same word as the Proven&ccedil;al <i>Nadau</i> or <i>Nadal</i>,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_23" id="Page_23" href="#Page_23">23</a>the Italian <i>Natale</i>, and the Welsh <i>Nadolig</i>, all obviously derived
+from the Latin <i>natalis</i>, and meaning &ldquo;birthday.&rdquo; One naturally
+takes this as referring to the Birth of Christ, but it may at any
+rate remind us of another birthday celebrated on the same date by
+the Romans of the Empire, that of the unconquered Sun, who
+on December&nbsp;25, the winter solstice according to the Julian
+calendar, began to rise to new vigour after his autumnal
+decline.</p>
+
+<p>Why, we may ask, did the Church choose December&nbsp;25 for
+the celebration of her Founder's Birth? No one now imagines
+that the date is supported by a reliable tradition; it is only one
+of various guesses of early Christian writers. As a learned
+eighteenth-century Jesuit&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-20" id="Nanchor_1-20" href="#Note_1-20">{20}</a>
+ has pointed out, there is not a single
+month in the year to which the Nativity has not been assigned
+by some writer or other. The real reason for the choice of the
+day most probably was, that upon it fell the pagan festival just
+mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Dies Natalis Invicti</i> was probably first celebrated in Rome
+by order of the Emperor Aurelian (270-5), an ardent worshipper
+of the Syrian sun-god Baal.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-21" id="Nanchor_1-21" href="#Note_1-21">{21}</a>
+ With the <i>Sol Invictus</i> was
+identified the figure of Mithra, that strange eastern god whose
+cult resembled in so many ways the worship of Jesus, and who
+was at one time a serious rival of the Christ in the minds of
+thoughtful men.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-22" id="Nanchor_1-22" href="#Note_1-22">{22}</a>
+ It was the sun-god, poetically and philosophically
+conceived, whom the Emperor Julian made the centre
+of his ill-fated revival of paganism, and there is extant a fine
+prayer of his to &ldquo;King Sun.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-23" id="Nanchor_1-23" href="#Note_1-23">{23}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>What more natural than that the Church should choose this
+day to celebrate the rising of her Sun of Righteousness with
+healing in His wings, that she should strive thus to draw away to
+His worship some adorers of the god whose symbol and representative
+was the earthly sun! There is no direct evidence of
+deliberate substitution, but at all events ecclesiastical writers soon
+after the foundation of Christmas made good use of the idea
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_24" id="Page_24" href="#Page_24">24</a>that the birthday of the Saviour had replaced the birthday of
+the sun.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>Little is known of the manner in which the <i>Natalis Invicti</i>
+was kept; it was not a folk-festival, and was probably observed
+by the classes rather than the masses.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-24" id="Nanchor_1-24" href="#Note_1-24">{24}</a>
+ Its direct influence on
+Christmas customs has probably been little or nothing. It fell,
+however, just before a Roman festival that had immense
+popularity, is of great importance for our subject, and is recalled
+by another name for Christmas that must now be considered.</p>
+
+<p>III. The Proven&ccedil;al <i>Calendas</i> or <i>Calenos</i>, the Polish <i>Kolenda</i>,
+the Russian <i>Koly&aacute;da</i>, the Czech <i>Koleda</i> and the Lithuanian
+<i>Kalledos</i>, not to speak of the Welsh <i>Calenig</i> for Christmas-box, and
+the Gaelic <i>Calluinn</i> for New Year's Eve, are all derived from the
+Latin <i>Kalendae</i>, and suggest the connection of Christmas with
+the Roman New Year's Day, the Kalends or the first day of
+January, a time celebrated with many festive customs. What
+these were, and how they have affected Christmas we shall see
+in some detail in Part II.; suffice it to say here that the festival,
+which lasted for at least three days, was one of riotous life, of
+banqueting and games and licence. It was preceded, moreover,
+by the <i>Saturnalia</i> (December&nbsp;17 to 23) which had many like
+features, and must have formed practically one festive season with
+it. The word <i>Saturnalia</i> has become so familiar in modern
+usage as to suggest sufficiently the character of the festival for
+which it stands.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_25" id="Page_25" href="#Page_25">25</a>Into the midst of this season of revelry and licence the Church
+introduced her celebration of the beginning of man's redemption
+from the bondage of sin. Who can wonder that Christmas
+contains incongruous elements, for old things, loved by the people,
+cannot easily be uprooted.</p>
+
+<p>IV. One more name yet remains to be considered, <i>Yule</i>
+(Danish <i>Jul</i>), the ordinary word for Christmas in the Scandinavian
+languages, and not extinct among ourselves. Its
+derivation has been widely discussed, but so far no satisfactory
+explanation of it has been found. Professor Skeat in the last
+edition of his Etymological Dictionary (1910) has to admit that
+its origin is unknown. Whatever its source may be, it is clearly
+the name of a Germanic season&#xfeff;&mdash;probably a two-month tide
+covering the second half of November, the whole of December,
+and the first half of January.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-26" id="Nanchor_1-26" href="#Note_1-26">{26}</a>
+ It may well suggest to us the
+element added to Christmas by the barbarian peoples who began
+to learn Christianity about the time when the festival was
+founded. Modern research has tended to disprove the idea that
+the old Germans held a Yule feast at the winter solstice, and it is
+probable, as we shall see, that the specifically Teutonic Christmas
+customs come from a New Year and beginning-of-winter festival
+kept about the middle of November. These customs transferred
+to Christmas are to a great extent religious or magical rites
+intended to secure prosperity during the coming year, and there
+is also the familiar Christmas feasting, apparently derived in part
+from the sacrificial banquets that marked the beginning of
+winter.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">We have now taken a general glance at the elements which
+have combined in Christmas. The heathen folk-festivals
+absorbed by the Nativity feast were essentially life-affirming, they
+expressed the mind of men who said &ldquo;yes&rdquo; to this life, who
+valued earthly good things. On the other hand Christianity, at
+all events in its intensest form, the religion of the monks, was at
+bottom pessimistic as regards this earth, and valued it only as a
+place of discipline for the life to come; it was essentially a
+religion of renunciation that said &ldquo;no&rdquo; to the world. The
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_26" id="Page_26" href="#Page_26">26</a>Christian had here no continuing city, but sought one to come.
+How could the Church make a feast of the secular New Year;
+what mattered to her the world of time? her eye was fixed upon
+the eternal realities&#xfeff;&mdash;the great drama of Redemption. Not upon
+the course of the temporal sun through the zodiac, but upon the
+mystical progress of the eternal Sun of Righteousness must she
+base her calendar. Christmas and New Year's Day&#xfeff;&mdash;the two
+festivals stood originally for the most opposed of principles.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally the Church fought bitterly against the observance of
+the Kalends; she condemned repeatedly the unseemly doings of
+Christians in joining in heathenish customs at that season; she
+tried to make the first of January a solemn fast; and from the
+ascetic point of view she was profoundly right, for the old festivals
+were bound up with a lusty attitude towards the world, a seeking
+for earthly joy and well-being.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle between the ascetic principle of self-mortification,
+world-renunciation, absorption in a transcendent ideal, and the
+natural human striving towards earthly joy and well-being, is,
+perhaps, the most interesting aspect of the history of Christianity;
+it is certainly shown in an absorbingly interesting way in the
+development of the Christian feast of the Nativity. The conflict
+is keen at first; the Church authorities fight tooth and nail
+against these relics of heathenism, these devilish rites; but mankind's
+instinctive paganism is insuppressible, the practices continue
+as ritual, though losing much of their meaning, and the Church,
+weary of denouncing, comes to wink at them, while the pagan
+joy in earthly life begins to colour her own festival.</p>
+
+<p>The Church's Christmas, as the Middle Ages pass on, becomes
+increasingly &ldquo;merry&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;warm and homely, suited to the instincts
+of ordinary humanity, filled with a joy that is of this earth, and
+not only a mystical rapture at a transcendental Redemption.
+The Incarnate God becomes a real child to be fondled and
+rocked, a child who is the loveliest of infants, whose birthday is
+the supreme type of all human birthdays, and may be kept with
+feasting and dance and song. Such is the Christmas of popular
+tradition, the Nativity as it is reflected in the carols, the cradle-rocking,
+the mystery plays of the later Middle Ages. This
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_27" id="Page_27" href="#Page_27">27</a>Christmas, which still lingers, though maimed, in some Catholic
+regions, is strongly life-affirming; the value and delight of
+earthly, material things is keenly felt; sometimes, even, it passes
+into coarseness and riot. Yet a certain mysticism usually penetrates
+it, with hints that this dear life, this fair world, are not all,
+for the soul has immortal longings in her. Nearly always there
+is the spirit of reverence, of bowing down before the Infant God,
+a visitor from the supernatural world, though bone of man's bone,
+flesh of his flesh. Heaven and earth have met together; the
+rough stable is become the palace of the Great King.</p>
+
+<p>This we might well call the &ldquo;Catholic&rdquo; Christmas, the
+Christmas of the age when the Church most nearly answered to
+the needs of the whole man, spiritual and sensuous. The
+Reformation in England and Germany did not totally destroy
+it; in England the carol-singers kept up for a while the old
+spirit; in Lutheran Germany a highly coloured and surprisingly
+sensuous celebration of the Nativity lingered on into the eighteenth
+century. In the countries that remained Roman Catholic much
+of the old Christmas continued, though the spirit of the Counter-Reformation,
+faced by the challenge of Protestantism, made for
+greater &ldquo;respectability,&rdquo; and often robbed the Catholic Christmas
+of its humour, its homeliness, its truly popular stamp, substituting
+pretentiousness for simplicity, sugary sentiment for na&iuml;ve and
+genuine poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the transformation of the Church's Christmas from
+something austere and metaphysical into something joyous and
+human, warm and kindly, we shall note in our Second Part the
+survival of much that is purely pagan, continuing alongside of the
+celebration of the Nativity, and often little touched by its influence.
+But first we must consider the side of the festival suggested
+by the English and French names: <i>Christmas</i> will stand for the
+liturgical rites commemorating the wonder of the Incarnation&#xfeff;&mdash;God
+in man made manifest&#xfeff;&mdash;<i>No&euml;l</i> or &ldquo;the Birthday,&rdquo; for the
+ways in which men have striven to realize the human aspect of
+the great Coming.</p>
+
+<p>How can we reach the inner meaning of the Nativity feast, its
+significance for the faithful? Better, perhaps, by the way of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_28" id="Page_28" href="#Page_28">28</a>poetry than by the way of ritual, for it is poetry that reveals the
+emotions at the back of the outward observances, and we shall
+understand these better when the singers of Christmas have laid
+bare to us their hearts. We may therefore first give attention to
+the Christmas poetry of sundry ages and peoples, and then go on
+to consider the liturgical and popular ritual in which the Church
+has striven to express her joy at the Redeemer's birth. Ceremonial,
+of course, has always mimetic tendencies, and in a further
+chapter we shall see how these issued in genuine drama; how, in
+the miracle plays, the Christmas story was represented by the forms
+and voices of living men.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_29" id="Page_29" href="#Page_29">29</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_30" id="Page_30" href="#Page_30">30</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_31" id="Page_31" href="#Page_31">31</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Part_I" id="Part_I"></a>Part I&#xfeff;&mdash;The Christian Feast</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_II" id="Chapter_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-1" id="Nanchor_2-1" href="#Note_2-1">{1}</a>
+</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological Character&#xfeff;&mdash;Humanizing Influence
+of Franciscanism&#xfeff;&mdash;Jacopone da Todi's Vernacular Verse&#xfeff;&mdash;German
+Catholic Poetry&#xfeff;&mdash;Mediaeval English Carols.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image03" name="image03" href="images/image03.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image03.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS."
+      title="MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS.</p>
+
+<p>PESELLINO</p>
+<p>(<i>Empoli Gallery</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>Christmas, as we have seen, had its beginning at the middle
+of the fourth century in Rome. The new feast was not long in
+finding a hymn-writer to embody in immortal Latin the emotions
+called forth by the memory of the Nativity. &ldquo;Veni, redemptor
+gentium&rdquo; is one of the earliest of Latin hymns&#xfeff;&mdash;one of the few
+that have come down to us from the father of Church song,
+Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan (d. 397). Great as theologian
+and statesman, Ambrose was great also as a poet and systematizer
+of Church music. &ldquo;Veni, redemptor gentium&rdquo; is above all
+things stately and severe, in harmony with the austere character
+of the zealous foe of the Arian heretics, the champion of monasticism.
+It is the theological aspect alone of Christmas, the
+redemption of sinful man by the mystery of the Incarnation and
+the miracle of the Virgin Birth, that we find in St. Ambrose's
+terse and pregnant Latin; there is no feeling for the human
+pathos and poetry of the scene at Bethlehem&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Veni, redemptor gentium,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ostende partum virginis;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Miretur omne saeculum:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Talis decet partus Deum.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_32" id="Page_32" href="#Page_32">32</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Non ex virili semine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sed mystico spiramine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Verbum Dei factum caro,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Fructusque ventris floruit.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9">[9]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-2" id="Nanchor_2-2" href="#Note_2-2">{2}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Another fine hymn often heard in English churches is of a
+slightly later date. &ldquo;Corde natus ex Parentis&rdquo; (&ldquo;Of the
+Father's love begotten&rdquo;) is a cento from a larger hymn by the
+Spanish poet Prudentius (<i>c.</i> 348-413). Prudentius did not write
+for liturgical purposes, and it was several centuries before &ldquo;Corde
+natus&rdquo; was adopted into the cycle of Latin hymns. Its elaborate
+rhetoric is very unlike the severity of &ldquo;Veni, redemptor gentium,&rdquo;
+but again the note is purely theological; the Incarnation as
+a world-event is its theme. It sings the Birth of Him who is</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Corde natus ex Parentis</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ante mundi exordium,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Alpha et O cognominatus,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ipse fons et clausula</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Omnium quae sunt, fuerunt,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Quaeque post futura sunt</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Saeculorum saeculis.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10">[10]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-3" id="Nanchor_2-3" href="#Note_2-3">{3}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Other early hymns are &ldquo;A solis ortus cardine&rdquo; (&ldquo;From east
+to west, from shore to shore&rdquo;), by a certain Coelius Sedulius
+(d. <i>c.</i> 450), still sung by the Roman Church at Lauds on Christmas
+Day, and &ldquo;Jesu, redemptor omnium&rdquo; (sixth century), the
+office hymn at Christmas Vespers. Like the poems of Ambrose
+and Prudentius, they are in classical metres, unrhymed, and based
+upon quantity, not accent, and they have the same general
+character, doctrinal rather than humanly tender.</p>
+
+<p>In the ninth and tenth centuries arose a new form of hymnody,
+the Prose or Sequence sung after the Gradual (the anthem
+between the Epistle and Gospel at Mass). The earliest writer
+of sequences was Notker, a monk of the abbey of St. Gall, near
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_33" id="Page_33" href="#Page_33">33</a>the Lake of Constance. Among those that are probably his
+work is the Christmas &ldquo;Natus ante saecula Dei filius.&rdquo; The
+most famous Nativity sequence, however, is the &ldquo;Laetabundus,
+exsultet fidelis chorus&rdquo; of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153),
+once sung all over Europe, and especially popular in England and
+France. Here are its opening verses:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Laetabundus,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Exsultet fidelis chorus;</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Alleluia!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Regem regum</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Intactae profudit thorus;</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Res miranda!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Angelus consilii</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Natus est de Virgine,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Sol de stella!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sol occasum nesciens,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Stella semper rutilans,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Semper clara.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-4" id="Nanchor_2-4" href="#Note_2-4">{4}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;Laetabundus&rdquo; is in rhymed stanzas; in this it differs
+from most early proses. The writing of rhymed sequences,
+however, became common through the example of the Parisian
+monk, Adam of St. Victor, in the second half of the twelfth
+century. He adopted an entirely new style of versification and
+music, derived from popular songs; and he and his successors in
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_34" id="Page_34" href="#Page_34">34</a>the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries wrote various proses for
+the Christmas festival.</p>
+
+<p>If we consider the Latin Christmas hymns from the fourth
+century to the thirteenth, we shall find that however much they
+differ in form, they have one common characteristic: they are
+essentially theological&#xfeff;&mdash;dwelling on the Incarnation and the
+Nativity as part of the process of man's redemption&#xfeff;&mdash;rather than
+realistic. There is little attempt to imagine the scene in the
+stable at Bethlehem, little interest in the Child as a child, little
+sense of the human pathos of the Nativity. The explanation
+is, I think, very simple, and it lights up the whole observance
+of Christmas as a Church festival in the centuries we are considering:
+<i>this poetry is the poetry of monks, or of men imbued with
+the monastic spirit</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The two centuries following the institution of Christmas saw
+the break-up of the Roman Empire in the west, and the
+incursions of barbarians threatening the very existence of the
+Christian civilization that had conquered classic paganism. It
+was by her army of monks that the Church tamed and Christianized
+the barbarians, and both religion and culture till the
+middle of the twelfth century were predominantly monastic.
+&ldquo;In writing of any eminently religious man of this period&rdquo; [the
+eleventh century], says Dean Church, &ldquo;it must be taken almost
+as a matter of course that he was a monk.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-5" id="Nanchor_2-5" href="#Note_2-5">{5}</a>
+ And a monastery
+was not the place for human feeling about Christmas; the monk
+was&#xfeff;&mdash;at any rate in ideal&#xfeff;&mdash;cut off from the world; not for him
+were the joys of parenthood or tender feelings for a new-born
+child. To the monk the world was, at least in theory, the vale
+of misery; birth and generation were, one may almost say,
+tolerated as necessary evils among lay folk unable to rise to the
+heights of abstinence and renunciation; one can hardly imagine
+a true early Benedictine filled with &ldquo;joy that a man is born into
+the world.&rdquo; The Nativity was an infinitely important event,
+to be celebrated with a chastened, unearthly joy, but not, as
+it became for the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a matter
+upon which human affection might lavish itself, which imagination
+might deck with vivid concrete detail. In the later Christmas
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_35" id="Page_35" href="#Page_35">35</a>the pagan and the Christian spirit, or delight in earthly things
+and joy in the invisible, seem to meet and mingle; to the true
+monk of the Dark and Early Middle Ages they were incompatible.</p>
+
+<p>What of the people, the great world outside the monasteries?
+Can we imagine that Christmas, on its Christian side, had a
+deep meaning for them? For the first ten centuries, to quote
+Dean Church again, Christianity &ldquo;can hardly be said to have
+leavened society at all.... It acted upon it doubtless with
+enormous power; but it was as an extraneous and foreign agent,
+which destroys and shapes, but does not mingle or renew....
+Society was a long time unlearning heathenism; it has not done
+so yet; but it had hardly begun, at any rate it was only just
+beginning, to imagine the possibility of such a thing in the
+eleventh century.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-6" id="Nanchor_2-6" href="#Note_2-6">{6}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The practical religion of the illiterate,&rdquo; says another ecclesiastical
+historian, Dr. W. R. W. Stephens, &ldquo;was in many respects
+merely a survival of the old paganism thinly disguised. There
+was a prevalent belief in witchcraft, magic, sortilegy, spells,
+charms, talismans, which mixed itself up in strange ways with
+Christian ideas and Christian worship.... Fear, the note of
+superstition, rather than love, which is the characteristic of a
+rational faith, was conspicuous in much of the popular religion.
+The world was haunted by demons, hobgoblins, malignant spirits
+of divers kinds, whose baneful influence must be averted by
+charms or offerings.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-7" id="Nanchor_2-7" href="#Note_2-7">{7}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The writings of ecclesiastics, the decrees of councils and
+synods, from the fourth century to the eleventh, abound in
+condemnations of pagan practices at the turn of the year. It
+is in these customs, and in secular mirth and revelry, not in
+Christian poetry, that we must seek for the expression of early
+lay feeling about Christmas. It was a feast of material good
+things, a time for the fulfilment of traditional heathen usages,
+rather than a joyous celebration of the Saviour's birth. No
+doubt it was observed by due attendance at church, but the
+services in a tongue not understanded of the people cannot
+have been very full of meaning to them, and we can imagine
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_36" id="Page_36" href="#Page_36">36</a>their Christmas church-going as rather a duty inspired by fear
+than an expression of devout rejoicing. It is noteworthy that
+the earliest of vernacular Christmas carols known to us, the
+early thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman &ldquo;Seignors, ore entendez
+&agrave; nus,&rdquo; is a song not of religion but of revelry. Its last verse
+is typical:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Seignors, jo vus di par No&euml;l,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">E par li sires de cest hostel,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Car bevez ben;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">E jo primes beverai le men,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">E pois apr&egrave;z chescon le soen,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Par mon conseil;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Si jo vus di trestoz, &lsquo;Wesseyl!&rsquo;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dehaiz eit qui ne dirra, &lsquo;Drincheyl!&rsquo;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12">[12]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-8" id="Nanchor_2-8" href="#Note_2-8">{8}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Not till the close of the thirteenth century do we meet with
+any vernacular Christmas poetry of importance. The verses
+of the <i>troubadours</i> and <i>trouv&egrave;res</i> of twelfth-century France had
+little to do with Christianity; their songs were mostly of
+earthly and illicit love. The German Minnesingers of the
+thirteenth century were indeed pious, but their devout lays
+were addressed to the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, the ideal
+of womanhood, holding in glory the Divine Child in her arms,
+rather than to the Babe and His Mother in the great humility
+of Bethlehem.</p>
+
+<p>The first real outburst of Christmas joy in a popular tongue
+is found in Italy, in the poems of that strange &ldquo;minstrel of the
+Lord,&rdquo; the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi (b. 1228, d. 1306).
+<i>Franciscan</i>, in that name we have an indication of the change
+in religious feeling that came over the western world, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_37" id="Page_37" href="#Page_37">37</a>especially Italy, in the thirteenth century.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-9" id="Nanchor_2-9" href="#Note_2-9">{9}</a>
+ For the twenty
+all-too-short years of St. Francis's apostolate have passed, and
+a new attitude towards God and man and the world has become
+possible. Not that the change was due solely to St. Francis;
+he was rather the supreme embodiment of the ideals and tendencies
+of his day than their actual creator; but he was the spark
+that kindled a mighty flame. In him we reach so important
+a turning-point in the history of Christmas that we must linger
+awhile at his side.</p>
+
+<p>Early Franciscanism meant above all the democratizing, the
+humanizing of Christianity; with it begins that &ldquo;carol spirit&rdquo;
+which is the most winning part of the Christian Christmas, the
+spirit which, while not forgetting the divine side of the Nativity,
+yet delights in its simple humanity, the spirit that links the
+Incarnation to the common life of the people, that brings human
+tenderness into religion. The faithful no longer contemplate
+merely a theological mystery, they are moved by affectionate
+devotion to the Babe of Bethlehem, realized as an actual living
+child, God indeed, yet feeling the cold of winter, the roughness
+of the manger bed.</p>
+
+<p>St. Francis, it must be remembered, was not a man of high
+birth, but the son of a silk merchant, and his appeal was made
+chiefly to the traders and skilled workmen of the cities, who, in
+his day, were rising to importance, coming, in modern Socialist
+terms, to class-consciousness. The monks, although boys of low
+birth were sometimes admitted into the cloister, were in sympathy
+one with the upper classes, and monastic religion and
+culture were essentially aristocratic. The rise of the Franciscans
+meant the bringing home of Christianity to masses of town-workers,
+homely people, who needed a religion full of vivid
+humanity, and whom the pathetic story of the Nativity would
+peculiarly touch.</p>
+
+<p>Love to man, the sense of human brotherhood&#xfeff;&mdash;that was the
+great thing which St. Francis brought home to his age. The
+message, certainly, was not new, but he realized it with infectious
+intensity. The second great commandment, &ldquo;Thou shall love
+thy neighbour as thyself,&rdquo; had not indeed been forgotten by
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_38" id="Page_38" href="#Page_38">38</a>mediaeval Christianity; the common life of monasticism was
+an attempt to fulfil it; yet for the monk love to man was often
+rather a duty than a passion. But to St. Francis love was very
+life; he loved not by duty but by an inner compulsion, and his
+burning love of God and man found its centre in the God-man,
+Christ Jesus. For no saint, perhaps, has the earthly life of Christ
+been the object of such passionate devotion as for St. Francis;
+the Stigmata were the awful, yet, to his contemporaries, glorious
+fruit of his meditations on the Passion; and of the ecstasy with
+which he kept his Christmas at Greccio we shall read when we
+come to consider the <i>Presepio</i>. He had a peculiar affection for the
+festival of the Holy Child; &ldquo;the Child Jesus,&rdquo; says Thomas of
+Celano, &ldquo;had been given over to forgetfulness in the hearts of
+many in whom, by the working of His grace, He was raised up
+again through His servant Francis.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-10" id="Nanchor_2-10" href="#Note_2-10">{10}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>To the Early Middle Ages Christ was the awful Judge, the
+<i>Rex tremendae majestatis</i>, though also the divine bringer of
+salvation from sin and eternal punishment, and, to the mystic,
+the Bridegroom of the Soul. To Francis He was the little
+brother of all mankind as well. It was a new human joy that
+came into religion with him. His essentially artistic nature was
+the first to realize the full poetry of Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;the coming of
+infinity into extremest limitation, the Highest made the lowliest,
+the King of all kings a poor infant. He had, in a supreme
+degree, the mingled reverence and tenderness that inspire the
+best carols.</p>
+
+<p>Though no Christmas verses by St. Francis have come
+down to us, there is a beautiful &ldquo;psalm&rdquo; for Christmas Day
+at Vespers, composed by him partly from passages of Scripture.
+A portion of Father Paschal Robinson's translation may
+be quoted:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Rejoice to God our helper.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Shout unto God, living and true,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With the voice of triumph.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For the Lord is high, terrible:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A great King over all the earth.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For the most holy Father of heaven,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_39" id="Page_39" href="#Page_39">39</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Our King, before ages sent His Beloved</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Son from on high, and He</span><br />
+<span class="i3">was born of the Blessed Virgin,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">holy Mary.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">This is the day which the Lord</span><br />
+<span class="i3">hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For the beloved and most holy</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Child has been given to us and</span><br />
+<span class="i3">born for us by the wayside.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And laid in a manger because He</span><br />
+<span class="i3">had no room in the inn.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Glory to God in the highest: and</span><br />
+<span class="i3">on earth peace to men of good will.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-11" id="Nanchor_2-11" href="#Note_2-11">{11}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is in the poetry of Jacopone da Todi, born shortly after the
+death of St. Francis, that the Franciscan Christmas spirit finds
+its most intense expression. A wild, wandering ascetic, an
+impassioned poet, and a soaring mystic, Jacopone is one of the
+greatest of Christian singers, unpolished as his verses are. Noble
+by birth, he made himself utterly as the common people for
+whom he piped his rustic notes. &ldquo;Dio fatto piccino&rdquo; (&ldquo;God
+made a little thing&rdquo;) is the keynote of his music; the Christ
+Child is for him &ldquo;our sweet little brother&rdquo;; with tender
+affection he rejoices in endearing diminutives&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Bambolino,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Piccolino,&rdquo; &ldquo;Jesulino.&rdquo; He sings of the Nativity with extraordinary
+realism.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13">[13]</a> Here, in words, is a picture of the Madonna
+and her Child that might well have inspired an early Tuscan
+artist:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Veggiamo il suo Bambino</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Gammettare nel fieno,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">E le braccia scoperte</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Porgere ad ella in seno,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_40" id="Page_40" href="#Page_40">40</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ed essa lo ricopre</span><br />
+<span class="i2">El meglio che pu&ograve; almeno,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Mettendoli la poppa</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Entro la sua bocchina.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">A la sua man manca,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Cullava lo Bambino,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">E con sante carole</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Nenciava il suo amor fino....</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Gli Angioletti d&rsquo; intorno</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Se ne gian danzando,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Facendo dolci versi</span><br />
+<span class="i2">E d&rsquo; amor favellando.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14">[14]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-12" id="Nanchor_2-12" href="#Note_2-12">{12}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>But there is an intense sense of the divine, as well as the
+human, in the Holy Babe; no one has felt more vividly the
+paradox of the Incarnation:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image04" name="image04" href="images/image04.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image04.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN."
+      title="JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN.</p>
+
+<p>From &ldquo;Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi&rdquo;</p>
+<p>(Florence, 1490).</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Ne la degna stalla del dolce Bambino</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Gli Angeli cantano d&rsquo; intorno al piccolino;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Cantano e gridano gli Angeli diletti,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Tutti riverenti timidi e subietti,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_41" id="Page_41" href="#Page_41">41</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Al Bambolino principe de gli eletti,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Che nudo giace nel pungente spino.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Il Verbo divino, che &egrave; sommo sapiente,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In questo d&igrave; par che non sappia niente,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Guardal su&rsquo; l fieno, che gambetta piangente,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Como elli non fusse huomo divino.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15">[15]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-13" id="Nanchor_2-13" href="#Note_2-13">{13}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Here, again, are some sweet and homely lines about preparation
+for the Infant Saviour:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">&ldquo;Andiamo a lavare</span><br />
+<span class="i2">La casa a nettare,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Che non trovi bruttura.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Poi el menaremo,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et gli daremo</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ben da ber&rsquo; e mangiare.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Un cibo espiato,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et d&rsquo; or li sia dato</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Senza alcuna dimura.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Lo cor adempito</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dagiamoli fornito</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Senza odio ne rancura.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16">[16]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-14" id="Nanchor_2-14" href="#Note_2-14">{14}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_42" id="Page_42" href="#Page_42">42</a>There have been few more rapturous poets than Jacopone;
+men deemed him mad; but, &ldquo;if he is mad,&rdquo; says a modern
+Italian writer, &ldquo;he is mad as the lark&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Nessun poeta canta
+a tutta gola come questo frate minore. S&rsquo; &egrave; pazzo, &egrave; pazzo come
+l&rsquo; allodola.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To him is attributed that most poignant of Latin hymns, the
+&ldquo;Stabat Mater dolorosa&rdquo;; he wrote also a joyous Christmas
+pendant to it:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Stabat Mater speciosa,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Juxta foenum gaudiosa,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Dum jacebat parvulus.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Cujus animam gaudentem,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Laetabundam ac ferventem,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Pertransivit jubilus.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-15" id="Nanchor_2-15" href="#Note_2-15">{15}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the fourteenth century we find a blossoming forth of
+Christmas poetry in another land, Germany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-16" id="Nanchor_2-16" href="#Note_2-16">{16}</a>
+ There are indeed
+Christmas and Epiphany passages in a poetical Life of Christ
+by Otfrid of Weissenburg in the ninth century, and a twelfth-century
+poem by Spervogel, &ldquo;Er ist gewaltic unde starc,&rdquo; opens
+with a mention of Christmas, but these are of little importance
+for us. The fourteenth century shows the first real outburst,
+and that is traceable, in part at least, to the mystical movement in
+the Rhineland caused by the preaching of the great Dominican,
+Eckhart of Strasburg, and his followers. It was a movement
+towards inward piety as distinguished from, though not excluding,
+external observances, which made its way largely by sermons
+listened to by great congregations in the towns. Its impulse
+came not from the monasteries proper, but from the convents
+of Dominican friars, and it was for Germany in the fourteenth
+century something like what Franciscanism had been for Italy
+in the thirteenth. One of the central doctrines of the school
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_43" id="Page_43" href="#Page_43">43</a>was that of the Divine Birth in the soul of the believer;
+according to Eckhart the soul comes into immediate union
+with God by &ldquo;bringing forth the Son&rdquo; within itself; the
+historic Christ is the symbol of the divine humanity to which
+the soul should rise: &ldquo;when the soul bringeth forth the Son,&rdquo;
+he says, &ldquo;it is happier than Mary.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-17" id="Nanchor_2-17" href="#Note_2-17">{17}</a>
+ Several Christmas sermons
+by Eckhart have been preserved; one of them ends with the
+prayer, &ldquo;To this Birth may that God, who to-day is new born
+as man, bring us, that we, poor children of earth, may be born in
+Him as God; to this may He bring us eternally! Amen.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-18" id="Nanchor_2-18" href="#Note_2-18">{18}</a>
+
+With this profound doctrine of the Divine Birth, it was natural
+that the German mystics should enter deeply into the festival
+of Christmas, and one of the earliest of German Christmas carols,
+&ldquo;Es komt ein schif geladen,&rdquo; is the work of Eckhart's disciple,
+John Tauler (d. 1361). It is perhaps an adaptation of a
+secular song:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;A ship comes sailing onwards</span><br />
+<span class="i3">With a precious freight on board;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">It bears the only Son of God,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">It bears the Eternal Word.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The doctrine of the mystics, &ldquo;Die in order to live,&rdquo; fills
+the last verses:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Whoe'er would hope in gladness</span><br />
+<span class="i3">To kiss this Holy Child,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Must suffer many a pain and woe,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Patient like Him and mild;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Must die with Him to evil</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And rise to righteousness,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That so with Christ he too may share</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Eternal life and bliss.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-19" id="Nanchor_2-19" href="#Note_2-19">{19}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>To the fourteenth century may perhaps belong an allegorical
+carol still sung in both Catholic and Protestant Germany:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Es ist ein Ros entsprungen</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Aus einer Wurzel zart,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_44" id="Page_44" href="#Page_44">44</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Als uns die Alten sungen,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Von Jesse kam die Art,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Und hat ein Bl&uuml;mlein bracht,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Mitten im kalten Winter,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wohl zu der halben Nacht.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Das R&ouml;slein, das ich meine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Davon Jesajas sagt,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hat uns gebracht alleine</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Marie, die reine Magd.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Aus Gottes ew'gem Rat</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hat sie ein Kind geboren</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wohl zu der halben Nacht.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18">[18]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-20" id="Nanchor_2-20" href="#Note_2-20">{20}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In a fourteenth-century Life of the mystic Heinrich Suso
+it is told how one day angels came to him to comfort him
+in his sufferings, how they took him by the hand and led him
+to dance, while one began a glad song of the child Jesus,
+&ldquo;In dulci jubilo.&rdquo; To the fourteenth century, then, dates back
+that most delightful of German carols, with its interwoven lines
+of Latin. I may quote the fine Scots translation in the &ldquo;Godlie
+and Spirituall Sangis&rdquo; of 1567:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>In dulci Jubilo</i>, Now lat us sing with myrth and jo</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Our hartis consolatioun lyis <i>in praesepio</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And schynis as the Sone, <i>Matris in gremio</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Alpha es et O, Alpha es et O.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>O Jesu parvule!</i> I thrist sore efter th&eacute;,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_45" id="Page_45" href="#Page_45">45</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Confort my hart and mynde, <i>O puer optime</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">God of all grace sa kynde, <i>et princeps gloriae</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Trahe me post te, Trahe me post te</i>.</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Ubi sunt gaudia</i>, in ony place bot thair,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Quhair that the Angellis sing <i>Nova cantica</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Bot and the bellis ring <i>in regis curia</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">God gif I war thair, God gif I war thair.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-21" id="Nanchor_2-21" href="#Note_2-21">{21}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The music of &ldquo;In dulci jubilo&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19">[19]</a> has, with all its religious
+feeling, something of the nature of a dance, and unites in a
+strange fashion solemnity, playfulness, and ecstatic delight. No
+other air, perhaps, shows so perfectly the reverent gaiety of
+the carol spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The fifteenth century produced a realistic type of German carol.
+Here is the beginning of one such:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Da Jesu Krist geboren wart,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">do was es kalt;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">in ain klaines kripplein</span><br />
+<span class="i2">er geleget wart.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Da stunt ain esel und ain rint,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">die atmizten &uuml;ber das hailig kint</span><br />
+<span class="i2">gar unverborgen.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Der ain raines herze hat, der darf nit sorgen.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20">[20]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-22" id="Nanchor_2-22" href="#Note_2-22">{22}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It goes on to tell in na&iuml;ve language the story of the wanderings
+of the Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>This carol type lasted, and continued to develop, in Austria and
+the Catholic parts of Germany through the sixteenth, seventeenth,
+and eighteenth centuries, and even in the nineteenth. In
+Carinthia in the early nineteenth century, almost every parish
+had its local poet, who added new songs to the old treasury.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-23" id="Nanchor_2-23" href="#Note_2-23">{23}</a>
+
+Particularly popular were the <i>Hirtenlieder</i> or shepherd songs,
+in which the peasant worshippers joined themselves to the
+shepherds of Bethlehem, and sought to share their devout
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_46" id="Page_46" href="#Page_46">46</a>emotions. Often these carols are of the most rustic character
+and in the broadest dialect. They breathe forth a great
+kindliness and homeliness, and one could fill pages with
+quotations. Two more short extracts must, however, suffice
+to show their quality.</p>
+
+<p>How warm and hearty is their feeling for the Child:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Du herzliabste Muater, gib Acht auf d&ouml;s Kind,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Es is ja gar frostig, thuas einfatschen gschwind.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Und du alter Voda, decks Kindlein schen zua,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sonst hats von der K&ouml;lden und Winden kan Ruah.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hiazt nemen mir Urlaub, o gettliches Kind,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thua unser gedenken, verzeich unser S&uuml;nd.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Es freut uns von Herzen dass d'ankomen bist;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Es h&auml;tt uns ja niemand zu helfen gewist.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21">[21]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-24" id="Nanchor_2-24" href="#Note_2-24">{24}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And what fatherly affection is here:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Das Kind is in der Krippen gl&ouml;gn,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">So herzig und so rar!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Mei kl&acirc;ner Hansl war nix dg&ouml;gn,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wenn a glei schener war.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Kolschwarz wie d'Kirchen d'Augen sein,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sunst aber kreidenweiss;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Die H&auml;nd so h&uuml;bsch recht zart und fein,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I hans angr&uuml;rt mit Fleiss.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Aft hats auf mi an Schmutza gmacht,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">An H&ouml;scheza darzue;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">O warst du mein, hoan i gedacht,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Werst wol a munter Bue.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dahoam in meiner Kachelstub</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Liess i brav hoazen ein,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Do in den St&acirc;l kimt &uuml;ber&acirc;l</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Der kalte Wind herein.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22">[22]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-25" id="Nanchor_2-25" href="#Note_2-25">{25}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_47" id="Page_47" href="#Page_47">47</a>We have been following on German ground a mediaeval
+tradition that has continued unbroken down to modern days;
+but we must now take a leap backward in time, and consider
+the beginnings of the Christmas carol in England.</p>
+
+<p>Not till the fifteenth century is there any outburst of
+Christmas poetry in English, though other forms of religious
+lyrics were produced in considerable numbers in the thirteenth
+and early fourteenth centuries. When the carols come at last,
+they appear in the least likely of all places, at the end of a
+versifying of the whole duty of man, by John Awdlay, a blind
+chaplain of Haghmon, in Shropshire. In red letters he writes:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;I pray you, sirus, boothe moore and lase,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sing these caroles in Crist&euml;mas,&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>and then follows a collection of twenty-five songs, some of
+which are genuine Christmas carols, as one now understands
+the word.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-26" id="Nanchor_2-26" href="#Note_2-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A carol, in the modern English sense, may perhaps be defined
+as a religious song, less formal and solemn than the ordinary
+Church hymn&#xfeff;&mdash;an expression of popular and often na&iuml;ve devotional
+feeling, a thing intended to be sung outside rather than
+within church walls. There still linger about the word some
+echoes of its original meaning, for &ldquo;carol&rdquo; had at first a secular
+or even pagan significance: in twelfth-century France it was used
+to describe the amorous song-dance which hailed the coming of
+spring; in Italian it meant a ring- or song-dance; while by
+English writers from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century it
+was used chiefly of singing joined with dancing, and had no necessary
+connection with religion. Much as the mediaeval Church,
+with its ascetic tendencies, disliked religious dancing, it could not
+always suppress it; and in Germany, as we shall see, there was
+choral dancing at Christmas round the cradle of the Christ
+Child. Whether Christmas carols were ever danced to in England
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_48" id="Page_48" href="#Page_48">48</a>is doubtful; many of the old airs and words have, however,
+a glee and playfulness as of human nature following its natural
+instincts of joy even in the celebration of the most sacred
+mysteries. It is probable that some of the carols are religious
+parodies of love-songs, written for the melodies of the originals,
+and many seem by their structure to be indirectly derived from
+the choral dances of farm folk, a notable feature being their
+burden or refrain, a survival of the common outcry of the
+dancers as they leaped around.</p>
+
+<p>Awdlay's carols are perhaps meant to be sung by &ldquo;wassailing
+neighbours, who make their rounds at Christmastide to drink a
+cup and take a gift, and bring good fortune upon the house&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-27" id="Nanchor_2-27" href="#Note_2-27">{27}</a>
+&#xfeff;&mdash;predecessors
+of those carol-singers of rural England in the
+nineteenth century, whom Mr. Hardy depicts so delightfully in
+&ldquo;Under the Greenwood Tree.&rdquo; Carol-singing by a band of
+men who go from house to house is probably a Christianization
+of such heathen processions as we shall meet in less altered forms
+in Part II.</p>
+
+<p>It must not be supposed that the carols Awdlay gives are his
+own work; and their exact date it is impossible to determine. Part
+of his book was composed in 1426, but one at least of the carols
+was probably written in the last half of the fourteenth century.
+They seem indeed to be the later blossomings of the great springtime
+of English literature, the period which produced Chaucer
+and Langland, an innumerable company of minstrels and ballad-makers,
+and the mystical poet, Richard Rolle of Hampole.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Through the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth,
+the flowering continued; and something like two hundred
+carols of this period are known. It is impossible to attempt here
+anything like representative quotation; I can only sketch in
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_49" id="Page_49" href="#Page_49">49</a>roughest outline the main characteristics of English carol literature,
+and refer the reader for examples to Miss Edith Rickert's
+comprehensive collection, &ldquo;Ancient English Carols, MCCCC-MDCC,&rdquo;
+or to the smaller but fine selection in Messrs. E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick's &ldquo;Early English Lyrics.&rdquo; Many
+may have been the work of <i>goliards</i> or wandering scholars, and a
+common feature is the interweaving of Latin with English words.</p>
+
+<p>Some, like the exquisite &ldquo;I sing of a maiden that is makeles,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-29" id="Nanchor_2-29" href="#Note_2-29">{29}</a>
+
+are rather songs to or about the Virgin than strictly Christmas
+carols; the Annunciation rather than the Nativity is their
+theme. Others again tell the whole story of Christ's life. The
+feudal idea is strong in such lines as these:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Mary is quene of all&euml; thinge,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And her sone a lovely kinge.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">God graunt us all&euml; good endinge!</span><br />
+<span class="i5"><i>Regnat dei gracia</i>.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-30" id="Nanchor_2-30" href="#Note_2-30">{30}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On the whole, in spite of some mystical exceptions, the
+mediaeval English carol is somewhat external in its religion;
+there is little deep individual feeling; the caroller sings as a
+member of the human race, whose curse is done away, whose
+nature is exalted by the Incarnation, rather than as one whose
+soul is athirst for God:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Now man is brighter than the sonne;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Now man in heven an hie shall wonne;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Bless&euml;d be God this game is begonne</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And his moder emperesse of helle.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-31" id="Nanchor_2-31" href="#Note_2-31">{31}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Salvation is rather an objective external thing than an inward
+and spiritual process. A man has but to pray devoutly to the
+dear Mother and Child, and they will bring him to the heavenly
+court. It is not so much personal sin as an evil influence in
+humanity, that is cured by the great event of Christmas:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;It was dark, it was dim,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For men that lev&euml;d in gret sin;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lucifer was all within,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Till on the Cristmes day.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_50" id="Page_50" href="#Page_50">50</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">There was weping, there was wo,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For every man to hell gan go.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">It was litel mery tho,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Till on the Cristmes day.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-32" id="Nanchor_2-32" href="#Note_2-32">{32}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>But now that Christ is born, and man redeemed, one may be
+blithe indeed:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Jhesus is that child&euml;s name,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Maide and moder is his dame,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And so oure sorow is turned to game.</span><br />
+<span class="i5"><i>Gloria tibi domine.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Now sitte we downe upon our knee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And pray that child that is so free;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And with gode hert&euml; now sing we</span><br />
+<span class="i5"><i>Gloria tibi domine</i>.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-33" id="Nanchor_2-33" href="#Note_2-33">{33}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Sometimes the religious spirit almost vanishes, and the carol
+becomes little more than a gay pastoral song:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;The shepard upon a hill he satt;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He had on him his tabard and his hat,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">His tar-box, his pipe, and his flagat;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">His name was called Joly Joly Wat,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">For he was a gud herd&euml;s boy.</span><br />
+<span class="i9">Ut hoy!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">For in his pipe he made so much joy.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Whan Wat to Bedlem cum was,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He swet, he had gone faster than a pace;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He found Jesu in a simpell place,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Betwen an ox and an asse.</span><br />
+<span class="i9">Ut hoy!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">For in his pipe he made so much joy.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;Jesu, I offer to thee here my pipe,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">My skirt, my tar-box, and my scripe;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Home to my felowes now will I skipe,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And also look unto my shepe.&rsquo;</span><br />
+<span class="i9">Ut hoy!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">For in his pipe he made so much joy.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-34" id="Nanchor_2-34" href="#Note_2-34">{34}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_51" id="Page_51" href="#Page_51">51</a>But to others again, especially the lullabies, the hardness of
+the Nativity, the shadow of the coming Passion, give a deep
+note of sorrow and pathos; there is the thought of the sword
+that shall pierce Mary's bosom:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;This endris night I saw a sight,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">A maid a cradell kepe,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And ever she song and seid among</span><br />
+<span class="i3">&lsquo;Lullay, my child, and slepe.&rsquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;I may not slepe, but I may wepe,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">I am so wo begone;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Slepe I wold, but I am colde</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And cloth&euml;s have I none.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;Adam's gilt this man had spilt;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That sin greveth me sore.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Man, for thee here shall I be</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Thirty winter and more.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;Here shall I be hanged on a tree,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And die as it is skill.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That I have bought lesse will I nought;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">It is my fader's will.&rsquo;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-35" id="Nanchor_2-35" href="#Note_2-35">{35}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The lullabies are quite the most delightful, as they are the
+most human, of the carols. Here is an exquisitely musical verse
+from one of 1530:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;In a dream late as I lay,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Methought I heard a maiden say</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And speak these words so mild:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;My little son, with thee I play,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And come,&rsquo; she sang, &lsquo;by, lullaby.&rsquo;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Thus rock&euml;d she her child.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>By-by, lullaby, by-by, lullaby,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i3"><i>Rock&euml;d I my child.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>By-by, by-by, by-by, lullaby,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i3"><i>Rock&euml;d I my child.</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-36" id="Nanchor_2-36" href="#Note_2-36">{36}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_52" id="Page_52" href="#Page_52">52</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_53" id="Page_53" href="#Page_53">53</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_54" id="Page_54" href="#Page_54">54</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_55" id="Page_55" href="#Page_55">55</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_III" id="Chapter_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>The French <i>No&euml;l</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;Latin Hymnody in Eighteenth-century France&#xfeff;&mdash;Spanish Christmas
+Verse&#xfeff;&mdash;Traditional Carols of Many Countries&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas Poetry in Protestant
+Germany&#xfeff;&mdash;Post-Reformation Verse in England&#xfeff;&mdash;Modern English Carols.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image05" name="image05" href="images/image05.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image05.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS."
+      title="THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.</p>
+
+<p><i>By Fouquet.</i></p>
+<p>(Mus&eacute;e Cond&eacute;, Chantilly.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Reformation marks a change in the character of Christmas
+poetry in England and the larger part of Germany, and, instead
+of following its development under Protestantism, it will be well
+to break off and turn awhile to countries where Catholic tradition
+remained unbroken. We shall come back later to Post-Reformation
+England and Protestant Germany.</p>
+
+<p>In French&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-1" id="Nanchor_3-1" href="#Note_3-1">{1}</a>
+ there is little or no Christmas poetry, religious in
+character, before the fifteenth century; the earlier carols that
+have come down to us are songs rather of feasting and worldly
+rejoicing than of sacred things. The true <i>No&euml;l</i> begins to appear
+in fifteenth-century manuscripts, but it was not till the following
+century that it attained its fullest vogue and was spread all over
+the country by the printing presses. Such <i>No&euml;ls</i> seem to have
+been written by clerks or recognized poets, either for old airs or
+for specially composed music. &ldquo;To a great extent,&rdquo; says Mr.
+Gregory Smith, &ldquo;they anticipate the spirit which stimulated the
+Reformers to turn the popular and often obscene songs into good
+and godly ballads.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-2" id="Nanchor_3-2" href="#Note_3-2">{2}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Some of the early <i>No&euml;ls</i> are not unlike the English carols of
+the period, and are often half in Latin, half in French. Here
+are a few such &ldquo;macaronic&rdquo; verses:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;C&eacute;l&eacute;brons la naissance</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Nostri Salvatoris</i>,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_56" id="Page_56" href="#Page_56">56</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qui fait la complaisance</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Dei sui Patris</i>.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Cet enfant tout aimable,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>In nocte medi&acirc;</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Est n&eacute; dans une &eacute;table,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>De cast&acirc; Mari&acirc;</i>.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Mille esprits ang&eacute;liques,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Juncti pastoribus</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Chantent dans leur musique,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Puer vobis natus</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Au Dieu par qui nous sommes,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Gloria in excelsis</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et la paix soit aux hommes</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Bonae voluntatis</i>.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Qu'on ne soit insensible!</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Adeamus omnes</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">A Dieu rendu passible,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Propter nos mortales</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et tous, de compagnie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Deprecemur eum</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qu&rsquo;&agrave; la fin de la vie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Det regnum beatum</i>.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-3" id="Nanchor_3-3" href="#Note_3-3">{3}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The sixteenth century is the most interesting <i>No&euml;l</i> period;
+we find then a conflict of tendencies, a conflict between
+Gallic realism and broad humour and the love of refined language
+due to the study of the ancient classics. There are many anonymous
+pieces of this time, but three important <i>No&euml;listes</i> stand out
+by name: Lucas le Moigne, Cur&eacute; of Saint Georges, Puy-la-Garde,
+near Poitiers; Jean Daniel, called &ldquo;Ma&icirc;tre Mitou,&rdquo; a
+priest-organist at Nantes; and Nicholas Denisot of Le Mans,
+whose <i>No&euml;ls</i> appeared posthumously under the pseudonym of
+&ldquo;Comte d'Alsinoys.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lucas le Moigne represents the <i>esprit gaulois</i>, the spirit that is
+often called &ldquo;Rabelaisian,&rdquo; though it is only one side of the
+genius of Rabelais. The good Cur&eacute; was a contemporary of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_57" id="Page_57" href="#Page_57">57</a>the author of &ldquo;Pantagruel.&rdquo; His &ldquo;Chansons de No&euml;ls nouvaulx&rdquo;
+was published in 1520, and contains carols in very varied styles,
+some na&iuml;ve and pious, others hardly quotable at the present day.
+One of his best-known pieces is a dialogue between the Virgin
+and the singers of the carol: Mary is asked and answers questions
+about the wondrous happenings of her life. Here are four verses
+about the Nativity:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Or nous dites, Marie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Les neuf mois accomplis,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Naquit le fruit de vie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Comme l'Ange avoit dit?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&#xfeff;&mdash;Oui, sans nulle peine</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et sans oppression,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Naquit de tout le monde</span><br />
+<span class="i2">La vraie R&eacute;demption.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Or nous dites, Marie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Du lieu imp&eacute;rial,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Fut-ce en chambre par&eacute;e,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ou en Palais royal?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&#xfeff;&mdash;En une pauvre &eacute;table</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ouverte &agrave; l'environ</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ou n'avait feu, ni flambe</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ni latte, ni chevron.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Or nous dites, Marie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qui vous vint visiter;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Les bourgeois de la ville</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Vous ont-ils confort&eacute;e?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&#xfeff;&mdash;Oncque, homme ni femme</span><br />
+<span class="i2">N'en eut compassion,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Non plus que d'un esclave</span><br />
+<span class="i2">D&rsquo;&eacute;trange r&eacute;gion.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Or nous dites, Marie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Des pauvres pastoureaux</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qui gardaient &egrave;s montagnes</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Leurs brebis &amp; aigneaux.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_58" id="Page_58" href="#Page_58">58</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">&#xfeff;&mdash;Ceux-l&agrave; m'ont visit&eacute;e</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Par grande affection;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Moult me fut agr&eacute;able</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Leur visitation.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-4" id="Nanchor_3-4" href="#Note_3-4">{4}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The influence of the &ldquo;Pl&eacute;iade,&rdquo; with its care for form, its
+respect for classical models, its enrichment of the French tongue
+with new Latin words, is shown by Jean Daniel, who also owes
+something to the poets of the late fifteenth century. Two
+stanzas may be quoted from him:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">&ldquo;C'est ung tr&egrave;s grant myst&egrave;re</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Qu'ung roy de si hault pris</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Vient naistre en lieu aust&egrave;re,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">En si meschant pourpris:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Le Roy de tous les bons espritz,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">C'est J&eacute;sus nostre fr&egrave;re,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Le Roy de tous les bons espritz,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Duquel sommes apris.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Saluons le doulx J&eacute;suchrist,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Notre Dieu, notre fr&egrave;re,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Saluons le doulx J&eacute;suchrist,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Chantons Noel d'esprit!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">En luy faisant pri&egrave;re,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Soyons de son party,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Qu'en sa haulte emperi&egrave;re</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Ayons lieu de party;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Comme il nous a droict apparty,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">J&eacute;sus nostre bon fr&egrave;re,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Comme il nous a droict apparty</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Au c&eacute;leste convy.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Saluons, etc.</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Amen. Noel.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-5" id="Nanchor_3-5" href="#Note_3-5">{5}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>As for Denisot, I may give two charming verses from one of
+his pastorals:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Suz, Bergiez, en campaigne,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Laissez l&agrave; vos troppeaux,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_59" id="Page_59" href="#Page_59">59</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Avant qu'on s'accompaigne,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Enflez vos chalumeaux.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Enflez vos cornemuses,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dansez ensemblement,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et vos doucettes muses,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Accollez doucement.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-6" id="Nanchor_3-6" href="#Note_3-6">{6}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>One result of the Italian influences which came over
+France in the sixteenth century was a fondness for diminutives.
+Introduced into carols, these have sometimes a very
+graceful effect:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Entre le boeuf &amp; le bouvet,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Noel nouvellet,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Voulust J&eacute;sus nostre maistre,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">En un petit hostelet,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Noel nouvellet,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">En ce pauvre monde naistre,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">O Noel nouvellet!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Ne couche, ne bercelet,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Noel nouvellet,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ne trouv&egrave;rent en cette estre,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Fors ung petit drappelet,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Noel nouvellet,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Pour envelopper le maistre,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">O Noel nouvellet!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-7" id="Nanchor_3-7" href="#Note_3-7">{7}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>These diminutives are found again, though fewer, in a
+particularly delightful carol:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">&ldquo;Laissez pa&icirc;tre vos bestes</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Pastoureaux, par monts et par vaux;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Laissez pa&icirc;tre vos bestes,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Et allons chanter Nau.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">J'ai ou&iuml; chanter le rossignol,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qui chantoit un chant si nouveau,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Si haut, si beau,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Si r&eacute;sonneau,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_60" id="Page_60" href="#Page_60">60</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Il m'y rompoit la t&ecirc;te,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Tant il chantoit et flageoloit:</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Adonc pris ma houlette</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Pour aller voir Naulet.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Laissez pa&icirc;tre, etc.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-8" id="Nanchor_3-8" href="#Note_3-8">{8}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The singer goes on to tell how he went with his fellow-shepherds
+and shepherdesses to Bethlehem:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Nous d&icirc;mes tous une chanson</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Les autres en vinrent au son,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Chacun prenant</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Son compagnon:</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Je prendrai Guillemette,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Margot tu prendras gros Guillot;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Qui prendra P&eacute;ronelle?</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Ce sera Talebot.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Laissez pa&icirc;tre, etc.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Ne chantons plus, nous tardons trop,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Pensons d'aller courir le trot.</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Viens-tu, Margot?&#xfeff;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i4">J'attends Guillot.&#xfeff;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">J'ai rompu ma courette,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Il faut ramancher mon sabot.&#xfeff;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Or, tiens cette aiguillette,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Elle y servira trop.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Laissez pa&icirc;tre, etc.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Nous courumes de grand&rsquo; roideur</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Pour voir notre doux R&eacute;dempteur</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Et Cr&eacute;ateur</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Et Formateur,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Qui &eacute;tait tendre d'aage</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et sans linceux en grand besoin,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Il gisait en la cr&ecirc;che</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Sur un botteau de foin.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Laissez pa&icirc;tre, etc.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_61" id="Page_61" href="#Page_61">61</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Sa m&egrave;re avecque lui &eacute;tait:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et Joseph si lui &eacute;clairait,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Point ne semblait</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Au beau fillet,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Il n&rsquo;&eacute;tait point son p&egrave;re;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Je l'aper&ccedil;us bien au cameau (<i>visage</i>)</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Il semblait &agrave; sa m&egrave;re,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Encore est-il plus beau.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Laissez pa&icirc;tre, etc.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>This is but one of a large class of French <i>No&euml;ls</i> which make
+the Nativity more real, more present, by representing the singer
+as one of a company of worshippers going to adore the Child.
+Often these are shepherds, but sometimes they are simply the
+inhabitants of a parish, a town, a countryside, or a province, bearing
+presents of their own produce to the little Jesus and His
+parents. Barrels of wine, fish, fowls, sucking-pigs, pastry, milk,
+fruit, firewood, birds in a cage&#xfeff;&mdash;such are their homely gifts.
+Often there is a strongly satiric note: the peculiarities and weaknesses
+of individuals are hit off; the reputation of a place is
+suggested, a village whose people are famous for their stinginess
+offers cider that is half rain-water; elsewhere the inhabitants are
+so given to law-suits that they can hardly find time to go to
+Bethlehem.</p>
+
+<p>Such <i>No&euml;ls</i> with their vivid local colour, are valuable pictures
+of the manners of their time. They are, unfortunately, too long
+for quotation here, but any reader who cares to follow up the
+subject will find some interesting specimens in a little collection
+of French carols that can be bought for ten <i>centimes</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-9" id="Nanchor_3-9" href="#Note_3-9">{9}</a>
+ They are
+of various dates; some probably were written as late as the
+eighteenth century. In that century, and indeed in the seventeenth,
+the best Christmas verses are those of a provincial and
+rustic character, and especially those in <i>patois</i>; the more cultivated
+poets, with their formal classicism, can ill enter into the spirit of
+the festival. Of the learned writers the best is a woman, Fran&ccedil;oise
+Paschal, of Lyons (b. about 1610); in spite of her
+Latinity she shows a real feeling for her subjects. Some of her
+<i>No&euml;ls</i> are dialogues between the sacred personages; one presents
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_62" id="Page_62" href="#Page_62">62</a>Joseph and Mary as weary wayfarers seeking shelter at all the
+inns of Bethlehem and everywhere refused by host or hostess:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&ldquo;<i>Saint Joseph.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Voyons la <i>Rose-Rouge</i>.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Madame de c&eacute;ans,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Auriez-vous quelque bouge</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Pour de petites gens?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>L'H&ocirc;tesse.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Vous n'avez pas la mine</span><br />
+<span class="i2">D'avoir de grands tr&eacute;sors;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Voyez chez ma voisine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Car, quant &agrave; moi, je dors.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Saint Joseph.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Monsieur des <i>Trois-Couronnes</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Avez-vous logement,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Chez vous pour trois personnes,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Quelque trou seulement.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>L'H&ocirc;te.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Vous perdez votre peine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Vous venez un peu tard,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ma maison est fort pleine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Allez quelqu'autre part.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-10" id="Nanchor_3-10" href="#Note_3-10">{10}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The most remarkable of the <i>patois No&euml;listes</i> of the seventeenth
+century are the Proven&ccedil;al Saboly and the Burgundian La
+Monnoye, the one kindly and tender, the other witty and
+sarcastic. Here is one of Saboly's Proven&ccedil;al <i>No&euml;ls</i>:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Quand la mi&egrave;jonue sounavo,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ai saut&agrave; d&oacute;u liech au s&ograve;u;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ai vist un b&egrave;l ange que cantavo</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Milo fes pu dous qu'un roussign&ograve;u.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Lei mastin d&oacute;u vesinage</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Se soun toutes atroupa;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_63" id="Page_63" href="#Page_63">63</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">N'avien jamai vist aqu&eacute;u visage</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Se soun tout-d'un-cop mes &agrave; japa.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Lei pastre dessus la paio</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dourmien coume de soucas;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Quand an aussi lou bru dei sounaio</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Au cresegu qu'ero lou souiras.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">S'eron de gent resounable,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Vendrien s&egrave;ns &egrave;stre envita:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Trouvarien dins un petit estable</span><br />
+<span class="i2">La lumiero emai la verita.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24">[24]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-11" id="Nanchor_3-11" href="#Note_3-11">{11}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>As for La Monnoye, here is a translation of one of his satirical
+verses:&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;When in the time of frost Jesus Christ came into
+the world the ass and ox warmed Him with their breath in the
+stable. How many asses and oxen I know in this kingdom of
+Gaul! How many asses and oxen I know who would not
+have done as much!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-12" id="Nanchor_3-12" href="#Note_3-12">{12}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Apart from the rustic <i>No&euml;ls</i>, the eighteenth century produced
+little French Christmas poetry of any charm. Some of the carols
+most sung in French churches to-day belong, however, to this
+period, <i>e.g.</i>, the &ldquo;Venez, divin Messie&rdquo; of the Abb&eacute; Pellegrin.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-13" id="Nanchor_3-13" href="#Note_3-13">{13}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">One cannot leave the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries without some mention of its Latin hymnody. From a
+date near 1700, apparently, comes the sweet and solemn &ldquo;Adeste,
+fideles&rdquo;; by its music and its rhythm, perhaps, rather than by its
+actual words it has become the best beloved of Christmas hymns.
+The present writer has heard it sung with equal reverence and
+heartiness in English, German, French, and Italian churches, and
+no other hymn seems so full of the spirit of Christmas devotion&#xfeff;&mdash;wonder,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_64" id="Page_64" href="#Page_64">64</a>awe, and tenderness, and the sense of reconciliation
+between Heaven and earth. Composed probably in France,
+&ldquo;Adeste, fideles&rdquo; came to be used in English as well as French
+Roman Catholic churches during the eighteenth century. In
+1797 it was sung at the chapel of the Portuguese Embassy in
+London; hence no doubt its once common name of &ldquo;Portuguese
+hymn.&rdquo; It was first used in an Anglican church in 1841, when
+the Tractarian Oakley translated it for his congregation at
+Margaret Street Chapel, London.</p>
+
+<p>Another fine Latin hymn of the eighteenth-century French
+Church is Charles Coffin's &ldquo;Jam desinant suspiria.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-14" id="Nanchor_3-14" href="#Note_3-14">{14}</a>
+ It
+appeared in the Parisian Breviary in 1736, and is well known in
+English as &ldquo;God from on high hath heard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">The Revolution and the decay of Catholicism in France seem
+to have killed the production of popular carols. The later nineteenth
+century, however, saw a revival of interest in the <i>No&euml;l</i> as a
+literary form. In 1875 the bicentenary of Saboly's death was
+celebrated by a competition for a <i>No&euml;l</i> in the Proven&ccedil;al tongue,
+and something of the same kind has been done in Brittany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-15" id="Nanchor_3-15" href="#Note_3-15">{15}</a>
+
+The <i>No&euml;l</i> has attracted by its aesthetic charm even poets who are
+anything but devout; Th&eacute;ophile Gautier, for instance, wrote a
+graceful Christmas carol, &ldquo;Le ciel est noir, la terre est blanche.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On a general view of the vernacular Christmas poetry of
+France it must be admitted that the devotional note is not very
+strong; there is indeed a formal reverence, a courtly homage,
+paid to the Infant Saviour, and the miraculous in the Gospel
+story is taken for granted; but there is little sense of awe and
+mystery. In harmony with the realistic instincts of the nation,
+everything is dramatically, very humanly conceived; at times,
+indeed, the personages of the Nativity scenes quite lose their sacred
+character, and the treatment degenerates into grossness. At its
+best, however, the French <i>No&euml;l</i> has a gaiety and a grace, joined
+to a genuine, if not very deep, piety, that are extremely charming.
+Reading these rustic songs, we are carried in imagination to
+French countrysides; we think of the long walk through the
+snow to the Midnight Mass, the cheerful <i>r&eacute;veillon</i> spread on the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_65" id="Page_65" href="#Page_65">65</a>return, the family gathered round the hearth, feasting on wine
+and chestnuts and <i>boudins</i>, and singing in traditional strains the
+joys of <i>No&euml;l</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Across the Pyrenees, in Spain, the late sixteenth and early
+seventeenth centuries saw a great output of Christmas verse.
+Among the chief writers were Juan L&oacute;pez de Ubeda, Francisco
+de Oca&ntilde;a, and Jos&eacute; de Valdivielso.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-16" id="Nanchor_3-16" href="#Note_3-16">{16}</a>
+ Their <i>villancicos</i> remind one
+of the paintings of Murillo; they have the same facility, the
+same tender and graceful sentiment, without much depth. They
+lack the homely flavour, the quaintness that make the French and
+German folk-carols so delightful; they have not the rustic tang,
+and yet they charm by their simplicity and sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>Here are a few stanzas by Oca&ntilde;a:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Dentro de un pobre pesebre</span><br />
+<span class="i2">y cobijado con heno</span><br />
+<span class="i2">yace Jesus Nazareno.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">En el heno yace echado</span><br />
+<span class="i2">el hijo de Dios eterno,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">para librar del infierno</span><br />
+<span class="i2">al hombre que hubo criado,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">y por matar el pecado</span><br />
+<span class="i2">el heno tiene por bueno</span><br />
+<span class="i2">nuestro Jesus Nazareno.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Est&aacute; entre dos animales</span><br />
+<span class="i2">que le calientan del frio,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">quien remedia nuestros males</span><br />
+<span class="i2">con su grande poder&iacute;o:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">es su reino y se&ntilde;or&iacute;o</span><br />
+<span class="i2">el mundo y el cielo sereno,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">y agora duerme en el heno.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Tiene por bueno sufrir</span><br />
+<span class="i2">el frio y tanta fortuna,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">sin tener ropa ninguna</span><br />
+<span class="i2">con que se abrigar ni cubrir,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_66" id="Page_66" href="#Page_66">66</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">y por darnos el vivir</span><br />
+<span class="i2">padeci&oacute; frio en el heno,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">nuestro Jesus Nazareno.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25">[25]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-17" id="Nanchor_3-17" href="#Note_3-17">{17}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>More of a peasant flavour is found in some snatches of
+Christmas carols given by Fernan Caballero in her sketch, &ldquo;La
+Noche de Navidad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">&ldquo;Ha nacido en un portal,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Llenito de telara&ntilde;as,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Entre la mula y el buey</span><br />
+<span class="i2">El Redentor de las almas.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">En el portal de Belen</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hay estrella, sol y luna:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">La Virgen y San Jos&eacute;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Y el ni&ntilde;o que est&aacute; en la cuna.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">En Belen tocan &aacute; fuego,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Del portal sale la llama,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Es una estrella del cielo,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Que ha caido entre la paja.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Yo soy un pobre gitano</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Que vengo de Egipto aqu&iacute;,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Y al ni&ntilde;o de Dios le traigo</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Un gallo quiquiriqu&iacute;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Yo soy un pobre gallego</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Que vengo de la Galicia,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Y al ni&ntilde;o de Dios le traigo</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lienzo para una camisa.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_67" id="Page_67" href="#Page_67">67</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Al ni&ntilde;o recien nacido</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Todos le traen un don;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Yo soy chico y nada tengo;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Le traigo mi corazon.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26">[26]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-18" id="Nanchor_3-18" href="#Note_3-18">{18}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In nearly every western language one finds traditional Christmas
+carols. Europe is everywhere alive with them; they spring up
+like wild flowers. Some interesting Italian specimens are given
+by Signor de Gubernatis in his &ldquo;Usi Natalizi.&rdquo; Here are a
+few stanzas from a Bergamesque cradle-song of the Blessed
+Virgin:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">&ldquo;Dormi, dormi, o bel bambin,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Re divin.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dormi, dormi, o fantolin.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Fa la nanna, o caro figlio,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Re del Ciel,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Tanto bel, grazioso giglio.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Chi&uuml;di i l&uuml;mi, o mio tesor,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dolce amor,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Di quest&rsquo; alma, almo Signor;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Fa la nanna, o regio infante,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sopra il fien,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Caro ben, celeste amante.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Perch&egrave; piangi, o bambinell,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Forse il giel</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ti d&agrave; noia, o l'asinell?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Fa la nanna, o paradiso</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Del mio cor,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Redentor, ti bacio il viso.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27">[27]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-19" id="Nanchor_3-19" href="#Note_3-19">{19}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_68" id="Page_68" href="#Page_68">68</a>With this lullaby may be compared a singularly lovely and
+quite untranslatable Latin cradle-song of unknown origin:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Dormi, fili, dormi! mater</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Cantat unigenito:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dormi, puer, dormi! pater,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Nato clamat parvulo:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Millies tibi laudes canimus</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Mille, mille, millies.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Lectum stravi tibi soli,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Dormi, nate bellule!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Stravi lectum foeno molli:</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Dormi, mi animule.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Millies tibi laudes canimus</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Mille, mille, millies.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Ne quid desit, sternam rosis,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Sternam foenum violis,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Pavimentum hyacinthis</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Et praesepe liliis.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Millies tibi laudes canimus</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Mille, mille, millies.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_69" id="Page_69" href="#Page_69">69</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Si vis musicam, pastores</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Convocabo protinus;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Illis nulli sunt priores;</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Nemo canit castius.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Millies tibi laudes canimus</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Mille, mille, millies.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-21" id="Nanchor_3-21" href="#Note_3-21">{21}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Curious little poems are found in Latin and other languages,
+making a dialogue of the cries of animals at the news of
+Christ's birth.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-22" id="Nanchor_3-22" href="#Note_3-22">{22}</a>
+ The following French example is fairly
+typical:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Comme les bestes autrefois</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Parloient mieux latin que fran&ccedil;ois,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Le coq, de loin voyant le fait,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">S&rsquo;&eacute;cria: <i>Christus natus est.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Le b&oelig;uf, d'un air tout &eacute;baubi,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Demande: <i>Ubi? Ubi? Ubi?</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">La ch&egrave;vre, se tordant le groin,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">R&eacute;pond que c'est &agrave; <i>B&eacute;thl&eacute;em</i>.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Maistre Baudet, <i>curiosus</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">De l'aller voir, dit: <i>Eamus</i>;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et, droit sur ses pattes, le veau</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Beugle deux fois: <i>Volo, Volo!</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28">[28]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-23" id="Nanchor_3-23" href="#Note_3-23">{23}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In Wales, in the early nineteenth century, carol-singing was
+more popular, perhaps, than in England; the carols were sung to
+the harp, in church at the <i>Plygain</i> or early morning service on
+Christmas Day, in the homes of the people, and at the doors of
+the houses by visitors.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-24" id="Nanchor_3-24" href="#Note_3-24">{24}</a>
+ In Ireland, too, the custom of carol-singing
+then prevailed.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-25" id="Nanchor_3-25" href="#Note_3-25">{25}</a>
+ Dr. Douglas Hyde, in his &ldquo;Religious
+Songs of Connacht,&rdquo; gives and translates an interesting Christmas
+hymn in Irish, from which two verses may be quoted. They set
+forth the great paradox of the Incarnation:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Little babe who art so great,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Child so young who art so old,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_70" id="Page_70" href="#Page_70">70</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">In the manger small his room,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Whom not heaven itself could hold.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Father&#xfeff;&mdash;not more old than thou?</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Mother&#xfeff;&mdash;younger, can it be?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Older, younger is the Son,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Younger, older, she than he.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-27" id="Nanchor_3-27" href="#Note_3-27">{27}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Even in dour Scotland, with its hatred of religious festivals,
+some kind of carolling survived here and there among Highland
+folk, and a remarkable and very &ldquo;Celtic&rdquo; Christmas song has
+been translated from the Gaelic by Mr. J. A. Campbell. It
+begins:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Sing hey the Gift, sing ho the Gift,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sing hey the Gift of the Living,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Son of the Dawn, Son of the Star,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Son of the Planet, Son of the Far [twice],</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sing hey the Gift, sing ho the Gift.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-28" id="Nanchor_3-28" href="#Note_3-28">{28}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image06" name="image06" href="images/image06.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image06.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY"
+      title="THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY" />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY</p>
+
+<p>MASTER OF THE SEVEN SORROWS OF MARY</p>
+<p>(ALSO ATTRIBUTED TO JOACHIM PATINIR)</p>
+<p>(<i>Vienna: Imperial Gallery</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image07" name="image07" href="images/image07.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image07.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="SINGING &ldquo;VOM HIMMEL HOCH&rdquo; FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS."
+      title="SINGING &ldquo;VOM HIMMEL HOCH&rdquo; FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">SINGING &ldquo;VOM HIMMEL HOCH&rdquo; FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS.</p>
+
+<p><i>By Ludwig Richter.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Before I close this study with a survey of Christmas poetry in
+England after the Reformation, it may be interesting to follow the
+developments in Protestant Germany. The Reformation gave a
+great impetus to German religious song, and we owe to it some
+of the finest of Christmas hymns. It is no doubt largely due to
+Luther, that passionate lover of music and folk-poetry, that hymns
+have practically become the liturgy of German Protestantism;
+yet he did but give typical expression to the natural instincts
+of his countrymen for song. Luther, though a rebel, was no
+Puritan; we can hardly call him an iconoclast; he had a conservative
+mind, which only gradually became loosened from its
+old attachments. His was an essentially artistic nature: &ldquo;I
+would fain,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;see all arts, especially music, in the service
+of Him who has given and created them,&rdquo; and in the matter of
+hymnody he continued, in many respects, the mediaeval German
+tradition. Homely, kindly, a lover of children, he had a deep
+feeling for the festival of Christmas; and not only did he translate
+into German &ldquo;A solis ortus cardine&rdquo; and &ldquo;Veni, redemptor
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_71" id="Page_71" href="#Page_71">71</a>gentium,&rdquo; but he wrote for his little son Hans one of the most
+delightful and touching of all Christmas hymns&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Vom Himmel
+hoch, da komm ich her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ich bring euch gute neue M&auml;r,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Der guten M&auml;r bring ich so viel,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Davon ich singen und sagen will.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Euch ist ein Kindlein heut gebor'n</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Von einer Jungfrau auserkor'n,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ein Kindelein so zart und fein,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Das soll eu'r Freud und Wonne sein.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Merk auf, mein Herz, und sich dort hin:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Was liegt doch in dem Kripplein drin?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wess ist das sch&ouml;ne Kindelein?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Es ist das liebe Jesulein.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Ach Herr, du Sch&ouml;pfer aller Ding,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wie bist du worden so gering,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dass du da liegst auf d&uuml;rrem Gras,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Davon ein Rind und Esel ass?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Mach dir ein rein sanft Bettelein,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Zu ruhen in mein's Herzens Schrein,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dass ich nimmer vergesse dein.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Davon ich allzeit fr&ouml;hlich sei,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Zu springen, singen immer frei</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Das rechte Lied dem Gottessohn</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Mit Herzenslust, den s&uuml;ssen Ton.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29">[29]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-29" id="Nanchor_3-29" href="#Note_3-29">{29}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_72" id="Page_72" href="#Page_72">72</a>&ldquo;Vom Himmel hoch&rdquo; has qualities of simplicity, directness,
+and warm human feeling which link it to the less ornate forms of
+carol literature. Its first verse is adapted from a secular song; its
+melody may, perhaps, have been composed by Luther himself.
+There is another Christmas hymn of Luther's, too&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Vom
+Himmel kam der Engel Schar&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;written for use when &ldquo;Vom
+Himmel hoch&rdquo; was thought too long, and he also composed
+additional verses for the mediaeval &ldquo;Gelobet seist du, Jesu
+Christ.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dass du Mensch geboren bist</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Von einer Jungfrau, das ist wahr,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Des freuet sich der Engel Schar.</span><br />
+<span class="i7"><i>Kyrieleis!</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Des ew'gen Vaters einig Kind</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Jetzt man in der Krippe find't,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In unser armes Fleisch und Blut</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Verkleidet sich das ewig Gut.</span><br />
+<span class="i7"><i>Kyrieleis!</i><a class="pagenum" name="Page_73" id="Page_73" href="#Page_73">73</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Den aller Weltkreis nie beschloss,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Der lieget in Marie'n Schoss;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Er ist ein Kindlein worden klein,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Der alle Ding&rsquo; erh&auml;lt allein.</span><br />
+<span class="i7"><i>Kyrieleis!</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30">[30]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-31" id="Nanchor_3-31" href="#Note_3-31">{31}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The first stanza alone is mediaeval, the remaining six of the
+hymn are Luther's.</p>
+
+<p>The Christmas hymns of Paul Gerhardt, the seventeenth-century
+Berlin pastor, stand next to Luther's. They are more
+subjective, more finished, less direct and forcible. Lacking the
+finest qualities of poetry, they are nevertheless impressive by their
+dignity and heartiness. Made for music, the words alone hardly
+convey the full power of these hymns. They should be heard
+sung to the old chorales, massive, yet sweet, by the lusty voices
+of a German congregation. To English people they are probably
+best known through the verses introduced into the &ldquo;Christmas
+Oratorio,&rdquo; where the old airs are given new beauty by Bach's
+marvellous harmonies. The tone of devotion, one feels, in
+Gerhardt and Bach is the same, immeasurably greater as is the
+genius of the composer; in both there is a profound joy in the
+Redemption begun by the Nativity, a robust faith joined to a
+deep sense of the mystery of suffering, and a keen sympathy with
+childhood, a tender fondness for the Infant King.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_74" id="Page_74" href="#Page_74">74</a>The finest perhaps of Gerhardt's hymns is the Advent &ldquo;Wie
+soll ich dich empfangen?&rdquo; (&ldquo;How shall I fitly meet Thee?&rdquo;),
+which comes early in the &ldquo;Christmas Oratorio.&rdquo; More closely
+connected with the Nativity, however, are the <i>Weihnachtslieder</i>,
+&ldquo;Wir singen dir, Emanuel,&rdquo; &ldquo;O Jesu Christ, dein Kripplein ist,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Fr&ouml;hlich soll mein Herze springen,&rdquo; &ldquo;Ich steh an deiner
+Krippen hier,&rdquo; and others. I give a few verses from the third:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Fr&ouml;hlich soll mein Herze springen</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Dieser Zeit,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Da f&uuml;r Freud</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Alle Engel singen.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">H&ouml;rt, h&ouml;rt, wie mit vollen Choren</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Alle Luft</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Laute ruft:</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Christus ist geboren.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Nun, er liegt in seiner Krippen,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Ruft zu sich</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Mich und dich,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Spricht mit s&uuml;ssen Lippen:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lasset fahrn, O lieben Br&uuml;der</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Was euch qu&auml;lt,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Was euch fehlt;</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Ich bring alles wieder.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">S&uuml;sses Heil, lass dich umfangen;</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Lass mich dir,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Meine Zier,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Unverr&uuml;ckt anhangen.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Du bist meines Lebens Leben;</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Nun kann ich</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Mich durch dich</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Wohl zufrieden geben.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31">[31]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-33" id="Nanchor_3-33" href="#Note_3-33">{33}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_75" id="Page_75" href="#Page_75">75</a>One more German Christmas hymn must be mentioned,
+Gerhard Tersteegen's &ldquo;Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr
+englischen Ch&ouml;re.&rdquo; Tersteegen represents one phase of the
+mystical and emotional reaction against the religious formalism
+and indifference of the eighteenth century. In the Lutheran
+Church the Pietists, though they never seceded, somewhat
+resembled the English Methodists; the Moravians formed a
+separate community, while from the &ldquo;Reformed&rdquo; or Calvinistic
+Church certain circles of spiritually-minded people, who drew
+inspiration from the mediaeval mystics and later writers like
+B&ouml;hme and Madame Guyon, gathered into more or less independent
+groups for religious intercourse. Of these last Tersteegen
+is a representative singer. Here are three verses from his best
+known Christmas hymn:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Ch&ouml;re,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Singet dem Herrn, dem Heiland der Menschen, zur Ehre:</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Sehet doch da!</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Gott will so freundlich und nah</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Zu den Verlornen sich kehren.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_76" id="Page_76" href="#Page_76">76</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">K&ouml;nig der Ehren, aus Liebe geworden zum Kinde,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dem ich auch wieder mein Herz in der Liebe verbinde;</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Du sollst es sein,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Den ich erw&auml;hle allein,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Ewig entsag&rsquo; ich der S&uuml;nde.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Treuer Immanuel, werd&rsquo; auch in mir neu geboren;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Komm doch, mein Heiland, und lass mich nicht l&auml;nger verloren;</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Wohne in mir,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Mach mich ganz eines mit dir,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Den du zum Leben erkoren.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32">[32]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-35" id="Nanchor_3-35" href="#Note_3-35">{35}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The note of personal religion, as distinguished from theological
+doctrine, is stronger in German Christmas poetry than in
+that of any other nation&#xfeff;&mdash;the birth of Christ in the individual
+soul, not merely the redemption of man in general, is a central
+idea.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">We come back at last to England. The great carol period is,
+as has already been said, the fifteenth, and the first half of the
+sixteenth, century; after the Reformation the English domestic
+Christmas largely loses its religious colouring, and the best carols
+of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are songs of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_77" id="Page_77" href="#Page_77">77</a>feasting and pagan ceremonies rather than of the Holy Child and
+His Mother. There is no lack of fine Christmas verse in the
+Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, but for the most part it
+belongs to the oratory and the chamber rather than the hall.
+The Nativity has become a subject for private contemplation, for
+individual devotion, instead of, as in the later Middle Ages, a
+matter for common jubilation, a wonder-story that really
+happened, in which, all alike and all together, the serious and the
+frivolous could rejoice, something that, with all its marvel, could
+be taken as a matter of course, like the return of the seasons or
+the rising of the sun on the just and on the unjust.</p>
+
+<p>English Christmas poetry after the mid-sixteenth century is,
+then, individual rather than communal in its spirit; it is also a
+thing less of the people, more of the refined and cultivated few.
+The Puritanism which so deeply affected English religion was
+abstract rather than dramatic in its conception of Christianity, it
+was concerned less with the events of the Saviour's life than with
+Redemption as a transaction between God and man; St. Paul
+and the Old Testament rather than the gospels were its inspiration.
+Moreover, the material was viewed not as penetrated by
+and revealing the spiritual, but as sheer impediment blocking out
+the vision of spiritual things. Hence the extremer Puritans were
+completely out of touch with the sensuous poetry of Christmas,
+a festival which, as we shall see, they actually suppressed when
+they came into power.</p>
+
+<p>The singing of sacred carols by country people continued,
+indeed, but the creative artistic impulse was lost. True carols
+after the Reformation tend to be doggerel, and no doubt many of
+the traditional pieces printed in such collections as Bramley and
+Stainer's&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33">[33]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-37" id="Nanchor_3-37" href="#Note_3-37">{37}</a>
+ are debased survivals from the Middle Ages, or
+perhaps new words written for old tunes. Such carols as &ldquo;God
+rest you merry, gentlemen,&rdquo; have unspeakably delightful airs,
+and the words charm us moderns by their quaintness and rusticity,
+but they are far from the exquisite loveliness of the mediaeval
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_78" id="Page_78" href="#Page_78">78</a>things. Gleams of great beauty are, however, sometimes found
+amid matter that in the process of transmission has almost ceased
+to be poetry. Here, for instance, are five stanzas from the
+traditional &ldquo;Cherry-tree Carol&rdquo;:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;As Joseph was a-walking,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">He heard an angel sing:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;This night shall be born</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Our heavenly King.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;He neither shall be born</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In housen nor in hall,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Nor in the place of Paradise,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">But in an ox's stall.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;He neither shall be clothed</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In purple nor in pall,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But all in fair linen</span><br />
+<span class="i3">As wear babies all.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;He neither shall be rocked</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In silver nor in gold,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But in a wooden cradle</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That rocks on the mould.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;He neither shall be christened</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In white wine nor red,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But with fair spring water</span><br />
+<span class="i3">With which we were christened.&rsquo;&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The old carols sung by country folk have often not much to
+do with the Nativity; they are sometimes rhymed lives of Christ
+or legends of the Holy Childhood. Of the latter class the
+strangest is &ldquo;The Bitter Withy,&rdquo; discovered in Herefordshire by
+Mr. Frank Sidgwick. It tells how the little Jesus asked three
+lads to play with Him at ball. But they refused:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;&rsquo;O we are lords&rsquo; and ladies&rsquo; sons,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Born in bower or in hall;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And you are but a poor maid's child,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Born in an oxen's stall.&rsquo;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_79" id="Page_79" href="#Page_79">79</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;If I am but a poor maid's child,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Born in an oxen's stall,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I will let you know at the very latter end</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That I am above you all.&rsquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">So he built him a bridge with the beams of the sun,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And over the sea went he,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And after followed the three jolly jerdins,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And drowned they were all three.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Then Mary mild called home her child,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And laid him across her knee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And with a handful of green withy twigs</span><br />
+<span class="i3">She gave him slashes three.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;O the withy, O the withy, O bitter withy</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That causes me to smart!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">O the withy shall be the very first tree</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That perishes at the heart.&rsquo;&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>From these popular ballads, mediaeval memories in the rustic
+mind, we must return to the devotional verse of the late sixteenth
+and early seventeenth centuries. Two of the greatest poets of the
+Nativity, the Roman priests Southwell and Crashaw, are deeply
+affected by the wave of mysticism which passed over Europe in
+their time. Familiar as is Southwell's &ldquo;The Burning Babe,&rdquo;
+few will be sorry to find it here:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;As I in hoary winter's night</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Stood shivering in the snow,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Surprised I was with sudden heat,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Which made my heart to glow;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And lifting up a fearful eye</span><br />
+<span class="i3">To view what fire was near,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A pretty Babe all burning bright</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Did in the air appear;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Who, scorch&egrave;d with excessive heat,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Such floods of tears did shed,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">As though His floods should quench His flames</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Which with His tears were fed.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_80" id="Page_80" href="#Page_80">80</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;Alas!&rsquo; quoth He, &lsquo;but newly born,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In fiery heats I fry,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Yet none approach to warm their hearts</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Or feel my fire, but I!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">My faultless breast the furnace is,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The fuel, wounding thorns;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The ashes, shame and scorns;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The fuel Justice layeth on,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And Mercy blows the coals,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The metal in this furnace wrought</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Are men's defil&egrave;d souls,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For which, as now on fire I am,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">To work them to their good,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">So will I melt into a bath,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">To wash them in my blood.&rsquo;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With this he vanished out of sight,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And swiftly shrunk away:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And straight I call&egrave;d unto mind</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That it was Christmas Day.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-38" id="Nanchor_3-38" href="#Note_3-38">{38}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>As for Crashaw,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;That the great angel-blinding light should shrink</span><br />
+<span class="i2">His blaze to shine in a poor shepherd's eye,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That the unmeasured God so low should sink</span><br />
+<span class="i2">As Pris'ner in a few poor rags to lie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That from His mother's breast He milk should drink</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Who feeds with nectar heaven's fair family,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That a vile manger His low bed should prove</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Who in a throne of stars thunders above:</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">That He, whom the sun serves, should faintly peep</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Through clouds of infant flesh; that He the old</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Eternal Word should be a Child and weep,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That He who made the fire should fear the cold:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That heaven's high majesty His court should keep</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In a clay cottage, by each blast controll'd:</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That glory's self should serve our griefs and fears,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And free Eternity submit to years&#xfeff;&mdash;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-39" id="Nanchor_3-39" href="#Note_3-39">{39}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>such are the wondrous paradoxes celebrated in his glowing
+imagery. The contrast of the winter snow with the burning
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_81" id="Page_81" href="#Page_81">81</a>heat of Incarnate Love, of the blinding light of Divinity with
+the night's darkness, indeed the whole paradox of the Incarnation&#xfeff;&mdash;Infinity
+in extremest limitation&#xfeff;&mdash;is nowhere realized with such
+intensity as by him. Yet, magnificent as are his best lines, his
+verse sometimes becomes too like the seventeenth-century Jesuit
+churches, with walls overladen with decoration, with great
+languorous pictures and air heavy with incense; and then we
+long for the dewy freshness of the early carols.</p>
+
+<p>The representative Anglican poets of the seventeenth century,
+Herbert and Vaughan, scarcely rise to their greatest heights in
+their treatment of Christmas, but with them as with the
+Romanists it is the mystical note that is dominant. Herbert
+sings:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted, light,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">To man, of all beasts, be not Thou a stranger.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Furnish and deck my soul, that thou may'st have</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A better lodging than a rack or grave.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-40" id="Nanchor_3-40" href="#Note_3-40">{40}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And Vaughan:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;I would I had in my best part</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Fit rooms for Thee! or that my heart</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Were so clean as</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Thy manger was!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But I am all filth, and obscene:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Yet, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make clean.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more</span><br />
+<span class="i2">This leper haunt and soil thy door!</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Cure him, ease him,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">O release him!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And let once more, by mystic birth,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The Lord of life be born in earth.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-41" id="Nanchor_3-41" href="#Note_3-41">{41}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In Herrick&#xfeff;&mdash;how different a country parson from Herbert!&#xfeff;&mdash;we
+find a sort of pagan piety towards the Divine Infant which,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_82" id="Page_82" href="#Page_82">82</a>though purely English in its expression, makes us think of some
+French <i>No&euml;liste</i> or some present-day Italian worshipper of the
+<i>Bambino</i>:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Instead of neat enclosures</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of interwoven osiers,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Instead of fragrant posies</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of daffodils and roses,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thy cradle, kingly Stranger,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">As gospel tells,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Was nothing else</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But here a homely manger.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">But we with silks not crewels,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With sundry precious jewels,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And lily work will dress Thee;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And, as we dispossess Thee</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of clouts, we'll make a chamber,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Sweet Babe, for Thee,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Of ivory,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And plaster'd round with amber.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-42" id="Nanchor_3-42" href="#Note_3-42">{42}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Poems such as Herrick's to the Babe of Bethlehem reveal in
+their writers a certain childlikeness, an <i>insouciance</i> without
+irreverence, the spirit indeed of a child which turns to its God
+quite simply and naturally, which makes Him after its own child-image,
+and sees Him as a friend who can be pleased with trifles&#xfeff;&mdash;almost,
+in fact, as a glorious playmate. Such a nature has no
+intense feeling of sin, but can ask for forgiveness and then forget;
+religion for it is rather an outward ritual to be duly and gracefully
+performed than an inward transforming power. Herrick is a
+strange exception among the Anglican singers of Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's great Nativity hymn, with its wondrous blending of
+pastoral simplicity and classical conceits, is too familiar for quotation
+here; it may be suggested, however, that this work of the
+poet's youth is far more Anglican than Puritan in its spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Sweet and solemn Spenserian echoes are these verses from
+Giles Fletcher's &ldquo;Christ's Victory in Heaven&rdquo;:&#xfeff;&mdash;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_83" id="Page_83" href="#Page_83">83</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Who can forget&#xfeff;&mdash;never to be forgot&#xfeff;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The time, that all the world in slumber lies,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">When, like the stars, the singing angels shot</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To earth, and heaven awak&egrave;d all his eyes</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To see another sun at midnight rise</span><br />
+<span class="i3">On earth? Was never sight of pareil fame,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">For God before man like Himself did frame,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But God Himself now like a mortal man became.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">A Child He was, and had not learnt to speak,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That with His word the world before did make;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">His mother's arms Him bore, He was so weak,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">See how small room my infant Lord doth take,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Whom all the world is not enough to hold!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Who of His years, or of His age hath told?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Never such age so young, never a child so old.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-43" id="Nanchor_3-43" href="#Note_3-43">{43}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The old lullaby tradition is continued by Wither, though the
+infant in the cradle is an ordinary human child, who is rocked to
+sleep with the story of his Lord:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;A little Infant once was He,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">And strength in weakness then was laid</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Upon His virgin-mother's knee,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">That power to thee might be conveyed.</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Within a manger lodged thy Lord,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Where oxen lay and asses fed;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Warm rooms we do to thee afford,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">An easy cradle or a bed.</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-44" id="Nanchor_3-44" href="#Note_3-44">{44}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>When we come to the eighteenth century we find, where we
+might least expect it, among the moral verses of Dr. Watts, a
+charming cradle-song conceived in just the same way:&#xfeff;&mdash;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_84" id="Page_84" href="#Page_84">84</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Holy angels guard thy bed!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Heavenly blessings without number</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Gently falling on thy head.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Soft and easy is thy cradle;</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">When His birthplace was a stable,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">And His softest bed was hay.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Lo He slumbers in His manger</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Where the horn&egrave;d oxen fed;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&#xfeff;&mdash;Peace, my darling, here's no danger;</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Here's no ox a-near thy bed.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-45" id="Nanchor_3-45" href="#Note_3-45">{45}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is to the eighteenth century that the three most
+popular of English Christmas hymns belong. Nahum Tate's
+&ldquo;While shepherds watched their flocks by night&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;one
+of the very few hymns (apart from metrical psalms)
+in common use in the Anglican Church before the
+nineteenth century&#xfeff;&mdash;is a bald and apparently artless
+paraphrase of St. Luke which, by some accident, has
+attained dignity, and is aided greatly by the simple and noble
+tune now attached to it. Charles Wesley's &ldquo;Hark, the herald
+angels sing,&rdquo; or&#xfeff;&mdash;as it should be&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Hark, how all the welkin
+rings,&rdquo; is much admired by some, but to the present writer seems
+a mere piece of theological rhetoric. Byrom's &ldquo;Christians,
+awake, salute the happy morn,&rdquo; has the stiffness and formality or
+its period, but it is not without a certain quaintness and dignity.
+One could hardly expect fine Christmas poetry of an age whose
+religion was on the one hand staid, rational, unimaginative, and
+on the other &ldquo;Evangelical&rdquo; in the narrow sense, finding its centre
+in the Atonement rather than the Incarnation.</p>
+
+<p>The revived mediaevalism, religious and aesthetic, of the nineteenth
+century, produced a number of Christmas carols. Some,
+like Swinburne's &ldquo;Three damsels in the queen's chamber,&rdquo; with
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_85" id="Page_85" href="#Page_85">85</a>its exquisite verbal music and delightful colour, and William
+Morris's less successful &ldquo;Masters, in this hall,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Outlanders,
+whence come ye last?&rdquo; are the work of unbelievers and bear
+witness only to the aesthetic charm of the Christmas story; but
+there are others, mostly from Roman or Anglo-Catholic sources,
+of real religious inspiration.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34">[34]</a> The most spontaneous are Christina
+Rossetti's, whose haunting rhythms and delicate feeling are
+shown at their best in her songs of the Christ Child. More
+studied and self-conscious are the austere Christmas verses of
+Lionel Johnson and the graceful carols of Professor Selwyn
+Image. In one poem Mr. Image strikes a deeper and stronger
+note than elsewhere; its solemn music takes us back to an earlier
+century:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Consider, O my soul, what morn is this!</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Whereon the eternal Lord of all things made,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For us, poor mortals, and our endless bliss,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Came down from heaven; and, in a manger laid,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">The first, rich, offerings of our ransom paid:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Consider, O my soul, what morn is this!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-46" id="Nanchor_3-46" href="#Note_3-46">{46}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Not a few contemporary poets have given us Christmas carols
+or poems. Among the freshest and most natural are those of
+Katharine Tynan, while Mr. Gilbert Chesterton has written
+some Christmas lyrics full of colour and vitality, and with a true
+mystical quality. Singing of Christmas, Mr. Chesterton is at
+his best; he has instinctive sympathy with the spirit of the
+festival, its human kindliness, its democracy, its sacramentalism,
+its exaltation of the child:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;The thatch of the roof was as golden</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Though dusty the straw was and old;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The wind had a peal as of trumpets,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Though blowing and barren and cold.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_86" id="Page_86" href="#Page_86">86</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The mother's hair was a glory,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Though loosened and torn;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For under the eaves in the gloaming</span><br />
+<span class="i4">A child was born.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-47" id="Nanchor_3-47" href="#Note_3-47">{47}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus opens a fine poem on the Nativity as symbolizing
+miracle of birth, of childhood with its infinite possibilities,
+eternal renewal of faith and hope.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_87" id="Page_87" href="#Page_87">87</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_88" id="Page_88" href="#Page_88">88</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_89" id="Page_89" href="#Page_89">89</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_IV" id="Chapter_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h2 class="title1">CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>Advent and Christmas Offices of the Roman Church&#xfeff;&mdash;The Three Masses of Christmas,
+their Origin and their Celebration in Rome&#xfeff;&mdash;The Midnight Mass in Many Lands&#xfeff;&mdash;Protestant
+Survivals of the Night Services&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas in the Greek Church&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+Eastern Epiphany and the Blessing of the Waters&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Presepio</i> or Crib, its
+Supposed Institution by St. Francis&#xfeff;&mdash;Early Traces of the Crib&#xfeff;&mdash;The Crib in
+Germany, Tyrol, &amp;c.&#xfeff;&mdash;Cradle-rocking in Mediaeval Germany&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas Minstrels
+in Italy and Sicily&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Presepio</i> in Italy&#xfeff;&mdash;Ceremonies with the <i>Culla</i> and
+the <i>Bambino</i> in Rome&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas in Italian London&#xfeff;&mdash;The Spanish Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Possible
+Survivals of the Crib in England.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image08" name="image08" href="images/image08.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image08.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE NATIVITY."
+      title="THE NATIVITY." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE NATIVITY.</p>
+
+<p>From Add. MS. 32454 in the British Museum</p>
+<p>(French, 15th century).</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>From a study of Christmas as reflected in lyric poetry, we now
+pass to other forms of devotion in which the Church has
+welcomed the Redeemer at His birth. These are of two kinds&#xfeff;&mdash;liturgical
+and popular; and they correspond in a large degree to
+the successive ways of apprehending the meaning of Christmas
+which we traced in the foregoing chapters. Strictly liturgical
+devotions are little understanded of the people: only the clergy
+can fully join in them; for the mass of the lay folk they are
+mysterious rites in an unknown tongue, to be followed with
+reverence, as far as may be, but remote and little penetrated with
+humanity. Side by side with these, however, are popular devotions,
+full of vivid colour, highly anthropomorphic, bringing the
+mysteries of religion within the reach of the simplest minds, and
+warm with human feeling. The austere Latin hymns of the
+earlier centuries belong to liturgy; the vernacular Christmas
+poetry of later ages is largely associated with popular devotion.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_90" id="Page_90" href="#Page_90">90</a>Liturgiology is a vast and complicated, and except to the few,
+an unattractive, subject. To attempt here a survey of the liturgies
+in their relation to Christmas is obviously impossible; we must
+be content to dwell mainly upon the present-day Roman offices,
+which, in spite of various revisions, give some idea of the
+mediaeval services of Latin Christianity, and to cast a few glances
+at other western rites, and at those of the Greek Church.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be his attitude towards Catholicism, or, indeed,
+Christianity, no one sensitive to the music of words, or the
+suggestions of poetic imagery, can read the Roman Breviary and
+Missal without profound admiration for the amazing skill with
+which the noblest passages of Hebrew poetry are chosen and
+fitted to the expression of Christian devotion, and the gold of
+psalmists, prophets, and apostles is welded into coronals for the
+Lord and His saints. The office-books of the Roman Church
+are, in one aspect, the greatest of anthologies.</p>
+
+<p>Few parts of the Roman Breviary have more beauty than the
+Advent&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35">[35]</a> offices, where the Church has brought together the
+majestic imagery of the Hebrew prophets, the fervent exhortation
+of the apostles, to prepare the minds of the faithful for the
+coming of the Christ, for the celebration of the Nativity.</p>
+
+<p>Advent begins with a stirring call. If we turn to the opening
+service of the Christian Year, the First Vespers of the First
+Sunday in Advent, we shall find as the first words in the
+&ldquo;Proper of the Season&rdquo; the trumpet-notes of St. Paul:
+&ldquo;Brethren, it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is
+our salvation nearer than when we believed.&rdquo; This, the Little
+Chapter for the office, is followed by the ancient hymn, &ldquo;Creator
+alme siderum,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-1" id="Nanchor_4-1" href="#Note_4-1">{1}</a>
+ chanting in awful tones the two comings of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_91" id="Page_91" href="#Page_91">91</a>Christ, for redemption and for judgment; and then are sung the
+words that strike the keynote of the Advent services, and are
+heard again and again.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>Rorate, coeli, desuper, et nubes pluant Justum</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">(Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down the Righteous One).</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Aperiatur terra et germinet Salvatorem</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">(Let the earth open, and let her bring forth the Saviour).&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Rorate, coeli, desuper</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;Advent is a time of longing expectancy.
+It is a season of waiting patiently for the Lord, whose coming in
+great humility is to be commemorated at Christmas, to whose
+coming again in His glorious majesty to judge both the quick
+and the dead the Christian looks forward with mingled hope and
+awe. There are four weeks in Advent, and an ancient symbolical
+explanation interprets these as typifying four comings of
+the Son of God: the first in the flesh, the second in the hearts
+of the faithful through the Holy Spirit, the third at the death of
+every man, and the fourth at the Judgment Day. The fourth
+week is never completed (Christmas Eve is regarded as not part
+of Advent), because the glory bestowed on the saints at the Last
+Coming will never end.</p>
+
+<p>The great Eucharistic hymn, &ldquo;Gloria in excelsis,&rdquo; is omitted
+in Advent, in order, say the symbolists, that on Christmas night,
+when it was first sung by the angels, it may be chanted with the
+greater eagerness and devotion. The &ldquo;Te Deum&rdquo; at Matins
+too is left unsaid, because Christ is regarded as not yet come.
+But &ldquo;Alleluia&rdquo; is not omitted, because Advent is only half a
+time of penitence: there is awe at the thought of the Coming
+for Judgment, but joy also in the hope of the Incarnation to be
+celebrated at Christmas, and the glory in store for the faithful.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-3" id="Nanchor_4-3" href="#Note_4-3">{3}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Looking forward is above all things the note of Advent; the
+Church seeks to share the mood of the Old Testament saints,
+and she draws more now than at any other season, perhaps, on
+the treasures of Hebrew prophecy for her lessons, antiphons,
+versicles, and responds. Looking for the glory that shall be
+revealed, she awaits, at this darkest time of the year, the rising
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_92" id="Page_92" href="#Page_92">92</a>of the Sun of Righteousness. <i>Rorate, coeli, desuper</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;the mood
+comes at times to all idealists, and even those moderns who hope
+not for a supernatural Redeemer, but for the triumph of social
+justice on this earth, must be stirred by the poetry of the
+Advent offices.</p>
+
+<p>It is at Vespers on the seven days before Christmas Eve that
+the Church's longing finds its noblest expression&#xfeff;&mdash;in the antiphons
+known as the &ldquo;Great O's,&rdquo; sung before and after the
+&ldquo;Magnificat,&rdquo; one on each day. &ldquo;O Sapientia,&rdquo; runs the first,
+&ldquo;O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of the Most High,
+and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly
+ordering all things: come and teach us the way of prudence.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;O Adonai,&rdquo; &ldquo;O Root of Jesse,&rdquo; &ldquo;O Key of David,&rdquo; &ldquo;O Day-spring,
+Brightness of Light Everlasting,&rdquo; &ldquo;O King of the
+Nations,&rdquo; thus the Church calls to her Lord, &ldquo;O Emmanuel,
+our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations, and their
+Salvation: come and save us, O Lord our God.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-4" id="Nanchor_4-4" href="#Note_4-4">{4}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At last Christmas Eve is here, and at Vespers we feel the
+nearness of the great Coming. &ldquo;Lift up your heads: behold
+your redemption draweth nigh,&rdquo; is the antiphon for the last
+psalm. &ldquo;To-morrow shall be done away the iniquity of the
+earth,&rdquo; is the versicle after the Office Hymn. And before and
+after the &ldquo;Magnificat&rdquo; the Church sings: &ldquo;When the sun
+shall have risen, ye shall see the King of kings coming forth
+from the Father, as a bridegroom out of his chamber.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Yet only with the night office of Matins does the glory of the
+festival begin. There is a special fitness at Christmas in the
+Church's keeping watch by night, like the shepherds of Bethlehem,
+and the office is full of the poetry of the season, full of
+exultant joy. To the &ldquo;Venite, exultemus Domino&rdquo; a Christmas
+note is added by the oft-repeated Invitatory, &ldquo;Unto us the Christ
+is born: O come, let us adore Him.&rdquo; Psalms follow&#xfeff;&mdash;among
+them the three retained by the Anglican Church in her Christmas
+Matins&#xfeff;&mdash;and lessons from the Old and New Testaments and
+the homilies of the Fathers, interspersed with Responsories
+bringing home to the faithful the wonders of the Holy Night.
+Some are almost dramatic; this, for instance:&#xfeff;&mdash;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_93" id="Page_93" href="#Page_93">93</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Whom saw ye, O shepherds? speak; tell us who hath appeared on the earth.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">We saw the new-born Child, and angels singing praise unto the Lord.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Speak, what saw ye? and tell us of the birth of Christ.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">We saw the new-born Child, and angels singing praise unto the Lord.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is the wonder of the Incarnation, the marvel of the spotless
+Birth, the song of the Angels, the coming down from heaven of
+true peace, the daybreak of redemption and everlasting joy, the
+glory of the Only-begotten, now beheld by men&#xfeff;&mdash;the supernatural
+side, in fact, of the festival, that the Church sets forth in
+her radiant words; there is little thought of the purely human
+side, the pathos of Bethlehem.</p>
+
+<p>It was customary at certain places, in mediaeval times, to lay
+on the altar three veils, and remove one at each nocturn of
+Christmas Matins. The first was black, and symbolised the
+time of darkness before the Mosaic Law; the second white,
+typifying, it would seem, the faith of those who lived under
+that Law of partial revelation; the third red, showing the love
+of Christ's bride, the Church, in the time of grace flowing from
+the Incarnation.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-5" id="Nanchor_4-5" href="#Note_4-5">{5}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A stately ceremony took place in England in the Middle Ages
+at the end of Christmas Matins&#xfeff;&mdash;the chanting of St. Matthew's
+genealogy of Christ. The deacon, in his dalmatic, with acolytes
+carrying tapers, with thurifer and cross-bearer, all in albs and
+unicles, went in procession to the pulpit or the rood-loft, to
+sing this portion of the Gospel. If the bishop were present,
+he it was who chanted it, and a rich candlestick was held to
+light him.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36">[36]</a> Then followed the chanting of the &ldquo;Te Deum.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-6" id="Nanchor_4-6" href="#Note_4-6">{6}</a>
+
+The ceremony does not appear in the ordinary Roman books,
+but it is still performed by the Benedictines, as one may read
+in the striking account of the monastic Christmas given by
+Huysmans in &ldquo;L'Oblat.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-7" id="Nanchor_4-7" href="#Note_4-7">{7}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_94" id="Page_94" href="#Page_94">94</a>Where, as in religious communities, the offices of the Church
+are performed in their full order, there follows on Matins that
+custom peculiar to Christmas, the celebration of Midnight Mass.
+On Christmas morning every priest is permitted to say three
+Masses, which should in strictness be celebrated at midnight,
+at dawn, and in full daylight. Each has its own Collect, Epistle,
+and Gospel, each its own Introit, Gradual, and other anthems.
+In many countries the Midnight Mass is the distinctive Christmas
+service, a great and unique event in the year, something which
+by its strangeness gives to the feast of the Nativity a place
+by itself. Few Catholic rites are more impressive than this
+Midnight Mass, especially in country places; through the
+darkness and cold of the winter's night, often for long distances,
+the faithful journey to worship the Infant Saviour in the splendour
+of the lighted church. It is a re-enactment of the visit of the
+shepherds to the cave at Bethlehem, aglow with supernatural
+light.</p>
+
+<p>Various symbolical explanations of the three Masses were
+given by mediaeval writers. The midnight celebration was
+supposed to represent mankind's condition before the Law of
+Moses, when thick darkness covered the earth; the second, at
+dawn, the time of the Law and the Prophets with its growing
+light; the third, in full daylight, the Christian era of light and
+grace. Another interpretation, adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas,
+is more mystical; the three Masses stand for the threefold birth
+of Christ, the first typifying the dark mystery of the eternal
+generation of the Son, the second the birth of Christ the morning-star
+within the hearts of men, the third the bodily birth of the
+Son of Mary.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-8" id="Nanchor_4-8" href="#Note_4-8">{8}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At the Christmas Masses the &ldquo;Gloria in excelsis&rdquo; resounds
+again. This song of the angels was at first chanted only at
+Christmas; it was introduced into Rome during the fifth
+century at Midnight Mass in imitation of the custom of the
+Church of Jerusalem.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-9" id="Nanchor_4-9" href="#Note_4-9">{9}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It is, indeed, from imitation of the services at Jerusalem and
+Bethlehem that the three Roman Masses of Christmas seem to
+have sprung. From a late fourth-century document known as
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_95" id="Page_95" href="#Page_95">95</a>the &ldquo;Peregrinatio Silviae,&rdquo; the narrative of a pilgrimage to the
+holy places of the east by a great lady from southern Gaul, it
+appears that at the feast of the Epiphany&#xfeff;&mdash;when the Birth of
+Christ was commemorated in the Palestinian Church&#xfeff;&mdash;two
+successive &ldquo;stations&rdquo; were held, one at Bethlehem, the other
+at Jerusalem. At Bethlehem the station was held at night
+on the eve of the feast, then a procession was made to the
+church of the Anastasis or Resurrection&#xfeff;&mdash;where was the Holy
+Sepulchre&#xfeff;&mdash;arriving &ldquo;about the hour when one man begins
+to recognise another, <i>i.e.</i>, near daylight, but before the day
+has fully broken.&rdquo; There a psalm was sung, prayers were
+said, and the catechumens and faithful were blessed by the
+bishop. Later, Mass was celebrated at the Great Church at
+Golgotha, and the procession returned to the Anastasis, where
+another Mass was said.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-10" id="Nanchor_4-10" href="#Note_4-10">{10}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At Bethlehem at the present time impressive services are
+held on the Latin Christmas Day. The Patriarch comes from
+Jerusalem, with a troop of cavalry and Kavasses in gorgeous
+array. The office lasts from 10 o'clock on Christmas Eve
+until long after midnight. &ldquo;At the reading of the Gospel
+the clergy and as many of the congregation as can follow leave
+the church, and proceed by a flight of steps and a tortuous
+rock-hewn passage to the Grotto of the Nativity, an irregular
+subterranean chamber, long and narrow. They carry with
+them a waxen image of an infant&#xfeff;&mdash;the <i>bambino</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;wrap it in
+swaddling bands and lay it on the site which is said to be
+that of the manger.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-11" id="Nanchor_4-11" href="#Note_4-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Midnight Mass appears to have been introduced into
+Rome in the first half of the fifth century. It was celebrated
+by the Pope in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, while
+the second Mass was sung by him at Sant&rsquo; Anastasia&#xfeff;&mdash;perhaps
+because of the resemblance of the name to the Anastasis at
+Jerusalem&#xfeff;&mdash;and the third at St. Peter's.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-12" id="Nanchor_4-12" href="#Note_4-12">{12}</a>
+ On Christmas Eve
+the Pope held a solemn &ldquo;station&rdquo; at Santa Maria Maggiore,
+and two Vespers were sung, the first very simple, the second, at
+which the Pope pontificated, with elaborate ceremonial. Before
+the second Vespers, in the twelfth century, a good meal had to
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_96" id="Page_96" href="#Page_96">96</a>be prepared for the papal household by the Cardinal-Bishop of
+Albano. After Matins and Midnight Mass at Santa Maria
+Maggiore, the Pope went in procession to Sant&rsquo; Anastasia for
+Lauds and the Mass of the Dawn. The third Mass, at St.
+Peter's, was an event of great solemnity, and at it took place
+in the year 800 that profoundly significant event, the coronation
+of Charlemagne by Leo III.&#xfeff;&mdash;a turning-point in European
+history.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-13" id="Nanchor_4-13" href="#Note_4-13">{13}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Later it became the custom for the Pope, instead of proceeding
+to St. Peter's, to return to Santa Maria Maggiore for
+the third Mass. On his arrival he was given a cane with a
+lighted candle affixed to it; with this he had to set fire to
+some tow placed on the capitals of the columns.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-14" id="Nanchor_4-14" href="#Note_4-14">{14}</a>
+ The
+ecclesiastical explanation of this strange ceremony was that
+it symbolised the end of the world by fire, but one may conjecture
+that some pagan custom lay at its root. Since 1870
+the Pope, as &ldquo;the prisoner of the Vatican,&rdquo; has of course ceased
+to celebrate at Santa Maria Maggiore or Sant&rsquo; Anastasia. The
+Missal, however, still shows a trace of the papal visit to Sant&rsquo;
+Anastasia in a commemoration of this saint which comes as
+a curious parenthesis in the Mass of the Dawn.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas Day in the Vatican the Pope blesses a hat
+and a sword, and these are sent as gifts to some prince. The
+practice is said to have arisen from the mediaeval custom for
+the Holy Roman Emperor or some other sovereign to read
+one of the lessons at Christmas Matins, in the papal chapel,
+with his sword drawn.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-15" id="Nanchor_4-15" href="#Note_4-15">{15}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Celebrated in countries as distant from one another, both
+geographically and in character, as Ireland and Sicily, Poland
+and South America, the Midnight Mass naturally varies greatly
+in its tone and setting. Sometimes it is little more than a
+fashionable function, sometimes the devotion of those who attend
+is shown by a tramp over miles of snow through the darkness
+and the bitter wind.</p>
+
+<p>In some charming memories of the Christmas of her childhood,
+Madame Th. Bentzon thus describes the walk to the Midnight
+Mass in a French country place about sixty years ago:&#xfeff;&mdash;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_97" id="Page_97" href="#Page_97">97</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can see myself as a little girl, bundled up to the tip of my nose
+in furs and knitted shawls, tiny wooden shoes on my feet, a lantern in
+my hand, setting out with my parents for the Midnight Mass of Christmas
+Eve.... We started off, a number of us, together in a stream
+of light.... Our lanterns cast great shadows on the white road, crisp
+with frost. As our little group advanced it saw others on their way,
+people from the farm and from the mill, who joined us, and once on
+the Place de l&rsquo;&Eacute;glise we found ourselves with all the parishioners in a
+body. No one spoke&#xfeff;&mdash;the icy north wind cut short our breath; but
+the voice of the chimes filled the silence.... We entered, accompanied
+by a gust of wind that swept into the porch at the same time
+we did; and the splendours of the altar, studded with lights, green
+with pine and laurel branches, dazzled us from the threshold.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-16" id="Nanchor_4-16" href="#Note_4-16">{16}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In devout Tyrol, the scenes on Christmas Eve before the Midnight
+Mass are often extremely impressive, particularly in narrow
+valleys where the houses lie scattered on the mountain slopes.
+Long before midnight the torches lighting the faithful on their
+way to Mass begin to twinkle; downward they move, now
+hidden in pine-woods and ravines, now reappearing on the open
+hill-side. More and more lights show themselves and throw ruddy
+flashes on the snow, until at last, the floor of the valley reached,
+they vanish, and only the church windows glow through the
+darkness, while the solemn strains of the organ and chanting
+break the silence of the night.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-17" id="Nanchor_4-17" href="#Note_4-17">{17}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Not everywhere has the great Mass been celebrated amid
+scenes so still and devotional. In Madrid, says a writer of the
+early nineteenth century, &ldquo;the evening of the vigil is scarcely
+dark when numbers of men, women, and boys are seen traversing
+the streets with torches, and many of them supplied
+with tambourines, which they strike loudly as they move
+along in a kind of Bacchanal procession. There is a tradition
+here that the shepherds who visited Bethlehem on the day of
+the Nativity had instruments of this sort upon which they
+expressed the sentiment of joy that animated them when
+they received the intelligence that a Saviour was born.&rdquo; At
+the Midnight Mass crowds of people who, perhaps, had been
+traversing the streets the whole night, came into the church
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_98" id="Page_98" href="#Page_98">98</a>with their tambourines and guitars, and accompanied the organ.
+The Mass over, they began to dance in the very body of the
+church.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-18" id="Nanchor_4-18" href="#Note_4-18">{18}</a>
+ A later writer speaks of the Midnight Mass in
+Madrid as a fashionable function to which many gay young
+people went in order to meet one another.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-19" id="Nanchor_4-19" href="#Note_4-19">{19}</a>
+ Such is the
+character of the service in the Spanish-American cities. In
+Lima the streets on Christmas Eve are crowded with gaily
+dressed and noisy folks, many of them masked, and everybody
+goes to the Mass.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-20" id="Nanchor_4-20" href="#Note_4-20">{20}</a>
+ In Paris the elaborate music attracts
+enormous and often not very serious crowds. In Sicily there
+is sometimes extraordinary irreverence at the midnight services:
+people take provisions with them to eat in church, and from time
+to time go out to an inn for a drink, and between the offices
+they imitate the singing of birds.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-21" id="Nanchor_4-21" href="#Note_4-21">{21}</a>
+ We may see in such things
+the licence of pagan festivals creeping within the very walls of the
+sanctuary.</p>
+
+<p>In the Rhineland Midnight Mass has been abolished, because
+the conviviality of Christmas Eve led to unseemly behaviour at
+the solemn service, but Mass is still celebrated very early&#xfeff;&mdash;at four
+or five&#xfeff;&mdash;and great crowds of worshippers attend. It is a stirring
+thing, this first Mass of Christmas, in some ancient town, when
+from the piercing cold, the intense stillness of the early morning,
+one enters a great church thronged with people, bright with
+candles, warm with human fellowship, and hears the vast congregation
+break out into a slow solemn chorale, full of devout joy that</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;In Bethlehem geboren</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ist uns ein Kindelein.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is interesting to trace survivals of the nocturnal Christmas
+offices in Protestant countries. In German &ldquo;Evangelical&rdquo;
+churches, midnight or early morning services were common in
+the eighteenth century; but they were forbidden in some places
+because of the riot and drunkenness which accompanied them.
+The people seem to have regarded them as a part of their Christmas
+revellings rather than as sacred functions; one writer compares
+the congregation to a crowd of wild drunken sailors in a
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_99" id="Page_99" href="#Page_99">99</a>tavern, another gives disgusting particulars of disorders in a
+church where the only sober man was the preacher.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-22" id="Nanchor_4-22" href="#Note_4-22">{22}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Sweden the Christmas service is performed very early in the
+morning, the chancel is lighted up with many candles, and the
+celebrant is vested in a white chasuble with golden orphreys.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-23" id="Nanchor_4-23" href="#Note_4-23">{23}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A Midnight Mass is now celebrated in many Anglican
+churches, but this is purely a modern revival. The most distinct
+British <i>survival</i> is to be found in Wales in the early service
+known as <i>Plygain</i> (dawn), sometimes a celebration of the
+Communion. At Tenby at four o'clock on Christmas morning
+it was customary for the young men of the town to escort the
+rector with lighted torches from his house to the church.
+Extinguishing their torches in the porch, they went in to the early
+service, and when it was ended the torches were relighted and
+the procession returned to the rectory. At St. Peter's Church,
+Carmarthen, an early service was held, to the light of coloured
+candles brought by the congregation. At St. Asaph, Caerwys,
+at 4 or 5 a.m., <i>Plygain</i>, consisting of carols sung round the
+church in procession, was held.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-24" id="Nanchor_4-24" href="#Note_4-24">{24}</a>
+ The <i>Plygain</i> continued in
+Welsh churches until about the eighteen-fifties, and, curiously
+enough, when the Established Church abandoned it, it was
+celebrated in Nonconformist chapels.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-25" id="Nanchor_4-25" href="#Note_4-25">{25}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Isle of Man on Christmas Eve, or <i>Oiel Verry</i> (Mary's
+Eve), &ldquo;a number of persons used to assemble in each parish
+church and proceed to shout carols or &lsquo;Carvals.&rsquo; There was no
+unison or concert about the chanting, but a single person would
+stand up with a lighted candle in his or her hand, and chant in
+a dismal monotone verse after verse of some old Manx &lsquo;Carval,&rsquo;
+until the candle was burnt out. Then another person would
+start up and go through a similar performance. No fresh candles
+might be lighted after the clock had chimed midnight.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-26" id="Nanchor_4-26" href="#Note_4-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>One may conjecture that the common English practice of
+ringing bells until midnight on Christmas Eve has also some
+connection with the old-time Midnight Mass.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">For the Greek Church Christmas is a comparatively unimportant
+festival by the side of the Epiphany, the celebration of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_100" id="Page_100" href="#Page_100">100</a>Christ's Baptism; the Christmas offices are, however, full of
+fine poetry. There is far less restraint, far less adherence to the
+words of Scripture, far greater richness of original composition,
+in the Greek than in the Roman service-books, and while there
+is less poignancy there is more amplitude and splendour.
+Christmas Day, with the Greeks, is a commemoration of the
+coming of the Magi as well as of the Nativity and the adoration
+of the shepherds, and the Wise Men are very prominent in the
+services. The following hymn of St. Anatolius (fifth century),
+from the First Vespers of the feast, is fairly typical of the
+character of the Christmas offices:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;When Jesus Our Lord was born of Her,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The Holy Virgin, all the universe</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Became enlightened.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For as the shepherds watched their flocks,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And as the Magi came to pray,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And as the Angels sang their hymn</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Herod was troubled; for God in flesh appeared,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The Saviour of our souls.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Thy kingdom, Christ our God, the kingdom is</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of all the worlds, and Thy dominion</span><br />
+<span class="i2">O'er every generation bears the sway,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Incarnate of the Holy Ghost,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Man of the Ever-Virgin Mary,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">By Thy presence, Christ our God,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thou hast shined a Light on us.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Light of Light, the Brightness of the Father,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thou hast beamed on every creature.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">All that hath breath doth praise Thee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Image of the Father's glory.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thou who art, and wast before,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">God who shinedst from the Maid,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Have mercy upon us.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">What gift shall we bring to Thee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">O Christ, since Thou as Man on earth</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For us hast shewn Thyself?<a class="pagenum" name="Page_101" id="Page_101" href="#Page_101">101</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Since every creature made by Thee</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Brings to Thee its thanksgiving.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The Angels bring their song,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The Heavens bring their star,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The Magi bring their gifts,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The Shepherds bring their awe,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Earth gives a cave, the wilderness a manger,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And we the Virgin-Mother bring.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">God before all worlds, have mercy upon us!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-27" id="Nanchor_4-27" href="#Note_4-27">{27}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A beautiful rite called the &ldquo;Peace of God&rdquo; is performed in
+Slavonic churches at the end of the &ldquo;Liturgy&rdquo; or Mass on
+Christmas morning&#xfeff;&mdash;the people kiss one another on both cheeks,
+saying, &ldquo;Christ is born!&rdquo; To this the answer is made, &ldquo;Of a
+truth He is born!&rdquo; and the kisses are returned. This is repeated
+till everyone has kissed and been kissed by all present.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-28" id="Nanchor_4-28" href="#Note_4-28">{28}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">We must pass rapidly over the feasts of saints within the
+Octave of the western Christmas, St. Stephen (December&nbsp;26),
+St. John the Evangelist (December&nbsp;27), the Holy Innocents
+(December&nbsp;28), and St. Sylvester (December&nbsp;31). None of
+these, except the feast of the Holy Innocents, have any special
+connection with the Nativity or the Infancy, and the popular
+customs connected with them will come up for consideration
+in our Second Part.</p>
+
+<p>The commemoration of the Circumcision (&ldquo;when eight days
+were accomplished for the circumcising of the child&rdquo;) falls
+naturally on January&nbsp;1, the Octave of Christmas. It is not of
+Roman origin, and was not observed in Rome until it had long
+been established in the Byzantine and Gallican Churches.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-29" id="Nanchor_4-29" href="#Note_4-29">{29}</a>
+ In
+Gaul, as is shown by a decree of the Council of Tours in 567,
+a solemn fast was held on the Circumcision and the two days
+following it, in order to turn away the faithful from the pagan
+festivities of the Kalends.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-30" id="Nanchor_4-30" href="#Note_4-30">{30}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The feast of the Epiphany on January&nbsp;6, as we have seen, is
+in the eastern Church a commemoration of the Baptism of Christ.
+In the West it has become primarily the festival of the adoration
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_102" id="Page_102" href="#Page_102">102</a>of the Magi, the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Still
+in the Roman offices many traces of the baptismal commemoration
+remain, and the memory of yet another manifestation of
+Christ's glory appears in the antiphon at &ldquo;Magnificat&rdquo; at the
+Second Vespers of the feast:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We keep holy a day adorned by three wonders: to-day a star led
+the Magi to the manger; to-day at the marriage water was made
+wine; to-day for our salvation Christ was pleased to be baptized of
+John in Jordan. Alleluia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>On the Octave of the Epiphany at Matins the Baptism is the
+central idea, and the Gospel at Mass bears on the same subject.
+In Rome itself even the Blessing of the Waters, the distinctive
+ceremony of the eastern Epiphany rite, is performed in certain
+churches according to a Latin ritual.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-31" id="Nanchor_4-31" href="#Note_4-31">{31}</a>
+ At Sant&rsquo; Andrea della
+Valle, Rome, during the Octave of the Epiphany a Solemn Mass
+is celebrated every morning in Latin, and afterwards, on each
+of the days from January&nbsp;7-13, there follows a Mass according
+to one of the eastern rites: Greco-Slav, Armenian, Chaldean,
+Coptic, Greco-Ruthenian, Greco-Melchite, and Greek.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-32" id="Nanchor_4-32" href="#Note_4-32">{32}</a>
+ It is
+a week of great opportunities for the liturgiologist and the lover
+of strange ceremonial.</p>
+
+<p>The Blessing of the Waters is an important event in all
+countries where the Greek Church prevails. In Greece the
+&ldquo;Great Blessing,&rdquo; as it is called, is performed in various ways
+according to the locality; sometimes the sea is blessed, sometimes
+a river or reservoir, sometimes merely water in a church. In
+seaport towns, where the people depend on the water for their
+living, the celebration has much pomp and elaborateness. At
+the Piraeus enormous and enthusiastic crowds gather, and there
+is a solemn procession of the bishop and clergy to the harbour,
+where the bishop throws a little wooden cross, held by a long
+blue ribbon, into the water, withdraws it dripping wet, and
+sprinkles the bystanders. This is done three times. At Nauplia
+and other places a curious custom prevails: the archbishop throws
+a wooden cross into the waters of the harbour, and the fishermen
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_103" id="Page_103" href="#Page_103">103</a>of the place dive in after it and struggle for its possession; he
+who wins it has the right of visiting all the houses of the town
+and levying a collection, which often brings in a large sum. In
+Samos all the women send to the church a vessel full of water
+to be blessed by the priest; with this water the fields and the
+trees are sprinkled.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-33" id="Nanchor_4-33" href="#Note_4-33">{33}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The sense attached to the ceremony by the Church is shown
+in this prayer:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thou didst sanctify the streams of Jordan by sending from
+Heaven Thy Holy Spirit, and by breaking the heads of the dragons
+lurking there. Therefore, O King, Lover of men, be Thou Thyself
+present also now by the visitation of Thy Holy Spirit, and sanctify
+this water. Give also to it the grace of ransom, the blessing of
+Jordan: make it a fountain of incorruption; a gift of sanctification;
+a washing away of sins; a warding off of diseases; destruction to
+demons; repulsion to the hostile powers; filled with angelic strength;
+that all who take and receive of it may have it for purification of
+souls and bodies, for healing of sicknesses, for sanctification of houses,
+and meet for every need.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-34" id="Nanchor_4-34" href="#Note_4-34">{34}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Though for the Church the immersion of the cross represents
+the Baptism of Christ, and the blessings springing from that
+event are supposed to be carried to the people by the sprinkling
+with the water, it is held by some students that the whole
+practice is a Christianization of a primitive rain-charm&#xfeff;&mdash;a piece
+of sympathetic magic intended to produce rain by imitating the
+drenching which it gives. An Epiphany song from Imbros
+connects the blessing of rain with the Baptism of Christ, and
+another tells how at the river Jordan &ldquo;a dove came down, white
+and feathery, and with its wings opened; it sent rain down on
+the Lord, and again it rained and rained on our Lady, and again
+it rained and rained on its wings.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-35" id="Nanchor_4-35" href="#Note_4-35">{35}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Blessing of the Waters is performed in the Greek church
+of St. Sophia, Bayswater, London, on the morning of the
+Epiphany, which, through the difference between the old and
+new &ldquo;styles,&rdquo; falls on our 19th of January. All is done within
+the church; the water to be blessed is placed on a table under
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_104" id="Page_104" href="#Page_104">104</a>the dome, and is sanctified by the immersion of a small cross;
+afterwards it is sprinkled on everyone present, and some is taken
+home by the faithful in little vessels.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-36" id="Nanchor_4-36" href="#Note_4-36">{36}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Moscow and St. Petersburg the Blessing is a function of
+great magnificence, but it is perhaps even more interesting as
+performed in Russian country places. Whatever may be the
+orthodox significance of the rite, to the country people it is the
+chasing away of &ldquo;forest demons, sprites, and fairies, once the gods
+the peasants worshipped, but now dethroned from their high
+estate,&rdquo; who in the long dark winter nights bewitch and vex the
+sons of men. A vivid and imaginative account of the ceremony
+and its meaning to the peasants is given by Mr. F. H. E. Palmer
+in his &ldquo;Russian Life in Town and Country.&rdquo; The district in
+which he witnessed it was one of forests and of lakes frozen in
+winter. On one of these lakes had been erected &ldquo;a huge cross,
+constructed of blocks of ice, that glittered like diamonds in the
+brilliant winter sunlight.... At length, far away could be
+heard the sound of human voices, singing a strange, wild melody.
+Presently there was a movement in the snow among the trees,
+and waving banners appeared as a procession approached,
+headed by the pope in his vestments, and surrounded by the
+village dignitaries, venerable, grey-bearded patriarchs.&rdquo; A wide
+space in the procession was left for &ldquo;a strange and motley
+band of gnomes and sprites, fairies and wood-nymphs,&rdquo; who, as
+the peasants believed, had been caught by the holy singing and
+the sacred sign on the waving banner. The chanting still went
+on as the crowd formed a circle around the glittering cross, and
+all looked on with awe while half a dozen peasants with their axes
+cut a large hole in the ice. &ldquo;And now the priest's voice is
+heard, deep and sonorous, as he pronounces the words of doom.
+Alas for the poor sprites! Into that yawning chasm they must
+leap, and sink deep, deep below the surface of that ice-cold
+water.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-37" id="Nanchor_4-37" href="#Note_4-37">{37}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Following these eastern Epiphany rites we have wandered far
+from the cycle of ideas generally associated with Christmas. We
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_105" id="Page_105" href="#Page_105">105</a>must now pass to those popular devotions to the Christ Child
+which, though they form no part of the Church's liturgy, she has
+permitted and encouraged. It is in the West that we shall find
+them; the Latin Church, as we have seen, makes far more of
+Christmas than the Greek.</p>
+
+<p>Rome is often condemned for using in her liturgy the dead
+language of Latin, but it must not be forgotten that in every
+country she offers to the faithful a rich store of devotional literature
+in their own tongue, and that, supplementary to the liturgical
+offices, there is much public prayer and praise in the vernacular.
+Nor, in that which appeals to the eye, does she limit herself to
+the mysterious symbolism of the sacraments and the ritual which
+surrounds them; she gives to the people concrete, pictorial images
+to quicken their faith. How ritual grew in mediaeval times into
+full-fledged drama we shall see in the next chapter; here let us
+consider that cult of the Christ Child in which the scene of
+Bethlehem is represented not by living actors but in plastic art,
+often most simple and homely.</p>
+
+<p>The use of the &ldquo;crib&rdquo; (French <i>cr&egrave;che</i>, Italian <i>presepio</i>, German
+<i>krippe</i>) at Christmas is now universally diffused in the Roman
+Church. Most readers of this book must have seen one of these
+structures representing the stable at Bethlehem, with the Child in
+the manger, His mother and St. Joseph, the ox and the ass, and
+perhaps the shepherds, the three kings, or worshipping angels.
+They are the delight of children, who through the season of
+Christmas and Epiphany wander into the open churches at all
+times of day to gaze wide-eyed on the life-like scene and offer a
+prayer to their Little Brother. No one with anything of the
+child-spirit can fail to be touched by the charm of the Christmas
+crib. Faults of artistic taste there may often be, but these are
+wont to be softened down by the flicker of tapers, the glow of
+ruby lights, amidst the shades of some dim aisle or chapel, and the
+scene of tender humanity, gently, mysteriously radiant, as though
+with &ldquo;bright shoots of everlastingness,&rdquo; is full of religious and
+poetic suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>The institution of the <i>presepio</i> is often ascribed to St. Francis
+of Assisi, who in the year 1224 celebrated Christmas at Greccio
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_106" id="Page_106" href="#Page_106">106</a>with a Bethlehem scene with a real ox and ass. About fifteen
+days before the Nativity, according to Thomas of Celano, the
+blessed Francis sent for a certain nobleman, John by name, and
+said to him: &ldquo;If thou wilt that we celebrate the present festival
+of the Lord at Greccio, make haste to go before and diligently
+prepare what I tell thee. For I would fain make memorial of
+that Child who was born in Bethlehem, and in some sort behold
+with bodily eyes His infant hardships; how He lay in a manger
+on the hay, with the ox and the ass standing by.&rdquo; The
+good man prepared all that the Saint had commanded, and at
+last the day of gladness drew nigh. The brethren were called
+from many convents; the men and women of the town prepared
+tapers and torches to illuminate the night. Finding all things
+ready, Francis beheld and rejoiced: the manger had been prepared,
+the hay was brought, and the ox and ass were led in.
+&ldquo;Thus Simplicity was honoured, Poverty exalted, Humility commended,
+and of Greccio there was made as it were a new
+Bethlehem. The night was lit up as the day, and was
+delightsome to men and beasts.... The woodland rang with
+voices, the rocks made answer to the jubilant throng.&rdquo; Francis
+stood before the manger, &ldquo;overcome with tenderness and
+filled with wondrous joy&rdquo;; Mass was celebrated, and he, in
+deacon's vestments, chanted the Holy Gospel in an &ldquo;earnest,
+sweet, and loud-sounding voice.&rdquo; Then he preached to the
+people of &ldquo;the birth of the poor King and the little town of
+Bethlehem.&rdquo; &ldquo;Uttering the word &lsquo;Bethlehem&rsquo; in the manner
+of a sheep bleating, he filled his mouth with the sound,&rdquo; and in
+naming the Child Jesus &ldquo;he would, as it were, lick his lips,
+relishing with happy palate and swallowing the sweetness of that
+word.&rdquo; At length, the solemn vigil ended, each one returned
+with joy to his own place.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-38" id="Nanchor_4-38" href="#Note_4-38">{38}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It has been suggested by Countess Martinengo&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-39" id="Nanchor_4-39" href="#Note_4-39">{39}</a>
+ that this
+beautiful ceremony was &ldquo;the crystallization of haunting memories
+carried away by St. Francis from the real Bethlehem&rdquo;; for he
+visited the east in 1219-20, and the Greccio celebration took
+place in 1224. St. Francis and his followers may well have
+helped greatly to popularize the use of the <i>presepio</i>, but it can be
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_107" id="Page_107" href="#Page_107">107</a>traced back far earlier than their time. In the liturgical drama
+known as the &ldquo;Officium Pastorum,&rdquo; which probably took shape
+in the eleventh century, we find a <i>praesepe</i> behind the altar as the
+centre of the action&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-40" id="Nanchor_4-40" href="#Note_4-40">{40}</a>
+; but long before this something of the kind
+seems to have been in existence in the church of Santa Maria
+Maggiore in Rome&#xfeff;&mdash;at one time called &ldquo;Beata Maria ad praesepe.&rdquo;
+Here Pope Gregory III. (731-41) placed &ldquo;a golden image of the
+Mother of God embracing God our Saviour, in various gems.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-41" id="Nanchor_4-41" href="#Note_4-41">{41}</a>
+
+According to Usener's views this church was founded by Pope
+Liberius (352-66), and was intended to provide a special home
+for the new festival of Christmas introduced by him, while an
+important part of the early Christmas ritual there was the celebration
+of Mass over a &ldquo;manger&rdquo; in which the consecrated Host
+was laid, as once the body of the Holy Child in the crib at Bethlehem.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-42" id="Nanchor_4-42" href="#Note_4-42">{42}</a>
+
+Further, an eastern homily of the late fourth century
+suggests that the preacher had before his eyes a representation of
+the Nativity. Such material representations, Usener conjectures,
+may have arisen from the devotions of the faithful at the supposed
+actual birthplace at Bethlehem, which would naturally be adorned
+with the sacred figures of the Holy Night.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-43" id="Nanchor_4-43" href="#Note_4-43">{43}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the crib can be traced
+at Milan, Parma, and Modena, and an Italian example carved in
+1478 still exists.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-44" id="Nanchor_4-44" href="#Note_4-44">{44}</a>
+ The Bavarian National Museum at Munich
+has a fine collection of cribs of various periods and from various
+lands&#xfeff;&mdash;Germany, Tyrol, Italy, and Sicily&#xfeff;&mdash;showing what
+elaborate care has been bestowed upon the preparation of these
+models. Among them is a great erection made at Botzen in the
+first half of the nineteenth century, and large enough to fill a
+fair-sized room. It represents the central square of a town, with
+imposing buildings, including a great cathedral not unlike our
+St. Paul's. Figures of various sizes were provided to suit the
+perspective, and the crib itself was probably set up in the porch of
+the church, while processions of puppets were arranged on the
+wide open square. Another, made in Munich, shows the
+adoration of the shepherds in a sort of ruined castle, while others,
+from Naples, lay the scene among remains of classical temples.
+One Tyrolese crib has a wide landscape background with a
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_108" id="Page_108" href="#Page_108">108</a>village and mountains typical of the country. The figures are
+often numerous, and, as their makers generally dressed them in
+the costume of their contemporaries, are sometimes exceedingly
+quaint. An angel with a wasp-waist, in a powdered wig, a hat
+trimmed with big feathers, and a red velvet dress with heavy gold
+embroidery, seems comic to us moderns, yet this is how the
+Ursuline nuns of Innsbruck conceived the heavenly messenger.
+Many of the cribs and figures, however, are of fine artistic
+quality, especially those from Naples and Sicily, and to the
+student of costume the various types of dress are of great
+interest.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-45" id="Nanchor_4-45" href="#Note_4-45">{45}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The use of the Christmas crib is by no means confined to
+churches; it is common in the home in many Catholic regions,
+and in at least one Protestant district, the Saxon Erzgebirge.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-46" id="Nanchor_4-46" href="#Note_4-46">{46}</a>
+ In
+Germany the <i>krippe</i> is often combined with the Christmas-tree;
+at Treves, for instance, the present writer saw a magnificent tree
+covered with glittering lights and ornaments, and underneath it
+the cave of the Nativity with little figures of the holy persons.
+Thus have pagan and Christian symbols met together.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">There grew up in Germany, about the fourteenth century, the
+extremely popular Christmas custom of &ldquo;cradle-rocking,&rdquo; a
+response to the people's need of a life-like and homely presentation
+of Christianity. By the <i>Kindelwiegen</i> the lay-folk were brought
+into most intimate touch with the Christ Child; the crib became
+a cradle (<i>wiege</i>) that could be rocked, and the worshippers were
+thus able to express in physical action their devotion to the new-born
+Babe. The cradle-rocking seems to have been done at first
+by priests, who impersonated the Virgin and St. Joseph, and sang
+over the Child a duet:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Joseph, lieber neve m&icirc;n,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hilf mir wiegen daz kindel&icirc;n.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Gerne, liebe muome m&icirc;n,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hilf ich dir wiegen d&icirc;n kindel&icirc;n.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37">[37]</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image09" name="image09" href="images/image09.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image09.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="A NEAPOLITAN &ldquo;PRESEPIO.&rdquo;"
+      title="A NEAPOLITAN &ldquo;PRESEPIO.&rdquo;" />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">A NEAPOLITAN &ldquo;PRESEPIO.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><i>Photo</i>] [<i>Meisenbach, Riffarth &amp; Co., Munich</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_109" id="Page_109" href="#Page_109">109</a>The choir and people took their part in the singing; and
+dancing, to the old Germans a natural accompaniment of festive
+song, became common around the cradle, which in time the
+people were allowed to rock with their own hands.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-47" id="Nanchor_4-47" href="#Note_4-47">{47}</a>
+ &ldquo;In dulci
+jubilo&rdquo; has the character of a dance, and the same is true of
+another delightful old carol, &ldquo;Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen,&rdquo;
+still used, in a form modified by later editors, in the churches of
+the Rhineland. The present writer has heard it sung, very
+slowly, in unison, by vast congregations, and very beautiful is its
+mingling of solemnity, festive joy, and tender sentiment:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class="music">
+   <a id="image10" name="image10"></a>
+   <img src="images/image10.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="Music"
+      title="Music" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Das Herz zum Krippelein biegen!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lasst uns den Geist erfreuen,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Das Kindlein benedeien:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">O Jesulein s&uuml;ss! O Jesulein s&uuml;ss!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Lasst uns sein H&auml;ndel und F&uuml;sse,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sein feuriges Herzlein gr&uuml;ssen!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Und ihn dem&uuml;tiglich eren</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Als unsern Gott und Herren!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">O Jesulein s&uuml;ss! O Jesulein s&uuml;ss!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38">[38]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-48" id="Nanchor_4-48" href="#Note_4-48">{48}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Two Latin hymns, &ldquo;Resonet in laudibus&rdquo; and &ldquo;Quem
+pastores laudavere,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-49" id="Nanchor_4-49" href="#Note_4-49">{49}</a>
+ were also sung at the <i>Kindelwiegen</i>, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_110" id="Page_110" href="#Page_110">110</a>a charming and quite untranslatable German lullaby has come
+down to us:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Sausa ninne, gottes minne,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Nu sweig und ru!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wen du wilt, so wellen wir deinen willen tun,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hochgelobter edler furst, nu schweig und wein auch nicht,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">T&ucirc;ste das, so wiss wir, dass uns wol geschicht.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-50" id="Nanchor_4-50" href="#Note_4-50">{50}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It was by appeals like this <i>Kindelwiegen</i> to the natural, homely
+instincts of the folk that the Church gained a real hold over the
+masses, making Christianity during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
+seventeenth centuries a genuinely popular religion in Germany.
+Dr. Alexander Tille, the best historian of the German Christmas,
+has an interesting passage on the subject: &ldquo;In the dancing and
+jubilation around the cradle,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;the religion of the
+Cross, however much it might in its inmost character be opposed
+to the nature of the German people and their essential healthiness,
+was felt no longer as something alien. It had become naturalized,
+but had lost in the process its very core. The preparation for a
+life after death, which was its Alpha and Omega, had passed into
+the background. It was not joy at the promised &lsquo;Redemption&rsquo;
+that expressed itself in the dance around the cradle; for the
+German has never learnt to feel himself utterly vile and sinful:
+it was joy at the simple fact that a human being, a particular
+human being in peculiar circumstances, was born into the
+world.... The Middle Ages showed in the cradle-rocking &lsquo;a
+true German and most lovable childlikeness.&rsquo; The Christ Child
+was the &lsquo;universal little brother of all children of earth,&rsquo; and they
+acted accordingly, they lulled Him to sleep, they fondled and
+rocked Him, they danced before Him and leapt around Him <i>in
+dulci jubilo</i>.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-51" id="Nanchor_4-51" href="#Note_4-51">{51}</a>
+ There is much here that is true of the cult of the
+Christ Child in other countries than Germany, though perhaps
+Dr. Tille underestimates the religious feeling that is often
+joined to the human sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>The fifteenth century was the great period for the <i>Kindelwiegen</i>,
+the time when it appears to have been practised in all the
+churches of Germany; in the sixteenth it began to seem
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_111" id="Page_111" href="#Page_111">111</a>irreverent to the stricter members of the clergy, and the
+figure of the infant Jesus was in many places no longer rocked
+in the cradle but enthroned on the altar.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-52" id="Nanchor_4-52" href="#Note_4-52">{52}</a>
+ This usage is
+described by Naogeorgus (1553):&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&ldquo;A woodden childe in clowtes is on the aultar set,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">About the which both boyes and gyrles do daunce and trymly jet,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And Carrols sing in prayse of Christ, and, for to helpe them heare,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The organs aunswere every verse with sweete and solemne cheare.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The priestes do rore aloude; and round about the parentes stande</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To see the sport, and with their voyce do helpe them and their hande.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-53" id="Nanchor_4-53" href="#Note_4-53">{53}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The placing of a &ldquo;Holy Child&rdquo; above the altar at Christmas
+is still customary in many Roman Catholic churches.</p>
+
+<p>Protestantism opposed the <i>Kindelwiegen</i>, on the grounds both
+of superstition and of the disorderly proceedings that accompanied
+it, but it was long before it was utterly extinguished even in the
+Lutheran churches. In Catholic churches the custom did not
+altogether die out, though the unseemly behaviour which often
+attended it&#xfeff;&mdash;and the growth of a pseudo-classical taste&#xfeff;&mdash;caused
+its abolition in most places.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-54" id="Nanchor_4-54" href="#Note_4-54">{54}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At T&uuml;bingen as late as 1830 at midnight on Christmas Eve
+an image of the Christ Child was rocked on the tower of the
+chief church in a small cradle surrounded with lights, while the
+spectators below sang a cradle-song.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-55" id="Nanchor_4-55" href="#Note_4-55">{55}</a>
+ According to a recent
+writer the &ldquo;rocking&rdquo; is still continued in the Upper Innthal.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-56" id="Nanchor_4-56" href="#Note_4-56">{56}</a>
+
+In the Tyrolese cathedral city of Brixen it was once performed
+every day between Christmas and Candlemas by the sacristan
+or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be
+disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the
+sacristan: &ldquo;Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the
+boys are often very ill-behaved.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-57" id="Nanchor_4-57" href="#Note_4-57">{57}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>There are records of other curious ceremonies in German
+or Austrian churches. At St. Peter am Windberge in
+M&uuml;hlkreis in Upper Austria, during the service on Christmas
+night a life-sized wooden figure of the Holy Child was offered in
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_112" id="Page_112" href="#Page_112">112</a>a basket to the congregation; each person reverently kissed it
+and passed it on to his neighbour. This was done as late as
+1883.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-58" id="Nanchor_4-58" href="#Note_4-58">{58}</a>
+ At Crimmitschau in Saxony a boy, dressed as an
+angel, used to be let down from the roof singing Luther's
+&ldquo;Vom Himmel hoch,&rdquo; and the custom was only given up when
+the breaking of the rope which supported the singer had
+caused a serious accident.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-59" id="Nanchor_4-59" href="#Note_4-59">{59}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">It is in Italy, probably, that the cult of the Christ Child is
+most ardently practised to-day. No people have a greater love
+of children than the Italians, none more of that dramatic instinct
+which such a form of worship demands. &ldquo;Easter,&rdquo; says
+Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, &ldquo;is the great popular feast in
+the eastern Church, Christmas in the Latin&#xfeff;&mdash;especially in Italy.
+One is the feast of the next world, and the other of this. Italians
+are fond of this world.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-60" id="Nanchor_4-60" href="#Note_4-60">{60}</a>
+ Christmas is for the poorer Italians
+a summing up of human birthdays, an occasion for pouring
+out on the <i>Bambino</i> parental and fraternal affection as well as
+religious worship.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome, Christmas used to be heralded by the arrival, ten
+days before the end of Advent, of the Calabrian minstrels or
+<i>pifferari</i> with their sylvan pipes (<i>zampogne</i>), resembling the
+Scottish bagpipe, but less harsh in sound. These minstrels were
+to be seen in every street in Rome, playing their wild plaintive
+music before the shrines of the Madonna, under the traditional
+notion of charming away her labour-pains. Often they would
+stop at a carpenter's shop &ldquo;per politezza al messer San
+Giuseppe.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-61" id="Nanchor_4-61" href="#Note_4-61">{61}</a>
+ Since 1870 the <i>pifferari</i> have become rare in Rome,
+but some were seen there by an English lady quite recently.
+At Naples, too, there are <i>zampognari</i> before Christmas, though
+far fewer than there used to be; for one <i>lira</i> they will pipe their
+rustic melodies before any householder's street Madonna through
+a whole <i>novena</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-62" id="Nanchor_4-62" href="#Note_4-62">{62}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image11" name="image11" href="images/image11.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image11.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS."
+      title="CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS.</p>
+
+<p><i>After an Etching by D. Allan.</i></p>
+<p>From Hone's &ldquo;Every-day Book&rdquo; (London, 1826).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In Sicily, too, men come down from the mountains nine days
+before Christmas to sing a <i>novena</i> to a plaintive melody accompanied
+by &lsquo;cello and violin. &ldquo;All day long,&rdquo; writes Signora
+Caico about Montedoro in Caltanissetta, &ldquo;the melancholy dirge
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_113" id="Page_113" href="#Page_113">113</a>was sung round the village, house after house, always the same
+minor tune, the words being different every day, so that in nine
+days the whole song was sung out.... I often looked out of
+the window to see them at a short distance, grouped before a
+house, singing their stanzas, well muffled in shawls, for the air
+is cold in spite of the bright sunshine.... The flat, white
+houses all round, the pure sky overhead, gave an Oriental setting
+to the scene.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Another Christmas custom in the same place was the singing
+of a <i>novena</i> not outside but within some of the village houses
+before a kind of altar gaily decorated and bearing at the top a
+waxen image of the Child Jesus. &ldquo;Close to it the orchestra was
+grouped&#xfeff;&mdash;a &rsquo;cello, two violins, a guitar, and a tambourine. The
+kneeling women huddled in front of the altar. All had on their
+heads their black <i>mantelline</i>. They began at once singing the
+<i>novena</i> stanzas appointed for that day; the tune was primitive
+and very odd: the first half of the stanza was quick and merry,
+the second half became a wailing dirge.&rdquo; A full translation of
+a long and very interesting and pathetic <i>novena</i> is given by
+Signora Caico.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39">[39]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-63" id="Nanchor_4-63" href="#Note_4-63">{63}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The <i>presepio</i> both in Rome and at Naples is the special Christmas
+symbol in the home, just as the lighted tree is in Germany. In
+Rome the Piazza Navona is the great place for the sale of little
+clay figures of the holy persons. (Is there perchance a survival
+here of the <i>sigillaria</i>, the little clay dolls sold in Rome at the
+<i>Saturnalia</i>?) These are bought in the market for two <i>soldi</i> each,
+and the <i>presepi</i> or &ldquo;Bethlehems&rdquo; are made at home with cardboard
+and moss.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-64" id="Nanchor_4-64" href="#Note_4-64">{64}</a>
+ The home-made <i>presepi</i> at Naples are well
+described by Matilde Serao; they are pasteboard models of the
+landscape of Bethlehem&#xfeff;&mdash;a hill with the sacred cave beneath it
+and two or three paths leading down to the grotto, a little tavern,
+a shepherd's hut, a few trees, sometimes a stream in glittering
+glass. The ground is made verdant with moss, and there is
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_114" id="Page_114" href="#Page_114">114</a>straw within the cave for the repose of the infant Jesus; singing
+angels are suspended by thin wires, and the star of the Wise Men
+hangs by an invisible thread. There is little attempt to realize
+the scenery of the East; the Child is born and the Magi adore
+Him in a Campanian or Calabrian setting.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-66" id="Nanchor_4-66" href="#Note_4-66">{66}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Italian churches, as well as Italian homes, have their <i>presepi</i>.
+&ldquo;Thither come the people, bearing humble gifts of chestnuts,
+apples, tomatoes, and the like, which they place as offerings in
+the hands of the figures. These are very often life-size. Mary
+is usually robed in blue satin, with crimson scarf and white head-dress.
+Joseph stands near her dressed in the ordinary working-garb.
+The onlookers are got up like Italian contadini. The
+Magi are always very prominent in their grand clothes, with
+satin trains borne by black slaves, jewelled turbans, and satin tunics
+all over jewels.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-67" id="Nanchor_4-67" href="#Note_4-67">{67}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image12" name="image12" href="images/image12.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image12.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE &ldquo;PRESEPIO&rdquo; AT GRECCIO."
+      title="ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE &ldquo;PRESEPIO&rdquo; AT GRECCIO." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE &ldquo;PRESEPIO&rdquo; AT GRECCIO.</p>
+
+<p><i>By Giotto.</i></p>
+<p>(Upper Church of St Francis, Assissi)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image13" name="image13" href="images/image13.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image13.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE &ldquo;BAMBINO&rdquo; OF ARA COELI."
+      title="THE &ldquo;BAMBINO&rdquo; OF ARA COELI." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE &ldquo;BAMBINO&rdquo; OF ARA COELI.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In Rome the two great centres of Christmas devotion are the
+churches of Santa Maria Maggiore, where are preserved the relics
+of the cradle of Christ, and Ara Coeli, the home of the most
+famous <i>Bambino</i> in the world. A vivid picture of the scene at
+Santa Maria Maggiore in the early nineteenth century is given
+by Lady Morgan. She entered the church at midnight on
+Christmas Eve to wait for the procession of the <i>culla</i>, or cradle.
+&ldquo;Its three ample naves, separated by rows of Ionic columns of
+white marble, produced a splendid vista. Thousands of wax
+tapers marked their form, and contrasted their shadows; some
+blazed from golden candlesticks on the superb altars of the
+lateral chapels.... Draperies of gold and crimson decked the
+columns, and spread their shadows from the inter-columniations
+over the marble pavement. In the midst of this imposing display
+of church magnificence, sauntered or reposed a population which
+displayed the most squalid misery. The haggard natives of
+the mountains ... were mixed with the whole mendicity of
+Rome.... Some of these terrific groups lay stretched in
+heaps on the ground, congregating for warmth; and as their
+dark eyes scowled from beneath the mantle which half hid a
+sheepskin dress, they had the air of banditti awaiting their
+prey; others with their wives and children knelt, half asleep,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_115" id="Page_115" href="#Page_115">115</a>round the chapel of the <i>Santa Croce</i>.... In the centre of
+the nave, multitudes of gay, gaudy, noisy persons, the petty
+shopkeepers, laquais, and <i>popolaccio</i> of the city, strolled and
+laughed, and talked loud.&rdquo; About three o'clock the service
+began, with a choral swell, blazing torches, and a crowded
+procession of priests of every rank and order. It lasted for two
+hours; then began the procession to the cell where the cradle
+lay, enshrined in a blaze of tapers and guarded by groups of
+devotees. Thence it was borne with solemn chants to the
+chapel of <i>Santa Croce</i>. A musical Mass followed, and the
+<i>culla</i> being at last deposited on the High Altar, the wearied
+spectators issued forth just as the dome of St. Peter's caught
+the first light of the morning.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-68" id="Nanchor_4-68" href="#Note_4-68">{68}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Still to-day the scene in the church at the five o'clock High
+Mass on Christmas morning is extraordinarily impressive, with the
+crowds of poor people, the countless lights at which the children
+gaze in open-eyed wonder, the many low Masses said in the side
+chapels, the imposing procession and the setting of the silver
+casket on the High Altar. The history of the relics of the
+<i>culla</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;five long narrow pieces of wood&#xfeff;&mdash;is obscure, but it is
+admitted even by some orthodox Roman Catholics that there is
+no sufficient evidence to connect them with Bethlehem.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-69" id="Nanchor_4-69" href="#Note_4-69">{69}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The famous <i>Bambino</i> at the Franciscan church of Ara Coeli on
+the citadel of Rome is &ldquo;a flesh-coloured doll, tightly swathed in
+gold and silver tissue, crowned, and sparkling with jewels,&rdquo; no
+thing of beauty, but believed to have miraculous powers. An
+inscription in the sacristy of the church states that it was made by
+a devout Minorite of wood from the Mount of Olives, and given
+flesh-colour by the interposition of God Himself. It has its own
+servants and its own carriage in which it drives out to visit the
+sick. There is a strange story of a theft of the wonder-working
+image by a woman who feigned sickness, obtained permission to
+have the <i>Bambino</i> left with her, and then sent back to the friars
+another image dressed in its clothes. That night the Franciscans
+heard great ringing of bells and knockings at the church door,
+and found outside the true <i>Bambino</i>, naked in the wind and rain.
+Since then it has never been allowed out alone.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-70" id="Nanchor_4-70" href="#Note_4-70">{70}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_116" id="Page_116" href="#Page_116">116</a>All through the Christmas and Epiphany season Ara Coeli is
+crowded with visitors to the <i>Bambino</i>. Before the <i>presepio</i>, where
+it lies, is erected a wooden platform on which small boys and
+girls of all ranks follow one another with little speeches&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;preaching&rdquo;
+it is called&#xfeff;&mdash;in praise of the infant Lord. &ldquo;They
+say their pieces,&rdquo; writes Countess Martinengo, &ldquo;with an infinite
+charm that raises half a smile and half a tear.&rdquo; They have the
+vivid dramatic gift, the extraordinary absence of self-consciousness,
+typical of Italian children, and their &ldquo;preaching&rdquo; is anything but
+a wooden repetition of a lesson learned by heart. Nor is there
+any irksome constraint; indeed to northerners the scene in the
+church might seem irreverent, for the children blow toy trumpets
+and their parents talk freely on all manner of subjects. The
+church is approached by one hundred and twenty-four steps, making
+an extraordinarily picturesque spectacle at this season, when they
+are thronged by people ascending and descending, and by vendors
+of all sorts of Christmas prints and images. On the Octave of
+the Epiphany there is a great procession, ending with the blessing
+of Rome by the Holy Child. The <i>Bambino</i> is carried out to the
+space at the top of the giddy flight of marble steps, and a priest
+raises it on high and solemnly blesses the Eternal City.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-71" id="Nanchor_4-71" href="#Note_4-71">{71}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A glimpse of the southern Christmas may be had in London
+in the Italian colony in and around Eyre Street Hill, off the
+Clerkenwell Road, a little town of poor Italians set down in the
+midst of the metropolis. The steep, narrow Eyre Street Hill, with
+its shops full of southern wares, is dingy enough by day, but after
+dark on Christmas Eve it looks like a bit of Naples. The
+windows are gay with lights and coloured festoons, there are
+lantern-decked sweetmeat stalls, one old man has a <i>presepio</i> in his
+room, other people have little altars or shrines with candles
+burning, and bright pictures of saints adorn the walls. It is a
+strangely pathetic sight, this <i>festa</i> of the children of the South,
+this attempt to keep an Italian Christmas amid the cold damp
+dreariness of a London slum. The colony has its own church,
+San Pietro, copied from some Renaissance basilica at Rome, a
+building half tawdry, half magnificent, which transports him who
+enters it far away to the South. Like every Italian church, it is
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_117" id="Page_117" href="#Page_117">117</a>at once the Palace of the Great King and the refuge of the
+humblest&#xfeff;&mdash;no other church in London is quite so intimately the
+home of the poor. Towards twelve o'clock on Christmas Eve
+the deep-toned bell of San Pietro booms out over the colony, and
+the people crowd to the Midnight Mass, and pay their devotions
+at a great <i>presepio</i> set up for the veneration of the faithful.
+When on the Octave of the Epiphany&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40">[40]</a> the time comes to close
+the crib, an impressive and touching ceremony takes place. The
+afternoon Benediction over, the priest, with the acolytes, goes to
+the <i>presepio</i> and returns to the chancel with the <i>Bambino</i>. Holding
+it on his arm, he preaches in Italian on the story of the Christ
+Child. The sermon ended, the notes of &ldquo;Adeste, fideles&rdquo; are
+heard, and while the Latin words are sung the faithful kneel
+at the altar rails and reverently kiss the Holy Babe. It is their
+farewell to the <i>Bambino</i> till next Christmas.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">A few details may here be given about the religious customs at
+Christmas in Spain. The Midnight Mass is there the great
+event of the festival. Something has already been said as to its
+celebration in Madrid. The scene at the midnight service in a
+small Andalusian country town is thus described by an English
+traveller:&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;The church was full; the service orderly; the people
+of all classes. There were muleteers, wrapped in their blue and
+white checked rugs; here, Spanish gentlemen, enveloped in their
+graceful capas, or capes ... here, again, were crowds of the
+commonest people,&#xfeff;&mdash;miners, fruitsellers, servants, and the like,&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+women kneeling on the rush matting of the dimly-lit church,
+the men standing in dark masses behind, or clustering in
+groups round every pillar.... At last, from under the altar,
+the senior priest ... took out the image of the Babe New-born,
+reverently and slowly, and held it up in his hands for adoration.
+Instantly every one crossed himself, and fell on his knees in silent
+worship.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-72" id="Nanchor_4-72" href="#Note_4-72">{72}</a>
+ The crib is very popular in Spanish homes and is
+the delight of children, as may be learnt from Fernan Caballero's
+interesting sketch of Christmas Eve in Spain, &ldquo;La Noche de
+Navidad.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-73" id="Nanchor_4-73" href="#Note_4-73">{73}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_118" id="Page_118" href="#Page_118">118</a>In England the Christmas crib is to be found nowadays in
+most Roman, and a few Anglican, churches. In the latter it
+is of course an imitation, not a survival. It is, however, possible
+that the custom of carrying dolls about in a box at Advent or
+Christmas time, common in some parts of England in the nineteenth
+century, is a survival, from the Middle Ages, of something
+like the crib. The so-called &ldquo;vessel-cup&rdquo; was &ldquo;a box
+containing two dolls, dressed up to represent the Virgin and the
+infant Christ, decorated with ribbons and surrounded by flowers
+and apples.&rdquo; The box had usually a glass lid, was covered by
+a white napkin, and was carried from door to door by a woman.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-74" id="Nanchor_4-74" href="#Note_4-74">{74}</a>
+
+It was esteemed very unlucky for any household not to be visited
+by the &ldquo;Advent images&rdquo; before Christmas Eve, and the bearers
+sang the well-known carol of the &ldquo;Joys of Mary.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-75" id="Nanchor_4-75" href="#Note_4-75">{75}</a>
+ In
+Yorkshire only one image was carried about.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-76" id="Nanchor_4-76" href="#Note_4-76">{76}</a>
+ At Gilmorton,
+Leicestershire, a friend of the present writer remembers that the
+children used to carry round what they called a &ldquo;Christmas
+Vase,&rdquo; an open box without lid in which lay three dolls side by
+side, with oranges and sprigs of evergreen. Some people regarded
+these as images of the Virgin, the Christ Child, and Joseph.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41">[41]</a></p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">In this study of the feast of the Nativity as represented in
+liturgy and ceremonial we have already come close to what may
+strictly be called drama; in the next chapter we shall cross the
+border line and consider the religious plays of the Middle Ages
+and the relics of or parallels to them found in later times.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_119" id="Page_119" href="#Page_119">119</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_120" id="Page_120" href="#Page_120">120</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_121" id="Page_121" href="#Page_121">121</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_V" id="Chapter_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h2 class="title1">CHRISTMAS DRAMA</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>Origins of the Mediaeval Drama&#xfeff;&mdash;Dramatic Tendencies in the Liturgy&#xfeff;&mdash;Latin
+Liturgical Plays&#xfeff;&mdash;The Drama becomes Laicized&#xfeff;&mdash;Characteristics of the Popular
+Drama&#xfeff;&mdash;The Nativity in the English Miracle Cycles&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas Mysteries in
+France&#xfeff;&mdash;Later French Survivals of Christmas Drama&#xfeff;&mdash;German Christmas
+Plays&#xfeff;&mdash;Mediaeval Italian Plays and Pageants&#xfeff;&mdash;Spanish Nativity Plays&#xfeff;&mdash;Modern
+Survivals in Various Countries&#xfeff;&mdash;The Star-singers, &amp;c.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image14" name="image14" href="images/image14.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image14.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS."
+      title="THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.</p>
+
+<p>From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the
+Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House
+(by permission).</p>
+<p>(Photo lent by Mr. F. Sidgwick, who has published the print on a modern Christmas broadside.)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In this chapter the Christian side only of the Christmas drama
+will be treated. Much folk-drama of pagan origin has gathered
+round the festival, but this we shall study in our Second Part.
+Our subject here is the dramatic representation of the story of the
+Nativity and the events immediately connected with it. The
+Christmas drama has passed through the same stages as the poetry
+of the Nativity. There is first a monastic and hieratic stage,
+when the drama is but an expansion of the liturgy, a piece of
+ceremonial performed by clerics with little attempt at verisimilitude
+and with Latin words drawn mainly from the Bible
+or the offices of the Church. Then, as the laity come to take
+a more personal interest in Christianity, we find fancy beginning
+to play around the subject, bringing out its human pathos and
+charm, until, after a transitional stage, the drama leaves the
+sanctuary, passes from Latin to the vulgar tongue, is played
+by lay performers in the streets and squares of the city, and,
+while its framework remains religious, takes into itself episodes
+of a more or less secular character. The Latin liturgical plays
+are to the &ldquo;miracles&rdquo; and &ldquo;mysteries&rdquo; of the later Middle
+Ages as a Romanesque church, solemn, oppressive, hieratic, to
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_122" id="Page_122" href="#Page_122">122</a>a Gothic cathedral, soaring, audacious, reflecting every phase of
+the popular life.</p>
+
+<p>The mediaeval religious drama&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-1" id="Nanchor_5-1" href="#Note_5-1">{1}</a>
+ was a natural development
+from the Catholic liturgy, not an imitation of classical models.
+The classical drama had expired at the break-up of the Roman
+Empire; its death was due largely, indeed, to the hostility
+of Christianity, but also to the rude indifference of the barbarian
+invaders. Whatever secular dramatic impulses remained in the
+Dark Ages showed themselves not in public and organized
+performances, but obscurely in the songs and mimicry of
+minstrels and in traditional folk-customs. Both of these classes
+of practices were strongly opposed by the Church, because of
+their connection with heathenism and the licence towards which
+they tended. Yet the dramatic instinct could not be suppressed.
+The folk-drama in such forms as the Feast of Fools found its
+way, as we shall see, even into the sanctuary, and&#xfeff;&mdash;most remarkable
+fact of all&#xfeff;&mdash;the Church's own services took on more and
+more a dramatic character.</p>
+
+<p>While the secular stage decayed, the Church was building up
+a stately system of ritual. It is needless to dwell upon the
+dramatic elements in Catholic worship. The central act of
+Christian devotion, the Eucharist, is in its essence a drama,
+a representation of the death of the Redeemer and the participation
+of the faithful in its benefits, and around this has gathered
+in the Mass a multitude of dramatic actions expressing different
+aspects of the Redemption. Nor, of course, is there merely
+symbolic <i>action</i>; the offices of the Church are in great part
+<i>dialogues</i> between priest and people, or between two sets of
+singers. It was from this antiphonal song, this alternation
+of versicle and respond, that the religious drama of the Middle
+Ages took its rise. In the ninth century the &ldquo;Antiphonarium&rdquo;
+traditionally ascribed to Pope Gregory the Great had become
+insufficient for ambitious choirs, and the practice grew up of
+supplementing it by new melodies and words inserted at the
+beginning or end or even in the middle of the old antiphons.
+The new texts were called &ldquo;tropes,&rdquo; and from the ninth to the
+thirteenth century many were written. An interesting Christmas
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_123" id="Page_123" href="#Page_123">123</a>example is the following ninth-century trope ascribed to Tutilo
+of St. Gall:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hodie cantandus est nobis puer, quem gignebat ineffabiliter ante
+tempora pater, et eundem sub tempore generavit inclyta mater.
+(To-day must we sing of a Child, whom in unspeakable wise His
+Father begat before all times, and whom, within time, a glorious mother
+brought forth.)</p>
+
+<p>Int[errogatio].</p>
+
+<p>Quis est iste puer quem tam magnis praeconiis dignum vociferatis?
+Dicite nobis ut collaudatores esse possimus. (Who is this Child whom
+ye proclaim worthy of so great laudations? Tell us that we also may
+praise Him.)</p>
+
+<p>Resp[onsio].</p>
+
+<p>Hic enim est quem praesagus et electus symmista Dei ad terram
+venturum praevidens longe ante praenotavit, sicque praedixit. (This
+is He whose coming to earth the prophetic and chosen initiate into the
+mysteries of God foresaw and pointed out long before, and thus
+foretold.)&rdquo;</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Here followed at once the Introit for the third Mass of Christmas
+Day, &ldquo;Puer natus est nobis, et filius datus est nobis, &amp;c. (Unto
+us a child is born, unto us a son is given.)&rdquo; The question and
+answer were no doubt sung by different choirs.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-2" id="Nanchor_5-2" href="#Note_5-2">{2}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>One can well imagine that this might develop into a regular
+little drama. As a matter of fact, however, it was from an
+Easter trope in the same manuscript, the &ldquo;Quem quaeritis,&rdquo;
+a dialogue between the three Maries and the angel at the
+sepulchre, that the liturgical drama sprang. The trope became
+very popular, and was gradually elaborated into a short symbolic
+drama, and its popularity led to the composition of similar pieces
+for Christmas and Ascensiontide. Here is the Christmas trope
+from a St. Gall manuscript:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>On the Nativity of the Lord at Mass let there be ready two deacons
+having on dalmatics, behind the altar, saying</i>:</p>
+
+<p>Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite? (Whom seek ye in the
+manger, say, ye shepherds?)<a class="pagenum" name="Page_124" id="Page_124" href="#Page_124">124</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Let two cantors in the choir answer</i>:</p>
+
+<p>Salvatorem Christum Dominum, infantem pannis involutum,
+secundum sermonem angelicum. (The Saviour, Christ the Lord, a
+child wrapped in swaddling clothes, according to the angelic word.)</p>
+
+<p><i>And the deacons</i>:</p>
+
+<p>Adest hic parvulus cum Maria, matre sua, de qua, vaticinando,
+Isaias Propheta: ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium; et nuntiantes
+dicite quia natus est. (Present here is the little one with Mary, His
+Mother, of whom Isaiah the prophet foretold: Behold, a virgin shall
+conceive, and shall bring forth a son; and do ye say and announce that
+He is born.)</p>
+
+<p><i>Then let the cantor lift up his voice and say</i>:</p>
+
+<p>Alleluia, alleluia, jam vere scimus Christum natum in terris, de quo
+canite, omnes, cum Propheta dicentes: Puer natus est! (Alleluia,
+alleluia. Now we know indeed that Christ is born on earth, of whom
+sing ye all, saying with the Prophet: Unto us a child is born.)&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-3" id="Nanchor_5-3" href="#Note_5-3">{3}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The dramatic character of this is very marked. A comparison
+with later liturgical plays suggests that the two deacons in their
+broad vestments were meant to represent the midwives mentioned
+in the apocryphal Gospel of St. James, and the cantors the
+shepherds.</p>
+
+<p>A development from this trope, apparently, was the &ldquo;Office of
+the Shepherds,&rdquo; which probably took shape in the eleventh
+century, though it is first given in a Rouen manuscript of the
+thirteenth. It must have been an impressive ceremony as performed
+in the great cathedral, dimly lit with candles, and full of
+mysterious black recesses and hints of infinity. Behind the high
+altar a <i>praesepe</i> or &ldquo;crib&rdquo; was prepared, with an image of the
+Virgin. After the &ldquo;Te Deum&rdquo; had been sung five canons or
+their vicars, clad in albs and amices, entered by the great door of
+the choir, and proceeded towards the apse. These were the
+shepherds. Suddenly from high above them came a clear boy's
+voice: &ldquo;Fear not, behold I bring you good tidings of great joy,&rdquo;
+and the rest of the angelic message. The &ldquo;multitude of the
+heavenly host&rdquo; was represented by other boys stationed probably
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_125" id="Page_125" href="#Page_125">125</a>in the triforium galleries, who broke out into the exultant
+&ldquo;Gloria in excelsis.&rdquo; Singing a hymn, &ldquo;Pax in terris
+nunciatur,&rdquo; the shepherds advanced towards the crib where two
+priests&#xfeff;&mdash;the midwives&#xfeff;&mdash;awaited them. These addressed to the
+shepherds the question &ldquo;Whom seek ye in the manger?&rdquo; and
+then came the rest of the &ldquo;Quem quaeritis&rdquo; which we already
+know, a hymn to the Virgin being sung while the shepherds
+adored the Infant. Mass followed immediately, the little drama
+being merely a prelude.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-4" id="Nanchor_5-4" href="#Note_5-4">{4}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>More important than this Office of the Shepherds is an
+Epiphany play called by various names, &ldquo;Stella,&rdquo; &ldquo;Tres Reges,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Magi,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Herodes,&rdquo; and found in different forms at Limoges,
+Rouen, Laon, Compi&egrave;gne, Strasburg, Le Mans, Freising in
+Bavaria, and other places. Mr. E. K. Chambers suggests that
+its kernel is a dramatized Offertory. It was a custom for
+Christian kings to present gold, frankincense, and myrrh at the
+Epiphany&#xfeff;&mdash;the offering is still made by proxy at the Chapel
+Royal, St. James's&#xfeff;&mdash;and Mr. Chambers takes &ldquo;the play to have
+served as a substitute for this ceremony, when no king actually
+regnant was present.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-5" id="Nanchor_5-5" href="#Note_5-5">{5}</a>
+ Its most essential features were the
+appearance of the Star of Bethlehem to the Magi, and their
+offering of the mystic gifts. The star, bright with candles,
+hung from the roof of the church, and was sometimes made
+to move.</p>
+
+<p>In the Rouen version of the play it is ordered that on the day
+of the Epiphany, Terce having been sung, three clerics, robed as
+kings, shall come from the east, north, and south, and meet before
+the altar, with their servants bearing the offerings of the Magi.
+The king from the east, pointing to the star with his stick,
+exclaims:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stella fulgore nimio rutilat. (The star glows with exceeding
+brightness.)&rdquo;</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The second monarch answers:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quae regem regum natum demonstrat. (Which shows the birth
+of the King of Kings.)&rdquo;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_126" id="Page_126" href="#Page_126">126</a></p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>And the third:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quem venturum olim prophetiae signaverant. (To whose coming
+the prophecies of old had pointed.)&rdquo;</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Then the Magi kiss one another and together sing:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eamus ergo et inquiramus eum, offerentes ei munera: aurum, thus,
+et myrrham. (Let us therefore go and seek Him, offering unto Him
+gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.)&rdquo;</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Antiphons are sung, a procession is formed, and the Magi go to
+a certain altar above which an image of the Virgin has been
+placed with a lighted star before it. Two priests in dalmatics&#xfeff;&mdash;apparently
+the midwives&#xfeff;&mdash;standing on either side of the altar,
+inquire who the Magi are, and receiving their answer, draw aside
+a curtain and bid them approach to worship the Child, &ldquo;for He is
+the redemption of the world.&rdquo; The three kings do adoration,
+and offer their gifts, each with a few pregnant words:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&ldquo;Suscipe, rex, aurum. (Receive, O King, gold.)&rdquo;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&ldquo;Tolle thus, tu vere Deus. (Accept incense, Thou very God.)&rdquo;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&ldquo;Myrrham, signum sepulturae. (Myrrh, the sign of burial.)&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The clergy and people then make their offerings, while the
+Magi fall asleep and are warned by an angel to return home
+another way. This they do symbolically by proceeding back to
+the choir by a side aisle.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-6" id="Nanchor_5-6" href="#Note_5-6">{6}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In its later forms the Epiphany play includes the appearance of
+Herod, who is destined to fill a very important place in the
+mediaeval drama. Hamlet's saying &ldquo;he out-Herods Herod&rdquo;
+sufficiently suggests the raging tyrant whom the playwrights of the
+Middle Ages loved. His appearance marks perhaps the first introduction
+into the Christian religious play of the evil principle so
+necessary to dramatic effect. At first Herod holds merely a mild
+conversation with the Magi, begging them to tell him when they
+have found the new-born King; in later versions of the play,
+however, his wrath is shown on learning that the Wise Men have
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_127" id="Page_127" href="#Page_127">127</a>departed home by another way; he breaks out into bloodthirsty
+tirades, orders the slaying of the Innocents, and in one form takes
+a sword and brandishes it in the air. He becomes in fact the outstanding
+figure in the drama, and one can understand why it was
+sometimes named after him.</p>
+
+<p>In the Laon &ldquo;Stella&rdquo; the actual murder of the Innocents was
+represented, the symbolical figure of Rachel weeping over her
+children being introduced. The plaint and consolation of Rachel,
+it should be noted, seem at first to have formed an independent
+little piece performed probably on Holy Innocents&rsquo; Day.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-7" id="Nanchor_5-7" href="#Note_5-7">{7}</a>
+ This
+later coalesced with the &ldquo;Stella,&rdquo; as did also the play of the
+shepherds, and, at a still later date, another liturgical drama which
+we must now consider&#xfeff;&mdash;the &ldquo;Prophetae.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This had its origin in a sermon (wrongly ascribed to St.
+Augustine) against Jews, Pagans, and Arians, a portion of which
+was used in many churches as a Christmas lesson. It begins
+with a rhetorical appeal to the Jews who refuse to accept Jesus
+as the Messiah in spite of the witness of their own prophets.
+Ten prophets are made to give their testimony, and then three
+Pagans are called upon, Virgil, Nebuchadnezzar and the
+Erythraean Sibyl. The sermon has a strongly dramatic
+character, and when chanted in church the parts of the preacher
+and the prophets were possibly distributed among different
+choristers. In time it developed into a regular drama, and
+more prophets were brought in. It was, indeed, the germ of the
+great Old Testament cycles of the later Middle Ages.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-8" id="Nanchor_5-8" href="#Note_5-8">{8}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>An extension of the &ldquo;Prophetae&rdquo; was the Norman or Anglo-Norman
+play of &ldquo;Adam,&rdquo; which began with the Fall, continued
+with Cain and Abel, and ended with the witness of the prophets.
+In the other direction the &ldquo;Prophetae&rdquo; was extended by the
+addition of the &ldquo;Stella.&rdquo; It so happens that there is no text of a
+Latin drama containing both these extensions at the same time,
+but such a play probably existed. From the mid-thirteenth to
+the mid-fourteenth century, indeed, there was a tendency for the
+plays to run together into cycles and become too long and
+too elaborate for performance in church. In the eleventh
+century, even, they had begun to pass out into the churchyard or
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_128" id="Page_128" href="#Page_128">128</a>the market-place, and to be played not only by the clergy but by
+laymen. This change had extremely important effects on their
+character. In the first place the vulgar tongue crept in. As
+early, possibly, as the twelfth century are the Norman &ldquo;Adam&rdquo;
+and the Spanish &ldquo;Misterio de los Reyes Magos,&rdquo; the former, as
+we have seen, an extended vernacular &ldquo;Prophetae,&rdquo; the latter, a
+fragment of a highly developed vernacular &ldquo;Stella.&rdquo; They are
+the first of the popular as distinguished from the liturgical plays;
+they were meant, as their language shows, for the instruction and
+delight of the folk; they were not to be listened to, like the
+mysterious Latin of the liturgy, in uncomprehending reverence,
+but were to be understanded of the people.</p>
+
+<p>The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw a progressive
+supplanting of Latin by the common speech, until, in the great
+cycles, only a few scraps of the church language were left to tell
+of the liturgical origin of the drama. The process of popularization,
+the development of the plays from religious ceremonial to
+lively drama, was probably greatly helped by the <i>goliards</i> or
+vagabond scholars, young, poor, and fond of amusement, who
+wandered over Europe from teacher to teacher, from monastery
+to monastery, in search of learning. Their influence is shown
+not merely in the broadening of the drama, but also in its passing
+from the Latin of the monasteries to the language of the
+common folk.</p>
+
+<p>A consequence of the outdoor performance of the plays was
+that Christmas, in the northern countries at all events, was found
+an unsuitable time for them. The summer was naturally
+preferred, and we find comparatively few mentions of plays at
+Christmas in the later Middle Ages. Whitsuntide and Corpus
+Christi became more popular dates, especially in England, and
+the pieces then performed were vast cosmic cycles, like the York,
+Chester, Towneley, and &ldquo;Coventry&rdquo; plays, in which the
+Christmas and Epiphany episodes formed but links in an immense
+chain extending from the Creation to the Last Judgment, and
+representing the whole scheme of salvation. It is in these
+Nativity scenes, however, that we have the only English
+renderings of the Christmas story in drama,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-9" id="Nanchor_5-9" href="#Note_5-9">{9}</a>
+ and though they
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_129" id="Page_129" href="#Page_129">129</a>were actually performed not at the winter festival&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42">[42]</a> but in the
+summer, they give in so striking a way the feelings, the point of
+view, of our mediaeval forefathers in regard to the Nativity that
+we are justified in dealing with them here at some length.</p>
+
+<p>As the drama became laicized, it came to reflect that strange
+medley of conflicting elements, pagan and Christian, materialistic
+and spiritual, which was the actual religion of the folk, as
+distinguished from the philosophical theology of the doctors and
+councils and the mysticism of the ascetics. The popularizing of
+Christianity had reached its climax in most countries of western
+Europe in the fifteenth century, approximately the period of the
+great &ldquo;mysteries.&rdquo; However little the ethical teaching of Jesus
+may have been acted upon, the Christian religion on its external
+side had been thoroughly appropriated by the people and wrought
+into a many-coloured polytheism, a true reflection of their minds.</p>
+
+<p>The figures of the drama are contemporaries of the spectators
+both in garb and character; they are not Orientals of ancient
+times, but Europeans of the end of the Middle Ages. Bethlehem
+is a &ldquo;faier borow,&rdquo; Herod a &ldquo;mody king,&rdquo; like unto some
+haughty, capricious, and violent monarch of the time, the
+shepherds are rustics of England or Germany or France or Italy,
+the Magi mighty potentates with gorgeous trains, and the Child
+Himself is a little being subject to all the pains and necessities of
+infancy, but delighted with sweet and pleasant things like a bob
+of cherries or a ball. The realism of the writers is sometimes
+astounding, and comic elements often appear&#xfeff;&mdash;to the people of
+the Middle Ages religion was so real and natural a thing that
+they could laugh at it without ceasing to believe in or to
+love it.</p>
+
+<p>The English mediaeval playwrights, it may safely be said, are
+surpassed by no foreigners in their treatment of Christmas
+subjects. To illustrate their way of handling the scenes I may
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_130" id="Page_130" href="#Page_130">130</a>gather from the four great cycles a few of the most interesting
+passages.</p>
+
+<p>From the so-called &ldquo;Ludus Coventriae&rdquo; I take the arrival of
+Joseph and Mary at Bethlehem; they ask a man in the street
+where they may find an inn:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>Joseph.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Heyl, wurchepful sere, and good day!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">A ceteceyn of this cyt&euml; ye seme to be;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of herborwe&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43">[43]</a> ffor spowse and me I yow pray,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">ffor trewly this woman is fful wer&euml;,</span><br />
+<span class="i7">And fayn at reste, sere, wold she be;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">We wolde ffulffylle the byddynge of oure emperoure,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">ffor to pay tribute, as right is oure,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And to kepe oureselfe ffrom dolowre,</span><br />
+<span class="i7">We are come to this cyt&euml;.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Cives.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Sere, ostage in this towne know I non,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Thin wyff and thou in for to slepe;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">This cet&euml; is besett with pepyl every won,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And yett thei ly withowte fful every strete.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Withinne no walle, man, comyst thou nowth,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Be thou onys&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44">[44]</a> withinne the cyt&euml; gate;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Onethys&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45">[45]</a> in the strete a place may be sowth,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Theron to reste, withowte debate.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Joseph.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Nay, sere, debate that wyl I nowth;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Alle suche thyngys passyn my powere:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But yitt my care and alle my thought</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Is for Mary, my derlynge dere.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">A! swete wyff, wat xal we do?</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Wher xal we logge this nyght?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Onto the ffadyr of heffne pray we so,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Us to kepe ffrom every wykkyd whyt.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Cives.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Good man, o word I wyl the sey,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">If thou wylt do by the counsel of me;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Yondyr is an hous of haras&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46">[46]</a> that stant be the wey,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Amonge the bestys herboryd may ye be.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_131" id="Page_131" href="#Page_131">131</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Maria.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Now the fadyr of hefne he mut yow yelde!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">His sone in my wombe forsothe he is;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He kepe the and thi good be fryth and ffelde!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Go we hens, husbond, for now tyme it is.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-11" id="Nanchor_5-11" href="#Note_5-11">{11}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The scene immediately after the Nativity is delicately and
+reverently presented in the York cycle. The Virgin worships
+the Child, saluting Him thus:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Hayle my lord God! hayle prince of pees!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hayle my fadir, and hayle my sone!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hayle souereyne sege all synnes to sesse!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hayle God and man in erth to wonne!&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47">[47]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i8">Hayle! thurgh whos myht</span><br />
+<span class="i2">All this worlde was first be-gonne,</span><br />
+<span class="i8">merkness&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48">[48]</a> and light.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Sone, as I am sympill sugett of thyne,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Vowchesaffe, swete sone I pray the,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That I myght the take in the[r] armys of mine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And in this poure wede to arraie the;</span><br />
+<span class="i8">Graunte me thi blisse!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">As I am thy modir chosen to be</span><br />
+<span class="i8">in sothfastnesse.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Joseph, who has gone out to get a light, returns, and this
+dialogue follows:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>Joseph.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Say, Marie doghtir, what chere with the?</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Mary.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Right goode, Joseph, as has been ay.</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Joseph.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;O Marie! what swete thyng is that on thy kne?</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Mary.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It is my sone, the soth to saye, that is so gud</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Joseph.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Wel is me I bade this day, to se this foode!&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49">[49]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i4">Me merueles mekill of this light</span><br />
+<span class="i4">That thus-gates shynes in this place,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">For suth it is a selcouth&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50">[50]</a> sight!<a class="pagenum" name="Page_132" id="Page_132" href="#Page_132">132</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>Mary.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This hase he ordand of his grace, my sone so ying,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">A starne to be schynyng a space at his bering</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Joseph.</i>&nbsp;Nowe welcome, floure fairest of hewe,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">I shall the menske&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51">[51]</a> with mayne and myght.</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Hayle! my maker, hayle Crist Jesu!</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Hayle, riall king, roote of all right!</span><br />
+<span class="i13">Hayle, saueour.</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Hayle, my lorde, lemer&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52">[52]</a> of light,</span><br />
+<span class="i13">Hayle, blessid floure!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Mary.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nowe lord! that all this worlde schall wynne,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">To the my sone is that I saye,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Here is no bedde to laye the inne,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Therfore my dere sone, I the praye sen it is soo,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Here in this cribbe I myght the lay betwene ther bestis two.</span><br />
+<span class="i4">And I sall happe&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53">[53]</a> the, myn owne dere childe,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">With such clothes as we haue here.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Joseph.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;O Marie! beholde thes beestis mylde,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">They make louyng in ther manere as thei wer men.</span><br />
+<span class="i4">For-sothe it semes wele be ther chere thare lord thei ken.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Mary.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ther lorde thai kenne, that wate I wele,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">They worshippe hym with myght and mayne;</span><br />
+<span class="i4">The wedir is colde, as ye may feele,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">To halde hym warme thei are full fayne, with thare warme breth.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-12" id="Nanchor_5-12" href="#Note_5-12">{12}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The playwrights are at their best in the shepherd scenes;
+indeed these are the most original parts of the cycles, for here
+the writers found little to help them in theological tradition, and
+were thrown upon their own wit. In humorous dialogue and
+na&iuml;ve sentiment the lusty burgesses of the fifteenth century were
+thoroughly at home, and the comedy and pathos of these scenes
+must have been as welcome a relief to the spectators, from the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_133" id="Page_133" href="#Page_133">133</a>long-winded solemnity of many of the plays, as they are to
+modern readers. In the York mysteries the shepherds make
+uncouth exclamations at the song of the angels and ludicrously
+try to imitate it. The Chester shepherds talk in a very natural
+way of such things as the diseases of sheep, sit down with much
+relish to a meal of &ldquo;ale of Halton,&rdquo; sour milk, onions, garlick
+and leeks, green cheese, a sheep's head soused in ale, and other
+items; then they call their lad Trowle, who grumbles because
+his wages have not been paid, refuses to eat, wrestles with his
+masters and throws them all. They sit down discomfited; then
+the Star of Bethlehem appears, filling them with wonder, which
+grows when they hear the angels&rsquo; song of &ldquo;Gloria in excelsis.&rdquo;
+They discuss what the words were&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;glore, glare with a glee,&rdquo;
+or, &ldquo;glori, glory, glorious,&rdquo; or, &ldquo;glory, glory, with a glo.&rdquo; At
+length they go to Bethlehem, and arrived at the stable, the
+first shepherd exclaims:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Sym, Sym, sickerlye</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Heare I see Marye,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And Jesus Christe faste by,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lapped in haye.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-13" id="Nanchor_5-13" href="#Note_5-13">{13}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Joseph is strangely described:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Whatever this oulde man that heare is,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Take heede howe his head is whore,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">His beirde is like a buske of breyers,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With a pound of heaire about his mouth and more.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-14" id="Nanchor_5-14" href="#Note_5-14">{14}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Their gifts to the Infant are a bell, a flask, a spoon to eat
+pottage with, and a cape. Trowle the servant has nought to
+offer but a pair of his wife's old hose; four boys follow with
+presents of a bottle, a hood, a pipe, and a nut-hook. Quaint are
+the words of the last two givers:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&ldquo;<i>The Thirde Boye.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">O, noble childe of thee!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Alas! what have I for thee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Save only my pipe?<a class="pagenum" name="Page_134" id="Page_134" href="#Page_134">134</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Elles trewly nothinge,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Were I in the rockes or in,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I coulde make this pippe</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That all this woode should ringe,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And quiver, as yt were.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="i4"><i>The Fourth Boye.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Nowe, childe, although thou be comon from God,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And be God thy selfe in thy manhoode,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Yet I knowe that in thy childehoode</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thou wylte for sweete meate loke,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To pull downe aples, peares, and plumes,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Oulde Joseph shall not nede to hurte his thombes,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Because thou hast not pleintie of crombes,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I geve thee heare my nutthocke.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-15" id="Nanchor_5-15" href="#Note_5-15">{15}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Let no one deem this irreverent; the spirit of this adoration
+of the shepherds is intensely devout; they go away longing to
+tell all the world the wonder they have seen; one will become a
+pilgrim; even the rough Trowle exclaims that he will forsake
+the shepherd's craft and will betake himself to an anchorite's
+hard by, in prayers to &ldquo;wache and wake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>More famous than this Chester &ldquo;Pastores&rdquo; are the two
+shepherd plays in the Towneley cycle.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-16" id="Nanchor_5-16" href="#Note_5-16">{16}</a>
+ The first begins with
+racy talk, leading to a wrangle between two of the shepherds
+about some imaginary sheep; then a third arrives and makes fun
+of them both; a feast follows, with much homely detail; they
+go to sleep and are awakened by the angelic message; after
+much debate over its meaning and over the foretellings of the
+prophets&#xfeff;&mdash;one of them, strangely enough, quotes a Latin passage
+from Virgil&#xfeff;&mdash;they go to Bethlehem and present to the Child a
+&ldquo;lytyll spruse cofer,&rdquo; a ball, and a gourd-bottle.</p>
+
+<p>The second play surpasses in humour anything else in the
+mediaeval drama of any country. We find the shepherds first
+complaining of the cold and their hard lot; they are &ldquo;al lappyd
+in sorow.&rdquo; They talk, almost like modern Socialists, of the
+oppressions of the rich:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&ldquo;For the tylthe of our landys lyys falow as the floore,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">As ye ken.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_135" id="Page_135" href="#Page_135">135</a></span><br />
+<span class="i3">We ar so hamyd,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54">[54]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i3">For-taxed and ramyd,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55">[55]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i3">We ar mayde hand-tamyd,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">With thyse gentlery men.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Thus thay refe&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56">[56]</a> us our rest, Our Lady theym wary!&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57">[57]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">These men that ar lord-fest,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58">[58]</a> they cause the ploghe tary.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>To these shepherds joins himself Mak, a thieving neighbour.
+Going to sleep, they make him lie between them, for they doubt
+his honesty. But for all their precautions he manages to steal
+a sheep, and carries it home to his wife. She thinks of an
+ingenious plan for concealing it from the shepherds if they visit
+the cottage seeking their lost property: she will pretend that she
+is in child-bed and that the sheep is the new-born infant. So it
+is wrapped up and laid in a cradle, and Mak sings a lullaby.
+The shepherds do suspect Mak, and come to search his house;
+his wife upbraids them and keeps them from the cradle. They
+depart, but suddenly an idea comes to one of them:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&ldquo;<i>The First Shepherd.</i>  Gaf ye the chyld any thyng?</span><br />
+<span class="i3"><i>The Second.</i>  I trow not oone farthyng.</span><br />
+<span class="i3"><i>The Third.</i>  Fast agane will I flyng,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Abyde ye me there. [<i>He goes back.</i>]</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Mak, take it to no grefe, if I com to thi barne.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Mak tries to put him off, but the shepherd will have
+his way:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Gyf me lefe hym to kys, and lyft up the clowtt.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">What the devill is this? he has a long snowte.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>So the secret is out. Mak's wife gives a desperate explanation:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;He was takyn with an elfe,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I saw it myself.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">When the clok stroke twelf</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Was he forshapyn.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_136" id="Page_136" href="#Page_136">136</a>Naturally this avails nothing, and her husband is given a
+good tossing by the shepherds until they are tired out and lie
+down to rest. Then comes the &ldquo;Gloria in excelsis&rdquo; and the
+call of the angel:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Ryse, hyrd men heynd! for now is he borne</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That shall take fro the feynd that Adam had lorne:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That warloo&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59">[59]</a> to sheynd,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60">[60]</a> this nyght is he borne,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">God is made youre freynd: now at this morne</span><br />
+<span class="i3">He behestys,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">At Bedlem go se,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ther lygys that fre&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61">[61]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">In a cryb fulle poorely,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Betwyx two bestys.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The shepherds wonder at the song, and one of them tries to
+imitate it; then they go even unto Bethlehem, and there follows
+the quaintest and most delightful of Christmas carols:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&ldquo;<i>Primus Pastor.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Hail, comly and clene,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Hail, yong child!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hail, maker, as I meene,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Of a maden so milde!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thou has war&euml;d,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62">[62]</a> I weene,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The warlo&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63">[63]</a> so wilde;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The fals giler of teen,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64">[64]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i3">Now goes he begilde.</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Lo! he merys,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65">[65]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lo! he lagh&euml;s, my sweting.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A welfare meting!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I have holden my heting.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66">[66]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Have a bob of cherys!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Secundus Pastor.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Hail, sufferan Savioure,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">For thou has us soght!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hail, frely&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67">[67]</a> foyde&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68">[68]</a> and floure,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That all thing has wroght!<a class="pagenum" name="Page_137" id="Page_137" href="#Page_137">137</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hail, full of favoure,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That made all of noght!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hail, I kneel and I cowre.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">A bird have I broght</span><br />
+<span class="i4">To my barne.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hail, litel tin&euml; mop!&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69">[69]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of oure crede thou art crop;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70">[70]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">I wold drink on thy cop,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Litel day starne.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6"><i>Tertius Pastor.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Hail, derling dere,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Full of godhede!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I pray thee be nere</span><br />
+<span class="i3">When that I have nede.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hail! swete is thy chere;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71">[71]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i3">My hart wold&euml; blede</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To see thee sitt here</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In so poor&euml; wede,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">With no pennys.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hail! Put forth thy dall!&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72">[72]</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">I bring thee bot a ball;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Have and play thee with all,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">And go to the tenis!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-17" id="Nanchor_5-17" href="#Note_5-17">{17}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The charm of this will be felt by every reader; it lies in a
+curious incongruity&#xfeff;&mdash;extreme homeliness joined to awe; the
+Infinite is contained within the narrowest human bounds; God
+Himself, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, a weak,
+helpless child. But a step more, and all would have been
+irreverence; as it is we have devotion, human, na&iuml;ve, and
+touching.</p>
+
+<p>It would be interesting to show how other scenes connected
+with Christmas are handled in the English miracle-plays: how
+Octavian (Caesar Augustus) sent out the decree that all the
+world should be taxed, and learned from the Sibyl the birth of
+Christ; how the Magi were led by the star and offered their
+symbolic gifts; how the raging of the boastful tyrant Herod, the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_138" id="Page_138" href="#Page_138">138</a>Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt are
+treated; but these scenes, though full of colour, are on the whole
+less remarkable than the shepherd and Nativity pieces, and space
+forbids us to dwell upon them. They contain many curious
+anachronisms, as when Herod invokes Mahounde, and talks
+about his princes, prelates, barons, baronets and burgesses.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73">[73]</a></p>
+
+<p>The religious play in England did not long survive the
+Reformation. Under the influence of Protestantism, with its
+vigilant dread of profanity and superstition, the cycles were
+shorn of many of their scenes, the performances became irregular,
+and by the end of the sixteenth century they had mostly ceased
+to be. Not sacred story, but the play of human character, was
+henceforth the material of the drama. The rich, variegated
+religion of the people, communal in its expression, tinged everywhere
+with human colour, gave place to a sterner, colder, more
+individual faith, fearful of contamination by the use of the
+outward and visible.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">There is little or no trace in the vernacular Christmas plays
+of direct translation from one language into another, though
+there was some borrowing of motives. Thus the Christmas
+drama of each nation has its own special flavour.</p>
+
+<p>If we turn to France, we find a remarkable fifteenth-century
+cycle that belongs purely to the winter festival, and shows the
+strictly Christmas drama at its fullest development. This great
+mystery of the &ldquo;Incarnacion et nativit&eacute; de nostre saulveur et
+redempteur Jesuchrist&rdquo; was performed out-of-doors at Rouen
+in 1474, an exceptional event for a northern city in winter-time.
+The twenty-four <i>establies</i> or &ldquo;mansions&rdquo; set up for the various
+scenes reached across the market-place from the &ldquo;Axe and
+Crown&rdquo; Inn to the &ldquo;Angel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_139" id="Page_139" href="#Page_139">139</a>After a prologue briefly explaining its purpose, the mystery
+begins, like the old liturgical plays, with the witness of the
+prophets; then follows a scene in Limbo where Adam is shown
+lamenting his fate, and another in Heaven where the Redemption
+of mankind is discussed and the Incarnation decided upon. With
+the Annunciation and the Visitation of the Virgin the first day
+closed. The second day opened with the ordering by Octavian
+of the world-census. The edict is addressed:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;A tous roys, marquis, ducs et contes,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Connestables, bailifs, vicomtes</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et tous autres generalment</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qui sont desoubz le firmament.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Joseph, in order to fulfil the command of Cyrenius, governor
+of Syria, leaves Nazareth for Bethlehem. A comic shepherds&rsquo;
+scene follows, with a rustic song:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Joyeusement, la garenlo,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Chantons en venant a la veille,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Puisque nous avons la bouteille</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Nous y berons jusques a bo.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>When Joseph and Mary reach the stable where the Nativity
+is to take place, there is a charming dialogue. Joseph laments
+over the meanness of the stable, Mary accepts it with calm
+resignation.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Joseph.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Las! vecy bien povre merrien</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Pour edifier un hostel</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et logis a ung seigneur tel.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Il naistra en bien povre place.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Marie.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Joseph.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Ou sont ces chambres tant fournies</span><br />
+<span class="i2">De Sarges, de Tapiceries<a class="pagenum" name="Page_140" id="Page_140" href="#Page_140">140</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Batus d'or, ou luyt mainte pierre,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et nates mises sur la terre,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Affin que le froit ne mefface?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Marie.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Joseph.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Helas! cy gerra povrement</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Le createur du firmament</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Celui qui fait le soleil luire,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qui fait la terre fruis produire,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qui tient la mer en son espace.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Marie.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>At last Christ is born, welcomed by the song of the angels,
+adored by His mother. In the heathen temples the idols fall;
+Hell mouth opens and shows the rage of the demons, who make a
+hideous noise; fire issues from the nostrils and eyes and ears of
+Hell, which shuts up with the devils within it. And then the
+angels in the stable worship the Child Jesus. The adoration of
+the shepherds was shown with many na&iuml;ve details for the delight
+of the people, and the performance ended with the offering of a
+sacrifice in Rome by the Emperor Octavian to an image of the
+Blessed Virgin.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-19" id="Nanchor_5-19" href="#Note_5-19">{19}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The French playwrights, quite as much as the English, love
+comic shepherd scenes with plenty of eating and drinking and
+brawling. A traditional figure is the shepherd Rifflart, always a
+laughable type. In the strictly mediaeval plays the shepherds are
+true French rustics, but with the progress of the Renaissance
+classical elements creep into the pastoral scenes; in a mystery
+printed in 1507 Orpheus with the Nymphs and Oreads is
+introduced. As might be expected, anachronisms often occur;
+a peculiarly piquant instance is found in the S. Genevi&egrave;ve
+mystery, where Caesar Augustus gets a piece of Latin translated
+into French for his convenience.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image15" name="image15" href="images/image15.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image15.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM."
+      title="THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM.</p>
+
+<p>From &ldquo;Le grant Kalendrier compost des Bergiers&rdquo;
+(N. le Rouge, Troyes, 1529).</p>
+<p>(Reproduced from a modern broadside published by Mr. F. Sidgwick.)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_141" id="Page_141" href="#Page_141">141</a>Late examples of French Christmas mysteries are the so-called
+&ldquo;comedies&rdquo; of the Nativity, Adoration of the Kings, Massacre
+of the Innocents, and Flight into Egypt contained in the
+&ldquo;Marguerites&rdquo; (published in 1547) of Marguerite, Queen of
+Navarre, sister of Fran&ccedil;ois I. Intermingled with the traditional
+figures treated more or less in the traditional way are personified
+abstractions like Philosophy, Tribulation, Inspiration, Divine
+Intelligence, and Contemplation, which largely rob the plays of
+dramatic effect. There is some true poetry in these pieces, but
+too much theological learning and too little simplicity, and in one
+place the ideas of Calvin seem to show themselves.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-20" id="Nanchor_5-20" href="#Note_5-20">{20}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The French mystery began to fall into decay about the middle
+of the sixteenth century. It was attacked on every side: by the
+new poets of the Renaissance, who preferred classical to Christian
+subjects; by the Protestants, who deemed the religious drama a
+trifling with the solemn truths of Scripture; and even by the
+Catholic clergy, who, roused to greater strictness by the challenge
+of Protestantism, found the comic elements in the plays offensive
+and dangerous, and perhaps feared that too great familiarity with
+the Bible as represented in the mysteries might lead the people
+into heresy.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-21" id="Nanchor_5-21" href="#Note_5-21">{21}</a>
+ Yet we hear occasionally of Christmas dramas in
+France in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
+In the neighbourhood of Nantes, for instance, a play of the
+Nativity by Claude Mac&eacute;e, hermit, probably written in the
+seventeenth century, was commonly performed in the first half
+of the nineteenth.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-22" id="Nanchor_5-22" href="#Note_5-22">{22}</a>
+ At Clermont the adoration of the shepherds
+was still performed in 1718, and some kind of representation of
+the scene continued in the diocese of Cambrai until 1834, when
+it was forbidden by the bishop. In the south, especially at
+Marseilles, &ldquo;pastorals&rdquo; were played towards the end of the nineteenth
+century; they had, however, largely lost their sacred
+character, and had become a kind of review of the events of
+the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-23" id="Nanchor_5-23" href="#Note_5-23">{23}</a>
+ At Dinan, in Brittany, some sort of Herod play
+was performed, though it was dying out, in 1886. It was
+acted by young men on the Epiphany, and there was an
+&ldquo;innocent&rdquo; whose throat they pretended to cut with a wooden
+sword.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-24" id="Nanchor_5-24" href="#Note_5-24">{24}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_142" id="Page_142" href="#Page_142">142</a>An interesting summary of a very full Nativity play performed
+in the churches of Upper Gascony on Christmas Eve is given by
+Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-25" id="Nanchor_5-25" href="#Note_5-25">{25}</a>
+ It ranges from the arrival of
+Joseph and Mary at Bethlehem to the Flight into Egypt and the
+Murder of the Innocents, but perhaps the most interesting parts
+are the shepherd scenes. After the message of the angel&#xfeff;&mdash;a child
+in a surplice, with wings fastened to his shoulders, seated on a
+chair drawn up to the ceiling and supported by ropes&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+shepherds leave the church, the whole of which is now regarded
+as the stable of the Divine Birth. They knock for admittance,
+and Joseph, regretting that the chamber is &ldquo;so badly lighted,&rdquo;
+lets them in. They fall down before the manger, and so do the
+shepherdesses, who &ldquo;deposit on the altar steps a banner covered
+with flowers and greenery, from which hang strings of small
+birds, apples, nuts, chestnuts, and other fruits. It is their Christmas
+offering to the cur&eacute;; the shepherds have already placed a
+whole sheep before the altar, in a like spirit.&rdquo; The play is not
+mere dumb-show, but has a full libretto.</p>
+
+<p>A rather similar piece of dramatic ceremonial is described by
+Barth&eacute;lemy in his edition of Durandus,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-26" id="Nanchor_5-26" href="#Note_5-26">{26}</a>
+ as customary in the
+eighteenth century at La Villeneuve-en-Chevrie, near Mantes.
+At the Midnight Mass a <i>cr&egrave;che</i> with a wax figure of the Holy
+Child was placed in the choir, with tapers burning about it.
+After the &ldquo;Te Deum&rdquo; had been sung, the celebrant, accompanied
+by his attendants, censed the <i>cr&egrave;che</i>, to the sound of violins,
+double-basses, and other instruments. A shepherd then prostrated
+himself before the crib, holding a sheep with a sort of
+little saddle bearing sixteen lighted candles. He was followed by
+two shepherdesses in white with distaffs and tapers. A second
+shepherd, between two shepherdesses, carried a laurel branch, to
+which were fastened oranges, lemons, biscuits, and sweetmeats.
+Two others brought great <i>pains-b&eacute;nits</i> and lighted candles; then
+came four shepherdesses, who made their adoration, and lastly
+twenty-six more shepherds, two by two, bearing in one hand a
+candle and in the other a festooned crook. The same ceremonial
+was practised at the Offertory and after the close of the Mass.
+All was done, it is said, with such piety and edification that
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_143" id="Page_143" href="#Page_143">143</a>St. Luke's words about the Bethlehem shepherds were true of
+these French swains&#xfeff;&mdash;they &ldquo;returned glorifying and praising
+God for all the things they had heard and seen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">In German there remain very few Christmas plays earlier than
+the fifteenth century. Later periods, however, have produced
+a multitude, and dramatic performances at Christmas have
+continued down to quite modern times in German-speaking
+parts.</p>
+
+<p>At Oberufer near Pressburg&#xfeff;&mdash;a German Protestant village in
+Hungary&#xfeff;&mdash;some fifty years ago, a Christmas play was performed
+under the direction of an old farmer, whose office as instructor
+had descended from father to son. The play took place at
+intervals of from three to ten years and was acted on all Sundays
+and festivals from Advent to the Epiphany. Great care was
+taken to ensure the strictest piety and morality in the actors, and
+no secular music was allowed in the place during the season for
+the performances. The practices began as early as October.
+On the first Sunday in Advent there was a solemn procession to
+the hall hired for the play. First went a man bearing a gigantic
+star&#xfeff;&mdash;he was called the &ldquo;Master Singer&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;and another carrying
+a Christmas-tree decked with ribbons and apples; then came all
+the actors, singing hymns. There was no scenery and no
+theatrical apparatus beyond a straw-seated chair and a wooden
+stool. When the first was used, the scene was understood to be
+Jerusalem, when the second, Bethlehem. The Christmas drama,
+immediately preceded by an Adam and Eve play, and succeeded
+by a Shrove Tuesday one, followed mediaeval lines, and included
+the wanderings of Joseph and Mary round the inns of Bethlehem,
+the angelic tidings to the shepherds, their visit to the manger, the
+adoration of the Three Kings, and various Herod scenes.
+Protestant influence was shown by the introduction of Luther's
+&ldquo;Vom Himmel hoch,&rdquo; but the general character was very much
+that of the old mysteries, and the dialogue was full of quaint
+na&iuml;vet&eacute;.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-27" id="Nanchor_5-27" href="#Note_5-27">{27}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At Brixlegg, in Tyrol, as late as 1872 a long Christmas play
+was acted under Catholic auspices; some of its dialogue was in
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_144" id="Page_144" href="#Page_144">144</a>the Tyrolese <i>patois</i> and racy and humorous, other parts, and
+particularly the speeches of Mary and Joseph&#xfeff;&mdash;out of respect for
+these holy personages&#xfeff;&mdash;had been rewritten in the eighteenth
+century in a very stilted and undramatic style. Some simple
+shepherd plays are said to be still presented in the churches of
+the Saxon Erzgebirge.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-28" id="Nanchor_5-28" href="#Note_5-28">{28}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The German language is perhaps richer in real Christmas plays,
+as distinguished from Nativity and Epiphany episodes in great
+cosmic cycles, than any other. There are some examples in
+mediaeval manuscripts, but the most interesting are shorter pieces
+performed in country places in comparatively recent times, and
+probably largely traditional in substance. Christianity by the
+fourteenth century had at last gained a real hold upon the
+German people, or perhaps one should rather say the German
+people had laid a strong hold upon Christianity, moulding it into
+something very human and concrete, materialistic often, yet not
+without spiritual significance. In cradle-rocking and religious
+dancing at Christmas the instincts of a lusty, kindly race expressed
+themselves, and the same character is shown in the short popular
+Christmas dramas collected by Weinhold and others.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-29" id="Nanchor_5-29" href="#Note_5-29">{29}</a>
+ Many of
+the little pieces&#xfeff;&mdash;some are rather duets than plays&#xfeff;&mdash;were sung or
+acted in church or by the fireside in the nineteenth century, and
+perhaps even now may linger in remote places. They are in
+dialect, and the rusticity of their language harmonizes well with
+their na&iuml;ve, homely sentiment. In them we behold the scenes of
+Bethlehem as realized by peasants, and their mixture of rough
+humour and tender feeling is thoroughly in keeping with the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>One is made to feel very vividly the amazement of the shepherds
+at the wondrous and sudden apparition of the angels:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>Riepl.</i> Woas is das f&uuml;r a Get&uuml;mmel,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">I versteh mi nit in d'Welt.</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J&ouml;rgl.</i> Is den heunt eingfalln der Himmel,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Fleugn d'Engeln auf unserm Feld?</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>R.</i>     Thuen Spr&uuml;ng macha</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J.</i>     Von oben acha!<a class="pagenum" name="Page_145" id="Page_145" href="#Page_145">145</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>R.</i>     I turft das Ding nit noacha thoan,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">that mir brechn Hals und Boan.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74">[74]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-30" id="Nanchor_5-30" href="#Note_5-30">{30}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The cold is keenly brought home to us when they come to the
+manger:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>J.</i>     Mei Kind, kanst kei Herberg finden?</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Muest so viel Frost leiden schoan.</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>R.</i>     Ligst du under kalden Windeln!</span><br />
+<span class="i6">L&auml;gts ihm doch a Gwandl oan!</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J.</i>     Machts ihm d'F&uuml;ess ein,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">H&uuml;llts in zue fein!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75">[75]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-31" id="Nanchor_5-31" href="#Note_5-31">{31}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Very homely are their presents to the Child:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Ein drei Eier und ein Butter</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Bringen wir auch, nemt es an!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Einen Han zu einer Suppen,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wanns die Mutter kochen kann.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Giessts ein Schmalz drein, wirds wol guet sein.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Weil wir sonsten gar nix han,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sind wir selber arme Hirten,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Nemts den guten Willen an.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76">[76]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-32" id="Nanchor_5-32" href="#Note_5-32">{32}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the dialogues ends with a curious piece of ordinary
+human kindliness, as if the Divine nature of the Infant were
+quite forgotten for the moment:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>J.</i>     Bleib halt fein gsund, mein kloans Liebl,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Wannst woas brauchst, so komm ze mir.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>J.</i>     Pf&uuml;et di G&ocirc;t halt!<a class="pagenum" name="Page_146" id="Page_146" href="#Page_146">146</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>R.</i>     W&auml;r fein gross bald!</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J.</i>     Kannst in mein Dienst stehen ein,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Wann darzu wirst gross gnue sein.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77">[77]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-33" id="Nanchor_5-33" href="#Note_5-33">{33}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Far more interesting in their realism and naturalness are these
+little plays of the common folk than the elaborate Christmas
+dramas of more learned German writers, Catholic and Lutheran,
+who in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became increasingly
+stilted and bombastic.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">The Italian religious drama&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-34" id="Nanchor_5-34" href="#Note_5-34">{34}</a>
+ evolved somewhat differently from
+that of the northern countries. The later thirteenth century saw
+the outbreak of the fanaticism of the Flagellants or <i>Battuti</i>, vast
+crowds of people of all classes who went in procession from church
+to church, from city to city, scourging their naked bodies in terror
+and repentance till the blood flowed. When the wild enthusiasm
+of this movement subsided it left enduring traces in the foundation
+of lay communities throughout the land, continuing in a more
+sober way the penitential practices of the Flagellants. One of
+their aids to devotion was the singing or reciting of vernacular
+poetry, less formal than the Latin hymns of the liturgy, and
+known as <i>laude</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78">[78]</a> These <i>laude</i> developed a more or less dramatic
+form, which gained the name of <i>divozioni</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79">[79]</a> They were, perhaps
+(though not certainly, for there seems to have been another tradition
+derived from the regular liturgical drama), the source from
+which sprang the gorgeously produced <i>sacre rappresentazioni</i> of
+the fifteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>sacre rappresentazioni</i> corresponded, though with considerable
+differences, to the miracle-plays of England and France.
+Their great period was the fifty years from 1470 to 1520, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_147" id="Page_147" href="#Page_147">147</a>they were performed, like the <i>divozioni</i>, by confraternities of
+religious laymen. The actors were boys belonging to the
+brotherhoods, and the plays were intended to be edifying for
+youth. They are more refined than the northern religious
+dramas, but only too often fall into insipidity.</p>
+
+<p>Among the texts given by D'Ancona in his collection of <i>sacre
+rappresentazioni</i> is a Tuscan &ldquo;Nativit&agrave;,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-36" id="Nanchor_5-36" href="#Note_5-36">{36}</a>
+ opening with a pastoral
+scene resembling those in the northern mysteries, but far less
+vigorous. It cannot compare, for character and humour, with
+the Towneley plays. Still the shepherds, whose names are Bobi
+del Farucchio, Nencio di Pucchio, Randello, Nencietto, Giordano,
+and Falconcello, are at least meant to have a certain rusticity, as
+they feast on bread and cheese and wine, play to the Saviour on
+bagpipe or whistle, and offer humble presents like apples and
+cheese. The scenes which follow, the coming of the Magi
+and the Murder of the Innocents, are not intrinsically of great
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that this play may have been the spectacle
+performed in Florence in 1466, as recorded by Machiavelli,
+&ldquo;to give men something to take away their thoughts from
+affairs of state.&rdquo; It &ldquo;represented the coming of the three Magi
+Kings from the East, following the star which showed the
+Nativity of Christ, and it was of so great pomp and magnificence
+that it kept the whole city busy for several months in arranging
+and preparing it.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-37" id="Nanchor_5-37" href="#Note_5-37">{37}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>An earlier record of an Italian pageant of the Magi is this
+account by the chronicler Galvano Flamma of what took place
+at Milan in 1336:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There were three kings crowned, on great horses, ... and an
+exceeding great train. And there was a golden star running through
+the air, which went before these three kings, and they came to the
+columns of San Lorenzo, where was King Herod in effigy, with the
+scribes and wise men. And they were seen to ask King Herod where
+Christ was born, and having turned over many books they answered,
+that He should be born in the city of David distant five miles from
+Jerusalem. And having heard this, those three kings, crowned with
+golden crowns, holding in their hands golden cups with gold, incense,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_148" id="Page_148" href="#Page_148">148</a>and myrrh, came to the church of Sant&rsquo; Eustorgio, the star preceding
+them through the air, ... and a wonderful train, with resounding
+trumpets and horns going before them, with apes, baboons, and
+diverse kinds of animals, and a marvellous tumult of people. There
+at the side of the high altar was a manger with ox and ass, and in the
+manger was the little Christ in the arms of the Virgin Mother. And
+those kings offered gifts unto Christ; then they were seen to sleep,
+and a winged angel said to them that they should not return by the
+region of San Lorenzo but by the Porta Romana; which also was
+done. There was so great a concourse of the people and soldiers and
+ladies and clerics that scarce anything like it was ever beheld. And it
+was ordered that every year this festal show should be performed.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-38" id="Nanchor_5-38" href="#Note_5-38">{38}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>How suggestive this is of the Magi pictures of the fifteenth
+century, with their gorgeous eastern monarchs and retinues of
+countless servants and strange animals. No other story in the
+New Testament gives such opportunity for pageantry as the Magi
+scene. All the wonder, richness, and romance of the East,
+all the splendour of western Renaissance princes could lawfully
+be introduced into the train of the Three Kings. With
+Gentile da Fabriano and Benozzo Gozzoli it has become a
+magnificent procession; there are trumpeters, pages, jesters,
+dwarfs, exotic beasts&#xfeff;&mdash;all the motley, gorgeous retinue of the
+monarchs of the time, while the kings themselves are romantic
+figures in richest attire, velvet, brocade, wrought gold, and
+jewels. It may be that much of this splendour was suggested
+to the painters by dramatic spectacles which actually passed before
+their eyes.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">I have already alluded to the Spanish &ldquo;Mystery of the Magi
+Kings,&rdquo; a mere fragment, but of peculiar interest to the historian
+of the drama as one of the two earliest religious plays in a modern
+European language. Though plays are known to have been
+performed in Spain at Christmas and Easter in the Middle Ages,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-39" id="Nanchor_5-39" href="#Note_5-39">{39}</a>
+
+we have no further texts until the very short &ldquo;Representation
+of the Birth of Our Lord,&rdquo; by G&oacute;mez Manrique, Se&ntilde;or de
+Villazopeque (1412-91), acted at the convent at Calabazanos,
+of which the author's sister was Superior. The characters
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_149" id="Page_149" href="#Page_149">149</a>introduced are the Virgin, St. Joseph, St. Gabriel, St. Michael,
+St. Raphael, another angel, and three shepherds.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-40" id="Nanchor_5-40" href="#Note_5-40">{40}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Touched by the spirit of the Renaissance, and particularly by
+the influence of Virgil, is Juan del Encina of Salamanca (1469-1534),
+court poet to the Duke of Alba, and author of two
+Christmas eclogues.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-41" id="Nanchor_5-41" href="#Note_5-41">{41}</a>
+ The first introduces four shepherds who
+bear the names of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
+John, and are curiously mixed personages, their words being
+half what might be expected from the shepherds of Bethlehem
+and half sayings proper only to the authors of the Gospels. It
+ends with a <i>villancico</i> or carol. The second eclogue is far more
+realistic, and indeed resembles the English and French pastoral
+scenes. The shepherds grumble about the weather&#xfeff;&mdash;it has
+been raining for two months, the floods are terrible, and no
+fords or bridges are left; they talk of the death of a sacristan,
+a fine singer; and they play a game with chestnuts; then comes
+the angel&#xfeff;&mdash;whom one of them calls a &ldquo;smartly dressed lad&rdquo;
+(<i>garzon rep&igrave;cado</i>)&#xfeff;&mdash;to tell them of the Birth, and they go to
+adore the Child, taking Him a kid, butter-cakes, eggs, and other
+presents.</p>
+
+<p>Infinitely more ambitious is &ldquo;The Birth of Christ&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-42" id="Nanchor_5-42" href="#Note_5-42">{42}</a>
+ by the
+great Lope de Vega (1562-1635). It opens in Paradise,
+immediately after the Creation, and ends with the adoration
+of the Three Kings. Full of allegorical conceits and personified
+qualities, it will hardly please the taste of modern minds.
+Another work of Lope's, &ldquo;The Shepherds of Bethlehem,&rdquo; a
+long pastoral in prose and verse, published in 1612, contains,
+amid many incongruities, some of the best of his shorter poems;
+one lullaby, sung by the Virgin in a palm-grove while her Child
+sleeps, has been thus translated by Ticknor:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Holy angels and blest,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Through these palms as ye sweep,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hold their branches at rest,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">For my babe is asleep.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">And ye Bethlehem palm-trees,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">As stormy winds rush<a class="pagenum" name="Page_150" id="Page_150" href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">In tempest and fury,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Your angry noise hush;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Move gently, move gently,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Restrain your wild sweep;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hold your branches at rest,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">My babe is asleep.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">My babe all divine,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">With earth's sorrows oppressed,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Seeks in slumber an instant</span><br />
+<span class="i3">His grievings to rest;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He slumbers, he slumbers,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">O, hush, then, and keep</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Your branches all still,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">My babe is asleep!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-43" id="Nanchor_5-43" href="#Note_5-43">{43}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Apart from such modern revivals of the Christmas drama as
+Mr. Laurence Housman's &ldquo;Bethlehem,&rdquo; Miss Buckton's
+&ldquo;Eager Heart,&rdquo; Mrs. Percy Dearmer's &ldquo;The Soul of the
+World,&rdquo; and similar experiments in Germany and France, a
+genuine tradition has lingered on in some parts of Europe into
+modern times. We have already noticed some French and
+German instances; to these may be added a few from other
+countries.</p>
+
+<p>In Naples there is no Christmas without the &ldquo;Cantata dei
+pastori&rdquo;; it is looked forward to no less than the Midnight
+Mass. Two or three theatres compete for the public favour in
+the performance of this play in rude verse. It begins with Adam
+and Eve and ends with the birth of Jesus and the adoration of
+the shepherds. Many devils are brought on the stage, their
+arms and legs laden with brass chains that rattle horribly. Awful
+are their names, Lucifero, Satanasso, Belfegor, Belzeb&ugrave;, &amp;c.
+They not only tempt Adam and Eve, but annoy the Virgin and
+St. Joseph, until an angel comes and frightens them away. Two
+non-Biblical figures are introduced, Razzullo and Sarchiapone,
+who are tempted by devils and aided by angels.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-44" id="Nanchor_5-44" href="#Note_5-44">{44}</a>
+ In Sicily too
+the Christmas play still lingers under the name of <i>Pastorale</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-45" id="Nanchor_5-45" href="#Note_5-45">{45}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_151" id="Page_151" href="#Page_151">151</a>A nineteenth-century Spanish survival of the &ldquo;Stella&rdquo; is
+described in Fernan Caballero's sketch, &ldquo;La Noche de Navidad.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-46" id="Nanchor_5-46" href="#Note_5-46">{46}</a>
+
+At the foot of the altar of the village church, according to
+this account, images of the Virgin and St. Joseph were placed,
+with the Holy Child between them, lying on straw. On either
+side knelt a small boy dressed as an angel. Solemnly there
+entered the church a number of men attired as shepherds, bearing
+their offerings to the Child; afterwards they danced with slow
+and dignified movements before the altar. The shepherds were
+followed by the richest men of the village dressed as the Magi
+Kings, mounted on horseback, and followed by their train.
+Before them went a shining star. On reaching the church they
+dismounted; the first, representing a majestic old man with
+white hair, offered incense to the Babe; the others, Caspar and
+Melchior, myrrh and gold respectively. This was done on the
+feast of the Epiphany.</p>
+
+<p>A remnant possibly of the &ldquo;Stella&rdquo; is to be found in a
+Christmas custom extremely widespread in Europe and surviving
+even in some Protestant lands&#xfeff;&mdash;the carrying about of a star in
+memory of the Star of Bethlehem. It is generally borne by a
+company of boys, who sing some sort of carol, and expect a gift
+in return.</p>
+
+<p>The practice is&#xfeff;&mdash;or was&#xfeff;&mdash;found as far north as Sweden. All
+through the Christmas season the &ldquo;star youths&rdquo; go about from
+house to house. Three are dressed up as the Magi Kings, a
+fourth carries on a stick a paper lantern in the form of a six-pointed
+star, made to revolve and lighted by candles. There are
+also a Judas, who bears the purse for the collection, and,
+occasionally, a King Herod. A doggerel rhyme is sung, telling
+the story of the Nativity and offering good wishes.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-47" id="Nanchor_5-47" href="#Note_5-47">{47}</a>
+ In
+Norway and Denmark processions of a like character were
+formerly known.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-48" id="Nanchor_5-48" href="#Note_5-48">{48}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Normandy at Christmas children used to go singing through
+the village streets, carrying a lantern of coloured paper on a long
+osier rod.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-49" id="Nanchor_5-49" href="#Note_5-49">{49}</a>
+ At Pleudihen in Brittany three young men representing
+the Magi sang carols in the cottages, dressed in their
+holiday clothes covered with ribbons.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-50" id="Nanchor_5-50" href="#Note_5-50">{50}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_152" id="Page_152" href="#Page_152">152</a>In England there appears to be no trace of the custom, which
+is however found in Germany, Austria, Holland, Italy, Bohemia,
+Roumania, Poland, and Russia.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-51" id="Nanchor_5-51" href="#Note_5-51">{51}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Thuringia a curious carol used to be sung, telling how
+Herod tried to tempt the Wise Men&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, good Wise Men, come in and dine;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I will give you both beer and wine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And hay and straw to make your bed,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And nought of payment shall be said.&rsquo;&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>But they answer:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, no! oh, no! we must away,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">We seek a little Child to-day,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A little Child, a mighty King,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Him who created everything.&rsquo;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-52" id="Nanchor_5-52" href="#Note_5-52">{52}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In Tyrol the &ldquo;star-singing&rdquo; is very much alive at the present
+day. In the Upper Innthal three boys in white robes, with
+blackened faces and gold paper crowns, go to every house on
+Epiphany Eve, one of them carrying a golden star on a pole.
+They sing a carol, half religious, half comic&#xfeff;&mdash;almost a little
+drama&#xfeff;&mdash;and are given money, cake, and drink. In the Ilsethal
+the boys come on Christmas Eve, and presents are given them by
+well-to-do people. In some parts there is but one singer, an old
+man with a white beard and a turban, who twirls a revolving
+star. A remarkable point about the Tyrolese star-singers is that
+before anything is given them they are told to stamp on the
+snowy fields outside the houses, in order to promote the growth
+of the crops in summer.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-53" id="Nanchor_5-53" href="#Note_5-53">{53}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Little Russia the &ldquo;star&rdquo; is made of pasteboard and has a
+transparent centre with a picture of Christ through which the
+light of a candle shines. One boy carries the star and another
+twirls the points.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-54" id="Nanchor_5-54" href="#Note_5-54">{54}</a>
+ In Roumania it is made of wood and
+adorned with frills and little bells. A representation of the
+&ldquo;manger,&rdquo; illuminated from behind, forms the centre, and the
+star also shows pictures of Adam and Eve and angels.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-55" id="Nanchor_5-55" href="#Note_5-55">{55}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_153" id="Page_153" href="#Page_153">153</a>A curious traditional drama, in which pagan elements seem
+to have mingled with the Herod story, is still performed by the
+Roumanians during the Christmas festival. It is called in
+Wallachia &ldquo;Vicleim&rdquo; (from Bethlehem), in Moldavia and
+Transylvania &ldquo;Irozi&rdquo; (plural from <i>Irod</i> = Herod). At least ten
+persons figure in it: &ldquo;Emperor&rdquo; Herod, an old grumbling
+monarch who speaks in harsh tones to his followers; an officer
+and two soldiers in Roman attire; the three Magi, in Oriental
+garb, a child, and &ldquo;two comical figures&#xfeff;&mdash;the <i>paia&#x0163;a</i> (the clown)
+and the <i>mo&#x015F;ul</i>, or old man, the former in harlequin accoutrement,
+the latter with a mask on his face, a long beard, a hunch on his
+back, and dressed in a sheepskin with the wool on the outside.
+The plot of the play is quite simple. The officer brings the
+news that three strange men have been caught, going to Bethlehem
+to adore the new-born Messiah; Herod orders them to be
+shown in: they enter singing in a choir. Long dialogues ensue
+between them and Herod, who at last orders them to be taken to
+prison. But then they address the Heavenly Father, and shout
+imprecations on Herod, invoking celestial punishment on him, at
+which unaccountable noises are heard, seeming to announce the
+fulfilment of the curse. Herod falters, begs the Wise Men's
+forgiveness, putting off his anger till more opportune times. The
+Wise Men retire.... Then a child is introduced, who goes
+on his knees before Herod, with his hands on his breast, asking
+pity. He gives clever answers to various questions and
+foretells the Christ's future career, at which Herod stabs him.
+The whole troupe now strikes up a tune of reproach to Herod,
+who falls on his knees in deep repentance.&rdquo; The play is sometimes
+performed by puppets instead of living actors.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-56" id="Nanchor_5-56" href="#Note_5-56">{56}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Christmas plays performed by puppets are found in other
+countries too. In Poland &ldquo;during the week between Christmas
+and New Year is shown the <i>Jaselki</i> or manger, a travelling series
+of scenes from the life of Christ or even of modern peasants, a
+small travelling puppet-theatre, gorgeous with tinsel and candles,
+and something like our &lsquo;Punch and Judy&rsquo; show. The market-place
+of Cracow, especially at night, is a very pretty spectacle, its
+sidewalks all lined with these glittering Jaselki.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-57" id="Nanchor_5-57" href="#Note_5-57">{57}</a>
+ In Madrid
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_154" id="Page_154" href="#Page_154">154</a>at the Epiphany a puppet-play was common, in which the events
+of the Nativity and the Infancy were mimed by wooden figures,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-58" id="Nanchor_5-58" href="#Note_5-58">{58}</a>
+
+and in Provence, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Christmas
+scenes were represented in the same way.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-59" id="Nanchor_5-59" href="#Note_5-59">{59}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Last may be mentioned a curious Mexican mixture of religion
+and amusement, a sort of drama called the &ldquo;Posadas,&rdquo; described
+by Madame Calderon de la Barca in her &ldquo;Life in Mexico&rdquo;
+(1843).&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-60" id="Nanchor_5-60" href="#Note_5-60">{60}</a>
+ The custom was based upon the wanderings of the
+Virgin and St. Joseph in Bethlehem in search of repose. For
+eight days these wanderings of the holy pair to the different
+<i>posadas</i> were represented. On Christmas Eve, says the narrator,
+&ldquo;a lighted candle was put into the hand of each lady [this was at
+a sort of party], and a procession was formed, two by two, which
+marched all through the house ... the whole party singing the
+Litanies.... A group of little children, dressed as angels, joined
+the procession.... At last the procession drew up before a
+door, and a shower of fireworks was sent flying over our heads,
+I suppose to represent the descent of the angels; for a group of
+ladies appeared, dressed to represent the shepherds.... Then
+voices, supposed to be those of Mary and Joseph, struck up a
+hymn, in which they begged for admittance, saying that the
+night was cold and dark, that the wind blew hard, and that they
+prayed for a night's shelter. A chorus of voices from within
+refused admittance. Again those without entreated shelter, and
+at length declared that she at the door, who thus wandered in the
+night, and had not where to lay her head, was the Queen of
+Heaven! At this name the doors were thrown wide open, and
+the Holy Family entered singing. The scene within was very
+pretty: a <i>nacimiento</i>.... One of the angels held a waxen baby
+in her arms.... A padre took the baby from the angel and
+placed it in the cradle, and the <i>posada</i> was completed. We then
+returned to the drawing-room&#xfeff;&mdash;angels, shepherds, and all, and
+danced till supper-time.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" href="#Note_5-60">{60}</a>
+ Here the religious drama has sunk to
+little more than a &ldquo;Society&rdquo; game.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image16" name="image16" href="images/image16.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image16.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. MASACCIO"
+      title="THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. MASACCIO" />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. MASACCIO</p>
+
+<p>(<i>Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_155" id="Page_155" href="#Page_155">155</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="POSTSCRIPT" id="POSTSCRIPT"></a>POSTSCRIPT</h2>
+
+
+<p>Before we pass on to the pagan aspects of Christmas, let us
+gather up our thoughts in an attempt to realize the peculiar
+appeal of the Feast of the Nativity, as it has been felt in the past,
+as it is felt to-day even by moderns who have no belief in the
+historical truth of the story it commemorates.</p>
+
+<p>This appeal of Christmas seems to lie in the union of two
+modes of feeling which may be called the <i>carol spirit</i> and the
+<i>mystical spirit</i>. The <i>carol spirit</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;by this we may understand the
+simple, human joyousness, the tender and graceful imagination,
+the kindly, intimate affection, which have gathered round the
+cradle of the Christ Child. The folk-tune, the secular song
+adapted to a sacred theme&#xfeff;&mdash;such is the carol. What a sense of
+kindliness, not of sentimentality, but of genuine human feeling,
+these old songs give us, as though the folk who first sang them
+were more truly comrades, more closely knit together than we
+under modern industrialism.</p>
+
+<p>One element in the carol spirit is the rustic note that finds
+its sanction as regards Christmas in St. Luke's story of the
+shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. One thinks
+of the stillness over the fields, of the hinds with their rough talk,
+&ldquo;simply chatting in a rustic row,&rdquo; of the keen air, and the great
+burst of light and song that dazes their simple wits, of their
+journey to Bethlehem where &ldquo;the heaven-born Child all meanly
+wrapt in the rude manger lies,&rdquo; of the ox and ass linking the
+beasts of the field to the Christmas adoration of mankind.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80">[80]</a></p>
+
+<p>For many people, indeed, the charm of Christmas is inseparably
+associated with the country; it is lost in London&#xfeff;&mdash;the city is too
+vast, too modern, too sophisticated. It is bound up with the
+thought of frosty fields, of bells heard far away, of bare trees
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_156" id="Page_156" href="#Page_156">156</a>against the starlit sky, of carols sung not by trained choirs but by
+rustic folk with rough accent, irregular time, and tunes learnt by
+ear and not by book.</p>
+
+<p>Again, without the idea of winter half the charm of Christmas
+would be gone. Transplanted in the imagination of western
+Christendom from an undefined season in the hot East to Europe
+at midwinter, the Nativity scenes have taken on a new pathos
+with the thought of the bitter cold to which the great Little One
+lay exposed in the rough stable, with the contrast between the
+cold and darkness of the night and the fire of love veiled beneath
+that infant form. <i>Lux in tenebris</i> is one of the strongest notes of
+Christmas: in the bleak midwinter a light shines through the
+darkness; when all is cold and gloom, the sky bursts into
+splendour, and in the dark cave is born the Light of the World.</p>
+
+<p>There is the idea of royalty too, with all it stands for of colour
+and magnificence, though not so much in literature as in painting
+is this side of the Christmas story represented. The Epiphany is
+the great opportunity for imaginative development of the regal
+idea. Then is seen the union of utter poverty with highest
+kingship; the monarchs of the East come to bow before the
+humble Infant for whom the world has found no room in the inn.
+How suggestive by their long, slow syllables are the Italian names
+of the Magi. Gasparre, Baldassarre, Melchiorre&#xfeff;&mdash;we picture
+Oriental monarchs in robes mysteriously gorgeous, wrought with
+strange patterns, heavy with gold and precious stones. With
+slow processional motion they advance, bearing to the King of
+Kings their symbolic gifts, gold for His crowning, incense for
+His worship, myrrh for His mortality, and with them come the
+mystery, colour, and perfume of the East, the occult wisdom
+which bows itself before the revelation in the Child.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, as the foregoing pages have shown, it is the <i>childhood</i>
+of the Redeemer that has won the heart of Europe for Christmas;
+it is the appeal to the parental instinct, the love for the tender,
+weak, helpless, yet all-potential babe, that has given the Church's
+festival its strongest hold. And this side of Christmas is
+penetrated often by the <i>mystical spirit</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;that sense of the Infinite
+in the finite without which the highest human life is impossible.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_157" id="Page_157" href="#Page_157">157</a>The feeling for Christmas varies from mere delight in the
+Christ Child as a representative symbol on which to lavish
+affection, as a child delights in a doll, to the mystical philosophy of
+Eckhart, in whose Christmas sermons the Nativity is viewed as a
+type of the Birth of God in the depths of man's being. Yet
+even the least spiritual forms of the cult of the Child are seldom
+without some hint of the supersensual, the Infinite, and even in
+Eckhart there is a love of concrete symbolism. Christmas
+stands peculiarly for the sacramental principle that the outward
+and visible is a sign and shadow of the inward and spiritual. It
+means the seeing of common, earthly things shot through by the
+glory of the Infinite. &ldquo;Its note,&rdquo; as has been said of a stage of
+the mystic consciousness, the Illuminative Way, &ldquo;is sacramental
+not ascetic. It entails ... the discovery of the Perfect One
+ablaze in the Many, not the forsaking of the Many in order
+to find the One ... an ineffable radiance, a beauty and a reality
+never before suspected, are perceived by a sort of clairvoyance
+shining in the meanest things.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_6-1" id="Nanchor_6-1" href="#Note_6-1">{1}</a>
+ Christmas is the festival of the
+Divine Immanence, and it is natural that it should have been
+beloved by the saint and mystic whose life was the supreme
+manifestation of the <i>Via Illuminativa</i>, Francis of Assisi.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas is the most human and lovable of the Church's
+feasts. Easter and Ascensiontide speak of the rising and
+exaltation of a glorious being, clothed in a spiritual body refined
+beyond all comparison with our natural flesh; Whitsuntide tells
+of the coming of a mysterious, intangible Power&#xfeff;&mdash;like the wind,
+we cannot tell whence It cometh and whither It goeth;
+Trinity offers for contemplation an ineffable paradox of Pure
+Being. But the God of Christmas is no ethereal form, no mere
+spiritual essence, but a very human child, feeling the cold and the
+roughness of the straw, needing to be warmed and fed and
+cherished. Christmas is the festival of the natural body, of this
+world; it means the consecration of the ordinary things of life,
+affection and comradeship, eating and drinking and merrymaking;
+and in some degree the memory of the Incarnation
+has been able to blend with the pagan joyance of the New
+Year.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_158" id="Page_158" href="#Page_158">158</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_159" id="Page_159" href="#Page_159">159</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Part_II" id="Part_II"></a>Part II&#xfeff;&mdash;Pagan Survivals</h2>
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_160" id="Page_160" href="#Page_160">160</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_161" id="Page_161" href="#Page_161">161</a></p>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_VI" id="Chapter_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>The Church and Superstition&#xfeff;&mdash;Nature of Pagan Survivals&#xfeff;&mdash;Racial Origins&#xfeff;&mdash;Roman
+Festivals of the <i>Saturnalia</i> and Kalends&#xfeff;&mdash;Was there a Teutonic Midwinter
+Festival?&#xfeff;&mdash;The Teutonic, Celtic, and Slav New Year&#xfeff;&mdash;Customs attracted to
+Christmas or January&nbsp;1&#xfeff;&mdash;The Winter Cycle of Festivals&#xfeff;&mdash;<i>Rationale</i> of Festival
+Ritual: (<i>a</i>) Sacrifice and Sacrament, (<i>b</i>) the Cult of the Dead, (<i>c</i>) Omens and
+Charms for the New Year&#xfeff;&mdash;Compromise in the Later Middle Ages&#xfeff;&mdash;The Puritans
+and Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Decay of Old Traditions.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image17" name="image17" href="images/image17.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image17.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA."
+      title="NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA.</p>
+
+<p>An Asiatic example of animal masks.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>We have now to leave the commemoration of the Nativity of
+Christ, and to turn to the other side of Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;its many
+traditional observances which, though sometimes coloured by
+Christianity, have nothing to do with the Birth of the Redeemer.
+This class of customs has often, especially in the first millennium
+of our era, been the object of condemnations by ecclesiastics, and
+represents the old paganism which Christianity failed to extinguish.
+The Church has played a double part, a part of sheer
+antagonism, forcing heathen customs into the shade, into a more
+or less surreptitious and unprogressive life, and a part of adaptation,
+baptizing them into Christ, giving them a Christian name and
+interpretation, and often modifying their form. The general
+effect of Christianity upon pagan usages is well suggested by
+Dr. Karl Pearson:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What the missionary could he repressed, the more as his church
+grew in strength; what he could not repress he adopted or simply
+left unregarded.... What the missionary tried to repress became
+mediaeval witchcraft; what he judiciously disregarded survives to this
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_162" id="Page_162" href="#Page_162">162</a>day in peasant weddings and in the folk-festivals at the great changes
+of season.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-1" id="Nanchor_7-1" href="#Note_7-1">{1}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>We find then many pagan practices concealed beneath a
+superficial Christianity&#xfeff;&mdash;often under the mantle of some saint&#xfeff;&mdash;but
+side by side with these are many usages never Christianized
+even in appearance, and obviously identical with heathen customs
+against which the Church thundered in the days of her youth.
+Grown old and tolerant&#xfeff;&mdash;except of novelties&#xfeff;&mdash;she has long since
+ceased to attack them, and they have themselves mostly lost all
+definite religious meaning. As the old pagan faith decayed, they
+tended to become in a literal sense &ldquo;superstition,&rdquo; something
+standing over, like shells from which the living occupant has
+gone. They are now often mere &ldquo;survivals&rdquo; in the technical
+folk-lore sense, pieces of custom separated from the beliefs that
+once gave them meaning, performed only because in a vague sort
+of way they are supposed to bring good luck. In many cases
+those who practise them would be quite unable to explain how or
+why they work for good.</p>
+
+<p>Mental inertia, the instinct to do and believe what has always
+been done and believed, has sometimes preserved the animating
+faith as well as the external form of these practices, but often all
+serious significance has departed. What was once religious or
+magical ritual, upon the due observance of which the welfare
+of the community was believed to depend, has become mere
+pageantry and amusement, often a mere children's game.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-2" id="Nanchor_7-2" href="#Note_7-2">{2}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the spirit of a later age has worked upon these
+pagan customs, revivifying and transforming them, giving them
+charm. Often, however, one does not find in them the poetry,
+the warm humanity, the humour, which mark the creations of
+popular Catholicism. They are fossils and their interest is that
+of the fossil: they are records of a vanished world and help us to
+an imaginative reconstruction of it. But further, just as on
+a stratum of rock rich in fossils there may be fair meadows and
+gardens and groves, depending for their life on the denudation
+of the rock beneath, so have these ancient religious products
+largely supplied the soil in which more spiritual and more
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_163" id="Page_163" href="#Page_163">163</a>beautiful things have flourished. Amid these, as has been well
+said, &ldquo;they still emerge, unchanged and unchanging, like the
+quaint outcrops of some ancient rock formation amid rich
+vegetation and fragrant flowers.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-3" id="Nanchor_7-3" href="#Note_7-3">{3}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The survivals of pagan religion at Christian festivals relate not
+so much to the worship of definite divinities&#xfeff;&mdash;against this the
+missionaries made their most determined efforts, and the names
+of the old gods have practically disappeared&#xfeff;&mdash;as to cults which
+preceded the development of anthropomorphic gods with names
+and attributes. These cults, paid to less personally conceived
+spirits, were of older standing and no doubt had deeper roots in
+the popular mind. Fundamentally associated with agricultural
+and pastoral life, they have in many cases been preserved by the
+most conservative element in the population, the peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the customs we shall meet with are magical, rather
+than religious in the proper sense; they are not directed to the
+conciliation of spiritual beings, but spring from primitive man's
+belief &ldquo;that in order to produce the great phenomena of nature
+on which his life depended he had only to imitate them.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-4" id="Nanchor_7-4" href="#Note_7-4">{4}</a>
+ Even
+when they have a definitely religious character, and are connected
+with some spirit, magical elements are often found in them.</p>
+
+<p>Before we consider these customs in detail it will be necessary
+to survey the pagan festivals briefly alluded to in <a href="#Chapter_I">Chapter I.</a>, to
+note the various ideas and practices that characterized them,
+and to study the attitude of the Church towards survivals of such
+practices while the conversion of Europe was in progress, and also
+during the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>The development of religious custom and belief in Europe is
+a matter of such vast complexity that I cannot in a book of this
+kind attempt more than the roughest outline of the probable
+origins of the observances, purely pagan or half-Christianized,
+clustering round Christmas. It is difficult, in the present state
+of knowledge, to discern clearly the contributions of different
+peoples to the traditional customs of Europe, and even, in many
+cases, to say whether a given custom is &ldquo;Aryan&rdquo; or pre-Aryan.
+The proportion of the Aryan military aristocracy to the peoples
+whom they conquered was not uniform in all countries, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_164" id="Page_164" href="#Page_164">164</a>probably was often small. While the families of the conquerors
+succeeded in imposing their languages, it by no means
+necessarily follows that the folk-practices of countries now
+Aryan in speech came entirely or even chiefly from Aryan
+sources. Religious tradition has a marvellous power of
+persistence, and it must be remembered that the lands conquered
+by men of Aryan speech had been previously occupied for
+immense periods.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-5" id="Nanchor_7-5" href="#Note_7-5">{5}</a>
+ Similarly, in countries like our own, which
+have been successively invaded by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons,
+Danes, and Normans, it is often extraordinarily hard to say even
+to what <i>national</i> source a given custom should be assigned.</p>
+
+<p>It is but tentatively and with uncertain hands that scholars are
+trying to separate the racial strains in the folk-traditions of
+Europe, and here I can hardly do more than point out three
+formative elements in Christian customs: the ecclesiastical, the
+classical (Greek and Roman), and the barbarian, taking the last
+broadly and without a minute racial analysis. So far, indeed, as
+ritual, apart from mythology, is concerned, there seems to be
+a broad common ground of tradition among the Aryan-speaking
+peoples. How far this is due to a common derivation we need
+not here attempt to decide. The folk-lore of the whole world,
+it is to be noted, &ldquo;reveals for the same stages of civilization
+a wonderful uniformity and homogeneity.... This uniformity
+is not, however, due to necessary uniformity of origin, but to
+a great extent to the fact that it represents the state of
+equilibrium arrived at between minds at a certain level and
+their environment.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-6" id="Nanchor_7-6" href="#Note_7-6">{6}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The scientific study of primitive religion is still almost in its
+infancy, and a large amount of conjecture must necessarily enter
+into any explanations of popular ritual that can be offered. In
+attempting to account for Christmas customs we must be mindful,
+therefore, of the tentative nature of the theories put forward.
+Again, it is important to remember that ritual practices are far
+more enduring than the explanations given to them. &ldquo;The
+antique religions,&rdquo; to quote the words of Robertson Smith, &ldquo;had
+for the most part no creed; they consisted entirely of institutions
+and practices ... as a rule we find that while the practice was
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_165" id="Page_165" href="#Page_165">165</a>rigorously fixed, the meaning attached to it was extremely
+vague, and the same rite was explained by different people in
+different ways.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-7" id="Nanchor_7-7" href="#Note_7-7">{7}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Thus if we can arrive at the significance of a rite at a
+given period, it by no means follows that those who began it
+meant the same thing. At the time of the conflict of the
+heathen religions with Christianity elaborate structures of
+mythology had grown up around their traditional ceremonial,
+assigning to it meanings that had often little to do with its
+original purpose. Often, too, when the purpose was changed,
+new ceremonies were added, so that a rite may look very unlike
+what it was at first.</p>
+
+<p>With these cautions and reservations we must now try to trace
+the connection between present-day or recent goings-on about
+Christmas-time and the festival practices of pre-Christian Europe.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Christmas, as we saw in <a href="#Chapter_I">Chapter I.</a>, has taken the date of the
+<i>Natalis Invicti</i>. We need not linger over this feast, for it was
+not attended by folk-customs, and there is nothing to connect it
+with modern survivals. The Roman festivals that really count
+for our present purpose are the Kalends of January and, probably,
+the <i>Saturnalia</i>. The influence of the Kalends is strongest
+naturally in the Latin countries, but is found also all over Europe.
+The influence of the <i>Saturnalia</i> is less certain; the festival is not
+mentioned in ecclesiastical condemnations after the institution
+of Christmas, and possibly its popularity was not so widespread
+as that of the Kalends. There are, however, some curiously
+interesting Christmas parallels to its usages.</p>
+
+<p>The strictly religious feast of the <i>Saturnalia</i>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-8" id="Nanchor_7-8" href="#Note_7-8">{8}</a>
+ was held on
+December&nbsp;17, but the festal customs were kept up for seven days,
+thus lasting until the day before our Christmas Eve. Among
+them was a fair called the <i>sigillariorum celebritas</i>, for the sale
+of little images of clay or paste which were given away as
+presents.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81">[81]</a> Candles seem also to have been given away, perhaps
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_166" id="Page_166" href="#Page_166">166</a>as symbols of, or even charms to ensure, the return of the sun's
+power after the solstice. The most remarkable and typical
+feature, however, of the <i>Saturnalia</i> was the mingling of all
+classes in a common jollity. Something of the character of
+the celebration (in a Hellenized form) may be gathered from
+the &ldquo;Cronia&rdquo; or &ldquo;Saturnalia&rdquo; of Lucian, a dialogue between
+Cronus or Saturn and his priest. We learn from it that the
+festivities were marked by &ldquo;drinking and being drunk, noise
+and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves,
+singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an occasional ducking
+of corked faces in icy water,&rdquo; and that slaves had licence to revile
+their lords.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-9" id="Nanchor_7-9" href="#Note_7-9">{9}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of the season may be judged from the legislation
+which Lucian attributes to Cronosolon, priest and prophet of
+Cronus, much as a modern writer might make Father Christmas
+or Santa Klaus lay down rules for the due observance of Yule.
+Here are some of the laws:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>All business, be it public or private, is forbidden during the feast days,
+save such as tends to sport and solace and delight. Let none follow their
+avocations saving cooks and bakers.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>All men shall be equal, slave and free, rich and poor, one with another.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Anger, resentment, threats, are contrary to law.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>No discourse shall be either composed or delivered, except it be witty and
+lusty, conducing to mirth and jollity.</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo;</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>There follow directions as to the sending of presents of money,
+clothing, or vessels, by rich men to poor friends, and as to poor
+men's gifts in return. If the poor man have learning, his return
+gift is to be &ldquo;an ancient book, but of good omen and festive
+humour, or a writing of his own after his ability.... For the
+unlearned, let him send a garland or grains of frankincense.&rdquo;
+The &ldquo;Cronosolon&rdquo; closes with &ldquo;Laws of the Board,&rdquo; of which
+the following are a few:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Every man shall take place as chance may direct; dignities and birth and
+wealth shall give no precedence.</i><a class="pagenum" name="Page_167" id="Page_167" href="#Page_167">167</a></p>
+
+<p><i>All shall be served with the same wine.... Every man's portion of meat
+shall be alike.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>When the rich man shall feast his slaves, let his friends serve
+with him.</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-11" id="Nanchor_7-11" href="#Note_7-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Over the whole festival brooded the thought of a golden age in
+the distant past, when Saturn ruled, a just and kindly monarch,
+when all men were good and all men were happy.</p>
+
+<p>A striking feature of the <i>Saturnalia</i> was the choosing by lot of a
+mock king, to preside over the revels. His word was law, and he
+was able to lay ridiculous commands upon the guests; &ldquo;one,&rdquo;
+says Lucian, &ldquo;must shout out a libel on himself, another dance
+naked, or pick up the flute-girl and carry her thrice round the
+house.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-12" id="Nanchor_7-12" href="#Note_7-12">{12}</a>
+ This king may have been originally the representative
+of the god Saturn himself. In the days of the classical writers
+he is a mere &ldquo;Lord of Misrule,&rdquo; but Dr. Frazer has propounded
+the very interesting theory that this time of privilege and gaiety
+was once but the prelude to a grim sacrifice in which he had
+to die in the character of the god, giving his life for the world.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-13" id="Nanchor_7-13" href="#Note_7-13">{13}</a>
+
+Dr. Frazer's theory, dependent for its evidence upon the narrative
+of the martyrdom of a fourth-century saint, Dasius by name,
+has been keenly criticized by Dr. Warde Fowler. He holds
+that there is nothing whatever to show that the &ldquo;Saturn&rdquo; who
+in the fourth century, according to the story, was sacrificed by
+soldiers on the Danube, had anything to do with the customs of
+ancient Rome.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-14" id="Nanchor_7-14" href="#Note_7-14">{14}</a>
+ Still, in whatever way the king of the <i>Saturnalia</i>
+may be explained, it is interesting to note his existence and compare
+him with the merry monarchs whom we shall meet at
+Christmas and Twelfth Night.</p>
+
+<p>How far the Saturnalian customs in general were of old Latin
+origin it is difficult to say; the name Saturnus (connected with
+the root of <i>serere</i>, to sow) and the date point to a real Roman
+festival of the sowing of the crops, but this was heavily overlaid
+with Greek ideas and practice.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-15" id="Nanchor_7-15" href="#Note_7-15">{15}</a>
+ It is especially important to
+bear this in mind in considering Lucian's statements.</p>
+
+<p>The same is true of the festival of the January Kalends, a few
+days after the <i>Saturnalia</i>. On January&nbsp;1, the Roman New
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_168" id="Page_168" href="#Page_168">168</a>Year's Day, the new consuls were inducted into office, and for
+at least three days high festival was kept. The houses were
+decorated with lights and greenery&#xfeff;&mdash;these, we shall find, may be
+partly responsible for the modern Christmas-tree. As at the
+<i>Saturnalia</i> masters drank and gambled with slaves. <i>Vota</i>, or
+solemn wishes of prosperity for the Emperor during the New
+Year, were customary, and the people and the Senate were even
+expected to present gifts of money to him. The Emperor
+Caligula excited much disgust by publishing an edict requiring
+these gifts and by standing in the porch of his palace to receive
+them in person. Such gifts, not only presented to the Emperor,
+but frequently exchanged between private persons, were called
+<i>strenae</i>, a name still surviving in the French <i>&eacute;trennes</i> (New
+Year's presents).&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-16" id="Nanchor_7-16" href="#Note_7-16">{16}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>An interesting and very full account of the Kalends celebrations
+is given in two discourses of Libanius, the famous Greek
+sophist of the fourth century:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The festival of the Kalends,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;is celebrated everywhere
+as far as the limits of the Roman Empire extend.... Everywhere
+may be seen carousals and well-laden tables; luxurious abundance is
+found in the houses of the rich, but also in the houses of the poor
+better food than usual is put upon the table. The impulse to spend
+seizes everyone. He who the whole year through has taken pleasure
+in saving and piling up his pence, becomes suddenly extravagant. He
+who erstwhile was accustomed and preferred to live poorly, now at
+this feast enjoys himself as much as his means will allow.... People
+are not only generous towards themselves, but also towards their
+fellow-men. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides....
+The highroads and footpaths are covered with whole processions of
+laden men and beasts.... As the thousand flowers which burst
+forth everywhere are the adornment of Spring, so are the thousand
+presents poured out on all sides, the decoration of the Kalends feast.
+It may justly be said that it is the fairest time of the year.... The
+Kalends festival banishes all that is connected with toil, and allows
+men to give themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment. From the
+minds of young people it removes two kinds of dread: the dread of the
+schoolmaster and the dread of the stern pedagogue. The slave also
+it allows, so far as possible, to breathe the air of freedom....
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_169" id="Page_169" href="#Page_169">169</a>Another great quality of the festival is that it teaches men not to hold
+too fast to their money, but to part with it and let it pass into other
+hands.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-17" id="Nanchor_7-17" href="#Note_7-17">{17}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The resemblances here to modern Christmas customs are very
+striking. In another discourse Libanius speaks of processions on
+the Eve of the festival. Few people, he says, go to bed; most
+go about the streets with singing and leaping and all sorts of
+mockery. The severest moralist utters no blame on this occasion.
+When morning begins to dawn they decorate their houses with
+laurels and other greenery, and at daybreak may go to bed to
+sleep off their intoxication, for many deem it necessary at this
+feast to follow the flowing bowl. On the 1st of January money
+is distributed to the populace; on the 2nd no more presents are
+given: it is customary to stay at home playing dice, masters and
+slaves together. On the 3rd there is racing; on the 4th the
+festivities begin to decline, but they are not altogether over on
+the 5th.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-18" id="Nanchor_7-18" href="#Note_7-18">{18}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Another feature of the Kalends, recorded not in the pages
+of classical writers but in ecclesiastical condemnations, was the
+custom of dressing up in the hides of animals, in women's clothes,
+and in masks of various kinds.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-19" id="Nanchor_7-19" href="#Note_7-19">{19}</a>
+ Dr. Tille&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-20" id="Nanchor_7-20" href="#Note_7-20">{20}</a>
+ regards this as
+Italian in origin, but it seems likely that it was a native custom in
+Greece, Gaul, Germany, and other countries conquered by the
+Romans. In Greece the skin-clad mummers may have belonged
+to the winter festivals of Dionysus supplanted by the <i>Kalendae</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-21" id="Nanchor_7-21" href="#Note_7-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Church's denunciations of pagan festal practices in the
+winter season are mainly directed against the Kalends celebrations,
+and show into how many regions the keeping of the
+feast had spread. Complaints of its continued observance abound
+in the writings of churchmen and the decrees of councils. In
+the second volume of his &ldquo;Mediaeval Stage&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-22" id="Nanchor_7-22" href="#Note_7-22">{22}</a>
+ Mr. Chambers
+has made an interesting collection of forty excerpts from such
+denunciations, ranging in date from the fourth century to the
+eleventh, and coming from Spain, Italy, Antioch, northern Africa,
+Constantinople, Germany, England, and various districts of what
+is now France.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_170" id="Page_170" href="#Page_170">170</a>As a specimen I may translate a passage describing at some
+length the practices condemned. It is from a sermon often
+ascribed to St. Augustine of Hippo, but probably composed in
+the sixth century, very likely by Caesarius of Arles in southern
+Gaul:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On those days,&rdquo; says the preacher, speaking of the Kalends of
+January, &ldquo;the heathen, reversing the order of all things, dress themselves
+up in indecent deformities.... These miserable men, and
+what is worse, some who have been baptized, put on counterfeit forms
+and monstrous faces, at which one should rather be ashamed and sad.
+For what reasonable man would believe that any men in their senses
+would by making a stag (<i>cervulum</i>) turn themselves into the appearance
+of animals? Some are clothed in the hides of cattle; others put on
+the heads of beasts, rejoicing and exulting that they have so transformed
+themselves into the shapes of animals that they no longer
+appear to be men.... How vile, further, it is that those who have
+been born men are clothed in women's dresses, and by the vilest change
+effeminate their manly strength by taking on the forms of girls,
+blushing not to clothe their warlike arms in women's garments; they
+have bearded faces, and yet they wish to appear women.... There
+are some who on the Kalends of January practise auguries, and do not
+allow fire out of their houses or any other favour to anyone who asks.
+Also they both receive and give diabolical presents (<i>strenas</i>). Some
+country people, moreover, lay tables with plenty of things necessary
+for eating ... thinking that thus the Kalends of January will be a
+warranty that all through the year their feasting will be in like measure
+abundant. Now as for them who on those days observe any heathen
+customs, it is to be feared that the name of Christian will avail them
+nought. And therefore our holy fathers of old, considering that the
+majority of men on those days became slaves to gluttony and riotous
+living and raved in drunkenness and impious dancing, determined for
+the whole world that throughout the Churches a public fast should be
+proclaimed.... Let us therefore fast, beloved brethren, on those
+days.... For he who on the Kalends shows any civility to foolish
+men who are wantonly sporting, is undoubtedly a partaker of
+their sin.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-23" id="Nanchor_7-23" href="#Note_7-23">{23}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>There are several points to be noted here. First, the zeal of
+the Church against the Kalends celebrations as impious relics of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_171" id="Page_171" href="#Page_171">171</a>heathenism: to root them out she even made the first three days
+of the year a solemn fast with litanies.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-24" id="Nanchor_7-24" href="#Note_7-24">{24}</a>
+ Next, the particular
+offences should be observed. These are: first, the dressing up of
+men in the hides of animals and the clothes of women; next, the
+New Year auguries and the superstition about fire, the giving of
+presents, and the laying of tables with good things; and last,
+drunkenness and riot in general. All these we shall find fully
+represented in modern Christmas customs.</p>
+
+<p>That Roman customs either spread to Germany, or were
+paralleled there, is shown by a curious letter written in 742 by St.
+Boniface to Pope Zacharias. The saint complained that certain
+Alamanni, Bavarians, and Franks refused to give up various
+heathen practices because they had seen such things done in the
+sacred city of Rome, close to St. Peter's, and, as they deemed,
+with the sanction of the clergy. On New Year's Eve, it was
+alleged, processions went through the streets of Rome, with
+impious songs and heathen cries; tables of fortune were set up,
+and at that time no one would lend fire or iron or any other
+article to his neighbour. The Pope replied that these things were
+odious to him, and should be so to all Christians; and next year
+all such practices at the January Kalends were formally forbidden
+by the Council of Rome.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-25" id="Nanchor_7-25" href="#Note_7-25">{25}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">So much for Roman customs; if indeed such practices as
+beast-masking are Roman, and not derived from the religion of
+peoples conquered by the imperial legions. We must now turn
+to the winter festivals of the barbarians with whom the Church
+began to come into contact soon after the establishment of
+Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>Much attention has been bestowed upon a supposed midwinter
+festival of the ancient Germans. In the mid-nineteenth century
+it was customary to speak of Christmas and the Twelve Nights
+as a continuation of the holy season kept by our forefathers at the
+winter solstice. The festive fires of Christmas were regarded as
+symbols of the sun, who then began his upward journey in the
+heavens, while the name Yule was traced back to the Anglo-Saxon
+word <i>hw&eacute;ol</i> (wheel), and connected with the circular
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_172" id="Page_172" href="#Page_172">172</a>course of the sun through the wheeling-points of the solstices and
+equinoxes. More recent research, however, has thrown the
+gravest doubts upon the existence of any Teutonic festival at the
+winter solstice.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82">[82]</a> It appears from philology and the study of
+surviving customs that the Teutonic peoples had no knowledge of
+the solstices and equinoxes, and until the introduction of the
+Roman Calendar divided their year not into four parts but into
+two, three, and six, holding their New Year's Day with its
+attendant festivities not at the end of December or beginning of
+January, but towards the middle of November. At that time in
+Central Europe the first snowfall usually occurred and the pastures
+were closed to the flocks. A great slaughter of cattle would then
+take place, it being impossible to keep the beasts in stall throughout
+the winter, and this time of slaughter would naturally be
+a season of feasting and sacrifice and religious observances.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83">[83]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-26" id="Nanchor_7-26" href="#Note_7-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Celtic year, like the Teutonic, appears to have begun in
+November with the feast of <i>Samhain</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;a name that may mean
+either &ldquo;summer-end&rdquo; or &ldquo;assembly.&rdquo; It appears to have been
+in origin a &ldquo;pastoral and agricultural festival, which in time came
+to be looked upon as affording assistance to the powers of growth
+in their conflict with the powers of blight,&rdquo; and to have had many
+features in common with the Teutonic feast at the same season,
+for instance animal sacrifice, commemoration of the dead, and
+omens and charms for the New Year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-27" id="Nanchor_7-27" href="#Note_7-27">{27}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>There is some reason also to believe that the New Year
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_173" id="Page_173" href="#Page_173">173</a>festival of the Slavs took place in the autumn and that its
+usages have been transferred to the feast of the Nativity.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-29" id="Nanchor_7-29" href="#Note_7-29">{29}</a>
+ A
+description based on contemporary documents cannot be given
+of these barbarian festivals; we have, rather, to reconstruct them
+from survivals in popular custom. At the close of this book, when
+such relics have been studied, we may have gained some idea
+of what went on upon these pre-Christian holy-days. It is the
+Teutonic customs that have been most fully recorded and discussed
+by scholars, and these will loom largest in our review; at
+the same time Celtic and Slav practices will be considered, and
+we shall find that they often closely resemble those current in
+Teutonic lands.</p>
+
+<p>The customs of the old New Year feasts have frequently
+wandered from their original November date, and to this fact we
+owe whatever elements of northern paganism are to be found in
+Christmas. Some practices seem to have been put forward to
+Michaelmas; one side of the festivals, the cult of the dead, is
+represented especially by All Saints&rsquo; and All Souls&rsquo; days (November
+1 and 2). St. Martin's Day (November&nbsp;11) probably marks
+as nearly as possible the old Teutonic date, and is still in Germany
+an important folk-feast attended by many customs derived from
+the beginning-of-winter festival. Other practices are found
+strewn over various holy-days between Martinmas and Epiphany,
+and concentrated above all on the Church's feast of the Nativity
+and the Roman New Year's Day, January&nbsp;1, both of which had
+naturally great power of attraction.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-30" id="Nanchor_7-30" href="#Note_7-30">{30}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The progress of agriculture, as Dr. Tille points out,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-31" id="Nanchor_7-31" href="#Note_7-31">{31}</a>
+ tended to
+destroy the mid-November celebration. In the Carolingian
+period an improvement took place in the cultivation of meadows,
+and the increased quantity of hay made it possible to keep the
+animals fattening in stall, instead of slaughtering them as soon as
+the pastures were closed. Thus the killing-time, with its festivities,
+became later and later. St. Andrew's Day (November&nbsp;30)
+and St. Nicholas's (December&nbsp;6) may mark stages in its progress
+into the winter. In St. Nicholas's Day, indeed, we find a feast
+that closely resembles Martinmas, and seems to be the same folk-festival
+transferred to a later date. Again, as regards England we
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_174" id="Page_174" href="#Page_174">174</a>must remember the difference between its climate and that of
+Central Europe. Mid-November would here not be a date
+beyond which pasturing was impossible, and thus the slaughter
+and feast held then by Angles and Saxons in their old German
+home would tend to be delayed.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-32" id="Nanchor_7-32" href="#Note_7-32">{32}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Christmas, as will be gathered from the foregoing, cannot on its
+pagan side be separated from the folk-feasts of November and
+December. The meaning of the term will therefore here be so
+extended as to cover the whole period between All Saints&rsquo; Day
+and Epiphany. That this is not too violent a proceeding will
+be seen later on.</p>
+
+<p>For the purposes of this book it seems best to treat the winter
+festivals calendarially, so to speak: to start at the beginning of
+November, and show them in procession, suggesting, as far as
+may be, the probable origins of the customs observed. Thus we
+may avoid the dismemberment caused by taking out certain
+practices from various festivals and grouping them under their
+probable origins, a method which would, moreover, be perilous in
+view of the very conjectural nature of the theories offered.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Before we pass to our procession of festivals, something must be
+said about the general nature and <i>rationale</i> of the customs associated
+with them. For convenience these customs may be divided
+into three groups:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">I. <i>Sacrificial or Sacramental Practices.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">II. <i>Customs connected with the Cult of the Dead and the Family Hearth.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i2">III. <i>Omens and Charms for the New Year.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Though these three classes overlap and it is sometimes difficult to
+place a given practice exclusively in one of them, they will form
+a useful framework for a brief account of the primitive ritual
+which survives at the winter festivals.</p>
+
+
+<h3>I. <span class="smcap">Sacrificial and Sacramental Practices.</span></h3>
+
+<p>To most people, probably, the word &ldquo;sacrifice&rdquo; suggests an
+offering, something presented to a divinity in order to obtain his
+favour. Such seems to have been the meaning generally given to
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_175" id="Page_175" href="#Page_175">175</a>sacrificial rites in Europe when Christianity came into conflict
+with paganism. It is, however, held by many scholars that the
+original purpose of sacrifice was sacramental&#xfeff;&mdash;the partaking by
+the worshipper of the divine life, conceived of as present in the
+victim, rather than the offering of a gift to a divinity.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-33" id="Nanchor_7-33" href="#Note_7-33">{33}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The whole subject of sacred animals is obscure, and in regard,
+especially, to totemism&#xfeff;&mdash;defined by Dr. Frazer&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-34" id="Nanchor_7-34" href="#Note_7-34">{34}</a>
+ as &ldquo;belief in
+the kinship of certain families with certain species of animals&rdquo;
+and practices based upon that belief&#xfeff;&mdash;the most divergent views
+are held by scholars. The religious significance which some have
+seen in totemistic customs is denied by others, while there is
+much disagreement as to the probability of their having been
+widespread in Europe. Still, whatever may be the truth about
+totemism, there is much that points to the sometime existence
+in Europe of sacrifices that were not offerings, but solemn feasts
+of communion in the flesh and blood of a worshipful animal.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-35" id="Nanchor_7-35" href="#Note_7-35">{35}</a>
+
+That the idea of sacrificial communion preceded the sacrifice-gift
+is suggested by the fact that in many customs which appear to be
+sacrificial survivals the body of the victim has some kind of
+sacramental efficacy; it conveys a blessing to that which is brought
+into contact with it. The actual eating and drinking of the
+flesh and blood is the most perfect mode of contact, but the same
+end seems to have been aimed at in such customs as the sprinkling
+of worshippers with blood, the carrying of the victim in procession
+from house to house, the burying of flesh in furrows to make the
+crops grow, and the wearing of hides, heads, or horns of sacrificed
+beasts.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-36" id="Nanchor_7-36" href="#Note_7-36">{36}</a>
+ We shall meet, during the Christmas season, with
+various practices that seem to have originated either in a sacrificial
+feast or in some such sacramental rites as have just been
+described. So peculiarly prominent are animal masks, apparently
+derived from hide-, head-, and horn-wearing, that we may dwell
+upon them a little at this point.</p>
+
+<p>We have already seen how much trouble the Kalends custom
+of beast-masking gave the ecclesiastics. Its probable origin is
+thus suggested by Robertson Smith:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is ... appropriate that the worshipper should dress himself in
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_176" id="Page_176" href="#Page_176">176</a>the skin of a victim, and so, as it were, envelop himself in its sanctity.
+To rude nations dress is not merely a physical comfort, but a fixed
+part of social religion, a thing by which a man constantly bears on his
+body the token of his religion, and which is itself a charm and a means
+of divine protection.... When the dress of sacrificial skin, which at
+once declared a man's religion and his sacred kindred, ceased to be
+used in ordinary life, it was still retained in holy and especially in
+piacular functions; ... examples are afforded by the Dionysiac
+mysteries and other Greek rites, and by almost every rude religion;
+while in later cults the old rite survives at least in the religious use of
+animal masks.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84">[84]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-37" id="Nanchor_7-37" href="#Note_7-37">{37}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>If we accept the animal-worship and sacrificial communion
+theory, many a Christmas custom will carry us back in thought to
+a stage of religion far earlier than the Greek and Roman classics
+or the Celtic and Teutonic mythology of the conversion period:
+we shall be taken back to a time before men had come to have
+anthropomorphic gods, when they were not conscious of their
+superiority to the beasts of the field, but regarded these beings,
+mysterious in their actions, extraordinary in their powers, as
+incarnations of potent spirits. At this stage of thought, it would
+seem, there were as yet no definite divinities with personal names
+and characters, but the world was full of spirits immanent in
+animal or plant or chosen human being, and able to pass from
+one incarnation to another. Or indeed it may be that animal
+sacrifice originated at a stage of religion before the idea of definite
+&ldquo;spirits&rdquo; had arisen, when man was conscious rather of a vague
+force like the Melanesian <i>mana</i>, in himself and in almost everything,
+and &ldquo;constantly trembling on the verge of personality.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-38" id="Nanchor_7-38" href="#Note_7-38">{38}</a>
+
+&ldquo;<i>Mana</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo; better than &ldquo;god&rdquo; or &ldquo;spirit&rdquo; may express that with
+which the partaker in the communal feast originally sought
+contact. &ldquo;When you sacrifice,&rdquo; to quote some words of Miss
+Jane Harrison, &ldquo;you build as it were a bridge between your
+<i>mana</i>, your will, your desire, which is weak and impotent, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_177" id="Page_177" href="#Page_177">177</a>that unseen outside <i>mana</i> which you believe to be strong and
+efficacious. In the fruits of the earth which grow by some
+unseen power there is much <i>mana</i>; you want that <i>mana</i>. In
+the loud-roaring bull and the thunder is much <i>mana</i>; you want
+that <i>mana</i>. It would be well to get some, to eat a piece of that
+bull raw, but it is dangerous, not a thing to do unawares alone;
+so you consecrate the first-fruits, you sacrifice the bull and then
+in safety you&#xfeff;&mdash;communicate.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-39" id="Nanchor_7-39" href="#Note_7-39">{39}</a>
+ &ldquo;Sanctity&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;the quality of
+awfulness and mystery&#xfeff;&mdash;rather than divinity or personality, may
+have been what primitive man saw in the beasts and birds which
+he venerated in &ldquo;their silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of
+their limited doings.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-40" id="Nanchor_7-40" href="#Note_7-40">{40}</a>
+ When we use the word &ldquo;spirit&rdquo; in
+connection with the pagan sacramental practices of Christmastide,
+it is well to bear in mind the possibility that at the origin of these
+customs there may have been no notion of communion with
+strictly personal beings, but rather some such <i>mana</i> idea as has
+been suggested above.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that animal-cults had their origin at a stage of
+human life preceding agriculture, when man lived not upon
+cultivated plants or tamed beasts, but upon roots and fruits and
+the products of the chase. Some scholars, indeed, hold that the
+domestication of animals for practical use was an outcome of
+the sacred, inviolable character of certain creatures: they may
+originally have been spared not for reasons of convenience but
+because it was deemed a crime to kill them&#xfeff;&mdash;except upon certain
+solemn occasions&#xfeff;&mdash;and may have become friendly towards man
+through living by his side.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-41" id="Nanchor_7-41" href="#Note_7-41">{41}</a>
+ On the other hand it is possible
+that totems were originally staple articles of food, that they were
+sacred because they were eaten with satisfaction, and that the
+very awe and respect attached to them because of their life-giving
+powers tended to remove them from common use and limit
+their consumption to rare ceremonial occasions.</p>
+
+<p>Closely akin to the worship of animals is that of plants, and
+especially trees, and there is much evidence pointing to sacramental
+cults in connection with the plant-world.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-42" id="Nanchor_7-42" href="#Note_7-42">{42}</a>
+ Some cakes
+and special vegetable dishes eaten on festal days may be survivals
+of sacramental feasts parallel to those upon the flesh and blood of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_178" id="Page_178" href="#Page_178">178</a>an animal victim. Benediction by external contact, again, is
+suggested by the widespread use in various ways of branches or
+sprigs or whole trees. The Christmas-tree and evergreen decorations
+are the most obvious examples; we shall see others in the
+course of our survey, and in connection with plants as well as
+with animals we shall meet with processions intended to convey
+a blessing to every house by carrying about the sacred elements&#xfeff;&mdash;to
+borrow a term from Christian theology. Even the familiar
+practice of going carol-singing may be a Christianized form of
+some such perambulation.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that men and women had originally separate cults.
+The cult of animals, according to a theory set forth by Mr.
+Chambers, would at first belong to the men, who as hunters worshipped
+the beasts they slew, apologizing to them, as some primitive
+people do to-day, for the slaughter they were obliged to commit.
+Other animals, apparently, were held too sacred to be slain,
+except upon rare and solemn occasions, and hence, as we have
+seen, may have arisen domestication and the pastoral life which,
+with its religious rites, was the affair of the men. To women,
+on the other hand, belonged agriculture; the cult of Mother
+Earth and the vegetation-spirits seems to have been originally
+theirs. Later the two cults would coalesce, but a hint of the
+time when certain rites were practised only by women may be
+found in that dressing up of men in female garments which
+appears not merely in the old Kalends customs but in some
+modern survivals.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85">[85]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-43" id="Nanchor_7-43" href="#Note_7-43">{43}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Apart from any special theory of the origin of sacrifice, we
+may note the association at Christmas of physical feasting with
+religious rejoicing. In this the modern European is the heir of
+an agelong tradition. &ldquo;Everywhere,&rdquo; says Robertson Smith,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_179" id="Page_179" href="#Page_179">179</a>&ldquo;we find that a sacrifice ordinarily involves a feast, and that a
+feast cannot be provided without a sacrifice. For a feast is not
+complete without flesh, and in early times the rule that all
+slaughter is sacrifice was not confined to the Semites. The
+identity of religious occasions and festal seasons may indeed be
+taken as the determining characteristic of the type of ancient religion
+generally; when men meet their god they feast and are
+glad together, and whenever they feast and are glad they desire
+that the god should be of the party.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-45" id="Nanchor_7-45" href="#Note_7-45">{45}</a>
+ To the paganism that
+preceded Christianity we must look for the origin of that
+Christmas feasting which has not seldom been a matter of
+scandal for the severer type of churchman.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>
+[Transcriber's Note: The marker for note <a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-44" id="Nanchor_7-44" href="#Note_7-44">{44}</a> was not present in
+the page scan]
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>A letter addressed in 601 by Pope Gregory the Great to
+Abbot Mellitus, giving him instructions to be handed on to
+Augustine of Canterbury, throws a vivid light on the process
+by which heathen sacrificial feasts were turned into Christian
+festivals. &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; the Pope says of the Anglo-Saxons, &ldquo;they
+are wont to slay many oxen in sacrifices to demons, some
+solemnity should be put in the place of this, so that on the day
+of the dedication of the churches, or the nativities of the holy
+martyrs whose relics are placed there, they may make for themselves
+tabernacles of branches of trees around those churches
+which have been changed from heathen temples, and may celebrate
+the solemnity with religious feasting. Nor let them now
+sacrifice animals to the Devil, but to the praise of God kill animals
+for their own eating, and render thanks to the Giver of all for
+their abundance; so that while some outward joys are retained
+for them, they may more readily respond to inward joys. For
+from obdurate minds it is undoubtedly impossible to cut off
+everything at once, because he who strives to ascend to the
+highest place rises by degrees or steps and not by leaps.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-46" id="Nanchor_7-46" href="#Note_7-46">{46}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>We see here very plainly the mind of the ecclesiastical compromiser.
+Direct sacrifice to heathen gods the Church of
+course could not dream of tolerating; it had been the very
+centre of her attack since the days of St. Paul, and refusal to take
+part in it had cost the martyrs their lives. Yet the festivity and
+merrymaking to which it gave occasion were to be left to the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_180" id="Page_180" href="#Page_180">180</a>people, for a time at all events. The policy had its advantages,
+it made the Church festivals popular; but it had also its dangers,
+it encouraged the intrusion of a pagan fleshly element into their
+austere and chastened joys. A certain orgiastic licence crept in,
+an unbridling of the physical appetites, which has ever been a
+source of sorrow and anger to the most earnest Christians and
+even led the Puritans of the seventeenth century to condemn all
+festivals as diabolical.</p>
+
+<p>Before we leave the subject of sacrificial survivals, it must be
+added that certain Christmas customs may come, little as those
+who practise them suspect it, from that darkest of religious rites,
+human sacrifice. Reference has already been made to Dr. Frazer's
+view of the Saturnalian king and his awful origin. We shall
+meet with various similar figures during the Christmas season&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+&ldquo;King of the Bean,&rdquo; for instance, and the &ldquo;Bishop of Fools.&rdquo;
+If the theories about human sacrifice set forth in &ldquo;The Golden
+Bough&rdquo; be accepted, we may regard these personages as having
+once been mock kings chosen to suffer instead of the real kings,
+who had at first to perish by a violent death in order to preserve
+from the decay of age the divine life incarnate in them. Such
+mock monarchs, according to Dr. Frazer, were exalted for a brief
+season to the glory and luxury of kingship ere their doom fell
+upon them;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-47" id="Nanchor_7-47" href="#Note_7-47">{47}</a>
+ in the Christmas &ldquo;kings&rdquo; the splendour alone
+has survived, the dark side is forgotten.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II. <span class="smcap">The Cult of the Dead and the Family Hearth.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Round the winter festival cluster certain customs apparently
+connected with distinctively domestic religion, rather than with
+such public and communal cults as we have considered under the
+heading of Sacrifice and Sacrament. A festival of the family&#xfeff;&mdash;that
+is, perhaps, what Christmas most prominently is to-day:
+it is the great season for gatherings &ldquo;round the old fireside&rdquo;; it
+is a joyous time for the children of the house, and the memory of
+the departed is vivid then, if unexpressed. Further, by the Yule
+log customs and certain other ceremonies still practised in the
+remoter corners of Europe, we are carried back to a stage of
+thought at which the dead were conceived as hovering about or
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_181" id="Page_181" href="#Page_181">181</a>visiting the abodes of the living. Ancestral spirits, it seems,
+were once believed to be immanent in the fire that burned on the
+hearth, and had to be propitiated with libations, while elsewhere
+the souls of the dead were thought to return to their old homes
+at the New Year, and meat and drink had to be set out for them.
+The Church's establishment of All Souls&rsquo; Day did much to keep
+practices of tendance of the departed to early November, but
+sometimes these have wandered to later dates and especially to
+Christmas. In folk-practices directed towards the dead two
+tendencies are to be found: on the one hand affection or at all
+events consideration for the departed persists, and efforts are
+made to make them comfortable; on the other, they are
+regarded with dread, and the sight of them is avoided by the
+living.</p>
+
+<p>In the passage quoted from Caesarius of Arles there was
+mention of the laying of tables with abundance of food at the
+Kalends. The same practice is condemned by St. Jerome in the
+fifth century, and is by him specially connected with Egypt.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-48" id="Nanchor_7-48" href="#Note_7-48">{48}</a>
+
+He, like Caesarius and others, regards it as a kind of charm to
+ensure abundance during the coming year, but it is very possible
+that its real purpose was different, that the food was an offering
+to supernatural beings, the guardians and representatives of the
+dead.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-49" id="Nanchor_7-49" href="#Note_7-49">{49}</a>
+ Burchardus of Worms in the early eleventh century
+says definitely that in his time tables were laid with food and
+drink and three knives for &ldquo;those three Sisters whom the
+ancients in their folly called <i>Parcae</i>.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-50" id="Nanchor_7-50" href="#Note_7-50">{50}</a>
+ The <i>Parcae</i> were
+apparently identified with the three &ldquo;weird&rdquo; Sisters known in
+England and in other Teutonic regions, and seem to have some
+connection with the fairies. As we shall see later on, it is still
+in some places the custom to lay out tables for supernatural
+beings, whether, as at All Souls&rsquo; tide, explicitly for the dead, or
+for Frau Perchta, or for the Virgin or some other Christian
+figure. Possibly the name <i>Modranicht</i> (night of mothers), which
+Bede gives to Christmas Eve,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-51" id="Nanchor_7-51" href="#Note_7-51">{51}</a>
+ may be connected with this
+practice.</p>
+
+<p>Not remote, probably, in origin from a belief in &ldquo;ghosts&rdquo; is
+the driving away of spirits that sometimes takes place about
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_182" id="Page_182" href="#Page_182">182</a>Christmas-time. Many peoples, as Dr. Frazer has shown, have
+an annual expulsion of goblins, ghosts, devils, witches, and evil
+influences, commonly at the end of the Old or beginning of the
+New Year. Sometimes the beings so driven away are definitely
+the spirits of the departed. An appalling racket and a great flare
+of torches are common features of these expulsions, and we shall
+meet with similar customs during the Christmas season. Such
+purifications, according to Dr. Frazer, are often preceded or
+followed by periods of licence, for when the burden of evil is
+about to be, or has just been, removed, it is felt that a little
+temporary freedom from moral restraints may be allowed with
+impunity.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-52" id="Nanchor_7-52" href="#Note_7-52">{52}</a>
+ Hence possibly, in part, the licence which has often
+attended the Christmas season.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III. <span class="smcap">Omens and Charms for the New Year.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Customs of augury are to be met with at various dates, which
+may mark the gradual shifting of the New Year festival from
+early November to January&nbsp;1, while actual charms to secure
+prosperity are commonest at Christmas itself or at the modern
+New Year. Magical rather than religious in character, they are
+attempts to discover or influence the future by a sort of crude
+scientific method based on supposed analogies. Beneath the
+charms lie the primitive ideas that like produces like and that
+things which have once been in contact continue to act upon one
+another after they are separated in space.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-53" id="Nanchor_7-53" href="#Note_7-53">{53}</a>
+ The same ideas
+obviously underlie many of the sacramental practices alluded to a
+few pages back, and these are often of the nature of charms.
+Probably, too, among New Year charms should be included such
+institutions as the bonfires on Hallowe'en in Celtic countries, on
+Guy Fawkes Day in England, and at Martinmas in Germany,
+for it would seem that they are intended to secure by imitation
+a due supply of sunshine.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-54" id="Nanchor_7-54" href="#Note_7-54">{54}</a>
+ The principle that &ldquo;well begun
+is well ended&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;or, as the Germans have it, &ldquo;<i>Anfang gut, alles
+gut</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;is fundamental in New Year practices: hence the custom
+of giving presents as auguries of wealth during the coming year;
+hence perhaps partly the heavy eating and drinking&#xfeff;&mdash;a kind of
+charm to ensure abundance.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_183" id="Page_183" href="#Page_183">183</a>Enough has already been said about the attitude of the early
+Church towards traditional folk-customs. Of the position taken
+up by the later mediaeval clergy we get an interesting glimpse in
+the &ldquo;Largum Sero&rdquo; of a certain monk Alsso of Br&#x0115;vnov, an
+account of Christmas practices in Bohemia written about the year
+1400. It supplies a link between modern customs and the
+Kalends prohibitions of the Dark Ages. Alsso tells of a number
+of laudable Christmas Eve practices, gives elaborate Christian
+interpretations of them, and contrasts them with things done by
+bad Catholics with ungodly intention. Here are some of his
+complaints:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>Presents, instead of being given, as they should be, in memory
+of God's great Gift to man, are sent because he who does
+not give freely will be unlucky in the coming year. Money,
+instead of being given to the poor, as is seemly, is laid on the
+table to augur wealth, and people open their purses that luck may
+enter. Instead of using fruit as a symbol of Christ the Precious
+Fruit, men cut it open to predict the future [probably from
+the pips]. It is a laudable custom to make great white loaves at
+Christmas as symbols of the True Bread, but evil men set out
+such loaves that the gods may eat of them.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Alsso's assumption is that the bad Catholics are diabolically
+perverting venerable Christmas customs, but there can be little
+doubt that precisely the opposite was really the case&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+Christian symbolism was merely a gloss upon pagan practices.
+In one instance Alsso admits that the Church had adopted and
+transformed a heathen usage: the old <i>calendisationes</i> or processions
+with an idol Bel had been changed into processions of
+clergy and choir-boys with the crucifix. Round the villages on
+the Eve and during the Octave of Christmas went these
+messengers of God, robed in white raiment as befitted the
+servants of the Lord of purity; they would chant joyful anthems
+of the Nativity, and receive in return some money from the
+people&#xfeff;&mdash;they were, in fact, carol-singers. Moreover with their
+incense they would drive out the Devil from every corner.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-55" id="Nanchor_7-55" href="#Note_7-55">{55}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Alsso's attitude is one of compromise, or at least many of the
+old heathen customs are allowed by him, when reinterpreted in a
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_184" id="Page_184" href="#Page_184">184</a>Christian sense. Such seems to have been the general tendency
+of the later Catholic Church, and also of Anglicanism in so far as
+it continued the Catholic tradition. It will be seen, however,
+from what has already been said, that the English Puritans were
+but following early Christian precedents when they attacked the
+paganism that manifested itself at Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>A strong Puritan onslaught is to be found in the &ldquo;Anatomie
+of Abuses&rdquo; by the Calvinist, Philip Stubbes, first published in
+1583. &ldquo;Especially,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;in Christmas tyme there is
+nothing els vsed but cardes, dice, tables, maskyng, mumming,
+bowling, and suche like fooleries; and the reason is, that they
+think they haue a commission and prerogatiue that tyme to
+doe what they list, and to followe what vanitie they will. But
+(alas!) doe they thinke that they are preuiledged at that time to
+doe euill? The holier the time is (if one time were holier than
+an other, as it is not), the holier ought their exercises to bee. Can
+any tyme dispence with them, or giue them libertie to sinne?
+No, no; the soule which sinneth shall dye, at what tyme soeuer
+it offendeth.... Notwithstandyng, who knoweth not that
+more mischeef is that tyme committed than in all the yere
+besides?&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-56" id="Nanchor_7-56" href="#Note_7-56">{56}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>When the Puritans had gained the upper hand they proceeded
+to the suppression not only of abuses, but of the festival itself.
+An excellent opportunity for turning the feast into a fast&#xfeff;&mdash;as the
+early Church had done, it will be remembered, with the Kalends
+festival&#xfeff;&mdash;came in 1644. In that year Christmas Day happened
+to fall upon the last Wednesday of the month, a day appointed by
+the Lords and Commons for a Fast and Humiliation. In its
+zeal against carnal pleasures Parliament published the following
+&ldquo;Ordinance for the better observation of the Feast of the
+Nativity of Christ&rdquo;:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whereas some doubts have been raised whether the next Fast
+shall be celebrated, because it falleth on the day which, heretofore,
+was usually called the Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour; the lords
+and commons do order and ordain that public notice be given, that the
+Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every month,
+ought to be observed until it be otherwise ordered by both houses;
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_185" id="Page_185" href="#Page_185">185</a>and that this day particularly is to be kept with the more solemn
+humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins and the sins
+of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory
+of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to
+carnal and sensual delights; being contrary to the life which Christ
+himself led here upon earth, and to the spiritual life of Christ in our
+souls; for the sanctifying and saving whereof Christ was pleased
+both to take a human life, and to lay it down again.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-57" id="Nanchor_7-57" href="#Note_7-57">{57}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>But the English people's love of Christmas could not be
+destroyed. &ldquo;These poor simple creatures are made after superstitious
+festivals, after unholy holidays,&rdquo; said a speaker in the
+House of Commons. &ldquo;I have known some that have preferred
+Christmas Day before the Lord's Day,&rdquo; said Calamy in a sermon
+to the Lords in Westminster Abbey, &ldquo;I have known those that
+would be sure to receive the Sacrament on Christmas Day though
+they did not receive it all the year after. This was the superstition
+of this day, and the profaneness was as great. There were
+some that did not play cards all the year long, yet they must play
+at Christmas.&rdquo; Various protests were made against the suppression
+of the festival. Though Parliament sat every Christmas
+Day from 1644 to 1656, the shops in London in 1644 were all
+shut, and in 1646 the people who opened their shops were so
+roughly used that next year they petitioned Parliament to protect
+them in future. In 1647 the shops were indeed all closed, but
+evergreen decorations were put up in the City, and the Lord
+Mayor and City Marshal had to ride about setting fire to them.
+There were even riots in country places, notably at Canterbury.
+With the Restoration Christmas naturally came back to full
+recognition, though it may be doubted whether it has ever
+been quite the same thing since the Puritan Revolution.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-58" id="Nanchor_7-58" href="#Note_7-58">{58}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Protestantism, in proportion to its thoroughness and the strength
+of its Puritan elements, has everywhere tended to destroy old
+pagan traditions and the festivals to which they cling. Calvinism
+has naturally been more destructive than Lutheranism, which in
+the Scandinavian countries has left standing many of the externals
+of Catholicism and also many Christmas customs that are purely
+pagan, while in Germany it has tolerated and even hallowed the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_186" id="Page_186" href="#Page_186">186</a>ritual of the Christmas-tree. But more powerful than religious
+influences, in rooting out the old customs, have been modern
+education and the growth of modern industry, breaking up the
+old traditional country life, and putting in its place the mobile,
+restless life of the great town. Many of the customs we shall
+have to consider belong essentially to the country, and have no
+relation to the life of the modern city. When communal in their
+character, a man could not perform them in separation from his
+rustic neighbours. Practices domestic in their purpose may
+indeed be transferred to the modern city, but it is the experience
+of folk-lorists that they seldom descend to the second generation.</p>
+
+<p>It is in regions like Bavaria, Tyrol, Styria, or the Slav parts of
+the Austrian Empire, or Roumania and Servia, that the richest store
+of festival customs is to be found nowadays. Here the old agricultural
+life has been less interfered with, and at the same time
+the Church, whether Roman or Greek, has succeeded in keeping
+modern ideas away from the people and in maintaining a popular
+piety that is largely polytheistic in its worship of the saints, and
+embodies a great amount of traditional paganism. In our half-suburbanized
+England but little now remains of these vestiges of
+primitive religion and magic whose interest and importance were
+only realized by students in the later nineteenth century, when
+the wave of &ldquo;progress&rdquo; was fast sweeping them away.</p>
+
+<p>Old traditions have a way of turning up unexpectedly in
+remote corners, and it is hard to say for certain that any custom
+is altogether extinct; every year, however, does its work of
+destruction, and it may well be that some of the practices here
+described in the present tense have passed into the Limbo of
+discarded things.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_187" id="Page_187" href="#Page_187">187</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_188" id="Page_188" href="#Page_188">188</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_189" id="Page_189" href="#Page_189">189</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_VII" id="Chapter_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h2 class="title1">ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>All Saints&rsquo; and All Souls&rsquo; Days, their Relation to a New Year Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;All
+Souls&rsquo; Eve and Tendance of the Departed&#xfeff;&mdash;Soul Cakes in England and on the
+Continent&#xfeff;&mdash;Pagan Parallels of All Souls&rsquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;Hallowe'en Charms and Omens&#xfeff;&mdash;Hallowe'en
+Fires&#xfeff;&mdash;Guy Fawkes Day&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Old Hob,&rdquo; the <i>Schimmelreiter</i>, and other
+Animal Masks&#xfeff;&mdash;Martinmas and its Slaughter&#xfeff;&mdash;Martinmas Drinking&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+Martin's Fires in Germany&#xfeff;&mdash;Winter Visitors in the Low Countries and
+Germany&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Martin as Gift-bringer&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Martin's Rod.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">All Saints&rsquo; and All Souls&rsquo; Days.</span></h3>
+
+<p>In the reign of Charles I. the young gentlemen of the Middle
+Temple were accustomed to reckon All Hallow Tide (November&nbsp;1)
+the beginning of Christmas.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-1" id="Nanchor_8-1" href="#Note_8-1">{1}</a>
+ We may here do likewise and
+start our survey of winter festivals with November, in the earlier
+half of which, apparently, fell the Celtic and Teutonic New
+Year's Days. It is impossible to fix precise dates, but there is
+reason for thinking that the Celtic year began about
+November&nbsp;1,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86">[86]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-2" id="Nanchor_8-2" href="#Note_8-2">{2}</a>
+ and the Teutonic about November&nbsp;11.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-3" id="Nanchor_8-3" href="#Note_8-3">{3}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>On November&nbsp;1 falls one of the greater festivals of the western
+Church, All Saints&rsquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;or, to give it its old English name, All
+Hallows&rsquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;and on the morrow is the solemn commemoration of the
+departed&#xfeff;&mdash;All Souls&rsquo;. In these two anniversaries the Church has
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_190" id="Page_190" href="#Page_190">190</a>preserved at or near the original date one part of the old beginning-of-winter
+festival&#xfeff;&mdash;the part concerned with the cult of the dead.
+Some of the practices belonging to this side of the feast have been
+transferred to the season of Christmas and the Twelve Days, but
+these have often lost their original meaning, and it is to All
+Souls&rsquo; Day that we must look for the most conscious survivals of
+that care for the departed which is so marked a feature of primitive
+religion. Early November, when the leaves are falling, and
+all around speaks of mortality, is a fitting time for the commemoration
+of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>The first clear testimony to All Souls&rsquo; Day is found at the end
+of the tenth century, and in France. All Saints&rsquo; Day, however,
+was certainly observed in England, France, and Germany in
+the eighth century,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-5" id="Nanchor_8-5" href="#Note_8-5">{5}</a>
+ and probably represents an attempt on the
+part of the Church to turn the minds of the faithful away from
+the pagan belief in and tendance of &ldquo;ghosts&rdquo; to the contemplation
+of the saints in the glory of Paradise. It would seem that
+this attempt failed, that the people needed a way of actually doing
+something for their own dead, and that All Souls&rsquo; Day with its
+solemn Mass and prayers for the departed was intended to supply
+this need and replace the traditional practices.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-6" id="Nanchor_8-6" href="#Note_8-6">{6}</a>
+ Here again the
+attempt was only partly successful, for side by side with the
+Church's rites there survived a number of usages related not
+to any Christian doctrine of the after-life, but to the pagan idea,
+widespread among many peoples, that on one day or night of the
+year the souls of the dead return to their old homes and must be
+entertained.</p>
+
+<p>All Souls&rsquo; Day then appeals to instincts older than Christianity.
+How strong is the hold of ancient custom even upon the sceptical
+and irreligious is shown very strikingly in Roman Catholic
+countries: even those who never go to church visit the graves of
+their relations on All Souls&rsquo; Eve to deck them with flowers.</p>
+
+<p>The special liturgical features of the Church's celebration are
+the Vespers, Matins, and Lauds of the Dead on the evening of
+November&nbsp;1, and the solemn Requiem Mass on November&nbsp;2,
+with the majestic &ldquo;Dies irae&rdquo; and the oft-recurrent versicle,
+&ldquo;Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_191" id="Page_191" href="#Page_191">191</a>eis,&rdquo; that most beautiful of prayers. The priest and altar are
+vested in black, and a catafalque with burning tapers round it
+stands in the body of the church. For the popular customs on
+the Eve we may quote Dr. Tylor's general description:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In Italy the day is given to feasting and drinking in honour of the
+dead, while skulls and skeletons in sugar and paste form appropriate
+children's toys. In Tyrol, the poor souls released from purgatory fire
+for the night may come and smear their burns with the melted fat of
+the &lsquo;soul light&rsquo; on the hearth, or cakes are left for them on the table,
+and the room is kept warm for their comfort. Even in Paris the souls
+of the departed come to partake of the food of the living. In Brittany
+the crowd pours into the churchyard at evening, to kneel barefoot at
+the grave of dead kinsfolk, to fill the hollow of the tombstone with
+holy water, or to pour libations of milk upon it. All night the church
+bells clang, and sometimes a solemn procession of the clergy goes round
+to bless the graves. In no household that night is the cloth removed,
+for the supper must be left for the souls to come and take their part,
+nor must the fire be put out, where they will come to warm themselves.
+And at last, as the inmates retire to rest, there is heard at the
+door a doleful chant&#xfeff;&mdash;it is the souls, who, borrowing the voices of the
+parish poor, have come to ask the prayers of the living.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-7" id="Nanchor_8-7" href="#Note_8-7">{7}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>To this may be added some further accounts of All Souls&rsquo; Eve
+as the one night in the year when the spirits of the departed are
+thought to revisit their old homes.</p>
+
+<p>In the Vosges mountains while the bells are ringing in All
+Souls&rsquo; Eve it is a custom to uncover the beds and open the
+windows in order that the poor souls may enter and rest. Prayer
+is made for the dead until late in the night, and when the last
+&ldquo;De profundis&rdquo; has been said &ldquo;the head of the family gently
+covers up the beds, sprinkles them with holy water, and shuts the
+windows.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-8" id="Nanchor_8-8" href="#Note_8-8">{8}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Esthonians on All Souls&rsquo; Day provide a meal for the dead
+and invite them by name. The souls arrive at the first cock-crow
+and depart at the second, being lighted out of the house by the
+head of the family, who waves a white cloth after them and bids
+them come again next year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-9" id="Nanchor_8-9" href="#Note_8-9">{9}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Brittany, as we have seen, the dead are thought to return at
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_192" id="Page_192" href="#Page_192">192</a>this season. It is believed that on the night between All Saints&rsquo;
+and All Souls&rsquo; the church is lighted up and the departed attend a
+nocturnal Mass celebrated by a phantom priest. All through the
+week, in one district, people are afraid to go out after nightfall lest
+they should see some dead person.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-10" id="Nanchor_8-10" href="#Note_8-10">{10}</a>
+ In Tyrol it is believed that
+the &ldquo;poor souls&rdquo; are present in the howling winds that often blow
+at this time.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-11" id="Nanchor_8-11" href="#Note_8-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Abruzzi on All Souls&rsquo; Eve &ldquo;before people go to sleep
+they place on the table a lighted lamp or candle and a frugal meal
+of bread and water. The dead issue from their graves and stalk
+in procession through every street of the village.... First pass
+the souls of the good, and then the souls of the murdered and
+the damned.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-12" id="Nanchor_8-12" href="#Note_8-12">{12}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Sicily a strange belief is connected with All Souls&rsquo; Day
+(<i>jornu di li morti</i>): the family dead are supposed, like Santa
+Klaus in the North, to bring presents to children; the dead
+relations have become the good fairies of the little ones. On the
+night between November&nbsp;1 and 2 little Sicilians believe that the
+departed leave their dread abode and come to town to steal from
+rich shopkeepers sweets and toys and new clothes. These they
+give to their child relations who have been &ldquo;good&rdquo; and have
+prayed on their behalf. Often they are clothed in white and
+wear silken shoes, to elude the vigilance of the shopkeepers.
+They do not always enter the houses; sometimes the presents are
+left in the children's shoes put outside doors and windows. In the
+morning the pretty gifts are attributed by the children to the
+<i>morti</i> in whose coming their parents have taught them to
+believe.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-13" id="Nanchor_8-13" href="#Note_8-13">{13}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A very widespread custom at this season is to burn candles,
+perhaps in order to lighten the darkness for the poor souls. In
+Catholic Ireland candles shine in the windows on the Vigil
+of All Souls&rsquo;,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-14" id="Nanchor_8-14" href="#Note_8-14">{14}</a>
+ in Belgium a holy candle is burnt all night,
+or people walk in procession with lighted tapers, while in
+many Roman Catholic countries, and even in the Protestant
+villages of Baden, the graves are decked with lights as well as
+flowers.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-15" id="Nanchor_8-15" href="#Note_8-15">{15}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Another practice on All Saints&rsquo; and All Souls&rsquo; Days, curiously
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_193" id="Page_193" href="#Page_193">193</a>common formerly in Protestant England, is that of making and
+giving &ldquo;soul-cakes.&rdquo; These and the quest of them by children
+were customary in various English counties and in Scotland.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-16" id="Nanchor_8-16" href="#Note_8-16">{16}</a>
+
+The youngsters would beg not only for the cakes but also sometimes
+for such things as &ldquo;apples and strong beer,&rdquo; presumably to
+make a &ldquo;wassail-bowl&rdquo; of &ldquo;lambswool,&rdquo; hot spiced ale with roast
+apples in it.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-17" id="Nanchor_8-17" href="#Note_8-17">{17}</a>
+ Here is a curious rhyme which they sang in
+Shropshire as they went round to their neighbours, collecting
+contributions:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Soul! soul! for a soul-cake!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I pray, good missis, a soul-cake!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">An apple or pear, a plum or a cherry,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Any good thing to make us merry.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">One for Peter, two for Paul,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Three for Him who made us all.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Up with the kettle, and down with the pan,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Give us good alms, and we'll be gone.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-18" id="Nanchor_8-18" href="#Note_8-18">{18}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Shropshire is a county peculiarly rich in &ldquo;souling&rdquo; traditions,
+and one old lady had cakes made to give away to the souling-children
+up to the time of her death in 1884. At that period the
+custom of &ldquo;souling&rdquo; had greatly declined in the county, and
+where it still existed the rewards were usually apples or money.
+Grown men, as well as children, sometimes went round, and the
+ditties sung often contained verses of good-wishes for the household
+practically identical with those sung by wassailers at
+Christmas.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-19" id="Nanchor_8-19" href="#Note_8-19">{19}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The name &ldquo;soul-cake&rdquo; of course suggests that the cakes were
+in some way associated with the departed, whether given as a
+reward for prayers for souls in Purgatory, or as a charity for the
+benefit of the &ldquo;poor souls,&rdquo; or baked that the dead might feast
+upon them.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87">[87]</a> It seems most probable that they were relics of
+a feast once laid out for the souls. On the other hand it is just
+possible that they were originally a sacrament of the corn-spirit.
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_194" id="Page_194" href="#Page_194">194</a>A North Welsh tradition recorded by Pennant may conceivably
+have preserved a vague memory of some agricultural connection:
+he tells us that on receiving soul-cakes the poor people used to
+pray to God to bless the next crop of wheat.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-20" id="Nanchor_8-20" href="#Note_8-20">{20}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Not in Great Britain alone are soul-cakes found; they are met
+with in Belgium, southern Germany, and Austria. In western
+Flanders children set up on All Souls&rsquo; Eve little street altars,
+putting a crucifix or Madonna with candles on a chair or stool,
+and begging passers-by for money &ldquo;for cakes for the souls in
+Purgatory.&rdquo; On All Souls&rsquo; morning it is customary, all over the
+Flemish part of Belgium, to bake little cakes of finest white flour,
+called &ldquo;soul-bread.&rdquo; They are eaten hot, and a prayer is said at
+the same time for the souls in Purgatory. It is believed that a soul
+is delivered for every cake eaten. At Antwerp the cakes are
+coloured yellow with saffron to suggest the Purgatorial flames.
+In southern Germany and Austria little white loaves of a special
+kind are baked; they are generally oval in form, and are usually
+called by some name into which the word &ldquo;soul&rdquo; enters. In
+Tyrol they are given to children by their godparents; those for
+the boys have the shape of horses or hares, those for the girls, of
+hens. In Tyrol the cakes left over at supper remain on the
+table and are said to &ldquo;belong to the poor souls.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-21" id="Nanchor_8-21" href="#Note_8-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Friuli in the north-east of Italy there is a custom closely
+corresponding to our &ldquo;soul-cakes.&rdquo; On All Souls&rsquo; Day every
+family gives away a quantity of bread. This is not regarded as a
+charity; all the people of the village come to receive it and before
+eating it pray for the departed of the donor's family. The most
+prosperous people are not ashamed to knock at the door and ask
+for this <i>pane dei morti</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-22" id="Nanchor_8-22" href="#Note_8-22">{22}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Tyrol All Souls&rsquo; is a day of licensed begging, which has
+become a serious abuse. A noisy rabble of ragged and disorderly
+folk, with bags and baskets to receive gifts, wanders from village
+to village, claiming as a right the presents of provisions that were
+originally a freewill offering for the benefit of the departed, and
+angrily abusing those who refuse to give.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-23" id="Nanchor_8-23" href="#Note_8-23">{23}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The New Year is the time for a festival of the dead in many
+parts of the world.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-24" id="Nanchor_8-24" href="#Note_8-24">{24}</a>
+ I may quote Dr. Frazer's account of what
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_195" id="Page_195" href="#Page_195">195</a>goes on in Tonquin; it shows a remarkable likeness to some
+European customs&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88">[88]</a>:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In Tonquin, as in Sumba, the dead revisit their kinsfolk and their
+old homes at the New Year. From the hour of midnight, when the
+New Year begins, no one dares to shut the door of his house for fear
+of excluding the ghosts, who begin to arrive at that time. Preparations
+have been made to welcome and refresh them after their long journey.
+Beds and mats are ready for their weary bodies to repose upon, water to
+wash their dusty feet, slippers to comfort them, and canes to support
+their feeble steps.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-25" id="Nanchor_8-25" href="#Note_8-25">{25}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In Lithuania, the last country in Europe to be converted to
+Christianity, heathen traditions lingered long, and sixteenth- and
+seventeenth-century travellers give accounts of a pagan New
+Year's feast which has great interest. In October, according
+to one account, on November&nbsp;2, according to another, the whole
+family met together, strewed the tables with straw and put sacks
+on the straw. Bread and two jugs of beer were then placed on the
+table, and one of every kind of domestic animal was roasted before
+the fire after a prayer to the god Zimiennik (possibly an ancestral
+spirit), asking for protection through the year and offering the
+animals. Portions were thrown to the corners of the room with
+the words &ldquo;Accept our burnt sacrifice, O Zimiennik, and kindly
+partake thereof.&rdquo; Then followed a great feast. Further, the
+spirits of the dead were invited to leave their graves and visit the
+bath-house, where platters of food were spread out and left for
+three days. At the end of this time the remains of the repast
+were set out over the graves and libations poured.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-26" id="Nanchor_8-26" href="#Note_8-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">The beginning of November is not solely a time of memory
+of the dead; customs of other sorts linger, or until lately used
+to linger, about it, especially in Scotland, northern England,
+Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, and the West Midlands. One may
+conjecture that these are survivals from the Celtic New Year's
+Day, for most of them are of the nature of omens or charms.
+Apples and nuts are prominent on Hallowe'en, the Eve of All
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_196" id="Page_196" href="#Page_196">196</a>Saints;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89">[89]</a> they may be regarded either as a kind of sacrament of
+the vegetation-spirit, or as simply intended by homoeopathic magic
+to bring fulness and fruitfulness to their recipients. A custom
+once common in the north of England&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-27" id="Nanchor_8-27" href="#Note_8-27">{27}</a>
+ and in Wales&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-28" id="Nanchor_8-28" href="#Note_8-28">{28}</a>
+ was to
+catch at apples with the mouth, the fruit being suspended on a
+string, or on one end of a large transverse beam with a lighted
+candle at the other end. In the north apples and nuts were the
+feature of the evening feast, hence the name &ldquo;Nutcrack night.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-29" id="Nanchor_8-29" href="#Note_8-29">{29}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Again, at St. Ives in Cornwall every child is given a big apple
+on Allhallows&rsquo; Eve&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Allan Day&rdquo; as it is called.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-30" id="Nanchor_8-30" href="#Note_8-30">{30}</a>
+ Nuts and
+apples were also used as means of forecasting the future. In
+Scotland for instance nuts were put into the fire and named
+after particular lads and lasses. &ldquo;As they burn quietly together
+or start from beside one another, the course and issue of the
+courtship will be.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-31" id="Nanchor_8-31" href="#Note_8-31">{31}</a>
+ On Hallowe'en in Nottinghamshire if a
+girl had two lovers and wanted to know which would be the
+more constant, she took two apple-pips, stuck one on each cheek
+(naming them after her lovers) and waited for one to fall off.
+The poet Gay alludes to this custom:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;See from the core two kernels now I take,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">This on my cheek for Lubberkin is worn,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And Booby Clod on t'other side is borne;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But Booby Clod soon falls upon the ground,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A certain token that his love's unsound;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Oh! were his lips to mine but joined so fast.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-32" id="Nanchor_8-32" href="#Note_8-32">{32}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In Nottinghamshire apples are roasted and the parings thrown
+over the left shoulder. &ldquo;Notice is taken of the shapes which the
+parings assume when they fall to the ground. Whatever letter
+a paring resembles will be the initial letter of the Christian name
+of the man or woman whom you will marry.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-33" id="Nanchor_8-33" href="#Note_8-33">{33}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_197" id="Page_197" href="#Page_197">197</a>Hallowe'en is indeed in the British Isles the favourite time for
+forecasting the future, and various methods are employed for
+this purpose.</p>
+
+<p>A girl may cross her shoes upon her bedroom floor in the
+shape of a T and say these lines:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;I cross my shoes in the shape of a T,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hoping this night my true love to see,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Not in his best or worst array,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But in the clothes of every day.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Then let her get into bed backwards without speaking any
+more that night, and she will see her future husband in
+her dreams.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-34" id="Nanchor_8-34" href="#Note_8-34">{34}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On All Hallowe'en or New Year's Eve,&rdquo; says Mr.
+W. Henderson, &ldquo;a Border maiden may wash her sark, and hang
+it over a chair to dry, taking care to tell no one what she is about.
+If she lie awake long enough, she will see the form of her future
+spouse enter the room and turn the sark. We are told of one
+young girl who, after fulfilling this rite, looked out of bed and
+saw a coffin behind the sark; it remained visible for some time
+and then disappeared. The girl rose up in agony and told her
+family what had occurred, and the next morning she heard
+of her lover's death.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-35" id="Nanchor_8-35" href="#Note_8-35">{35}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Scotland&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-36" id="Nanchor_8-36" href="#Note_8-36">{36}</a>
+ and Ireland&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-37" id="Nanchor_8-37" href="#Note_8-37">{37}</a>
+ other methods of foreseeing the
+future are practised on Hallowe'en; we need not consider them
+here, for we shall have quite enough of such auguries later on.
+(Some Scottish customs are introduced by Burns into his poem
+&ldquo;Hallowe'en.&rdquo;) I may, however, allude to the custom formerly
+prevalent in Wales for women to congregate in the church on
+this &ldquo;Night of the Winter Kalends,&rdquo; in order to discover who
+of the parishioners would die during the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-38" id="Nanchor_8-38" href="#Note_8-38">{38}</a>
+ East of the
+Welsh border, at Dorstone in Herefordshire, there was a belief
+that on All Hallows&rsquo; Eve at midnight those who were bold
+enough to look through the windows would see the church lighted
+with an unearthly glow, and Satan in monk's habit fulminating
+anathemas from the pulpit and calling out the names of those
+who were to render up their souls.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-39" id="Nanchor_8-39" href="#Note_8-39">{39}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_198" id="Page_198" href="#Page_198">198</a>Again, there are numerous Hallowe'en fire customs, probably
+sun-charms for the New Year, a kind of homoeopathic magic
+intended to assist the sun in his struggle with the powers of
+darkness. To this day great bonfires are kindled in the Highlands,
+and formerly brands were carried about and the new fire
+was lit in each house.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-40" id="Nanchor_8-40" href="#Note_8-40">{40}</a>
+ It would seem that the Yule log customs
+(see <a href="#Chapter_X">Chapter X.</a>) are connected with this new lighting of the
+house-fire, transferred to Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland fire was lighted at this time at a place called
+Tlachtga, from which all the hearths in Ireland are said to have
+been annually supplied.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-41" id="Nanchor_8-41" href="#Note_8-41">{41}</a>
+ In Wales the habit of lighting bonfires
+on the hills is perhaps not yet extinct.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-42" id="Nanchor_8-42" href="#Note_8-42">{42}</a>
+ Within living memory
+when the flames were out somebody would raise the cry, &ldquo;May
+the tailless black sow seize the hindmost,&rdquo; and everyone present
+would run for his life.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-43" id="Nanchor_8-43" href="#Note_8-43">{43}</a>
+ This may point to a former human
+sacrifice, possibly of a victim laden with the accumulated evils
+of the past year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-44" id="Nanchor_8-44" href="#Note_8-44">{44}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In North Wales, according to another account, each family
+used to make a great bonfire in a conspicuous place near the
+house. Every person threw into the ashes a white stone, marked;
+the stones were searched for in the morning, and if any one were
+missing the person who had thrown it in would die, it was
+believed, during the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-45" id="Nanchor_8-45" href="#Note_8-45">{45}</a>
+ The same belief and practice were
+found at Callander in Perthshire.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-46" id="Nanchor_8-46" href="#Note_8-46">{46}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Though, probably, the Hallowe'en fire rites had originally some
+connection with the sun, the conscious intention of those who
+practised them in modern times was often to ward off witchcraft.
+With this object in one place the master of the family used to
+carry a bunch of burning straw about the corn, in Scotland
+the red end of a fiery stick was waved in the air, in Lancashire
+a lighted candle was borne about the fells, and in the Isle of
+Man fires were kindled.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-47" id="Nanchor_8-47" href="#Note_8-47">{47}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Guy Fawkes Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Probably the burning of Guy Fawkes on November&nbsp;5 is a
+survival of a New Year bonfire. There is every reason to think
+that the commemoration of the deliverance from &ldquo;gunpowder
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_199" id="Page_199" href="#Page_199">199</a>treason and plot&rdquo; is but a modern meaning attached to an
+ancient traditional practice, for the burning of the effigy has
+many parallels in folk-custom. Dr. Frazer&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-48" id="Nanchor_8-48" href="#Note_8-48">{48}</a>
+ regards such
+effigies as representatives of the spirit of vegetation&#xfeff;&mdash;by burning
+them in a fire that represented the sun men thought they secured
+sunshine for trees and crops. Later, when the ideas on which the
+custom was based had faded away, people came to identify these
+images with persons whom they regarded with aversion, such as
+Judas Iscariot, Luther (in Catholic Tyrol), and, apparently, Guy
+Fawkes in England. At Ludlow in Shropshire, it is interesting
+to note, if any well-known local man had aroused the enmity of
+the populace his effigy was substituted for, or added to, that of
+Guy Fawkes. Bonfire Day at Ludlow is marked by a torchlight
+procession and a huge conflagration.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-49" id="Nanchor_8-49" href="#Note_8-49">{49}</a>
+ At Hampstead the Guy
+Fawkes fire and procession are still in great force. The thing
+has become a regular carnival, and on a foggy November night
+the procession along the steep curving Heath Street, with the
+glare of the torches lighting up the faces of dense crowds, is a
+strangely picturesque spectacle.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_90" id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90">[90]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Animal Masks.</span></h3>
+
+<p>On All Souls&rsquo; Day in Cheshire there began to be carried about
+a curious construction called &ldquo;Old Hob,&rdquo; a horse's head
+enveloped in a sheet; it was taken from door to door, and accompanied
+by the singing of begging rhymes.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-50" id="Nanchor_8-50" href="#Note_8-50">{50}</a>
+ Old Hob, who
+continued to appear until Christmas, is an English parallel to the
+German <i>Schimmel</i> or white horse. We have here to do with one
+of those strange animal forms which are apparently relics of
+sacrificial customs. They come on various days in the winter
+festival season, and also at other times, and may as well be considered
+at this point. In some cases they are definitely imitations
+of animals, and may have replaced real sacrificial beasts taken
+about in procession, in others they are simply men wearing the
+head, horn, hide, or tail of a beast, like the worshippers at many
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_200" id="Page_200" href="#Page_200">200</a>a heathen sacrifice to-day. (Of the <i>rationale</i> of masking something
+has already been said in <a href="#Chapter_VI">Chapter VI.</a>)</p>
+
+<p>The mingling of Roman and non-Roman customs makes it
+very hard to separate the different elements in the winter festivals.
+In regard particularly to animal masks it is difficult to pronounce
+in favour of one racial origin rather than another; we may, however,
+infer with some probability that when a custom is attached
+not to Christmas or the January Kalends but to one of the
+November or early December feasts, it is not of Roman origin.
+For, as the centuries have passed, Christmas and the Kalends&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+Roman festivals ecclesiastical and secular&#xfeff;&mdash;have increasingly
+tended to supplant the old northern festal times, and a transference
+of, for instance, a Teutonic custom from Martinmas to
+Christmas or January&nbsp;1, is far more conceivable than the attraction
+of a Roman practice to one of the earlier and waning festivals.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take first the horse-forms, seemingly connected with
+that sacrificial use of the horse among the Teutons to which
+Tacitus and other writers testify.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-51" id="Nanchor_8-51" href="#Note_8-51">{51}</a>
+ &ldquo;Old Hob&rdquo; is doubtless one
+form of the hobby horse, so familiar in old English festival
+customs. His German parallel, the <i>Schimmel</i>, is mostly formed
+thus in the north: a sieve with a long pole to whose end a
+horse's head is fastened, is tied beneath the chest of a young man,
+who goes on all fours, and some white cloths are thrown over the
+whole. In Silesia the <i>Schimmel</i> is formed by three or four youths.
+The rider is generally veiled, and often wears on his head a pot
+with glowing coals shining forth through openings that represent
+eyes and a mouth.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-52" id="Nanchor_8-52" href="#Note_8-52">{52}</a>
+ In Pomerania the thing is called simply
+<i>Schimmel</i>,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-53" id="Nanchor_8-53" href="#Note_8-53">{53}</a>
+ in other parts emphasis is laid upon the rider, and the
+name <i>Schimmelreiter</i> is given. Some mythologists have seen in this
+rider on a white horse an impersonation of Woden on his great
+charger; but it is more likely that the practice simply originated
+in the taking round of a real sacrificial horse.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-54" id="Nanchor_8-54" href="#Note_8-54">{54}</a>
+ The <i>Schimmelreiter</i>
+is often accompanied by a &ldquo;bear,&rdquo; a youth dressed in straw
+who plays the part of a bear tied to a pole.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-55" id="Nanchor_8-55" href="#Note_8-55">{55}</a>
+ He may be
+connected with some such veneration of the animal as is suggested
+by the custom still surviving at Berne, of keeping bears at the
+public expense.</p>
+
+<p>To return to Great Britain, here is an account of a so-called
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_201" id="Page_201" href="#Page_201">201</a>&ldquo;hodening&rdquo; ceremony once performed at Christmas-time at
+Ramsgate: &ldquo;A party of young people procure the head of a dead
+horse, which is affixed to a pole about four feet in length, a
+string is tied to the lower jaw, a horse-cloth is then attached to
+the whole, under which one of the party gets, and by frequently
+pulling the string keeps up a loud snapping noise and is accompanied
+by the rest of the party grotesquely habited and ringing
+hand-bells. They thus proceed from house to house, sounding
+their bells and singing carols and songs.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-56" id="Nanchor_8-56" href="#Note_8-56">{56}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Again, in Wales a creature called &ldquo;the Mari Llwyd&rdquo; was
+known at Christmas. A horse's skull is &ldquo;dressed up with
+ribbons, and supported on a pole by a man who is concealed under
+a large white cloth. There is a contrivance for opening and
+shutting the jaws, and the figure pursues and bites everybody it
+can lay hold of, and does not release them except on payment of
+a fine.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-57" id="Nanchor_8-57" href="#Note_8-57">{57}</a>
+ The movable jaws here give the thing a likeness to
+certain Continental figures representing other kinds of animals
+and probably witnessing to their former sacrificial use. On
+the island of Usedom appears the <i>Klapperbock</i>, a youth who
+carries a pole with the hide of a buck thrown over it and a wooden
+head at the end. The lower jaw moves up and down and
+clatters, and he charges at children who do not know their
+prayers by heart.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-58" id="Nanchor_8-58" href="#Note_8-58">{58}</a>
+ In Upper Styria we meet the <i>Habergaiss</i>.
+Four men hold on to one another and are covered with white
+blankets. The foremost one holds up a wooden goat's head with
+a movable lower jaw that rattles, and he butts children.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-59" id="Nanchor_8-59" href="#Note_8-59">{59}</a>
+ At
+Ilsenburg in the Harz is found the <i>Habersack</i>, formed by a person
+taking a pole ending in a fork, and putting a broom between the
+prongs so that the appearance of a head with horns is obtained.
+The carrier is concealed by a sheet.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-60" id="Nanchor_8-60" href="#Note_8-60">{60}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In connection with horns we must not forget the &ldquo;horn-dance&rdquo;
+at Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, held now in September,
+but formerly at Christmas. Six of the performers wear
+sets of horns kept from year to year in the church.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-61" id="Nanchor_8-61" href="#Note_8-61">{61}</a>
+ Plot, in
+his &ldquo;Natural History of Staffordshire&rdquo; (1686, p. 434) calls it a
+&ldquo;<i>Hobby-horse Dance</i> from a person who carried the image of a horse
+between his legs, made of thin boards.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-62" id="Nanchor_8-62" href="#Note_8-62">{62}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_202" id="Page_202" href="#Page_202">202</a>In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway creatures resembling both
+the <i>Schimmelreiter</i> and the <i>Klapperbock</i> are or were to be met with
+at Christmas. The name <i>Julebuk</i> (yule buck) is used for various
+objects: sometimes for a person dressed up in hide and horns, or
+with a buck's head, who &ldquo;goes for&rdquo; little boys and girls; sometimes
+for a straw puppet set up or tossed about from hand to
+hand; sometimes for a cake in the form of a buck. People seem
+to have had a bad conscience about these things, for there are
+stories connecting them with the Devil. A girl, for instance, who
+danced at midnight with a straw <i>Julebuk</i>, found that her partner
+was no puppet but the Evil One himself. Again, a fellow who
+had dressed himself in black and put horns on his head, claws on
+his hands, and fiery tow in his mouth, was carried off by the
+Prince of Darkness whose form he had mimicked.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-63" id="Nanchor_8-63" href="#Note_8-63">{63}</a>
+ The association
+of animal maskings with the infernal powers is doubtless the
+work of the Church. To the zealous missionary the old heathen
+ritual was no mere foolish superstition but a service of intensely
+real and awful beings, the very devils of hell, and one may even
+conjecture that the traditional Christian devil-type, half animal
+half human, was indirectly derived from skin-clad worshippers at
+pagan festivals.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Martinmas.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Between All Souls&rsquo; Day and Martinmas (November&nbsp;11)
+there are no folk-festivals of great importance, though on St.
+Hubert's Day, November&nbsp;3, in Flemish Belgium special little
+cakes are made, adorned with the horn of the saint, the patron of
+hunting, and are eaten not only by human beings but by dogs,
+cats, and other domestic animals.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-64" id="Nanchor_8-64" href="#Note_8-64">{64}</a>
+ The English Guy Fawkes
+Day has already been considered, while November&nbsp;9, Lord
+Mayor's Day, the beginning of the municipal year, may remind
+us of the old Teutonic New Year.</p>
+
+<p>Round Martinmas popular customs cluster thickly, as might be
+expected, since it marks as nearly as possible the date of the old
+beginning-of-winter festival, the feast perhaps at which Germanicus
+surprised the Marsi in <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 14.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-65" id="Nanchor_8-65" href="#Note_8-65">{65}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The most obvious feature of Martinmas is its physical feasting.
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_203" id="Page_203" href="#Page_203">203</a>Economic causes, as we saw in <a href="#Chapter_VI">Chapter VI.</a>, must have made the
+middle of November a great killing season among the old Germans,
+for the snow which then began rendered it impossible longer to
+pasture the beasts, and there was not fodder enough to keep the
+whole herd through the winter. Thus it was a time of feasting
+on flesh, and of animal sacrifices, as is suggested by the Anglo-Saxon
+name given to November by Bede, <i>Blot-monath</i>, sacrifice-month.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-66" id="Nanchor_8-66" href="#Note_8-66">{66}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Christmas does not seem to have quickly superseded the middle
+of November as a popular feast in Teutonic countries; rather one
+finds an outcome of the conciliatory policy pursued by Gregory
+the Great (see <a href="#Chapter_VI">Chapter VI.</a>) in the development of Martinmas.
+Founded in the fifth century, it was made a great Church festival
+by Pope Martin I. (649-654),&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-67" id="Nanchor_8-67" href="#Note_8-67">{67}</a>
+ and it may well have been
+intended to absorb and Christianize the New Year festivities of
+the Teutonic peoples. The veneration of St. Martin spread
+rapidly in the churches of northern Europe, and he came to be
+regarded as one of the very chief of the saints.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-68" id="Nanchor_8-68" href="#Note_8-68">{68}</a>
+ His day is no
+longer a Church feast of high rank, but its importance as a folk
+festival is great.</p>
+
+<p>The tradition of slaughter is preserved in the British custom of
+killing cattle on St. Martin's Day&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Martlemas beef&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-69" id="Nanchor_8-69" href="#Note_8-69">{69}</a>
+&#xfeff;&mdash;and in
+the German eating of St. Martin's geese and swine.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-70" id="Nanchor_8-70" href="#Note_8-70">{70}</a>
+ The St.
+Martin's goose, indeed, is in Germany as much a feature of the
+festival as the English Michaelmas goose is of the September
+feast of the angels.</p>
+
+<p>In Denmark too a goose is eaten at Martinmas, and from its
+breast-bone the character of the coming winter can be foreseen.
+The white in it is a sign of snow, the brown of very great cold.
+Similar ideas can be traced in Germany, though there is not
+always agreement as to what the white and the brown betoken.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-71" id="Nanchor_8-71" href="#Note_8-71">{71}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At St. Peter's, Athlone, Ireland, a very obviously sacrificial
+custom lasted on into the nineteenth century. Every household
+would kill an animal of some kind, and sprinkle the threshold with
+its blood. A cow or sheep, a goose or turkey, or merely a cock
+or hen, was used according to the means of the family.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-72" id="Nanchor_8-72" href="#Note_8-72">{72}</a>
+ It seems
+that the animal was actually offered to St. Martin, apparently as
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_204" id="Page_204" href="#Page_204">204</a>the successor of some god, and bad luck came if the custom were
+not observed. Probably these rites were transferred to Martinmas
+from the old Celtic festival of <i>Samhain</i>. Again, in a strange Irish
+legend the saint himself is said to have been cut up and eaten in
+the form of an ox.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-73" id="Nanchor_8-73" href="#Note_8-73">{73}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the wine-producing regions of Germany Martinmas was the
+day for the first drinking of the new wine, and the feasting in
+general on his day gave the saint the reputation of a guzzler and
+a glutton; it even became customary to speak of a person who
+had squandered his substance in riotous living as a <i>Martinsmann</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-74" id="Nanchor_8-74" href="#Note_8-74">{74}</a>
+
+As we have seen survivals of sacrifice in the Martinmas slaughter,
+so we may regard the <i>Martinsminne</i> or toast as originating in a
+sacrifice of liquor.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-75" id="Nanchor_8-75" href="#Note_8-75">{75}</a>
+ In the B&ouml;hmerwald it is believed that wine
+taken at Martinmas brings strength and beauty, and the lads and
+girls gather in the inns to drink, while a common German proverb
+runs:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Heb an Martini,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Trink Wein per circulum anni.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91">[91]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-76" id="Nanchor_8-76" href="#Note_8-76">{76}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Here, by the way, is a faint suggestion that Martinmas is
+regarded as the beginning of the year; as such it certainly appears
+in a number of legal customs, English, French, and German,
+which existed in the Middle Ages and in some cases in quite
+recent times. It was often at Martinmas that leases ended, rents
+had to be paid, and farm-servants changed their places.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-77" id="Nanchor_8-77" href="#Note_8-77">{77}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>There is a survival, perhaps, of a cereal sacrifice or sacrament
+in the so-called &ldquo;Martin's horns,&rdquo; horseshoe pastries given at
+Martinmas in many parts of Germany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-78" id="Nanchor_8-78" href="#Note_8-78">{78}</a>
+ Another kind of
+sacrifice is suggested by a Dutch custom of throwing baskets of
+fruit into Martinmas bonfires, and by a German custom of casting
+in empty fruit-baskets.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-79" id="Nanchor_8-79" href="#Note_8-79">{79}</a>
+ In Venetia the peasants keep over from
+the vintage a few grapes to form part of their Martinmas supper,
+and as far south as Sicily it is considered essential to taste the new
+wine at this festival.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-80" id="Nanchor_8-80" href="#Note_8-80">{80}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Bonfires appear at Martinmas in Germany, as at All Hallows
+tide in the British Isles. On St. Martin's Eve in the Rhine
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_205" id="Page_205" href="#Page_205">205</a>Valley between Cologne and Coblentz, numbers of little fires burn
+on the heights and by the river-bank,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-81" id="Nanchor_8-81" href="#Note_8-81">{81}</a>
+ the young people leap
+through the flames and dance about them, and the ashes are
+strewn on the fields to make them fertile.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-82" id="Nanchor_8-82" href="#Note_8-82">{82}</a>
+ Survivals of fire-customs
+are found also in other regions. In Belgium, Holland,
+and north-west Germany processions of children with paper or
+turnip lanterns take place on St. Martin's Eve. In the Eichsfeld
+district the little river Geislede glows with the light of candles
+placed in floating nutshells. Even the practice of leaping through
+the fire survives in a modified form, for in northern Germany it
+is not uncommon for people on St. Martin's Day or Eve to jump
+over lighted candles set on the parlour floor.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-83" id="Nanchor_8-83" href="#Note_8-83">{83}</a>
+ In the fifteenth
+century the Martinmas fires were so many that the festival actually
+got the name of <i>Funkentag</i> (Spark Day).&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-84" id="Nanchor_8-84" href="#Note_8-84">{84}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">On St. Martin's Eve in Germany and the Low Countries we
+begin to meet those winter visitors, bright saints and angels on
+the one hand, mock-terrible bogeys and monsters on the other,
+who add so much to the romance and mystery of the children's
+Christmas. Such visitors are to be found in many countries, but
+it is in the lands of German speech that they take on the most
+vivid and picturesque forms. St. Martin, St. Nicholas, Christkind,
+Knecht Ruprecht, and the rest are very real and personal
+beings to the children, and are awaited with pleasant expectation
+or mild dread. Often they are beheld not merely with the
+imagination but with the bodily eye, when father or friend is
+wondrously transformed into a supernatural figure.</p>
+
+<p>What are the origins of these holy or monstrous beings? It
+is hard to say with certainty, for many elements, pagan and
+Christian, seem here to be closely blended. It is pretty clear,
+however, that the grotesque half-animal shapes are direct relics
+of heathendom, and it is highly probable that the forms of saints
+or angels&#xfeff;&mdash;even, perhaps, of the Christ Child Himself&#xfeff;&mdash;represent
+attempts of the Church to transform and sanctify alien things
+which she could not suppress. What some of these may have
+been we shall tentatively guess as we go along. Though no
+grown-up person would take the mimic Martin or Nicholas
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_206" id="Page_206" href="#Page_206">206</a>seriously nowadays, there seem to be at the root of them things
+once regarded as of vital moment. Just as fairy-tales, originally
+serious attempts to explain natural facts, have now become reading
+for children, so ritual practices which our ancestors deemed of vast
+importance for human welfare have become mere games to amuse
+the young.</p>
+
+<p>On St. Martin's Eve, to come back from speculation to the
+facts of popular custom, the saint appears in the nurseries of
+Antwerp and other Flemish towns. He is a man dressed up as
+a bishop, with a pastoral staff in his hand. His business is to ask
+if the children have been &ldquo;good,&rdquo; and if the result of his inquiries
+is satisfactory he throws down apples, nuts, and cakes. If not, it
+is rods that he leaves behind. At Ypres he does not visibly appear,
+but children hang up stockings filled with hay, and next morning
+find presents in them, left by the saint in gratitude for the fodder
+provided for his horse. He is there imagined as a rider on a white
+horse, and the same conception prevails in Austrian Silesia, where
+he brings the &ldquo;Martin's horns&rdquo; already mentioned.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-85" id="Nanchor_8-85" href="#Note_8-85">{85}</a>
+ In Silesia
+when it snows at Martinmas people say that the saint is coming
+on his white horse, and there, it may be noted, the <i>Schimmelreiter</i>
+appears at the same season.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-86" id="Nanchor_8-86" href="#Note_8-86">{86}</a>
+ In certain respects, it has been
+suggested, St. Martin may have taken the place of Woden.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-87" id="Nanchor_8-87" href="#Note_8-87">{87}</a>
+ It
+is perhaps not without significance that, like the god, he is a
+military hero, and conceived as a rider on horseback. At D&uuml;sseldorf
+he used to be represented in his festival procession by a man
+riding on another fellow's back.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-88" id="Nanchor_8-88" href="#Note_8-88">{88}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At Mechlin and other places children go round from house to
+house, singing and collecting gifts. Often four boys with paper
+caps on their heads, dressed as Turks, carry a sort of litter
+whereon St. Martin sits. He has a long white beard of flax
+and a paper mitre and stole, and holds a large wooden spoon to
+receive apples and other eatables that are given to the children, as
+well as a leather purse for offerings of money.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-89" id="Nanchor_8-89" href="#Note_8-89">{89}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Ansbach region a different type of being used to appear&#xfeff;&mdash;Pelzm&auml;rten
+(Skin Martin) by name; he ran about and
+frightened the children, before he threw them their apples and
+nuts. In several places in Swabia, too, Pelzm&auml;rte was known;
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_207" id="Page_207" href="#Page_207">207</a>he had a black face, a cow-bell hung on his person, and he
+distributed blows as well as nuts and apples.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-90" id="Nanchor_8-90" href="#Note_8-90">{90}</a>
+ In him there is
+obviously more of the pagan mummer than the Christian bishop.</p>
+
+<p>In Belgium St. Martin is chiefly known as the bringer of
+apples and nuts for children; in Bavaria and Austria he has a
+different aspect: a <i>gerte</i> or rod, supposed to promote fruitfulness
+among cattle and prosperity in general, is connected with his day.
+The rods are taken round by the neatherds to the farmers, and
+one is given to each&#xfeff;&mdash;two to rich proprietors; they are to be
+used, when spring comes, to drive out the cattle for the first time.
+In Bavaria they are formed by a birch-bough with all the leaves
+and twigs stripped off&#xfeff;&mdash;except at the top, to which oak-leaves
+and juniper-twigs are fastened. At Etzendorf a curious old
+rhyme shows that the herdsman with the rod is regarded as the
+representative of St. Martin.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-91" id="Nanchor_8-91" href="#Note_8-91">{91}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Can we connect this custom with the saint who brings
+presents to youngsters?&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_92" id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92">[92]</a> There seems to be a point of contact
+when we note that at Antwerp St. Martin throws down rods for
+naughty children as well as nuts and apples for good ones, and
+that Pelzm&auml;rte in Swabia has blows to bestow as well as gifts.
+St. Martin's main functions&#xfeff;&mdash;and, as we shall see, St. Nicholas has
+the same&#xfeff;&mdash;are to beat the bad children and reward the good with
+apples, nuts, and cakes. Can it be that the ethical distinction is
+of comparatively recent origin, an invention perhaps for children
+when the customs came to be performed solely for their benefit,
+and that the beating and the gifts were originally shared by all
+alike and were of a sacramental character? We shall meet with
+more whipping customs later on, they are common enough in folk-ritual,
+and are not punishments, but kindly services; their purpose
+is to drive away evil influences, and to bring to the flogged one
+the life-giving virtues of the tree from which the twigs or boughs
+are taken.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-92" id="Nanchor_8-92" href="#Note_8-92">{92}</a>
+ Both the flogging and the eating of fruit may,
+indeed, be means of contact with the vegetation-spirit, the one in
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_208" id="Page_208" href="#Page_208">208</a>an external, the other in a more internal way. Or possibly the
+rod and the fruit may once have been conjoined, the beating being
+performed with fruit-laden boughs in order to produce prosperity.
+It is noteworthy that at Etzendorf so many head of cattle and
+loads of hay are augured for the farmer as there are juniper-<i>berries</i>
+and twigs on St. Martin's <i>gerte</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-94" id="Nanchor_8-94" href="#Note_8-94">{94}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Attempts to account for the figures of SS. Martin and Nicholas
+in northern folk-customs have been made along various lines.
+Some scholars regard them as Christianizations of the pagan god
+Woden; but they might also be taken as akin to the &ldquo;first-foots&rdquo;
+whom we shall meet on January&nbsp;1&#xfeff;&mdash;visitors who bring
+good luck&#xfeff;&mdash;or as maskers connected with animal sacrifices
+(Pelzm&auml;rte suggests this), or again as related to the Boy Bishop,
+the Lord of Misrule and the Twelfth Night King. May I
+suggest that some at least of their aspects could be explained on
+the supposition that they represent administrants of primitive
+vegetation sacraments, and that these administrants, once ordinary
+human beings, have taken on the name and attributes of the saint
+who under the Christian dispensation presides over the festival?
+In any case it is a strange irony of history that around the festival
+of Martin of Tours, the zealous soldier of Christ and deadly foe
+of heathenism, should have gathered so much that is unmistakably
+pagan.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_209" id="Page_209" href="#Page_209">209</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_210" id="Page_210" href="#Page_210">210</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_211" id="Page_211" href="#Page_211">211</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_VIII" id="Chapter_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h2 class="title1">ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Catherine's Day as Spinsters&rsquo; Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+Andrew's Eve Auguries&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Kl&ouml;pfeln&auml;chte</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Nicholas's Day, the Saint as
+Gift-bringer, and his Attendants&#xfeff;&mdash;Election of the Boy Bishop&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Nicholas's
+Day at Bari&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Lucia's Day in Sweden, Sicily, and Central Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+Thomas's Day as School Festival&#xfeff;&mdash;Its Uncanny Eve&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;Going a-Thomassin&rsquo;.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">St. Clement's Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>The next folk-feast after Martinmas is St. Clement's Day,
+November&nbsp;23, once reckoned the first day of winter in
+England.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-1" id="Nanchor_9-1" href="#Note_9-1">{1}</a>
+ It marks apparently one of the stages in the progress
+of the winter feast towards its present solstitial date. In England
+some interesting popular customs existed on this day. In
+Staffordshire children used to go round to the village houses
+begging for gifts, with rhymes resembling in many ways the
+&ldquo;souling&rdquo; verses I have already quoted. Here is one of the
+Staffordshire &ldquo;clemencing&rdquo; songs:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Clemany! Clemany! Clemany mine!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A good red apple and a pint of wine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Some of your mutton and some of your veal,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">If it is good, pray give me a deal;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">If it is not, pray give me some salt.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Butler, butler, fill your bowl;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">If thou fill'st it of the best,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The Lord'll send your soul to rest;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">If thou fill'st it of the small,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Down goes butler, bowl and all.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_212" id="Page_212" href="#Page_212">212</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Pray, good mistress, send to me</span><br />
+<span class="i2">One for Peter, one for Paul,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">One for Him who made us all;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Apple, pear, plum, or cherry,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Any good thing to make us merry;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A bouncing buck and a velvet chair,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Clement comes but once a year;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Off with the pot and on with the pan,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A good red apple and I'll be gone.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-2" id="Nanchor_9-2" href="#Note_9-2">{2}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In Worcestershire on St. Clement's Day the boys chanted
+similar rhymes, and at the close of their collection they would
+roast the apples received and throw them into ale or cider.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-3" id="Nanchor_9-3" href="#Note_9-3">{3}</a>
+ In
+the north of England men used to go about begging drink, and at
+Ripon Minster the choristers went round the church offering
+everyone a rosy apple with a sprig of box on it.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-4" id="Nanchor_9-4" href="#Note_9-4">{4}</a>
+ The Cambridge
+bakers held their annual supper on this day,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-5" id="Nanchor_9-5" href="#Note_9-5">{5}</a>
+ at Tenby
+the fishermen were given a supper,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-6" id="Nanchor_9-6" href="#Note_9-6">{6}</a>
+ while the blacksmiths&rsquo;
+apprentices at Woolwich had a remarkable ceremony, akin perhaps
+to the Boy Bishop customs. One of their number was chosen
+to play the part of &ldquo;Old Clem,&rdquo; was attired in a great coat,
+and wore a mask, a long white beard, and an oakum wig. Seated
+in a large wooden chair, and surrounded by attendants bearing
+banners, torches, and weapons, he was borne about the town
+on the shoulders of six men, visiting numerous public-houses
+and the blacksmiths and officers of the dockyard. Before him he
+had a wooden anvil, and in his hands a pair of tongs and a wooden
+hammer, the insignia of the blacksmith's trade.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-7" id="Nanchor_9-7" href="#Note_9-7">{7}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">St. Catherine's Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>November&nbsp;25 is St. Catherine's Day, and at Woolwich Arsenal
+a similar ceremony was then performed: a man was dressed in
+female attire, with a large wheel by his side to represent the saint,
+and was taken round the town&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-8" id="Nanchor_9-8" href="#Note_9-8">{8}</a>
+ in a wooden chair. At Chatham
+there was a torchlight procession on St. Catherine's Day, and a
+woman in white muslin with a gilt crown was carried about in a
+chair. She was said to represent not the saint, but Queen
+Catherine.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-9" id="Nanchor_9-9" href="#Note_9-9">{9}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_213" id="Page_213" href="#Page_213">213</a>St. Catherine's Day was formerly a festival for the lacemakers
+of Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire. She
+was the patroness of spinsters in the literal as well as the modern
+sense of the word, and at Peterborough the workhouse girls used
+to go in procession round the city on her day, dressed in white
+with coloured ribbons; the tallest was chosen as Queen and bore
+a crown and sceptre. As they went to beg money of the chief
+inhabitants they sang a quaint ballad which begins thus:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Here comes Queen Catherine, as fine as any queen,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With a coach and six horses a-coming to be seen,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">And a-spinning we will go, will go, will go,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">And a-spinning we will go.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-10" id="Nanchor_9-10" href="#Note_9-10">{10}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>We may perhaps see in this Saint or Queen Catherine a
+female counterpart of the Boy Bishop, who began his career on
+St. Nicholas's Day. Catherine, it must be remembered, is the
+patron saint of girls as Nicholas is of boys. In Belgium her day
+is still a festival for the &ldquo;young person&rdquo; both in schools and in
+families.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-11" id="Nanchor_9-11" href="#Note_9-11">{11}</a>
+ Even in modern Paris the dressmaker-girls celebrate
+it, and in a very charming way, too.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At midday the girls of every workroom present little mob-caps
+trimmed with yellow ribbons to those of their number who
+are over twenty-five and still unmarried. Then they themselves
+put on becoming little caps with yellow flowers and yellow
+ribbons and a sprig of orange blossom on them, and out they go
+arm-in-arm to parade the streets and collect a tribute of flowers
+from every man they meet.... Instead of working all the
+afternoon, the midinettes entertain all their friends (no men
+admitted, though, for it is the day of St. Catherine) to concerts
+and even to dramatic performances in the workrooms, where the
+work-tables are turned into stages, and the employers provide
+supper.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-12" id="Nanchor_9-12" href="#Note_9-12">{12}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">St. Andrew's Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>The last day of November is the feast of St. Andrew. Of
+English customs on this day the most interesting perhaps are
+those connected with the &ldquo;Tander&rdquo; or &ldquo;Tandrew&rdquo; merrymakings
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_214" id="Page_214" href="#Page_214">214</a>of the Northamptonshire lacemakers. A day of general
+licence used to end in masquerading. Women went about in
+male attire and men and boys in female dress.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-13" id="Nanchor_9-13" href="#Note_9-13">{13}</a>
+ In Kent and
+Sussex squirrel-hunting was practised on this day&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-14" id="Nanchor_9-14" href="#Note_9-14">{14}</a>
+&#xfeff;&mdash;a survival
+apparently of some old sacrificial custom comparable with the
+hunting of the wren at Christmas (see <a href="#Chapter_XII">Chapter XII.</a>).</p>
+
+<p>In Germany St. Andrew's Eve is a great occasion for
+prognostications of the future. Indeed, like Hallowe'en in
+Great Britain, <i>Andreasabend</i> in Germany seems to have preserved
+the customs of augury connected with the old November New
+Year festival.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-15" id="Nanchor_9-15" href="#Note_9-15">{15}</a>
+ To a large extent the practices are performed
+by girls anxious to know what sort of husband they will get.
+Many and various are the methods.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes it suffices to repeat some such rhyme as the
+following before going to sleep, and the future husband will
+appear in a dream:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;St. Andrew's Eve is to-day,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sleep all people,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sleep all children of men,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Who are between heaven and earth,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Except this only man,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Who may be mine in marriage.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-16" id="Nanchor_9-16" href="#Note_9-16">{16}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Again, at nightfall let a girl shut herself up naked in her
+bedroom, take two beakers, and into one pour clear water, into
+the other wine. These let her place on the table, which is to be
+covered with white, and let the following words be said:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;My dear St. Andrew!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Let now appear before me</span><br />
+<span class="i2">My heart's most dearly beloved.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">If he shall be rich,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He will pour a cup of wine;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">If he is to be poor,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Let him pour a cup of water.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>This done, the form of the future husband will enter and drink
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_215" id="Page_215" href="#Page_215">215</a>of one of the cups. If he is poor, he will take the water; if rich,
+the wine.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-17" id="Nanchor_9-17" href="#Note_9-17">{17}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>One of the most common practices is to pour molten lead or
+tin through a key into cold water, and to discover the calling of
+the future husband by the form it takes, which will represent the
+tools of his trade. The white of an egg is sometimes used for
+the same purpose.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-18" id="Nanchor_9-18" href="#Note_9-18">{18}</a>
+ Another very widespread custom is to put
+nutshells to float on water with little candles burning in them.
+There are twice as many shells as there are girls present; each
+girl has her shell, and to the others the names of possible suitors
+are given. The man and the girl whose shells come together
+will marry one another. Sometimes the same method is practised
+with little cups of silver foil.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-19" id="Nanchor_9-19" href="#Note_9-19">{19}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>On the border of Saxony and Bohemia, a maiden who wishes
+to know the bodily build of her future husband goes in the
+darkness to a stack of wood and draws out a piece. If the wood
+is smooth and straight the man will be slim and well built; if
+it is crooked, or knotted, he will be ill-developed or even a
+hunchback.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-20" id="Nanchor_9-20" href="#Note_9-20">{20}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>These are but a few of the many ways in which girls seek to
+peer into the future and learn something about the most
+important event in their lives. Far less numerous, but not
+altogether absent on this night, are other kinds of prognostication.
+A person, for instance, who wishes to know whether he will die
+in the coming year, must on St. Andrew's Eve before going to
+bed make on the table a little pointed heap of flour. If by the
+morning it has fallen asunder, the maker will die.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-21" id="Nanchor_9-21" href="#Note_9-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The association of St. Andrew's Eve with the foreseeing of the
+future is not confined to the German race; it is found also on
+Slavonic and Roumanian ground. In Croatia he who fasts then
+will behold his future wife in a dream,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-22" id="Nanchor_9-22" href="#Note_9-22">{22}</a>
+ and among the
+Roumanians mothers anxious about their children's luck break
+small sprays from fruit-trees, bind them together in bunches, one
+for each child, and put them in a glass of water. The branch
+of the lucky one will blossom.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-23" id="Nanchor_9-23" href="#Note_9-23">{23}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Roumania St. Andrew's Eve is a creepy time, for on it
+vampires are supposed to rise from their graves, and with coffins
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_216" id="Page_216" href="#Page_216">216</a>on their heads walk about the houses in which they once lived.
+Before nightfall every woman takes some garlic and anoints with
+it the door locks and window casements; this will keep away the
+vampires. At the cross-roads there is a great fight of these
+loathsome beings until the first cock crows; and not only the
+dead take part in this, but also some living men who are vampires
+from their birth. Sometimes it is only the souls of these living
+vampires that join in the fight; the soul comes out through the
+mouth in the form of a bluish flame, takes the shape of an
+animal, and runs to the crossway. If the body meanwhile is
+moved from its place the person dies, for the soul cannot find its
+way back.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-24" id="Nanchor_9-24" href="#Note_9-24">{24}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>St. Andrew's Day is sometimes the last, sometimes the first
+important festival of the western Church's year. It is regarded
+in parts of Germany as the beginning of winter, as witness
+the saying:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;S&uuml;nten-Dres-Misse,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">es de Winter gewisse.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_93" id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93">[93]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-25" id="Nanchor_9-25" href="#Note_9-25">{25}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The nights are now almost at their longest, and as November
+passes away, giving place to the last month of the year, Christmas
+is felt to be near at hand.</p>
+
+<p>In northern Bohemia it is customary for peasant girls to keep
+for themselves all the yarn they spin on St. Andrew's Eve, and
+the <i>Hausfrau</i> gives them also some flax and a little money.
+With this they buy coffee and other refreshments for the lads
+who come to visit the parlours where in the long winter evenings
+the women sit spinning. These evenings, when many gather
+together in a brightly lighted room and sing songs and tell
+stories while they spin, are cheerful enough, and spice is added by
+the visits of the village lads, who in some places come to see
+the girls home.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-26" id="Nanchor_9-26" href="#Note_9-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Kl&ouml;pfeln&auml;chte.</span></h3>
+
+<p>On the Thursday nights in Advent it is customary in southern
+Germany for children or grown-up people to go from house
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_217" id="Page_217" href="#Page_217">217</a>to house, singing hymns and knocking on the doors with rods
+or little hammers, or throwing peas, lentils, and the like against
+the windows. Hence these evenings have gained the name of
+<i>Kl&ouml;pfel</i> or <i>Kn&ouml;pflinsn&auml;chte</i> (Knocking Nights).&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-27" id="Nanchor_9-27" href="#Note_9-27">{27}</a>
+ The practice is
+described by Naogeorgus in the sixteenth century:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Three weekes before the day whereon was borne the Lord of Grace,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And on the Thursdaye Boyes and Girles do runne in every place,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And crie, the Advent of the Lorde not borne as yet perhaps.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For these three nightes are alwayes thought, unfortunate to bee;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wherein they are afrayde of sprites and cankred witches&rsquo; spight,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And dreadfull devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-28" id="Nanchor_9-28" href="#Note_9-28">{28}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>With it may be compared the Macedonian custom for village
+boys to go in parties at nightfall on Christmas Eve, knocking at
+the cottage doors with sticks, shouting <i>Kolianda! Kolianda!</i> and
+receiving presents,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-29" id="Nanchor_9-29" href="#Note_9-29">{29}</a>
+ and also one in vogue in Holland between
+Christmas and the Epiphany. There &ldquo;the children go out in
+couples, each boy carrying an earthenware pot, over which a
+bladder is stretched, with a piece of stick tied in the middle.
+When this stick is twirled about, a not very melodious grumbling
+sound proceeds from the contrivance, which is known by the
+name of &lsquo;Rommelpot.&rsquo; By going about in this manner the
+children are able to collect some few pence.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-30" id="Nanchor_9-30" href="#Note_9-30">{30}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Can such practices have originated in attempts to drive out evil
+spirits from the houses by noise? Similar methods are used for
+that purpose by various European and other peoples.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-31" id="Nanchor_9-31" href="#Note_9-31">{31}</a>
+ Anyhow
+something mysterious hangs about the <i>Kl&ouml;pfeln&auml;chte</i>. They are
+occasions for girls to learn about their future husbands, and
+upon them in Swabia goes about Pelzm&auml;rte, whom we already
+know.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-32" id="Nanchor_9-32" href="#Note_9-32">{32}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_218" id="Page_218" href="#Page_218">218</a>In Tyrol curious mummeries are then performed. At Pillersee
+in the Lower Innthal two youths combine to form a mimic
+ass, upon which a third rides, and they are followed by a motley
+train. The ass falls sick and has to be cured by a &ldquo;vet,&rdquo; and all
+kinds of satirical jokes are made about things that have happened
+in the parish during the year. Elsewhere two men dress up in
+straw as husband and wife, and go out with a masked company.
+The pair wrangle with one another and carry on a play of wits
+with the peasants whose house they are visiting. Sometimes the
+satire is so cutting that permanent enmities ensue, and for this
+reason the practice is gradually being dropped.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-33" id="Nanchor_9-33" href="#Note_9-33">{33}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">St. Nicholas's Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>On December&nbsp;6 we reach the most distinctive children's
+festival of the whole year, St. Nicholas's Day. In England it
+has gone out of mind, and in the flat north of Germany
+Protestantism has largely rooted it out, as savouring too much
+of saint-worship, and transferred its festivities to the more
+Evangelical season of Christmas.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-34" id="Nanchor_9-34" href="#Note_9-34">{34}</a>
+ In western and southern
+Germany, however, and in Austria, Switzerland, and the Low
+Countries, it is still a day of joy for children, though in some
+regions even there its radiance tends to pale before the greater
+glory of the Christmas-tree.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy either to get at the historic facts about St.
+Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, or
+to ascertain why he became the patron saint of boys. The
+legends of his infant piety and his later wondrous works for the
+benefit of young people may either have given rise, or be themselves
+due to, his connection with children.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-35" id="Nanchor_9-35" href="#Note_9-35">{35}</a>
+ In eastern Europe
+and southern Italy he is above all things the saint of seafaring
+men, and among the Greeks his cult has perhaps replaced that of
+Artemis as a sea divinity.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-36" id="Nanchor_9-36" href="#Note_9-36">{36}</a>
+ This aspect of him does not, however,
+appear in the German festival customs with which we are
+here chiefly concerned.</p>
+
+<p>It has already been hinted that in some respects St. Nicholas
+is a duplicate of St. Martin. His feast, indeed, is probably a later
+beginning-of-winter festival, dating from the period when
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_219" id="Page_219" href="#Page_219">219</a>improved methods of agriculture and other causes made early
+December, rather than mid-November, the time for the great
+annual slaughter and its attendant rejoicings. Like St. Martin
+he brings sweet things for the good children and rods for the bad.</p>
+
+<p>St. Nicholas's Eve is a time of festive stir in Holland and
+Belgium; the shops are full of pleasant little gifts: many-shaped
+biscuits, gilt gingerbreads, sometimes representing the saint, sugar
+images, toys, and other trifles. In many places, when evening
+comes on, people dress up as St. Nicholas, with mitre and pastoral
+staff, enquire about the behaviour of the children, and if it has
+been good pronounce a benediction and promise them a reward
+next morning. Before they go to bed the children put out their
+shoes, with hay, straw, or a carrot in them for the saint's white
+horse or ass. When they wake in the morning, if they have been
+&ldquo;good&rdquo; the fodder is gone and sweet things or toys are in its
+place; if they have misbehaved themselves the provender is
+untouched and no gift but a rod is there.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-37" id="Nanchor_9-37" href="#Note_9-37">{37}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In various parts of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria St.
+Nicholas is mimed by a man dressed up as a bishop.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-38" id="Nanchor_9-38" href="#Note_9-38">{38}</a>
+ In Tyrol
+children pray to the saint on his Eve and leave out hay for
+his white horse and a glass of <i>schnaps</i> for his servant. And he
+comes in all the splendour of a church-image, a reverend grey-haired
+figure with flowing beard, gold-broidered cope, glittering
+mitre, and pastoral staff. Children who know their catechism are
+rewarded with sweet things out of the basket carried by his
+servant; those who cannot answer are reproved, and St. Nicholas
+points to a terrible form that stands behind him with a rod&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+hideous Klaubauf, a shaggy monster with horns, black face, fiery
+eyes, long red tongue, and chains that clank as he moves.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-39" id="Nanchor_9-39" href="#Note_9-39">{39}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Lower Austria the saint is followed by a similar figure called
+Krampus or Grampus;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-40" id="Nanchor_9-40" href="#Note_9-40">{40}</a>
+ in Styria this horrible attendant is
+named Bartel;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-41" id="Nanchor_9-41" href="#Note_9-41">{41}</a>
+ all are no doubt related to such monsters as the
+<i>Klapperbock</i> (see <a href="#Chapter_VII">Chapter VII.</a>). Their heathen origin is evident
+though it is difficult to trace their exact pedigree. Sometimes St.
+Nicholas himself appears in a non-churchly form like Pelzm&auml;rte,
+with a bell,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-42" id="Nanchor_9-42" href="#Note_9-42">{42}</a>
+ or with a sack of ashes which gains him the name
+of Aschenklas.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-43" id="Nanchor_9-43" href="#Note_9-43">{43}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_220" id="Page_220" href="#Page_220">220</a>Not only by hideous figures is St. Nicholas attended. Sometimes,
+as at Warnsdorf near Rumburg, there come with him the
+forms of Christ Himself, St. Peter, an angel, and the famous
+Knecht Ruprecht, whom we shall meet again on Christmas Eve.
+They are represented by children, and a little drama is performed,
+one personage coming in after the other and calling for the next
+in the manner of the English mummers&rsquo; play. St. Nicholas, St.
+Peter, and Ruprecht accuse the children of all kinds of naughtiness,
+the &ldquo;Heiliger Christ&rdquo; intercedes and at last throws nuts
+down and receives money from the parents.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-44" id="Nanchor_9-44" href="#Note_9-44">{44}</a>
+ In Tyrol there
+are St. Nicholas plays of a more comic nature, performed publicly
+by large companies of players and introducing a number of
+humorous characters and much rude popular wit.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-45" id="Nanchor_9-45" href="#Note_9-45">{45}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a female bogey used to appear: Budelfrau in
+Lower Austria, Berchtel in Swabia, Buzebergt in the neighbourhood
+of Augsburg.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-46" id="Nanchor_9-46" href="#Note_9-46">{46}</a>
+ The last two are plainly variants of
+Berchte, who is specially connected with the Epiphany.
+Berchtel used to punish the naughty children with a rod, and
+reward the good with nuts and apples; Buzebergt wore black
+rags, had her face blackened and her hair hanging unkempt, and
+carried a pot of starch which she smeared upon people's faces.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-47" id="Nanchor_9-47" href="#Note_9-47">{47}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>As Santa Klaus St. Nicholas is of course known to every
+English child, but rather as a sort of incarnation of Christmas
+than as a saint with a day of his own. Santa Klaus, probably,
+has come to us <i>vi&acirc;</i> the United States, whither the Dutch took
+him, and where he has still immense popularity.</p>
+
+<p>In the Middle Ages in England as elsewhere the Eve of
+St. Nicholas was a day of great excitement for boys. It was then
+that the small choristers and servers in cathedral and other
+churches generally elected their &ldquo;Boy Bishop&rdquo; or &ldquo;Nicholas.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-48" id="Nanchor_9-48" href="#Note_9-48">{48}</a>
+
+He had in some places to officiate at First Vespers and at the
+services on the festival itself. As a rule, however, the feast
+of the Holy Innocents, December&nbsp;28, was probably the most
+important day in the Boy Bishop's career, and we may therefore
+postpone our consideration of him. We will here only note his
+connection with the festival of the patron saint of boys, a
+connection perhaps implying a common origin for him and
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_221" id="Page_221" href="#Page_221">221</a>for the St. Nicholases who in bishops&rsquo; vestments make their
+present-giving rounds.</p>
+
+<p>The festival of St. Nicholas is naturally celebrated with most
+splendour at the place where his body lies, the seaport of Bari in
+south-eastern Italy. The holy bones are preserved in a sepulchre
+beneath a crypt of rich Saracenic architecture, above which rises
+a magnificent church. Legend relates that in the eleventh
+century they were stolen by certain merchants of Bari from the
+saint's own cathedral at Myra in Asia Minor. The tomb of St.
+Nicholas is a famous centre for pilgrimages, and on the 6th
+of December many thousands of the faithful, bearing staves bound
+with olive and pine, visit it. An interesting ceremony on the
+festival is the taking of the saint's image out to sea by the sailors
+of the port. They return with it at nightfall, and a great
+procession escorts it back to the cathedral with torches and fireworks
+and chanting.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-49" id="Nanchor_9-49" href="#Note_9-49">{49}</a>
+ Here may be seen the other, the seafaring,
+aspect of St. Nicholas; by this mariners&rsquo; cult we are taken far
+away from the present-giving saint who delights the small
+children of the North.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">St. Lucia's Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>The only folk-festivals of note between St. Nicholas's Day
+and Christmas are those of St. Lucia (December&nbsp;13) and St.
+Thomas the Apostle (December&nbsp;21).</p>
+
+<p>In Sweden St. Lucia's Day was formerly marked by some
+interesting practices. It was, so to speak, the entrance to the
+Christmas festival, and was called &ldquo;little Yule.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-50" id="Nanchor_9-50" href="#Note_9-50">{50}</a>
+ At the first
+cock-crow, between 1 and 4 a.m., the prettiest girl in the house
+used to go among the sleeping folk, dressed in a white robe, a red
+sash, and a wire crown covered with whortleberry-twigs and
+having nine lighted candles fastened in it. She awakened the
+sleepers and regaled them with a sweet drink or with coffee,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_94" id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94">[94]</a>
+sang a special song, and was named &ldquo;Lussi&rdquo; or &ldquo;Lussibruden&rdquo;
+(Lucy bride). When everyone was dressed, breakfast was taken,
+the room being lighted by many candles. The domestic animals
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_222" id="Page_222" href="#Page_222">222</a>were not forgotten on this day, but were given special portions.
+A peculiar feature of the Swedish custom is the presence of lights
+on Lussi's crown. Lights indeed are the special mark of the
+festival; it was customary to shoot and fish on St. Lucy's Day
+by torchlight, the parlours, as has been said, were brilliantly illuminated
+in the early morning, in West Gothland Lussi went
+round the village preceded by torchbearers, and in one parish she
+was represented by a cow with a crown of lights on her head.
+In schools the day was celebrated with illuminations.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-51" id="Nanchor_9-51" href="#Note_9-51">{51}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>What is the explanation of this feast of lights? There is
+nothing in the legend of the saint to account for it; her name,
+however, at once suggests <i>lux</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;light. It is possible, as Dr.
+Feilberg supposes, that the name gave rise to the special use of
+lights among the Latin-learned monks who brought Christianity
+to Sweden, and that the custom spread from them to the common
+people. A peculiar fitness would be found in it because St.
+Lucia's Day according to the Old Style was the shortest day of
+the year, the turning-point of the sun's light.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-52" id="Nanchor_9-52" href="#Note_9-52">{52}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Sicily also St. Lucia's festival is a feast of lights. After
+sunset on the Eve a long procession of men, lads, and children,
+each flourishing a thick bunch of long straws all afire, rushes
+wildly down the streets of the mountain village of Montedoro, as if
+fleeing from some danger, and shouting hoarsely. &ldquo;The darkness
+of the night,&rdquo; says an eye-witness, &ldquo;was lighted up by this savage
+procession of dancing, flaming torches, whilst bonfires in all the
+side streets gave the illusion that the whole village was burning.&rdquo;
+At the end of the procession came the image of Santa Lucia,
+holding a dish which contained her eyes.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_95" id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95">[95]</a> In the midst of the
+<i>piazza</i> a great mountain of straw had been prepared; on this
+everyone threw his own burning torch, and the saint was placed
+in a spot from which she could survey the vast bonfire.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-53" id="Nanchor_9-53" href="#Note_9-53">{53}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In central Europe we see St. Lucia in other aspects. In the
+B&ouml;hmerwald she goes round the village in the form of a nanny-goat
+with horns, gives fruit to the good children, and threatens to
+rip open the belly of the naughty. Here she is evidently related
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_223" id="Page_223" href="#Page_223">223</a>to the pagan monsters already described. In Tyrol she plays a
+more graceful part: she brings presents for girls, an office
+which St. Nicholas is there supposed to perform for boys only.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-55" id="Nanchor_9-55" href="#Note_9-55">{55}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Lower Austria St. Lucia's Eve is a time when special danger
+from witchcraft is feared and must be averted by prayer and
+incense. A procession is made through each house to cense every
+room. On this evening, too, girls are afraid to spin lest in the
+morning they should find their distaffs twisted, the threads broken,
+and the yarn in confusion. (We shall meet with like superstitions
+during the Twelve Nights.) At midnight the girls practise a
+strange ceremony: they go to a willow-bordered brook, cut the
+bark of a tree partly away, without detaching it, make with a
+knife a cross on the inner side of the cut bark, moisten it with
+water, and carefully close up the opening. On New Year's Day
+the cutting is opened, and the future is augured from the markings
+found. The lads, on the other hand, look out at midnight for a
+mysterious light, the <i>Luzieschein</i>, the forms of which indicate
+coming events.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-56" id="Nanchor_9-56" href="#Note_9-56">{56}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Denmark, too, St. Lucia's Eve is a time for seeing the
+future. Here is a prayer of Danish maids: &ldquo;Sweet St. Lucy let
+me know: whose cloth I shall lay, whose bed I shall make, whose
+child I shall bear, whose darling I shall be, whose arms I shall
+sleep in.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-57" id="Nanchor_9-57" href="#Note_9-57">{57}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">St. Thomas's Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Many and various are the customs and beliefs associated with
+the feast of St. Thomas (December&nbsp;21). In Denmark it was
+formerly a great children's day, unique in the year, and rather
+resembling the mediaeval Boy Bishop festival. It was the
+breaking-up day for schools; the children used to bring their
+master an offering of candles and money, and in return he gave
+them a feast. In some places it had an even more delightful
+side: for this one day in the year the children were allowed the
+mastery in the school. Testimonials to their scholarship and
+industry were made out, and elaborate titles were added to their
+names, as exalted sometimes as &ldquo;Pope,&rdquo; &ldquo;Emperor,&rdquo; or
+&ldquo;Empress.&rdquo; Poor children used to go about showing these
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_224" id="Page_224" href="#Page_224">224</a>documents and collecting money. Games and larks of all sorts
+went on in the schools without a word of reproof, and the children
+were wont to burn their master's rod.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-58" id="Nanchor_9-58" href="#Note_9-58">{58}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the neighbourhood of Antwerp children go early to school
+on St. Thomas's Day, and lock the master out, until he promises
+to treat them with ale or other drink. After this they buy a cock
+and hen, which are allowed to escape and have to be caught by
+the boys or the girls respectively. The girl who catches the hen
+is called &ldquo;queen,&rdquo; the boy who gets the cock, &ldquo;king.&rdquo; Elsewhere
+in Belgium children lock out their parents, and servants
+their masters, while schoolboys bind their teacher to his chair and
+carry him over to the inn. There he has to buy back his liberty
+by treating his scholars with punch and cakes. Instead of the
+chase for the fowls, it was up to 1850 the custom in the Ardennes
+for the teacher to give the children hens and let them chop the
+heads off.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-59" id="Nanchor_9-59" href="#Note_9-59">{59}</a>
+ Some pagan sacrifice no doubt lies at the root of this
+barbarous practice, which has many parallels in the folk-lore of
+western and southern Europe.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-60" id="Nanchor_9-60" href="#Note_9-60">{60}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>As for schoolboys&rsquo; larks with their teachers, the custom of
+&ldquo;barring out the master&rdquo; existed in England, and was practised
+before Christmas&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-61" id="Nanchor_9-61" href="#Note_9-61">{61}</a>
+ as well as at other times of the year, notably
+Shrove Tuesday. At Bromfield in Cumberland on Shrove
+Tuesday there was a regular siege, the school doors were strongly
+barricaded within, and the boy-defenders were armed with pop-guns.
+If the master won, heavy tasks were imposed, but if, as
+more often happened, he was defeated in his efforts to regain his
+authority, he had to make terms with the boys as to the hours
+of work and play.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-62" id="Nanchor_9-62" href="#Note_9-62">{62}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>St. Thomas's Eve is in certain regions one of the uncanniest
+nights in the year. In some Bohemian villages the saint is
+believed to drive about at midnight in a chariot of fire. In the
+churchyard there await him all the dead men whose name is
+Thomas; they help him to alight and accompany him to the churchyard
+cross, which glows red with supernatural radiance. There
+St. Thomas kneels and prays, and then rises to bless his namesakes.
+This done, he vanishes beneath the cross, and each Thomas
+returns to his grave. The saint here seems to have taken over
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_225" id="Page_225" href="#Page_225">225</a>the character of some pagan god, who, like the Teutonic Odin or
+Woden, ruled the souls of the departed. In the houses the people
+listen with awe for the sound of his chariot, and when it is heard
+make anxious prayer to him for protection from all ill. Before
+retiring to rest the house-father goes to the cowhouse with holy
+water and consecrated salt, asperges it from without, and then
+entering, sprinkles every cow. Salt is also thrown on the head
+of each animal with the words, &ldquo;St. Thomas preserve thee from
+all sickness.&rdquo; In the B&ouml;hmerwald the cattle are fed on this night
+with consecrated bayberries, bread, and salt, in order to avert
+disease.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-63" id="Nanchor_9-63" href="#Note_9-63">{63}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Upper and Lower Austria St. Thomas's Eve is reckoned as
+one of the so-called <i>Rauchn&auml;chte</i> (smoke-nights) when houses and
+farm-buildings must be sanctified with incense and holy water, the
+other nights being the Eves of Christmas, the New Year, and the
+Epiphany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-64" id="Nanchor_9-64" href="#Note_9-64">{64}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Germany St. Thomas's, like St. Andrew's Eve, is a time for
+forecasting the future, and the methods already described are sometimes
+employed by girls who wish to behold their future husbands.
+A widely diffused custom is that of throwing shoes backwards over
+the shoulders. If the points are found turned towards the door the
+thrower is destined to leave the house during the year; if they
+are turned away from it another year will be spent there. In
+Westphalia a belief prevails that you must eat and drink heartily
+on this night in order to avert scarcity.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-65" id="Nanchor_9-65" href="#Note_9-65">{65}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Lower Austria it is supposed that sluggards can cure themselves
+of oversleeping by saying a special prayer before they go to
+bed on St. Thomas's Eve, and in Westphalia in the mid-nineteenth
+century the same association of the day with slumber was
+shown by the schoolchildren's custom of calling the child who
+arrived last at school <i>Domesesel</i> (Thomas ass). In Holland, again,
+the person who lies longest in bed on St. Thomas's Day is greeted
+with shouts of &ldquo;lazybones.&rdquo; Probably the fact that December&nbsp;21
+is the shortest day is enough to account for this.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-66" id="Nanchor_9-66" href="#Note_9-66">{66}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In England there was divination by means of &ldquo;St. Thomas's
+onion.&rdquo; Girls used to peel an onion, wrap it in a handkerchief
+and put it under their heads at night, with a prayer to the satin
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_226" id="Page_226" href="#Page_226">226</a>to show them their true love in a dream.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-67" id="Nanchor_9-67" href="#Note_9-67">{67}</a>
+ The most notable
+English custom on this day, however, was the peregrinations of
+poor people begging for money or provisions for Christmas. Going
+&ldquo;a-gooding,&rdquo; or &ldquo;a-Thomassin&rsquo;,&rdquo; or &ldquo;a-mumping,&rdquo; this was
+called. Sometimes in return for the charity bestowed a sprig of
+holly or mistletoe was given.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-68" id="Nanchor_9-68" href="#Note_9-68">{68}</a>
+ Possibly the sprig was originally
+a sacrament of the healthful spirit of growth: it may be compared
+with the olive- or cornel-branches carried about on New Year's
+Eve by Macedonian boys,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-69" id="Nanchor_9-69" href="#Note_9-69">{69}</a>
+ and also with the St. Martin's rod
+(see <a href="#Chapter_VII">last chapter</a>).</p>
+
+<p>One more English custom on December&nbsp;21 must be mentioned&#xfeff;&mdash;it
+points to a sometime sacrifice&#xfeff;&mdash;the bull-baiting practised until
+1821 at Wokingham in Berkshire. Its abolition in 1822 caused
+great resentment among the populace, although the flesh continued
+to be duly distributed.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-70" id="Nanchor_9-70" href="#Note_9-70">{70}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">We are now four days from the feast of the Nativity, and many
+things commonly regarded as distinctive of Christmas have already
+come under notice. We have met, for instance, with several kinds
+of present-giving, with auguries for the New Year, with processions
+of carol-singers and well-wishers, with ceremonial feasting that
+anticipates the Christmas eating and drinking, and with various
+figures, saintly or monstrous, mimed or merely imagined, which
+we shall find reappearing at the greatest of winter festivals. These
+things would seem to have been attracted from earlier dates to the
+feast of the Nativity, and the probability that Christmas has borrowed
+much from an old November festival gradually shifted into
+December, is our justification for having dwelt so long upon the
+feasts that precede the Twelve Days.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_227" id="Page_227" href="#Page_227">227</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_228" id="Page_228" href="#Page_228">228</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_229" id="Page_229" href="#Page_229">229</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_IX" id="Chapter_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht&#xfeff;&mdash;Talking Animals and other Wonders
+of Christmas Eve&#xfeff;&mdash;Scandinavian Beliefs about Trolls and the Return of the
+Dead&#xfeff;&mdash;Traditional Christmas Songs in Eastern Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;The Twelve Days, their
+Christian Origin and Pagan Superstitions&#xfeff;&mdash;The Raging Host&#xfeff;&mdash;Hints of Supernatural
+Visitors in England&#xfeff;&mdash;The German <i>Frauen</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;The Greek <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image18" name="image18" href="images/image18.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image18.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE&#xfeff;&mdash;THE MUMMERS COMING IN"
+      title="CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE&#xfeff;&mdash;THE MUMMERS COMING IN" />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE&#xfeff;&mdash;THE MUMMERS COMING IN</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Christmas Eve.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Christmas in the narrowest sense must be reckoned as beginning
+on the evening of December&nbsp;24. Though Christmas Eve is not
+much observed in modern England, throughout the rest of Europe
+its importance so far as popular customs are concerned is far
+greater than that of the Day itself. Then in Germany the
+Christmas-tree is manifested in its glory; then, as in the
+England of the past, the Yule log is solemnly lighted in many
+lands; then often the most distinctive Christmas meal takes place.</p>
+
+<p>We shall consider these and other institutions later; though
+they appear first on Christmas Eve, they belong more or less to
+the Twelve Days as a whole. Let us look first at the supernatural
+visitors, mimed by human beings, who delight the
+minds of children, especially in Germany, on the evening of
+December&nbsp;24, and at the beliefs that hang around this most
+solemn night of the year.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">First of all, the activities of St. Nicholas are not confined to his
+own festival; he often appears on Christmas Eve. We have
+already seen how he is attended by various companions, including
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_230" id="Page_230" href="#Page_230">230</a>Christ Himself, and how he comes now vested as a bishop, now as
+a masked and shaggy figure. The names and attributes of the
+Christmas and Advent visitors are rather confused, but on the
+whole it may be said that in Protestant north Germany the episcopal
+St. Nicholas and his Eve have been replaced by Christmas
+Eve and the Christ Child, while the name Klas has become
+attached to various unsaintly forms appearing at or shortly
+before Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>We can trace a deliberate substitution of the Christ Child for
+St. Nicholas as the bringer of gifts. In the early seventeenth
+century a Protestant pastor is found complaining that parents put
+presents in their children's beds and tell them that St. Nicholas
+has brought them. &ldquo;This,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;is a bad custom, because
+it points children to the saint, while yet we know that not
+St. Nicholas but the holy Christ Child gives us all good things
+for body and soul, and He alone it is whom we ought to call
+upon.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-1" id="Nanchor_10-1" href="#Note_10-1">{1}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The ways in which the figure, or at all events the name, of
+Christ Himself, is introduced into German Christmas customs,
+are often surprising. The Christ Child, &ldquo;Christkind,&rdquo; so
+familiar to German children, has now become a sort of mythical
+figure, a product of sentiment and imagination working so freely
+as almost to forget the sacred character of the original. Christkind
+bears little resemblance to the Infant of Bethlehem; he is
+quite a tall child, and is often represented by a girl dressed in
+white, with long fair hair. He hovers, indeed, between the
+character of the Divine Infant and that of an angel, and is
+regarded more as a kind of good fairy than as anything else.</p>
+
+<p>In Alsace the girl who represents Christkind has her face
+&ldquo;made up&rdquo; with flour, wears a crown of gold paper with lighted
+candles in it&#xfeff;&mdash;a parallel to the headgear of the Swedish Lussi;
+in one hand she holds a silver bell, in the other, a basket of sweetmeats.
+She is followed by the terrible Hans Trapp, dressed in a
+bearskin, with blackened face, long beard, and threatening rod.
+He &ldquo;goes for&rdquo; the naughty children, who are only saved by the
+intercession of Christkind.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-2" id="Nanchor_10-2" href="#Note_10-2">{2}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Mittelmark the name of <i>de h&ecirc;le</i> (holy) <i>Christ</i> is strangely
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_231" id="Page_231" href="#Page_231">231</a>given to a skin- or straw-clad man, elsewhere called Knecht
+Ruprecht, Klas, or Joseph.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-3" id="Nanchor_10-3" href="#Note_10-3">{3}</a>
+ In the Ruppin district a man dresses
+up in white with ribbons, carries a large pouch, and is called
+<i>Christmann</i> or <i>Christpuppe</i>. He is accompanied by a <i>Schimmelreiter</i>
+and by other fellows who are attired as women, have blackened
+faces, and are named <i>Feien</i> (we may see in them a likeness to the
+Kalends maskers condemned by the early Church). The procession
+goes round from house to house. The <i>Schimmelreiter</i>
+as he enters has to jump over a chair; this done, the <i>Christpuppe</i>
+is admitted. The girls present begin to sing, and the <i>Schimmelreiter</i>
+dances with one of them. Meanwhile the <i>Christpuppe</i>
+makes the children repeat some verse of Scripture or a hymn;
+if they know it well, he rewards them with gingerbreads from his
+wallet; if not, he beats them with a bundle filled with ashes.
+Then both he and the <i>Schimmelreiter</i> dance and pass on. Only
+when they are gone are the <i>Feien</i> allowed to enter; they jump
+wildly about and frighten the children.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-4" id="Nanchor_10-4" href="#Note_10-4">{4}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Knecht Ruprecht, to whom allusion has already been made,
+is a prominent figure in the German Christmas. On Christmas
+Eve in the north he goes about clad in skins or straw and
+examines children; if they can say their prayers perfectly he
+rewards them with apples, nuts and gingerbreads; if not, he
+punishes them. In the Mittelmark, as we have seen, a personage
+corresponding to him is sometimes called &ldquo;the holy Christ&rdquo;; in
+Mecklenburg he is &ldquo;r&ucirc; Klas&rdquo; (rough Nicholas&#xfeff;&mdash;note his identification
+with the saint); in Brunswick, Hanover, and Holstein
+&ldquo;Klas,&rdquo; &ldquo;Klawes,&rdquo; &ldquo;Klas B&ucirc;r&rdquo; and &ldquo;Bullerklas&rdquo;; and in
+Silesia &ldquo;Joseph.&rdquo; Sometimes he wears bells and carries a long
+staff with a bag of ashes at the end&#xfeff;&mdash;hence the name
+&ldquo;Aschenklas&rdquo; occasionally given to him.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-5" id="Nanchor_10-5" href="#Note_10-5">{5}</a>
+ An ingenious theory
+connects this aspect of him with the <i>polaznik</i> of the Slavs, who
+on Christmas Day in Crivoscian farms goes to the hearth, takes
+up the ashes of the Yule log and dashes them against the
+cauldron-hook above so that sparks fly (see <a href="#Chapter_X">Chapter X.</a>).&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-6" id="Nanchor_10-6" href="#Note_10-6">{6}</a>
+ As for
+the name &ldquo;Ruprecht&rdquo; the older mythologists interpreted it
+as meaning &ldquo;shining with glory,&rdquo; <i>hruodperaht</i>, and identified its
+owner with the god Woden.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-7" id="Nanchor_10-7" href="#Note_10-7">{7}</a>
+ Dr. Tille, however, regards him
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_232" id="Page_232" href="#Page_232">232</a>as dating only from the seventeenth century.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-8" id="Nanchor_10-8" href="#Note_10-8">{8}</a>
+ It can hardly be
+said that any satisfactory account has as yet been given of the
+origins of this personage, or of his relation to St. Nicholas,
+Pelzm&auml;rte, and monstrous creatures like the <i>Klapperbock</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the south-western part of Lower Austria, both St. Nicholas&#xfeff;&mdash;a
+proper bishop with mitre, staff, and ring&#xfeff;&mdash;and Ruprecht appear
+on Christmas Eve, and there is quite an elaborate ceremonial.
+The children welcome the saint with a hymn; then he goes to a
+table and makes each child repeat a prayer and show his lesson-books.
+Meanwhile Ruprecht in a hide, with glowing eyes and a
+long red tongue, stands at the door to overawe the young people.
+Each child next kneels before the saint and kisses his ring,
+whereupon Nicholas bids him put his shoes out-of-doors and look
+in them when the clock strikes ten. After this the saint lays
+on the table a rod dipped in lime, solemnly blesses the children,
+sprinkling them with holy water, and noiselessly departs. The
+children steal out into the garden, clear a space in the snow, and
+set out their shoes; when the last stroke of ten has sounded they
+find them filled with nuts and apples and all kinds of sweet things.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-9" id="Nanchor_10-9" href="#Note_10-9">{9}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Troppau district of Austrian Silesia, three figures go
+round on Christmas Eve&#xfeff;&mdash;Christkindel, the archangel Gabriel,
+and St. Peter&#xfeff;&mdash;and perform a little play before the presents they
+bring are given. Christkindel announces that he has gifts for the
+good children, but the bad shall feel the rod. St. Peter complains
+of the naughtiness of the youngsters: they play about in the
+streets instead of going straight to school; they tear up their
+lesson-books and do many other wicked things. However, the
+children's mother pleads for them, and St. Peter relents and gives
+out the presents.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-10" id="Nanchor_10-10" href="#Note_10-10">{10}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Erzgebirge appear St. Peter and Ruprecht, who is clad
+in skin and straw, has a mask over his face, a rod, a chain round
+his body, and a sack with apples, nuts, and other gifts; and a
+somewhat similar performance is gone through.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-11" id="Nanchor_10-11" href="#Note_10-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>If we go as far east as Russia we find a parallel to the girl
+Christkind in Koly&aacute;da, a white-robed maiden driven about in a
+sledge from house to house on Christmas Eve. The young
+people who attended her sang carols, and presents were given
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_233" id="Page_233" href="#Page_233">233</a>them in return. <i>Koly&aacute;da</i> is the name for Christmas and appears
+to be derived from <i>Kalendae</i>, which probably entered the Slavonic
+languages by way of Byzantium. The maiden is one of those
+beings who, like the Italian Befana, have taken their names from
+the festival at which they appear.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-12" id="Nanchor_10-12" href="#Note_10-12">{12}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">No time in all the Twelve Nights and Days is so charged
+with the supernatural as Christmas Eve. Doubtless this is due
+to the fact that the Church has hallowed the night of December
+24-5 above all others in the year. It was to the shepherds
+keeping watch over their flocks <i>by night</i> that, according to the
+Third Evangelist, came the angelic message of the Birth, and in
+harmony with this is the unique Midnight Mass of the Roman
+Church, lending a peculiar sanctity to the hour of its celebration.
+And yet many of the beliefs associated with this night show a
+large admixture of paganism.</p>
+
+<p>First, there is the idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve
+animals have the power of speech. This superstition exists in
+various parts of Europe, and no one can hear the beasts talk with
+impunity. The idea has given rise to some curious and rather
+grim tales. Here is one from Brittany:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Once upon a time there was a woman who starved her cat
+and dog. At midnight on Christmas Eve she heard the dog say
+to the cat, &lsquo;It is quite time we lost our mistress; she is a regular
+miser. To-night burglars are coming to steal her money; and
+if she cries out they will break her head.&rsquo; &lsquo;&rsquo;Twill be a good
+deed,&rsquo; the cat replied. The woman in terror got up to go to a
+neighbour's house; as she went out the burglars opened the door,
+and when she shouted for help they broke her head.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-13" id="Nanchor_10-13" href="#Note_10-13">{13}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Again a story is told of a farm servant in the German Alps
+who did not believe that the beasts could speak, and hid in a
+stable on Christmas Eve to learn what went on. At midnight
+he heard surprising things. &ldquo;We shall have hard work to do
+this day week,&rdquo; said one horse. &ldquo;Yes, the farmer's servant is
+heavy,&rdquo; answered the other. &ldquo;And the way to the churchyard
+is long and steep,&rdquo; said the first. The servant was buried that
+day week.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-14" id="Nanchor_10-14" href="#Note_10-14">{14}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_234" id="Page_234" href="#Page_234">234</a>It may well have been the traditional association of the ox and
+ass with the Nativity that fixed this superstition to Christmas Eve,
+but the conception of the talking animals is probably pagan.</p>
+
+<p>Related to this idea, but more Christian in form, is the belief
+that at midnight all cattle rise in their stalls or kneel and adore
+the new-born King. Readers of Mr. Hardy's &ldquo;Tess&rdquo; will
+remember how this is brought into a delightful story told by a
+Wessex peasant. The idea is widespread in England and on the
+Continent,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-15" id="Nanchor_10-15" href="#Note_10-15">{15}</a>
+ and has reached even the North American Indians.
+Howison, in his &ldquo;Sketches of Upper Canada,&rdquo; relates that an
+Indian told him that &ldquo;on Christmas night all deer kneel and
+look up to Great Spirit.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-16" id="Nanchor_10-16" href="#Note_10-16">{16}</a>
+ A somewhat similar belief about
+bees was held in the north of England: they were said to
+assemble on Christmas Eve and hum a Christmas hymn.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-17" id="Nanchor_10-17" href="#Note_10-17">{17}</a>
+ Bees
+seem in folk-lore in general to be specially near to humanity in
+their feelings.</p>
+
+<p>It is a widespread idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve all
+water turns to wine. A Guernsey woman once determined to
+test this; at midnight she drew a bucket from the well. Then
+came a voice:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Toute l'eau se tourne en vin,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et tu es proche de ta fin.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>She fell down with a mortal disease, and died before the end of
+the year. In Sark the superstition is that the water in streams
+and wells turns into blood, and if you go to look you will die
+within the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-18" id="Nanchor_10-18" href="#Note_10-18">{18}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>There is also a French belief that on Christmas Eve, while
+the genealogy of Christ is being chanted at the Midnight Mass,
+hidden treasures are revealed.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-19" id="Nanchor_10-19" href="#Note_10-19">{19}</a>
+ In Russia all sorts of buried
+treasures are supposed to be revealed on the evenings between
+Christmas and the Epiphany, and on the eves of these festivals the
+heavens are opened, and the waters of springs and rivers turn
+into wine.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-20" id="Nanchor_10-20" href="#Note_10-20">{20}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Another instance of the supernatural character of the night is
+found in a Breton story of a blacksmith who went on working
+after the sacring bell had rung at the Midnight Mass. To him
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_235" id="Page_235" href="#Page_235">235</a>came a tall, stooping man with a scythe, who begged him to put
+in a nail. He did so; and the visitor in return bade him send
+for a priest, for this work would be his last. The figure disappeared,
+the blacksmith felt his limbs fail him, and at cock-crow
+he died. He had mended the scythe of the <i>Ankou</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;Death the
+reaper.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-21" id="Nanchor_10-21" href="#Note_10-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Scandinavian countries simple folk have a vivid sense of
+the nearness of the supernatural on Christmas Eve. On Yule
+night no one should go out, for he may meet uncanny beings
+of all kinds. In Sweden the Trolls are believed to celebrate
+Christmas Eve with dancing and revelry. &ldquo;On the heaths witches
+and little Trolls ride, one on a wolf, another on a broom or a
+shovel, to their assemblies, where they dance under their stones....
+In the mount are then to be heard mirth and music, dancing
+and drinking. On Christmas morn, during the time between
+cock-crowing and daybreak, it is highly dangerous to be
+abroad.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-22" id="Nanchor_10-22" href="#Note_10-22">{22}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Christmas Eve is also in Scandinavian folk-belief the time when
+the dead revisit their old homes, as on All Souls&rsquo; Eve in Roman
+Catholic lands. The living prepare for their coming with
+mingled dread and desire to make them welcome. When the
+Christmas Eve festivities are over, and everyone has gone to rest,
+the parlour is left tidy and adorned, with a great fire burning,
+candles lighted, the table covered with a festive cloth and plentifully
+spread with food, and a jug of Yule ale ready. Sometimes
+before going to bed people wipe the chairs with a clean white
+towel; in the morning they are wiped again, and, if earth is
+found, some kinsman, fresh from the grave, has sat there. Consideration
+for the dead even leads people to prepare a warm bath
+in the belief that, like living folks, the kinsmen will want a wash
+before their festal meal.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_96" id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96">[96]</a> Or again beds were made ready for
+them while the living slept on straw. Not always is it consciously
+the dead for whom these preparations are made, sometimes
+they are said to be for the Trolls and sometimes even for
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_236" id="Page_236" href="#Page_236">236</a>the Saviour and His angels.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-24" id="Nanchor_10-24" href="#Note_10-24">{24}</a>
+ (We may compare with this
+Christian idea the Tyrolese custom of leaving some milk for the
+Christ Child and His Mother&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-25" id="Nanchor_10-25" href="#Note_10-25">{25}</a>
+ at the hour of Midnight Mass,
+and a Breton practice of leaving food all through Christmas night
+in case the Virgin should come.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-26" id="Nanchor_10-26" href="#Note_10-26">{26}</a>
+)</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to say how far the other supernatural beings&#xfeff;&mdash;their
+name is legion&#xfeff;&mdash;who in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and
+Iceland are believed to come out of their underground hiding-places
+during the long dark Christmas nights, were originally ghosts of
+the dead. Twenty years ago many students would have accounted
+for them all in this way, but the tendency now is strongly against
+the derivation of all supernatural beings from ancestor-worship.
+Elves, trolls, dwarfs, witches, and other uncanny folk&#xfeff;&mdash;the beliefs
+about their Christmas doings are too many to be treated here;
+readers of Danish will find a long and very interesting chapter
+on this subject in Dr. Feilberg's &ldquo;Jul.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-27" id="Nanchor_10-27" href="#Note_10-27">{27}</a>
+ I may mention just
+one familiar figure of the Scandinavian Yule, Tomte Gubbe, a
+sort of genius of the house corresponding very much to the
+&ldquo;drudging goblin&rdquo; of Milton's &ldquo;L'Allegro,&rdquo; for whom the
+cream-bowl must be duly set. He may perhaps be the spirit of
+the founder of the family. At all events on Christmas Eve
+Yule porridge and new milk are set out for him, sometimes
+with other things, such as a suit of small clothes, spirits, or
+even tobacco. Thus must his goodwill be won for the coming
+year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-28" id="Nanchor_10-28" href="#Note_10-28">{28}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In one part of Norway it used to be believed that on Christmas
+Eve, at rare intervals, the old Norse gods made war on Christians,
+coming down from the mountains with great blasts of wind
+and wild shouts, and carrying off any human being who might
+be about. In one place the memory of such a visitation was
+preserved in the nineteenth century. The people were preparing
+for their festivities, when suddenly from the mountains came the
+warning sounds. &ldquo;In a second the air became black, peals of
+thunder echoed among the hills, lightning danced about the
+buildings, and the inhabitants in the darkened rooms heard the
+clatter of hoofs and the weird shrieks of the hosts of the
+gods.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-29" id="Nanchor_10-29" href="#Note_10-29">{29}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_237" id="Page_237" href="#Page_237">237</a>The Scandinavian countries, Protestant though they are, have
+retained many of the outward forms of Catholicism, and the
+sign of the cross is often used as a protection against uncanny
+visitors. The cross&#xfeff;&mdash;perhaps the symbol was originally Thor's
+hammer&#xfeff;&mdash;is marked with chalk or tar or fire upon doors and
+gates, is formed of straw or other material and put in stables and
+cowhouses, or is smeared with the remains of the Yule candle
+on the udders of the beasts&#xfeff;&mdash;it is in fact displayed at every
+point open to attack by a spirit of darkness.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-30" id="Nanchor_10-30" href="#Note_10-30">{30}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Christmas Eve is in Germany a time for auguries. Some of
+the methods already noted on other days are practised upon it&#xfeff;&mdash;for
+instance the pouring of molten lead into water, the flinging of
+shoes, the pulling out of pieces of wood, and the floating of nutshells&#xfeff;&mdash;and
+there are various others which it might be tedious to
+describe.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-31" id="Nanchor_10-31" href="#Note_10-31">{31}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Among the southern Slavs if a girl wants to know what sort of
+husband she will get, she covers the table on Christmas Eve, puts
+on it a white loaf, a plate, and a knife, spoon, and fork, and goes
+to bed. At midnight the spirit of her future husband will appear
+and fling the knife at her. If it falls without injuring her she will
+get a good husband and be happy, but if she is hurt she will die
+early. There is a similar mode of divination for a young fellow.
+On Christmas Eve, when everybody else has gone to church, he
+must, naked and in darkness, sift ashes through a sieve. His
+future bride will then appear, pull him thrice by the nose, and
+go away.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-32" id="Nanchor_10-32" href="#Note_10-32">{32}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In eastern Europe Christmas, and especially Christmas Eve, is
+the time for the singing of carols called in Russian <i>Koly&aacute;dki</i>, and in
+other Slav countries by similar names derived from <i>Kalendae</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-33" id="Nanchor_10-33" href="#Note_10-33">{33}</a>
+
+More often than not these are without connection with the
+Nativity; sometimes they have a Christian form and tell of the
+doings of God, the Virgin and the saints, but frequently they
+are of an entirely secular or even pagan character. Into some the
+sun, moon, and stars and other natural objects are introduced, and
+they seem to be based on myths to which a Christian appearance
+has been given by a sprinkling of names of holy persons of the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_238" id="Page_238" href="#Page_238">238</a>Church. Here for instance is a fragment from a Carpathian
+song:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;A golden plough goes ploughing,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And behind that plough is the Lord Himself.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The holy Peter helps Him to drive,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And the Mother of God carries the seed corn,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Carries the seed corn, prays to the Lord God,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;Make, O Lord, the strong wheat to grow,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The strong wheat and the vigorous corn!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The stalks then shall be like reeds!&rsquo;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-34" id="Nanchor_10-34" href="#Note_10-34">{34}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Often they contain wishes for the prosperity of the household and
+end with the words, &ldquo;for many years, for many years.&rdquo; The
+Roumanian songs are frequently very long, and a typical, oft-recurring
+refrain is:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;This evening is a great evening,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">White flowers;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Great evening of Christmas,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">White flowers.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-35" id="Nanchor_10-35" href="#Note_10-35">{35}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Sometimes they are ballads of the national life.</p>
+
+<p>In Russia a carol beginning &ldquo;Glory be to God in heaven,
+Glory!&rdquo; and calling down blessings on the Tsar and his people,
+is one of the most prominent among the <i>Koly&aacute;dki</i>, and opens the
+singing of the songs called <i>Podblyudnuiya</i>. &ldquo;At the Christmas
+festival a table is covered with a cloth, and on it is set a dish or bowl
+(<i>blyudo</i>) containing water. The young people drop rings or other
+trinkets into the dish, which is afterwards covered with a cloth,
+and then the <i>Podblyudnuiya</i> Songs commence. At the end of each
+song one of the trinkets is drawn at random, and its owner deduces
+an omen from the nature of the words which have just been
+sung.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-36" id="Nanchor_10-36" href="#Note_10-36">{36}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Twelve Days.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Whatever the limits fixed for the beginning and end of the
+Christmas festival, its core is always the period between Christmas
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_239" id="Page_239" href="#Page_239">239</a>Eve and the Epiphany&#xfeff;&mdash;the &ldquo;Twelve Days.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_97" id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97">[97]</a> A cycle of feasts
+falls within this time, and the customs peculiar to each day will be
+treated in calendarial order. First, however, it will be well to
+glance at the character of the Twelve Days as a whole, and at
+the superstitions which hang about the season. So many are these
+superstitions, so &ldquo;bewitched&rdquo; is the time, that the older mythologists
+not unnaturally saw in it a Teutonic festal season, dating
+from pre-Christian days. In point of fact it appears to be simply
+a creation of the Church, a natural linking together of Christmas
+and Epiphany. It is first mentioned as a festal tide by the eastern
+Father, Ephraem Syrus, at the end of the fourth century, and
+was declared to be such by the western Council of Tours
+in 567.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-37" id="Nanchor_10-37" href="#Note_10-37">{37}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>While Christmas Eve is the night <i>par excellence</i> of the supernatural,
+the whole season of the Twelve Days is charged with it.
+It is hard to see whence Shakespeare could have got the idea
+which he puts into the mouth of Marcellus in &ldquo;Hamlet&rdquo;:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Some say that ever &lsquo;gainst that season comes</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The bird of dawning singeth all night long;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-38" id="Nanchor_10-38" href="#Note_10-38">{38}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Against this is the fact that in folk-lore Christmas is a quite
+peculiarly uncanny time. Not unnatural is it that at this midwinter
+season of darkness, howling winds, and raging storms, men
+should have thought to see and hear the mysterious shapes and
+voices of dread beings whom the living shun.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the Teutonic world one finds the belief in a &ldquo;raging
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_240" id="Page_240" href="#Page_240">240</a>host&rdquo; or &ldquo;wild hunt&rdquo; or spirits, rushing howling through the air
+on stormy nights. In North Devon its name is &ldquo;Yeth (heathen)
+hounds&rdquo;;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-40" id="Nanchor_10-40" href="#Note_10-40">{40}</a>
+ elsewhere in the west of England it is called the &ldquo;Wish
+hounds.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-41" id="Nanchor_10-41" href="#Note_10-41">{41}</a>
+ It is the train of the unhappy souls of those who died
+unbaptized, or by violent hands, or under a curse, and often Woden
+is their leader.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-42" id="Nanchor_10-42" href="#Note_10-42">{42}</a>
+ At least since the seventeenth century this
+&ldquo;raging host&rdquo; (<i>das w&uuml;thende Heer</i>) has been particularly associated
+with Christmas in German folk-lore,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-43" id="Nanchor_10-43" href="#Note_10-43">{43}</a>
+ and in Iceland it goes by
+the name of the &ldquo;Yule host.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-44" id="Nanchor_10-44" href="#Note_10-44">{44}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Guernsey the powers of darkness are supposed to be more
+than usually active between St. Thomas's Day and New Year's
+Eve, and it is dangerous to be out after nightfall. People are led
+astray then by Will o&rsquo; the Wisp, or are preceded or followed by
+large black dogs, or find their path beset by white rabbits that go
+hopping along just under their feet.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-45" id="Nanchor_10-45" href="#Note_10-45">{45}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In England there are signs that supernatural visitors were
+formerly looked for during the Twelve Days. First there was
+a custom of cleansing the house and its implements with peculiar
+care. In Shropshire, for instance, &ldquo;the pewter and brazen vessels
+had to be made so bright that the maids could see to put their caps
+on in them&#xfeff;&mdash;otherwise the fairies would pinch them, but if all was
+perfect, the worker would find a coin in her shoe.&rdquo; Again in
+Shropshire special care was taken to put away any suds or &ldquo;back-lee&rdquo;
+for washing purposes, and no spinning might be done during
+the Twelve Days.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-46" id="Nanchor_10-46" href="#Note_10-46">{46}</a>
+ It was said elsewhere that if any flax were
+left on the distaff, the Devil would come and cut it.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-47" id="Nanchor_10-47" href="#Note_10-47">{47}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The prohibition of spinning may be due to the Church's
+hallowing of the season and the idea that all work then was wrong.
+This churchly hallowing may lie also at the root of the Danish
+tradition that from Christmas till New Year's Day nothing that
+runs round should be set in motion,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-48" id="Nanchor_10-48" href="#Note_10-48">{48}</a>
+ and of the German idea that
+no thrashing must be done during the Twelve Days, or all the corn
+within hearing will spoil. The expectation of uncanny visitors
+in the English traditions calls, however, for special attention; it is
+perhaps because of their coming that the house must be left spotlessly
+clean and with as little as possible about on which they can work
+mischief.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-49" id="Nanchor_10-49" href="#Note_10-49">{49}</a>
+ Though I know of no distinct English belief in the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_241" id="Page_241" href="#Page_241">241</a>return of the family dead at Christmas, it may be that the fairies
+expected in Shropshire were originally ancestral ghosts. Such a
+derivation of the elves and brownies that haunt the hearth is very
+probable.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-50" id="Nanchor_10-50" href="#Note_10-50">{50}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">The belief about the Devil cutting flax left on the distaff links
+the English superstitions to the mysterious <i>Frau</i> with various
+names, who in Germany is supposed to go her rounds during the
+Twelve Nights. She has a special relation to spinning, often
+punishing girls who leave their flax unspun. In central Germany
+and in parts of Austria she is called Frau Holle or Holda, in
+southern Germany and Tyrol Frau Berchta or Perchta, in the north
+down to the Harz Mountains Frau Freen or Frick, or Fru Gode
+or Fru Harke, and there are other names too.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-51" id="Nanchor_10-51" href="#Note_10-51">{51}</a>
+ Attempts have
+been made to dispute her claim to the rank of an old Teutonic goddess
+and to prove her a creation of the Middle Ages, a representative
+of the crowd of ghosts supposed to be specially near to the living
+at Christmastide.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-52" id="Nanchor_10-52" href="#Note_10-52">{52}</a>
+ It is questionable whether she can be thus
+explained away, and at the back of the varying names, and much
+overlaid no doubt with later superstitions, there may be a traditional
+goddess corresponding to that old divinity Frigg to whom we owe
+the name of Friday. The connection of Frick with Frigg is very
+probable, and Frick shares characteristics with the other <i>Frauen</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-53" id="Nanchor_10-53" href="#Note_10-53">{53}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>All are connected with spinning and spinsters (in the literal
+sense). Fru Frick or Freen in the Uckermark and the northern
+Harz permits no spinning during the time when she goes her
+rounds, and if there are lazy spinsters she soils the unspun flax on
+their distaff. In like manner do Holda, Harke, Berchta, and Gode
+punish lazy girls.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-54" id="Nanchor_10-54" href="#Note_10-54">{54}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The characters of the <i>Frauen</i> can best be shown by the things
+told of them in different regions. They are more dreaded than
+loved, but if severe in their chastisements they are also generous in
+rewarding those who do them service.</p>
+
+<p>Frau Gaude (also called Gode, Gaue, or Wode) is said in Mecklenburg
+to love to drive through the village streets on the Twelve
+Nights with a train of dogs. Wherever she finds a street-door
+open she sends a little dog in. Next morning he wags his
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_242" id="Page_242" href="#Page_242">242</a>tail at the inmates and whines, and will not be driven away. If
+killed, he turns into a stone by day; this, though it may be
+thrown away, always returns and is a dog again by night. All
+through the year he whines and brings ill luck upon the house;
+so people are careful to keep their street-doors shut during the
+Twelve Nights.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-55" id="Nanchor_10-55" href="#Note_10-55">{55}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Good luck, however, befalls those who do Frau Gaude a service.
+A man who put a new pole to her carriage was brilliantly
+repaid&#xfeff;&mdash;the chips that fell from the pole turned to glittering
+gold. Similar stories of golden chips are told about Holda and
+Berchta.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-56" id="Nanchor_10-56" href="#Note_10-56">{56}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A train of dogs belongs not only to Frau Gaude but also to
+Frau Harke; with these howling beasts they go raging through
+the air by night.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-57" id="Nanchor_10-57" href="#Note_10-57">{57}</a>
+ The <i>Frauen</i> in certain aspects are, indeed, the
+leaders of the &ldquo;Wild Host.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Holda and Perchta, as some strange stories show, are the guides
+and guardians of the <i>heimchen</i> or souls of children who have died
+unbaptized. In the valley of the Saale, so runs a tale, Perchta,
+queen of the <i>heimchen</i>, had her dwelling of old, and at her command
+the children watered the fields, while she worked with her
+plough. But the people of the place were ungrateful, and she
+resolved to leave their land. One night a ferryman beheld on the
+bank of the Saale a tall, stately lady with a crowd of weeping
+children. She demanded to be ferried across, and the children
+dragged a plough into the boat, crying bitterly. As a reward
+for the ferrying, Perchta, mending her plough, pointed to the
+chips. The man grumblingly took three, and in the morning they
+had turned to gold-pieces.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-58" id="Nanchor_10-58" href="#Note_10-58">{58}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Holda, whose name means &ldquo;the kindly one,&rdquo; is the most
+friendly of the <i>Frauen</i>. In Saxony she brings rewards for diligent
+spinsters, and on every New Year's Eve, between nine and ten
+o'clock, she drives in a carriage full of presents through villages
+where respect has been shown to her. At the crack of her whip
+the people come out to receive her gifts. In Hesse and
+Thuringia she is imagined as a beautiful woman clad in white
+with long golden hair, and, when it snows hard, people say, &ldquo;Frau
+Holle is shaking her featherbed.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-59" id="Nanchor_10-59" href="#Note_10-59">{59}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_243" id="Page_243" href="#Page_243">243</a>More of a bugbear on the whole is Berchte or Perchte (the
+name is variously spelt). She is particularly connected with the
+Eve of the Epiphany, and it is possible that her name comes
+from the old German <i>giper(c)hta Na(c)ht</i>, the bright or shining
+night, referring to the manifestation of Christ's glory.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-60" id="Nanchor_10-60" href="#Note_10-60">{60}</a>
+ In
+Carinthia the Epiphany is still called <i>Berchtentag</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-61" id="Nanchor_10-61" href="#Note_10-61">{61}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Berchte is sometimes a bogey to frighten children. In the
+mountains round Traunstein children are told on Epiphany Eve
+that if they are naughty she will come and cut their stomachs
+open.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-62" id="Nanchor_10-62" href="#Note_10-62">{62}</a>
+ In Upper Austria the girls must finish their spinning by
+Christmas; if Frau Berch finds flax still on their distaffs she will
+be angered and send them bad luck.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-63" id="Nanchor_10-63" href="#Note_10-63">{63}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Orlagau (between the Saale and the Orle) on the night
+before Twelfth Day, Perchta examines the spinning-rooms and
+brings the spinners empty reels with directions to spin them full
+within a very brief time; if this is not done she punishes them
+by tangling and befouling the flax. She also cuts open the body
+of any one who has not eaten <i>zemmede</i> (fasting fare made of flour
+and milk and water) that day, takes out any other food he has
+had, fills the empty space with straw and bricks, and sews him up
+again.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-64" id="Nanchor_10-64" href="#Note_10-64">{64}</a>
+ And yet, as we have seen, she has a kindly side&#xfeff;&mdash;at any
+rate she rewards those who serve her&#xfeff;&mdash;and in Styria at Christmas
+she even plays the part of Santa Klaus, hearing children repeat
+their prayers and rewarding them with nuts and apples.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-65" id="Nanchor_10-65" href="#Note_10-65">{65}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>There is a charming Tyrolese story about her. At midnight
+on Epiphany Eve a peasant&#xfeff;&mdash;not too sober&#xfeff;&mdash;suddenly heard
+behind him &ldquo;a sound of many voices, which came on nearer and
+nearer, and then the Berchtl, in her white clothing, her broken
+ploughshare in her hand, and all her train of little people, swept
+clattering and chattering close past him. The least was the
+last, and it wore a long shirt which got in the way of its
+little bare feet, and kept tripping it up. The peasant had sense
+enough left to feel compassion, so he took his garter off and
+bound it for a girdle round the infant, and then set it again on its
+way. When the Berchtl saw what he had done, she turned back
+and thanked him, and told him that in return for his compassion
+his children should never come to want.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-66" id="Nanchor_10-66" href="#Note_10-66">{66}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_244" id="Page_244" href="#Page_244">244</a>In Tyrol, by the way, it is often said that the Perchtl is
+Pontius Pilate's wife, Procula.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-67" id="Nanchor_10-67" href="#Note_10-67">{67}</a>
+ In the Italian dialects of south
+Tyrol the German Frau Berchta has been turned into <i>la donna
+Berta</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-68" id="Nanchor_10-68" href="#Note_10-68">{68}</a>
+ If one goes further south, into Italy itself, one meets
+with a similar being, the Befana, whose name is plainly nothing
+but a corruption of <i>Epiphania</i>. She is so distinctly a part of the
+Epiphany festival that we may leave her to be considered
+later.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Of all supernatural Christmas visitors, the most vividly realized
+and believed in at the present day are probably the Greek <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>
+or <i>Karkantzaroi</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-69" id="Nanchor_10-69" href="#Note_10-69">{69}</a>
+ They are the terror of the Greek
+peasant during the Twelve Days; in the soil of his imagination
+they flourish luxuriantly, and to him they are a very real and
+living nuisance.</p>
+
+<p>Traditions about the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i> vary from region to
+region, but in general they are half-animal, half-human
+monsters, black, hairy, with huge heads, glaring red eyes, goats&rsquo;
+or asses&rsquo; ears, blood-red tongues hanging out, ferocious tusks,
+monkeys&rsquo; arms, and long curved nails, and commonly they have
+the foot of some beast. &ldquo;From dawn till sunset they hide
+themselves in dark and dank places ... but at night they issue
+forth and run wildly to and fro, rending and crushing those
+who cross their path. Destruction and waste, greed and lust
+mark their course.&rdquo; When a house is not prepared against their
+coming, &ldquo;by chimney and door alike they swarm in, and make
+havoc of the home; in sheer wanton mischief they overturn and
+break all the furniture, devour the Christmas pork, befoul all the
+water and wine and food which remains, and leave the occupants
+half dead with fright or violence.&rdquo; Many like or far worse
+pranks do they play, until at the crowing of the third cock
+they get them away to their dens. The signal for their final
+departure does not come until the Epiphany, when, as we saw in
+<a href="#Chapter_IV">Chapter IV.</a>, the &ldquo;Blessing of the Waters&rdquo; takes place. Some
+of the hallowed water is put into vessels, and with these and
+with incense the priests sometimes make a round of the village,
+sprinkling the people and their houses. The fear of the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_245" id="Page_245" href="#Page_245">245</a><i>Kallikantzaroi</i> at this purification is expressed in the following
+lines:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Quick, begone! we must begone,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Here comes the pot-bellied priest,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With his censer in his hand</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And his sprinkling-vessel too;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He has purified the streams</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And he has polluted us.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Besides this ecclesiastical purification there are various Christian
+precautions against the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;<i>e.g.</i>, to mark the house-door
+with a black cross on Christmas Eve, the burning of incense
+and the invocation of the Trinity&#xfeff;&mdash;and a number of other means
+of aversion: the lighting of the Yule log, the burning of something
+that smells strong, and&#xfeff;&mdash;perhaps as a peace-offering&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+hanging of pork-bones, sweetmeats, or sausages in the
+chimney.</p>
+
+<p>Just as men are sometimes believed to become vampires
+temporarily during their lifetime, so, according to one stream
+of tradition, do living men become <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>. In Greece
+children born at Christmas are thought likely to have this objectionable
+characteristic as a punishment for their mothers&rsquo; sin in
+bearing them at a time sacred to the Mother of God. In Macedonia&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-70" id="Nanchor_10-70" href="#Note_10-70">{70}</a>
+
+people who have a &ldquo;light&rdquo; guardian angel undergo the
+hideous transformation.</p>
+
+<p>Many attempts have been made to account for the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>.
+Perhaps the most plausible explanation of the outward
+form, at least, of the uncanny creatures, is the theory connecting
+them with the masquerades that formed part of the winter festival
+of Dionysus and are still to be found in Greece at Christmastide.
+The hideous bestial shapes, the noise and riot, may well have
+seemed demoniacal to simple people slightly &ldquo;elevated,&rdquo; perhaps,
+by Christmas feasting, while the human nature of the maskers
+was not altogether forgotten.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-71" id="Nanchor_10-71" href="#Note_10-71">{71}</a>
+ Another theory of an even more
+prosaic character has been propounded&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;that the Kallikantzaroi
+are nothing more than established nightmares, limited
+like indigestion to the twelve days of feasting. This view is
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_246" id="Page_246" href="#Page_246">246</a>taken by Allatius, who says that a Kallikantzaros has all the
+characteristics of nightmare, rampaging abroad and jumping
+on men's shoulders, then leaving them half senseless on the
+ground.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-72" id="Nanchor_10-72" href="#Note_10-72">{72}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Such theories are ingenious and suggestive, and may be true to
+a certain degree, but they hardly cover all the facts. It is possible
+that the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i> may have some connection with the
+departed; they certainly appear akin to the modern Greek and
+Slavonic vampire, &ldquo;a corpse imbued with a kind of half-life,&rdquo; and
+with eyes gleaming like live coals.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-73" id="Nanchor_10-73" href="#Note_10-73">{73}</a>
+ They are, however, even
+more closely related to the werewolf, a man who is supposed to
+change into a wolf and go about ravening. It is to be noted that
+&ldquo;man-wolves&rdquo; (&lambda;&upsilon;&kappa;&alpha;&nu;&theta;&rho;&omega;&pi;&omicron;&iota;) is the very name given to the
+<i>Kallikantzaroi</i> in southern Greece, and that the word <i>Kallikantzaros</i>
+itself has been conjecturally derived by Bernhard Schmidt from
+two Turkish words meaning &ldquo;black&rdquo; and &ldquo;werewolf.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-74" id="Nanchor_10-74" href="#Note_10-74">{74}</a>
+ The
+connection between Christmas and werewolves is not confined to
+Greece. According to a belief not yet extinct in the north and
+east of Germany, even where the real animals have long ago been
+extirpated, children born during the Twelve Nights become werewolves,
+while in Livonia and Poland that period is the special
+season for the werewolf's ravenings.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-75" id="Nanchor_10-75" href="#Note_10-75">{75}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps on no question connected with primitive religion is
+there more uncertainty than on the ideas of early man about the
+nature of animals and their relation to himself and the world.
+When we meet with half-animal, half-human beings we must be
+prepared to find much that is obscure.</p>
+
+<p>With the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i> may be compared some goblins of the
+Celtic imagination; especially like is the Manx <i>Fynnodderee</i> (lit.
+&ldquo;the hairy-dun one&rdquo;), &ldquo;something between a man and a beast,
+being covered with black shaggy hair and having fiery eyes,&rdquo; and
+prodigiously strong.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-76" id="Nanchor_10-76" href="#Note_10-76">{76}</a>
+ The Russian <i>Domovy</i> or house-spirit is
+also a hirsute creature,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-77" id="Nanchor_10-77" href="#Note_10-77">{77}</a>
+ and the Russian <i>Ljeschi</i>, goat-footed
+woodland sprites, are, like the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>, supposed to be got
+rid of by the &ldquo;Blessing of the Waters&rdquo; at the Epiphany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-78" id="Nanchor_10-78" href="#Note_10-78">{78}</a>
+
+Some of the monstrous German figures already dealt with here
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_247" id="Page_247" href="#Page_247">247</a>bear strong resemblances to the Greek demons. And, of course,
+on Greek ground one cannot help thinking of Pan and the Satyrs
+and Centaurs.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_98" id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98">[98]</a></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_248" id="Page_248" href="#Page_248">248</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_249" id="Page_249" href="#Page_249">249</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_250" id="Page_250" href="#Page_250">250</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_251" id="Page_251" href="#Page_251">251</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_X" id="Chapter_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h2 class="title1">THE YULE LOG</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>The Log as Centre of the Domestic Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Customs of the Southern Slavs&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+<i>Polaznik</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;Origin of the Yule Log&#xfeff;&mdash;Probable Connection with Vegetation-cults or
+Ancestor-worship&#xfeff;&mdash;The <i>Souche de No&euml;l</i> in France&#xfeff;&mdash;Italian and German Christmas
+Logs&#xfeff;&mdash;English Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;The Yule Candle in England and Scandinavia.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The peoples of Europe have various centres for their Christmas
+rejoicing. In Spain and Italy the crib is often the focus of the
+festival in the home as well as the church. In England&#xfeff;&mdash;after
+the old tradition&#xfeff;&mdash;, in rural France, and among the southern
+Slavs, the centre is the great log solemnly brought in and
+kindled on the hearth, while in Germany, one need hardly say,
+the light-laden tree is the supreme symbol of Christmas. The
+crib has already been treated in our First Part, the Yule log and
+the Christmas-tree will be considered in this chapter and the next.</p>
+
+<p>The log placed on the fire on the Vigil of the Nativity no
+longer forms an important part of the English Christmas. Yet
+within the memory of many it was a very essential element in the
+celebration of the festival, not merely as giving out welcome
+warmth in the midwinter cold, but as possessing occult, magical
+properties. In some remote corners of England it probably
+lingers yet. We shall return to the traditional English Yule log
+after a study of some Continental customs of the same kind.</p>
+
+<p>First, we may travel to a part of eastern Europe where the
+log ceremonies are found in their most elaborate form. Among
+the Serbs and Croats on Christmas Eve two or three young oaks
+are felled for every house, and, as twilight comes on, are brought
+in and laid on the fire. (Sometimes there is one for each male
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_252" id="Page_252" href="#Page_252">252</a>member of the family, but one large log is the centre of the
+ritual.) The felling takes place in some districts before sunrise,
+corn being thrown upon the trees with the words, &ldquo;Good
+morning, Christmas!&rdquo; At Risano and other places in Lower
+Dalmatia the women and girls wind red silk and gold wire round
+the oak trunks, and adorn them with leaves and flowers. While
+they are being carried into the house lighted tapers are held on
+either side of the door. As the house-father crosses the threshold
+in the twilight with the first log, corn&#xfeff;&mdash;or in some places wine&#xfeff;&mdash;is
+thrown over him by one of the family. The log or <i>badnjak</i>
+is then placed on the fire. At Ragusa the house-father sprinkles
+corn and wine upon the <i>badnjak</i>, saying, as the flame shoots up,
+&ldquo;Goodly be thy birth!&rdquo; In the mountains above Risano he not
+only pours corn and wine but afterwards takes a bowl of corn, an
+orange, and a ploughshare, and places them on the upper end of
+the log in order that the corn may grow well and the beasts be
+healthy during the year. In Montenegro, instead of throwing
+corn, he more usually breaks a piece of unleavened bread, places
+it upon the log, and pours over it a libation of wine.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-1" id="Nanchor_11-1" href="#Note_11-1">{1}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The first visit on Christmas Day is considered important&#xfeff;&mdash;we
+may compare this with &ldquo;first-footing&rdquo; in the British Isles on
+January&nbsp;1&#xfeff;&mdash;and in order that the right sort of person may come,
+some one is specially chosen to be the so-called <i>polaznik</i>. No
+outsider but this <i>polaznik</i> may enter a house on Christmas Day,
+where the rites are strictly observed. He appears in the early
+morning, carries corn in his glove and shakes it out before the
+threshold with the words, &ldquo;Christ is born,&rdquo; whereupon some
+member of the household sprinkles him with corn in return,
+answering, &ldquo;He is born indeed.&rdquo; Afterwards the <i>polaznik</i> goes
+to the fire and makes sparks fly from the remains of the <i>badnjak</i>,
+at the same time uttering a wish for the good luck of the house-father
+and his household and farm. Money and sometimes an
+orange are then placed on the <i>badnjak</i>. It is not allowed to burn
+quite away; the last remains of the fire are extinguished and the
+embers are laid between the branches of young fruit-trees to
+promote their growth.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-2" id="Nanchor_11-2" href="#Note_11-2">{2}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>How shall we interpret these practices? Mannhardt regards
+the log as an embodiment of the vegetation-spirit, and its burning
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_253" id="Page_253" href="#Page_253">253</a>as an efficacious symbol of sunshine, meant to secure the genial
+vitalizing influence of the sun during the coming year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-3" id="Nanchor_11-3" href="#Note_11-3">{3}</a>
+ It is,
+however, possible to connect it with a different circle of ideas and
+to see in its burning the solemn annual rekindling of the sacred
+hearth-fire, the centre of the family life and the dwelling-place of
+the ancestors. Primitive peoples in many parts of the world are
+accustomed to associate fire with human generation,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-4" id="Nanchor_11-4" href="#Note_11-4">{4}</a>
+ and it is a
+general belief among Aryan and other peoples that ancestral
+spirits have their seat in the hearth. In Russia, for instance, &ldquo;in
+the Nijegorod Government it is still forbidden to break up the
+smouldering faggots in a stove, because to do so might cause the
+ancestors to fall through into hell. And when a Russian family
+moves from one house to another, the fire is conveyed to the new
+one, where it is received with the words, &lsquo;Welcome, grandfather,
+to the new home!&rsquo;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-5" id="Nanchor_11-5" href="#Note_11-5">{5}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Sir Arthur Evans in three articles in <i>Macmillan's Magazine</i> for
+1881&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-6" id="Nanchor_11-6" href="#Note_11-6">{6}</a>
+ gave a minute account of the Christmas customs of the
+Serbian highlanders above Risano, who practise the log-rites with
+elaborate ceremonial, and explained them as connected in one way
+or other with ancestor-worship, though the people themselves
+attach a Christian meaning to many of them. He pointed to the
+following facts as showing that the Serbian Christmas is at bottom
+a feast of the dead:&#xfeff;&mdash;(1) It is said on Christmas Eve, &ldquo;To-night
+Earth is blended with Paradise&rdquo; [<i>Raj</i>, the abode of the dead
+among the heathen Slavs]. (2) There is talk of unchristened folk
+beneath the threshold wailing &ldquo;for a wax-light and offerings to be
+brought them; when that is done they lie still enough&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;here
+there may be a modified survival of the idea that ancestral spirits
+dwell beneath the doorway. (3) The food must on no account
+be cleared away after the Christmas meal, but is left for three
+days, apparently for the house-spirits. (4) Blessings are invoked
+upon the &ldquo;Absent Ones,&rdquo; which seems to mean the departed,
+and (5) a toast is drunk and a bread-cake broken in memory of
+&ldquo;the Patron Namegiver of all house-fathers,&rdquo; ostensibly Christ
+but perhaps originally the founder of the family. Some of these
+customs resemble those we have noted on All Souls&rsquo; Eve and&#xfeff;&mdash;in
+Scandinavia&#xfeff;&mdash;on Christmas Eve; other parallels we shall meet
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_254" id="Page_254" href="#Page_254">254</a>with later. Among the Slav races the old organization of the
+family under an elective house-elder and holding things in
+common has been faithfully preserved, and we might expect to
+find among the remote Serbian highlanders specially clear traces
+of the old religion of the hearth. One remarkable point noted by
+Sir Arthur Evans was that in the Crivoscian cottage where he
+stayed the fire-irons, the table, and the stools were removed to an
+obscure corner before the logs were brought in and the Christmas
+rites began&#xfeff;&mdash;an indication apparently of the extreme antiquity of
+the celebration, as dating from a time when such implements
+were unknown.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-7" id="Nanchor_11-7" href="#Note_11-7">{7}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>If we take the view that ancestral spirits are the centre of the
+<i>badnjak</i> observances, we may regard the libations upon the fire as
+intended for their benefit. On the sun and vegetation hypothesis,
+however, the libations would be meant to secure, by homoeopathic
+magic, that sunshine should alternate with the rain necessary for
+the welfare of plants.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_99" id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99">[99]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-8" id="Nanchor_11-8" href="#Note_11-8">{8}</a>
+ The fertilizing powers possessed by the
+sparks and ashes of the Christmas log appear frequently in folk-lore,
+and may be explained either by the connection of fire with
+human generation already noted, or, on the other theory, by the
+burning log being a sort of sacrament of sunshine. It is not perhaps
+necessary to exclude the idea of the log's connection with
+the vegetation-spirit even on the ancestral cult hypothesis, for the
+tree which furnished the fuel may have been regarded as the source
+of the life of the race.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-9" id="Nanchor_11-9" href="#Note_11-9">{9}</a>
+ The Serbian rites certainly suggest very
+strongly some sort of veneration for the log itself as well as for the
+fire that it feeds.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">We may now return to western Europe. In France the
+Christmas log or <i>souche de No&euml;l</i> is common in the less modernized
+places, particularly in the south. In Dauphin&eacute; it is called <i>chalendal</i>,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_255" id="Page_255" href="#Page_255">255</a>in Provence <i>calignaou</i> (from <i>Kalendae</i>, of course) or <i>tr&eacute;foir</i>, in
+Orne <i>tr&eacute;fouet</i>. On Christmas Eve in Provence the whole family
+goes solemnly out to bring in the log. A carol meanwhile is sung
+praying for blessings on the house, that the women may bear
+children, the nanny-goats kids, and the ewes lambs, that corn
+and flour may abound, and the cask be full of wine. Then the
+youngest child in the family pours wine on the log in the name
+of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The log is then thrown
+upon the fire, and the charcoal is kept all the year and used as a
+remedy for various ills.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-11" id="Nanchor_11-11" href="#Note_11-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Another account is given in his Memoirs by Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Mistral,
+the Proven&ccedil;al poet. On Christmas Eve everyone, he says,
+speaking of his boyhood, sallied forth to fetch the Yule log,
+which had to be cut from a fruit-tree:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Walking in line we bore it home, headed by the oldest at one end,
+and I, the last born, bringing up the rear. Three times we made the
+tour of the kitchen, then, arrived at the flagstones of the hearth, my
+father solemnly poured over the log a glass of wine, with the dedicatory
+words:</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Joy, joy. May God shower joy upon us, my dear children.
+Christmas brings us all good things. God give us grace to see the New
+Year, and if we do not increase in numbers may we at all events not
+decrease.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>In chorus we responded:</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Joy, joy, joy!&rsquo; and lifted the log on the fire dogs. Then as the
+first flame leapt up my father would cross himself, saying, &lsquo;Burn the log,
+O fire,&rsquo; and with that we all sat down to the table.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-12" id="Nanchor_11-12" href="#Note_11-12">{12}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In some places the <i>tr&eacute;foir</i> or <i>tison de No&euml;l</i> is burnt every evening
+during the Thirteen Nights. If put under the bed its charcoal
+protects the house all the year round from lightning; contact
+with it preserves people from chilblains and animals from various
+diseases; mixed with fodder it makes cows calve; its brands
+thrown into the soil keep the corn healthy. In P&eacute;rigord the portion
+which has not been burnt is used to form part of a plough,
+and is believed to make the seed prosper; women also keep some
+fragments until Epiphany that their poultry may thrive.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-13" id="Nanchor_11-13" href="#Note_11-13">{13}</a>
+ In
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_256" id="Page_256" href="#Page_256">256</a>Brittany the <i>tison</i> is a protection against lightning and its ashes
+are put in wells to keep the water good.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-14" id="Nanchor_11-14" href="#Note_11-14">{14}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In northern Italy also the <i>ceppo</i> or log is (or was) known&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+Piedmontese call it <i>suc</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;and in Tuscany Christmas is called after
+it <i>Festa di Ceppo</i>. In the Val di Chiana on Christmas Eve the
+family gathers, a great log is set on the fire, the children are
+blindfolded and have to beat it with tongs, and an <i>Ave Maria del
+Ceppo</i> is sung.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-15" id="Nanchor_11-15" href="#Note_11-15">{15}</a>
+ Under the name in Lombardy of <i>zocco</i>, in Tuscany
+of <i>ciocco</i>, <i>di Natale</i>, the Yule log was in olden times common
+in Italian cities; the custom can there be traced back to the
+eleventh century. A little book probably printed in Milan at the
+end of the fifteenth century gives minute particulars of the ritual
+observed, and we learn that on Christmas Eve the father, or the
+head of the household, used to call all the family together and
+with great devotion, in the name of the Holy Trinity, take the
+log and place it on the fire. Juniper was put under it, and on
+the top money was placed, afterwards to be given to the servants.
+Wine in abundance was poured three times on the fire when the
+head of the house had drunk and given drink to all present. It
+was an old Italian custom to preserve the ashes of the <i>zocco</i> as a
+protection against hail. A modern superstition is to keep some
+splinters of the wood and burn them in the fires made for the
+benefit of silkworms; so burnt, they are supposed to keep ills
+away from the creatures.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-16" id="Nanchor_11-16" href="#Note_11-16">{16}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In many parts of Germany Yule log customs can be traced. In
+Hesse and Westphalia, for instance, it was the custom on Christmas
+Eve or Day to lay a large block of wood on the fire and, as
+soon as it was charred a little, to take it off and preserve it. When
+a storm threatened, it was kindled again as a protection against
+lightning. It was called the <i>Christbrand</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-17" id="Nanchor_11-17" href="#Note_11-17">{17}</a>
+ In Thuringia a
+<i>Christklotz</i> (Christ log) is put on the fire before people go to bed,
+so that it may burn all through the night. Its remains are kept to
+protect the house from fire and ill-luck. In parts of Thuringia and
+in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, East Prussia, Saxony, and Bohemia,
+the fire is kept up all night on Christmas or New Year's Eve, and
+the ashes are used to rid cattle of vermin and protect plants and
+fruit-trees from insects, while in the country between the Sieg
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_257" id="Page_257" href="#Page_257">257</a>and Lahn the powdered ashes of an oaken log are strewn during
+the Thirteen Nights on the fields, to increase their fertility.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-18" id="Nanchor_11-18" href="#Note_11-18">{18}</a>
+ In
+Sweden, too, some form of Yule log was known,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-19" id="Nanchor_11-19" href="#Note_11-19">{19}</a>
+ and in Greece,
+as we have seen, the burning of a log is still supposed to be a protection
+against <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As for the English customs, they can hardly be better introduced
+than in Herrick's words:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&ldquo;Come, bring, with a noise,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">My merry, merry boys,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The Christmas Log to the firing:</span><br />
+<span class="i3">While my good Dame she</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Bids ye all be free,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And drink to your hearts&rsquo; desiring.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">With the last year's Brand</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Light the new Block, and</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For good success in his spending,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">On your psaltries play,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">That sweet luck may</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Come while the log is a-teending.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_100" id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100">[100]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-20" id="Nanchor_11-20" href="#Note_11-20">{20}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>We may note especially that the block must be kindled
+with last year's brand; here there is a distinct suggestion
+that the lighting of the log at Christmas is a shrunken remnant
+of the keeping up of a perpetual fire, the continuity being
+to some extent preserved by the use of a brand from last year's
+blaze.</p>
+
+<p>Another tradition and its origin are thus described by Sir Laurence
+Gomme:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From there being an ever-burning fire, it has come to be that the
+fire must not be allowed to be extinguished on the last day of the old
+year, so that the old year's fire may last into the new year. In Lanarkshire
+it is considered unlucky to give out a light to any one on the
+morning of the new year, and therefore if the house-fire has been
+allowed to become extinguished recourse must be had to the embers of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_258" id="Page_258" href="#Page_258">258</a>the village pile [for on New Year's Eve a great public bonfire is made].
+In some places the self-extinction of the yule-log at Christmas is portentous
+of evil.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-21" id="Nanchor_11-21" href="#Note_11-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In the north of England in the days of tinder-boxes, if any one
+could not get a light it was useless to ask a neighbour for one, so
+frightfully unlucky was it to allow any light to leave the house
+between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-22" id="Nanchor_11-22" href="#Note_11-22">{22}</a>
+ The idea of the
+unluckiness of giving out fire at the Kalends of January can be
+traced back to the eighth century when, as we saw in <a href="#Chapter_VI">Chapter VI.</a>,
+St. Boniface alluded to this superstition among the people or
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>In Shropshire the idea is extended even to ashes, which must
+not be thrown out of the house on Christmas Day, &ldquo;for fear of
+throwing them in Our Saviour's face.&rdquo; Perhaps such superstitions
+may originally have had to do with dread that the &ldquo;luck&rdquo; of the
+family, the household spirit, might be carried away with the gift
+of fire from the hearth.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-23" id="Nanchor_11-23" href="#Note_11-23">{23}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Burne wrote in the eighties there were still many
+West Shropshire people who could remember seeing the
+&ldquo;Christmas Brand&rdquo; drawn by horses to the farmhouse door, and
+placed at the back of the wide open hearth, where the flame was
+made up in front of it. &ldquo;The embers,&rdquo; says one informant,
+&ldquo;were raked up to it every night, and it was carefully tended
+that it might not go out during the whole season, during
+which time no light might either be struck, given, or borrowed.&rdquo;
+At Cleobury Mortimer in the south-east of the
+county the silence of the curfew bell during &ldquo;the Christmas&rdquo;
+points to a time when fires might not be extinguished during
+that season.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-24" id="Nanchor_11-24" href="#Note_11-24">{24}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The place of the Yule log in Devonshire is taken by the
+&ldquo;ashen [sometimes &ldquo;ashton&rdquo;] faggot,&rdquo; still burnt in many a
+farm on Christmas Eve. The sticks of ash are fastened together
+by ashen bands, and the traditional custom is for a quart of cider
+to be called for and served to the merrymaking company, as each
+band bursts in the flames.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-25" id="Nanchor_11-25" href="#Note_11-25">{25}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In England the Yule log was often supplemented or replaced
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_259" id="Page_259" href="#Page_259">259</a>by a great candle. At Ripon in the eighteenth century the
+chandlers sent their customers large candles on Christmas Eve,
+and the coopers, logs of wood.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-26" id="Nanchor_11-26" href="#Note_11-26">{26}</a>
+ Hampson, writing in 1841,
+says:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In some places candles are made of a particular kind, because the
+candle that is lighted on Christmas Day must be so large as to burn
+from the time of its ignition to the close of the day, otherwise it will
+portend evil to the family for the ensuing year. The poor were wont
+to present the rich with wax tapers, and yule candles are still in the
+north of Scotland given by merchants to their customers. At one
+time children at the village schools in Lancashire were required to
+bring each a mould candle before the <i>parting</i> or separation for the
+Christmas holidays.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_101" id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101">[101]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-27" id="Nanchor_11-27" href="#Note_11-27">{27}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In the Scandinavian countries the Yule candle is, or was, very
+prominent indeed. In West Jutland (Denmark) two great
+tallow candles stood on the festive board. No one dared to touch
+or extinguish them, and if by any mischance one went out it was
+a portent of death. They stood for the husband and wife, and
+that one of the wedded pair whose candle burnt the longer would
+outlive the other.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-28" id="Nanchor_11-28" href="#Note_11-28">{28}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Norway also two lights were placed on the table.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-29" id="Nanchor_11-29" href="#Note_11-29">{29}</a>
+ All
+over the Scandinavian lands the Yule candle had to burn throughout
+the night; it was not to be extinguished till the sun rose or&#xfeff;&mdash;as
+was said elsewhere&#xfeff;&mdash;till the beginning of service on
+Christmas Day. Sometimes the putting-out had to be done by
+the oldest member of the family or the father of the household.
+In Norway the candle was lighted every evening until New
+Year's Day. While it foreshadowed death if it went out, so long
+as it duly burned it shed a blessing with its light, and, in order to
+secure abundance of good things, money, clothes, food, and drink
+were spread out that its rays might fall upon them. The remains
+of the candle were used in various ways to benefit man and beast.
+Sometimes a cross was branded with them upon the animals on
+Christmas morning; in Sweden the plough was smeared with
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_260" id="Page_260" href="#Page_260">260</a>the tallow, when used for the first time in spring. Or again the
+tallow was given to the fowls; and, lastly, in Denmark the ends
+were preserved and burnt in thundery weather to protect the
+house from lightning.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-30" id="Nanchor_11-30" href="#Note_11-30">{30}</a>
+ There is an analogy here with the use
+of the Christmas log, and also of the candles of the Purification
+(see <a href="#Chapter_XVI">Chapter XVI.</a>).</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_261" id="Page_261" href="#Page_261">261</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_262" id="Page_262" href="#Page_262">262</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_263" id="Page_263" href="#Page_263">263</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_XI" id="Chapter_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>The Christmas-tree a German Creation&#xfeff;&mdash;Charm of the German Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Early
+Christmas-trees&#xfeff;&mdash;The Christmas Pyramid&#xfeff;&mdash;Spread of the Tree in Modern
+Germany and other Countries&#xfeff;&mdash;Origin of the Christmas-tree&#xfeff;&mdash;Beliefs about
+Flowering Trees at Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;Evergreens at the Kalends&#xfeff;&mdash;Non-German Parallels
+to the Christmas-tree&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas Decorations connected with Ancient Kalends
+Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;Sacredness of Holly and Mistletoe&#xfeff;&mdash;Floors strewn with Straw&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas
+and New Year Gifts, their Connection with the Roman <i>Strenae</i> and
+St. Nicholas&#xfeff;&mdash;Present-giving in Various Countries&#xfeff;&mdash;Christmas Cards.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image19" name="image19" href="images/image19.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image19.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY."
+      title="THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.</p>
+
+<p>From an engraving by Joseph Kellner.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Christmas-tree.</span></h3>
+
+<p>The most widespread, and to children the most delightful, of all
+festal institutions is the Christmas-tree. Its picturesqueness and
+gay charm have made it spread rapidly all over Europe without
+roots in national tradition, for, as most people know, it is a
+German creation, and even in Germany it attained its present
+immense popularity only in the nineteenth century. To
+Germany, of course, one should go to see the tree in all its glory.
+Many people, indeed, maintain that no other Christmas can compare
+with the German <i>Weihnacht</i>. &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; writes Miss I. A. R.
+Wylie, &ldquo;that childish, open-hearted simplicity which, so it seems
+to me, makes Christmas essentially German, or at any rate
+explains why it is that nowhere else in the world does it find so
+pure an expression. The German is himself simple, warm-hearted,
+unpretentious, with something at the bottom of him which is childlike
+in the best sense. He is the last &lsquo;Naturmensch&rsquo; in civilization.&rdquo;
+Christmas suits him &ldquo;as well as a play suits an actor for
+whose character and temperament it has been especially written.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-1" id="Nanchor_12-1" href="#Note_12-1">{1}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_264" id="Page_264" href="#Page_264">264</a>In Germany the Christmas-tree is not a luxury for well-to-do
+people as in England, but a necessity, the very centre of the
+festival; no one is too poor or too lonely to have one. There is
+something about a German <i>Weihnachtsbaum</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;a romance and a
+wonder&#xfeff;&mdash;that English Christmas-trees do not possess. For one
+thing, perhaps, in a land of forests the tree seems more in place; it
+is a kind of sacrament linking mankind to the mysteries of the
+woodland. Again the German tree is simply a thing of beauty
+and radiance; no utilitarian presents hang from its boughs&#xfeff;&mdash;they
+are laid apart on a table&#xfeff;&mdash;and the tree is purely splendour for
+splendour's sake. However tawdry it may look by day, at night
+it is a true thing of wonder, shining with countless lights and
+glittering ornaments, with fruit of gold and shimmering festoons
+of silver. Then there is the solemnity with which it is
+surrounded; the long secret preparations behind the closed doors,
+and, when Christmas Eve arrives, the sudden revelation of hidden
+glory. The Germans have quite a religious feeling for their
+<i>Weihnachtsbaum</i>, coming down, one may fancy, from some dim
+ancestral worship of the trees of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>As Christmas draws near the market-place in a German town
+is filled with a miniature forest of firs; the trees are sold by old
+women in quaint costumes, and the shop-windows are full of
+candles and ornaments to deck them. Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in
+her &ldquo;Home Life in Germany&rdquo; gives a delightful picture of such
+a Christmas market in &ldquo;one of the old German cities in the hill
+country, when the streets and the open places are covered with
+crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white with it.... The
+air is cold and still, and heavy with the scent of the Christmas-trees
+brought from the forest for the pleasure of the children.
+Day by day you see the rows of them growing thinner, and if
+you go to the market on Christmas Eve itself you will find only
+a few trees left out in the cold. The market is empty, the
+peasants are harnessing their horses or their oxen, the women are
+packing up their unsold goods. In every home in the city one of
+the trees that scented the open air a week ago is shining now
+with lights and little gilded nuts and apples, and is helping to
+make that Christmas smell, all compact of the pine forest, wax
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_265" id="Page_265" href="#Page_265">265</a>candles, cakes and painted toys, you must associate so long as you
+live with Christmas in Germany.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-2" id="Nanchor_12-2" href="#Note_12-2">{2}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Even in London one may get a glimpse of the Teutonic
+Christmas in the half-German streets round Fitzroy Square.
+They are bald and drab enough, but at Christmas here and there
+a window shines with a lighted tree, and the very prosaic
+Lutheran church in Cleveland Street has an unwonted sight to
+show&#xfeff;&mdash;two great fir-trees decked with white candles, standing
+one on each side of the pulpit. The church of the German
+Catholics, too, St. Boniface's, Whitechapel, has in its sanctuary
+two Christmas-trees strangely gay with coloured glistening balls
+and long strands of gold and silver <i>engelshaar</i>. The candles are
+lit at Benediction during the festival, and between the shining
+trees the solemn ritual is performed by the priest and a crowd of
+serving boys in scarlet and white with tapers and incense.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">There is a pretty story about the institution of the <i>Weihnachtsbaum</i>
+by Martin Luther: how, after wandering one Christmas
+Eve under the clear winter sky lit by a thousand stars, he set up
+for his children a tree with countless candles, an image of the
+starry heaven whence Christ came down. This, however, belongs
+to the region of legend; the first historical mention of the
+Christmas-tree is found in the notes of a certain Strasburg citizen
+of unknown name, written in the year 1605. &ldquo;At Christmas,&rdquo;
+he writes, &ldquo;they set up fir-trees in the parlours at Strasburg and
+hang thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers,
+gold-foil, sweets, &amp;c.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-3" id="Nanchor_12-3" href="#Note_12-3">{3}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>We next meet with the tree in a hostile allusion by a distinguished
+Strasburg theologian, Dr. Johann Konrad Dannhauer,
+Professor and Preacher at the Cathedral. In his book, &ldquo;The
+Milk of the Catechism,&rdquo; published about the middle of the
+seventeenth century, he speaks of &ldquo;the Christmas- or fir-tree, which
+people set up in their houses, hang with dolls and sweets, and
+afterwards shake and deflower.&rdquo; &ldquo;Whence comes the custom,&rdquo;
+he says, &ldquo;I know not; it is child's play.... Far better were
+it to point the children to the spiritual cedar-tree, Jesus Christ.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-4" id="Nanchor_12-4" href="#Note_12-4">{4}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In neither of these references is there any mention of candles&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_266" id="Page_266" href="#Page_266">266</a>most fascinating feature of the modern tree. These appear,
+however, in a Latin work on Christmas presents by Karl Gottfried
+Kissling of the University of Wittenberg, written in 1737.
+He tells how a certain country lady of his acquaintance set up a
+little tree for each of her sons and daughters, lit candles on or
+around the trees, laid out presents beneath them, and called her
+children one by one into the room to take the trees and gifts
+intended for them.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-5" id="Nanchor_12-5" href="#Note_12-5">{5}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>With the advance of the eighteenth-century notices of the
+<i>Weihnachtsbaum</i> become more frequent: Jung Stilling, Goethe,
+Schiller, and others mention it, and about the end of the
+century its use seems to have been fairly general in Germany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-6" id="Nanchor_12-6" href="#Note_12-6">{6}</a>
+
+In many places, however, it was not common till well on in the
+eighteen hundreds: it was a Protestant rather than a Catholic
+institution, and it made its way but slowly in regions where the
+older faith was held.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-7" id="Nanchor_12-7" href="#Note_12-7">{7}</a>
+ Well-to-do townspeople welcomed it first,
+and the peasantry were slow to adopt it. In Old Bavaria, for
+instance, in 1855 it was quite unknown in country places, and
+even to-day it is not very common there, except in the towns.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-8" id="Nanchor_12-8" href="#Note_12-8">{8}</a>
+
+&ldquo;It is more in vogue on the whole,&rdquo; wrote Dr. Tille in 1893,
+&ldquo;in the Protestant north than in the Catholic south,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-9" id="Nanchor_12-9" href="#Note_12-9">{9}</a>
+ but its
+popularity was rapidly growing at that time.</p>
+
+<p>A common substitute for the Christmas-tree in Saxony during
+the nineteenth century, and one still found in country places, was
+the so-called &ldquo;pyramid,&rdquo; a wooden erection adorned with many-coloured
+paper and with lights. These pyramids were very
+popular among the smaller <i>bourgeoisie</i> and artisans, and were kept
+from one Christmas to another.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-10" id="Nanchor_12-10" href="#Note_12-10">{10}</a>
+ In Berlin, too, the pyramid
+was once very common. It was there adorned with green twigs
+as well as with candles and coloured paper, and had more resemblance
+to the Christmas-tree.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-11" id="Nanchor_12-11" href="#Note_12-11">{11}</a>
+ Tieck refers to it in his story,
+&ldquo;Weihnacht-Abend&rdquo; (1805).&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-12" id="Nanchor_12-12" href="#Note_12-12">{12}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Pyramids, without lights apparently, were known in England
+before 1840. In Hertfordshire they were formed of gilt evergreens,
+apples, and nuts, and were carried about just before
+Christmas for presents. In Herefordshire they were known at
+the New Year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-13" id="Nanchor_12-13" href="#Note_12-13">{13}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_267" id="Page_267" href="#Page_267">267</a>The Christmas-tree was introduced into France in 1840, when
+Princess Helene of Mecklenburg brought it to Paris. In 1890
+between thirty and thirty-five thousand of the trees are said to
+have been sold in Paris.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-14" id="Nanchor_12-14" href="#Note_12-14">{14}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In England it is alluded to in 1789,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-15" id="Nanchor_12-15" href="#Note_12-15">{15}</a>
+ but its use did not
+become at all general until about the eighteen-forties. In 1840
+Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had a Christmas-tree, and the
+fashion spread until it became completely naturalized.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-16" id="Nanchor_12-16" href="#Note_12-16">{16}</a>
+ In
+Denmark and Norway it was known in 1830, and in Sweden in
+1863 (among the Swedish population on the coast of Finland it
+seems to have been in use in 1800).&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-17" id="Nanchor_12-17" href="#Note_12-17">{17}</a>
+ In Bohemia it is
+mentioned in 1862.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-18" id="Nanchor_12-18" href="#Note_12-18">{18}</a>
+ It is also found in Russia, the United
+States, Spain, Italy, and Holland,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-19" id="Nanchor_12-19" href="#Note_12-19">{19}</a>
+ and of course in Switzerland
+and Austria, so largely German in language and customs. In
+non-German countries it is rather a thing for the well-to-do
+classes than for the masses of the people.</p>
+
+<p>The Christmas-tree is essentially a domestic institution. It
+has, however, found its way into Protestant churches in Germany
+and from them into Catholic churches. Even the Swiss
+Zwinglians, with all their Puritanism, do not exclude it from their
+bare, white-washed fanes. In the M&uuml;nsterthal, for instance, a
+valley of Romonsch speech, off the Lower Engadine, a tree
+decked with candles, festoons, presents, and serpent-squibs, stands
+in church at Christmas, and it is difficult for the minister to
+conduct service, for all the time, except during the prayers,
+the people are letting off fireworks. On one day between
+Christmas Eve and New Year there is a great present-giving
+in church.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-20" id="Nanchor_12-20" href="#Note_12-20">{20}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Munich, and doubtless elsewhere, the tree appears not only
+in the church and in the home, but in the cemetery. The graves
+of the dead are decked on Christmas Eve with holly and mistletoe
+and a little Christmas-tree with gleaming lights, a touching token
+of remembrance, an attempt, perhaps, to give the departed a share
+in the brightness of the festival.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-21" id="Nanchor_12-21" href="#Note_12-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">The question of the origin of Christmas-trees is of great
+interest. Though their affinity to other sacraments of the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_268" id="Page_268" href="#Page_268">268</a>vegetation-spirit is evident, it is difficult to be certain of their
+exact ancestry. Dr. Tille regards them as coming from a
+union of two elements: the old Roman custom of decking houses
+with laurels and green trees at the Kalends of January, and the
+popular belief that every Christmas Eve apple and other trees
+blossomed and bore fruit.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-22" id="Nanchor_12-22" href="#Note_12-22">{22}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Before the advent of the Christmas-tree proper&#xfeff;&mdash;a fir with
+lights and ornaments often imitating and always suggesting
+flowers and fruit&#xfeff;&mdash;it was customary to put trees like cherry or
+hawthorn into water or into pots indoors, so that they might bud
+and blossom at New Year or Christmas.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-23" id="Nanchor_12-23" href="#Note_12-23">{23}</a>
+ Even to-day the
+practice of picking boughs in order that they may blossom at
+Christmas is to be found in some parts of Austria. In Carinthia
+girls on St. Lucia's Day (December&nbsp;13) stick a cherry-branch
+into wet sand; if it blooms at Christmas their wishes will be
+fulfilled. In other parts the branches&#xfeff;&mdash;pear as well as cherry&#xfeff;&mdash;are
+picked on St. Barbara's Day (December&nbsp;4), and in South
+Tyrol cherry-trees are manured with lime on the first Thursday
+in Advent so that they may blossom at Christmas.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-24" id="Nanchor_12-24" href="#Note_12-24">{24}</a>
+ The custom
+may have had to do with legendary lore about the marvellous
+transformation of Nature on the night of Christ's birth, when the
+rivers ran wine instead of water and trees stood in full blossom in
+spite of ice and snow.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-25" id="Nanchor_12-25" href="#Note_12-25">{25}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In England there was an old belief in trees blossoming at
+Christmas, connected with the well-known legend of St. Joseph
+of Arimathea. When the saint settled at Glastonbury he planted
+his staff in the earth and it put forth leaves; moreover it
+blossomed every Christmas Eve. Not only the original thorn at
+Glastonbury but trees of the same species in other parts of
+England had this characteristic. When in 1752 the New
+Style was substituted for the Old, making Christmas fall twelve
+days earlier, folks were curious to see what the thorns would do.
+At Quainton in Buckinghamshire two thousand people, it is
+said, went out on the new Christmas Eve to view a blackthorn
+which had the Christmas blossoming habit. As no sign of buds
+was visible they agreed that the new Christmas could not be
+right, and refused to keep it. At Glastonbury itself nothing
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_269" id="Page_269" href="#Page_269">269</a>happened on December&nbsp;24, but on January&nbsp;5, the right day
+according to the Old Style, the thorn blossomed as usual.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_102" id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102">[102]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-26" id="Nanchor_12-26" href="#Note_12-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Let us turn to the customs of the Roman Empire which may
+be in part responsible for the German Christmas-tree. The
+practice of adorning houses with evergreens at the January
+Kalends was common throughout the Empire, as we learn from
+Libanius, Tertullian, and Chrysostom. A grim denunciation of
+such decorations and the lights which accompanied them may be
+quoted from Tertullian; it makes a pregnant contrast of pagan
+and Christian. &ldquo;Let them,&rdquo; he says of the heathen, &ldquo;kindle
+lamps, they who have no light; let them fix on the doorposts
+laurels which shall afterwards be burnt, they for whom fire is close
+at hand; meet for them are testimonies of darkness and auguries
+of punishment. But thou,&rdquo; he says to the Christian, &ldquo;art a
+light of the world and a tree that is ever green; if thou hast
+renounced temples, make not a temple of thy own house-door.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-27" id="Nanchor_12-27" href="#Note_12-27">{27}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>That these New Year practices of the Empire had to do with
+the <i>Weihnachtsbaum</i> is very possible, but on the other hand it has
+closer parallels in certain folk-customs that in no way suggest
+Roman or Greek influence. Not only at Christmas are ceremonial
+&ldquo;trees&rdquo; to be found in Germany. In the Erzgebirge
+there is dancing at the summer solstice round &ldquo;St. John's tree,&rdquo;
+a pyramid decked with garlands and flowers, and lit up at night
+by candles.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-28" id="Nanchor_12-28" href="#Note_12-28">{28}</a>
+ At midsummer &ldquo;in the towns of the Upper Harz
+Mountains tall fir-trees, with the bark peeled off their lower
+trunks, were set up in open places and decked with flowers and
+eggs, which were painted yellow and red. Round these trees the
+young folk danced by day and the old folk in the evening&rdquo;;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-29" id="Nanchor_12-29" href="#Note_12-29">{29}</a>
+
+while on Dutch ground in Gelderland and Limburg at the
+beginning of May trees were adorned with lights.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-30" id="Nanchor_12-30" href="#Note_12-30">{30}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Nearer to Christmas is a New Year's custom found in some
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_270" id="Page_270" href="#Page_270">270</a>Alsatian villages: the adorning of the fountain with a &ldquo;May.&rdquo;
+The girls who visit the fountain procure a small fir-tree or holly-bush,
+and deck it with ribbons, egg-shells, and little figures representing
+a shepherd or a man beating his wife. This is set up
+above the fountain on New Year's Eve. On the evening of the
+next day the snow is carefully cleared away and the girls dance
+and sing around the fountain. The lads may only take part in
+the dance by permission of the girls. The tree is kept all through
+the year as a protection to those who have set it up.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-31" id="Nanchor_12-31" href="#Note_12-31">{31}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Sweden, before the advent of the German type of tree, it
+was customary to place young pines, divested of bark and branches,
+outside the houses at Christmastide.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-32" id="Nanchor_12-32" href="#Note_12-32">{32}</a>
+ An English parallel which
+does not suggest any borrowing from Germany, was formerly to
+be found at Brough in Westmoreland on Twelfth Night. A
+holly-tree with torches attached to its branches was carried through
+the town in procession. It was finally thrown among the populace,
+who divided into two parties, one of which endeavoured to
+take the tree to one inn, and the other, to a rival hostelry.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-33" id="Nanchor_12-33" href="#Note_12-33">{33}</a>
+ We
+have here pretty plainly a struggle of two factions&#xfeff;&mdash;perhaps of
+two quarters of a town that were once separate villages&#xfeff;&mdash;for the
+possession of a sacred object.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_103" id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p>We may find parallels, lastly, in two remote corners of Europe.
+In the island of Chios&#xfeff;&mdash;here we are on Greek ground&#xfeff;&mdash;tenants
+are wont to offer to their landlords on Christmas morning a
+<i>rhamna</i>, a pole with wreaths of myrtle, olive, and orange leaves
+bound around it; &ldquo;to these are fixed any flowers that may be
+found&#xfeff;&mdash;geraniums, anemones, and the like, and, by way of
+further decoration, oranges, lemons, and strips of gold and coloured
+paper.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_104" id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104">[104]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-34" id="Nanchor_12-34" href="#Note_12-34">{34}</a>
+ Secondly, among the Circassians in the early half of the
+nineteenth century, a young pear-tree used to be carried into each
+house at an autumn festival, to the sound of music and joyous cries.
+It was covered with candles, and a cheese was fastened to its top.
+Round about it they ate, drank, and sang. Afterwards it was
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_271" id="Page_271" href="#Page_271">271</a>removed to the courtyard, where it remained for the rest of the
+year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-36" id="Nanchor_12-36" href="#Note_12-36">{36}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Though there is no recorded instance of the use of a tree
+at Christmas in Germany before the seventeenth century, the
+<i>Weihnachtsbaum</i> may well be a descendant of some sacred tree
+carried about or set up at the beginning-of-winter festival. All
+things considered, it seems to belong to a class of primitive sacraments
+of which the example most familiar to English peoples is
+the May-pole. This is, of course, an early summer institution,
+but in France and Germany a Harvest May is also known&#xfeff;&mdash;a
+large branch or a whole tree, which is decked with ears of corn,
+brought home on the last waggon from the harvest field, and
+fastened to the roof of farmhouse or barn, where it remains for a
+year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-37" id="Nanchor_12-37" href="#Note_12-37">{37}</a>
+ Mannhardt has shown that such sacraments embody the
+tree-spirit conceived as the spirit of vegetation in general, and are
+believed to convey its life-giving, fructifying influences. Probably
+the idea of contact with the spirit of growth lay also beneath the
+Roman evergreen decorations, so that whether or not we connect the
+Christmas-tree with these, the principle at the bottom is the same.</p>
+
+<p>Certain Christian ideas, finally, besides that of trees blossoming
+on the night of the Nativity, may have affected the fortunes of
+the Christmas-tree. December&nbsp;24 was in old Church calendars
+the day of Adam and Eve, the idea being that Christ the second
+Adam had repaired by His Incarnation the loss caused by the sin
+of the first. A legend grew up that Adam when he left Paradise
+took with him an apple or sprout from the Tree of Knowledge,
+and that from this sprang the tree from which the Cross was
+made. Or it was said that on Adam's grave grew a sprig from
+the Tree of Life, and that from it Christ plucked the fruit of
+redemption. The Cross in early Christian poetry was conceived
+as the Tree of Life planted anew, bearing the glorious fruit of
+Christ's body, and repairing the mischief wrought by the misuse
+of the first tree. We may recall a verse from the &ldquo;Pange,
+lingua&rdquo; of Passiontide:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Faithful Cross! above all other,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">One and only noble tree!<a class="pagenum" name="Page_272" id="Page_272" href="#Page_272">272</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">None in foliage, none in blossom,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">None in fruit thy peer may be:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sweetest wood and sweetest iron!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Sweetest weight is hung on thee.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the religious Christmas plays the tree of Paradise was sometimes
+shown to the people. At Oberufer, for instance, it was a
+fine juniper-tree, adorned with apples and ribbons. Sometimes
+Christ Himself was regarded as the tree of Paradise.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-38" id="Nanchor_12-38" href="#Note_12-38">{38}</a>
+ The
+thought of Him as both the Light of the World and the Tree
+of Life may at least have given a Christian meaning to the
+light-bearing tree, and helped to establish its popularity among
+pious folk.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Christmas Decorations.</span></h3>
+
+<p>We have seen that the Christmas-tree may be a development,
+partly at least, from the custom of decorating buildings with
+evergreens at the New Year, and that such decorations were
+common throughout the Roman Empire.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_105" id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105">[105]</a> Some further consideration
+may now be given to the subject of Christmas decorations
+in various lands. In winter, when all is brown and dead,
+the evergreens are manifestations of the abiding life within the
+plant-world, and they may well have been used as sacramental
+means of contact with the spirit of growth and fertility, threatened
+by the powers of blight. Particularly precious would be plants
+like the holly, the ivy, and the mistletoe, which actually bore fruit
+in the winter-time.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-39" id="Nanchor_12-39" href="#Note_12-39">{39}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In spite of ecclesiastical condemnations of Kalends decorations&#xfeff;&mdash;as
+late as the sixth century the <i>capitula</i> of Bishop Martin of
+Braga forbid the adorning of houses with laurels and green trees&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-40" id="Nanchor_12-40" href="#Note_12-40">{40}</a>
+&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+custom has found its way even into churches, and nowhere
+more than in England. At least as far back as the fifteenth
+century, according to Stow's &ldquo;Survay of London,&rdquo; it was the
+custom at Christmas for &ldquo;every man's house, as also the parish
+churches,&rdquo; to be &ldquo;decked with holm, ivy, bays, and whatsoever
+the season of the year afforded to be green. The conduits and
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_273" id="Page_273" href="#Page_273">273</a>standards in the streets were likewise garnished.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-41" id="Nanchor_12-41" href="#Note_12-41">{41}</a>
+ Many
+people of the last generation will remember the old English mode
+of decoration&#xfeff;&mdash;how sprigs of holly and yew, stuck into holes in
+the high pews, used to make the churches into miniature forests.
+Only upon the mistletoe does a trace of the ecclesiastical taboo
+remain, and even that is not universal, for at York Minster, for
+instance, some was laid upon the altar.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-42" id="Nanchor_12-42" href="#Note_12-42">{42}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>English popular custom has connected particular plants with
+the winter festival in a peculiarly delightful way; at the mere
+mention of holly or mistletoe the picture of Christmas with its
+country charm rises to the mind&#xfeff;&mdash;we think of snowy fields and
+distant bells, of warm hearths and kindly merrymaking.</p>
+
+<p>It is no wonder that the mistletoe has a special place in Christmas
+decorations, for it is associated with both Teutonic myth and
+Celtic ritual. It was with mistletoe that the beloved Balder was
+shot, and the plant played an important part in a Druidic ceremony
+described by Pliny. A white-robed Druid climbed a sacred oak
+and cut the mistletoe with a golden sickle. As it fell it was caught
+in a white cloth, and two white bulls were then sacrificed, with
+prayer. The mistletoe was called &ldquo;all-healer&rdquo; and was believed
+to be a remedy against poison and to make barren animals fruitful.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-43" id="Nanchor_12-43" href="#Note_12-43">{43}</a>
+
+The significance of the ritual is not easy to find. Pliny's account,
+Dr. MacCulloch has suggested, may be incomplete, and the cutting
+of the mistletoe may have been a preliminary to some other
+ceremony&#xfeff;&mdash;perhaps the felling of the tree on which it grew, whose
+soul was supposed to be in it, or perhaps the slaying of a representative
+of the tree-spirit; while the white oxen of Pliny's time
+may have replaced a human victim.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-44" id="Nanchor_12-44" href="#Note_12-44">{44}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to find that the name &ldquo;all-healer&rdquo; is still given
+to the mistletoe in Celtic speech,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_106" id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106">[106]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-45" id="Nanchor_12-45" href="#Note_12-45">{45}</a>
+ and that in various European
+countries it is believed to possess marvellous powers of healing
+sickness or averting misfortune.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-46" id="Nanchor_12-46" href="#Note_12-46">{46}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_274" id="Page_274" href="#Page_274">274</a>It is hard to say exactly what is the origin of the English
+&ldquo;kissing under the mistletoe,&rdquo; but the practice would appear to
+be due to an imagined relation between the love of the sexes and
+the spirit of fertility embodied in the sacred bough, and it may
+be a vestige of the licence often permitted at folk-festivals.
+According to one form of the English custom the young men
+plucked, each time they kissed a girl, a berry from the bough.
+When the berries were all picked, the privilege ceased.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-48" id="Nanchor_12-48" href="#Note_12-48">{48}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a curious form, reminding one both of the German
+Christmas-tree and of the <i>Krippe</i>, is taken by the &ldquo;kissing
+bunch.&rdquo; Here is an account from Derbyshire:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The &lsquo;kissing bunch&rsquo; is always an elaborate affair. The size
+depends upon the couple of hoops&#xfeff;&mdash;one thrust through the other&#xfeff;&mdash;which
+form its skeleton. Each of the ribs is garlanded with holly,
+ivy, and sprigs of other greens, with bits of coloured ribbons and paper
+roses, rosy-cheeked apples, specially reserved for this occasion, and
+oranges. Three small dolls are also prepared, often with much taste,
+and these represent our Saviour, the mother of Jesus, and Joseph.
+These dolls generally hang within the kissing bunch by strings from
+the top, and are surrounded by apples, oranges tied to strings, and
+various brightly coloured ornaments. Occasionally, however, the dolls
+are arranged in the kissing bunch to represent a manger-scene....
+Mistletoe is not very plentiful in Derbyshire; but, generally, a bit is
+obtainable, and this is carefully tied to the bottom of the kissing
+bunch, which is then hung in the middle of the house-place, the
+centre of attention during Christmastide.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-49" id="Nanchor_12-49" href="#Note_12-49">{49}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Kissing under the mistletoe seems to be distinctively English.
+There is, however, a New Year's Eve custom in Lower Austria
+and the Rhaetian Alps that somewhat resembles our mistletoe
+bough practices. People linger late in the inns, the walls and
+windows of which are decorated with green pine-twigs. In the
+centre of the inn-parlour hangs from a roof-beam a wreath of the
+same greenery, and in a dark corner hides a masked figure
+known as &ldquo;Sylvester,&rdquo; old and ugly, with a flaxen beard and
+<i>a wreath of mistletoe</i>. If a youth or maiden happens to pass under
+the pine wreath Sylvester springs out and imprints a rough kiss.
+When midnight comes he is driven out as the representative of
+the old year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-50" id="Nanchor_12-50" href="#Note_12-50">{50}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_275" id="Page_275" href="#Page_275">275</a>There are traces in Britain of the sacredness of holly as well
+as mistletoe. In Northumberland it is used for divination: nine
+leaves are taken and tied with nine knots into a handkerchief,
+and put under the pillow by a person who desires prophetic
+dreams.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-51" id="Nanchor_12-51" href="#Note_12-51">{51}</a>
+ For this purpose smooth leaves (without prickles)
+must be employed, and it is to be noted that at Burford in
+Shropshire smooth holly only was used for the Christmas decorations.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-52" id="Nanchor_12-52" href="#Note_12-52">{52}</a>
+
+Holly is hated by witches,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-53" id="Nanchor_12-53" href="#Note_12-53">{53}</a>
+ but perhaps this may be
+due not to any pre-Christian sanctity attached to it but to the
+association of its thorns and blood-red berries with the Passion&#xfeff;&mdash;an
+association to which it owes its Danish name, <i>Kristdorn</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In some old English Christmas carols holly and ivy are put
+into a curious antagonism, apparently connected with a contest of
+the sexes. Holly is the men's plant, ivy the women's, and the
+carols are debates as to the respective merits of each. Possibly
+some sort of rude drama may once have been performed.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-54" id="Nanchor_12-54" href="#Note_12-54">{54}</a>
+ Here
+is a fifteenth-century example of these carols:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Holly and Ivy made a great party,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Who should have the mastery,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In land&euml;s where they go.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Then spoke Holly, &lsquo;I am free and jolly,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I will have the mastery,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In land&euml;s where we go.&rsquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Then spake Ivy, &lsquo;I am lov'd and prov'd,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And I will have the mastery,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In land&euml;s where we go.&rsquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Then spake Holly, and set him down on his knee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;I pray thee, gentle Ivy,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Say me no villainy,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In land&euml;s where we go.&rsquo;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-55" id="Nanchor_12-55" href="#Note_12-55">{55}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The sanctity of Christmas house-decorations in England is
+shown by the care taken in disposing of them when removed
+from the walls. In Shropshire old-fashioned people never
+threw them away, for fear of misfortune, but either burnt them
+or gave them to the cows; it was very unlucky to let a piece
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_276" id="Page_276" href="#Page_276">276</a>fall to the ground. The Shropshire custom was to leave the
+holly and ivy up until Candlemas, while the mistletoe-bough was
+carefully preserved until the time came for a new one next year.
+West Shropshire tradition, by the way, connects the mistletoe
+with the New Year rather than with Christmas; the bough
+ought not to be put up until New Year's Eve.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-56" id="Nanchor_12-56" href="#Note_12-56">{56}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Sweden green boughs, apparently, are not used for decoration,
+but the floor of the parlour is strewn with sprigs of fragrant
+juniper or spruce-pine, or with rye-straw.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-57" id="Nanchor_12-57" href="#Note_12-57">{57}</a>
+ The straw was
+probably intended originally to bring to the house, by means of
+sacramental contact, the wholesome influences of the corn-spirit,
+though the common people connect it with the stable at Bethlehem.
+The practice of laying straw and the same Christian
+explanation are found also in Poland&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-58" id="Nanchor_12-58" href="#Note_12-58">{58}</a>
+ and in Crivoscia.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-59" id="Nanchor_12-59" href="#Note_12-59">{59}</a>
+ In
+Poland before the cloth is laid on Christmas Eve, the table is
+covered with a layer of hay or straw, and a sheaf stands in the
+corner. Years ago straw was also spread on the floor. Sometimes
+it is given to the cattle as a charm and sometimes it is
+used to tie up fruit-trees.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-60" id="Nanchor_12-60" href="#Note_12-60">{60}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Frazer conjectures that the Swedish Yule straw comes in
+part at least from the last sheaf at harvest, to which, as embodying
+the corn-spirit, a peculiar significance is attached. The
+Swedish, like the Polish, Yule straw has sundry virtues; scattered
+on the ground it will make a barren field productive; and
+it is used to bind trees and make them fruitful.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-61" id="Nanchor_12-61" href="#Note_12-61">{61}</a>
+ Again the
+peasant at Christmas will sit on a log and throw up Yule straws
+one by one to the roof; as many as lodge in the rafters, so many
+will be the sheaves of rye at harvest.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-62" id="Nanchor_12-62" href="#Note_12-62">{62}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Christmas and New Year Gifts.</span></h3>
+
+<p>We have come across presents of various kinds at the pre-Christmas
+festivals; now that we have reached Christmastide
+itself we may dwell a little upon the festival as the great present-giving
+season of the year, and try to get at the origins of the
+custom.</p>
+
+<p>The Roman <i>strenae</i> offered to the Emperor or exchanged
+between private citizens at the January Kalends have already
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_277" id="Page_277" href="#Page_277">277</a>been noted. According to tradition they were originally merely
+branches plucked from the grove of the goddess Strenia, and the
+purpose of these may well have been akin to that of the greenery
+used for decorations, viz., to secure contact with a vegetation-spirit.
+In the time of the Empire, however, the <i>strenae</i> were of
+a more attractive character, &ldquo;men gave honeyed things, that the
+year of the recipient might be full of sweetness, lamps that it
+might be full of light, copper and silver and gold that wealth
+might flow in amain.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-63" id="Nanchor_12-63" href="#Note_12-63">{63}</a>
+ Such presents were obviously a kind
+of charm for the New Year, based on the principle that as the
+beginning was, so would the rest of the year be.</p>
+
+<p>With the adoption of the Roman New Year's Day its present-giving
+customs appear to have spread far and wide. In France,
+where the Latin spirit is still strong, January&nbsp;1 is even now the
+great day for presents, and they are actually called <i>&eacute;trennes</i>, a
+name obviously derived from <i>strenae</i>. In Paris boxes of sweets
+are then given by bachelors to friends who have entertained
+them at their houses during the year&#xfeff;&mdash;a survival perhaps of
+the &ldquo;honeyed things&rdquo; given in Roman times.</p>
+
+<p>In many countries, however, present-giving is attached to the
+ecclesiastical festival of Christmas. This is doubtless largely due
+to attraction from the Roman New Year's Day to the feast
+hallowed by the Church, but readers of the foregoing pages will
+have seen that Christmas has also drawn to itself many practices
+of a November festival, and it is probable that German Christmas
+presents, at least, are connected as much with the apples and nuts
+of St. Martin and St. Nicholas&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_107" id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107">[107]</a> as with the Roman <i>strenae</i>. It
+has already been pointed out that the German St. Nicholas as
+present-giver appears to be a duplicate of St. Martin, and that St.
+Nicholas himself has often wandered from his own day to Christmas,
+or has been replaced by the Christ Child. We have also
+noted the rod associated with the two saints, and seen reason for
+thinking that its original purpose was not disciplinary but health-giving.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_278" id="Page_278" href="#Page_278">278</a>It is interesting to find that while, if we may trust tradition,
+the Roman <i>strenae</i> were originally twigs, Christmas gifts in
+sixteenth-century Germany showed a connection with the twigs
+or rods of St. Martin and St. Nicholas. The presents were tied
+together in a bundle, and a twig was added to them.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-65" id="Nanchor_12-65" href="#Note_12-65">{65}</a>
+ This was
+regarded by the pedagogic mind of the period not as a lucky
+twig but as a rod in the sinister sense. In some Protestant
+sermons of the latter half of the century there are curious detailed
+references to Christmas presents. These are supposed to be
+brought to children by the Saviour Himself, strangely called the
+<i>Haus-Christ</i>. Among the gifts mentioned as contained in the
+&ldquo;Christ-bundles&rdquo; are pleasant things like money, sugar-plums,
+cakes, apples, nuts, dolls; useful things like clothes; and also
+things &ldquo;that belong to teaching, obedience, chastisement, and
+discipline, as A.B.C. tablets, Bibles and handsome books, writing
+materials, paper, &amp;c., <i>and the</i> &lsquo;<i>Christ-rod</i>.&rsquo;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-66" id="Nanchor_12-66" href="#Note_12-66">{66}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A common gift to German children at Christmas or the New
+Year was an apple with a coin in it; the coin may conceivably
+be a Roman survival,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-67" id="Nanchor_12-67" href="#Note_12-67">{67}</a>
+ while the apple may be connected with
+those brought by St. Nicholas.</p>
+
+<p>The Christ Child is still supposed to bring presents in Germany;
+in France, too, it is sometimes <i>le petit J&eacute;sus</i> who bears the
+welcome gifts.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-68" id="Nanchor_12-68" href="#Note_12-68">{68}</a>
+ In Italy we shall find that the great time for
+children's presents is Epiphany Eve, when the Befana comes,
+though in the northern provinces Santa Lucia is sometimes a
+gift-bringer.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-69" id="Nanchor_12-69" href="#Note_12-69">{69}</a>
+ In Sicily the days for gifts and the supposed
+bringers vary; sometimes, as we have already seen, it is the dead
+who bring them, on All Souls&rsquo; Eve; sometimes it is <i>la Vecchia
+di Natali</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;the Christmas old woman&#xfeff;&mdash;who comes with them
+on Christmas Eve; sometimes they are brought by the old
+woman Strina&#xfeff;&mdash;note the derivation from <i>strenae</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;at the New
+Year; sometimes by the Befana at the Epiphany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-70" id="Nanchor_12-70" href="#Note_12-70">{70}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A curious mode of giving presents on Christmas Eve belongs
+particularly to Sweden, though it is also found&#xfeff;&mdash;perhaps
+borrowed&#xfeff;&mdash;in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and other parts of
+Germany. The so-called <i>Julklapp</i> is a gift wrapped up in
+innumerable coverings. The person who brings it raps noisily at
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_279" id="Page_279" href="#Page_279">279</a>the door, and throws or pushes the <i>Julklapp</i> into the room. It is
+essential that he should arrive quite unexpectedly, and come and
+go like lightning without revealing his identity. Great efforts
+are made to conceal the gift so that the recipient after much
+trouble in undoing the covering may have to search and search
+again to find it. Sometimes in Sweden a thin gold ring is hidden
+away in a great heavy box, or a little gold heart is put in a
+Christmas cake. Occasionally a man contrives to hide in the
+<i>Julklapp</i> and thus offer himself as a Christmas present to the lady
+whom he loves. The gift is often accompanied by some satirical
+rhyme, or takes a form intended to tease the recipient.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-71" id="Nanchor_12-71" href="#Note_12-71">{71}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Another custom, sometimes found in &ldquo;better-class&rdquo; Swedish
+households, is for the Christmas presents to be given by two
+masked figures, an old man and an old woman. The old man
+holds a bell in his hand and rings it, the old woman carries a basket
+full of sealed packets, which she delivers to the addressees.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-72" id="Nanchor_12-72" href="#Note_12-72">{72}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing specially interesting in modern English modes
+of present-giving. We may, however, perhaps see in the custom
+of Christmas boxes, inexorably demanded and not always willingly
+bestowed, a degeneration of what was once friendly entertainment
+given in return for the good wishes and the luck brought by
+wassailers. Instances of gifts to calling neighbours have already
+come before our notice at several pre-Christmas festivals, notably
+All Souls&rsquo;, St. Clement's, and St. Thomas's. As for the name
+&ldquo;Christmas box,&rdquo; it would seem to have come from the
+receptacles used for the gifts. According to one account apprentices,
+journeymen, and servants used to carry about earthen boxes
+with a slit in them, and when the time for collecting was over,
+broke them to obtain the contents.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-73" id="Nanchor_12-73" href="#Note_12-73">{73}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Christmas card, a sort of attenuated present, seems to be
+of quite modern origin. It is apparently a descendant of the
+&ldquo;school pieces&rdquo; or &ldquo;Christmas pieces&rdquo; popular in England in
+the first half of the nineteenth century&#xfeff;&mdash;sheets of writing-paper
+with designs in pen and ink or copper-plate headings. The first
+Christmas card proper appears to have been issued in 1846, but it
+was not till about 1862 that the custom of card-sending obtained
+any foothold.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-74" id="Nanchor_12-74" href="#Note_12-74">{74}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_280" id="Page_280" href="#Page_280">280</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image20" name="image20" href="images/image20.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image20.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA."
+      title="CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA.</p>
+
+<p><i>By Ferdinand Waldm&ucirc;ller (b. 1793).</i></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_281" id="Page_281" href="#Page_281">281</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_282" id="Page_282" href="#Page_282">282</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_283" id="Page_283" href="#Page_283">283</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_XII" id="Chapter_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h2 class="title1">CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>Prominence of Eating in the English Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;The Boar's Head, the Goose, and
+other Christmas Fare&#xfeff;&mdash;Frumenty, Sowens, Yule Cakes, and the Wassail Bowl&#xfeff;&mdash;Continental
+Christmas Dishes, their Possible Origins&#xfeff;&mdash;French and German Cakes&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+Animals&rsquo; Christmas Feast&#xfeff;&mdash;Cakes in Eastern Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;Relics of Animal
+Sacrifice&#xfeff;&mdash;Hunting the Wren&#xfeff;&mdash;Various Games of Sacrificial Origin.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Feasting Customs.</span></h3>
+
+<p>In the mind of the average sensual Englishman perhaps the
+most vivid images called up by the word Christmas are those
+connected with eating and drinking. &ldquo;Ha pi&ugrave; da fare che i
+forni di Natale in Inghilterra,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_108" id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108">[108]</a> an Italian proverb used of a very
+busy person, sufficiently suggests the character of our Christmas.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_109" id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109">[109]</a>
+It may be that the Christmas dinner looms larger among the
+English than among most other peoples, but in every country
+a distinctive meal of some kind is associated with the season.
+We have already seen how this illustrates the immemorial
+connection between material feasting and religious rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>Let us note some forms of &ldquo;Christmas fare&rdquo; and try to get an
+idea of their origin. First we may look at English feasting
+customs, though, as they have been pretty fully described by
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_284" id="Page_284" href="#Page_284">284</a>previous writers, no very elaborate account of them need
+be given.</p>
+
+<p>The gross eating and drinking in former days at Christmas, of
+which our present mild gluttony is but a pale reflection, would
+seem to be connected with the old November feast, though
+transferred to the season hallowed by Christ's birth. The show
+of slaughtered beasts, adorned with green garlands, in an English
+town just before Christmas, reminds one strongly of the old
+November killing. In displays of this kind the pig's head is
+specially conspicuous, and points to the time when the swine was
+a favourite sacrificial animal.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-1" id="Nanchor_13-1" href="#Note_13-1">{1}</a>
+ We may recall here the traditional
+carol sung at Queen's College, Oxford, as the boar's head is
+solemnly brought in at Christmas, and found elsewhere in other
+forms:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;The boar's head in hand bear I,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Bedeck'd with bays and rosemary;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And I pray you, my masters, be merry,</span><br />
+<span class="i3"><i>Quot estis in convivio.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i3"><i>Caput apri defero,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i3"><i>Reddens laudes Domino.</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-2" id="Nanchor_13-2" href="#Note_13-2">{2}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The Christmas bird provided by the familiar &ldquo;goose club&rdquo;
+may be compared with the German Martinmas goose. The
+more luxurious turkey must be relatively an innovation, for that
+bird seems not to have been introduced into England until the
+sixteenth century.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-3" id="Nanchor_13-3" href="#Note_13-3">{3}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Cakes and pies, partly or wholly of vegetable origin, are, of
+course, as conspicuous at the English Christmas as animal food.
+The peculiar &ldquo;luckiness&rdquo; attached to some of them (as when
+mince-pies, eaten in different houses during the Twelve Days,
+bring a happy month each) makes one suspect some more serious
+original purpose than mere gratification of the appetite. A
+sacrificial or sacramental origin is probable, at least in certain
+cases; a cake made of flour, for instance, may well have been
+regarded as embodying the spirit immanent in the corn.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-4" id="Nanchor_13-4" href="#Note_13-4">{4}</a>
+
+Whether any mystic significance ever belonged to the plum-pudding
+it is hard to say, though the sprig of holly stuck into its
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_285" id="Page_285" href="#Page_285">285</a>top recalls the lucky green boughs we have so often come across,
+and a resemblance to the libations upon the Christmas log might
+be seen in the burning brandy.</p>
+
+<p>A dish once prominent at Christmas was &ldquo;frumenty&rdquo; or
+&ldquo;furmety&rdquo; (variously spelt, and derived from the Latin <i>frumentum</i>,
+corn). It was made of hulled wheat boiled in milk and seasoned
+with cinnamon, sugar, &amp;c.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-5" id="Nanchor_13-5" href="#Note_13-5">{5}</a>
+ This too may have been a cereal
+sacrament. In Yorkshire it was the first thing eaten on
+Christmas morning, just as ale posset was the last thing drunk
+on Christmas Eve. Ale posset was a mixture of beer and milk,
+and each member of the family in turn had to take a &ldquo;sup,&rdquo; as
+also a piece of a large apple-pie.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-6" id="Nanchor_13-6" href="#Note_13-6">{6}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the Highlands of Scotland, among those who observed
+Christmas, a characteristic dish was new sowens (the husks and
+siftings of oatmeal), given to the family early on Christmas Day
+in their beds. They were boiled into the consistence of molasses
+and were poured into as many bickers as there were people to
+partake of them. Everyone on despatching his bicker jumped
+out of bed.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-7" id="Nanchor_13-7" href="#Note_13-7">{7}</a>
+ Here, as in the case of the Yorkshire frumenty, the
+eating has a distinctly ceremonial character.</p>
+
+<p>In the East Riding of Yorkshire a special Yule cake was eaten
+on Christmas Eve, &ldquo;made of flour, barm, large cooking raisins,
+currants, lemon-peel, and nutmeg,&rdquo; and about as large as a
+dinner-plate.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-8" id="Nanchor_13-8" href="#Note_13-8">{8}</a>
+ In Shropshire &ldquo;wigs&rdquo; or caraway buns dipped
+in ale were eaten on Christmas Eve.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-9" id="Nanchor_13-9" href="#Note_13-9">{9}</a>
+ Again elsewhere there
+were Yule Doughs or Dows, little images of paste, presented by
+bakers to their customers.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-10" id="Nanchor_13-10" href="#Note_13-10">{10}</a>
+ We shall see plenty of parallels to
+these on the Continent. When they are in animal or even
+human form they may in some cases have taken the place of
+actual sacrificial victims.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-11" id="Nanchor_13-11" href="#Note_13-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Nottinghamshire the Christmas cake was associated with
+the wassail-bowl in a manner which may be compared with the
+Macedonian custom described later; it was broken up and put
+into the bowl, hot ale was poured over it, and so it was eaten.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-12" id="Nanchor_13-12" href="#Note_13-12">{12}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The wassail-bowl&#xfeff;&mdash;one cannot leave the subject of English
+Yuletide feasting without a few words upon this beloved beaker
+of hot spiced ale and toasted apples (&ldquo;lambswool&rdquo;). <i>Wassail</i> is
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_286" id="Page_286" href="#Page_286">286</a>derived from the Anglo-Saxon <i>wes h&aacute;l</i> = be whole, and wassailing
+is in its essence the wishing of a person's very good health. The
+origin of drinking healths is not obvious; perhaps it may be
+sacramental: the draught may have been at first a means of
+communion with some divinity, and then its consumption may
+have come to be regarded not only as benefiting the partaker,
+but as a rite that could be performed for the welfare of another
+person. Apart from such speculations, we may note the frequent
+mention of wassailing in old English carols of the less ecclesiastical
+type; the singers carried with them a bowl or cup which
+they expected their wealthier neighbours to fill with drink.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-13" id="Nanchor_13-13" href="#Note_13-13">{13}</a>
+
+Sometimes the bowl was adorned with ribbons and had a golden
+apple at the top,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-14" id="Nanchor_13-14" href="#Note_13-14">{14}</a>
+ and it is a noteworthy fact that the box with
+the Christmas images, mentioned in Chapter IV. (p. <a href="#Page_118">118</a>), is
+sometimes called &ldquo;the Vessel [Wassail] Cup.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-15" id="Nanchor_13-15" href="#Note_13-15">{15}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The various Christmas dishes of Europe would form an interesting
+subject for exhaustive study. To suggest a religious
+origin for each would be going too far, for merely economic
+considerations must have had much to do with the matter, but it
+is very probable that in some cases they are relics of sacrifices
+or sacraments.</p>
+
+<p>The pig is a favourite food animal at Christmas in other
+countries than our own, a fact probably connected with sacrificial
+customs. In Denmark and Sweden a pig's head was one of the
+principal articles of the great Christmas Eve repast.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-16" id="Nanchor_13-16" href="#Note_13-16">{16}</a>
+ In
+Germany it is a fairly widespread custom to kill a pig shortly
+before Christmas and partake of it on Christmas Day; its
+entrails and bones and the straw which has been in contact with
+it are supposed to have fertilizing powers.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-17" id="Nanchor_13-17" href="#Note_13-17">{17}</a>
+ In Roumania a pig
+is the Christmas animal <i>par excellence</i>,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-18" id="Nanchor_13-18" href="#Note_13-18">{18}</a>
+ in Russia pigs&rsquo; trotters
+are a favourite dish at the New Year,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-19" id="Nanchor_13-19" href="#Note_13-19">{19}</a>
+ and in every Servian
+house roast pig is the principal Christmas dish.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-20" id="Nanchor_13-20" href="#Note_13-20">{20}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Upper Bavaria there is a custom which almost certainly has
+at its root a sacrifice: a number of poor people club together at
+Christmas-time and buy a cow to be killed and eaten at a
+common feast.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-21" id="Nanchor_13-21" href="#Note_13-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>More doubtful is the sacrificial origin of the dishes of certain
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_287" id="Page_287" href="#Page_287">287</a>special kinds of fish on Christmas Eve. In Saxony and Thuringia
+herring salad is eaten&#xfeff;&mdash;he who bakes it will have money
+all the year&#xfeff;&mdash;and in many parts of Germany and also in Styria
+carp is then consumed.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-22" id="Nanchor_13-22" href="#Note_13-22">{22}</a>
+ Round Erc&eacute; in Brittany the family
+dish is cod.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-23" id="Nanchor_13-23" href="#Note_13-23">{23}</a>
+ In Italy the <i>cenone</i> or great supper held on
+Christmas Eve has fish for its animal basis, and stewed eels are
+particularly popular. It is to be remembered that in Catholic
+countries the Vigil of the Nativity is a fast, and meat is not
+allowed upon it; this alone would account for the prominence of
+fish on Christmas Eve.</p>
+
+<p>We have already come across peculiar cakes eaten at various
+pre-Christmas festivals; at Christmas itself special kinds of bread,
+pastry, and cakes abound on the Continent, and in some cases at
+least may have a religious origin.</p>
+
+<p>In France various sorts of cakes and loaves are known at the
+season of <i>No&euml;l</i>. In Berry on Christmas morning loaves called
+<i>cornab&oelig;ux</i>, made in the shape of horns or a crescent, are distributed
+to the poor. In Lorraine people give one another <i>cogn&eacute;s</i>
+or <i>cogneux</i>, a kind of pastry in the shape of two crescents back
+to back, or else long and narrow in form and with a crescent
+at either end. In some parts of France the <i>cornab&oelig;ux</i> are known
+as <i>h&ocirc;lais</i>, and ploughmen give to the poor as many of these
+loaves as they possess oxen and horses.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-24" id="Nanchor_13-24" href="#Note_13-24">{24}</a>
+ These horns may be
+substitutes for a sacrifice of oxen.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the French Christmas cakes have the form of
+complete oxen or horses&#xfeff;&mdash;such were the thin unleavened cakes
+sold in the early nineteenth century at La Ch&acirc;tre (Indre). In
+the neighbourhood of Chartres there are <i>cochenilles</i> and <i>coquelins</i>
+in animal and human shapes. Little cakes called <i>naulets</i> are sold
+by French bakers, and actually represent the Holy Child. With
+them may be compared the <i>coignoles</i> of French Flanders, cakes of
+oblong form adorned with the figure of the infant Jesus in
+sugar.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-25" id="Nanchor_13-25" href="#Note_13-25">{25}</a>
+ Sometimes the Christmas loaf or cake in France has
+healing properties; a certain kind of cake in Berry and Limousin
+is kept all through the year, and a piece eaten in sickness has
+marvellous powers.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-26" id="Nanchor_13-26" href="#Note_13-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Cortet gives an extraordinary account of a French custom
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_288" id="Page_288" href="#Page_288">288</a>connected with eating and drinking. At Mouthe (Doubs) there
+used to be brought to the church at Christmas pies, cakes, and
+other eatables, and wine of the best. They were called the
+&ldquo;De fructu,&rdquo; and when at Vespers the verse &ldquo;De fructu ventris
+tui ponam super sedem tuam&rdquo; was reached, all the congregation
+made a rush for these refreshments, contended for them, and
+carried them off with singing and shouting.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-27" id="Nanchor_13-27" href="#Note_13-27">{27}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The most remarkable of Christmas cakes or loaves is the
+Swedish and Danish &ldquo;Yule Boar,&rdquo; a loaf in the form of a boar-pig,
+which stands on the table throughout the festal season. It
+is often made from the corn of the last sheaf of the harvest, and
+in it Dr. Frazer finds a clear expression of the idea of the corn-spirit
+as embodied in pig form. &ldquo;Often it is kept till sowing-time
+in spring, when part of it is mixed with the seed corn and
+part given to the ploughman and plough-horses or plough-oxen
+to eat, in the expectation of a good harvest.&rdquo; In some parts of
+the Esthonian island of Oesel the cake has not the form of a boar,
+but bears the same name, and on New Year's Day is given to
+the cattle. In other parts of the island the &ldquo;Yule Boar&rdquo; is
+actually a little pig, roasted on Christmas Eve and set up
+on the table.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-28" id="Nanchor_13-28" href="#Note_13-28">{28}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Germany, besides <i>stollen</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;a sort of plum-loaf&#xfeff;&mdash;biscuits, often
+of animal or human shape, are very conspicuous on Christmas Eve.
+Any one who has witnessed a German Christmas will remember
+the extraordinary variety of them, <i>lebkuchen</i>, <i>pfeffern&uuml;sse</i>, <i>printen</i>,
+<i>spekulatius</i> biscuits, &amp;c. In Berlin a great pile of biscuits heaped up
+on your plate is an important part of the Christmas Eve supper.
+These of course are nowadays mere luxuries, but they may well
+have had some sort of sacrificial origin. An admirable and
+exhaustive study of Teutonic Christmas cakes and biscuits has
+been made, with infinite pains, by an Austrian professor, Dr.
+H&ouml;fler, who reproduces some curious old biscuits, stamped with
+highly artistic patterns, preserved in museums.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-29" id="Nanchor_13-29" href="#Note_13-29">{29}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Among unsophisticated German peasants there is a belief in
+magical powers possessed by bread baked at Christmas, particularly
+when moistened by Christmas dew. (This dew is held to be
+peculiarly sacred, perhaps on account of the words &ldquo;Rorate, coeli,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_289" id="Page_289" href="#Page_289">289</a>desuper&rdquo; used at the Advent Masses.) In Franconia such bread,
+thrown into a dangerous fire, stills the flames; in the north of
+Germany, if put during the Twelve Days into the fodder of the
+cattle, it makes them prolific and healthy throughout the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-30" id="Nanchor_13-30" href="#Note_13-30">{30}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It is pleasant to note that animals are often specially cared for
+at Christmas. Up till the early nineteenth century the cattle in
+Shropshire were always better fed at Christmas than at other
+times, and Miss Burne tells of an old gentleman in Cheshire who
+used then to give his poultry a double portion of grain, for, he
+said, &ldquo;all creation should rejoice at Christmas, and the dumb
+creatures had no other manner of doing so.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-31" id="Nanchor_13-31" href="#Note_13-31">{31}</a>
+ The saying
+reminds one of that lover of Christmas and the animals, St.
+Francis of Assisi. It will be remembered how he wished that
+oxen and asses should have extra corn and hay at Christmas,
+&ldquo;for reverence of the Son of God, whom on such a night the
+most Blessed Virgin Mary did lay down in the stall betwixt the
+ox and the ass.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-32" id="Nanchor_13-32" href="#Note_13-32">{32}</a>
+ It was a gracious thought, and no doubt with
+St. Francis, as with the old Cheshireman, it was a purely Christian
+one; very possibly, however, the original object of such attention
+to the dumb creatures was to bring to the animals, by means of
+the corn, the influence of the spirit of fertility.</p>
+
+<p>In Silesia on Christmas night all the beasts are given wheat to
+make them thrive, and it is believed that if wheat be kept in the
+pocket during the Christmas service and then given to fowls, it
+will make them grow fat and lay many eggs.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-33" id="Nanchor_13-33" href="#Note_13-33">{33}</a>
+ In Sweden on
+Christmas Eve the cattle are given the best forage the house can
+afford, and afterwards a mess of all the viands of which their
+masters have partaken; the horses are given the choicest hay and,
+later on, ale; and the other animals are treated to good things.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-34" id="Nanchor_13-34" href="#Note_13-34">{34}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At Loblang in Hungary the last sheaf at harvest is kept,
+and given on New Year's morning to the wild birds.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-35" id="Nanchor_13-35" href="#Note_13-35">{35}</a>
+ In
+southern Germany corn is put on the roof for them on Christmas
+Eve, or,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-36" id="Nanchor_13-36" href="#Note_13-36">{36}</a>
+ as also in Sweden,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-37" id="Nanchor_13-37" href="#Note_13-37">{37}</a>
+ an unthreshed sheaf is set on a
+pole. In these cases it is possible that the food was originally an
+offering to ancestral or other spirits.</p>
+
+<p><i>Revenons &agrave; nos g&acirc;teaux.</i> In Rome and elsewhere in Italy an
+important article of Christmas food is the <i>panettone</i>, a currant loaf.
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_290" id="Page_290" href="#Page_290">290</a>Such loaves are sent as presents to friends. In eastern Europe,
+too, Christmas loaves or cakes are very conspicuous. The
+<i>chesnitza</i> and <i>kolatch</i> cakes among the southern Slavs are flat
+and wheel-like, with a circular hole in the middle and a number
+of lines radiating from it. In the central hole is sometimes
+placed a lighted taper or a small Christmas-tree hung with
+ribbons, tinsel, and sweetmeats. These cakes, made with
+elaborate ceremonial early in the morning, are solemnly broken
+by the house-father on Christmas Day, and a small piece is eaten
+by each member of the family. In some places one is fixed on
+the horn of the &ldquo;eldest ox,&rdquo; and if he throws it off it is a good
+sign.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-38" id="Nanchor_13-38" href="#Note_13-38">{38}</a>
+ The last practice may be compared with a Herefordshire
+custom which we shall meet with on Twelfth Night (p. <a href="#Page_346">346</a>).</p>
+
+<p>In southern Greece a special kind of flat loaves with a cross on
+the top is made on Christmas Eve. The name given is &ldquo;Christ's
+Loaves.&rdquo; &ldquo;The cloth is not removed from the table; but
+everything is left as it is in the belief that &lsquo;Christ will come and
+eat&rsquo; during the night.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-39" id="Nanchor_13-39" href="#Note_13-39">{39}</a>
+ Probably Christ has here taken the
+place of ancestral spirits.</p>
+
+<p>In Tyrol peasants eat at Christmastide the so-called <i>zelten</i>, a
+kind of pie filled with dried pear-slices, nuts, figs, raisins, and the
+like. It is baked on the Eve of St. Thomas, and its filling is as
+important an event for the whole family as was the plum-pudding
+and mincemeat making in old-fashioned English households.
+When the <i>zelten</i> is filled the sign of the cross is made upon it
+and it is sprinkled with holy water and put in the oven. When
+baked and cooled, it is laid in the family stock of rye and is not
+eaten until St. Stephen's Day or Epiphany. Its cutting by the
+father of the family is a matter of considerable solemnity.
+Smaller pies are made at the same time for the maid-servants, and
+a curious custom is connected with them. It is usual for the
+maids to visit their relations during the Christmas holidays and
+share with them their <i>zelten</i>. A young man who wishes to be
+engaged to a maid should offer to carry her pie for her. This
+is his declaration of love, and if she accepts the offer she signifies
+her approval of him. To him falls the duty or privilege of
+cutting the <i>zelten</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-40" id="Nanchor_13-40" href="#Note_13-40">{40}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_291" id="Page_291" href="#Page_291">291</a>Other cake customs are associated with the Epiphany, and will
+be considered in connection with that festival. We may here
+in conclusion notice a few further articles of Christmas good
+cheer.</p>
+
+<p>In Italy and Spain&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-41" id="Nanchor_13-41" href="#Note_13-41">{41}</a>
+ a sort of nougat known as <i>torrone</i> or
+<i>turron</i> is eaten at Christmas. You may buy it even in London
+in the Italian quarter; in Eyre Street Hill it is sold on Christmas
+Eve on little gaily-decked street stalls. Its use may well be a
+survival of the Roman custom of giving sweet things at the
+Kalends in order that the year might be full of sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>Some Little Russian feasting customs are probably pagan in
+origin, but have received a curious Christian interpretation. All
+Little Russians sit down to honey and porridge on Christmas
+Eve. They call it <i>koutia</i>, and cherish the custom as something
+that distinguishes them from Great and White Russians. Each
+dish is said to represent the Holy Crib. First porridge is put in,
+which is like putting straw in the manger; then each person
+helps himself to honey and fruit, and that symbolizes the Babe.
+A place is made in the porridge, and then the honey and fruit are
+poured in; the fruit stands for the body, the honey for the spirit
+or the blood.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-42" id="Nanchor_13-42" href="#Note_13-42">{42}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Something like this is the special dish eaten in every Roumanian
+peasant household on Christmas Eve&#xfeff;&mdash;the <i>turte</i>. It is made up
+of a pile of thin dry leaves of dough, with melted sugar or honey,
+or powdered walnut, or the juice of the hemp-seed. The <i>turte</i>
+are traditionally said to represent the swaddling clothes of the
+Holy Child.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-43" id="Nanchor_13-43" href="#Note_13-43">{43}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Poland a few weeks before Christmas monks bring round
+small packages of wafers made of flour and water, blessed by a
+priest, and with figures stamped upon them. No Polish family
+is without these <i>oplatki</i>; they are sent in letters to relations and
+friends, as we send Christmas cards. When the first star appears
+on Christmas Eve the whole family, beginning with the eldest
+member, break one of these wafers between themselves, at the
+same time exchanging good wishes. Afterwards the master
+and mistress go to the servants&rsquo; quarters to divide the wafer
+there.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-44" id="Nanchor_13-44" href="#Note_13-44">{44}</a>
+</p>
+
+<h3><a class="pagenum" name="Page_292" id="Page_292" href="#Page_292">292</a><span class="smcap">Relics of Sacrifice.</span></h3>
+
+<p>We have noted a connection, partial at least, between Christmas
+good cheer and sacrifice; let us now glance at a few customs
+of a different character but seemingly of sacrificial origin.</p>
+
+<p>Traces of sacrifices of cats and dogs are to be found in Germany
+and Bohemia. In Lauenburg and Mecklenburg on Christmas
+morning, before the cattle are watered, a dog is thrown into their
+drinking water, in order that they may not suffer from the
+mange. In the Uckermark a cat may be substituted for the dog.
+In Bohemia a black cat is caught, boiled, and buried by night
+under a tree, to keep evil spirits from injuring the fields.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-45" id="Nanchor_13-45" href="#Note_13-45">{45}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A strange Christmas custom is the &ldquo;hunting of the wren,&rdquo;
+once widespread in England and France and still practised in
+Ireland. In the Isle of Man very early on Christmas morning,
+when the church bells had rung out midnight, servants went out
+to hunt the wren. They killed the bird, fastened it to the top
+of a long pole, and carried it in procession to every house,
+chanting these words:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">We hunted the wren for every one.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>At each house they sought to collect money. At last, when all
+had been visited, they laid the wren on a bier, carried it to the
+churchyard, and buried it with the utmost solemnity, singing
+Manx dirges. Another account, from the mid-nineteenth
+century, describes how on St. Stephen's Day Manx boys went
+from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs in the
+centre of two hoops crossing one another at right angles and
+decorated with evergreens and ribbons. In exchange for a small
+coin they would give a feather of the wren, which was carefully
+kept as a preservative against shipwreck during the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_110" id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110">[110]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-46" id="Nanchor_13-46" href="#Note_13-46">{46}</a>
+
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_293" id="Page_293" href="#Page_293">293</a>There are also traces of a Manx custom of boiling and eating
+the bird.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-48" id="Nanchor_13-48" href="#Note_13-48">{48}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The wren is popularly called &ldquo;the king of birds,&rdquo; and it is
+supposed to be highly unlucky to kill one at ordinary times.
+Probably it was once regarded as sacred, and the Christmas
+&ldquo;hunting&rdquo; is the survival of an annual custom of slaying the
+divine animal, such as is found among primitive peoples.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-49" id="Nanchor_13-49" href="#Note_13-49">{49}</a>
+ The
+carrying of its body from door to door is apparently intended to
+convey to each house a portion of its virtues, while the actual
+eating of the bird would be a sort of communion feast. Perhaps
+the custom, in a Cornish village, of eating blackbird pie on
+Twelfth Day should be explained in the same way.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-50" id="Nanchor_13-50" href="#Note_13-50">{50}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>I can here hardly do more than allude to the many games&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-51" id="Nanchor_13-51" href="#Note_13-51">{51}</a>
+
+that were traditional in England at Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;hoodman-blind,
+shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, snap-dragon,
+and the rest. To attempt to describe and explain them would
+lead me too far, but it is highly probable that some at least might
+be traced to an origin in sacrificial ritual. The degeneration
+of religious rites into mere play is, indeed, as we have seen, a
+process illustrated by the whole history of Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>Only two British Christmas games can be discussed in this
+book: blindman's buff and football. An account of a remarkable
+Christmas football match will be found in the chapter on
+Epiphany customs, where it is brought into connection with
+that closely related game, the &ldquo;Haxey hood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As for blindman's buff, it is distinctly a Christmas sport, and it
+is known nearly all over Europe by names derived from animals,
+<i>e.g.</i>, &ldquo;blind cow&rdquo; and &ldquo;blind mouse.&rdquo; Mr. N. W. Thomas has
+suggested that &ldquo;the explanation of these names is that the players
+originally wore masks; the game is known in some cases as the
+&lsquo;blinde Mumm,&rsquo; or blind mask.... The player who is &lsquo;it&rsquo;
+seems to be the sacrificer; he bears the same name as the victim,
+just as in agricultural customs the reaper of the last corn bears the
+same name as the last sheaf.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-52" id="Nanchor_13-52" href="#Note_13-52">{52}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Scandinavian countries are very rich in Christmas games
+and dances,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-53" id="Nanchor_13-53" href="#Note_13-53">{53}</a>
+ of which it would be interesting to attempt explanations
+if space allowed. One Swedish song and dance game&#xfeff;&mdash;it
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_294" id="Page_294" href="#Page_294">294</a>may be related to the sword-dance (see <a href="#Chapter_XIII">Chapter XIII.</a>)&#xfeff;&mdash;is
+obviously sacrificial. Several youths, with blackened faces and
+persons disguised, are the performers. One of them is put to
+death with a knife by a woman in hideous attire. Afterwards,
+with gross gestures, she dances with the victim.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-54" id="Nanchor_13-54" href="#Note_13-54">{54}</a>
+ According to
+another account, from Gothland, the victim sits clad in a skin,
+holding in his mouth a wisp of straw cut sharp at the ends and
+standing out. It has been conjectured that this is meant to
+resemble a swine's bristles, and that the man represents a hog
+sacrificed to Frey.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-55" id="Nanchor_13-55" href="#Note_13-55">{55}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Lastly a Russian game may be mentioned, though it has no
+sacrificial suggestion. During the Christmas season girls play at
+what is called &ldquo;the Burial of the Gold.&rdquo; They form a circle,
+with one girl standing in the centre, and pass from hand to hand
+a gold ring, which the maiden inside tries to detect. Meanwhile
+a song is sung, &ldquo;Gold I bury, gold I bury.&rdquo; Some imaginative
+mythologists interpret the ring as representing the sun, buried by
+the clouds of winter.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-56" id="Nanchor_13-56" href="#Note_13-56">{56}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_295" id="Page_295" href="#Page_295">295</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_296" id="Page_296" href="#Page_296">296</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_297" id="Page_297" href="#Page_297">297</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_XIII" id="Chapter_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">MASKING, THE MUMMERS&rsquo; PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE BOY BISHOP</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>English Court Masking&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;The Lord of Misrule&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;The Mummers&rsquo; Play, the Sword-Dance,
+and the Morris Dance&#xfeff;&mdash;Origin of St. George and other Characters&#xfeff;&mdash;Mumming
+in Eastern Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;The Feast of Fools, its History and Suppression&#xfeff;&mdash;The
+Boy Bishop, his Functions and Sermons&#xfeff;&mdash;Modern Survivals of the Boy
+Bishop.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image21" name="image21" href="images/image21.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image21.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST. PETER."
+      title="YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST. PETER." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST. PETER.</p>
+
+<p>From an article by Mr. T. M. Fallow in <i>The Antiquary</i>, May, 1895.</p>
+<p>(By permission of Messrs. Elliot Stock.)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>We have already seen a good deal of masking in connection with
+St. Nicholas, Knecht Ruprecht, and other figures of the German
+Christmas; we may next give some attention to English customs
+of the same sort during the Twelve Days, and then pass on to
+the strange burlesque ceremonies of the Feast of Fools and
+the Boy Bishop, ceremonies which show an intrusion of pagan
+mummery into the sanctuary itself.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Christmas Masking.</span></h3>
+
+<p>The custom of Christmas masking, &ldquo;mumming,&rdquo; or &ldquo;disguising&rdquo;
+can be traced at the English court as early as the reign
+of Edward III. It is in all probability connected with that
+wearing of beasts&rsquo; heads and skins of which we have already noted
+various examples&#xfeff;&mdash;its origin in folk-custom seems to have been
+the coming of a band of worshippers clad in this uncouth but
+auspicious garb to bring good luck to a house.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-1" id="Nanchor_14-1" href="#Note_14-1">{1}</a>
+ The most direct
+English survival is found in the village mummers who still call
+themselves &ldquo;guisers&rdquo; or &ldquo;geese-dancers&rdquo; and claim the right to
+enter every house. These will be dealt with shortly, after a consideration
+of more courtly customs of the same kind.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_298" id="Page_298" href="#Page_298">298</a>In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the English
+court masque reached its greatest developments; the fundamental
+idea was then generally overlaid with splendid trappings, the
+dresses and the arrangements were often extremely elaborate, and
+the introduction of dialogued speech made these &ldquo;disguises&rdquo;
+regular dramatic performances. A notable example is Ben Jonson's
+&ldquo;Masque of Christmas.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-2" id="Nanchor_14-2" href="#Note_14-2">{2}</a>
+ Shakespeare, however, gives us
+in &ldquo;Henry VIII.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-3" id="Nanchor_14-3" href="#Note_14-3">{3}</a>
+ an example of a simpler impromptu form:
+the king and a party dressed up as shepherds break in upon a
+banquet of Wolsey's.</p>
+
+<p>In this volume we are more concerned with the popular
+Christmas than with the festivities of kings and courts and
+grandees. Mention must, however, be made of a personage who
+played an important part in the Christmas of the Tudor court and
+appeared also in colleges, Inns of Court, and the houses of the
+nobility&#xfeff;&mdash;the &ldquo;Lord of Misrule.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-4" id="Nanchor_14-4" href="#Note_14-4">{4}</a>
+ He was annually elected to
+preside over the revels, had a retinue of courtiers, and was
+surrounded by elaborate ceremonial. He seems to be the equivalent
+and was probably the direct descendant of the &ldquo;Abbot&rdquo; or
+&ldquo;Bishop&rdquo; of the Feast of Fools, who will be noticed later in this
+chapter. Sometimes indeed he is actually called &ldquo;Abbot of Misrule.&rdquo;
+A parallel to him is the Twelfth Night &ldquo;king,&rdquo; and he
+appears to be a courtly example of the temporary monarch of folk-custom,
+though his name is sometimes extended to &ldquo;kings&rdquo; of
+quite vulgar origin elected not by court or gentry but by the
+common people. The &ldquo;Lord of Misrule&rdquo; was among the relics
+of paganism most violently attacked by Puritan writers like
+Stubbes and Prynne, and the Great Rebellion seems to have
+been the death of him.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Mummers&rsquo; Plays and Morris Dances.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Let us turn now to the rustic Christmas mummers, to-day fast
+disappearing, but common enough in the mid-nineteenth century.
+Their goings-on are really far more interesting, because more
+traditional, than the elaborate shows and dressings-up of the
+court. Their names vary: &ldquo;mummers&rdquo; and &ldquo;guisers&rdquo; are the
+commonest; in Sussex they are &ldquo;tipteerers,&rdquo; perhaps because of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_299" id="Page_299" href="#Page_299">299</a>the perquisites they collect, in Cornwall &ldquo;geese-dancers&rdquo;
+(&ldquo;geese&rdquo; no doubt comes from &ldquo;disguise&rdquo;), in Shropshire
+&ldquo;morris&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;or &ldquo;merry&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;dancers.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-5" id="Nanchor_14-5" href="#Note_14-5">{5}</a>
+ It is to be noted that
+they are unbidden guests, and enter your house as of right.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-6" id="Nanchor_14-6" href="#Note_14-6">{6}</a>
+
+Sometimes they merely dance, sing, and feast, but commonly
+they perform a rude drama.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-7" id="Nanchor_14-7" href="#Note_14-7">{7}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The plays acted by the mummers&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-8" id="Nanchor_14-8" href="#Note_14-8">{8}</a>
+ vary so much that it is
+difficult to describe them in general terms. There is no reason
+to suppose that the words are of great antiquity&#xfeff;&mdash;the earliest
+form may perhaps date from the seventeenth century; they
+appear to be the result of a crude dramatic and literary instinct
+working upon the remains of traditional ritual, and manipulating
+it for purposes of entertainment. The central figure is St.
+George (occasionally he is called Sir, King, or Prince George),
+and the main dramatic substance, after a prologue and introduction
+of the characters, is a fight and the arrival of a doctor to
+bring back the slain to life. At the close comes a <i>qu&ecirc;te</i> for
+money. The name George is found in all the Christmas plays,
+but the other characters have a bewildering variety of names
+ranging from Hector and Alexander to Bonaparte and Nelson.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chambers in two very interesting and elaborately documented
+chapters has traced a connection between these St.
+George players and the sword-dancers found at Christmas or
+other festivals in Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, and
+Great Britain. The sword-dance in its simplest form is described
+by Tacitus in his &ldquo;Germania&rdquo;: &ldquo;they have,&rdquo; he says of the Germans,
+&ldquo;but one kind of public show: in every gathering it is the
+same. Naked youths, who profess this sport, fling themselves in
+dance among swords and levelled lances.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-9" id="Nanchor_14-9" href="#Note_14-9">{9}</a>
+ In certain forms of
+the dance there are figures in which the swords are brought
+together on the heads of performers, or a pretence is made to cut
+at heads and feet, or the swords are put in a ring round a person's
+neck. This strongly suggests that an execution, probably a
+sacrifice, lies at the bottom of the dances. In several cases,
+moreover, they are accompanied by sets of verses containing the
+incident of a quarrel and the violent death of one of the
+performers. The likeness to the central feature of the <a class="pagenum" name="Page_300" id="Page_300" href="#Page_300">300</a>St.
+George play&#xfeff;&mdash;the slaying&#xfeff;&mdash;will be noticed. In one of the
+dances, too, there is even a doctor who revives the victim.</p>
+
+<p>In England the sword-dance is found chiefly in the north, but
+with it appear to be identical the morris-dances&#xfeff;&mdash;characterized
+by the wearing of jingling bells&#xfeff;&mdash;which are commoner in the
+southern counties. Blackened faces are common in both, and
+both have the same grotesque figures, a man and a woman, often
+called Tommy and Bessy in the sword-dance and &ldquo;the fool&rdquo; and
+Maid Marian in the morris. Moreover the morris-dancers in
+England sometimes use swords, and in one case the performers
+of an undoubted sword-dance were called &ldquo;morrice&rdquo; dancers in
+the eighteenth century. Bells too, so characteristic of the
+morris, are mentioned in some Continental accounts of the
+sword-dance.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_111" id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111">[111]</a></p>
+
+<p>Intermediate between these dances and the fully developed St.
+George dramas are the plays performed on Plough Monday in
+Lincolnshire and the East Midlands. They all contain a good
+deal of dancing, a violent death and a revival, and grotesques
+found both in the dances and in the Christmas plays.</p>
+
+<p>The sword-dance thus passes by a gradual transition, the
+dancing diminishing, the dramatic elements increasing, into the
+mummers&rsquo; plays of St. George. The central motive, death and
+revival, Mr. Chambers regards as a symbol of the resurrection of
+the year or the spirit of vegetation,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_112" id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112">[112]</a> like the Thuringian custom
+of executing a &ldquo;wild man&rdquo; covered with leaves, whom a doctor
+brings to life again by bleeding. This piece of ritual has apparently
+been attracted to Christmas from an early feast of spring,
+and Plough Monday, when the East Midland plays take place, is
+just such an early spring feast. Again, in some places the <a class="pagenum" name="Page_301" id="Page_301" href="#Page_301">301</a>St.
+George play is performed at Easter, a date alluded to in the title,
+&ldquo;Pace-eggers&rsquo;&rdquo; or &ldquo;Pasque-eggers&rsquo;&rdquo; play.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-13" id="Nanchor_14-13" href="#Note_14-13">{13}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Two grotesque figures appear with varying degrees of clearness
+and with various names in the dances and in the plays&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+&ldquo;fool&rdquo; (Tommy) who wears the skin and tail of a fox or other
+animal, and a man dressed in woman's clothes (Bessy). In these
+we may recognize the skin-clad mummer and the man aping a
+woman whom we meet in the old Kalends denunciations. Sometimes
+the two are combined, while a hobby-horse also not
+unfrequently appears.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-14" id="Nanchor_14-14" href="#Note_14-14">{14}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>How exactly St. George came to be the central figure of the
+Christmas plays is uncertain; possibly they may be a development
+of a dance in which appeared the &ldquo;Seven Champions,&rdquo; the
+English national heroes&#xfeff;&mdash;of whom Richard Johnson wrote a
+history in 1596&#xfeff;&mdash;with St. George at their head. It is more
+probable, however, that the saint came in from the mediaeval
+pageants held on his day in many English towns.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-15" id="Nanchor_14-15" href="#Note_14-15">{15}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Can it be that the German St. Nicholas plays are more
+Christianized and sophisticated forms of folk-dramas like in origin
+to those we have been discussing? They certainly resemble the
+English plays in the manner in which one actor calls in another
+by name; while the grotesque figures introduced have some likeness
+to the &ldquo;fool&rdquo; of the morris.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas mumming, it may be added, is found in eastern as
+well as western Europe. In Greece, where ecclesiastical condemnations
+of such things can be traced with remarkable clearness
+from early times to the twelfth century, it takes sundry forms.
+&ldquo;At Pharsala,&rdquo; writes Mr. J. C. Lawson, &ldquo;there is a sort of play
+at the Epiphany, in which the mummers represent bride, bridegroom,
+and &lsquo;Arab&rsquo;; the Arab tries to carry off the bride, and
+the bridegroom defends her.... Formerly also at &lsquo;Kozane and
+in many other parts of Greece,&rsquo; according to a Greek writer in the
+early part of the nineteenth century, throughout the Twelve
+Days boys carrying bells used to go round the houses, singing
+songs and having &lsquo;one or more of their company dressed up with
+masks and bells and foxes&rsquo; brushes and other such things to give
+them a weird and monstrous look.&rsquo;&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-16" id="Nanchor_14-16" href="#Note_14-16">{16}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_302" id="Page_302" href="#Page_302">302</a>In Russia, too, mummers used to go about at Christmastide,
+visiting houses, dancing, and performing all kinds of antics.
+&ldquo;Prominent parts were always played by human representatives
+of a goat and a bear. Some of the party would be disguised as
+&lsquo;Lazaruses,&rsquo; that is, as blind beggars.&rdquo; A certain number of
+the mummers were generally supposed to play the part of thieves
+anxious to break in.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-17" id="Nanchor_14-17" href="#Note_14-17">{17}</a>
+ Readers of Tolstoy's &ldquo;War and Peace&rdquo;
+may remember a description of some such maskings in the
+year 1810.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Feast of Fools.</span></h3>
+
+<p>So far, in this Second Part, we have been considering customs
+practised chiefly in houses, streets, and fields. We must now turn
+to certain festivities following hard upon Christmas Day, which,
+though pagan in origin and sometimes even blasphemous, found
+their way in the Middle Ages within the walls of the church.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after Christmas a group of <i>tripudia</i> or revels was held
+by the various inferior clergy and ministrants of cathedrals and
+other churches. These festivals, of which the best known are
+the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop ceremonies, have been so
+fully described by other writers, and my space here is so limited,
+that I need but treat them in outline, and for detail refer the reader
+to such admirable accounts as are to be found in Chapters XIII.,
+XIV., and XV. of Mr. Chamber's &ldquo;The Mediaeval Stage.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-18" id="Nanchor_14-18" href="#Note_14-18">{18}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Johannes Belethus, Rector of Theology at Paris towards the
+end of the twelfth century, speaks of four <i>tripudia</i> held after
+Christmas:&#xfeff;&mdash;those of the deacons on St. Stephen's Day, the priests
+on St. John's, the choir-boys on Holy Innocents&rsquo;, and the subdeacons
+on the Circumcision, the Epiphany, or the Octave of the
+Epiphany. The feast of subdeacons, says Belethus, &ldquo;we call
+that of fools.&rdquo; It is this feast which, though not apparently the
+earliest in origin of the four, was the most riotous and disorderly,
+and shows most clearly its pagan character. Belethus&rsquo; mention of
+it is the first clear notice, though disorderly revels of the same kind
+seem to have existed at Constantinople as early as the ninth century.
+At first confined to the subdeacons, the Feast of Fools became in
+its later developments a festival not only of that order but of the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_303" id="Page_303" href="#Page_303">303</a>inferior clergy in general, of the vicars choral, the chaplains, and
+the choir-clerks, as distinguished from the canons. For this
+rabble of poor and low-class clergy it was no doubt a welcome
+relaxation, and one can hardly wonder that they let themselves
+go in burlesquing the sacred but often wearisome rites at which it
+was their business to be present through many long hours, or
+that they delighted to usurp for once in a way the functions
+ordinarily performed by their superiors. The putting down of
+the mighty from their seat and the exalting of them of low
+degree was the keynote of the festival. While &ldquo;Deposuit
+potentes de sede: et exaltavit humiles&rdquo; was being sung at the
+&ldquo;Magnificat,&rdquo; it would appear that the precentor's <i>baculus</i> or
+staff was handed over to the clerk who was to be &ldquo;lord of the
+feast&rdquo; for the year, and throughout the services of the day the
+inferior clergy predominated, under the leadership of this chosen
+&ldquo;lord.&rdquo; He was usually given some title of ecclesiastical dignity,
+&ldquo;bishop,&rdquo; &ldquo;prelate,&rdquo; &ldquo;archbishop,&rdquo; &ldquo;cardinal,&rdquo; or even &ldquo;pope,&rdquo;
+was vested in full pontificals, and in some cases sat on the real
+bishop's throne, gave benedictions, and issued indulgences.</p>
+
+<p>These lower clergy, it must be remembered, belonged to the
+peasant or small <i>bourgeois</i> class and were probably for the most
+part but ill-educated. They were likely to bring with them
+into the Church the superstitions floating about among the
+people, and the Feast of Fools may be regarded as a recoil of
+paganism upon Christianity in its very sanctuary. &ldquo;An ebullition
+of the natural lout beneath the cassock&rdquo; it has been called by
+Mr. Chambers, and many of its usages may be explained by the
+reaction of coarse natures freed for once from restraint. It
+brought to light, however, not merely personal vulgarity, but a
+whole range of traditional customs, derived probably from a fusion
+of the Roman feast of the Kalends of January with Teutonic or
+Celtic heathen festivities.</p>
+
+<p>A general account of its usages is given in a letter addressed
+in 1445 by the Paris Faculty of Theology to the bishops and
+chapters of France:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous
+visages at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_304" id="Page_304" href="#Page_304">304</a>women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat
+black puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying
+Mass. They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke
+from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church,
+without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the
+town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter
+of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent
+gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-19" id="Nanchor_14-19" href="#Note_14-19">{19}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The letter also speaks of &ldquo;bishops&rdquo; or &ldquo;archbishops&rdquo; of Fools,
+who wore mitres and held pastoral staffs. We here see clearly,
+besides mere irreverence, an outcrop of pagan practices. Topsy-turvydom,
+the temporary exaltation of inferiors, was itself a
+characteristic of the Kalends celebrations, and a still more remarkable
+feature of them was, as we have seen, the wearing of beast-masks
+and the dressing up of men in women's clothes. And
+what is the &ldquo;bishop&rdquo; or &ldquo;archbishop&rdquo; but a parallel to, and, we
+may well believe, an example of, the mock king whom Dr. Frazer
+has traced in so many a folk-festival, and who is found at the
+<i>Saturnalia</i>?</p>
+
+<p>One more feature of the Feast of Fools must be considered,
+the Ass who gave to it the not uncommon title of <i>asinaria festa</i>.
+At Bourges, Sens, and Beauvais, a curious half-comic hymn was
+sung in church, the so-called &ldquo;Prose of the Ass.&rdquo; It begins as
+follows:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Orientis partibus</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Adventavit Asinus,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Pulcher et fortissimus,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sarcinis aptissimus.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hez, Sir Asnes, car chantez,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Belle bouche rechignez,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Vous aurez du foin assez</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et de l'avoine a plantez.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And after eight verses in praise of the beast, with some mention
+of his connection with Bethlehem and the Wise Men, it closes
+thus:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Amen dicas, Asine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Iam satur de gramine,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_305" id="Page_305" href="#Page_305">305</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Amen, Amen, itera,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Aspernare vetera.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Hez va, hez va! hez va, hez!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Bialx Sire Asnes, car allez:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Belle bouche, car chantez.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-20" id="Nanchor_14-20" href="#Note_14-20">{20}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>An ass, it would seem, was actually brought into church, at
+Beauvais at all events, during the singing of this song on the
+feast of the Circumcision. On January&nbsp;14 an extraordinary
+ceremony took place there. A girl with a child in her arms rode
+upon an ass into St. Stephen's church, to represent the Flight
+into Egypt. The Introit, &ldquo;Kyrie,&rdquo; &ldquo;Gloria,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Credo&rdquo;
+at Mass ended in a bray, and at the close of the service the priest
+instead of saying &ldquo;Ite, missa est,&rdquo; had to bray three times, and
+the people to respond in like manner. Mr. Chambers's theory is
+that the ass was a descendant of the <i>cervulus</i> or hobby-buck who
+figures so largely in ecclesiastical condemnations of Kalends
+customs.</p>
+
+<p>The country <i>par excellence</i> of the Feast of the Fools was
+France. It can also be traced in Germany and Bohemia, while
+in England too there are notices of it, though far fewer than in
+France. Its abuses were the subject of frequent denunciations
+by Church reformers from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.
+The feast was prohibited at various times, and notably by the
+Council of Basle in 1435, but it was too popular to be quickly
+suppressed, and it took a century and a half to die out after this
+condemnation by a general council of the Church. In one
+cathedral, Amiens, it even lingered until 1721.</p>
+
+<p>When in the fifteenth century and later the Feast of Fools was
+expelled from the churches of France, associations of laymen
+sprang up to carry on its traditions outside. It was indeed a form
+of entertainment which the townsfolk as well as the lower clergy
+thoroughly appreciated, and they were by no means willing to let
+it die. A <i>Prince des Sots</i> took the place of the &ldquo;bishop,&rdquo; and
+was chosen by <i>soci&eacute;t&eacute;s joyeuses</i> organized by the youth of the cities
+for New Year merrymaking. Gradually their activities grew,
+and their celebrations came to take place at other festive times
+beside the Christmas season. The <i>sots</i> had a distinctive dress, its
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_306" id="Page_306" href="#Page_306">306</a>most characteristic feature being a hood with asses&rsquo; ears, probably
+a relic of the primitive days when the heads of sacrificed animals
+were worn by festal worshippers.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-21" id="Nanchor_14-21" href="#Note_14-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Boy Bishop.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Of older standing than the Feast of Fools were the Christmas
+revels of the deacons, the priests, and the choir-boys. They can
+be traced back to the early tenth century, and may have
+originated at the great song-school of St. Gall near Constance.
+The most important of the three feasts was that of the boys on
+Holy Innocents&rsquo; Day, a theoretically appropriate date. Corresponding
+to the &ldquo;lord&rdquo; of the Feast of Fools was the famous
+&ldquo;Boy Bishop,&rdquo; a choir-boy chosen by the lads themselves, who
+was vested in cope and mitre, held a pastoral staff, and gave the
+benediction. Other boys too usurped the dignities of their
+elders, and were attired as dean, archdeacons, and canons.
+Offices for the festival, in which the Boy Bishop figures largely,
+are to be found in English, French, and German service-books,
+the best known in this country being those in the Sarum Processional
+and Breviary. In England these ceremonies were far
+more popular and lasting than the Feast of Fools, and, unlike it,
+they were recognized and approved by authority, probably
+because boys were more amenable to discipline than men, and
+objectionable features could be pruned away with comparative
+ease. The festivities must have formed a delightful break in the
+year of the mediaeval schoolboy, for whom holidays, as distinguished
+from holy-days for church-going, scarcely existed. The
+feast, as we shall see, was by no means confined within the
+church walls; there was plenty of merrymaking and money-making
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>Minute details have been preserved of the Boy Bishop customs
+at St. Paul's Cathedral in the thirteenth century. It had
+apparently been usual for the &ldquo;bishop&rdquo; to make the cathedral
+dignitaries act as taper- and incense-bearers, thus reversing matters
+so that the great performed the functions of the lowly. In 1263
+this was forbidden, and only clerks of lower rank might be chosen
+for these offices. But the &ldquo;bishop&rdquo; had the right to demand
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_307" id="Page_307" href="#Page_307">307</a>after Compline on the Eve of the Innocents a supper for himself
+and his train from the Dean or one of his canons. The number
+of his following must, however, be limited; if he went to the
+Dean's he might take with him a train of fifteen: two chaplains,
+two taper-bearers, five clerks, two vergers, and four residentiary
+canons; if to a lesser dignitary his attendants were to be fewer.</p>
+
+<p>On Innocents&rsquo; Day he was given a dinner, after which came a
+cavalcade through the city, that the &ldquo;bishop&rdquo; might bless the
+people. He had also to preach a sermon&#xfeff;&mdash;no doubt written
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>Examples of such discourses are still extant,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-22" id="Nanchor_14-22" href="#Note_14-22">{22}</a>
+ and are not without
+quaint touches. For instance the bidding prayer before one
+of them alludes to &ldquo;the ryghte reverende fader and worshypfull
+lorde my broder Bysshopp of London, your dyoceasan,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;my worshypfull broder [the] Deane of this cathedrall
+chirche,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-23" id="Nanchor_14-23" href="#Note_14-23">{23}</a>
+ while in another the preacher remarks, speaking of
+the choristers and children of the song-school, &ldquo;Yt is not so
+long sens I was one of them myself.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-24" id="Nanchor_14-24" href="#Note_14-24">{24}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In some places it appears, though this is by no means certain,
+that the boy actually sang Mass. The &ldquo;bishop's&rdquo; office was a
+very desirable one not merely because of the feasting, but because
+he had usually the right to levy contributions on the faithful,
+and the amounts collected were often very large. At York,
+for instance, in 1396 the &ldquo;bishop&rdquo; pocketed about &pound;77, all
+expenses paid.</p>
+
+<p>The general parallelism of the Boy Bishop customs and the
+Feast of Fools is obvious, and no doubt they had much the same
+folk-origin. One point, already mentioned, should specially be
+noticed: the election of the Boy Bishop generally took place on
+December&nbsp;5, the Eve of St. Nicholas, patron of children; he was
+often called &ldquo;Nicholas bishop&rdquo;; and sometimes, as at Eton and
+Mayence, he exercised episcopal functions at divine service on the
+eve and the feast itself. It is possible, as Mr. Chambers suggests,
+that St. Nicholas's Day was an older date for the boys&rsquo; festival
+than Holy Innocents&rsquo;, and that from the connection with St.
+Nicholas, the bishop saint <i>par excellence</i> (he was said to have been
+consecrated by divine command when still a mere layman), sprang
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_308" id="Page_308" href="#Page_308">308</a>the custom of giving the title &ldquo;bishop&rdquo; to the &ldquo;lord&rdquo; first of
+the boys&rsquo; feast and later of the Feast of Fools.</p>
+
+<p>In the late Middle Ages the Boy Bishop was found not merely
+in cathedral, monastic, and collegiate churches but in many
+parish churches throughout England and Scotland. Various
+inventories of the vestments and ornaments provided for him
+still exist. With the beginnings of the Reformation came his
+suppression: a proclamation of Henry VIII., dated July&nbsp;22,
+1541, commands &ldquo;that from henceforth all suche superstitions
+be loste and clyerlye extinguisshed throughowte all this his realmes
+and dominions, forasmoche as the same doo resemble rather the
+unlawfull superstition of gentilitie [paganism], than the pure and
+sincere religion of Christe.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-25" id="Nanchor_14-25" href="#Note_14-25">{25}</a>
+ In Mary's reign the Boy Bishop
+reappeared, along with other &ldquo;Popish&rdquo; usages, but after
+Elizabeth's accession he naturally fell into oblivion. A few
+traces of him lingered in the seventeenth century. &ldquo;The
+Schoole-boies in the west,&rdquo; says Aubrey, &ldquo;still religiously observe
+St. Nicholas day (Decemb. 6th), he was the Patron of the
+Schoole-boies. At Curry-Yeovill in Somersetshire, where there
+is a Howschole (or schole) in the Church, they have annually
+at that time a Barrell of good Ale brought into the church; and
+that night they have the priviledge to breake open their Masters
+Cellar-dore.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-26" id="Nanchor_14-26" href="#Note_14-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In France he seems to have gradually vanished, as, after the
+Reformation, the Catholic Church grew more and more
+&ldquo;respectable,&rdquo; but traces of him are to be found in the
+eighteenth century at Lyons and Rheims; and at Sens, even in
+the nineteenth, the choir-boys used to play at being bishops on
+Innocents&rsquo; Day and call their &ldquo;archbishop&rdquo; <i>&acirc;ne</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;a memory this
+of the old <i>asinaria festa</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-27" id="Nanchor_14-27" href="#Note_14-27">{27}</a>
+ In Denmark a vague trace of him
+was retained in the nineteenth century in a children's game. A
+boy was dressed up in a white shirt, and seated on a chair, and
+the children sang a verse beginning, &ldquo;Here we consecrate a Yule-bishop,&rdquo;
+and offered him nuts and apples.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-28" id="Nanchor_14-28" href="#Note_14-28">{28}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_309" id="Page_309" href="#Page_309">309</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_310" id="Page_310" href="#Page_310">310</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_311" id="Page_311" href="#Page_311">311</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_XIV" id="Chapter_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS&rsquo; DAYS</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day&#xfeff;&mdash;The Swedish St. Stephen&#xfeff;&mdash;St. John's
+Wine&#xfeff;&mdash;Childermas and its Beatings.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The three saints&rsquo; days immediately following Christmas&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+Stephen's (December&nbsp;26), St. John the Evangelist's (December&nbsp;27),
+and the Holy Innocents&rsquo; (December&nbsp;28)&#xfeff;&mdash;have still various folk-customs
+associated with them, in some cases purely secular, in others
+hallowed by the Church.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">St. Stephen's Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>In Tyrolese churches early in the morning of St. Stephen's Day
+there takes place a consecration of water and of salt brought by
+the people. The water is used by the peasants to sprinkle food,
+barns, and fields in order to avert the influence of witches and evil
+spirits, and bread soaked in it is given to the cattle when they are
+driven out to pasture on Whit Monday. The salt, too, is given
+to the beasts, and the peasants themselves partake of it before any
+important journey like a pilgrimage. Moreover when a storm
+is threatening some is thrown into the fire as a protection
+against hail.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-1" id="Nanchor_15-1" href="#Note_15-1">{1}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The most striking thing about St. Stephen's Day, however, is
+its connection with horses. St. Stephen is their patron; in England
+in former times they were bled on his festival in the belief
+that it would benefit them,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-2" id="Nanchor_15-2" href="#Note_15-2">{2}</a>
+ and the custom is still continued in
+some parts of Austria.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-3" id="Nanchor_15-3" href="#Note_15-3">{3}</a>
+ In Tyrol it is the custom not only to
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_312" id="Page_312" href="#Page_312">312</a>bleed horses on St. Stephen's Day, but also to give them consecrated
+salt and bread or oats and barley.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-4" id="Nanchor_15-4" href="#Note_15-4">{4}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In some of the Carinthian valleys where horse-breeding is
+specially carried on, the young men ride into the village on their
+unsaddled steeds, and a race is run four or five times round the
+church, while the priest blesses the animals, sprinkling them with
+holy water and exorcizing them.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-5" id="Nanchor_15-5" href="#Note_15-5">{5}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Similar customs are or were found in various parts of Germany.
+In Munich, formerly, during the services on St. Stephen's Day
+more than two hundred men on horseback used to ride three
+times round the interior of a church. The horses were decorated
+with many-coloured ribbons, and the practice was not abolished
+till 1876.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-6" id="Nanchor_15-6" href="#Note_15-6">{6}</a>
+ At Backnang in Swabia horses were ridden out, as
+fast as possible, to protect them from the influence of witches,
+and in the Hohenlohe region men-servants were permitted by their
+masters to ride in companies to neighbouring places, where much
+drinking went on.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-7" id="Nanchor_15-7" href="#Note_15-7">{7}</a>
+ In Holstein the lads on Stephen's Eve used
+to visit their neighbours in a company, groom the horses, and ride
+about in the farmyards, making a great noise until the people woke
+up and treated them to beer and spirits.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-8" id="Nanchor_15-8" href="#Note_15-8">{8}</a>
+ At the village of Wallsb&uuml;ll
+near Flensburg the peasant youths in the early morning held
+a race, and the winner was called Steffen and entertained at the
+inn. At Vi&ouml;l near Bredstadt the child who got up last on
+December&nbsp;26 received the name of Steffen and had to ride to a
+neighbour's house on a hay-fork. In other German districts the
+festival was called &ldquo;the great horse-day,&rdquo; consecrated food was
+given to the animals, they were driven round and round the fields
+until they sweated violently, and at last were ridden to the blacksmith's
+and bled, to keep them healthy through the year. The
+blood was preserved as a remedy for various illnesses.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-9" id="Nanchor_15-9" href="#Note_15-9">{9}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, in Sweden that the &ldquo;horsy&rdquo; aspect of the festival
+is most obvious.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-10" id="Nanchor_15-10" href="#Note_15-10">{10}</a>
+ Formerly there was a custom, at one o'clock
+on St. Stephen's morning, for horses to be ridden to water that
+flowed northward; they would then drink &ldquo;the cream of the
+water&rdquo; and flourish during the year. There was a violent race to
+the water, and the servant who got there first was rewarded by
+a drink of something stronger. Again, early that morning one
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_313" id="Page_313" href="#Page_313">313</a>peasant would clean out another's stable, often at some distance
+from his home, feed, water, and rub down the horses, and then
+be entertained to breakfast. In olden times after service on St.
+Stephen's Day there was a race home on horseback, and it was
+supposed that he who arrived first would be the first to get his
+harvest in. But the most remarkable custom is the early morning
+jaunt of the so-called &ldquo;Stephen's men,&rdquo; companies of peasant
+youths, who long before daybreak ride in a kind of race from
+village to village and awaken the inhabitants with a folk-song called
+<i>Staffansvisa</i>, expecting to be treated to ale or spirits in return.</p>
+
+<p>The cavalcade is supposed to represent St. Stephen and his
+followers, yet the saint is not, as might be expected, the first martyr
+of the New Testament, but a dauntless missionary who, according
+to old legends, was one of the first preachers of the Gospel in
+Sweden, and was murdered by the heathen in a dark forest. A
+special trait, his love of horses, connects him with the customs
+just described. He had, the legends tell, five steeds: two red,
+two white, one dappled; when one was weary he mounted
+another, making every week a great round to preach the Word.
+After his death his body was fastened to the back of an unbroken
+colt, which halted not till it came near Norrala, his home. There
+he was buried, and a church built over his grave became a place
+of pilgrimage to which sick animals, especially horses, were brought
+for healing.</p>
+
+<p>Mannhardt and Feilberg hold that this Swedish St. Stephen is
+not a historical personage but a mythical figure, like many other
+saints, and that his legend, so bound up with horses, was an
+attempt to account for the folk-customs practised on the day dedicated
+to St. Stephen the first martyr. It is interesting to note
+that legendary tradition has played about a good deal with the New
+Testament Stephen; for instance an old English carol makes
+him a servant in King Herod's hall at the time of Christ's
+birth:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Stephen out of kitchen came,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">With boar&euml;s head on hand,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He saw a star was fair and bright</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Over Bethlehem stand.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_314" id="Page_314" href="#Page_314">314</a>Thereupon he forsook King Herod for the Child Jesus, and was
+stoned to death.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-11" id="Nanchor_15-11" href="#Note_15-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>To return, however, to the horse customs of the day after
+Christmas, it is pretty plain that they are of non-Christian origin.
+Mannhardt has suggested that the race which is their most prominent
+feature once formed the prelude to a ceremony of lustration
+of houses and fields with a sacred tree. Somewhat similar
+&ldquo;ridings&rdquo; are found in various parts of Europe in spring, and are
+connected with a procession that appears to be an ecclesiastical
+adaptation of a pre-Christian lustration-rite.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-12" id="Nanchor_15-12" href="#Note_15-12">{12}</a>
+ The great name of
+Mannhardt lends weight to this theory, but it seems a somewhat
+roundabout way of accounting for the facts. Perhaps an explanation
+of the &ldquo;horsiness&rdquo; of the day might be sought in some
+pre-Christian sacrifice of steeds.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">We have already noted that St. Stephen's Day is often the date
+for the &ldquo;hunting of the wren&rdquo; in the British Isles; it was also
+in England generally devoted to hunting and shooting, it being
+held that the game laws were not in force on that day.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-13" id="Nanchor_15-13" href="#Note_15-13">{13}</a>
+ This
+may be only an instance of Christmas licence, but it is just
+possible that there is here a survival of some tradition of sacrificial
+slaughter.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">St. John's Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>An ecclesiastical adaptation of a pagan practice may be seen in
+the <i>Johannissegen</i> customary on St. John's Day in many parts of
+Catholic Germany and Austria. A quantity of wine is brought
+to church to be blessed by the priest after Mass, and is taken away
+by the people to be drunk at home. There are many popular
+beliefs about the magical powers of this wine, beliefs which can be
+traced back through at least four centuries. In Tyrol and Bavaria
+it is supposed to protect its drinker from being struck by lightning,
+in the Rhenish Palatinate it is drunk in order that the other wine
+a man possesses may be kept from injury, or that next year's
+harvest may be good. In Nassau, Carinthia, and other regions some
+is poured into the wine-casks to preserve the precious drink from
+harm, while in Bavaria some is kept for use as medicine in sickness.
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_315" id="Page_315" href="#Page_315">315</a>In Syria St. John's wine is said to keep the body sound
+and healthy, and on his day even babes in the cradle are made to
+join in the family drinking.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-14" id="Nanchor_15-14" href="#Note_15-14">{14}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It appears that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there
+was a great drinking on St. John's Day of ordinary, as well as consecrated,
+wine, often to excess, and scholars of that time seriously
+believed that <i>Weihnacht</i>, the German name for Christmas, should
+properly be spelt <i>Weinnacht</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-15" id="Nanchor_15-15" href="#Note_15-15">{15}</a>
+ The <i>Johannissegen</i>, or <i>Johannisminne</i>
+as it was sometimes called, seems, all things considered, to
+be a survival of an old wine sacrifice like the <i>Martinsminne</i>. That
+it does not owe its origin to the legend about the cup of poison
+drunk by St. John is shown by the fact that a similar custom was
+in old times practised in Germany and Sweden on St. Stephen's
+Day.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-16" id="Nanchor_15-16" href="#Note_15-16">{16}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Holy Innocents&rsquo; Day.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Holy Innocents&rsquo; Day or Childermas, whether or not because
+of Herod's massacre, was formerly peculiarly unlucky; it was a
+day upon which no one, if he could possibly avoid it, should begin
+any piece of work. It is said of that superstitious monarch,
+Louis XI. of France, that he would never do any business on that
+day, and of our own Edward IV. that his coronation was postponed,
+because the date originally fixed was Childermas. In
+Cornwall no housewife would scour or scrub on Childermas, and
+in Northamptonshire it was considered very unlucky to begin any
+undertaking or even to do washing throughout the year on the day
+of the week on which the feast fell. Childermas was there called
+Dyzemas and a saying ran: &ldquo;What is begun on Dyzemas Day
+will never be finished.&rdquo; In Ireland it was called &ldquo;the cross day
+of the year,&rdquo; and it was said that anything then begun must have
+an unlucky ending.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-17" id="Nanchor_15-17" href="#Note_15-17">{17}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In folk-ritual the day is remarkable for its association with
+whipping customs. The seventeenth-century writer Gregorie
+mentions a custom of whipping up children on Innocents&rsquo; Day
+in the morning, and explains its purpose as being that the
+memory of Herod's &ldquo;murther might stick the closer; and, in a
+moderate proportion, to act over the crueltie again in kind.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-18" id="Nanchor_15-18" href="#Note_15-18">{18}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_316" id="Page_316" href="#Page_316">316</a>This explanation will hardly hold water; the many and various
+examples of the practice of whipping at Christmas collected by
+Mannhardt&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-19" id="Nanchor_15-19" href="#Note_15-19">{19}</a>
+ show that it is not confined either to Innocents&rsquo;
+Day or to children. Moreover it is often regarded not as a cruel
+infliction, but as a service for which return must be made in good
+things to eat.</p>
+
+<p>In central and southern Germany the custom is called
+&ldquo;peppering&rdquo; (<i>pfeffern</i>) and also by other names. In the
+Orlagau the girls on St. Stephen's, and the boys on St. John's
+Day beat their parents and godparents with green fir-branches,
+while the menservants beat their masters with rosemary sticks,
+saying:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Fresh green! Long life!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Give me a bright <i>thaler</i> [or nuts, &amp;c.].&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>They are entertained with plum-loaf or gingerbreads and brandy.
+In the Saxon Erzgebirge the young fellows whip the women and
+girls on St. Stephen's Day, if possible while they are still in bed,
+with birch-rods, singing the while:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Fresh green, fair and fine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Gingerbread and brandy-wine&rdquo;;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>and on St. John's Day the women pay the men back. At several
+places in the Thuringian Forest children on Innocents&rsquo; Day
+beat passers-by with birch-boughs, and get in return apples, nuts,
+and other dainties. Various other German examples of the same
+class of practice are given by Mannhardt.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-20" id="Nanchor_15-20" href="#Note_15-20">{20}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In France children who let themselves be caught in bed on the
+morning of Holy Innocents&rsquo; came in for a whipping from their
+parents; while in one province, Normandy, the early risers
+among the young people themselves gave the sluggards a beating.
+The practice even gave birth to a verb&#xfeff;&mdash;<i>innocenter</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-21" id="Nanchor_15-21" href="#Note_15-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>There can be little doubt that the Innocents&rsquo; Day beating
+is a survival of a pre-Christian custom. Similar ritual scourging
+is found in many countries at various seasons of the year, and is
+by no means confined to Europe.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-22" id="Nanchor_15-22" href="#Note_15-22">{22}</a>
+ As now practised, it has
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_317" id="Page_317" href="#Page_317">317</a>often a harsh appearance, or has become a kind of teasing, as
+when in Bohemia at Easter young men whip girls until they give
+them something. Its original purpose, however, as we have seen
+in connection with St. Martin's rod, seems to have been
+altogether kindly. The whipping was not meant as a punishment
+or expiation or to harden people to pain, but either to expel
+harmful influences and drive out evil spirits or to convey by
+contact the virtues of some sacred tree.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_318" id="Page_318" href="#Page_318">318</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_319" id="Page_319" href="#Page_319">319</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_320" id="Page_320" href="#Page_320">320</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_321" id="Page_321" href="#Page_321">321</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_XV" id="Chapter_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h2 class="title1">NEW YEAR'S DAY</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>Principle of New Year Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;The New Year in France, Germany, the United
+States, and Eastern Europe&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;First-footing&rdquo; in Great Britain&#xfeff;&mdash;Scottish New
+Year Practices&#xfeff;&mdash;Highland Fumigation and &ldquo;Breast-strip&rdquo; Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;Hogmanay
+and Aguillanneuf&#xfeff;&mdash;New Year Processions in Macedonia, Roumania, Greece, and
+Rome&#xfeff;&mdash;Methods of Augury&#xfeff;&mdash;Sundry New Year Charms.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Coming to January&nbsp;1, the modern and the Roman New Year's
+Day, we shall find that most of its customs have been anticipated
+at earlier festivals; the Roman Kalends practices have often been
+shifted to Christmas, while old Celtic and Teutonic New Year
+practices have frequently been transferred to the Roman date.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_113" id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113">[113]</a></p>
+
+<p>The observances of New Year's Day mainly rest, as was said
+in <a href="#Chapter_VI">Chapter VI.</a>, on the principle that &ldquo;a good beginning makes a
+good ending,&rdquo; that as the first day is so will the rest be. If you
+would have plenty to eat during the year, dine lavishly on New
+Year's Day, if you would be rich see that your pockets are not
+empty at this critical season, if you would be lucky avoid like
+poison at this of all times everything of ill omen.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On the Borders,&rdquo; says Mr. W. Henderson, &ldquo;care is taken
+that no one enters a house empty-handed on New Year's Day.
+A visitor must bring in his hand some eatable; he will be doubly
+welcome if he carries in a hot stoup or &lsquo;plotie.&rsquo; Everybody
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_322" id="Page_322" href="#Page_322">322</a>should wear a new dress on New Year's Day, and if its pockets
+contain money of every description they will be certain not to
+be empty throughout the year.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-2" id="Nanchor_16-2" href="#Note_16-2">{2}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The laying of stress on what happens on New Year's Day is
+by no means peculiarly European. Hindus, for instance, as
+Mr. Edgar Thurston tells us, &ldquo;are very particular about
+catching sight of some auspicious object on the morning of New
+Year's Day, as the effects of omens seen on that occasion are
+believed to last throughout the year.&rdquo; It is thought that a man's
+whole prosperity depends upon the things that he then happens
+to fix his eyes upon.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-3" id="Nanchor_16-3" href="#Note_16-3">{3}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Charms, omens, and good wishes are naturally the most prominent
+customs of January&nbsp;1 and its Eve. The New Year in
+England can hardly be called a popular festival; there is no public
+holiday and the occasion is more associated with penitential
+Watch Night services and good resolutions than with rejoicing.
+But let the reader, if he be in London, pay a visit to Soho at
+this time, and he will get some idea of what the New Year
+means to the foreigner. The little restaurants are decorated
+with gay festoons of all colours and thronged with merrymakers,
+the shop-windows are crowded with all manner of <i>recherch&eacute;</i>
+delicacies; it is the gala season of the year.</p>
+
+<p>In France January&nbsp;1 is a far more festal day than Christmas;
+it is then that presents are given, family gatherings held, and calls
+paid. In the morning children find their stockings filled with
+gifts, and then rush off to offer good wishes to their parents. In
+the afternoon the younger people call upon their older relations,
+and in the evening all meet for dinner at the home of the head of
+the family.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-4" id="Nanchor_16-4" href="#Note_16-4">{4}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Germany the New Year is a time of great importance.
+Cards are far more numerous than at Christmas, and &ldquo;New
+Year boxes&rdquo; are given to the tradespeople, while on the Eve
+(<i>Sylvesterabend</i>) there are dances or parties, the custom of forecasting
+the future by lead-pouring is practised, and at the stroke
+of midnight there is a general cry of &ldquo;Prosit Neu Jahr!&rdquo;, a
+drinking of healths, and a shaking of hands.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-5" id="Nanchor_16-5" href="#Note_16-5">{5}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>New Year wishes and &ldquo;compliments of the season&rdquo; are
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_323" id="Page_323" href="#Page_323">323</a>familiar to us all, but in England we have not that custom of
+paying formal calls which in France is so characteristic of
+January&nbsp;1, when not only relations and personal friends, but
+people whose connection is purely official are expected to visit
+one another. In devout Brittany the wish exchanged takes a
+beautiful religious form&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;I wish you a good year and Paradise
+at the end of your days.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-6" id="Nanchor_16-6" href="#Note_16-6">{6}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>New Year calling is by no means confined to France. In the
+United States it is one of the few traces left by the early Dutch
+settlers on American manners. The custom is now rapidly
+falling into disuse,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-7" id="Nanchor_16-7" href="#Note_16-7">{7}</a>
+ but in New York up to the middle of the
+nineteenth century &ldquo;New Year's Day was devoted to the universal
+interchange of visits. Every door was thrown wide open. It
+was a breach of etiquette to omit any acquaintance in these
+annual calls, when old friendships were renewed and family
+differences amicably settled. A hearty welcome was extended
+even to strangers of presentable appearance.&rdquo; At that time
+the day was marked by tremendous eating and drinking, and its
+visiting customs sometimes developed into wild riot. Young
+men in barouches would rattle from one house to another all day
+long. &ldquo;The ceremony of calling was a burlesque. There was
+a noisy and hilarious greeting, a glass of wine was swallowed
+hurriedly, everybody shook hands all round, and the callers
+dashed out and rushed into the carriage and were driven rapidly
+to the next house.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-8" id="Nanchor_16-8" href="#Note_16-8">{8}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The New Year calling to offer good wishes resembles in some
+respects the widespread custom of &ldquo;first-footing,&rdquo; based on the
+belief that the character of the first visitor on New Year's Day
+affects the welfare of the household during the year. We have
+already met with a &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; in the <i>polaznik</i> of the southern
+Slavs on Christmas Day. It is to be borne in mind that for
+them, or at all events for the Crivoscian highlanders whose
+customs are described by Sir Arthur Evans, Christmas is essentially
+the festival of the New Year: New Year's Day is not
+spoken of at all, its name and ceremonies being completely
+absorbed by the feasts of &ldquo;Great&rdquo; and &ldquo;Little&rdquo; Christmas.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-9" id="Nanchor_16-9" href="#Note_16-9">{9}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; superstition is found in countries as far apart as
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_324" id="Page_324" href="#Page_324">324</a>Scotland and Macedonia. Let us begin with some English examples
+of it. In Shropshire the most important principle is that if luck
+is to rest on a house the &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; must not be a woman. To
+provide against such an unlucky accident as that a woman should
+call first, people often engage a friendly man or boy to pay them an
+early visit. It is particularly interesting to find a Shropshire parallel
+to the <i>polaznik's</i> action in going straight to the hearth and striking
+sparks from the Christmas log,&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_114" id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114">[114]</a> when Miss Burne tells us that
+one old man who used to &ldquo;let the New Year in&rdquo; &ldquo;always entered
+without knocking or speaking, and silently stirred the fire before
+he offered any greeting to the family.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-10" id="Nanchor_16-10" href="#Note_16-10">{10}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the villages of the Teme valley, Worcestershire and Herefordshire,
+&ldquo;in the old climbing-boy days, chimneys used to be swept
+on New Year's morning, that one of the right sex should be the
+first to enter; and the young urchins of the neighbourhood went
+the round of the houses before daylight singing songs, when one of
+their number would be admitted into the kitchen &lsquo;for good luck
+all the year.&rsquo;&rdquo; In 1875 this custom was still practised; and at
+some of the farmhouses, if washing-day chanced to fall on the
+first day of the year, it was either put off, or to make sure, before
+the women could come, the waggoner's lad was called up early
+that he might be let out and let in again.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-11" id="Nanchor_16-11" href="#Note_16-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the unluckiness of a woman's being the &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo;
+is extraordinarily widespread; the present writer has met
+with it in an ordinary London restaurant, where great stress was
+laid upon a man's opening the place on New Year's morning
+before the waitresses arrived. A similar belief is found even in
+far-away China: it is there unlucky on New Year's Day to
+meet a woman on first going out.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-12" id="Nanchor_16-12" href="#Note_16-12">{12}</a>
+ Can the belief be connected
+with such ideas about dangerous influences proceeding from
+women as have been described by Dr. Frazer in Vol. III. of
+&ldquo;The Golden Bough,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-13" id="Nanchor_16-13" href="#Note_16-13">{13}</a>
+ or does it rest merely on a view of
+woman as the inferior sex? The unluckiness of first meeting
+a woman is, we may note, not confined to, but merely intensified
+on New Year's Day; in Shropshire&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-14" id="Nanchor_16-14" href="#Note_16-14">{14}</a>
+ and in Germany&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-15" id="Nanchor_16-15" href="#Note_16-15">{15}</a>
+ it
+belongs to any ordinary day.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_325" id="Page_325" href="#Page_325">325</a>As to the general attitude towards woman suggested by these
+superstitions I may quote a striking passage from Miss Jane
+Harrison's &ldquo;Themis.&rdquo; &ldquo;Woman to primitive man is a thing
+at once weak and magical, to be oppressed, yet feared. She is
+charged with powers of child-bearing denied to man, powers only
+half understood, forces of attraction, but also of danger and
+repulsion, forces that all over the world seem to fill him with dim
+terror. The attitude of man to woman, and, though perhaps in
+a less degree, of woman to man, is still to-day essentially
+magical.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-16" id="Nanchor_16-16" href="#Note_16-16">{16}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;First-foot&rdquo; superstitions flourish in the north of England and
+in Scotland. In the northern counties a man is often specially
+retained as &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; or &ldquo;lucky bird&rdquo;; in some parts he must
+be a bachelor, and he is often expected to bring a present with
+him&#xfeff;&mdash;a shovelful of coals, or some eatable, or whisky.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-17" id="Nanchor_16-17" href="#Note_16-17">{17}</a>
+ In the
+East Riding of Yorkshire a boy called the &ldquo;lucky bird&rdquo; used to
+come at dawn on Christmas morning as well as on New Year's
+Day, and bring a sprig of evergreens&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-18" id="Nanchor_16-18" href="#Note_16-18">{18}</a>
+&#xfeff;&mdash;an offering by now
+thoroughly familiar to us. In Scotland, especially in Edinburgh,
+it is customary for domestic servants to invite their sweethearts
+to be their &ldquo;first-foots.&rdquo; The old Scotch families who preserve
+ancient customs encourage their servants to &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; them,
+and grandparents like their grandchildren to perform for them
+the same service.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-19" id="Nanchor_16-19" href="#Note_16-19">{19}</a>
+ In Aberdeenshire it is considered most
+important that the &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; should not come empty-handed.
+Formerly he carried spiced ale; now he brings a whisky-bottle.
+Shortbread, oat-cakes, &ldquo;sweeties,&rdquo; or sowens, were also sometimes
+brought by the &ldquo;first-foot,&rdquo; and occasionally the sowens were
+sprinkled on the doors and windows of the houses visited&#xfeff;&mdash;a
+custom strongly suggesting a sacramental significance of
+some sort.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-20" id="Nanchor_16-20" href="#Note_16-20">{20}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Before we leave the subject of British &ldquo;first-footing&rdquo; we may
+notice one or two things that have possibly a racial significance.
+Not only must the &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; be a man or boy, he is often
+required to be dark-haired; it is unlucky for a fair- or red-haired
+person to &ldquo;let in&rdquo; the New Year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-21" id="Nanchor_16-21" href="#Note_16-21">{21}</a>
+ It has been suggested by
+Sir John Rhys that this idea rested in the first instance upon
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_326" id="Page_326" href="#Page_326">326</a>racial antipathy&#xfeff;&mdash;the natural antagonism of an indigenous dark-haired
+people to a race of blonde invaders.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-22" id="Nanchor_16-22" href="#Note_16-22">{22}</a>
+ Another curious
+requirement&#xfeff;&mdash;in the Isle of Man and Northumberland&#xfeff;&mdash;is that
+the &ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; shall not be flat-footed: he should be a person
+with a high-arched instep, a foot that &ldquo;water runs under.&rdquo; Sir
+John Rhys is inclined to connect this also with some racial
+contrast. He remarks, by way of illustration, that English shoes
+do not as a rule fit Welsh feet, being made too low in the instep.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-23" id="Nanchor_16-23" href="#Note_16-23">{23}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Some reference has already been made to Scottish New Year
+customs. In Scotland, the most Protestant region of Europe, the
+country in which Puritanism abolished altogether the celebration
+of Christmas, New Year's Day is a great occasion, and is
+marked by various interesting usages, its importance being no
+doubt largely due to the fact that it has not to compete with the
+Church feast of the Nativity. Nowadays, indeed, the example of
+Anglicanism is affecting the country to a considerable extent, and
+Christmas Day is becoming observed in the churches. The New
+Year, however, is still the national holiday, and January&nbsp;1 a
+great day for visiting and feasting, the chief, in fact, of all
+festivals.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-24" id="Nanchor_16-24" href="#Note_16-24">{24}</a>
+ New Year's Day and its Eve are often called the
+&ldquo;Daft Days&rdquo;; cakes and pastry of all kinds are eaten, healths
+are drunk, and calls are paid.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-25" id="Nanchor_16-25" href="#Note_16-25">{25}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Edinburgh there are striking scenes on New Year's Eve.
+&ldquo;Towards evening,&rdquo; writes an observer, &ldquo;the thoroughfares
+become thronged with the youth of the city.... As the midnight
+hour approaches, drinking of healths becomes frequent, and
+some are already intoxicated.... The eyes of the immense
+crowd are ever being turned towards the lighted clock-face of
+&lsquo;Auld and Faithful&rsquo;&rsquo; Tron [Church], the hour approaches, the
+hands seem to stand still, but in one second more the hurrahing,
+the cheering, the hand-shaking, the health-drinking, is all kept
+up as long as the clock continues to ring out the much-longed-for
+midnight hour.... The crowds slowly disperse, the much-intoxicated
+and helpless ones being hustled about a good deal,
+the police urging them on out of harm's way. The first-footers
+are off and away, flying in every direction through the city,
+singing, cheering, and shaking hands with all and sundry.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-26" id="Nanchor_16-26" href="#Note_16-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_327" id="Page_327" href="#Page_327">327</a>One need hardly allude to the gathering of London Scots
+around St. Paul's to hear the midnight chime and welcome the
+New Year with the strains of &ldquo;Auld Lang Syne,&rdquo; except to say
+that times have changed and Scotsmen are now lost in the swelling
+multitude of roysterers of all nationalities.</p>
+
+<p>Drinking is and was a great feature of the Scottish New
+Year's Eve. &ldquo;On the approach of twelve o'clock, a <i>hot pint</i> was
+prepared&#xfeff;&mdash;that is, a kettle or flagon full of warm, spiced, and
+sweetened ale, with an infusion of spirits. When the clock had
+struck the knell of the departed year, each member of the family
+drank of this mixture &lsquo;A good health and a happy New Year
+and many of them&rsquo; to all the rest, with a general hand-shaking.&rdquo;
+The elders of the family would then sally out to visit their
+neighbours, and exchange greetings.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-27" id="Nanchor_16-27" href="#Note_16-27">{27}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At Biggar in Lanarkshire it was customary to &ldquo;burn out the
+old year&rdquo; with bonfires, while at Burghead in Morayshire a tar-barrel
+called the &ldquo;Clavie&rdquo; was set on fire and carried about
+the village and the fishing boats. Its embers were scrambled for
+by the people and carefully kept as charms against witchcraft.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-28" id="Nanchor_16-28" href="#Note_16-28">{28}</a>
+
+These fire-customs may be compared with those on Hallowe'en,
+which, as we have seen, is probably an old New Year's Eve.</p>
+
+<p>Stewart in his &ldquo;Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of
+Scotland&rdquo; tells how on the last night of the year the Strathdown
+Highlanders used to bring home great loads of juniper, which on
+New Year's Day was kindled in the different rooms, all apertures
+being closed so that the smoke might produce a thorough
+fumigation. Not only human beings had to stand this, but horses
+and other animals were treated in the same way to preserve them
+from harm throughout the year. Moreover, first thing on New
+Year's morning, everybody, while still in bed, was asperged with a
+large brush.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-29" id="Nanchor_16-29" href="#Note_16-29">{29}</a>
+ There is a great resemblance here to the Catholic
+use of incense and holy water in southern Germany and Austria
+on the <i>Rauchn&auml;chte</i> (see also <a href="#Chapter_VIII">Chapter VIII.</a>). In Tyrol these
+nights are Christmas, New Year's, and Epiphany Eves. When
+night falls the Tyrolese peasant goes with all his household through
+each room and outhouse, his wife bearing the holy water vessel
+and the censer. Every corner of the buildings, every animal,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_328" id="Page_328" href="#Page_328">328</a>every human being is purified with the sacred smoke and the
+holy sprinkling, and even the Christmas pie must be hallowed in
+this way. In Orthodox Greek countries something of the same
+kind takes place, as we shall see, at the Epiphany. To drive
+away evil spirits is no doubt the object of all these rites.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-30" id="Nanchor_16-30" href="#Note_16-30">{30}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The most interesting of Scottish New Year customs, considered
+as religious survivals, is a practice found in the Highlands on New
+Year's Eve, and evidently of sacrificial origin. It has been
+described by several writers, and has various forms. According
+to one account the hide of the mart or winter cow was wrapped
+round the head of one of a company of men, who all made off
+belabouring the hide with switches. The disorderly procession
+went three times <i>deiseal</i> (according to the course of the sun)
+round each house in the village, striking the walls and shouting on
+coming to a door a rhyme demanding admission. On entering,
+each member of the party was offered refreshments, and their
+leader gave to the goodman of the house the &ldquo;breast-stripe&rdquo; of a
+sheep, deer, or goat, wrapped round the point of a shinty stick.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-31" id="Nanchor_16-31" href="#Note_16-31">{31}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>We have here another survival of that oft-noted custom of skin-wearing,
+which, as has been seen, originated apparently in a desire
+for contact with the sanctity of the sacrificed victim. Further,
+the &ldquo;breast-stripe&rdquo; given to the goodman of each house is
+evidently meant to convey the hallowed influences to each family.
+It is an oval strip, and no knife may be used in removing it from
+the flesh. The head of the house sets fire to it, and it is given to
+each person in turn to smell. The inhaling of its fumes is a
+talisman against fairies, witches, and demons. In the island of
+South Uist, according to a quite recent account, each person
+seizes hold of it as it burns, making the sign of the cross, if he be
+a Catholic, in the name of the Trinity, and it is put thrice
+sun-wise about the heads of those present. If it should be
+extinguished it is a bad omen for the New Year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-32" id="Nanchor_16-32" href="#Note_16-32">{32}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The writer of the last account speaks of the &ldquo;breast-strip&rdquo; as
+the &ldquo;Hogmanay,&rdquo; and it is just possible that the well-known
+Hogmanay processions of children on New Year's Eve (in Scotland
+and elsewhere) may have some connection with the ritual
+above described. It is customary for the poorer children to
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_329" id="Page_329" href="#Page_329">329</a>swaddle themselves in a great sheet, doubled up in front so as to
+form a vast pocket, and then go along the streets in little bands,
+calling out &ldquo;Hogmanay&rdquo; at the doors of the wealthier classes, and
+expecting a dole of oaten bread. Each child gets a quadrant of
+oat-cake (sometimes with cheese), and this is called the &ldquo;Hogmanay.&rdquo;
+Here is one of the rhymes they sing:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Get up, goodwife, and shake your feathers,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And dinna think that we are beggars;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For we are bairns come out to play,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Get up and gie's our hogmanay!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-33" id="Nanchor_16-33" href="#Note_16-33">{33}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The word <i>Hogmanay</i>&#xfeff;&mdash;it is found in various forms in the
+northern English counties as well as in Scotland&#xfeff;&mdash;has been a
+puzzle to etymologists. It is used both for the last day of the
+year and for the gift of the oaten cake or the like; and, as
+we have seen, it is shouted by the children in their quest.
+Exactly corresponding to it in sense and use is the French word
+<i>aguillanneuf</i>, from which it appears to be derived. Although the
+phonetic difference between this and the Scottish word is great,
+the Norman form <i>hoguinan&eacute;</i> is much closer. There is, moreover,
+a Spanish word <i>aguinaldo</i> (formerly <i>aguilando</i>) = Christmas-box.
+The popular explanation of the French term as <i>au-guy-l'an-neuf</i>
+(to the mistletoe the New Year) is now rejected by scholars, and it
+seems likely that the word is a corruption of the Latin <i>Kalendae</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-34" id="Nanchor_16-34" href="#Note_16-34">{34}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>A few instances of <i>aguillanneuf</i> customs may be given. Here
+are specimens of rhymes sung by the New Year <i>qu&ecirc;teurs</i>:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Si vous veniez &agrave; la d&eacute;pense,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&Agrave; la d&eacute;pense de chez nous,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Vous mangeriez de bons choux,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">On vous servirait du rost.</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Hoguinano.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Donnez-moi mes hoguignettes</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Dans un panier que voicy.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Je l'achetai samedy</span><br />
+<span class="i2">D'un bon homme de dehors;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Mais il est encore &agrave; payer.</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Hoguinano.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-35" id="Nanchor_16-35" href="#Note_16-35">{35}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_330" id="Page_330" href="#Page_330">330</a>Formerly at Matignon and Ploubalay in Brittany on Christmas
+Eve the boys used to get together, carry big sticks and wallets,
+and knock at farmhouse doors. When the inmates called out,
+&ldquo;Who's there?&rdquo; they would answer, &ldquo;The <i>hoguihanneu</i>,&rdquo; and
+after singing something they were given a piece of lard. This
+was put on a pointed stick carried by one of the boys, and was
+kept for a feast called the <i>bouriho</i>.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-36" id="Nanchor_16-36" href="#Note_16-36">{36}</a>
+ Elsewhere in Brittany poor
+children went round crying &ldquo;<i>au guyan&eacute;</i>,&rdquo; and were given pieces
+of lard or salt beef, which they stuck on a long spit.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-37" id="Nanchor_16-37" href="#Note_16-37">{37}</a>
+ In
+Guernsey the children's quest at the New Year was called
+<i>oguinane</i>. They chanted the following rhyme:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Oguin&acirc;ni! Oguin&acirc;no!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ouvre ta pouque, et pis la recclios.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_115" id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115">[115]</a>&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-38" id="Nanchor_16-38" href="#Note_16-38">{38}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Similar processions are common in eastern Europe at the New
+Year. In some parts of Macedonia on New Year's Eve men or
+boys go about making a noise with bells. In other districts, early
+on New Year's morning, lads run about with sticks or clubs, knock
+people up, cry out good wishes, and expect to be rewarded with
+something to eat. Elsewhere again they carry green olive- or
+cornel-boughs, and touch with them everyone they meet.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-39" id="Nanchor_16-39" href="#Note_16-39">{39}</a>
+
+We have already considered various similar customs, the noise
+and knocking being apparently intended to drive away evil
+spirits, and the green boughs to bring folks into contact with the
+spirit of growth therein immanent.</p>
+
+<p>In Roumania on New Year's Eve there is a custom known
+as the &ldquo;little plough.&rdquo; Boys and men go about after dark
+from house to house, with long greetings, ringing of bells, and
+cracking of whips. On New Year's morning Roumanians throw
+handfuls of corn at one another with some appropriate greeting,
+such as:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;May you live,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">May you flourish</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Like apple-trees,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_331" id="Page_331" href="#Page_331">331</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Like pear-trees</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In springtime,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Like wealthy autumn,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of all things plentiful.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Generally this greeting is from the young to the old or from
+the poor to the rich, and a present in return is expected.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-40" id="Nanchor_16-40" href="#Note_16-40">{40}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Athens models of war-ships are carried round by waits, who
+make a collection of money in them. &ldquo;St. Basil's ships&rdquo; they
+are called, and they are supposed to represent the vessel on which
+St. Basil, whose feast is kept on January&nbsp;1, sailed from Caesarea.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-41" id="Nanchor_16-41" href="#Note_16-41">{41}</a>
+
+It is probable that this is but a Christian gloss on a pagan
+custom. Possibly there may be here a survival of an old Greek
+practice of bearing a ship in procession in honour of Dionysus,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-42" id="Nanchor_16-42" href="#Note_16-42">{42}</a>
+
+but it is to be noted that similar observances are found at
+various seasons in countries like Germany and Belgium where
+no Greek influence can be traced. The custom is widespread,
+and it has been suggested by Mannhardt that it was originally
+intended either to promote the success of navigation or to carry
+evil spirits out to sea.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-43" id="Nanchor_16-43" href="#Note_16-43">{43}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting, lastly, to read a mediaeval account of a New
+Year <i>qu&ecirc;te</i> in Rome. &ldquo;The following,&rdquo; says the writer, &ldquo;are
+common Roman sports at the Kalends of January. On the Eve
+of the Kalends at a late hour boys arise and carry a shield. One
+of them wears a mask; they whistle and beat a drum, they go
+round to the houses, they surround the shield, the drum sounds,
+and the masked figure whistles. This playing ended, they
+receive a present from the master of the house, whatever he
+thinks fit to give. So they do at every house. On that day they
+eat all kinds of vegetables. And in the morning two of the boys
+arise, take olive-branches and salt, enter into the houses, and
+salute the master with the words, &lsquo;Joy and gladness be in the
+house, so many sons, so many little pigs, so many lambs,&rsquo; and
+they wish him all good things. And before the sun rises they
+eat either a piece of honeycomb or something sweet, that the
+whole year may pass sweetly, without strife and great trouble.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-44" id="Nanchor_16-44" href="#Note_16-44">{44}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Various methods of peering into the future, more or less like
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_332" id="Page_332" href="#Page_332">332</a>those described at earlier festivals, are practised at the New Year.
+Especially popular at German New Year's Eve parties is the
+custom of <i>bleigiessen</i>. &ldquo;This ceremony consists of boiling
+specially prepared pieces of lead in a spoon over a candle; each
+guest takes his spoonful and throws it quickly into the basin of
+water which is held ready. According to the form which the
+lead takes so will his future be in the coming year ... ships (which
+indicate a journey), or hearts (which have, of course, only one
+meaning), or some other equally significant shape is usually
+discerned.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-45" id="Nanchor_16-45" href="#Note_16-45">{45}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Macedonia St. Basil's Eve (December&nbsp;31) is a common time
+for divination: a favourite method is to lay on the hot cinders a
+pair of wild-olive-leaves to represent a youth and a maid. If the
+leaves crumple up and draw near each other, it is concluded that
+the young people love one another dearly, but if they recoil apart
+the opposite is the case. If they flare up and burn, it is a sign of
+excessive passion.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-46" id="Nanchor_16-46" href="#Note_16-46">{46}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Lithuania on New Year's Eve nine sorts of things&#xfeff;&mdash;money,
+cradle, bread, ring, death's head, old man, old woman, ladder, and
+key&#xfeff;&mdash;are baked of dough, and laid under nine plates, and every
+one has three grabs at them. What he gets will fall to his lot
+during the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-47" id="Nanchor_16-47" href="#Note_16-47">{47}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, in Brittany it is supposed that the wind which prevails
+on the first twelve days of the year will blow during each of the
+twelve months, the first day corresponding to January, the second
+to February, and so on.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-48" id="Nanchor_16-48" href="#Note_16-48">{48}</a>
+ Similar ideas of the prophetic character
+of Christmastide weather are common in our own and
+other countries.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Practically all the customs discussed in this chapter have been
+of the nature of charms; one or two more, practised on New
+Year's Day or Eve, may be mentioned in conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>There are curious superstitions about New Year water. At
+Bromyard in Herefordshire it was the custom, at midnight on
+New Year's Eve, to rush to the nearest spring to snatch the
+&ldquo;cream of the well&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;the first pitcherful of water&#xfeff;&mdash;and with it
+the prospect of the best luck.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-49" id="Nanchor_16-49" href="#Note_16-49">{49}</a>
+ A Highland practice was to send
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_333" id="Page_333" href="#Page_333">333</a>some one on the last night of the year to draw a pitcherful of
+water in silence, and without the vessel touching the ground.
+The water was drunk on New Year's morning as a charm
+against witchcraft and the evil eye.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-50" id="Nanchor_16-50" href="#Note_16-50">{50}</a>
+ A similar belief about the
+luckiness of &ldquo;new water&rdquo; exists at Canzano Peligno in the
+Abruzzi. &ldquo;On New Year's Eve, the fountain is decked with
+leaves and bits of coloured stuff, and fires are kindled round it.
+As soon as it is light, the girls come as usual with their copper
+pots on their head; but the youths are on this morning guardians
+of the well, and sell the &lsquo;new water&rsquo; for nuts and fruits&#xfeff;&mdash;and
+other sweet things.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-51" id="Nanchor_16-51" href="#Note_16-51">{51}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In some of the Aegean islands when the family return from
+church on New Year's Day, the father picks up a stone and
+leaves it in the yard, with the wish that the New Year may bring
+with it &ldquo;as much gold as is the weight of the stone.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-52" id="Nanchor_16-52" href="#Note_16-52">{52}</a>
+ Finally,
+in Little Russia &ldquo;corn sheaves are piled upon a table, and in the
+midst of them is set a large pie. The father of the family takes
+his seat behind them, and asks his children if they can see him.
+&lsquo;We cannot see you,&rsquo; they reply. On which he proceeds to
+express what seems to be a hope that the corn will grow so high
+in his fields that he may be invisible to his children when he
+walks there at harvest-time.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-53" id="Nanchor_16-53" href="#Note_16-53">{53}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>With a curious and beautiful old carol from South Wales I
+must bring this chapter to a close. It was formerly sung before
+dawn on New Year's Day by poor children who carried about a
+jug of water drawn that morning from the well. With a sprig
+of box or other evergreen they would sprinkle those they met,
+wishing them the compliments of the season. To pay their
+respects to those not abroad at so early an hour, they would
+serenade them with the following lines, which, while connected
+with the &ldquo;new water&rdquo; tradition, contain much that is of doubtful
+interpretation, and are a fascinating puzzle for folk-lorists:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Here we bring new water</span><br />
+<span class="i3">From the well so clear,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For to worship God with,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">This happy New Year.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_334" id="Page_334" href="#Page_334">334</a></span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The water and the wine;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The seven bright gold wires</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And the bugles they do shine.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Sing reign of Fair Maid,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">With gold upon her toe,&#xfeff;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Open you the West Door,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And turn the Old Year go:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sing reign of Fair Maid,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">With gold upon her chin,&#xfeff;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Open you the East Door,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And let the New Year in.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-54" id="Nanchor_16-54" href="#Note_16-54">{54}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_335" id="Page_335" href="#Page_335">335</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_336" id="Page_336" href="#Page_336">336</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_337" id="Page_337" href="#Page_337">337</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_XVI" id="Chapter_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<h2 class="title1">EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>The Twelfth Cake and the &ldquo;King of the Bean&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;French Twelfth Night Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;St.
+Basil's Cake in Macedonia&#xfeff;&mdash;Epiphany and the Expulsion of Evils&#xfeff;&mdash;The Befana
+in Italy&#xfeff;&mdash;The Magi as Present-bringers&#xfeff;&mdash;Greek Epiphany Customs&#xfeff;&mdash;Wassailing
+Fruit-trees&#xfeff;&mdash;Herefordshire and Irish Twelfth Night Practices&#xfeff;&mdash;The &ldquo;Haxey
+Hood&rdquo; and Christmas Football&#xfeff;&mdash;St. Knut's Day in Sweden&#xfeff;&mdash;Rock Day&#xfeff;&mdash;Plough
+Monday&#xfeff;&mdash;Candlemas, its Ecclesiastical and Folk Ceremonies&#xfeff;&mdash;Farewells to
+Christmas.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration">
+   <a id="image22" name="image22" href="images/image22.jpg">
+    <img src="images/image22.jpg"
+      width="75%"
+      alt="THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE."
+      title="THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE." />
+    </a>
+   <p class="caption">THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Epiphany.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Though the Epiphany has ceased to be a popular festival in England,
+it was once a very high day indeed, and in many parts of
+Europe it is still attended by folk-customs of great interest.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_116" id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116">[116]</a> For
+the peasant of Tyrol, indeed, it is New Year's Day, the first of
+January being kept only by the townsfolk and modernized
+people.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-1" id="Nanchor_17-1" href="#Note_17-1">{1}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>To Englishmen perhaps the best known feature of the secular
+festival is the Twelfth Cake. Some words of Leigh Hunt's will
+show what an important place this held in the mid-nineteenth
+century:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Christmas goes out in fine style,&#xfeff;&mdash;with Twelfth Night. It is a
+finish worthy of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the
+season; New Year's Day the middle of it, or noon; Twelfth Night
+is the night, brilliant with innumerable planets of Twelfth-cakes. The
+whole island keeps court; nay, all Christendom. All the world are
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_338" id="Page_338" href="#Page_338">338</a>kings and queens. Everybody is somebody else, and learns at once to
+laugh at, and to tolerate, characters different from his own, by enacting
+them. Cakes, characters, forfeits, lights, theatres, merry rooms, little
+holiday-faces, and, last not least, the painted sugar on the cakes, so bad
+to eat but so fine to look at, useful because it is perfectly useless except
+for a sight and a moral&#xfeff;&mdash;all conspire to throw a giddy splendour over
+the last night of the season, and to send it to bed in pomp and colours,
+like a Prince.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-2" id="Nanchor_17-2" href="#Note_17-2">{2}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">For seventeenth-century banqueting customs and the connection
+of the cake with the &ldquo;King of the Bean&rdquo; Herrick may be
+quoted:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&ldquo;Now, now the mirth comes</span><br />
+<span class="i3">With the cake full of plums,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Where bean's the king of the sport here;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Besides we must know,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The pea also</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Must revel as queen in the court here.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Begin then to choose</span><br />
+<span class="i3">This night as ye use,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Who shall for the present delight here</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Be a king by the lot,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And who shall not</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Which known, let us make</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Joy-sops with the cake;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And let not a man then be seen here,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Who unurg'd will not drink,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">To the base from the brink,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A health to the king and the queen here.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-3" id="Nanchor_17-3" href="#Note_17-3">{3}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>There are many English references to the custom of electing a
+Twelfth Day monarch by means of a bean or pea, and this &ldquo;king&rdquo;
+is mentioned in royal accounts as early as the reign of Edward II.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-4" id="Nanchor_17-4" href="#Note_17-4">{4}</a>
+
+He appears, however, to have been even more popular in France
+than in England.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_339" id="Page_339" href="#Page_339">339</a>The method of choosing the Epiphany king is thus described
+by the sixteenth-century writer, &Eacute;tienne Pasquier:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When the cake has been cut into as many portions as there are
+guests, a small child is put under the table, and is interrogated by the
+master under the name of Pheb&eacute; [Phoebus], as if he were a child who
+in the innocence of his age represented a kind of Apollo's oracle. To
+this questioning the child answers with a Latin word: <i>Domine</i>.
+Thereupon the master calls on him to say to whom he shall give the
+piece of cake which he has in his hand: the child names whoever
+comes into his head, without respect of persons, until the portion where
+the bean is given out. He who gets it is reckoned king of the company,
+although he may be a person of the least importance. This done,
+everyone eats, drinks, and dances heartily.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-5" id="Nanchor_17-5" href="#Note_17-5">{5}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In Berry at the end of the festive repast a cake is brought
+before the head of the household, and divided into as many
+portions as there are guests, plus one. The youngest member of
+the family distributes them. The portion remaining is called <i>la
+part du bon Dieu</i> and is given to the first person who asks for it.
+A band of children generally come to claim it, with a leader who
+sings a little song.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-6" id="Nanchor_17-6" href="#Note_17-6">{6}</a>
+ There was formerly a custom of dressing up
+a king in full robes. He had a fool to amuse him during the
+feast, and shots were fired when he drank.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-7" id="Nanchor_17-7" href="#Note_17-7">{7}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Here is a nineteenth-century account from Lorraine:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On the Vigil of the Epiphany all the family and the guests assemble
+round the table, which is illuminated by a lamp hanging above its
+centre. Lots are cast for the king of the feast, and if the head of anyone
+present casts no shadow on the wall it is a sign that he will die
+during the year. Then the king chooses freely his queen: they have
+the place of honour, and each time they raise their glasses to their
+mouths cries of &lsquo;The king drinks, the queen drinks!&rsquo; burst forth
+on all sides.... The next day an enormous cake, divided into equal portions,
+is distributed to the company by the youngest boy. The first
+portion is always for <i>le bon Dieu</i>, the second for the Blessed Virgin (these
+two portions are always given to the first poor person who presents himself);
+then come those of relations, servants, and visitors. He who finds
+a bean in his portion is proclaimed king; if it is a lady she chooses her
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_340" id="Page_340" href="#Page_340">340</a>king, and he invites the company to a banquet on the Sunday following,
+at which black kings are made by rubbing the face with a
+burnt cork.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-8" id="Nanchor_17-8" href="#Note_17-8">{8}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The use of the <i>g&acirc;teau des Rois</i> goes pretty far back. At the
+monastery of Mont-St.-Michel in the thirteenth century the
+Epiphany king was chosen from among the monks by means of a
+number of cakes in one of which a bean was placed. At Matins,
+High Mass, and Vespers he sat upon a special throne.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-9" id="Nanchor_17-9" href="#Note_17-9">{9}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It may be added that there is a quaint old story of a curate
+&ldquo;who having taken his preparations over evening, when all men
+cry (as the manner is) <i>the king drinketh</i>, chanting his Masse the
+next morning, fell asleep in his Memento: and, when he awoke,
+added with a loud voice, <i>The king drinketh</i>.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-10" id="Nanchor_17-10" href="#Note_17-10">{10}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>One more French &ldquo;king&rdquo; custom may be mentioned, though
+it relates to Christmas Day, not Epiphany. At Salers in the
+centre of France there were formerly a king and queen whose
+function was to preside over the festival, sit in a place of honour
+in church, and go first in the procession. The kingship was not
+elective, but was sold by auction at the church door, and it is said
+to have been so much coveted that worthy citizens would sell their
+heritage in order to purchase it.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-11" id="Nanchor_17-11" href="#Note_17-11">{11}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It may be remarked that Epiphany kings and cakes similar to
+the French can be traced in Holland and Germany,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-12" id="Nanchor_17-12" href="#Note_17-12">{12}</a>
+ and that the
+&ldquo;King of the Bean&rdquo; is known in modern Italy, though there he
+may be an importation from the north.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-13" id="Nanchor_17-13" href="#Note_17-13">{13}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>How is this merry monarch to be accounted for? His resemblance
+to the king of the <i>Saturnalia</i>, who presided over the fun
+of the feast in the days of imperial Rome, is certainly striking,
+but it is impossible to say whether he derives directly from
+that personage. No doubt his association with the feast of the
+Three Kings has helped to maintain his rule. As for the bean, it
+appears to have been a sacred vegetable in ancient times. There
+is a story about the philosopher Pythagoras, how, when flying
+before a host of rebels, he came upon a field of beans and refused
+to pass through it for fear of crushing the plants, thus enabling his
+pursuers to overtake him. Moreover, the <i>flamen dialis</i> in Rome
+was forbidden to eat or even name the vegetable, and the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_341" id="Page_341" href="#Page_341">341</a>name of the Fabii, a Roman <i>gens</i>, suggests a totem tribe of
+the bean.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-14" id="Nanchor_17-14" href="#Note_17-14">{14}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In eastern Europe, though I know of no election of a king, there
+are New Year customs with cakes, closely resembling some of the
+French practices described a page or two back. &ldquo;St. Basil's Cake&rdquo;
+on New Year's Eve in Macedonia is a kind of shortbread with a
+silver coin and a cross of green twigs in it. When all are seated
+round the table the father and mother take the cake, &ldquo;and break
+it into two pieces, which are again subdivided by the head of the
+family into shares. The first portion is destined for St. Basil, the
+Holy Virgin, or the patron saint whose icon is in the house. The
+second stands for the house itself. The third for the cattle and
+domestic animals belonging thereto. The fourth for the inanimate
+property, and the rest for each member of the household according
+to age. Each portion is successively dipped in a cup of wine.&rdquo;
+He who finds the cross or the coin in his share of the cake will
+prosper during the year. The money is considered sacred and is
+used to buy a votive taper.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-15" id="Nanchor_17-15" href="#Note_17-15">{15}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Macedonia when the New Year's supper is over, the table, with
+the remnants of the feast upon it, is removed to a corner of the
+room in order that St. Basil may come and partake of the food.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-16" id="Nanchor_17-16" href="#Note_17-16">{16}</a>
+
+He appears to have been substituted by the Church for the spirits
+of the departed, for whom, as we have seen, food is left in the
+West on All Souls&rsquo; and Christmas Eves. Probably the Macedonian
+practice of setting aside a portion of the cake for a saint,
+and the pieces cut in France for <i>le bon Dieu</i> and the Virgin or the
+three Magi, have a like origin. One may compare them with
+the Serbian breaking of the <i>kolatch</i> cake in honour of Christ &ldquo;the
+Patron Namegiver.&rdquo; Is it irrelevant, also, to mention here the
+Greek Church custom, at the preparation of the elements for
+the Eucharist, of breaking portions of the bread in memory of
+the Virgin and other saints?</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">In many countries the Epiphany is a special time for the
+expulsion of evils. At Brunnen in Switzerland boys go about
+in procession on Twelfth Night, with torches and lanterns, and
+make a great noise with horns, bells, whips, &amp;c., in order to
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_342" id="Page_342" href="#Page_342">342</a>frighten away two wood-spirits. In Labrugui&egrave;re in southern
+France on the Eve of Twelfth Day the inhabitants rush through
+the streets, making discordant noises and a huge uproar, with the
+object of scaring away ghosts and devils.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-17" id="Nanchor_17-17" href="#Note_17-17">{17}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In parts of the eastern Alps there takes place what is called
+<i>Berchtenlaufen</i>. Lads, formerly to the number of two or three
+hundred, rush about in the strangest masks, with cowbells, whips,
+and all sorts of weapons, and shout wildly.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-18" id="Nanchor_17-18" href="#Note_17-18">{18}</a>
+ In Nuremberg up
+to the year 1616 on <i>Bergnacht</i> or Epiphany Eve boys and girls
+used to run about the streets and knock loudly at the doors.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-19" id="Nanchor_17-19" href="#Note_17-19">{19}</a>
+
+Such knocking, as we have seen, may well have been intended to
+drive away spirits from the houses.</p>
+
+<p>At Eschenloh near Partenkirchen in Upper Bavaria three women
+used to <i>berchten</i> on that evening. They all had linen bags over
+their heads, with holes for the mouth and eyes. One carried a
+chain, another a rake, and the third a broom. Going round to
+the houses, they knocked on the door with the chain, scraped the
+ground with the rake, and made a noise of sweeping with the
+broom.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-20" id="Nanchor_17-20" href="#Note_17-20">{20}</a>
+ The suggestion of a clearing away of evils is here
+very strong.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i> mention has already been
+made of the purification of houses with holy water, performed by
+Greek priests on the Epiphany. In Roumania, where a similar
+sprinkling is performed, a curious piece of imitative magic is
+added&#xfeff;&mdash;the priest is invited to sit upon the bed, in order that
+the brooding hen may sit upon her eggs. Moreover there should
+be maize grains under the mattress; then the hen will lay eggs
+in abundance.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-21" id="Nanchor_17-21" href="#Note_17-21">{21}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">We noted in an earlier chapter the name <i>Berchtentag</i> applied
+in southern Germany and in Austria to the Epiphany, and we
+saw also how the mysterious Frau Berchta was specially connected
+with the day. On the Epiphany and its Eve in the M&ouml;llthal in
+Carinthia a female figure, &ldquo;the Berchtel,&rdquo; goes the round of the
+houses. She is generally dressed in a hide, wears a hideous
+wooden mask, and hops wildly about, inquiring as to the
+behaviour of children, and demanding gifts.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-22" id="Nanchor_17-22" href="#Note_17-22">{22}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_343" id="Page_343" href="#Page_343">343</a>Something of the terrible, as well as the beneficent, belongs to
+the &ldquo;Befana,&rdquo; the Epiphany visitor who to Italian children is
+the great gift-bringer of the year, the Santa Klaus of the South.
+&ldquo;Delightful,&rdquo; say Countess Martinengo, &ldquo;as are the treasures she
+puts in their shoes when satisfied with their behaviour, she is
+credited with an unpleasantly sharp eye for youthful transgressions.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-23" id="Nanchor_17-23" href="#Note_17-23">{23}</a>
+
+Mothers will sometimes warn their children that
+if they are naughty the Befana will fetch and eat them. To
+Italian youngsters she is a very real being, and her coming on
+Epiphany Eve is looked forward to with the greatest anxiety.
+Though she puts playthings and sweets in the stockings of good
+children, she has nothing but a birch and coal for those who
+misbehave themselves.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-24" id="Nanchor_17-24" href="#Note_17-24">{24}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Formerly at Florence images of the Befana were put up in the
+windows of houses, and there were processions through the
+streets, guys being borne about, with a great blowing of
+trumpets.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-25" id="Nanchor_17-25" href="#Note_17-25">{25}</a>
+ Toy trumpets are still the delight of little boys at
+the Epiphany in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The Befana's name is obviously derived from <i>Epiphania</i>. In
+Naples the little old woman who fills children's stockings is
+called &ldquo;Pasqua Epiphania,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_117" id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117">[117]</a> the northern contraction not having
+been acclimatized there.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-26" id="Nanchor_17-26" href="#Note_17-26">{26}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Spain as well as Italy the Epiphany is associated with
+presents for children, but the gift-bringers for little Spaniards are
+the Three Holy Kings themselves. There is an old Spanish
+tradition that the Magi go every year to Bethlehem to adore the
+infant Jesus, and on their way visit children, leaving sweets and
+toys for them if they have behaved well. On Epiphany Eve the
+youngsters go early to bed, put out their shoes on the window-sill
+or balcony to be filled with presents by the Wise Men, and
+provide a little straw for their horses.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-27" id="Nanchor_17-27" href="#Note_17-27">{27}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It is, or was, a custom in Madrid to look out for the Kings on
+Epiphany Eve. Companies of men go out with bells and pots
+and pans, and make a great noise. There is loud shouting, and
+torches cast a fantastic light upon the scene. One of the men
+carries a large ladder, and mounts it to see if the Kings are
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_344" id="Page_344" href="#Page_344">344</a>coming. Here, perhaps, some devil-scaring rite, resembling those
+described above, has been half-Christianized.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-28" id="Nanchor_17-28" href="#Note_17-28">{28}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In Provence, too, there was a custom of going to meet the
+Magi. In a charming chapter of his Memoirs Mistral tells us
+how on Epiphany Eve all the children of his countryside used to
+go out to meet the Kings, bearing cakes for the Magi, dried
+figs for their pages, and handfuls of hay for their horses. In the
+glory and colour of the sunset young Mistral thought he saw
+the splendid train; but soon the gorgeous vision died away, and the
+children stood gaping alone on the darkening highway&#xfeff;&mdash;the
+Kings had passed behind the mountain. After supper the little
+ones hurried to church, and there in the Chapel of the Nativity
+beheld the Kings in adoration before the Crib.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-29" id="Nanchor_17-29" href="#Note_17-29">{29}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>At Trest not only did the young people carry baskets or
+dried fruit, but there were three men dressed as Magi to receive
+the offerings and accept compliments addressed to them by an
+orator. In return they presented him with a purse full of
+counters, upon which he rushed off with the treasure and was
+pursued by the others in a sort of dance.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-30" id="Nanchor_17-30" href="#Note_17-30">{30}</a>
+ Here again the Magi
+are evidently mixed up with something that has no relation to
+Christianity.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">We noted in <a href="#Chapter_IV">Chapter IV.</a> the elaborate ceremonies connected
+in Greece with the Blessing of the Waters at the Epiphany, and
+the custom of diving for a cross. It would seem, as was pointed
+out, that the latter is an ecclesiastically sanctioned form of a folk-ceremony.
+This is found in a purer state in Macedonia, where,
+after Matins on the Epiphany, it is the custom to thrust some one
+into water, be it sea or river, pond or well. On emerging he has
+to sprinkle the bystanders.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-31" id="Nanchor_17-31" href="#Note_17-31">{31}</a>
+ The rite may be compared with the
+drenchings of human beings in order to produce rain described by
+Dr. Frazer in &ldquo;The Magic Art.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-32" id="Nanchor_17-32" href="#Note_17-32">{32}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Another Greek custom combines the purifying powers of
+Epiphany water with the fertilizing influences of the Christmas
+log&#xfeff;&mdash;round Mount Olympos ashes are taken from the hearth
+where a cedar log has been burning since Christmas, and are
+baptized in the blessed water of the river. They are then borne
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_345" id="Page_345" href="#Page_345">345</a>to the vineyards, and thrown at their four corners, and also at the
+foot of apple- and fig-trees.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-33" id="Nanchor_17-33" href="#Note_17-33">{33}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>This may remind us that in England fruit-trees used to come
+in for special treatment on the Vigil of the Epiphany. In
+Devonshire the farmer and his men would go to the orchard with
+a large jug of cider, and drink the following toast at the foot of
+one of the best-bearing apple-trees, firing guns in conclusion:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i5">&ldquo;Here's to thee, old apple-tree,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Whence thou may'st bud, and whence thou may'st blow!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And whence thou may'st bear apples enow!</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Hats full! caps full!</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Bushel!&#xfeff;&mdash;bushel&#xfeff;&mdash;sacks full,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">And my pockets full too! Huzza!&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-34" id="Nanchor_17-34" href="#Note_17-34">{34}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In seventeenth-century Somersetshire, according to Aubrey, a piece
+of toast was put upon the roots.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-35" id="Nanchor_17-35" href="#Note_17-35">{35}</a>
+ According to another account
+each person in the company used to take a cupful of cider, with
+roasted apples pressed into it, drink part of the contents, and
+throw the rest at the tree.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-36" id="Nanchor_17-36" href="#Note_17-36">{36}</a>
+ The custom is described by
+Herrick as a Christmas Eve ceremony:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Wassail the trees, that they may bear</span><br />
+<span class="i2">You many a plum and many a pear;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For more or less fruits they will bring,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">As you do give them wassailing.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-37" id="Nanchor_17-37" href="#Note_17-37">{37}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In Sussex the wassailing (or &ldquo;worsling&rdquo;) of fruit-trees took
+place on Christmas Eve, and was accompanied by a trumpeter
+blowing on a cow's horn.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-38" id="Nanchor_17-38" href="#Note_17-38">{38}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The wassailing of the trees may be regarded as either originally
+an offering to their spirits or&#xfeff;&mdash;and this seems more probable&#xfeff;&mdash;as
+a sacramental act intended to bring fertilizing influences to
+bear upon them. Customs of a similar character are found in
+Continental countries during the Christmas season. In Tyrol,
+for instance, when the Christmas pies are a-making on St.
+Thomas's Eve, the maids are told to go out-of-doors and put their
+arms, sticky with paste, round the fruit-trees, in order that they
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_346" id="Page_346" href="#Page_346">346</a>may bear well next year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-39" id="Nanchor_17-39" href="#Note_17-39">{39}</a>
+ The uses of the ashes of the
+Christmas log have already been noticed.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, as in the Thurgau, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and
+Tyrol, the trees are beaten to make them bear. On New Year's
+Eve at Hildesheim people dance and sing around them,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-40" id="Nanchor_17-40" href="#Note_17-40">{40}</a>
+ while
+the Tyrolese peasant on Christmas Eve will go out to his trees,
+and, knocking with bent fingers upon them, will bid them wake
+up and bear.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-41" id="Nanchor_17-41" href="#Note_17-41">{41}</a>
+ There is a Slavonic custom, on the same night,
+of threatening apple-trees with a hatchet if they do not produce
+fruit during the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-42" id="Nanchor_17-42" href="#Note_17-42">{42}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Another remarkable agricultural rite was practised on Epiphany
+Eve in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. The farmer and his
+servants would meet in a field sown with wheat, and there light
+thirteen fires, with one larger than the rest. Round this a circle
+was formed by the company, and all would drink a glass of cider
+to the success of the harvest.&#xFEFF;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_118" id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118">[118]</a> This done, they returned to the
+farm, to feast&#xfeff;&mdash;in Gloucestershire&#xfeff;&mdash;on cakes made with caraways,
+and soaked in cider. The Herefordshire accounts give
+particulars of a further ceremony. A large cake was provided,
+with a hole in the middle, and after supper everyone went to the
+wain-house. The master filled a cup with strong ale, and
+standing opposite the finest ox, pledged him in a curious toast;
+the company followed his example with the other oxen, addressing
+each by name. Afterwards the large cake was put on the
+horn of the first ox.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-43" id="Nanchor_17-43" href="#Note_17-43">{43}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>It is extremely remarkable, and can scarcely be a mere
+coincidence, that far away among the southern Slavs, as we saw
+in <a href="#Chapter_XII">Chapter XII.</a>, a Christmas cake with a hole in its centre is
+likewise put upon the horn of the chief ox. The wassailing of
+the animals is found there also. On Christmas Day, Sir Arthur
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_347" id="Page_347" href="#Page_347">347</a>Evans relates, the house-mother &ldquo;entered the stall set apart for
+the goats, and having first sprinkled them with corn, took the
+wine-cup in her hand and said, &lsquo;Good morning, little mother!
+The Peace of God be on thee! Christ is born; of a truth He
+is born. May'st thou be healthy. I drink to thee in wine; I
+give thee a pomegranate; may'st thou meet with all good luck!&rsquo;
+She then lifted the cup to her lips, took a sup, tossed the pomegranate
+among the herd, and throwing her arms round the she-goat,
+whose health she had already drunk, gave it the &lsquo;Peace
+of God&rsquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;kissed it, that is, over and over again.&rdquo; The same
+ceremony was then performed for the benefit of the sheep and
+cows, and all the animals were beaten with a leafy olive-branch.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-44" id="Nanchor_17-44" href="#Note_17-44">{44}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>As for the fires, an Irish custom to some extent supplies a
+parallel. On Epiphany Eve a sieve of oats was set up, &ldquo;and
+in it a dozen of candles set round, and in the centre one larger,
+all lighted.&rdquo; This was said to be in memory of the Saviour and
+His apostles, lights of the world.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-45" id="Nanchor_17-45" href="#Note_17-45">{45}</a>
+ Here is an account of a
+similar custom practised in Co. Leitrim:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A piece of board is covered with cow-dung, and twelve rushlights
+are stuck therein. These are sprinkled with ash at the top, to make
+them light easily, and then set alight, each being named by some one
+present, and as each dies so will the life of its owner. A ball is then
+made of the dung, and it is placed over the door of the cowhouse for
+an increase of cattle. Sometimes mud is used, and the ball placed
+over the door of the dwelling-house.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-46" id="Nanchor_17-46" href="#Note_17-46">{46}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>There remains to be considered under Epiphany usages an
+ancient and very remarkable game played annually on January&nbsp;6
+at Haxey in Lincolnshire. It is known traditionally as &ldquo;Haxey
+Hood,&rdquo; and its centre is a struggle between the men of two
+villages for the possession of a roll of sacking or leather called the
+&ldquo;hood.&rdquo; Over it preside the &ldquo;boggans&rdquo; or &ldquo;bullocks&rdquo; of
+Plough Monday (see p. <a href="#Page_352">352</a>), headed by a figure known as &ldquo;My
+Lord,&rdquo; who is attended by a fool. The proceedings are opened
+on the village green by a mysterious speech from the fool:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, good folks, this is Haxa&rsquo; Hood. We've killed two
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_348" id="Page_348" href="#Page_348">348</a>bullocks and a half, but the other half we had to leave running
+about field: we can fetch it if it's wanted. Remember it's&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&lsquo;Hoose agin hoose, toon agin toon,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And if you meet a man knock him doon.&rsquo;&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Then, in an open field, the hoods&#xfeff;&mdash;there are six of them, one
+apparently for each of the chief hamlets round&#xfeff;&mdash;are thrown up and
+struggled for. &ldquo;The object is to carry them off the field away from
+the boggans. If any of these can get hold of them, or even touch
+them, they have to be given up, and carried back to My Lord.
+For every one carried off the field the boggans forfeit half-a-crown,
+which is spent in beer, doubtless by the men of the
+particular hamlet who have carried off the hood.&rdquo; The great
+event of the day is the struggle for the last hood&#xfeff;&mdash;made of
+leather&#xfeff;&mdash;between the men of Haxey and the men of Westwoodside&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;that
+is to say really between the customers of the public-houses
+there&#xfeff;&mdash;each party trying to get it to his favourite &lsquo;house.&rsquo;
+The publican at the successful house stands beer.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-47" id="Nanchor_17-47" href="#Note_17-47">{47}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chambers regards the fool's strange speech as preserving
+the tradition that the hood is the half of a bullock&#xfeff;&mdash;the head of a
+sacrificial victim, and he explains both the Haxey game and also
+the familiar games of hockey and football as originating in a
+struggle between the people of two villages to get such a head,
+with all its fertilizing properties, over their own boundary.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-48" id="Nanchor_17-48" href="#Note_17-48">{48}</a>
+ At
+Hornchurch in Essex, if we may trust a note given by Hone, an
+actual boar's head was wrestled for on Christmas Day, and afterwards
+feasted upon at one of the public-houses by the victor and
+his friends.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-49" id="Nanchor_17-49" href="#Note_17-49">{49}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>One more feature of the Haxey celebration must be mentioned
+(it points apparently to a human sacrifice): the fool, the morning
+after the game, used to be &ldquo;smoked&rdquo; over a straw fire. &ldquo;He
+was suspended above the fire and swung backwards and forwards
+over it until almost suffocated; then allowed to drop into the
+smouldering straw, which was well wetted, and to scramble out
+as he could.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-50" id="Nanchor_17-50" href="#Note_17-50">{50}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the subject of football, I may here condense an
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_349" id="Page_349" href="#Page_349">349</a>account of a Welsh Christmas custom quoted by Sir Laurence
+Gomme, in his book &ldquo;The Village Community,&rdquo; from the
+<i>Oswestry Observer</i> of March&nbsp;2, 1887:&#xfeff;&mdash;&ldquo;In South Cardiganshire
+it seems that about eighty years ago the population, rich and poor,
+male and female, of opposing parishes, turned out on Christmas
+Day and indulged in the game of football with such vigour that it
+became little short of a serious fight.&rdquo; Both in north and south
+Wales the custom was found. At one place, Llanwenog near
+Lampeter, there was a struggle between two parties with different
+traditions of race. The Bros, supposed to be descendants from
+Irish people, occupied the high ground of the parish; the
+Blaenaus, presumably pure-bred Brythons, occupied the lowlands.
+After morning service on Christmas Day, &ldquo;the whole of the Bros
+and Blaenaus, rich and poor, male and female, assembled on the
+turnpike road which divided the highlands from the lowlands.&rdquo;
+The ball was thrown high in the air, &ldquo;and when it fell Bros and
+Blaenaus scrambled for its possession.... If the Bros, by hook
+or by crook, could succeed in taking the ball up the mountain to
+their hamlet of Rhyddlan they won the day, while the Blaenaus
+were successful if they got the ball to their end of the parish
+at New Court.&rdquo; Many severe kicks were given, and the whole
+thing was taken so keenly &ldquo;that a Bro or a Blaenau would as
+soon lose a cow from his cowhouse as the football from his portion
+of the parish.&rdquo; There is plainly more than a mere pastime here;
+the thing appears to have been originally a struggle between
+two clans.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-51" id="Nanchor_17-51" href="#Note_17-51">{51}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="thoughtbreak">Anciently the Carnival, with its merrymaking before the
+austerities of Lent, was held to begin at the Epiphany. This
+was the case in Tyrol even in the nineteenth century.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-52" id="Nanchor_17-52" href="#Note_17-52">{52}</a>
+ As
+a rule, however, the Carnival in Roman Catholic countries is
+restricted to the last three days before Ash Wednesday. The
+pagan origin of its mummeries and licence is evident, but it is a
+spring rather than a winter festival, and hardly calls for treatment
+here.</p>
+
+<p>The Epiphany is in many places the end of Christmas. In
+Calvados, Normandy, it is marked by bonfires; red flames mount
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_350" id="Page_350" href="#Page_350">350</a>skywards, and the peasants join hands, dance, and leap through
+blinding smoke and cinders, shouting these rude lines:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;&Agrave;dieu les Rois</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Jusqu&rsquo;&agrave; douze mois,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Douze mois pass&eacute;s</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Les bougel&eacute;es.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-53" id="Nanchor_17-53" href="#Note_17-53">{53}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Another French Epiphany <i>chanson</i>, translated by the Rev. R. L.
+Gales, is a charming farewell to Christmas:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;No&euml;l is leaving us,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sad &lsquo;tis to tell,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But he will come again,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Adieu, No&euml;l.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">His wife and his children</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Weep as they go:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">On a grey horse</span><br />
+<span class="i2">They ride thro&rsquo; the snow.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The Kings ride away</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In the snow and the rain,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">After twelve months</span><br />
+<span class="i2">We shall see them again.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-54" id="Nanchor_17-54" href="#Note_17-54">{54}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Post-Epiphany Festivals.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Though with Twelfth Day the high festival of Christmas
+generally ends, later dates have sometimes been assigned as the
+close of the season. At the old English court, for instance, the
+merrymaking was sometimes carried on until Candlemas, while
+in some English country places it was customary, even in the
+late nineteenth century, to leave Christmas decorations up, in
+houses and churches, till that day.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-55" id="Nanchor_17-55" href="#Note_17-55">{55}</a>
+ The whole time between
+Christmas and the Presentation in the Temple was thus treated
+as sacred to the Babyhood of Christ; the withered evergreens
+would keep alive memories of Christmas joys, even, sometimes,
+after Septuagesima had struck the note of penitence.</p>
+
+<p>Before we pass on to a short notice of Candlemas, we may
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_351" id="Page_351" href="#Page_351">351</a>glance at a few last sparks, so to speak, of the Christmas blaze,
+and then at the English festivals which marked the resumption of
+work after the holidays.</p>
+
+<p>In Sweden Yule is considered to close with the Octave of the
+Epiphany, January&nbsp;13, &ldquo;St. Knut's Day,&rdquo; the twentieth after
+Christmas.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Twentieth day Knut</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Driveth Yule out&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>sing the old folks as the young people dance in a ring round the
+festive Yule board, which is afterwards robbed of the viands that
+remain on it, including the Yule boar. On this day a sort of
+mimic fight used to take place, the master and servants of the
+house pretending to drive away the guests with axe, broom,
+knife, spoon, and other implements.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-56" id="Nanchor_17-56" href="#Note_17-56">{56}</a>
+ The name, &ldquo;St. Knut's
+Day,&rdquo; is apparently due to the fact that in the laws of Canute
+the Great (1017-36) it is commanded that there is to be no
+fasting from Christmas to the Octave of the Epiphany.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-57" id="Nanchor_17-57" href="#Note_17-57">{57}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In England the day after the Epiphany was called St. Distaff's
+or Rock Day (the word Rock is evidently the same as the
+German <i>Rocken</i> = distaff). It was the day when the women
+resumed their spinning after the rest and gaiety of Christmas.
+From a poem of Herrick's it appears that the men in jest tried to
+burn the women's flax, and the women in return poured water on
+the men:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Partly work, and partly play</span><br />
+<span class="i2">You must on St. Distaff's day:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">From the plough soon free your team,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Then come home and fother them;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">If the maids a-spinning go,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Burn the flax and fire the tow.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Bring in pails of water then,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Let the maids bewash the men;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Give St. Distaff all the right,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Then bid Christmas sport good night;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And next morrow, every one</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To his own vocation.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-58" id="Nanchor_17-58" href="#Note_17-58">{58}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_352" id="Page_352" href="#Page_352">352</a>A more notable occasion was Plough Monday, the first after
+Twelfth Day. Men's labour then began again after the
+holidays.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-59" id="Nanchor_17-59" href="#Note_17-59">{59}</a>
+ We have already seen that it is sometimes associated
+with the mummers&rsquo; plays. Often, however, its ritual is not
+developed into actual drama, and the following account from
+Derbyshire gives a fairly typical description of its customs:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On Plough Monday the &lsquo;Plough bullocks&rsquo; are occasionally seen;
+they consist of a number of young men from various farmhouses, who are
+dressed up in ribbons.... These young men yoke themselves to a
+plough, which they draw about, preceded by a band of music, from house
+to house, collecting money. They are accompanied by the Fool and
+Bessy; the fool being dressed in the skin of a calf, with the tail hanging
+down behind, and Bessy generally a young man in female attire. The
+fool carries an inflated bladder tied to the end of a long stick, by way
+of whip, which he does not fail to apply pretty soundly to the heads
+and shoulders of his team. When anything is given a cry of &lsquo;Largess!&rsquo;
+is raised, and a dance performed round the plough. If a refusal to their
+application for money is made they not unfrequently plough up the
+pathway, door-stone, or any other portion of the premises they happen
+to be near.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-60" id="Nanchor_17-60" href="#Note_17-60">{60}</a>
+</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>By Plough Monday we have passed, it seems probable, from
+New Year festivals to one that originally celebrated the beginning
+of spring. Such a feast, apparently, was kept in mid-February
+when ploughing began at that season; later the advance of agriculture
+made it possible to shift it forward to early January.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-61" id="Nanchor_17-61" href="#Note_17-61">{61}</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Candlemas.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Nearer to the original date of the spring feast is Candlemas,
+February&nbsp;2; though connected with Christmas by its ecclesiastical
+meaning, it is something of a vernal festival.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-62" id="Nanchor_17-62" href="#Note_17-62">{62}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The feast of the Purification of the Virgin or Presentation of
+Christ in the Temple was probably instituted by Pope Liberius at
+Rome in the fourth century. The ceremonial to which it owes
+its popular name, Candlemas, is the blessing of candles in church
+and the procession of the faithful, carrying them lighted in their
+hands. During the blessing the &ldquo;Nunc dimittis&rdquo; is chanted,
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_353" id="Page_353" href="#Page_353">353</a>with the antiphon &ldquo;Lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam
+plebis tuae Israel,&rdquo; the ceremony being thus brought into connection
+with the &ldquo;light to lighten the Gentiles&rdquo; hymned by Symeon.
+Usener has however shown reason for thinking that the Candlemas
+procession was not of spontaneous Christian growth, but was
+inspired by a desire to Christianize a Roman rite, the <i>Amburbale</i>,
+which took place at the same season and consisted of a procession
+round the city with lighted candles.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-63" id="Nanchor_17-63" href="#Note_17-63">{63}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Candlemas customs of the sixteenth century are thus
+described by Naogeorgus:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Then numbers great of Tapers large, both men and women beare</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To Church, being halowed there with pomp, and dreadful words to heare.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">This done, eche man his Candell lightes, where chiefest seemeth hee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Whose taper greatest may be seene, and fortunate to bee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Whose Candell burneth cleare and brighte; a wondrous force and might</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Doth in these Candells lie, which if at any time they light,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">They sure beleve that neyther storme or tempest dare abide,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Nor thunder in the skies be heard, nor any devils spide,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Nor fearefull sprites that walke by night, nor hurts of frost or haile.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-64" id="Nanchor_17-64" href="#Note_17-64">{64}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Still, in many Roman Catholic regions, the candles blessed in
+church at the Purification are believed to have marvellous powers.
+In Brittany, Franche-Comt&eacute;, and elsewhere, they are preserved
+and lighted in time of storm or sickness.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-65" id="Nanchor_17-65" href="#Note_17-65">{65}</a>
+ In Tyrol they are
+lighted on important family occasions such as christenings and
+funerals, as well as on the approach of a storm&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-66" id="Nanchor_17-66" href="#Note_17-66">{66}</a>
+; in Sicily in time
+of earthquake or when somebody is dying.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-67" id="Nanchor_17-67" href="#Note_17-67">{67}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>In England some use of candles on this festival continued long
+after the Reformation. In 1628 the Bishop of Durham gave
+serious offence by sticking up wax candles in his cathedral at the
+Purification; &ldquo;the number of all the candles burnt that evening
+was two hundred and twenty, besides sixteen torches; sixty of
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_354" id="Page_354" href="#Page_354">354</a>those burning tapers and torches standing upon and near the high
+Altar.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-68" id="Nanchor_17-68" href="#Note_17-68">{68}</a>
+ Ripon Cathedral, as late as the eighteenth century, was
+brilliantly illuminated with candles on the Sunday before the
+festival.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-69" id="Nanchor_17-69" href="#Note_17-69">{69}</a>
+ And, to come to domestic customs, at Lyme Regis in
+Dorsetshire the person who bought the wood-ashes of a family
+used to send a present of a large candle at Candlemas. It was
+lighted at night, and round it there was festive drinking until its
+going out gave the signal for retirement to rest.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-70" id="Nanchor_17-70" href="#Note_17-70">{70}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>There are other British Candlemas customs connected with
+fire. In the western isles of Scotland, says an early eighteenth-century
+writer, &ldquo;as Candlemas Day comes round, the mistress and
+servants of each family taking a sheaf of oats, dress it up in
+woman's apparel, and after putting it in a large basket, beside
+which a wooden club is placed, they cry three times, &lsquo;Briid is
+come! Briid is welcome!&rsquo; This they do just before going to
+bed, and as soon as they rise in the morning, they look among the
+ashes, expecting to see the impression of Briid's club there, which
+if they do, they reckon it a true presage of a good crop and prosperous
+year, and the contrary they take as an ill-omen.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-71" id="Nanchor_17-71" href="#Note_17-71">{71}</a>
+ Sir
+Laurence Gomme regards this as an illustration of belief in a
+house-spirit whose residence is the hearth and whose element is
+the ever-burning sacred flame. He also considers the Lyme Regis
+custom mentioned above to be a modernized relic of the sacred
+hearth-fire.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-72" id="Nanchor_17-72" href="#Note_17-72">{72}</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Again, the feast of the Purification was the time to kindle a
+&ldquo;brand&rdquo; preserved from the Christmas log. Herrick's Candlemas
+lines may be recalled:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Kindle the Christmas brand, and then</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Till sunne-set let it burne;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Which quencht, then lay it up agen,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Till Christmas next returne.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Part must be kept wherewith to teend</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The Christmas Log next yeare;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And where &lsquo;tis safely kept, the Fiend</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Can do no mischiefe there.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-73" id="Nanchor_17-73" href="#Note_17-73">{73}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_355" id="Page_355" href="#Page_355">355</a>Candlemas Eve was the moment for the last farewells to
+Christmas; Herrick sings:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;End now the White Loafe and the Pye,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And let all sports with Christmas dye,&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>and</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Down with the Rosemary and Bayes,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Down with the Misleto;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Instead of Holly, now up-raise</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The greener Box for show.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The Holly hitherto did sway;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Let Box now domineere</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Until the dancing Easter Day,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Or Easter's Eve appeare.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-74" id="Nanchor_17-74" href="#Note_17-74">{74}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>An old Shropshire servant, Miss Burne tells us, was wont, when
+she took down the holly and ivy on Candlemas Eve, to put snow-drops
+in their place.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-75" id="Nanchor_17-75" href="#Note_17-75">{75}</a>
+ We may see in this replacing of the winter
+evergreens by the delicate white flowers a hint that by Candlemas
+the worst of the winter is over and gone; Earth has begun to deck
+herself with blossoms, and spring, however feebly, has begun.
+With Candlemas we, like the older English countryfolk, may take
+our leave of Christmas.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_356" id="Page_356" href="#Page_356">356</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_357" id="Page_357" href="#Page_357">357</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="CONCLUSION" id="CONCLUSION"></a>CONCLUSION</h2>
+
+
+<p>The reader who has had patience to persevere will by now have
+gained some idea of the manner in which Christmas is, and has
+been, kept throughout Europe. We have traced the evolution
+of the festival, seen it take its rise soon after the victory of the
+Catholic doctrine of Christ's person at Nicea, and spread from
+Rome to every quarter of the Empire, not as a folk-festival but
+as an ecclesiastical holy-day. We have seen the Church condemn
+with horror the relics of pagan feasts which clung round the
+same season of the year; then, as time went on, we have found
+the two elements, pagan and Christian, mingling in some degree,
+the pagan losing most of its serious meaning, and continuing
+mainly as ritual performed for the sake of use and wont or as a
+jovial tradition, the Christian becoming humanized, the skeleton
+of dogma clothed with warm flesh and blood.</p>
+
+<p>We have considered, as represented in poetry and liturgy, the
+strictly ecclesiastical festival, the commemoration of the Nativity
+as the beginning of man's redemption. We have seen how in
+the carols, the cult of the <i>presepio</i>, and the religious drama, the
+Birth of the King of Glory in the stable at midwinter has presented
+itself in concrete form to the popular mind, calling up a
+host of human emotions, a crowd of quaint and beautiful fancies.
+Lastly we have noted the survival, in the most varied degrees of
+transformation, of things which are alien to Christianity and in
+some cases seem to go back to very primitive stages of thought
+and feeling. An antique reverence for the plant-world may lie,
+as we have seen, beneath the familiar institution of the Christmas-tree,
+some sort of animal-worship may be at the bottom of the
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_358" id="Page_358" href="#Page_358">358</a>beast-masks common at winter festivals, survivals of sacrifice may
+linger in Christmas feasting, and in the family gatherings round
+the hearth may be preserved a dim memory of ancient domestic
+rites.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas, indeed, regarded in all its aspects, is a microcosm of
+European religion. It reflects almost every phase of thought and
+feeling from crude magic and superstition to the speculative
+mysticism of Eckhart, from mere delight in physical indulgence
+to the exquisite spirituality and tenderness of St. Francis.
+Ascetic and <i>bon-vivant</i>, mystic and materialist, learned and
+simple, noble and peasant, all have found something in it of
+which to lay hold. It is a river into which have flowed tributaries
+from every side, from Oriental religion, from Greek and
+Roman civilization, from Celtic, Teutonic, Slav, and probably
+pre-Aryan, society, mingling their waters so that it is often hard
+to discover the far-away springs.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen how the Reformation broke up the great
+mediaeval synthesis of paganism and Christianity, how the
+extremer forms of Protestantism aimed at completely destroying
+Christmas, and how the general tendency of modern civilization,
+with its scientific spirit, its popular education, its railways, its
+concentration of the people in great cities, has been to root out
+traditional beliefs and customs both Christian and pagan, so that
+if we would seek for relics of the old things we must go to the
+regions of Europe that are least industrially and intellectually
+&ldquo;advanced.&rdquo; Yet amongst the most sceptical and &ldquo;enlightened&rdquo;
+of moderns there is generally a large residuum of tradition.
+&ldquo;Emotionally,&rdquo; it has been said, &ldquo;we are hundreds of thousands
+of years old; rationally we are embryos&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_18-1" id="Nanchor_18-1" href="#Note_18-1">{1}</a>
+; and many people who
+deem themselves &ldquo;emancipated&rdquo; are willing for once in the year
+to plunge into the stream of tradition, merge themselves in
+inherited social custom, and give way to sentiments and impressions
+which in their more reflective moments they spurn.
+Most men are ready at Christmas to put themselves into an
+instinctive rather than a rational attitude, to drink of the springs
+of wonder, and return in some degree to earlier, less intellectual
+stages of human development&#xfeff;&mdash;to become in fact children again.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_359" id="Page_359" href="#Page_359">359</a>Many elements enter into the modern Christmas. There is
+the delight of its warmth and brightness and comfort against the
+bleak midwinter. A peculiar charm of the northern Christmas
+lies in the thought of the cold barred out, the home made a warm,
+gay place in contrast with the cheerless world outside. There is
+the physical pleasure of &ldquo;good cheer,&rdquo; of plentiful eating and
+drinking, joined to, and partly resulting in, a sense of goodwill
+and expansive kindliness towards the world at large, a temporary
+feeling of the brotherhood of man, a desire that the poor may for
+once in the year &ldquo;have a good time.&rdquo; Here perhaps we may
+trace the influence of the <i>Saturnalia</i>, with its dreams of the
+age of gold, its exaltation of them of low degree. Mixed
+with a little sentimental Christianity this is the Christmas of
+Dickens&#xfeff;&mdash;the Christmas which he largely helped to perpetuate
+in England.</p>
+
+<p>Each nation, naturally, has fashioned its own Christmas. The
+English have made it a season of solid material comfort, of good-fellowship
+and &ldquo;charity,&rdquo; with a slight flavour of soothing
+religion. The modern French, sceptical and pagan, make little
+of Christmas, and concentrate upon the secular celebration of the
+<i>jour de l'an</i>. For the Scandinavians Christmas is above all a time
+of sport, recreation, good living, and social gaiety in the midst of
+a season when little outdoor work can be done and night almost
+swallows up day. The Germans, sentimental and childlike,
+have produced a Christmas that is a very Paradise for children
+and at which the old delight to play at being young again around
+the Tree. For the Italians Christmas is centred upon the cult
+of the <i>Bambino</i>, so fitted to their dramatic instincts, their love of
+display, their strong parental affection. (How much of the
+sentiment that surrounds the <i>presepio</i> is, though religiously
+heightened, akin to the delight of a child in its doll!) If the
+Germans may be called the good, industrious, sentimental children
+of Europe, making the most of simple things, the Italians are the
+lively, passionate, impulsive children, loving gay clothes and
+finery; and the contrast shows in their keeping of Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>The modern Christmas is above all things a children's feast,
+and the elders who join in it put themselves upon their children's
+<a class="pagenum" name="Page_360" id="Page_360" href="#Page_360">360</a>level. We have noted how ritual acts, once performed with
+serious purpose, tend to become games for youngsters, and have
+seen many an example of this process in the sports and mummeries
+kept up by the elder folk for the benefit of the children. We
+have seen too how the radiant figure of the Christ Child has
+become a gift-bringer for the little ones. At no time in the
+world's history has so much been made of children as to-day,
+and because Christmas is their feast its lustre continues unabated
+in an age upon which dogmatic Christianity has largely lost its
+hold, which laughs at the pagan superstitions of its forefathers.
+Christmas is the feast of beginnings, of instinctive, happy childhood;
+the Christian idea of the Immortal Babe renewing weary,
+stained humanity, blends with the thought of the New Year,
+with its hope and promise, laid in the cradle of Time.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_361" id="Page_361" href="#Page_361">361</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_362" id="Page_362" href="#Page_362">362</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_363" id="Page_363" href="#Page_363">363</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="NOTES_AND_BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="NOTES_AND_BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a>NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>
+Bibliographical details are given with the first reference to each authority, and the
+titles and authors&rsquo; names are there printed in heavy type. The particulars are
+repeated in the notes to Part II. when authorities are referred to again.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<div class="notes">
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I.&#xfeff;&mdash;INTRODUCTION</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-1" id="Note_1-1" href="#Nanchor_1-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. K. Chesterton</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Daily News,&rdquo;</b> Dec. 26, 1903.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-2" id="Note_1-2" href="#Nanchor_1-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> Dec. 23, 1911.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-3" id="Note_1-3" href="#Nanchor_1-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. <b>J. E. Harrison, &ldquo;Themis: a Study of the Social Origins of Greek
+Religion&rdquo;</b> (Cambridge, 1912), 139, 184.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-4" id="Note_1-4" href="#Nanchor_1-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Or plural <i>Weihnachten</i>. The name <i>Weihnachten</i> was applied in five different ways
+in mediaeval Germany: (1) to Dec. 25, (2) to Dec. 25-8, (3) to the whole Christmas
+week, (4) to Dec. 25 to Jan. 6, (5) to the whole time from Christmas to the Octave of
+the Epiphany. <b>G. Bilfinger, &ldquo;Das germanische Julfest&rdquo;</b> (Stuttgart, 1901), 39.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-5" id="Note_1-5" href="#Nanchor_1-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. Tille, &ldquo;Die Geschichte der deutschen Weihnacht&rdquo;</b> (Leipsic, 1893), 22.
+[Referred to as &ldquo;D. W.&rdquo;]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-6" id="Note_1-6" href="#Nanchor_1-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. Usener, &ldquo;Das Weihnachtsfest&rdquo;</b> (Kap. i., bis. iii. 2nd Edition, Bonn, 1911),
+273&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-7" id="Note_1-7" href="#Nanchor_1-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>L. Duchesne, &ldquo;Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans.,
+Revised Edition, London, 1912), 257&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-8" id="Note_1-8" href="#Nanchor_1-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. Hastings, &ldquo;Encyclop&aelig;dia of Religion and Ethics&rdquo;</b> (Edinburgh, 1910),
+iii. 601&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-9" id="Note_1-9" href="#Nanchor_1-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. K. Chambers, &ldquo;The Mediaeval Stage&rdquo;</b> (Oxford, 1903), i. 244. [Referred
+to as &ldquo;M. S.&rdquo;]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-10" id="Note_1-10" href="#Nanchor_1-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. Tille, &ldquo;Yule and Christmas: their Place in the Germanic Year&rdquo;</b>
+(London, 1899), 122. [Referred to as &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.&rdquo;]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-11" id="Note_1-11" href="#Nanchor_1-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 164.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-12" id="Note_1-12" href="#Nanchor_1-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 21.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-13" id="Note_1-13" href="#Nanchor_1-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 203.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-14" id="Note_1-14" href="#Nanchor_1-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>K. Lake</b> in Hastings's &ldquo;Encyclop&aelig;dia&rdquo; and in <b>&ldquo;The Guardian,&rdquo;</b> Dec. 29,
+1911; <b>F. C. Conybeare</b>, Preface to <b>&ldquo;The Key of Truth, a Manual of the Paulician
+Church of Armenia&rdquo;</b> (Oxford, 1898), clii.&nbsp;f.; Usener, 18&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-15" id="Note_1-15" href="#Nanchor_1-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Usener, 27&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-16" id="Note_1-16" href="#Nanchor_1-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 31; <b>J. E. Harrison, &ldquo;Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion&rdquo;</b>
+(Cambridge, 1903), 550.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-17" id="Note_1-17" href="#Nanchor_1-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Harrison, &ldquo;Prolegomena,&rdquo; 402&nbsp;f., 524&nbsp;f., 550.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_364" id="Page_364" href="#Page_364">364</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-18" id="Note_1-18" href="#Nanchor_1-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Lake</b>, and <b>G. Rietschel, &ldquo;Weihnachten in Kirche, Kunst and Volksleben&rdquo;</b>
+(Bielefeld and Leipsic, 1902), 10.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-19" id="Note_1-19" href="#Nanchor_1-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Conybeare, lxxviii.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-20" id="Note_1-20" href="#Nanchor_1-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. Lupi, &ldquo;Dissertazioni, lettere ed altre operette&rdquo;</b> (Faenza, 1785), i. 219&nbsp;f.,
+mentioned in article &ldquo;Nativity&rdquo; in <b>T. K. Cheyne's &ldquo;Encyclop&aelig;dia Biblica&rdquo;</b> (London,
+1902), iii. 3346.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-21" id="Note_1-21" href="#Nanchor_1-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 234.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-22" id="Note_1-22" href="#Nanchor_1-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 235; <b>F. Cumont, &ldquo;The Monuments of Mithra&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans., London,
+1903), 190.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-23" id="Note_1-23" href="#Nanchor_1-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. Negri, &ldquo;Julian the Apostate&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans., London, 1905), i. 240&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-24" id="Note_1-24" href="#Nanchor_1-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 235.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-25" id="Note_1-25" href="#Nanchor_1-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Duchesne, &ldquo;Christian Worship,&rdquo; 265.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_1-26" id="Note_1-26" href="#Nanchor_1-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 146.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>PART I.&#xfeff;&mdash;THE CHRISTIAN FEAST</h3>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II.&#xfeff;&mdash;CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-1" id="Note_2-1" href="#Nanchor_2-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See especially for Latin, German, and English hymnody <b>J. Julian, &ldquo;A Dictionary
+of Hymnology&rdquo;</b> (New Edition, London, 1907), and the <b>Historical Edition of
+&ldquo;Hymns Ancient and Modern&rdquo;</b> (London, 1909).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-2" id="Note_2-2" href="#Nanchor_2-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. C. Beeching, &ldquo;A Book of Christmas Verse&rdquo;</b> (London, 1895), 3.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-3" id="Note_2-3" href="#Nanchor_2-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Beeching, 8.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-4" id="Note_2-4" href="#Nanchor_2-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. Gastou&eacute;, &ldquo;No&euml;l&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1907), 38.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-5" id="Note_2-5" href="#Nanchor_2-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>R. W. Church, &ldquo;St. Anselm&rdquo;</b> (London, 1870), 6.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-6" id="Note_2-6" href="#Nanchor_2-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 3&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-7" id="Note_2-7" href="#Nanchor_2-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. R. W. Stephens, &ldquo;The English Church from the Norman Conquest to
+the Accession of Edward I.&rdquo;</b> (London, 1901), 309.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-8" id="Note_2-8" href="#Nanchor_2-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. Sandys, &ldquo;Christmastide: its History, Festivities, and Carols&rdquo;</b>
+(London, n.d.), 216; <b>E. Rickert, &ldquo;Ancient English Carols. MCCCC-MDCC&rdquo;</b>
+(London, 1910), 133.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-9" id="Note_2-9" href="#Nanchor_2-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;For the Franciscan influence on poetry and art see: <b>Vernon Lee, &ldquo;Renaissance
+Fancies and Studies&rdquo;</b> (London, 1895); <b>H. Thode, &ldquo;Franz von Assisi und die
+Anf&auml;nge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien&rdquo;</b> (Berlin, 1885); <b>A. Macdonell,
+&ldquo;Sons of Francis&rdquo;</b> (London, 1902); <b>J. A. Symonds, &ldquo;The Renaissance in Italy.
+Italian Literature,&rdquo;</b> Part I. (New Edition, London, 1898).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-10" id="Note_2-10" href="#Nanchor_2-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Thomas of Celano, &ldquo;Lives of St. Francis&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans. by A. G. Ferrers
+Howell, London, 1908), 84.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-11" id="Note_2-11" href="#Nanchor_2-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>P. Robinson, &ldquo;Writings of St. Francis&rdquo;</b> (London, 1906), 175.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-12" id="Note_2-12" href="#Nanchor_2-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Le poesie spirituali del B. Jacopone da Todi,&rdquo;</b> con annotationi di Fra
+Francesco Tresatti (Venice, 1617), 266.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-13" id="Note_2-13" href="#Nanchor_2-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 275.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-14" id="Note_2-14" href="#Nanchor_2-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 867.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-15" id="Note_2-15" href="#Nanchor_2-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Stabat Mater speciosa,&rdquo;</b> trans. and ed. by J. M. Neale (London, 1866).<a class="pagenum" name="Page_365" id="Page_365" href="#Page_365">365</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-16" id="Note_2-16" href="#Nanchor_2-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;For German Christmas poetry see, besides Julian: <b>Hoffmann von Fallersleben,
+&ldquo;Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes bis auf Luthers Zeit&rdquo;</b> (2nd Edition,
+Hanover, 1854); <b>P. Wackernagel, &ldquo;Das deutsche Kirchenlied&rdquo;</b> (Leipsic, 1867);
+and <b>C. Winkworth, &ldquo;Christian Singers of Germany&rdquo;</b> (London, n.d.).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-17" id="Note_2-17" href="#Nanchor_2-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>R. M. Jones, &ldquo;Studies in Mystical Religion&rdquo;</b> (London, 1909), 235, 237.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-18" id="Note_2-18" href="#Nanchor_2-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Meister Eckharts Schriften und Predigten,&rdquo;</b> edited by H. Buttner (Leipsic,
+1903), i. 44.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-19" id="Note_2-19" href="#Nanchor_2-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Translation by C. Winkworth, &ldquo;Christian Singers,&rdquo; 84. German text in
+Wackernagel, ii. 302&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-20" id="Note_2-20" href="#Nanchor_2-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch&rdquo;</b> (Hamburg-Grossborstel, 1907), 125.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-21" id="Note_2-21" href="#Nanchor_2-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs,&rdquo;</b> reprinted from the
+Edition of 1567 by A. F. Mitchell (Edinburgh and London, 1897), 53. This translation
+is abridged and Protestantized. The mediaeval German text, which is partly
+addressed to the Virgin, is given in <b>Hoffmann von Fallersleben, &ldquo;In Dulci Jubilo&rdquo;</b>
+(Hanover, 1854), 46. For the music see <b>G. R. Woodward, &ldquo;The Cowley Carol
+Book&rdquo;</b> (New Edition, London, 1909), 20&nbsp;f. [a work peculiarly rich in old German airs].
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-22" id="Note_2-22" href="#Nanchor_2-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>K. Weinhold, &ldquo;Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus S&uuml;ddeutschland und
+Schlesien&rdquo;</b> (2nd Edition, Vienna, 1875), 385.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-23" id="Note_2-23" href="#Nanchor_2-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 396. [For help in the translation of German dialect I am indebted to
+Dr. M. A. M&uuml;gge.]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-24" id="Note_2-24" href="#Nanchor_2-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 400.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-25" id="Note_2-25" href="#Nanchor_2-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 417.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-26" id="Note_2-26" href="#Nanchor_2-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;E. K. Chambers, essay on &ldquo;Some Aspects of Medi&aelig;val Lyric&rdquo; in <b>&ldquo;Early
+English Lyrics,&rdquo;</b> chosen by <b>E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick</b> (London, 1907), 290.
+[Twenty-five of Awdlay's carols were printed by Messrs. <b>Chambers and Sidgwick</b> in
+<b>&ldquo;The Modern Language Review&rdquo;</b> (Cambridge), Oct., 1910, and Jan., 1911.]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-27" id="Note_2-27" href="#Nanchor_2-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 293.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-28" id="Note_2-28" href="#Nanchor_2-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Quoted by <b>J. J. Jusserand, &ldquo;A Literary History of the English People&rdquo;</b>
+(2nd Edition, London, 1907), i. 218.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-29" id="Note_2-29" href="#Nanchor_2-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rickert, 6; Beeching, 13.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-30" id="Note_2-30" href="#Nanchor_2-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;No. lv. in Chambers and Sidgwick, &ldquo;Early English Lyrics.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-31" id="Note_2-31" href="#Nanchor_2-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;No. lix., <i>ibid.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-32" id="Note_2-32" href="#Nanchor_2-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;No. lxi., <i>ibid.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-33" id="Note_2-33" href="#Nanchor_2-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;No. lxx., <i>ibid.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-34" id="Note_2-34" href="#Nanchor_2-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;No. lxvii., <i>ibid.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-35" id="Note_2-35" href="#Nanchor_2-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;No. lxiii., <i>ibid.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_2-36" id="Note_2-36" href="#Nanchor_2-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rickert, 67.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III.&#xfeff;&mdash;CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-1" id="Note_3-1" href="#Nanchor_3-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>No&euml;l Herv&eacute;, &ldquo;Les No&euml;ls fran&ccedil;ais&rdquo;</b> (Niort, 1905), Gastou&eacute;, 57&nbsp;f.; <b>G. Gregory
+Smith, &ldquo;The Transition Period&rdquo;</b> (Edinburgh and London, 1900), 217.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-2" id="Note_3-2" href="#Nanchor_3-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Gregory Smith, 217.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-3" id="Note_3-3" href="#Nanchor_3-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. Lemeignen, &ldquo;Vieux No&euml;ls compos&eacute;s en l'honneur de la Naissance de
+Notre-Seigneur J&eacute;sus-Christ&rdquo;</b> (Nantes, 1876), iii. 2&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-4" id="Note_3-4" href="#Nanchor_3-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 10, 11.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-5" id="Note_3-5" href="#Nanchor_3-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 93, 95.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-6" id="Note_3-6" href="#Nanchor_3-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Herv&eacute;, 46.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-7" id="Note_3-7" href="#Nanchor_3-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lemeignen, i. 55.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_366" id="Page_366" href="#Page_366">366</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-8" id="Note_3-8" href="#Nanchor_3-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lemeignen, i. 29.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-9" id="Note_3-9" href="#Nanchor_3-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Les Vieux No&euml;ls,&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;Nouvelle Biblioth&egrave;que Populaire&rdquo;</b> (published by
+Henri Gautier, 55 Quai des Grands Augustins, Paris).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-10" id="Note_3-10" href="#Nanchor_3-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lemeignen, i. 93.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-11" id="Note_3-11" href="#Nanchor_3-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. J. L. J. Mass&eacute;, &ldquo;A Book Of Old Carols&rdquo;</b> (London, 1910), i. 21.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-12" id="Note_3-12" href="#Nanchor_3-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Herv&eacute;, 86.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-13" id="Note_3-13" href="#Nanchor_3-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lemeignen, i. 71.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-14" id="Note_3-14" href="#Nanchor_3-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Hymns Ancient and Modern&rdquo; (Historical Edition), 79. Translation is No. 58
+in Ordinary Edition.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-15" id="Note_3-15" href="#Nanchor_3-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Herv&eacute;, 132.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-16" id="Note_3-16" href="#Nanchor_3-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A great number of these <i>villancicos</i> and <i>romances</i> may be found in <b>Justo de
+Sancha, &ldquo;Romancero y Cancionero Sagrados&rdquo;</b> (Madrid, 1855,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;35 of Rivadeneyra's
+Library of Spanish Authors), and there are some good examples in <b>J. N. B&ouml;hl
+de Faber, &ldquo;Rimas Antiguas Castellanas&rdquo;</b> (Hamburg, 1823).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-17" id="Note_3-17" href="#Nanchor_3-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;B&ouml;hl de Faber, ii. 36.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-18" id="Note_3-18" href="#Nanchor_3-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>F. Caballero, &ldquo;Elia y La Noche de Navidad&rdquo;</b> (Leipsic, 1864), 210.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-19" id="Note_3-19" href="#Nanchor_3-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. de Gubernatis, &ldquo;Storia Comparata degli Usi Natalizi&rdquo;</b> (Milan, 1878), 90.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-20" id="Note_3-20" href="#Nanchor_3-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;These three verses are taken from <b>Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco's</b> charming
+translation of the poem, in her <b>&ldquo;Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs&rdquo;</b> (London,
+1886), 304&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-21" id="Note_3-21" href="#Nanchor_3-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Martinengo, &ldquo;Folk-Songs,&rdquo; 302&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-22" id="Note_3-22" href="#Nanchor_3-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Latin text in Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 311; Italian game in De Gubernatis, 93.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-23" id="Note_3-23" href="#Nanchor_3-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Herv&eacute;, 115&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-24" id="Note_3-24" href="#Nanchor_3-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. Hone, &ldquo;The Ancient Mysteries Described&rdquo;</b> (London, 1823), 103.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-25" id="Note_3-25" href="#Nanchor_3-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 103.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-26" id="Note_3-26" href="#Nanchor_3-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See Note 11.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-27" id="Note_3-27" href="#Nanchor_3-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>D. Hyde, &ldquo;Religious Songs of Connacht&rdquo;</b> (London, 1906), ii. 225&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-28" id="Note_3-28" href="#Nanchor_3-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Vineyard&rdquo;</b> (London), Dec., 1910, 144.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-29" id="Note_3-29" href="#Nanchor_3-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch,&rdquo; 120&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-30" id="Note_3-30" href="#Nanchor_3-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs,&rdquo; 49&nbsp;f. (spelling here
+modernized); Rickert, 82&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-31" id="Note_3-31" href="#Nanchor_3-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch,&rdquo; 123, and most German Protestant hymnbooks.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-32" id="Note_3-32" href="#Nanchor_3-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Translation by Miles Coverdale, in Rickert, 192&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-33" id="Note_3-33" href="#Nanchor_3-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;No. 5 in <b>Paulus Gerhardt, &ldquo;Geistliche Lieder,&rdquo;</b> ed. by P. Wackernagel and
+W. T&uuml;mpel (9th Edition, G&uuml;tersloh, 1907).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-34" id="Note_3-34" href="#Nanchor_3-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Translation by <b>C. Winkworth</b> in <b>&ldquo;Lyra Germanica&rdquo;</b> (New Edition, London,
+1869), ii. 13&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-35" id="Note_3-35" href="#Nanchor_3-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch,&rdquo; 128&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-36" id="Note_3-36" href="#Nanchor_3-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Translation (last verse altered) in <b>&ldquo;The British Herald&rdquo;</b> (London), Sept., 1866,
+329.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-37" id="Note_3-37" href="#Nanchor_3-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Christmas Carols New and Old,&rdquo;</b> the words edited by <b>H. R. Bramley</b>, the
+music edited by <b>Sir John Stainer</b> (London, n.d.).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-38" id="Note_3-38" href="#Nanchor_3-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Beeching, 27&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-39" id="Note_3-39" href="#Nanchor_3-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 67.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-40" id="Note_3-40" href="#Nanchor_3-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 49.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-41" id="Note_3-41" href="#Nanchor_3-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 76.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-42" id="Note_3-42" href="#Nanchor_3-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 48.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-43" id="Note_3-43" href="#Nanchor_3-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 45.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-44" id="Note_3-44" href="#Nanchor_3-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 42&nbsp;f.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_367" id="Page_367" href="#Page_367">367</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-45" id="Note_3-45" href="#Nanchor_3-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Beeching, 85&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-46" id="Note_3-46" href="#Nanchor_3-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Selwyn Image, &ldquo;Poems and Carols&rdquo;</b> (London, 1894), 25.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_3-47" id="Note_3-47" href="#Nanchor_3-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. K. Chesterton</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Commonwealth&rdquo;</b> (London), Dec., 1902, 353.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.&#xfeff;&mdash;CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-1" id="Note_4-1" href="#Nanchor_4-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Translation, &ldquo;Creator of the starry height,&rdquo; in &ldquo;Hymns A. and M.&rdquo; (Ordinary
+Edition), No. 45.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-2" id="Note_4-2" href="#Nanchor_4-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. Dowden, &ldquo;The Church Year and Kalendar&rdquo;</b> (Cambridge, 1910), 76&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-3" id="Note_4-3" href="#Nanchor_4-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Rational ou Manuel des divins Offices de Guillaume Durand, &Eacute;v&egrave;que de
+Mende au treizi&egrave;me si&egrave;cle,&rdquo;</b> traduit par <b>M. C. Barth&eacute;lemy</b> (Paris, 1854), iii. 155&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-4" id="Note_4-4" href="#Nanchor_4-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See translation of the Great O's in &ldquo;The English Hymnal,&rdquo; No. 734.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-5" id="Note_4-5" href="#Nanchor_4-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Barth&eacute;lemy, iii. 220&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-6" id="Note_4-6" href="#Nanchor_4-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>D. Rock, &ldquo;The Church of Our Fathers&rdquo;</b> (London, 1853),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iii. pt. ii. 214.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-7" id="Note_4-7" href="#Nanchor_4-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. K. Huysmans, &ldquo;L'Oblat&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1903), 194.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-8" id="Note_4-8" href="#Nanchor_4-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Gastou&eacute;, 44&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-9" id="Note_4-9" href="#Nanchor_4-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. G. C. F. Atchley, &ldquo;Ordo Romanus Primus&rdquo;</b> (London, 1905), 71.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-10" id="Note_4-10" href="#Nanchor_4-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Pilgrimage of S. Silvia of Aquitaine&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans. by J. H. Bernard,
+London, 1891), 50&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-11" id="Note_4-11" href="#Nanchor_4-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>S. D. Ferriman</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Daily News,&rdquo;</b> Dec. 25, 1911.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-12" id="Note_4-12" href="#Nanchor_4-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. Bonaccorsi, &ldquo;Il Natale: appunti d'esegesi e di storia&rdquo;</b> (Rome, 1903), 73.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-13" id="Note_4-13" href="#Nanchor_4-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Gastou&eacute;, 41&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-14" id="Note_4-14" href="#Nanchor_4-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Bonaccorsi, 75.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-15" id="Note_4-15" href="#Nanchor_4-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. Malleson and M. A. R. Tuker, &ldquo;Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical
+Rome&rdquo;</b> (London, 1897), pt. ii. 211.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-16" id="Note_4-16" href="#Nanchor_4-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Th. Bentzon, &ldquo;Christmas In France&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Century Magazine&rdquo;</b> (New
+York), Dec., 1901, 170&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-17" id="Note_4-17" href="#Nanchor_4-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>L. von H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben&rdquo;</b> (Stuttgart, 1909), 232.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-18" id="Note_4-18" href="#Nanchor_4-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>M. J. Quin, &ldquo;A Visit to Spain&rdquo;</b> (2nd Edition, London, 1824), 126&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-19" id="Note_4-19" href="#Nanchor_4-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Madrid in 1835,&rdquo;</b> by a <b>Resident Officer</b> (London, 1836), i. 395&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-20" id="Note_4-20" href="#Nanchor_4-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. S. Walsh, &ldquo;Curiosities of Popular Customs&rdquo;</b> (London, 1898), 237.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-21" id="Note_4-21" href="#Nanchor_4-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. Pitr&egrave;, &ldquo;Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane&rdquo;</b> (Palermo, 1880), 444.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-22" id="Note_4-22" href="#Nanchor_4-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 70&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-23" id="Note_4-23" href="#Nanchor_4-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>F. H. Woods, &ldquo;Sweden and Norway&rdquo;</b> (London, 1882), 209; <b>L. Lloyd,
+&ldquo;Peasant Life in Sweden&rdquo;</b> (London, 1870), 201&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-24" id="Note_4-24" href="#Nanchor_4-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. E. Vaux, &ldquo;Church Folklore&rdquo;</b> (London, 1894), 222&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-25" id="Note_4-25" href="#Nanchor_4-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>M. Trevelyan, &ldquo;Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales&rdquo;</b> (London, 1909), 28.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-26" id="Note_4-26" href="#Nanchor_4-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Vaux, 262&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-27" id="Note_4-27" href="#Nanchor_4-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>R. F. Littledale, &ldquo;Offices from the Service-Books of the Holy Eastern
+Church&rdquo;</b> (London, 1863), 174&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-28" id="Note_4-28" href="#Nanchor_4-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>[Sir] A. J. Evans, &ldquo;Christmas and Ancestor Worship in the Black Mountain,&rdquo;</b>
+in <b>&ldquo;Macmillan's Magazine&rdquo;</b> (London),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xliii., 1881, 228.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-29" id="Note_4-29" href="#Nanchor_4-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Duchesne, 273.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-30" id="Note_4-30" href="#Nanchor_4-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 245.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-31" id="Note_4-31" href="#Nanchor_4-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Roman Breviary,&rdquo;</b> translated by <b>John, Marquess of Bute</b> (New Edition
+Edinburgh and London, 1908), 186.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-32" id="Note_4-32" href="#Nanchor_4-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See announcement in <b>&ldquo;The Roman Mail&rdquo;</b> in Jan., 1912.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_368" id="Page_368" href="#Page_368">368</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-33" id="Note_4-33" href="#Nanchor_4-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Mary Hamilton, &ldquo;Greek Saints and their Festivals&rdquo;</b> (London, 1910), 113&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-34" id="Note_4-34" href="#Nanchor_4-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. Holloway, &ldquo;An Eastern Epiphany Service&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;Pax&rdquo;</b> (the Magazine of
+the Caldey Island Benedictines), Dec., 1910.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-35" id="Note_4-35" href="#Nanchor_4-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Hamilton, 119&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-36" id="Note_4-36" href="#Nanchor_4-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Holloway, as above.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-37" id="Note_4-37" href="#Nanchor_4-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>F. H. E. Palmer, &ldquo;Russian Life in Town and Country&rdquo;</b> (London, 1901),
+176&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-38" id="Note_4-38" href="#Nanchor_4-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Thomas of Celano, trans. by Howell, 82&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-39" id="Note_4-39" href="#Nanchor_4-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, &ldquo;Puer Parvulus&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Outdoor Life
+in the Greek and Roman Poets&rdquo;</b> (London, 1911), 248.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-40" id="Note_4-40" href="#Nanchor_4-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 41.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-41" id="Note_4-41" href="#Nanchor_4-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Bonaccorsi, 85; Usener, 298.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-42" id="Note_4-42" href="#Nanchor_4-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Usener, 290.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-43" id="Note_4-43" href="#Nanchor_4-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 295, 299.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-44" id="Note_4-44" href="#Nanchor_4-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rietschel, 55.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-45" id="Note_4-45" href="#Nanchor_4-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 56&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-46" id="Note_4-46" href="#Nanchor_4-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 60.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-47" id="Note_4-47" href="#Nanchor_4-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 69&nbsp;f.; Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 59&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-48" id="Note_4-48" href="#Nanchor_4-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Music from <b>Trier &ldquo;Gesangbuch&rdquo;</b> (1911), No. 18, where a very much
+weakened text is given. Text from Weinhold, 114. Another form of the air is
+given in &ldquo;The Cowley Carol Book,&rdquo; No. 36.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-49" id="Note_4-49" href="#Nanchor_4-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Text and music in Mass&eacute;, i. 6.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-50" id="Note_4-50" href="#Nanchor_4-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 60.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-51" id="Note_4-51" href="#Nanchor_4-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 61&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-52" id="Note_4-52" href="#Nanchor_4-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 63.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-53" id="Note_4-53" href="#Nanchor_4-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Thomas Naogeorgus, &ldquo;The Popish Kingdome,&rdquo;</b> Englyshed by Barnabe Googe,
+1570 (ed. by R. C. Hope, London, 1880), 45.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-54" id="Note_4-54" href="#Nanchor_4-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 68.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-55" id="Note_4-55" href="#Nanchor_4-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 68.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-56" id="Note_4-56" href="#Nanchor_4-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 235.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-57" id="Note_4-57" href="#Nanchor_4-57">
+57.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 235.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-58" id="Note_4-58" href="#Nanchor_4-58">
+58.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 64.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-59" id="Note_4-59" href="#Nanchor_4-59">
+59.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rietschel, 75.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-60" id="Note_4-60" href="#Nanchor_4-60">
+60.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Martinengo, &ldquo;Outdoor Life,&rdquo; 249.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-61" id="Note_4-61" href="#Nanchor_4-61">
+61.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Lady Morgan, &ldquo;Italy&rdquo;</b> (New Edition, London, 1821), iii. 72.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-62" id="Note_4-62" href="#Nanchor_4-62">
+62.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Matilde Serao, &ldquo;La Madonna e i Santi&rdquo;</b> (Naples, 1902), 223&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-63" id="Note_4-63" href="#Nanchor_4-63">
+63.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>L. Caico, &ldquo;Sicilian Ways and Days&rdquo;</b> (London, 1910), 192&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-64" id="Note_4-64" href="#Nanchor_4-64">
+64.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Information kindly given to the author by Mrs. C. G. Crump.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-65" id="Note_4-65" href="#Nanchor_4-65">
+65.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Information derived by the author from a resident in Messina.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-66" id="Note_4-66" href="#Nanchor_4-66">
+66.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Serao, <i>see</i> Note 62.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-67" id="Note_4-67" href="#Nanchor_4-67">
+67.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. H. D. Rouse, &ldquo;Religious Tableaux in Italian Churches,&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;Folk-Lore&rdquo;</b>
+(London),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;v., 1894, 6&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-68" id="Note_4-68" href="#Nanchor_4-68">
+68.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Morgan, iii. 76&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-69" id="Note_4-69" href="#Nanchor_4-69">
+69.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Bonaccorsi, 45&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-70" id="Note_4-70" href="#Nanchor_4-70">
+70.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. J. C. Hare, &ldquo;Walks in Rome&rdquo;</b> (11th Edition, London, 1883), 157.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-71" id="Note_4-71" href="#Nanchor_4-71">
+71.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Martinengo, &ldquo;Outdoor Life,&rdquo; 253; Bonaccorsi, 110&nbsp;f.; <b>R. Ellis Roberts, &ldquo;A
+Roman Pilgrimage&rdquo;</b> (London, 1911), 185&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-72" id="Note_4-72" href="#Nanchor_4-72">
+72.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. J. Rose, &ldquo;Untrodden Spain&rdquo;</b> (London, 1875), 276.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-73" id="Note_4-73" href="#Nanchor_4-73">
+73.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See Note 18 to Chapter III.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_369" id="Page_369" href="#Page_369">369</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-74" id="Note_4-74" href="#Nanchor_4-74">
+74.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>T. F. Thiselton Dyer, &ldquo;British Popular Customs&rdquo;</b> (London, 1876), 464.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-75" id="Note_4-75" href="#Nanchor_4-75">
+75.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Vaux, 216.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-76" id="Note_4-76" href="#Nanchor_4-76">
+76.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 464.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_4-77" id="Note_4-77" href="#Nanchor_4-77">
+77.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 120.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V.&#xfeff;&mdash;CHRISTMAS DRAMA</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-1" id="Note_5-1" href="#Nanchor_5-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;This account of the mediaeval Christmas drama owes much to Chambers, &ldquo;The
+Mediaeval Stage,&rdquo; especially chaps. xviii. to xx., and to <b>W. Creizenach, &ldquo;Geschichte
+des neueren Dramas&rdquo;</b> (Halle a/S., 1893),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;i., bks. ii.-iv. See also: <b>Karl Pearson</b>,
+essay on <b>&ldquo;The German Passion Play&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Chances of Death, and other
+Studies in Evolution&rdquo;</b> (London, 1897), ii. 246&nbsp;f.; <b>E. Du M&eacute;ril, &ldquo;Origines latines
+du th&eacute;&acirc;tre moderne&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1849); <b>L. Petit de Julleville, &ldquo;Histoire du th&eacute;&acirc;tre
+en France au moyen &acirc;ge. I. Les Myst&egrave;res&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1880); and other works
+cited later.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-2" id="Note_5-2" href="#Nanchor_5-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 8&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-3" id="Note_5-3" href="#Nanchor_5-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 11.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-4" id="Note_5-4" href="#Nanchor_5-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Du M&eacute;ril, 147.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-5" id="Note_5-5" href="#Nanchor_5-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 52.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-6" id="Note_5-6" href="#Nanchor_5-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Text in Du M&eacute;ril, 153&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-7" id="Note_5-7" href="#Nanchor_5-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 44.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-8" id="Note_5-8" href="#Nanchor_5-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 52&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-9" id="Note_5-9" href="#Nanchor_5-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;On the English plays see: Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; chaps. xx. and xxi.; <b>A. W. Ward,
+&ldquo;A History of English Dramatic Literature&rdquo;</b> (London, 1875),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;i. chap. i.;
+Creizenach,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;i.; <b>K. L. Bates, &ldquo;The English Religious Drama&rdquo;</b> (London, 1893).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-10" id="Note_5-10" href="#Nanchor_5-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 129, 131, 139.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-11" id="Note_5-11" href="#Nanchor_5-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Ludus Coventriae,&rdquo;</b> ed. by J. O. Halliwell (London, 1841), 146&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-12" id="Note_5-12" href="#Nanchor_5-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;York Plays,&rdquo;</b> ed. by L. Toulmin Smith (Oxford, 1885), 114&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-13" id="Note_5-13" href="#Nanchor_5-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Chester Plays,&rdquo;</b> ed. by T. Wright (London, 1843), 137.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-14" id="Note_5-14" href="#Nanchor_5-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 138.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-15" id="Note_5-15" href="#Nanchor_5-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 143.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-16" id="Note_5-16" href="#Nanchor_5-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Towneley Plays,&rdquo;</b> ed. by George England, with Introduction by A. W.
+Pollard (London, 1897). The first Shepherds&rsquo; Play is on p. 100&nbsp;f., the second on
+p. 116&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-17" id="Note_5-17" href="#Nanchor_5-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Text from Chambers and Sidgwick, &ldquo;Early English Lyrics,&rdquo; 124&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-18" id="Note_5-18" href="#Nanchor_5-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Text in <b>T. Sharp, &ldquo;A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries
+anciently performed at Coventry&rdquo;</b> (Coventry, 1825).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-19" id="Note_5-19" href="#Nanchor_5-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Petit de Julleville, ii. 36 f and 431&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-20" id="Note_5-20" href="#Nanchor_5-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 620&nbsp;f.; <b>&ldquo;Les marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses,&rdquo;</b> ed.
+from the edition of 1547 by F. Frank (Paris, 1873), ii. 1&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-21" id="Note_5-21" href="#Nanchor_5-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Petit de Julleville, i. 441.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-22" id="Note_5-22" href="#Nanchor_5-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 455. Text in Lemeignen, ii. 1&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-23" id="Note_5-23" href="#Nanchor_5-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Petit de Julleville, i. 79&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-24" id="Note_5-24" href="#Nanchor_5-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>P. S&eacute;billot, &ldquo;Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1886),
+177.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-25" id="Note_5-25" href="#Nanchor_5-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Martinengo, &ldquo;Folk-Songs,&rdquo; xxxiii.&nbsp;f. In her essay, &ldquo;Puer Parvulus,&rdquo; in &ldquo;The
+Outdoor Life,&rdquo; 260&nbsp;f., the Countess gives a charming description of a somewhat
+similar Piedmontese play.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-26" id="Note_5-26" href="#Nanchor_5-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Barth&eacute;lemy, iii. 411&nbsp;f.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_370" id="Page_370" href="#Page_370">370</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-27" id="Note_5-27" href="#Nanchor_5-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rietschel, 88&nbsp;f.; <b>O. von Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, &ldquo;Das festliche Jahr&rdquo;</b>
+(2nd Edition, Leipsic, 1898), 439&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-28" id="Note_5-28" href="#Nanchor_5-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rietschel, 92&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-29" id="Note_5-29" href="#Nanchor_5-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;An interesting book on popular Christmas plays is <b>F. Vogt, &ldquo;Die schlesischen
+Weihnachtspiele&rdquo;</b> (Leipsic, 1901).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-30" id="Note_5-30" href="#Nanchor_5-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Weinhold, 94.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-31" id="Note_5-31" href="#Nanchor_5-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 95&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-32" id="Note_5-32" href="#Nanchor_5-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 100&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-33" id="Note_5-33" href="#Nanchor_5-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 96&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-34" id="Note_5-34" href="#Nanchor_5-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 91&nbsp;f.; Symonds, &ldquo;Renaissance,&rdquo; iv. 242, 272&nbsp;f.;
+<b>A. d'Ancona, &ldquo;Origini del Teatro italiano&rdquo;</b> (Florence, 1877), i. 87&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-35" id="Note_5-35" href="#Nanchor_5-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;D'Ancona, &ldquo;Origini,&rdquo; i. 126&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-36" id="Note_5-36" href="#Nanchor_5-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. d'Ancona, &ldquo;Sacre Rappresentazioni dei secoli xiv, xv e xvi&rdquo;</b> (Florence,
+1872), i. 191&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-37" id="Note_5-37" href="#Nanchor_5-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 192.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-38" id="Note_5-38" href="#Nanchor_5-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Latin original quoted by D'Ancona, &ldquo;Origini,&rdquo; i. 91, and Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo;
+ii. 93.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-39" id="Note_5-39" href="#Nanchor_5-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Creizenach, i. 347.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-40" id="Note_5-40" href="#Nanchor_5-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, &ldquo;A History of Spanish Literature&rdquo;</b> (London, 1898), 113.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-41" id="Note_5-41" href="#Nanchor_5-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Juan del Encina, &ldquo;Teatro Completo&rdquo;</b> (Madrid, 1893), 3&nbsp;f., 137&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-42" id="Note_5-42" href="#Nanchor_5-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See <b>G. Ticknor, &ldquo;History of Spanish Literature&rdquo;</b> (6th American Edition,
+Boston, 1888), ii. 283&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-43" id="Note_5-43" href="#Nanchor_5-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 208.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-44" id="Note_5-44" href="#Nanchor_5-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari&rdquo;</b> (Palermo and Turin),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xxi., 1902, 381.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-45" id="Note_5-45" href="#Nanchor_5-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Pitr&egrave;, 448.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-46" id="Note_5-46" href="#Nanchor_5-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Fernan Caballero, &ldquo;Elia y La Noche de Navidad,&rdquo; 222&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-47" id="Note_5-47" href="#Nanchor_5-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 213&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-48" id="Note_5-48" href="#Nanchor_5-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. F. Feilberg, &ldquo;Jul&rdquo;</b> (Copenhagen, 1904), ii. 242&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-49" id="Note_5-49" href="#Nanchor_5-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. Cortet, &ldquo;Essai sur les f&ecirc;tes religieuses&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1867), 38.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-50" id="Note_5-50" href="#Nanchor_5-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;S&eacute;billot, 215.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-51" id="Note_5-51" href="#Nanchor_5-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, ii. 250; Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 31&nbsp;f.; <b>T. Stratilesco, &ldquo;From Carpathian
+to Pindus: Pictures of Roumanian Country Life&rdquo;</b> (London, 1906), 195&nbsp;f.;
+<b>E. van Norman, &ldquo;Poland: the Knight among Nations&rdquo;</b> (London and New York,
+3rd Edition, n.d.), 302; <b>S. Graham, &ldquo;A Vagabond in the Caucasus. With some
+Notes of his Experiences among the Russians&rdquo;</b> (London, 1910), 28.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-52" id="Note_5-52" href="#Nanchor_5-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Translation in <b>Karl Hase, &ldquo;Miracle Plays and Sacred Dramas&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans.,
+London, 1880), 9; German text in Weinhold, 132.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-53" id="Note_5-53" href="#Nanchor_5-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 247&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-54" id="Note_5-54" href="#Nanchor_5-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Graham, 28.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-55" id="Note_5-55" href="#Nanchor_5-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Stratilesco, 195&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-56" id="Note_5-56" href="#Nanchor_5-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 355&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-57" id="Note_5-57" href="#Nanchor_5-57">
+57.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Van Norman, 302.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-58" id="Note_5-58" href="#Nanchor_5-58">
+58.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cortet, 42.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-59" id="Note_5-59" href="#Nanchor_5-59">
+59.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Barth&eacute;lemy, iii. 411&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_5-60" id="Note_5-60" href="#Nanchor_5-60">
+60.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Madame Calderon de la Barca, &ldquo;Life in Mexico&rdquo;</b> (London, 1843), 237&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>POSTSCRIPT</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_6-1" id="Note_6-1" href="#Nanchor_6-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. Underhill, &ldquo;Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of
+Man's Spiritual Consciousness&rdquo;</b> (London, 1911), 305.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_371" id="Page_371" href="#Page_371">371</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>PART II.&#xfeff;&mdash;PAGAN SURVIVALS</h3>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.&#xfeff;&mdash;PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-1" id="Note_7-1" href="#Nanchor_7-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Karl Pearson</b>, essay on <b>&ldquo;Woman as Witch&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Chances of Death and
+other Studies in Evolution&rdquo;</b> (London, 1897), ii. 16.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-2" id="Note_7-2" href="#Nanchor_7-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. <b>J. G. Frazer, &ldquo;The Dying God&rdquo;</b> (London, 1911), 269.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-3" id="Note_7-3" href="#Nanchor_7-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. A. MacCulloch, &ldquo;The Religion of the Ancient Celts&rdquo;</b> (Edinburgh, 1911),
+278.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-4" id="Note_7-4" href="#Nanchor_7-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Dying God,&rdquo; 266.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-5" id="Note_7-5" href="#Nanchor_7-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. Anwyl, &ldquo;Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times&rdquo;</b> (London, 1906), 1&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-6" id="Note_7-6" href="#Nanchor_7-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 20; cf. <b>E. K. Chambers, &ldquo;The Mediaeval Stage&rdquo;</b> (Oxford, 1903), i. 100&nbsp;f.
+[Referred to as &ldquo;M. S.&rdquo;]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-7" id="Note_7-7" href="#Nanchor_7-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. Robertson Smith, &ldquo;Lectures on the Religion of the Semites&rdquo;</b> (New
+Edition, London, 1894), 16.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-8" id="Note_7-8" href="#Nanchor_7-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 236; <b>W. W. Fowler, &ldquo;The Roman Festivals of the
+Period of the Republic&rdquo;</b> (London, 1899), 272.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-9" id="Note_7-9" href="#Nanchor_7-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Works of Lucian of Samosata&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans. by H. W. and F. G.
+Fowler, Oxford, 1905), iv. 108&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-10" id="Note_7-10" href="#Nanchor_7-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>John Brand, &ldquo;Observations on Popular Antiquities&rdquo;</b> (New Edition, with
+the Additions of Sir Henry Ellis, London, Chatto &amp; Windus, 1900), 283.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-11" id="Note_7-11" href="#Nanchor_7-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Works of Lucian,&rdquo; iv. 114&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-12" id="Note_7-12" href="#Nanchor_7-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> iv. 109.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-13" id="Note_7-13" href="#Nanchor_7-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. G. Frazer, &ldquo;The Golden Bough&rdquo;</b> (2nd Edition, London, 1900), iii. 138&nbsp;f.,
+and <b>&ldquo;The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kingship&rdquo;</b> (London, 1911), ii. 310&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-14" id="Note_7-14" href="#Nanchor_7-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. W. Fowler, &ldquo;The Religious Experience of the Roman People&rdquo;</b> (London,
+1911), 107, 112.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-15" id="Note_7-15" href="#Nanchor_7-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Fowler, &ldquo;Roman Festivals,&rdquo; 268, and &ldquo;Religious Experience,&rdquo; 107; <b>C. Bailey,
+&ldquo;The Religion of Ancient Rome&rdquo;</b> (London, 1907), 70.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-16" id="Note_7-16" href="#Nanchor_7-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 237&nbsp;f.; Fowler, &ldquo;Roman Festivals,&rdquo; 278.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-17" id="Note_7-17" href="#Nanchor_7-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Quoted from <b>&ldquo;Libanii Opera,&rdquo;</b> ed. by Reiske, i. 256&nbsp;f., by <b>G. Bilfinger, &ldquo;Das
+germanische Julfest&rdquo;</b> (vol.&nbsp;ii. of &ldquo;Untersuchungen &uuml;ber die Zeitrechnung der alten
+Germanen,&rdquo; Stuttgart, 1901), 41&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-18" id="Note_7-18" href="#Nanchor_7-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Libanii Opera,&rdquo; iv. 1053&nbsp;f., quoted by Bilfinger, 43&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-19" id="Note_7-19" href="#Nanchor_7-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 237&nbsp;f., 258.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-20" id="Note_7-20" href="#Nanchor_7-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. Tille, &ldquo;Yule and Christmas&rdquo;</b> (London, 1899), 96. [Referred to as
+&ldquo;Y. &amp; C.&rdquo;]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-21" id="Note_7-21" href="#Nanchor_7-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. C. Lawson, &ldquo;Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion&rdquo;</b>
+(Cambridge, 1910), 221&nbsp;f. Cf. <b>M. Hamilton, &ldquo;Greek Saints and their Festivals&rdquo;</b>
+(London, 1910), 98.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-22" id="Note_7-22" href="#Nanchor_7-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 290&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-23" id="Note_7-23" href="#Nanchor_7-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Latin text in Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 297&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-24" id="Note_7-24" href="#Nanchor_7-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 245.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-25" id="Note_7-25" href="#Nanchor_7-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 88&nbsp;f.; Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 303&nbsp;f.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_372" id="Page_372" href="#Page_372">372</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-26" id="Note_7-26" href="#Nanchor_7-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; throughout; Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 288&nbsp;f.; <b>Chantepie de la
+Saussaye, &ldquo;The Religion of the Ancient Teutons&rdquo;</b> (Boston, 1902), 382. Cf. <b>O.
+Schrader</b>, in <b>Hastings's &ldquo;Encyclop&aelig;dia of Religion and Ethics&rdquo;</b> (Edinburgh, 1909),
+ii. 47&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-27" id="Note_7-27" href="#Nanchor_7-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Religion of the Ancient Celts,&rdquo; 258&nbsp;f. Cf. Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo;
+i. 228, 234.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-28" id="Note_7-28" href="#Nanchor_7-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 203.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-29" id="Note_7-29" href="#Nanchor_7-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>[Sir] A. J. Evans, &ldquo;Christmas and Ancestor Worship in the Black Mountain,&rdquo;</b>
+in <b>&ldquo;Macmillan's Magazine&rdquo;</b> (London),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xliii., 1881, 363.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-30" id="Note_7-30" href="#Nanchor_7-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 247.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-31" id="Note_7-31" href="#Nanchor_7-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 64.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-32" id="Note_7-32" href="#Nanchor_7-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 232.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-33" id="Note_7-33" href="#Nanchor_7-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 130; W. Robertson Smith, 213&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-34" id="Note_7-34" href="#Nanchor_7-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Dying God,&rdquo; 129&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-35" id="Note_7-35" href="#Nanchor_7-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See <b>N. W. Thomas</b> in <b>&ldquo;Folk-Lore&rdquo;</b> (London),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xi., 1900, 227&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-36" id="Note_7-36" href="#Nanchor_7-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 132&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-37" id="Note_7-37" href="#Nanchor_7-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;W. Robertson Smith, 437&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-38" id="Note_7-38" href="#Nanchor_7-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. E. Harrison, &ldquo;Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion&rdquo;</b>
+(Cambridge, 1912), 67. Cf. <b>E. F. Ames, &ldquo;The Psychology of Religious Experience&rdquo;</b>
+(London and Boston, 1910), 95&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-39" id="Note_7-39" href="#Nanchor_7-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Harrison, &ldquo;Themis,&rdquo; 137.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-40" id="Note_7-40" href="#Nanchor_7-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 110.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-41" id="Note_7-41" href="#Nanchor_7-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>S. Reinach, &ldquo;Cultes, mythes, et religions&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1905), i. 93. For the
+theory that totems were originally food-objects, see Ames, 118&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-42" id="Note_7-42" href="#Nanchor_7-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 133.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-43" id="Note_7-43" href="#Nanchor_7-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 105&nbsp;f., 144.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-44" id="Note_7-44" href="#Nanchor_7-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Harrison, &ldquo;Themis,&rdquo; 507.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-45" id="Note_7-45" href="#Nanchor_7-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;W. Robertson Smith, 255.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-46" id="Note_7-46" href="#Nanchor_7-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Bede, &ldquo;Historia Ecclesiastica,&rdquo;</b> lib. i. cap. 30. Latin text in Bede's Works,
+edited by J. A. Giles (London, 1843),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;ii. p. 142.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-47" id="Note_7-47" href="#Nanchor_7-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 143.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-48" id="Note_7-48" href="#Nanchor_7-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Jerome, &ldquo;Comm. in Isaiam,&rdquo;</b> lxv. 11. Latin text in Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo;
+ii. 294.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-49" id="Note_7-49" href="#Nanchor_7-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 266.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-50" id="Note_7-50" href="#Nanchor_7-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Latin text in Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 306.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-51" id="Note_7-51" href="#Nanchor_7-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Bede, &ldquo;De Temporum Ratione,&rdquo;</b> cap. 15, quoted by Chambers, i. 231. See also
+Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 152&nbsp;f., and Bilfinger, 131, for other views.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-52" id="Note_7-52" href="#Nanchor_7-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 70&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-53" id="Note_7-53" href="#Nanchor_7-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See Frazer, &ldquo;Magic Art,&rdquo; i. 52.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-54" id="Note_7-54" href="#Nanchor_7-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 300&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-55" id="Note_7-55" href="#Nanchor_7-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Latin text in <b>H. Usener, &ldquo;Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen,&rdquo;</b>
+part ii. (Bonn, 1889), 43&nbsp;f. See also <b>A. Tille, &ldquo;Die Geschichte der deutschen
+Weihnacht&rdquo;</b> (Leipsic, 1893), 44&nbsp;f. [Referred to as &ldquo;D. W.&rdquo;]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-56" id="Note_7-56" href="#Nanchor_7-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Philip Stubbs, &ldquo;Anatomie Of Abuses&rdquo;</b> (Reprint of 3rd Edition of 1585,
+edited by W. B. Turnbull, London, 1836), 205.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-57" id="Note_7-57" href="#Nanchor_7-57">
+57.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Quoted by <b>J. Ashton, &ldquo;A righte Merrie Christmasse!!&rdquo;</b> (London, n.d.), 26&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_7-58" id="Note_7-58" href="#Nanchor_7-58">
+58.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 27&nbsp;f.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_373" id="Page_373" href="#Page_373">373</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.&#xfeff;&mdash;ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-1" id="Note_8-1" href="#Nanchor_8-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>R. Chambers, &ldquo;The Book Of Days&rdquo;</b> (London, n.d.), ii. 538 [referred to as
+&ldquo;B. D.&rdquo;]; <b>T. F. Thiselton Dyer, &ldquo;British Popular Customs&rdquo;</b> (London, 1876),
+396&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-2" id="Note_8-2" href="#Nanchor_8-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>[Sir] J. Rhys, &ldquo;Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated
+by Celtic Heathendom&rdquo;</b> (London, 1888), 514, <b>&ldquo;Celtic Folklore: Welsh
+and Manx&rdquo;</b> (Oxford, 1901), i. 321.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-3" id="Note_8-3" href="#Nanchor_8-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 57&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-4" id="Note_8-4" href="#Nanchor_8-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rhys, &ldquo;Celtic Folklore,&rdquo; i. 315&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-5" id="Note_8-5" href="#Nanchor_8-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. Dowden, &ldquo;The Church Year and Kalendar&rdquo;</b> (Cambridge, 1910), 23&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-6" id="Note_8-6" href="#Nanchor_8-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. <b>J. G. Frazer, &ldquo;Adonis, Attis, Osiris&rdquo;</b> (2nd Edition, London, 1907), 315&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-7" id="Note_8-7" href="#Nanchor_8-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. B. Tylor, &ldquo;Primitive Culture&rdquo;</b> (3rd Edition, London, 1891), ii. 38.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-8" id="Note_8-8" href="#Nanchor_8-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Adonis,&rdquo; 310.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-9" id="Note_8-9" href="#Nanchor_8-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 312&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-10" id="Note_8-10" href="#Nanchor_8-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>P. S&eacute;billot, &ldquo;Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1886),
+206.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-11" id="Note_8-11" href="#Nanchor_8-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>L. von H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben&rdquo;</b> (Stuttgart, 1909), 193.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-12" id="Note_8-12" href="#Nanchor_8-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Adonis,&rdquo; 315.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-13" id="Note_8-13" href="#Nanchor_8-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. Pitr&egrave;, &ldquo;Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane&rdquo;</b> (Palermo, 1880), 393&nbsp;f.
+Cf. <b>H. F. Feilberg, &ldquo;Jul&rdquo;</b> (Copenhagen, 1904), i. 67.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-14" id="Note_8-14" href="#Nanchor_8-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Notes and Queries&rdquo;</b> (London), 3rd Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;i. 446; Dyer, 408.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-15" id="Note_8-15" href="#Nanchor_8-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Adonis,&rdquo; 250.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-16" id="Note_8-16" href="#Nanchor_8-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 405&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-17" id="Note_8-17" href="#Nanchor_8-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iv. 381; Dyer, 407.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-18" id="Note_8-18" href="#Nanchor_8-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, &ldquo;Shropshire Folk-Lore&rdquo;</b> (London, 1883), 383.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-19" id="Note_8-19" href="#Nanchor_8-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 381&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-20" id="Note_8-20" href="#Nanchor_8-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Quoted by Dyer, 410.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-21" id="Note_8-21" href="#Nanchor_8-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>O. von Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, &ldquo;Das festliche Jahr der germanischen
+V&ouml;lker&rdquo;</b> (2nd Edition, Leipsic, 1898), 390.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-22" id="Note_8-22" href="#Nanchor_8-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari&rdquo;</b> (Palermo),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;viii. 574.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-23" id="Note_8-23" href="#Nanchor_8-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 189&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-24" id="Note_8-24" href="#Nanchor_8-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Adonis,&rdquo; 303&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-25" id="Note_8-25" href="#Nanchor_8-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 306&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-26" id="Note_8-26" href="#Nanchor_8-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Evans, 363&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-27" id="Note_8-27" href="#Nanchor_8-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 394.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-28" id="Note_8-28" href="#Nanchor_8-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 398.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-29" id="Note_8-29" href="#Nanchor_8-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 394. Cf. Chambers, &ldquo;B. D.,&rdquo; ii. 519&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-30" id="Note_8-30" href="#Nanchor_8-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 395.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-31" id="Note_8-31" href="#Nanchor_8-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 399.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-32" id="Note_8-32" href="#Nanchor_8-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 397&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-33" id="Note_8-33" href="#Nanchor_8-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>S. O. Addy, &ldquo;Household Tales, with other Traditional Remains. Collected
+in the Counties of Lincoln, Derby, and Nottingham&rdquo;</b> (London and Sheffield,
+1895), 82.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-34" id="Note_8-34" href="#Nanchor_8-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 85.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-35" id="Note_8-35" href="#Nanchor_8-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the
+Borders&rdquo;</b> (2nd Edition, London, 1879), 101.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-36" id="Note_8-36" href="#Nanchor_8-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 399.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-37" id="Note_8-37" href="#Nanchor_8-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 403.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_374" id="Page_374" href="#Page_374">374</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-38" id="Note_8-38" href="#Nanchor_8-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rhys, &ldquo;Celtic Folklore,&rdquo; i. 321, &ldquo;Celtic Heathendom,&rdquo; 514.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-39" id="Note_8-39" href="#Nanchor_8-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rhys, &ldquo;Celtic Folklore,&rdquo; i. 328.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-40" id="Note_8-40" href="#Nanchor_8-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Religion of the Ancient Celts,&rdquo; 259, 261.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-41" id="Note_8-41" href="#Nanchor_8-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rhys, &ldquo;Celtic Heathendom,&rdquo; 515.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-42" id="Note_8-42" href="#Nanchor_8-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 515.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-43" id="Note_8-43" href="#Nanchor_8-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 515, &ldquo;Celtic Folklore,&rdquo; i. 225.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-44" id="Note_8-44" href="#Nanchor_8-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Religion of the Ancient Celts,&rdquo; 262.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-45" id="Note_8-45" href="#Nanchor_8-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 211.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-46" id="Note_8-46" href="#Nanchor_8-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 402.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-47" id="Note_8-47" href="#Nanchor_8-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 394&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-48" id="Note_8-48" href="#Nanchor_8-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 299&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-49" id="Note_8-49" href="#Nanchor_8-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 389.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-50" id="Note_8-50" href="#Nanchor_8-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 409.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-51" id="Note_8-51" href="#Nanchor_8-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. Grimm, &ldquo;Teutonic Mythology&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans. by J. S. Stallybrass, London,
+1880-8), i. 47.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-52" id="Note_8-52" href="#Nanchor_8-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>K. Weinhold, &ldquo;Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus S&uuml;ddeutschland und
+Schlesien&rdquo;</b> (Vienna, 1875), 6.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-53" id="Note_8-53" href="#Nanchor_8-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>U. Jahn, &ldquo;Die deutschen Opfergebr&auml;uche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht&rdquo;</b>
+(Breslau, 1884), 262.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-54" id="Note_8-54" href="#Nanchor_8-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 262.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-55" id="Note_8-55" href="#Nanchor_8-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Weinhold, 6.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-56" id="Note_8-56" href="#Nanchor_8-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 472.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-57" id="Note_8-57" href="#Nanchor_8-57">
+57.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;i. 173; Dyer, 486.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-58" id="Note_8-58" href="#Nanchor_8-58">
+58.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Weinhold, 7.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-59" id="Note_8-59" href="#Nanchor_8-59">
+59.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 10.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-60" id="Note_8-60" href="#Nanchor_8-60">
+60.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 449.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-61" id="Note_8-61" href="#Nanchor_8-61">
+61.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 166.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-62" id="Note_8-62" href="#Nanchor_8-62">
+62.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 480.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-63" id="Note_8-63" href="#Nanchor_8-63">
+63.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, ii. 228&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-64" id="Note_8-64" href="#Nanchor_8-64">
+64.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 393.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-65" id="Note_8-65" href="#Nanchor_8-65">
+65.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Tacitus, &ldquo;Annales,&rdquo;</b> lib. i. cap. 50, quoted by Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 25.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-66" id="Note_8-66" href="#Nanchor_8-66">
+66.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 26.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-67" id="Note_8-67" href="#Nanchor_8-67">
+67.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 52.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-68" id="Note_8-68" href="#Nanchor_8-68">
+68.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 27.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-69" id="Note_8-69" href="#Nanchor_8-69">
+69.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 216&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-70" id="Note_8-70" href="#Nanchor_8-70">
+70.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 401&nbsp;f. For German Martinmas feasting, see also Jahn,
+229&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-71" id="Note_8-71" href="#Nanchor_8-71">
+71.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iv. 1838, for Danish custom; Jahn, 235&nbsp;f., for German.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-72" id="Note_8-72" href="#Nanchor_8-72">
+72.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Folk-Lore Record&rdquo;</b> (London),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iv., 1881, 107; Dyer, 420.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-73" id="Note_8-73" href="#Nanchor_8-73">
+73.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Religion of the Ancient Celts,&rdquo; 260.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-74" id="Note_8-74" href="#Nanchor_8-74">
+74.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 403.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-75" id="Note_8-75" href="#Nanchor_8-75">
+75.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 246&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-76" id="Note_8-76" href="#Nanchor_8-76">
+76.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 246; Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 403.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-77" id="Note_8-77" href="#Nanchor_8-77">
+77.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 34&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-78" id="Note_8-78" href="#Nanchor_8-78">
+78.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 404; Jahn, 250.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-79" id="Note_8-79" href="#Nanchor_8-79">
+79.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 247.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-80" id="Note_8-80" href="#Nanchor_8-80">
+80.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Angela Nardo-Cibele in <i>Archivio trad. pop.</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;v. 238&nbsp;f., for Venetia; Pitr&egrave;,
+411&nbsp;f., for Sicily.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-81" id="Note_8-81" href="#Nanchor_8-81">
+81.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 405.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_375" id="Page_375" href="#Page_375">375</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-82" id="Note_8-82" href="#Nanchor_8-82">
+82.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 240.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-83" id="Note_8-83" href="#Nanchor_8-83">
+83.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 241&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-84" id="Note_8-84" href="#Nanchor_8-84">
+84.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 241.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-85" id="Note_8-85" href="#Nanchor_8-85">
+85.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 404.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-86" id="Note_8-86" href="#Nanchor_8-86">
+86.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Weinhold, 7.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-87" id="Note_8-87" href="#Nanchor_8-87">
+87.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 268; Weinhold, 7; Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 25.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-88" id="Note_8-88" href="#Nanchor_8-88">
+88.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, illustration facing p. 406.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-89" id="Note_8-89" href="#Nanchor_8-89">
+89.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 405.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-90" id="Note_8-90" href="#Nanchor_8-90">
+90.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 404.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-91" id="Note_8-91" href="#Nanchor_8-91">
+91.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 410; Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 26&nbsp;f.; <b>W. Mannhardt, &ldquo;Der Baumkultus der
+Germanen und ihrer Nachbarst&auml;mme&rdquo;</b> (Berlin, 1875. Vol. i. of &ldquo;Wald- und
+Feldkulte&rdquo;), 273.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-92" id="Note_8-92" href="#Nanchor_8-92">
+92.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 303, and Reinach, i. 180.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-93" id="Note_8-93" href="#Nanchor_8-93">
+93.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Archivio trad. pop.</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;v. 238&nbsp;f., 358&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_8-94" id="Note_8-94" href="#Nanchor_8-94">
+94.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 274.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.&#xfeff;&mdash;ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-1" id="Note_9-1" href="#Nanchor_9-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 423.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-2" id="Note_9-2" href="#Nanchor_9-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;viii. 618; Dyer, 425.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-3" id="Note_9-3" href="#Nanchor_9-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 222&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-4" id="Note_9-4" href="#Nanchor_9-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 97.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-5" id="Note_9-5" href="#Nanchor_9-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 3rd Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iv. 492; Dyer, 423.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-6" id="Note_9-6" href="#Nanchor_9-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 425.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-7" id="Note_9-7" href="#Nanchor_9-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 222.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-8" id="Note_9-8" href="#Nanchor_9-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 223.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-9" id="Note_9-9" href="#Nanchor_9-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 2nd Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;v. 47; Dyer, 427.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-10" id="Note_9-10" href="#Nanchor_9-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 426&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-11" id="Note_9-11" href="#Nanchor_9-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 415.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-12" id="Note_9-12" href="#Nanchor_9-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. N. Raphael</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Daily Express,&rdquo;</b> Nov. 28, 1911.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-13" id="Note_9-13" href="#Nanchor_9-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 430.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-14" id="Note_9-14" href="#Nanchor_9-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 429.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-15" id="Note_9-15" href="#Nanchor_9-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 148.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-16" id="Note_9-16" href="#Nanchor_9-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>B. Thorpe, &ldquo;Northern Mythology&rdquo;</b> (London, 1852), iii. 143.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-17" id="Note_9-17" href="#Nanchor_9-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> iii. 144.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-18" id="Note_9-18" href="#Nanchor_9-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 416&nbsp;f. Cf. Grimm, iv. 1800.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-19" id="Note_9-19" href="#Nanchor_9-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 417. Cf. Thorpe, iii. 145.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-20" id="Note_9-20" href="#Nanchor_9-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 418.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-21" id="Note_9-21" href="#Nanchor_9-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Thorpe, iii. 145.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-22" id="Note_9-22" href="#Nanchor_9-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>F. S. Krauss, &ldquo;Sitte und Brauch der S&uuml;dslaven&rdquo;</b> (Vienna, 1885), 179.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-23" id="Note_9-23" href="#Nanchor_9-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>T. Stratilesco, &ldquo;From Carpathian to Pindus: Pictures of Roumanian
+Country Life&rdquo;</b> (London, 1906), 189.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-24" id="Note_9-24" href="#Nanchor_9-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 188&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-25" id="Note_9-25" href="#Nanchor_9-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 416.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-26" id="Note_9-26" href="#Nanchor_9-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 420&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-27" id="Note_9-27" href="#Nanchor_9-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 425.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_376" id="Page_376" href="#Page_376">376</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-28" id="Note_9-28" href="#Nanchor_9-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Thomas Naogeorgus, &ldquo;The Popish Kingdome,&rdquo;</b> Englyshed by Barnabe
+Googe, 1570 (ed. by R. C. Hope, London, 1880), 44.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-29" id="Note_9-29" href="#Nanchor_9-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. F. Abbott, &ldquo;Macedonian Folklore&rdquo;</b> (Cambridge, 1903), 76.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-30" id="Note_9-30" href="#Nanchor_9-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>P. M. Hough, &ldquo;Dutch Life in Town and Country&rdquo;</b> (London, 1901), 96.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-31" id="Note_9-31" href="#Nanchor_9-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 90, and also the Epiphany noise-makings
+described in the present volume.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-32" id="Note_9-32" href="#Nanchor_9-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 426.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-33" id="Note_9-33" href="#Nanchor_9-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 218&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-34" id="Note_9-34" href="#Nanchor_9-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 30.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-35" id="Note_9-35" href="#Nanchor_9-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 370.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-36" id="Note_9-36" href="#Nanchor_9-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Hamilton, 30. Cf. article on St. Nicholas by Professor Anichkof in <i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;v., 1894, 108&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-37" id="Note_9-37" href="#Nanchor_9-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 428&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-38" id="Note_9-38" href="#Nanchor_9-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 35&nbsp;f.; Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 430.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-39" id="Note_9-39" href="#Nanchor_9-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 209&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-40" id="Note_9-40" href="#Nanchor_9-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 430.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-41" id="Note_9-41" href="#Nanchor_9-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Weinhold, 9.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-42" id="Note_9-42" href="#Nanchor_9-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 326.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-43" id="Note_9-43" href="#Nanchor_9-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Weinhold, 9.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-44" id="Note_9-44" href="#Nanchor_9-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 431&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-45" id="Note_9-45" href="#Nanchor_9-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 212&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-46" id="Note_9-46" href="#Nanchor_9-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 433.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-47" id="Note_9-47" href="#Nanchor_9-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 433.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-48" id="Note_9-48" href="#Nanchor_9-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 369.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-49" id="Note_9-49" href="#Nanchor_9-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. S. Walsh, &ldquo;Curiosities of Popular Customs&rdquo;</b> (London, 1898), 753&nbsp;f.
+Cf. Chambers, &ldquo;B. D.,&rdquo; ii. 664.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-50" id="Note_9-50" href="#Nanchor_9-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, i. 165, 170.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-51" id="Note_9-51" href="#Nanchor_9-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 169&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-52" id="Note_9-52" href="#Nanchor_9-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 171.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-53" id="Note_9-53" href="#Nanchor_9-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>L. Caico, &ldquo;Sicilian Ways and Days&rdquo;</b> (London, 1910), 188&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-54" id="Note_9-54" href="#Nanchor_9-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, i. 168.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-55" id="Note_9-55" href="#Nanchor_9-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 434.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-56" id="Note_9-56" href="#Nanchor_9-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 434&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-57" id="Note_9-57" href="#Nanchor_9-57">
+57.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iv. 1867.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-58" id="Note_9-58" href="#Nanchor_9-58">
+58.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, i. 108&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-59" id="Note_9-59" href="#Nanchor_9-59">
+59.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 111.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-60" id="Note_9-60" href="#Nanchor_9-60">
+60.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;N. W. Thomas in <i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xi., 1900, 252.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-61" id="Note_9-61" href="#Nanchor_9-61">
+61.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ashton, 52.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-62" id="Note_9-62" href="#Nanchor_9-62">
+62.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 72&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-63" id="Note_9-63" href="#Nanchor_9-63">
+63.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 436&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-64" id="Note_9-64" href="#Nanchor_9-64">
+64.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 437.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-65" id="Note_9-65" href="#Nanchor_9-65">
+65.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 438.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-66" id="Note_9-66" href="#Nanchor_9-66">
+66.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 439.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-67" id="Note_9-67" href="#Nanchor_9-67">
+67.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 439.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-68" id="Note_9-68" href="#Nanchor_9-68">
+68.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 438&nbsp;f.; Chambers, &ldquo;B. D.,&rdquo; ii. 724.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-69" id="Note_9-69" href="#Nanchor_9-69">
+69.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 81.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_9-70" id="Note_9-70" href="#Nanchor_9-70">
+70.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 2nd Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;v. 35; Dyer, 439.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_377" id="Page_377" href="#Page_377">377</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.&#xfeff;&mdash;CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-1" id="Note_10-1" href="#Nanchor_10-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 32&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-2" id="Note_10-2" href="#Nanchor_10-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 446.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-3" id="Note_10-3" href="#Nanchor_10-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 448.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-4" id="Note_10-4" href="#Nanchor_10-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 449.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-5" id="Note_10-5" href="#Nanchor_10-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 448; Weinhold, 8&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-6" id="Note_10-6" href="#Nanchor_10-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Evans, 229.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-7" id="Note_10-7" href="#Nanchor_10-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Weinhold, 8.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-8" id="Note_10-8" href="#Nanchor_10-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 116.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-9" id="Note_10-9" href="#Nanchor_10-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 444&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-10" id="Note_10-10" href="#Nanchor_10-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 442&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-11" id="Note_10-11" href="#Nanchor_10-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 444.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-12" id="Note_10-12" href="#Nanchor_10-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. R. S. Ralston, &ldquo;Songs of the Russian People&rdquo;</b> (1st Edition, London,
+1872), 186&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-13" id="Note_10-13" href="#Nanchor_10-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;S&eacute;billot, 216.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-14" id="Note_10-14" href="#Nanchor_10-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Walsh, 232.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-15" id="Note_10-15" href="#Nanchor_10-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 406; Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo;
+311; <b>Sir Edgar MacCulloch, &ldquo;Guernsey Folk Lore&rdquo;</b> (London, 1903), 34; Thorpe,
+ii. 272.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-16" id="Note_10-16" href="#Nanchor_10-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Walsh, 232.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-17" id="Note_10-17" href="#Nanchor_10-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 311.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-18" id="Note_10-18" href="#Nanchor_10-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Guernsey Folk Lore,&rdquo; 34&nbsp;f. Cf. for Germany, Grimm, iv.
+1779, 1809.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-19" id="Note_10-19" href="#Nanchor_10-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iv. 1840.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-20" id="Note_10-20" href="#Nanchor_10-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ralston, 201.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-21" id="Note_10-21" href="#Nanchor_10-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. Le Braz, &ldquo;La L&eacute;gende de la Mort chez les Bretons armoricains&rdquo;</b> (Paris,
+1902), i. 114&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-22" id="Note_10-22" href="#Nanchor_10-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Thorpe, ii. 89.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-23" id="Note_10-23" href="#Nanchor_10-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 171.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-24" id="Note_10-24" href="#Nanchor_10-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, ii. 7&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-25" id="Note_10-25" href="#Nanchor_10-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 14.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-26" id="Note_10-26" href="#Nanchor_10-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Bilfinger, 52.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-27" id="Note_10-27" href="#Nanchor_10-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, ii. 3&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-28" id="Note_10-28" href="#Nanchor_10-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 20&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-29" id="Note_10-29" href="#Nanchor_10-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. F. M. Ferryman, &ldquo;In the Northman's Land&rdquo;</b> (London, 1896), 112.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-30" id="Note_10-30" href="#Nanchor_10-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, ii. 64.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-31" id="Note_10-31" href="#Nanchor_10-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iv. 1781, 1783, 1793, 1818.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-32" id="Note_10-32" href="#Nanchor_10-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Krauss, 181.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-33" id="Note_10-33" href="#Nanchor_10-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Accounts of the carols used in Little Russia are given by Mr. Ralston, 186&nbsp;f.,
+while those sung by the Roumanians are described by Mlle. Stratilesco, 192&nbsp;f., and
+those customary in Dalmatia by Sir A. J. Evans, 224&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-34" id="Note_10-34" href="#Nanchor_10-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ralston, 193.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-35" id="Note_10-35" href="#Nanchor_10-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Stratilesco, 192.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-36" id="Note_10-36" href="#Nanchor_10-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ralston, 197.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-37" id="Note_10-37" href="#Nanchor_10-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 244.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-38" id="Note_10-38" href="#Nanchor_10-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Shakespeare, &ldquo;Hamlet,&rdquo; Act I. Sc. 1.</b>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-39" id="Note_10-39" href="#Nanchor_10-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Bilfinger, 37&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-40" id="Note_10-40" href="#Nanchor_10-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 132.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_378" id="Page_378" href="#Page_378">378</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-41" id="Note_10-41" href="#Nanchor_10-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tylor, i. 362.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-42" id="Note_10-42" href="#Nanchor_10-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. Golther, &ldquo;Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie&rdquo;</b> (Leipsic, 1895),
+283&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-43" id="Note_10-43" href="#Nanchor_10-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 173.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-44" id="Note_10-44" href="#Nanchor_10-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 132.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-45" id="Note_10-45" href="#Nanchor_10-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Guernsey Folk Lore,&rdquo; 33&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-46" id="Note_10-46" href="#Nanchor_10-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 396&nbsp;f., 403.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-47" id="Note_10-47" href="#Nanchor_10-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>R. T. Hampson, &ldquo;Medii Aevi Kalendarium&rdquo;</b> (London, 1841), i. 90.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-48" id="Note_10-48" href="#Nanchor_10-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iv. 1836; Thorpe, ii. 272.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-49" id="Note_10-49" href="#Nanchor_10-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 405.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-50" id="Note_10-50" href="#Nanchor_10-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 405; MacCulloch, &ldquo;Religion of the Ancient Celts,&rdquo; 166.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-51" id="Note_10-51" href="#Nanchor_10-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. H. Meyer, &ldquo;Mythologie der Germanen&rdquo;</b> (Strassburg, 1903), 424; Golther,
+491; Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 22&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-52" id="Note_10-52" href="#Nanchor_10-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Golther, 493.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-53" id="Note_10-53" href="#Nanchor_10-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Meyer, 425&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-54" id="Note_10-54" href="#Nanchor_10-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 425&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-55" id="Note_10-55" href="#Nanchor_10-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iii. 925&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-56" id="Note_10-56" href="#Nanchor_10-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 268, 275&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-57" id="Note_10-57" href="#Nanchor_10-57">
+57.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 22.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-58" id="Note_10-58" href="#Nanchor_10-58">
+58.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, i. 275; Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 23.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-59" id="Note_10-59" href="#Nanchor_10-59">
+59.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 23.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-60" id="Note_10-60" href="#Nanchor_10-60">
+60.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Meyer, 425; Grimm, i. 281.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-61" id="Note_10-61" href="#Nanchor_10-61">
+61.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 21.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-62" id="Note_10-62" href="#Nanchor_10-62">
+62.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Golther, 493.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-63" id="Note_10-63" href="#Nanchor_10-63">
+63.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 24.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-64" id="Note_10-64" href="#Nanchor_10-64">
+64.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, i. 274.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-65" id="Note_10-65" href="#Nanchor_10-65">
+65.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Meyer, 428.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-66" id="Note_10-66" href="#Nanchor_10-66">
+66.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>R. H. Busk, &ldquo;The Valleys of Tirol&rdquo;</b> (London, 1874), 116.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-67" id="Note_10-67" href="#Nanchor_10-67">
+67.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 118.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-68" id="Note_10-68" href="#Nanchor_10-68">
+68.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 417.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-69" id="Note_10-69" href="#Nanchor_10-69">
+69.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The details given about the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i> are taken, unless otherwise stated,
+from Lawson, 190&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-70" id="Note_10-70" href="#Nanchor_10-70">
+70.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 74.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-71" id="Note_10-71" href="#Nanchor_10-71">
+71.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Hamilton, 108&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-72" id="Note_10-72" href="#Nanchor_10-72">
+72.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 109.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-73" id="Note_10-73" href="#Nanchor_10-73">
+73.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 218.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-74" id="Note_10-74" href="#Nanchor_10-74">
+74.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 73&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-75" id="Note_10-75" href="#Nanchor_10-75">
+75.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Meyer, 85&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-76" id="Note_10-76" href="#Nanchor_10-76">
+76.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. Henderson, &ldquo;Survivals of Belief among the Celts&rdquo;</b> (Glasgow, 1911), 178.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-77" id="Note_10-77" href="#Nanchor_10-77">
+77.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 177.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_10-78" id="Note_10-78" href="#Nanchor_10-78">
+78.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>F. H. E. Palmer, &ldquo;Russian Life In Town and Country&rdquo;</b> (London, 1901), 178.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER X.&#xfeff;&mdash;THE YULE LOG</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-1" id="Note_11-1" href="#Nanchor_11-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Evans, 221&nbsp;f.; Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 224&nbsp;f. Cf. the account of the
+Servian Christmas in <b>Chedo Mijatovitch, &ldquo;Servia and the Servians&rdquo;</b> (London,
+1908), 98&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-2" id="Note_11-2" href="#Nanchor_11-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Same sources.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_379" id="Page_379" href="#Page_379">379</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-3" id="Note_11-3" href="#Nanchor_11-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 236.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-4" id="Note_11-4" href="#Nanchor_11-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Magic Art,&rdquo; ii. 208.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-5" id="Note_11-5" href="#Nanchor_11-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 232.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-6" id="Note_11-6" href="#Nanchor_11-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Evans, 219, 295, and 357.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-7" id="Note_11-7" href="#Nanchor_11-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 222.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-8" id="Note_11-8" href="#Nanchor_11-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 237.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-9" id="Note_11-9" href="#Nanchor_11-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. Frazer, &ldquo;Magic Art,&rdquo; ii. 233.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-10" id="Note_11-10" href="#Nanchor_11-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 365&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-11" id="Note_11-11" href="#Nanchor_11-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 226&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-12" id="Note_11-12" href="#Nanchor_11-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Memoirs of Mistral&rdquo;</b> (Eng. Trans. by C. E. Maud, London, 1907), 29&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-13" id="Note_11-13" href="#Nanchor_11-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 226&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-14" id="Note_11-14" href="#Nanchor_11-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;S&eacute;billot, 218.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-15" id="Note_11-15" href="#Nanchor_11-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. de Gubernatis, &ldquo;Storia Comparata degli Usi Natalizi&rdquo;</b> (Milan, 1878),
+112.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-16" id="Note_11-16" href="#Nanchor_11-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;C. Casati in <i>Archivio trad. pop.</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;vi. 168&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-17" id="Note_11-17" href="#Nanchor_11-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 253.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-18" id="Note_11-18" href="#Nanchor_11-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 254.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-19" id="Note_11-19" href="#Nanchor_11-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 257.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-20" id="Note_11-20" href="#Nanchor_11-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 245; Dyer, 466.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-21" id="Note_11-21" href="#Nanchor_11-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>[Sir] G. L. Gomme, &ldquo;Folk Lore Relics of Early Village Life&rdquo;</b> (London
+1883), 99.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-22" id="Note_11-22" href="#Nanchor_11-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ashton, 111.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-23" id="Note_11-23" href="#Nanchor_11-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 402.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-24" id="Note_11-24" href="#Nanchor_11-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 398&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-25" id="Note_11-25" href="#Nanchor_11-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iv. 309; Dyer, 446&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-26" id="Note_11-26" href="#Nanchor_11-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Gentleman's Magazine,&rdquo;</b> 1790, 719.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-27" id="Note_11-27" href="#Nanchor_11-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Hampson, i. 109.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-28" id="Note_11-28" href="#Nanchor_11-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, i. 118&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-29" id="Note_11-29" href="#Nanchor_11-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 146.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_11-30" id="Note_11-30" href="#Nanchor_11-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 66&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.&#xfeff;&mdash;THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-1" id="Note_12-1" href="#Nanchor_12-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>I. A. R. Wylie, &ldquo;My German Year&rdquo;</b> (London, 1910), 68.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-2" id="Note_12-2" href="#Nanchor_12-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Mrs. A. Sidgwick, &ldquo;Home Life in Germany&rdquo;</b> (London, 1908), 176.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-3" id="Note_12-3" href="#Nanchor_12-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 258. For the history and associations of the Christmas-tree see
+also <b>E. M. Kronfeld, &ldquo;Der Weihnachtsbaum&rdquo;</b> (Oldenburg, 1906).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-4" id="Note_12-4" href="#Nanchor_12-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 259.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-5" id="Note_12-5" href="#Nanchor_12-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 261.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-6" id="Note_12-6" href="#Nanchor_12-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 261&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-7" id="Note_12-7" href="#Nanchor_12-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>G. Rietschel, &ldquo;Weihnachten in Kirche, Kunst und Volksleben&rdquo;</b> (Bielefeld
+and Leipsic, 1902), 153.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-8" id="Note_12-8" href="#Nanchor_12-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i>, 153.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-9" id="Note_12-9" href="#Nanchor_12-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 270.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-10" id="Note_12-10" href="#Nanchor_12-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rietschel, 151.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-11" id="Note_12-11" href="#Nanchor_12-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 151.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-12" id="Note_12-12" href="#Nanchor_12-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 267.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_380" id="Page_380" href="#Page_380">380</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-13" id="Note_12-13" href="#Nanchor_12-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 442; E. M. Leather, <b>&ldquo;The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire&rdquo;</b> (London,
+1912), 90.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-14" id="Note_12-14" href="#Nanchor_12-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rietschel, 154.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-15" id="Note_12-15" href="#Nanchor_12-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ashton, 189.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-16" id="Note_12-16" href="#Nanchor_12-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 190.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-17" id="Note_12-17" href="#Nanchor_12-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 271.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-18" id="Note_12-18" href="#Nanchor_12-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 272.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-19" id="Note_12-19" href="#Nanchor_12-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 277; Rietschel, 254.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-20" id="Note_12-20" href="#Nanchor_12-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Information supplied by the Rev. E. W. Lummis, who a few years ago was a
+pastor in the M&uuml;nsterthal.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-21" id="Note_12-21" href="#Nanchor_12-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>L. Macdonald</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Pall Mall Gazette&rdquo;</b> (London), Dec. 28, 1911.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-22" id="Note_12-22" href="#Nanchor_12-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 174.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-23" id="Note_12-23" href="#Nanchor_12-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 175&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-24" id="Note_12-24" href="#Nanchor_12-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rietschel, 141.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-25" id="Note_12-25" href="#Nanchor_12-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 175.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-26" id="Note_12-26" href="#Nanchor_12-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 172&nbsp;f.; Chambers, &ldquo;B. D.,&rdquo; ii. 759.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-27" id="Note_12-27" href="#Nanchor_12-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Latin text in Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 290.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-28" id="Note_12-28" href="#Nanchor_12-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 244.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-29" id="Note_12-29" href="#Nanchor_12-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Magic Art,&rdquo; ii. 65.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-30" id="Note_12-30" href="#Nanchor_12-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 244.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-31" id="Note_12-31" href="#Nanchor_12-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 241; Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 18.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-32" id="Note_12-32" href="#Nanchor_12-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 168.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-33" id="Note_12-33" href="#Nanchor_12-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 35.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-34" id="Note_12-34" href="#Nanchor_12-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. F. Dawson, &ldquo;Christmas: its Origin and Associations&rdquo;</b> (London, 1902),
+325.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-35" id="Note_12-35" href="#Nanchor_12-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Harrison, &ldquo;Themis,&rdquo; 321.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-36" id="Note_12-36" href="#Nanchor_12-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Magic Art,&rdquo; ii. 55&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-37" id="Note_12-37" href="#Nanchor_12-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Magic Art,&rdquo; ii. 48.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-38" id="Note_12-38" href="#Nanchor_12-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 242&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-39" id="Note_12-39" href="#Nanchor_12-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 251.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-40" id="Note_12-40" href="#Nanchor_12-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Latin text, <i>ibid.</i> ii. 300.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-41" id="Note_12-41" href="#Nanchor_12-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. Stow, &ldquo;A Survay of London,&rdquo;</b> edited by Henry Morley (London, 1893), 123.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-42" id="Note_12-42" href="#Nanchor_12-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 251.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-43" id="Note_12-43" href="#Nanchor_12-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iii. 1206; Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 327; MacCulloch, &ldquo;Religion
+of the Ancient Celts,&rdquo; 162, 205.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-44" id="Note_12-44" href="#Nanchor_12-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Religion of the Ancient Celts,&rdquo; 162&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-45" id="Note_12-45" href="#Nanchor_12-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iii. 1206.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-46" id="Note_12-46" href="#Nanchor_12-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 246; <b>Laisnel de la Salle, &ldquo;Croyances et l&eacute;gendes du
+centre de la France&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1875), i. 58.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-47" id="Note_12-47" href="#Nanchor_12-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 451&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-48" id="Note_12-48" href="#Nanchor_12-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Washington Irving, &ldquo;The Sketch-Book&rdquo;</b> (Revised Edition, New York, 1860),
+245.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-49" id="Note_12-49" href="#Nanchor_12-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 5th Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;viii. 481.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-50" id="Note_12-50" href="#Nanchor_12-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 472.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-51" id="Note_12-51" href="#Nanchor_12-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 100.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-52" id="Note_12-52" href="#Nanchor_12-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 245.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-53" id="Note_12-53" href="#Nanchor_12-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 226.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-54" id="Note_12-54" href="#Nanchor_12-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, &ldquo;Early English Lyrics&rdquo;</b> (London, 1907),
+293; <b>E. Rickert, &ldquo;Ancient English Carols&rdquo;</b> (London, 1910), 262.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_381" id="Page_381" href="#Page_381">381</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-55" id="Note_12-55" href="#Nanchor_12-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rickert, 262.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-56" id="Note_12-56" href="#Nanchor_12-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 245&nbsp;f., 397, 411.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-57" id="Note_12-57" href="#Nanchor_12-57">
+57.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 169.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-58" id="Note_12-58" href="#Nanchor_12-58">
+58.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Van Norman, 300.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-59" id="Note_12-59" href="#Nanchor_12-59">
+59.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Evans, 222.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-60" id="Note_12-60" href="#Nanchor_12-60">
+60.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Van Norman, 300&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-61" id="Note_12-61" href="#Nanchor_12-61">
+61.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; ii. 286&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-62" id="Note_12-62" href="#Nanchor_12-62">
+62.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iv. 1831.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-63" id="Note_12-63" href="#Nanchor_12-63">
+63.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 238. Cf. Tille, &ldquo;Y. &amp; C.,&rdquo; 104.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-64" id="Note_12-64" href="#Nanchor_12-64">
+64.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 420.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-65" id="Note_12-65" href="#Nanchor_12-65">
+65.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 195.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-66" id="Note_12-66" href="#Nanchor_12-66">
+66.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 197.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-67" id="Note_12-67" href="#Nanchor_12-67">
+67.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Bilfinger, 48.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-68" id="Note_12-68" href="#Nanchor_12-68">
+68.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Th. Bentzon, &ldquo;Christmas in France&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Century Magazine&rdquo;</b> (New
+York), Dec., 1901, 173.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-69" id="Note_12-69" href="#Nanchor_12-69">
+69.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, ii. 179&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-70" id="Note_12-70" href="#Nanchor_12-70">
+70.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Pitr&egrave;, 167, 404.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-71" id="Note_12-71" href="#Nanchor_12-71">
+71.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, i. 196; Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 453&nbsp;f.; Wylie, 77&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-72" id="Note_12-72" href="#Nanchor_12-72">
+72.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 172.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-73" id="Note_12-73" href="#Nanchor_12-73">
+73.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. Sandys, &ldquo;Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern&rdquo;</b> (London, 1833), xcv.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_12-74" id="Note_12-74" href="#Nanchor_12-74">
+74.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Walsh, 240&nbsp;f.; Ashton, 194&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.&#xfeff;&mdash;CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-1" id="Note_13-1" href="#Nanchor_13-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 257.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-2" id="Note_13-2" href="#Nanchor_13-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rickert, 259.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-3" id="Note_13-3" href="#Nanchor_13-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. Sandys, &ldquo;Christmastide: its History, Festivities, and Carols&rdquo;</b> (London,
+n.d.), 112.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-4" id="Note_13-4" href="#Nanchor_13-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 133.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-5" id="Note_13-5" href="#Nanchor_13-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. A. H. Murray, &ldquo;A New English Dictionary&rdquo;</b> (Oxford, 1888, &amp;c.) iv. (1) 577.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-6" id="Note_13-6" href="#Nanchor_13-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Addy, 103.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-7" id="Note_13-7" href="#Nanchor_13-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dawson, 254.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-8" id="Note_13-8" href="#Nanchor_13-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Addy, 104.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-9" id="Note_13-9" href="#Nanchor_13-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 407.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-10" id="Note_13-10" href="#Nanchor_13-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 283.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-11" id="Note_13-11" href="#Nanchor_13-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. <i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xi., 1900, 260.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-12" id="Note_13-12" href="#Nanchor_13-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Addy, 103.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-13" id="Note_13-13" href="#Nanchor_13-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. carols in Brand, 3, and Rickert, 243&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-14" id="Note_13-14" href="#Nanchor_13-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 3.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-15" id="Note_13-15" href="#Nanchor_13-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 464.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-16" id="Note_13-16" href="#Nanchor_13-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, i. 119, 184; Lloyd, 173.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-17" id="Note_13-17" href="#Nanchor_13-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 265.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-18" id="Note_13-18" href="#Nanchor_13-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Stratilesco, 190.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-19" id="Note_13-19" href="#Nanchor_13-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ralston, 193, 203.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-20" id="Note_13-20" href="#Nanchor_13-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mijatovich, 98.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-21" id="Note_13-21" href="#Nanchor_13-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 261.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-22" id="Note_13-22" href="#Nanchor_13-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rietschel, 106. Cf. Weinhold, 25, and Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 463.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-23" id="Note_13-23" href="#Nanchor_13-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;S&eacute;billot, 217.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_382" id="Page_382" href="#Page_382">382</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-24" id="Note_13-24" href="#Nanchor_13-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Laisnel, i. 7&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-25" id="Note_13-25" href="#Nanchor_13-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 12&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-26" id="Note_13-26" href="#Nanchor_13-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 11.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-27" id="Note_13-27" href="#Nanchor_13-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. Cortet, &ldquo;Essai sur les F&ecirc;tes religieuses&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1867), 265.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-28" id="Note_13-28" href="#Nanchor_13-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; ii. 286&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-29" id="Note_13-29" href="#Nanchor_13-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>M. H&ouml;fler, &ldquo;Weihnachtsgeb&auml;cke. Eine vergleichende Studie der germanischen
+Gebildbrote zur Weihnachtszeit&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;Zeitschrift f&uuml;r &ouml;sterreichische
+Volkskunde,&rdquo;</b> Jahrg. 11, Supplement-Heft 3 (Vienna, 1905).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-30" id="Note_13-30" href="#Nanchor_13-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 280&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-31" id="Note_13-31" href="#Nanchor_13-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 406&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-32" id="Note_13-32" href="#Nanchor_13-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Mirror of Perfection,&rdquo;</b> trans. by Sebastian Evans (London, 1898), 206.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-33" id="Note_13-33" href="#Nanchor_13-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 233&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-34" id="Note_13-34" href="#Nanchor_13-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 170&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-35" id="Note_13-35" href="#Nanchor_13-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 276.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-36" id="Note_13-36" href="#Nanchor_13-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 276.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-37" id="Note_13-37" href="#Nanchor_13-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 168.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-38" id="Note_13-38" href="#Nanchor_13-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Evans, 231&nbsp;f.; for the ox-custom, see Evans, 233.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-39" id="Note_13-39" href="#Nanchor_13-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 76.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-40" id="Note_13-40" href="#Nanchor_13-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 244&nbsp;f., 238, 245.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-41" id="Note_13-41" href="#Nanchor_13-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dawson, 339.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-42" id="Note_13-42" href="#Nanchor_13-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>S. Graham, &ldquo;A Vagabond in the Caucasus. With some Notes of his
+Experiences among the Russians&rdquo;</b> (London, 1910), 25&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-43" id="Note_13-43" href="#Nanchor_13-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Stratilesco, 190.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-44" id="Note_13-44" href="#Nanchor_13-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Van Norman, 299&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-45" id="Note_13-45" href="#Nanchor_13-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 267.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-46" id="Note_13-46" href="#Nanchor_13-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; ii. 442&nbsp;f., where other examples, British and Continental,
+of the wren-hunt are given. Cf. Dyer, 494&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-47" id="Note_13-47" href="#Nanchor_13-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xviii., 1907, 439&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-48" id="Note_13-48" href="#Nanchor_13-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Religion of the Ancient Celts,&rdquo; 221.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-49" id="Note_13-49" href="#Nanchor_13-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;See Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; ii. 380, 441, for examples of similar practices with
+sacred animals.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-50" id="Note_13-50" href="#Nanchor_13-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xi., 1900, 259.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-51" id="Note_13-51" href="#Nanchor_13-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 272.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-52" id="Note_13-52" href="#Nanchor_13-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;xi., 1900, 262.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-53" id="Note_13-53" href="#Nanchor_13-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 181&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-54" id="Note_13-54" href="#Nanchor_13-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 181.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-55" id="Note_13-55" href="#Nanchor_13-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Thorpe, ii. 49&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_13-56" id="Note_13-56" href="#Nanchor_13-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ralston, 200.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.&#xfeff;&mdash;MASKING, THE MUMMERS&rsquo; PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE BOY BISHOP</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-1" id="Note_14-1" href="#Nanchor_14-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 390&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-2" id="Note_14-2" href="#Nanchor_14-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>The Works Of Ben Jonson</b>, ed. by Barry Cornwall (London, 1838), 600.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-3" id="Note_14-3" href="#Nanchor_14-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Shakespeare, &ldquo;Henry VIII.,&rdquo;</b> Act I. Sc. IV.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-4" id="Note_14-4" href="#Nanchor_14-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 403&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-5" id="Note_14-5" href="#Nanchor_14-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 227, 402.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-6" id="Note_14-6" href="#Nanchor_14-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 402. Cf. Burne and Jackson, 410.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-7" id="Note_14-7" href="#Nanchor_14-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;For a bibliography of texts of the mummers&rsquo; plays see Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 205&nbsp;f.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_383" id="Page_383" href="#Page_383">383</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-8" id="Note_14-8" href="#Nanchor_14-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;This account of the plays and dances is based upon Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 182&nbsp;f.
+(chapters ix. and x.).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-9" id="Note_14-9" href="#Nanchor_14-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Tacitus, &ldquo;Germania,&rdquo;</b> cap. xxiv. (Eng. Trans. by W. Hamilton Fyfe, Oxford,
+1908).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-10" id="Note_14-10" href="#Nanchor_14-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cf. Harrison, &ldquo;Themis,&rdquo; 43&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-11" id="Note_14-11" href="#Nanchor_14-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Professor Gilbert Murray in &ldquo;Themis,&rdquo; 341&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-12" id="Note_14-12" href="#Nanchor_14-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Harrison, &ldquo;Themis,&rdquo; 232.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-13" id="Note_14-13" href="#Nanchor_14-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 226.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-14" id="Note_14-14" href="#Nanchor_14-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 192, 213&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-15" id="Note_14-15" href="#Nanchor_14-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 220&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-16" id="Note_14-16" href="#Nanchor_14-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lawson, 223&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-17" id="Note_14-17" href="#Nanchor_14-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 5th Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;x. 482.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-18" id="Note_14-18" href="#Nanchor_14-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;This account of the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop is mainly derived from
+Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 274-371, and from <b>Mr. A. F. Leach's</b> article, <b>&ldquo;The Schoolboys&rsquo;
+Feast,&rdquo;</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Fortnightly Review&rdquo;</b> (London),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;lix., 1896, 128&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-19" id="Note_14-19" href="#Nanchor_14-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 294.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-20" id="Note_14-20" href="#Nanchor_14-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Full text in Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; ii. 280&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-21" id="Note_14-21" href="#Nanchor_14-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 372&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-22" id="Note_14-22" href="#Nanchor_14-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;Two Sermons preached by the Boy Bishop at St. Paul's,&rdquo;</b> ed. by J. G.
+Nichols, with an Introduction by E. F. Rimbault (London, printed for the Camden
+Society, 1875).
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-23" id="Note_14-23" href="#Nanchor_14-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 3.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-24" id="Note_14-24" href="#Nanchor_14-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Quoted by <b>F. J. Snell, &ldquo;The Customs Of Old England&rdquo;</b> (London, 1911), 44.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-25" id="Note_14-25" href="#Nanchor_14-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 366.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-26" id="Note_14-26" href="#Nanchor_14-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. Aubrey, &ldquo;Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme&rdquo;</b> (1686-7), ed. by J.
+Britten (London, 1881), 40&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-27" id="Note_14-27" href="#Nanchor_14-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 350.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_14-28" id="Note_14-28" href="#Nanchor_14-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, ii. 254.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.&#xfeff;&mdash;ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS&rsquo; DAYS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-1" id="Note_15-1" href="#Nanchor_15-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 237&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-2" id="Note_15-2" href="#Nanchor_15-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 492.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-3" id="Note_15-3" href="#Nanchor_15-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>L. von H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Das Tiroler Bauernjahr&rdquo;</b> (Innsbruck, 1899), 204.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-4" id="Note_15-4" href="#Nanchor_15-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 204.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-5" id="Note_15-5" href="#Nanchor_15-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 204&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-6" id="Note_15-6" href="#Nanchor_15-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, i. 212.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-7" id="Note_15-7" href="#Nanchor_15-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 402.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-8" id="Note_15-8" href="#Nanchor_15-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Feilberg, i. 211.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-9" id="Note_15-9" href="#Nanchor_15-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 402&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-10" id="Note_15-10" href="#Nanchor_15-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 402&nbsp;f.; Feilberg, i. 204&nbsp;f.; Lloyd, 203&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-11" id="Note_15-11" href="#Nanchor_15-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>H. C. Beeching, &ldquo;A Book of Christmas Verse&rdquo;</b> (London, 1895), 21&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-12" id="Note_15-12" href="#Nanchor_15-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 406.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-13" id="Note_15-13" href="#Nanchor_15-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 67.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-14" id="Note_15-14" href="#Nanchor_15-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jahn, 269&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-15" id="Note_15-15" href="#Nanchor_15-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 270&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-16" id="Note_15-16" href="#Nanchor_15-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 273.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_384" id="Page_384" href="#Page_384">384</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-17" id="Note_15-17" href="#Nanchor_15-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 497&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-18" id="Note_15-18" href="#Nanchor_15-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 498; Brand, 290.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-19" id="Note_15-19" href="#Nanchor_15-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 264&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-20" id="Note_15-20" href="#Nanchor_15-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 265&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-21" id="Note_15-21" href="#Nanchor_15-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 268.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_15-22" id="Note_15-22" href="#Nanchor_15-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 129&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XV.&#xfeff;&mdash;NEW YEAR'S DAY</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-1" id="Note_16-1" href="#Nanchor_16-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rhys, &ldquo;Celtic Folklore,&rdquo; i. 320&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-2" id="Note_16-2" href="#Nanchor_16-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 72.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-3" id="Note_16-3" href="#Nanchor_16-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. Thurston, &ldquo;Omens and Superstitions of Southern India&rdquo;</b> (London, 1912),
+17&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-4" id="Note_16-4" href="#Nanchor_16-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Walsh, 742.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-5" id="Note_16-5" href="#Nanchor_16-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Wylie, 81.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-6" id="Note_16-6" href="#Nanchor_16-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;S&eacute;billot, 176.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-7" id="Note_16-7" href="#Nanchor_16-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. Maurice Low, &ldquo;The American People&rdquo;</b> (London, 1911), ii. 6.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-8" id="Note_16-8" href="#Nanchor_16-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Walsh, 739&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-9" id="Note_16-9" href="#Nanchor_16-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Evans, 229.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-10" id="Note_16-10" href="#Nanchor_16-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 315&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-11" id="Note_16-11" href="#Nanchor_16-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 5th Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iii. 6.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-12" id="Note_16-12" href="#Nanchor_16-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Information given by the Rev. E. J. Hardy, formerly Chaplain to the Forces at
+Hongkong.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-13" id="Note_16-13" href="#Nanchor_16-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 204&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-14" id="Note_16-14" href="#Nanchor_16-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 265.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-15" id="Note_16-15" href="#Nanchor_16-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iv. 1784.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-16" id="Note_16-16" href="#Nanchor_16-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Harrison, &ldquo;Themis,&rdquo; 36.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-17" id="Note_16-17" href="#Nanchor_16-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,&rdquo; 72&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-18" id="Note_16-18" href="#Nanchor_16-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Addy, 205.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-19" id="Note_16-19" href="#Nanchor_16-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;G. Hastie in <i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iv., 1893, 309&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-20" id="Note_16-20" href="#Nanchor_16-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;J. E. Crombie in same volume, 316&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-21" id="Note_16-21" href="#Nanchor_16-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Addy, 106; Burne and Jackson, 314; Rhys, &ldquo;Celtic Folklore,&rdquo; i. 337.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-22" id="Note_16-22" href="#Nanchor_16-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rhys, &ldquo;Celtic Folklore,&rdquo; i. 339.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-23" id="Note_16-23" href="#Nanchor_16-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 339&nbsp;f.; W. Henderson, 74. Cf. <i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iii., 1892, 253&nbsp;f.;&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iv.,
+1893, 309&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-24" id="Note_16-24" href="#Nanchor_16-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Hastie (see Note 19), 311.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-25" id="Note_16-25" href="#Nanchor_16-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Walsh, 738.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-26" id="Note_16-26" href="#Nanchor_16-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Hastie, 312.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-27" id="Note_16-27" href="#Nanchor_16-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;B. D.,&rdquo; i. 28.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-28" id="Note_16-28" href="#Nanchor_16-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> ii. 789&nbsp;f.; <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 2nd Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;ix., 322; Dyer, 506.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-29" id="Note_16-29" href="#Nanchor_16-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ashton, 228.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-30" id="Note_16-30" href="#Nanchor_16-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 230&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-31" id="Note_16-31" href="#Nanchor_16-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>J. G. Campbell, &ldquo;Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and
+Islands of Scotland&rdquo;</b> (Glasgow, 1902), 232. Cf. the account given by Dr. Johnson,
+in Brand, 278.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-32" id="Note_16-32" href="#Nanchor_16-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Henderson, &ldquo;Survivals of Belief among the Celts,&rdquo; 263&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-33" id="Note_16-33" href="#Nanchor_16-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>R. Chambers, &ldquo;Popular Rhymes of Scotland&rdquo;</b> (Edinburgh, 1847), 296, and
+&ldquo;B. D.,&rdquo; ii. 788.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_385" id="Page_385" href="#Page_385">385</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-34" id="Note_16-34" href="#Nanchor_16-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;New English Dictionary,&rdquo; v. (1) 327.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-35" id="Note_16-35" href="#Nanchor_16-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cortet, 18.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-36" id="Note_16-36" href="#Nanchor_16-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;S&eacute;billot, 213.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-37" id="Note_16-37" href="#Nanchor_16-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 213.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-38" id="Note_16-38" href="#Nanchor_16-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;MacCulloch, &ldquo;Guernsey Folk Lore,&rdquo; 37.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-39" id="Note_16-39" href="#Nanchor_16-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 80&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-40" id="Note_16-40" href="#Nanchor_16-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Stratilesco, 197&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-41" id="Note_16-41" href="#Nanchor_16-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Hamilton, 103.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-42" id="Note_16-42" href="#Nanchor_16-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 104.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-43" id="Note_16-43" href="#Nanchor_16-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mannhardt, &ldquo;Baumkultus,&rdquo; 593&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-44" id="Note_16-44" href="#Nanchor_16-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Latin text from Ducange in Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 254.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-45" id="Note_16-45" href="#Nanchor_16-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Wylie, 81.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-46" id="Note_16-46" href="#Nanchor_16-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 78.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-47" id="Note_16-47" href="#Nanchor_16-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Grimm, iv. 1847.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-48" id="Note_16-48" href="#Nanchor_16-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;S&eacute;billot, 171.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-49" id="Note_16-49" href="#Nanchor_16-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 7.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-50" id="Note_16-50" href="#Nanchor_16-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ashton, 228.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-51" id="Note_16-51" href="#Nanchor_16-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. Macdonell, &ldquo;In the Abruzzi&rdquo;</b> (London, 1908), 102.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-52" id="Note_16-52" href="#Nanchor_16-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 77.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-53" id="Note_16-53" href="#Nanchor_16-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ralston, 205.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_16-54" id="Note_16-54" href="#Nanchor_16-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Athen&aelig;um&rdquo;</b> (London), Feb. 5, 1848; <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;v., 5.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI.&#xfeff;&mdash;EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-1" id="Note_17-1" href="#Nanchor_17-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 240&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-2" id="Note_17-2" href="#Nanchor_17-2">
+2&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Leigh Hunt, &ldquo;The Seer; or, Common-Places Refreshed&rdquo;</b> (London, 1850),
+part ii. 31.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-3" id="Note_17-3" href="#Nanchor_17-3">
+3&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Beeching, 148&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-4" id="Note_17-4" href="#Nanchor_17-4">
+4&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 261.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-5" id="Note_17-5" href="#Nanchor_17-5">
+5&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. Pasquier, &ldquo;Les Recherches de la France&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1621), livre iv., chap. ix.
+p. 375.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-6" id="Note_17-6" href="#Nanchor_17-6">
+6&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cortet, 33.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-7" id="Note_17-7" href="#Nanchor_17-7">
+7&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 34.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-8" id="Note_17-8" href="#Nanchor_17-8">
+8&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 43.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-9" id="Note_17-9" href="#Nanchor_17-9">
+9&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. Du M&eacute;ril, &ldquo;Origines latines du th&eacute;&acirc;tre moderne&rdquo;</b> (Paris, 1849), 26&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-10" id="Note_17-10" href="#Nanchor_17-10">
+10.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 13.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-11" id="Note_17-11" href="#Nanchor_17-11">
+11.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>A. de Nore, &ldquo;Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de France&rdquo;</b>
+(Paris, 1846), 173.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-12" id="Note_17-12" href="#Nanchor_17-12">
+12.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 29&nbsp;f.; Brand, 13.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-13" id="Note_17-13" href="#Nanchor_17-13">
+13.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Matilde Serao, &ldquo;La Madonna e i Santi&rdquo;</b> (Naples, 1902), 128.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-14" id="Note_17-14" href="#Nanchor_17-14">
+14.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinach, i. 45&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-15" id="Note_17-15" href="#Nanchor_17-15">
+15.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 77.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-16" id="Note_17-16" href="#Nanchor_17-16">
+16.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 78.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-17" id="Note_17-17" href="#Nanchor_17-17">
+17.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Golden Bough,&rdquo; iii. 93.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-18" id="Note_17-18" href="#Nanchor_17-18">
+18.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 246; Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 21.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-19" id="Note_17-19" href="#Nanchor_17-19">
+19.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 21.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-20" id="Note_17-20" href="#Nanchor_17-20">
+20.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 21&nbsp;f.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_386" id="Page_386" href="#Page_386">386</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-21" id="Note_17-21" href="#Nanchor_17-21">
+21.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Stratilesco, 198.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-22" id="Note_17-22" href="#Nanchor_17-22">
+22.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Reinsberg-D&uuml;ringsfeld, 21.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-23" id="Note_17-23" href="#Nanchor_17-23">
+23.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, &ldquo;Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs&rdquo;</b>
+(London, 1886), 334.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-24" id="Note_17-24" href="#Nanchor_17-24">
+24.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>D. N. Lees, &ldquo;Tuscan Feasts and Tuscan Friends&rdquo;</b> (London, 1907), 87.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-25" id="Note_17-25" href="#Nanchor_17-25">
+25.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 83.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-26" id="Note_17-26" href="#Nanchor_17-26">
+26.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Serao, 127&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-27" id="Note_17-27" href="#Nanchor_17-27">
+27.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>E. de Olavarr&iacute;a y Huarte, &ldquo;El Folk-Lore de Madrid,&rdquo;</b> 90. [Vol. ii. of
+&ldquo;Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Espa&ntilde;olas&rdquo; (Seville, 1884).]
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-28" id="Note_17-28" href="#Nanchor_17-28">
+28.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 92.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-29" id="Note_17-29" href="#Nanchor_17-29">
+29.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Memoirs of Mistral,&rdquo; 32&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-30" id="Note_17-30" href="#Nanchor_17-30">
+30.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Nore, 17.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-31" id="Note_17-31" href="#Nanchor_17-31">
+31.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Abbott, 87.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-32" id="Note_17-32" href="#Nanchor_17-32">
+32.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Frazer, &ldquo;Magic Art,&rdquo; i. 275&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-33" id="Note_17-33" href="#Nanchor_17-33">
+33.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Hamilton, 118.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-34" id="Note_17-34" href="#Nanchor_17-34">
+34.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 16; Chambers, &ldquo;B. D.,&rdquo; i. 56; Dyer, 21.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-35" id="Note_17-35" href="#Nanchor_17-35">
+35.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Aubrey, 40.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-36" id="Note_17-36" href="#Nanchor_17-36">
+36.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 16.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-37" id="Note_17-37" href="#Nanchor_17-37">
+37.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Beeching, 147.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-38" id="Note_17-38" href="#Nanchor_17-38">
+38.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ashton, 87&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-39" id="Note_17-39" href="#Nanchor_17-39">
+39.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 225.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-40" id="Note_17-40" href="#Nanchor_17-40">
+40.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Tille, &ldquo;D. W.,&rdquo; 254.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-41" id="Note_17-41" href="#Nanchor_17-41">
+41.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 230.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-42" id="Note_17-42" href="#Nanchor_17-42">
+42.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>W. S. Lach-Szyrma</b> in <b>&ldquo;The Folk-Lore Record&rdquo;</b> (London),&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;iv., 1881, 53.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-43" id="Note_17-43" href="#Nanchor_17-43">
+43.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 17; Chambers, &ldquo;B. D.,&rdquo; i. 55&nbsp;f.; Dyer, 22&nbsp;f. Several accounts have
+been collected by Mrs. Leather, &ldquo;Folk-Lore of Herefordshire,&rdquo; 93&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-44" id="Note_17-44" href="#Nanchor_17-44">
+44.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Evans, 228.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-45" id="Note_17-45" href="#Nanchor_17-45">
+45.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 24.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-46" id="Note_17-46" href="#Nanchor_17-46">
+46.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;v., 1894, 192.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-47" id="Note_17-47" href="#Nanchor_17-47">
+47.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i>&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;vii., 1896, 340&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-48" id="Note_17-48" href="#Nanchor_17-48">
+48.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 149&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-49" id="Note_17-49" href="#Nanchor_17-49">
+49.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;W. Hone, &ldquo;Every Day Book&rdquo; (London, 1838), ii. 1649.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-50" id="Note_17-50" href="#Nanchor_17-50">
+50.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;vii., 1896, 342.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-51" id="Note_17-51" href="#Nanchor_17-51">
+51.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>[Sir] G. L. Gomme, &ldquo;The Village Community&rdquo;</b> (London, 1890), 242&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-52" id="Note_17-52" href="#Nanchor_17-52">
+52.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Busk, 99.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-53" id="Note_17-53" href="#Nanchor_17-53">
+53.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dawson, 320.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-54" id="Note_17-54" href="#Nanchor_17-54">
+54.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&ldquo;The Nation&rdquo;</b> (London), Dec. 10, 1910.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-55" id="Note_17-55" href="#Nanchor_17-55">
+55.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 411.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-56" id="Note_17-56" href="#Nanchor_17-56">
+56.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lloyd, 217.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-57" id="Note_17-57" href="#Nanchor_17-57">
+57.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Bilfinger, 24.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-58" id="Note_17-58" href="#Nanchor_17-58">
+58.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 18&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-59" id="Note_17-59" href="#Nanchor_17-59">
+59.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 37.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-60" id="Note_17-60" href="#Nanchor_17-60">
+60.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Quoted from <b>&ldquo;Journal of the Arch&aelig;ological Association,&rdquo;</b>&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;vii., 1852,
+202, by Dyer, 39.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-61" id="Note_17-61" href="#Nanchor_17-61">
+61.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i. 113.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-62" id="Note_17-62" href="#Nanchor_17-62">
+62.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> i. 114.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-63" id="Note_17-63" href="#Nanchor_17-63">
+63.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Usener, 310&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-64" id="Note_17-64" href="#Nanchor_17-64">
+64.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Naogeorgus, 48.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-65" id="Note_17-65" href="#Nanchor_17-65">
+65.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;S&eacute;billot, 179&nbsp;f.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_387" id="Page_387" href="#Page_387">387</a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-66" id="Note_17-66" href="#Nanchor_17-66">
+66.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;H&ouml;rmann, &ldquo;Tiroler Volksleben,&rdquo; 7.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-67" id="Note_17-67" href="#Nanchor_17-67">
+67.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Usener, 321.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-68" id="Note_17-68" href="#Nanchor_17-68">
+68.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 25. Cf. <b>G. W. Kitchin, &ldquo;Seven Sages Of Durham&rdquo;</b> (London, 1911),
+113.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-69" id="Note_17-69" href="#Nanchor_17-69">
+69.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>The Gentleman's Magazine</i>, 1790, 719.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-70" id="Note_17-70" href="#Nanchor_17-70">
+70.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dyer, 55&nbsp;f.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-71" id="Note_17-71" href="#Nanchor_17-71">
+71.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Quoted by Dyer, 57, from <b>Martin's &ldquo;Description of the Western Isles of
+Scotland&rdquo;</b> (1703), 119.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-72" id="Note_17-72" href="#Nanchor_17-72">
+72.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Gomme, &ldquo;Folk-Lore Relics,&rdquo; 95.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-73" id="Note_17-73" href="#Nanchor_17-73">
+73.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Brand, 26.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-74" id="Note_17-74" href="#Nanchor_17-74">
+74.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ibid.</i> 26.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_17-75" id="Note_17-75" href="#Nanchor_17-75">
+75.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Burne and Jackson, 411.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>CONCLUSION</h3>
+
+
+<p>
+<a class="label" name="Note_18-1" id="Note_18-1" href="#Nanchor_18-1">
+1&nbsp;.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;E. Clodd in Presidential Address to the Folk-Lore Society, 1894. See <i>Folk-Lore</i>,&nbsp;vol.&nbsp;vi., 1895, 77.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_388" id="Page_388" href="#Page_388">388</a>
+</p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="pages"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_389" id="Page_389" href="#Page_389">389</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_390" id="Page_390" href="#Page_390">390</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_391" id="Page_391" href="#Page_391">391</a></p>
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_A"></a>Abbots Bromley, horn-dance at, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li>Abruzzi, All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>&ldquo;new water&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Adam,&rdquo; drama, <a href="#Page_127">127-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Adam and Eve, their Day, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+<li>Adam of St. Victor, <a href="#Page_33">33-4</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Adeste, fideles,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_63">63-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Advent, <a href="#Page_90">90-2</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>&ldquo;Advent images,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>Kl&ouml;pfeln&auml;chte</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216-8</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Alexandria, pagan rites at, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li>All Saints&rsquo; Day, and the cult of the dead, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189-90</a></li>
+
+<li>All Souls&rsquo; Day, and the cult of the dead, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189-95</a></li>
+
+<li>Alsace, Christkind in, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>New Year's &ldquo;May&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_269">269-70</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Alsso of Br&#x0115;vnov, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+<li>Ambrose, St., <a href="#Page_31">31-2</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Amburbale</i>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+
+<li>Amiens, Feast of Fools at, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Anatolius, St., hymn of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li>Ancestor-worship, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+<li>Andrew, St., his Day, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213-6</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+
+<li>Animals, carol of, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>ox and ass at the Nativity, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</li>
+  <li>cult of, <a href="#Page_174">174-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>masks of, <a href="#Page_175">175-6</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199-202</a>;</li>
+  <li>on Christmas Eve, <a href="#Page_233">233-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>specially fed at Christmas, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</li>
+  <li>wassailing, <a href="#Page_346">346-7</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Ansbach, Martinmas in, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+<li>Antwerp, soul-cakes at, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>St. Martin at, <a href="#Page_206">206-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Thomas's Day at, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Apples, customs with, <a href="#Page_195">195-6</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li>Ara Coeli, Rome, <a href="#Page_115">115-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Ardennes, St. Thomas's Day in, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+<li>Armenian Church, Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+<li>Artemis and St. Nicholas, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li>Aryan and pre-Aryan customs, <a href="#Page_163">163-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Aschenklas, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Ashes, superstition about, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+<li>Ass, Prose of the, <a href="#Page_304">304-5</a></li>
+
+<li>Athens, New Year in, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li>Aubrey, J., <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Augury, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-8</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214-5</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321-33</a></li>
+
+<li>Augustine, St. (of Canterbury), <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li>Aurelian, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li>Austria, Christmas poetry in, <a href="#Page_45">45-46</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_143">143-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>soul-cakes in, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Nicholas in, <a href="#Page_218">218-20</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Lucia's Eve in, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Thomas's Eve in, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</li>
+  <li>Frau Perchta, etc., in, <a href="#Page_241">241-4</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>;</li>
+  <li>Sylvester in, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</li>
+  <li><i>See also</i> Bohemia, Carinthia, Styria, Tyrol</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Awdlay, John, <a href="#Page_47">47-8</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_B"></a>Bach, J. S., <a href="#Page_73">73-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Baden, All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+<li>Balder, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>Baptism of Christ, celebrated at Epiphany, <a href="#Page_20">20-2</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Barbara, St., her festival, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li>Bari, festival of St. Nicholas at, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li>Barring out the master, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+<li>Bartel, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li>Basil, St., his festival, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li>Basilidians, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Basle, Council of, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Bavaria, St. Martin's rod in, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas-trees in, <a href="#Page_266">266-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>sacrificial feast in, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. John's wine in, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Beauvais, Feast of the Ass at, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Bede, Venerable, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_392" id="Page_392" href="#Page_392">392</a></li>
+
+<li>Bees on Christmas Eve, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li>Befana, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+
+<li>Belethus, Johannes, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li>Belgium, All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>St. Hubert's Day in, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li>
+  <li>Martinmas in, <a href="#Page_204">204-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Catherine's Day in, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Nicholas in, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Thomas's Day in, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Bentzon, Madame Th., <a href="#Page_96">96-7</a></li>
+
+<li>Berchta. <i>See</i> Perchta</li>
+
+<li>Berlin, pyramids in, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>biscuits in, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li>Berry, cake customs in, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+
+<li>Bethlehem, Christmas at, <a href="#Page_94">94-5</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li>Biggar, bonfires at, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+<li>Bilfinger, Dr. G., <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+<li>Birds fed at Christmas, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li>Blindman's buff, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+<li>Boar's head, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li>Bohemia, the &ldquo;star&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>fifteenth-century Christmas customs in, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Andrew's Eve in, <a href="#Page_215">215-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Thomas's Eve in, <a href="#Page_224">224-5</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Boniface, St., <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li>Boy Bishop, <a href="#Page_212">212-3</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306-8</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>connection with St. Nicholas, <a href="#Page_220">220-1</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307-8</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Breast-strip&rdquo; rites, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li>
+
+<li>Breviary, the Roman, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li>Briid, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+<li>Brimo, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Brittany, Herod play in, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Magi actors in, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li>
+  <li>All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_191">191-2</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve superstitions in, <a href="#Page_233">233-5</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas log in, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>aguillanneuf</i> in, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>;</li>
+  <li>weather superstition in, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Brixen, cradle-rocking at, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li>Brixlegg, Christmas play at, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>&nbsp;f.</li>
+
+<li>Bromfield, Cumberland, barring out the master at, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+<li>Brough, Westmoreland, Twelfth Night tree at, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Brunnen, Epiphany at, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+<li>Budelfrau, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+<li>Burchardus of Worms, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Burford, Christmas holly at, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+
+<li>Burghead, &ldquo;Clavie&rdquo; at, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+<li>Burns, Robert, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Bush, burning the,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+
+<li>Buzebergt, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+<li>Byrom, John, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_C"></a>Caballero, Fernan, <a href="#Page_66">66-7</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li>Caesarius of Arles, <a href="#Page_170">170-1</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Cakes, &ldquo;feasten,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>soul, <a href="#Page_192">192-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Hubert's, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li>
+  <li>Martin's horns, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas, <a href="#Page_287">287-8</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289-90</a>;</li>
+  <li>Twelfth Night, <a href="#Page_337">337-40</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Basil's, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Calabrian minstrels, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+<li>Calamy, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+<li>Caligula, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+<li>Callander, Hallowe'en at, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+<li>Cambridge, St. Clement's Day at, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li>Canada, Christmas Eve superstition in, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li>Candlemas, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352-5</a></li>
+
+<li>Candles, on St. Lucia's Day, <a href="#Page_212">212-2</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Yule, <a href="#Page_258">258-60</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Cards, Christmas, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Carinthia, St. Stephen's Day in, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+
+<li>Carnival, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+
+<li>Carols, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_47">47-8</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>English sacred, <a href="#Page_47">47-51</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76-8</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84-5</a>;</li>
+  <li>Welsh, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li>
+  <li>Irish, <a href="#Page_69">69-70</a>;</li>
+  <li>Highland, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Catholicism and Christmas, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li>Celtic New Year, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203-4</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+
+<li>Centaurs, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+<li>Cereal sacraments, <a href="#Page_177">177-8</a>.<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>See also</i> Cakes</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Chambers, Mr. E. K., <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299-300</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302-7</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li>Charlemagne, coronation of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li>Charms, New Year, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-8</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321-34</a></li>
+
+<li>Cheshire, Old Hob in, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>poultry specially fed at Christmas, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Chester plays, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Chesterton, Mr. G. K., <a href="#Page_85">85-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Childermas, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>Children's festivals, <a href="#Page_205">205-7</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218-20</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223-4</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359-60</a></li>
+
+<li>China, New Year in, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+
+<li>Chios, Christmas <i>rhamna</i> in, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Christkind as gift-bringer, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Christmas, pagan and Christian elements in, <a href="#Page_18">18-28</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161-86</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357-60</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>names of, <a href="#Page_20">20-5</a>;</li>
+  <li>establishment of, <a href="#Page_20">20-2</a>;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_393" id="Page_393" href="#Page_393">393</a></li>
+  <li>its connection with earlier festivals, <a href="#Page_20">20-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>becomes humanized, <a href="#Page_25">25-7</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>in poetry, <a href="#Page_31">31-86</a>;</li>
+  <li>liturgical aspects of, <a href="#Page_89">89-101</a>;</li>
+  <li>in popular devotion, <a href="#Page_104">104-18</a>;</li>
+  <li>in drama, <a href="#Page_121">121-54</a>;</li>
+  <li>its human appeal, <a href="#Page_155">155-7</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357-60</a>;</li>
+  <li>attracts customs from other festivals, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277-8</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</li>
+  <li>decorations, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>feasting, <a href="#Page_178">178-80</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283-91</a>;</li>
+  <li>presents, <a href="#Page_276">276-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>masking customs, <a href="#Page_297">297-308</a>;</li>
+  <li>log, <i>see</i> Yule Log</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Christmas Eve, <a href="#Page_229">229-38</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>superstitions about the supernatural, <a href="#Page_233">233-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>log customs, <a href="#Page_251">251-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>fish supper on, <a href="#Page_286">286-7</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Christmas-tree, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263-72</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>its origin, <a href="#Page_267">267-72</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Christpuppe, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Chrysostom, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Church, Dean, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+<li>Circumcision, Feast of, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>See also</i> New Year's Day</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Clement, St., his Day, <a href="#Page_211">211-2</a></li>
+
+<li>Cleobury Mortimer, curfew at, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+<li>Clermont, shepherd play at, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li>Coffin, Charles, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li>Communion, sacrificial, <a href="#Page_174">174-8</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Comte d'Alsinoys,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58-9</a></li>
+
+<li>Cornwall, Hallowe'en custom in, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>blackbird pie in, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;</li>
+  <li>Childermas in, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Coventry plays, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130-1</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li>Cradle-rocking, <a href="#Page_108">108-11</a></li>
+
+<li>Crashaw, <a href="#Page_79">79-81</a></li>
+
+<li>Crib, Christmas, <a href="#Page_105">105-8</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113-8</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>possible survivals in England, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Crimmitschau, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+<li>Crivoscian customs, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346-7</a></li>
+
+<li>Croatia, St. Andrew's Eve in, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas log customs in, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Cronia</i>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_D"></a>Dalmatia, Yule log customs in, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li>Dancing, <a href="#Page_47">47-8</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293-4</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298-300</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li>Daniel, Jean, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li>Dannhauer, J. K., <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+
+<li>Dasius, St., <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li>Dead, feasts of the, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180-1</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189-95</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235-6</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+<li>Decorations, evergreen, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+<li>Denisot, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58-9</a></li>
+
+<li>Denmark, &ldquo;star-singing&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>animal masks in, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li>
+  <li>Martinmas goose in, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Lucia's Eve in, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Thomas's Day in, <a href="#Page_223">223-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve superstitions in, <a href="#Page_235">235-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Yule candles in, <a href="#Page_259">259-60</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas-tree in, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li>
+  <li>pig's head eaten in, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</li>
+  <li>Yule-bishop in, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Derbyshire, &ldquo;kissing-bunch&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Plough Monday in, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Devil, and beast masks, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>and flax, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Devon, &ldquo;Yeth hounds&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>&ldquo;ashton faggot&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;</li>
+  <li>wassailing fruit-trees in, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Dew, Christmas, <a href="#Page_288">288-9</a></li>
+
+<li>Dickens, Charles, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li>
+
+<li>Dinan, Herod play at, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li>Dionysus, as child-god, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>winter festivals of, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Dorstone, Hallowe'en at, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li>Drama, Christmas, in Latin, <a href="#Page_121">121-7</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>in English, <a href="#Page_128">128-38</a>;</li>
+  <li>in French, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138-43</a>;</li>
+  <li>in Spanish, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148-50</a>;</li>
+  <li>in German, <a href="#Page_143">143-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>in Italian, <a href="#Page_147">147-8</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li>
+  <li>survivals of, <a href="#Page_150">150-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Nicholas plays, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;</li>
+  <li>pagan folk-drama, <a href="#Page_298">298-302</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Drinking customs, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285-6</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314-5</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+<li>Druids and mistletoe, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>Duchesne, Monsignor, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li>Durham, Candlemas at, <a href="#Page_353">353-4</a></li>
+
+<li>D&uuml;sseldorf, Martinmas at, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+<li>Dyzemas, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_E"></a>Eckhart, <a href="#Page_42">42-3</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+<li>Edinburgh, New Year in, <a href="#Page_325">325-6</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Eiresione</i>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Encina, Juan del, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li>England, Christmas poetry in, <a href="#Page_47">47-51</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76-86</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Midnight Mass in, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</li>
+  <li>possible survivals of the Christmas crib in, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;</li>
+  <li>the Nativity in the miracle cycles, <a href="#Page_128">128-38</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;souling&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_192">192-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Hallowe'en in, <a href="#Page_195">195-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>Guy Fawkes Day in, <a href="#Page_198">198-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>animal masks in, <a href="#Page_199">199-201</a>;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_394" id="Page_394" href="#Page_394">394</a></li>
+  <li>Martinmas in, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Clement's Day in, <a href="#Page_211">211-2</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Catherine's Day in, <a href="#Page_212">212-3</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Andrew's Day in, <a href="#Page_213">213-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Thomas's Day in, <a href="#Page_225">225-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve superstitions in, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li>
+  <li>Yule log in, <a href="#Page_257">257-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>Yule candle in, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</li>
+  <li>pyramids and Christmas-trees in, <a href="#Page_266">266-7</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li>
+  <li>the Holy Thorn in, <a href="#Page_268">268-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>evergreen decorations in, <a href="#Page_272">272-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas boxes in, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas fare in, <a href="#Page_283">283-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>sacrificial survivals and Christmas games in, <a href="#Page_292">292-3</a>;</li>
+  <li>mummers and sword-dancers in, <a href="#Page_297">297-301</a>;</li>
+  <li>Feast of Fools in, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</li>
+  <li>Boy Bishop in, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Stephen's Day in, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Holy Innocents&rsquo; Day in, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year's Day in, <a href="#Page_321">321-9</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany customs in, <a href="#Page_337">337-8</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>Candlemas in, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353-5</a>;</li>
+  <li>Rock Day in, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>;</li>
+  <li>Plough Monday in, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Ephraem Syrus, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li>Epiphanius, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Epiphany, early history of the festival, <a href="#Page_20">20-2</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>in the Roman Church, <a href="#Page_101">101-2</a>;</li>
+  <li>in the Greek Church, <a href="#Page_102">102-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Blessing of the Waters at, <a href="#Page_102">102-4</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</li>
+  <li>Italian religious ceremonies at, <a href="#Page_116">116-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>in drama, <a href="#Page_125">125-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>old German name for, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li>
+  <li>folk customs on, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;</li>
+  <li>Twelfth Night cakes and kings, <a href="#Page_337">337-41</a>;</li>
+  <li>expulsion of evils, <a href="#Page_341">341-2</a>;</li>
+  <li>the Befana and the Magi, <a href="#Page_343">343-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>wassailing, <a href="#Page_345">345-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;Haxey Hood,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_347">347-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>farewells to Christmas, <a href="#Page_349">349-50</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Erzgebirge, Christmas plays in, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>St. John's tree in, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>pfeffern</i> in, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Eschenloh, <i>berchten</i> at, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+<li>Esthonians, All Souls&rsquo; Day among, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+<li>Ethelred, laws of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Etzendorf, St. Martin's rod at, <a href="#Page_207">207-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Evans, Sir Arthur, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Eves, importance of for festival customs, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+<li>Expulsion rites, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181-2</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327-8</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341-2</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_F"></a>Fabriano, Gentile da, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li>Fare, Christmas, <a href="#Page_283">283-91</a></li>
+
+<li>Feasting, connected with sacrifice, <a href="#Page_178">178-9</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>at Martinmas, <a href="#Page_202">202-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>at Christmas, <a href="#Page_283">283-91</a>;</li>
+  <li>at New Year, <a href="#Page_321">321-3</a>;</li>
+  <li>at Epiphany, <a href="#Page_337">337-41</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Feien</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Feilberg, Dr. H. F., <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Festivals, origin and purpose of, <a href="#Page_17">17-8</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>relation of pagan and Christian, <a href="#Page_19">19-27</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169-74</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Fire, not given out at Christmas or New Year, <a href="#Page_170">170-1</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257-8</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>bonfires, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198-9</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204-5</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346-50</a>;</li>
+  <li>new fire lit, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas log and ancestor-worship, <a href="#Page_251">251-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>the Yule log and candle in western Europe, <a href="#Page_254">254-60</a>;</li>
+  <li>Candlemas fires and lights, <a href="#Page_352">352-4</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;First-foots,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Fish eaten on Christmas Eve, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+
+<li>Flagellants, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+<li>Flamma, Galvano, <a href="#Page_147">147-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Fletcher, Giles, <a href="#Page_82">82-3</a></li>
+
+<li>Florence, Nativity plays at, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Befana at, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Fools, Feast of, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Football, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+
+<li>Fowler, Dr. W. Warde, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li>France, Christmas poetry in, <a href="#Page_55">55-65</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Midnight Mass in, <a href="#Page_96">96-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_124">124-7</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138-43</a>;</li>
+  <li>All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_191">191-2</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve superstitions in, <a href="#Page_234">234-5</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas log in, <a href="#Page_254">254-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas-tree in, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li>
+  <li>Harvest May in, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li>
+  <li>presents brought by <i>le petit J&eacute;sus</i>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas cakes in, <a href="#Page_287">287-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>Feast of Fools in, <a href="#Page_302">302-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Boy Bishop in, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</li>
+  <li>Innocents&rsquo; Day in, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_322">322-3</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>aguillanneuf</i> in, <a href="#Page_329">329-30</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_339">339-42</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349-50</a>;</li>
+  <li>Candlemas candles in, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Francis, St. (of Assisi), and Christmas, <a href="#Page_36">36-8</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105-6</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li>Frazer, Dr. J. G., <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+
+<li>Frick, Frau, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li>Frigg, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li>Friuli, All Souls&rsquo; Day in, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+<li>Frumenty, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_G"></a>Games, Christmas, <a href="#Page_293">293-4</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_395" id="Page_395" href="#Page_395">395</a></li>
+
+<li>Gaude, Frau, <a href="#Page_241">241-2</a></li>
+
+<li>Gautier, Th&eacute;ophile, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li>Gay, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+<li>Geese-dancers, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>Genealogy, chanting of the, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+<li>George, St., in mummers&rsquo; plays, <a href="#Page_299">299-301</a></li>
+
+<li>Gerhardt, Paul, <a href="#Page_73">73-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Germanicus, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+<li>Germany, Christmas established in, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas poetry in Catholic, <a href="#Page_42">42-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>Protestant hymns in, <a href="#Page_70">70-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas services in, <a href="#Page_98">98-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>the crib and <i>Kindelwiegen</i> in, <a href="#Page_107">107-12</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_143">143-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;star-singing&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li>
+  <li>Roman customs in, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</li>
+  <li>pre-Christian New Year in, <a href="#Page_171">171-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>soul-cakes in, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li>the <i>Schimmel</i> and other animal masks in, <a href="#Page_199">199-201</a>;</li>
+  <li>Martinmas customs in, <a href="#Page_202">202-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Andrew's Eve in, <a href="#Page_214">214-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Nicholas in, <a href="#Page_218">218-9</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229-32</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Thomas's Eve in, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve in, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</li>
+  <li>Twelve Days superstitions in, <a href="#Page_240">240-3</a>;</li>
+  <li>Frau Berchta, etc., in, <a href="#Page_241">241-3</a>;</li>
+  <li>werewolves in, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas log in, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas-tree in, <a href="#Page_263">263-7</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>;</li>
+  <li>Harvest May in, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas presents in, <a href="#Page_277">277-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas fare in, <a href="#Page_286">286-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>sacrificial relics in, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Stephen's Day in, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. John's Day in, <a href="#Page_314">314-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Holy Innocents&rsquo; Day in, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Gilmorton, &ldquo;Christmas Vase&rdquo; at, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Glastonbury thorns, <a href="#Page_268">268-9</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Gloria in excelsis,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+<li>Goethe, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Goliards</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li>Gomme, Sir Laurence, <a href="#Page_257">257-8</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+
+<li>Goose, Martinmas, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Gozzoli, Benozzo, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li>Grampus, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li>Greece, Epiphany ceremonies in, <a href="#Page_102">102-3</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244-5</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>winter festivals of Dionysus in, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>Kallikantzaroi</i> in, <a href="#Page_244">244-7</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas log in, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>rhamna</i> in Chios, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;Christ's Loaves&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</li>
+  <li>folk-plays in, <a href="#Page_300">300-1</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Greek Church, Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102-4</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas in, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99-101</a>;</li>
+  <li>Advent in, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Gregorie, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>Gregory III., <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li>Gregory the Great, letter to Mellitus, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li>Guernsey, Christmas superstitions in, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>oguinane</i> in, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Guisers, <a href="#Page_297">297-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Guy Fawkes Day, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198-9</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_H"></a><i>Habergaiss</i>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Habersack</i>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li>Hakon the Good, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+<li>Hallowe'en, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Hampstead, Guy Fawkes Day at, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li>Hans Trapp, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li>Hardy, Mr. Thomas, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li>Harke, Frau, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li>Harrison, Miss Jane, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176-7</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Haxey Hood,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_347">347-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Herbert, George, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li>Herefordshire, Hallowe'en in, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>pyramids in, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;</li>
+  <li>Holy Thorn in, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year water in, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany and New Year ceremonies in, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Herod plays, <a href="#Page_126">126-7</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+<li>Herrick, <a href="#Page_81">81-2</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354-5</a></li>
+
+<li>Hertfordshire, pyramids in, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li>Hindu New Year, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li>H&ouml;fler, Dr., <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li>Hogmanay, <a href="#Page_328">328-30</a></li>
+
+<li>Holda, Frau, <a href="#Page_241">241-2</a></li>
+
+<li>Holland, the &ldquo;star&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Martinmas in, <a href="#Page_204">204-5</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>Rommelpot</i> in, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Nicholas in, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Thomas's Day in, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Holly, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Holy Innocents&rsquo; Day, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306-8</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315-7</a></li>
+
+<li>Horn-cakes, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li>Hornchurch, boar's head at, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li>Horn-dance, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li>Horse, as a sacrificial animal, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>hobby-horse, hodening, and the <i>Schimmel</i>, <a href="#Page_199">199-201</a>;</li>
+  <li>customs on St. Stephen's Day, <a href="#Page_311">311-4</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_396" id="Page_396" href="#Page_396">396</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Howison, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li>Hubert, St., his Day, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+<li>Hunt, Leigh, <a href="#Page_337">337-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Huysmans, J. K., <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+<li>Hymns, Latin, <a href="#Page_31">31-4</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_I"></a>Iceland, &ldquo;Yule host&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li>Image, Prof. Selwyn, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;In dulci jubilo,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_44">44-5</a></li>
+
+<li>Incense used for purification, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244-5</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Ireland, Christmas carols in, <a href="#Page_69">69-70</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li>
+  <li>Hallowe'en customs in, <a href="#Page_197">197-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>Martinmas slaughter in, <a href="#Page_203">203-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;hunting of the wren&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li>
+  <li>Holy Innocents&rsquo; Day in, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Italy, Christmas poetry in, <a href="#Page_36">36-42</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>presepio</i> in, <a href="#Page_105">105-7</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112-6</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_146">146-8</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li>
+  <li>All Souls&rsquo; in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li>Martinmas in, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas log in, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;</li>
+  <li>Santa Lucia in, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas fare in, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289-91</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Ivy, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275-6</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_J"></a>Jacopone da Todi, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39-42</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+<li>James, St., Gospel of, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+<li>Jerome, St., <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Jerusalem, Christmas at, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94-5</a></li>
+
+<li>John, St., Evangelist, his Day, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314-5</a></li>
+
+<li>Johnson, Lionel, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>Johnson, Richard, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>Jonson, Ben, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Julebuk</i>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+<li>Julian the Apostate, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Julklapp</i>, <a href="#Page_278">278-9</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_K"></a>Kalends of January, the Roman festival, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167-71</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>made a fast, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-1</a>.</li>
+  <li><i>See also</i> New Year's Day</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Kallikantzaroi</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244-7</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Kindelwiegen</i>, <a href="#Page_108">108-11</a></li>
+
+<li>King of the Bean, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338-41</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Kissing-bunch,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li>Kissling, K. G., <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Klapperbock</i>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li>Klaubauf, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Kl&ouml;pfeln&auml;chte</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216-7</a></li>
+
+<li>Knecht Ruprecht, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231-2</a></li>
+
+<li>Kore, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Krampus, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_L"></a>Labrugui&egrave;re, Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+<li>Lake, Prof. K., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li>La Monnoye, <a href="#Page_62">62-3</a></li>
+
+<li>Lancashire, Hallowe'en in, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+<li>Latin Christmas poetry, <a href="#Page_31">31-4</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63-4</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68-9</a></li>
+
+<li>Lawson, Mr. J. C., <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>Lead-pouring, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li>Leather, Mrs., <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+
+<li>Le Moigne, Lucas, <a href="#Page_56">56-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Libanius, <a href="#Page_168">168-9</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Liberius, Pope, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352-3</a></li>
+
+<li>Lima, Christmas Eve at, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li>Lithuania, feast of the dead in, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>New Year's Eve in, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Log customs. <i>See</i> Yule log</li>
+
+<li>Lombardy, Christmas log in, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li>London, Greek Epiphany ceremonies in, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Italian Christmas in, <a href="#Page_116">116-7</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas in, under Puritans, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</li>
+  <li>German Christmas in, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</li>
+  <li>Boy Bishop in, <a href="#Page_306">306-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Lord Mayor's day, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+<li>Lord of Misrule, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li>Lorraine, cake customs in, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339-40</a></li>
+
+<li>Lucia, St., her festival, <a href="#Page_221">221-3</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li>Lucian, <a href="#Page_166">166-7</a></li>
+
+<li>Ludlow, Guy Fawkes Day at, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li>Lullabies, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67-9</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83-4</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109-10</a></li>
+
+<li>Luther, Martin, <a href="#Page_70">70-3</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+
+<li>Lyme Regis, Candlemas at, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_M"></a>Macedonia, Christmas Eve in, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>New Year's Eve in, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>Kallikantzaroi</i> in, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>;</li>
+  <li>folk-play in, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Mac&eacute;e, Claude, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li>Madrid, <a href="#Page_97">97-8</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+
+<li>Magi in drama, <a href="#Page_125">125-6</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128-9</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151-3</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>as present-bringers, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Magic, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>Man, Isle of, carol-singing in, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>Hollantide</i> in, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_397" id="Page_397" href="#Page_397">397</a></li>
+  <li><i>Fynnodderee</i> in, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;hunting of the wren&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_292">292-3</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Mana</i>, <a href="#Page_176">176-7</a></li>
+
+<li>Mannhardt, W., <a href="#Page_252">252-3</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Marguerite of Navarre, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li>Marseilles, &ldquo;pastorals&rdquo; at, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li>Martin of Braga, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li>Martin I., Pope, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li>Martinengo-Cesaresco, Countess, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li>Martinmas, an old winter festival, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202-3</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>its feasting customs, <a href="#Page_202">202-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>its bonfires, <a href="#Page_204">204-5</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Martin as gift-bringer, and his relation to St. Nicholas, <a href="#Page_205">205-8</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218-9</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277-8</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Masking customs, <a href="#Page_169">169-71</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175-6</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199-202</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230-2</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297-302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304-305</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+
+<li>Mass, Midnight, <a href="#Page_94">94-9</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>the three Christmas Masses, <a href="#Page_94">94-6</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Mechlin, Martinmas at, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+<li>Mellitus, Abbot, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li>Mexico, Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li>Michaelmas, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li>Milan, Epiphany play at, <a href="#Page_147">147-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Milton, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li>Mince-pies, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li>Minnesingers, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Misterio de los Reyes Magos,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li>Mistletoe, <a href="#Page_272">272-4</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+
+<li>Mistral, Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>Mithra, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Modranicht</i>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Monasticism and Christmas, <a href="#Page_34">34-5</a></li>
+
+<li>Mont-St.-Michel, Epiphany king at, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+
+<li>Montenegro, Christmas log customs in, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li>Morgan, Lady, <a href="#Page_114">114-5</a></li>
+
+<li>Morris, William, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>Morris-dancers, <a href="#Page_299">299-301</a></li>
+
+<li>Mouthe, &ldquo;De fructu&rdquo; at, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li>Mummers&rsquo; plays, <a href="#Page_297">297-302</a></li>
+
+<li>Munich, Bavarian National Museum at, <a href="#Page_107">107-8</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas-tree at, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Stephen's Day at, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Murillo, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li>Mythology, in relation to ritual, <a href="#Page_164">164-5</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_N"></a>Naogeorgus, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+
+<li>Naples, <i>zampognari</i> at, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>presepio</i> at, <a href="#Page_113">113-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas plays at, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany at, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Natalis Invicti</i>, <a href="#Page_23">23-4</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li>New Year's Day, in Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167-71</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276-7</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>opposed in character to Christmas, <a href="#Page_25">25-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Teutonic and Celtic, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171-3</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Slav, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</li>
+  <li>January&nbsp;1 made a fast, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-1</a>;</li>
+  <li>customs attracted to January&nbsp;1, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;</li>
+  <li>fire not given out, <a href="#Page_170">170-1</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>charms, omens, and other customs, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321-34</a>;</li>
+  <li>presents, <a href="#Page_168">168-71</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276-7</a>;</li>
+  <li>mistletoe connected with, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Nicea, Council of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+<li>Nicholas, St., his Day related to Martinmas, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-8</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277-8</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>as patron of boys, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>,</li>
+  <li>of sailors, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</li>
+  <li>his festival, <a href="#Page_218">218-21</a>;</li>
+  <li>on Christmas Eve, <a href="#Page_229">229-32</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><i>No&euml;l</i>, origin of the name, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>the French carol, <a href="#Page_55">55-65</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Normandy, &ldquo;star-singing&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Innocents&rsquo; Day in, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_349">349-50</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Northamptonshire, St. Catherine's and St. Andrew's Days in, <a href="#Page_213">213-4</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Dyzemas in, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Northumberland, holly in, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+
+<li>Norway, Christmas established in, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>&ldquo;star-singing&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li>
+  <li>pre-Christian Yule festival in, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li>
+  <li>animal masks in, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve superstitions in, <a href="#Page_235">235-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Yule candles in, <a href="#Page_259">259-60</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Notker, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Nottinghamshire, Hallowe'en customs in, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas cake and wassail-bowl in, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Nuremberg, Epiphany at, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+<li>Nuts, customs with, <a href="#Page_195">195-6</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_O"></a>&ldquo;O's,&rdquo; Great, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li>Oak as a sacred tree, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li>Oberufer, Christmas play at, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li>Oca&ntilde;a, F. de, <a href="#Page_65">65-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Oesel, &ldquo;Yule Boar&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li>Old Hob, <a href="#Page_199">199-200</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_398" id="Page_398" href="#Page_398">398</a></li>
+
+<li>Otfrid of Weissenburg, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li>Oxford, boars head at, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_P"></a>Palmer, Mr. F. H. E., <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Parcae</i>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Paris, Christmas in, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Catherine's Day in, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas-tree in, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;</li>
+  <li>Feast of Fools in, <a href="#Page_302">302-3</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Paschal, Fran&ccedil;oise, <a href="#Page_61">61-2</a></li>
+
+<li>Pasquier, &Eacute;tienne, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+
+<li>Pearson, Dr. Karl, <a href="#Page_161">161-2</a></li>
+
+<li>Pellegrin, Abb&eacute;, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li>Pelzm&auml;rte, <a href="#Page_206">206-8</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li>Perchta, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241-4</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+<li>Perun, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li>Peterborough, St. Catherine's Day at, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li>Philocalian Calendar, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Pifferari</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+<li>Pillersee, Advent mummeries at, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li>Pliny, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>Plough Monday, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>Plum-pudding, <a href="#Page_284">284-5</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Plygain</i>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li>Poland, the &ldquo;star&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>puppet-shows in, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li>
+  <li>werewolves in, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas straw in, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas wafers in, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Polaznik</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Presents, at the Roman Kalends, <a href="#Page_168">168-71</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276-7</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>on All Souls&rsquo; Eve, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li>
+  <li>at Martinmas, <a href="#Page_205">205-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>on St. Nicholas's Day, <a href="#Page_218">218-20</a>;</li>
+  <li>at Christmas, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>at New Year and other seasons, <a href="#Page_277">277-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>at Epiphany, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Presepio.</i> <i>See</i> Crib</li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Prophetae,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+<li>Protestantism, effects of, on Christmas, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70-8</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185-6</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229-30</a></li>
+
+<li>Provence, remains of Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas log in, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;</li>
+  <li>Magi in, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Prudentius, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Puppet-plays, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>&nbsp;f.</li>
+
+<li>Purification, feast of the. <i>See</i> Candlemas</li>
+
+<li>Puritans, their attitude towards Christmas, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184-5</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li>Pyramids, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_Q"></a>Quainton, blossoming thorn at, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_R"></a>&ldquo;Raging host,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+
+<li>Ragusa, Christmas log customs at, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li>Ramsgate, hodening at, <a href="#Page_200">200-1</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Rauchn&auml;chte</i>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Rhys, Sir John, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Ripon, St. Clement's Day at, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Yule candles at, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</li>
+  <li>Candlemas at, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Risano, Christmas log customs at, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li>Rolle, Richard, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li>Rome, Christmas established in, <a href="#Page_20">20-1</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>pagan winter festivals in, <a href="#Page_23">23-4</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165-71</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas services and customs in, <a href="#Page_95">95-6</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112-6</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289-90</a>;</li>
+  <li>mediaeval New Year <i>qu&ecirc;te</i> in, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Rossetti, Christina, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>Rouen, religious plays at, <a href="#Page_124">124-5</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138-40</a></li>
+
+<li>Roumania, the &ldquo;star&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Andrew's Eve in, <a href="#Page_215">215-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas songs in, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas fare in, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_330">330-1</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Russia, Epiphany ceremonies in, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>the &ldquo;star&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve in, <a href="#Page_232">232-3</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</li>
+  <li>fire superstitions in, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas fare in, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas games in, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</li>
+  <li>mummers in, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_S"></a>Saboly, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>Sacrifice, theories of, <a href="#Page_174">174-8</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>connected with festivals, <a href="#Page_178">178-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>survivals of, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283-7</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292-4</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347-9</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Salers, Christmas king at, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Samhain</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li>Sant&rsquo; Andrea della Valle, Rome, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li>Santa Klaus, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+<li>Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, <a href="#Page_95">95-6</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114-5</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Saturnalia</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165-7</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li>
+
+<li>Schiller, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Schimmel</i> and <i>Schimmelreiter</i>, <a href="#Page_199">199-200</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Schoolboys&rsquo; festival, <a href="#Page_223">223-4</a>.<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>See also</i> Boy Bishop</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Scotland, Christmas carols in, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Hallowe'en customs in, <a href="#Page_197">197-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>sowens eaten in, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;first-foot&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_325">325-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>other New Year customs in, <a href="#Page_326">326-9</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332-3</a>;</li>
+  <li>Candlemas in, <a href="#Page_354">354</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_399" id="Page_399" href="#Page_399">399</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Sedulius, Coelius, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Sequences, <a href="#Page_32">32-3</a></li>
+
+<li>Serao, Matilde, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+<li>Serbs, Christmas customs of, <a href="#Page_251">251-4</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+<li>Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li>Shepherds in Christmas drama, <a href="#Page_123">123-4</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132-7</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139-43</a></li>
+
+<li>Shropshire, soul-cakes in, <a href="#Page_192">192-3</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Guy Fawkes Day at Ludlow, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</li>
+  <li>Twelve Days superstitions in, <a href="#Page_240">240-1</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Brand in, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas decorations in, <a href="#Page_275">275-6</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;wigs&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</li>
+  <li>cattle specially fed at Christmas, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</li>
+  <li>morris-dancers in, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>;</li>
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>;</li>
+  <li>Candlemas in, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Sicily, Midnight Mass in, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas <i>novena</i> in, <a href="#Page_112">112-3</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas procession at Messina, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas plays in, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li>
+  <li>All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li>
+  <li>Martinmas in, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Lucia's Eve in, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li>
+  <li>presents in, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</li>
+  <li>Candlemas candles in, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Sidgwick, Mr. F., <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Sidgwick, Mrs. Alfred, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+<li>Silesia, <i>Schimmel</i> in, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Martinmas in, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve in, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;</li>
+  <li>animals specially fed at Christmas, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Slav New Year, <a href="#Page_172">172-3</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas songs and customs, <a href="#Page_237">237-8</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251-4</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li>
+  <li><i>See also</i> Bohemia, Crivoscia, Poland, Russia</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Smith, W. Robertson, <a href="#Page_164">164-5</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175-6</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178-9</a></li>
+
+<li>Somersetshire wassailing, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+
+<li>Soul cakes, <a href="#Page_192">192-4</a></li>
+
+<li>South America, Christmas in, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li>Southwell, <a href="#Page_79">79-80</a></li>
+
+<li>Sowens eaten, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+
+<li>Spain, Christmas poetry in, <a href="#Page_65">65-7</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Midnight Mass in, <a href="#Page_97">97-8</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</li>
+  <li>the crib in, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148-51</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>turron</i> in, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_343">343-4</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Spervogel, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li>Spinning, during Twelve Days, <a href="#Page_240">240-3</a></li>
+
+<li>Staffordshire, St. Clement's Day in, <a href="#Page_211">211-2</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Star-singing,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_151">151-2</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Stella,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_125">125-7</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Stephen, St., his festival, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Stephens, Dean, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li>Stow's &ldquo;Survay,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li>Strasburg, early Christmas-trees at, <a href="#Page_265">265-6</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Strenae</i>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Stubbes, Philip, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li>Styles, Old and New, <a href="#Page_268">268-9</a></li>
+
+<li>Styria, <i>Habergaiss</i> in, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Perchta in, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. John's wine in, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Sun, the, December <a href="#Page_25">25</a> as festival of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Yule not connected with, <a href="#Page_171">171-2</a>;</li>
+  <li>sun-charms, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Suso, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li>Sussex, squirrel-hunting in, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>tipteerers in, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>;</li>
+  <li>wassailing fruit-trees in, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Swabia, Pelzm&auml;rte in, <a href="#Page_206">206-7</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li>Sweden, Christmas service in, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>&ldquo;star-singing&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li>
+  <li>animal masks in, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Lucia's Day in, <a href="#Page_221">221-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve superstitions in, <a href="#Page_235">235-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>Yule log in, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;</li>
+  <li>Yule candles in, <a href="#Page_259">259-60</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas-trees in, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li>
+  <li>Yule straw in, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas presents in, <a href="#Page_278">278-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>pig's head eaten in, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</li>
+  <li>dances in, <a href="#Page_293">293-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Stephen's Day in, <a href="#Page_312">312-3</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;St. Knut's Day&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Swinburne, <a href="#Page_84">84-5</a></li>
+
+<li>Swine as sacrificial animal, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>Switzerland, St. Nicholas in, <a href="#Page_218">218-9</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Christmas-tree in, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li>
+  <li>birds fed at Christmas, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Sword-dance, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299-301</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Sylvesterabend</i>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_T"></a>Tacitus, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>Tate, Nahum, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li>Tauler, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li>Teme valley, &ldquo;first-footing&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+
+<li>Tenby, <i>Plygain</i> at, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>St. Clement's Day at, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Tersteegen, Gerhard, <a href="#Page_75">75-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Tertullian, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Teutonic New Year, <a href="#Page_171">171-3</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Thomas of Celano, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li>Thomas, Mr. N. W., <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+<li>Thomas, St., his festival, <a href="#Page_223">223-6</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Thomassin&rsquo;,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li>Thurston, Mr. Edgar, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li>Tieck, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_400" id="Page_400" href="#Page_400">400</a></li>
+
+<li>Tille, Dr. A., <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172-3</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231-2</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li>Tipteerers, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li>Tolstoy's &ldquo;War and Peace,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li>Tomte Gubbe, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li>Tonquin, feast of the dead in, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li>Totemism, <a href="#Page_175">175-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Tours, Council of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li>Towneley plays, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134-7</a></li>
+
+<li>Trees, sacred, <a href="#Page_177">177-8</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269-71</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>flowering at Christmas, <a href="#Page_268">268-9</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christian symbols, <a href="#Page_271">271-2</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Trest, Epiphany at, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+
+<li>Trolls on Christmas Eve, <a href="#Page_235">235-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Troppau, Christmas Eve at, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+<li>Troubadours, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+<li>T&uuml;bingen, cradle-rocking at, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li>Tuscany, Christmas log in, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li>Tutilo of St. Gall, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li>Twelfth Night. <i>See</i> Epiphany</li>
+
+<li>Twelve Days, declared a festal tide, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>variously reckoned, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</li>
+  <li>supernatural visitors on, <a href="#Page_239">239-47</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Tylor, Dr. E. B., <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+<li>Tynan, Katharine, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>Tyrol, Midnight Mass in, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>the crib in, <a href="#Page_107">107-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>cradle-rocking in, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas drama in, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;star-singing&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li>
+  <li>All Souls in, <a href="#Page_191">191-2</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li><i>Kl&ouml;pfeln&auml;chte</i> in, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Nicholas in, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Lucia in, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas Eve in, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;</li>
+  <li>Berchta in, <a href="#Page_243">243-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>customs with fruit-trees in, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas pie in, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345-6</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. Stephen's Day in, <a href="#Page_311">311-2</a>;</li>
+  <li>St. John's Day in, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>;</li>
+  <li>Epiphany in, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>;</li>
+  <li>Carnival in, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>;</li>
+  <li>Purification candles in, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_U"></a>Ubeda, J. L. de, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li>Uist, South, &ldquo;breast-strip&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li>
+
+<li>United States, Santa Klaus in, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Usedom, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li>Usener, H., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_V"></a>Valdivielso, J. de, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li>Vampires, <a href="#Page_215">215-6</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Vaughan, Henry, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li>Vega, Lope de, <a href="#Page_149">149-50</a></li>
+
+<li>Vegetation-cults, <a href="#Page_177">177-8</a></li>
+
+<li>Venetia, Martinmas in, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+
+<li>Vessel-cup, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Villazopeque, <a href="#Page_148">148-9</a></li>
+
+<li>Vosges mountains, All Souls&rsquo; Eve in, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_W"></a>Wales, Christmas carols in, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>Plygain</i> in, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</li>
+  <li>soul-cakes in, <a href="#Page_193">193-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Hallowe'en in, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196-8</a>;</li>
+  <li>the &ldquo;Mari Llwyd&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;new water&rdquo; carol in, <a href="#Page_333">333-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>Christmas football in, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Warnsdorf, St. Nicholas play at, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+<li>Wassail-bowl, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285-6</a></li>
+
+<li>Water, New Year, <a href="#Page_332">332-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Watts, Isaac, <a href="#Page_83">83-4</a></li>
+
+<li>Weather, ideas about, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Weihnacht</i>, origin of the name, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li>Werewolves, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+<li>Wesley, Charles, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li>Westermarck, Dr. E., <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+<li>Westphalia, St. Thomas's Day in, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Whipping customs, <a href="#Page_207">207-8</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315-7</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Wild hunt,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_239">239-40</a></li>
+
+<li>Wine, Martinmas, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>St. John's and St. Stephen's, <a href="#Page_314">314-5</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Wish hounds,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li>Wither, George, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+<li>Woden, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li>Women, their clothes worn by men at folk-festivals, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>unlucky at New Year, <a href="#Page_324">324-5</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Woolwich, St. Clement's and St. Catherine's Days at, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li>Worcestershire. St. Clement's Day in, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>New Year in, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Wormesley, Holy Thorn at, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Wren, hunting of, <a href="#Page_292">292-3</a></li>
+
+<li>Wylie, Miss I. A. R., <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_Y"></a>&ldquo;Yeth hounds,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li>York Minster, mistletoe at, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Boy Bishop at, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>York plays, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131-3</a></li>
+
+<li>Yorkshire, possible survival of the crib in, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;<ul class="IX">
+  <li>frumenty, ale posset, and Yule cakes in, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</li>
+  <li>&ldquo;lucky bird&rdquo; in, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Ypres, St. Martin at, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+<li>Yule, origin of the name, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171-2</a></li>
+
+<li>&ldquo;Yule Boar,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li>Yule log, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251-8</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a id="IX_Z"></a>Zacharias, Pope, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chaphr" />
+
+<h2 class="title"><a name="FOOTNOTES" id="FOOTNOTES"></a>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_1">
+[1]</a>
+For an explanation of the small numerals in the text see Preface.</p>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: In this edition the numerals are enclosed in
+{curly brackets}, so they will not be confused with footnotes.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_2">
+[2]</a>
+&ldquo;Christianity,&rdquo; as here used, will stand for the system of orthodoxy which had
+been fixed in its main outlines when the festival of Christmas took its rise. The
+relation of the orthodox creed to historical fact need not concern us here, nor need we
+for the purposes of this study attempt to distinguish between the Christianity of Jesus
+and ecclesiastical accretions around his teaching.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_3">
+[3]</a>
+Whether the Nativity had previously been celebrated at Rome on January&nbsp;6 is a
+matter of controversy; the affirmative view was maintained by Usener in his monograph
+on Christmas,&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-6" id="Nanchor_1-6" href="#Note_1-6">{6}</a>
+ the negative by Monsignor Duchesne.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-7" id="Nanchor_1-7" href="#Note_1-7">{7}</a>
+ A very minute, cautious,
+and balanced study of both arguments is to be found in Professor Kirsopp Lake's article
+on Christmas in Hastings's &ldquo;Encyclop&aelig;dia of Religion and Ethics,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-8" id="Nanchor_1-8" href="#Note_1-8">{8}</a>
+ and a short
+article was contributed by the same writer to <i>The Guardian</i>, December&nbsp;29, 1911.
+Professor Lake, on the whole, inclines to Usener's view. The early history of the
+festival is also treated by Father Cyril Martindale in &ldquo;The Catholic Encyclop&aelig;dia&rdquo;
+(article &ldquo;Christmas&rdquo;).</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_4">
+[4]</a>
+Usener says 354, Duchesne 336.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_5">
+[5]</a>
+The eastern father, Epiphanius (fourth century), gives a strange account of a
+heathen, or perhaps in reality a Gnostic, rite held at Alexandria on the night of
+January&nbsp;5-6. In the temple of Kore&#xfeff;&mdash;the Maiden&#xfeff;&mdash;he tells us, worshippers spent the
+night in singing and flute-playing, and at cock-crow brought up from a subterranean
+sanctuary a wooden image seated naked on a litter. It had the sign of the cross upon
+it in gold in five places&#xfeff;&mdash;the forehead, the hands, and the knees. This image was
+carried seven times round the central hall of the temple with flute-playing, drumming,
+and hymns, and then taken back to the underground chamber. In explanation of these
+strange actions it was said: &ldquo;To-day, at this hour, hath Kore (the Maiden) borne the
+&AElig;on.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-15" id="Nanchor_1-15" href="#Note_1-15">{15}</a>
+ Can there be a connection between this festival and the Eleusinian
+mysteries? In the latter there was a nocturnal celebration with many lights burning,
+and the cry went forth, &ldquo;Holy Brimo (the Maiden) hath borne a sacred child, Brimos.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-16" id="Nanchor_1-16" href="#Note_1-16">{16}</a>
+
+The details given by Miss Harrison in her &ldquo;Prolegomena&rdquo; of the worship of the child
+Dionysus&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-17" id="Nanchor_1-17" href="#Note_1-17">{17}</a>
+ are of extraordinary interest, and a minute comparison of this cult with that
+of the Christ Child might lead to remarkable results.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_6">
+[6]</a>
+Mithraism resembled Christianity in its monotheistic tendencies, its sacraments, its
+comparatively high morality, its doctrine of an Intercessor and Redeemer, and its vivid
+belief in a future life and judgment to come. Moreover Sunday was its holy-day
+dedicated to the Sun.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_7">
+[7]</a>
+This is the explanation adopted by most scholars (cf. Chambers, &ldquo;M. S.,&rdquo; i.,
+241-2). Duchesne suggests as an explanation of the choice of December&nbsp;25 the fact
+that a tradition fixed the Passion of Christ on March&nbsp;25. The same date, he thinks,
+would have been assigned to His Conception in order to make the years of His life
+complete, and the Birth would come naturally nine months after the Conception. He,
+however, &ldquo;would not venture to say, in regard to the 25th of December, that the
+coincidence of the <i>Sol novus</i> exercised no direct or indirect influence on the ecclesiastical
+decision arrived at in regard to the matter.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-25" id="Nanchor_1-25" href="#Note_1-25">{25}</a>
+ Professor Lake also, in his article in
+Hastings's &ldquo;Encyclop&aelig;dia,&rdquo; seeks to account for the selection of December&nbsp;25 without
+any deliberate competition with the <i>Natalis Invicti</i>. He points out that the Birth of
+Christ was fixed at the vernal equinox by certain early chronologists, on the strength of
+an elaborate and fantastic calculation based on Scriptural data, and connecting the
+Incarnation with the Creation, and that when the Incarnation came to be viewed as
+beginning at the Conception instead of the Birth, the latter would naturally be placed
+nine months later.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_8">
+[8]</a>
+Cf. chap. xviii. of Dr. Yrj&ouml; Hirn's &ldquo;The Sacred Shrine&rdquo; (London, 1912). Dr.
+Hirn finds a solitary anticipation of the Franciscan treatment of the Nativity in the
+Christmas hymns of the fourth-century eastern poet, Ephraem Syrus.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_9">
+[9]</a>
+No. 55 in &ldquo;Hymns Ancient and Modern&rdquo; (Ordinary Edition).</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_10">
+[10]</a>
+No. 56 in &ldquo;Hymns Ancient and Modern&rdquo; (Ordinary Edition).</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_11">
+[11]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Come rejoicing,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Faithful men, with rapture singing</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Alleluya!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Monarch's Monarch,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">From a holy maiden springing,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Mighty wonder!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Angel of the Counsel here,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sun from star, he doth appear,</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Born of maiden:</span><br />
+<span class="i2">He a sun who knows no night,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">She a star whose paler light</span><br />
+<span class="i4">Fadeth never.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(Translation in &ldquo;The English Hymnal,&rdquo; No. 22.)</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_12">
+[12]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Lords, by Christmas and the host</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of this mansion hear my toast&#xfeff;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Drink it well&#xfeff;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Each must drain his cup of wine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And I the first will toss off mine:</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Thus I advise.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Here then I bid you all <i>Wassail</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Cursed be he who will not say, <i>Drinkhail!</i>&#x00a0;&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(Translation by F. Douce.)</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_13">
+[13]</a>
+It is difficult to be sure of the authenticity of the verse attributed to Jacopone.
+Many of the poems in Tresatti's edition, from which the quotations in the text are
+taken, may be the work of his followers.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_14">
+[14]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Come and look upon her child</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Nestling in the hay!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">See his fair arms opened wide,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">On her lap to play!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And she tucks him by her side,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Cloaks him as she may!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Gives her paps unto his mouth,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Where his lips are laid.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">She with left hand cradling</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Rocked and hushed her boy,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And with holy lullabies</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Quieted her toy....</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Little angels all around</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Danced, and carols flung;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Making verselets sweet and true,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Still of love they sung.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(Translation by John Addington Symonds in &ldquo;The Renaissance in Italy. Italian
+Literature&rdquo; [1898 Edn.], Part I., 468.)</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_15">
+[15]</a>
+&ldquo;In the worthy stable of the sweet baby the angels are singing round the little
+one; they sing and cry out, the beloved angels, quite reverent, timid and shy round the
+little baby Prince of the Elect who lies naked among the prickly hay.... The Divine
+Verb, which is highest knowledge, this day seems as if He knew nothing of anything.
+Look at Him on the hay, crying and kicking as if He were not at all a divine man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>(Translation by Vernon Lee in &ldquo;Renaissance Fancies and Studies,&rdquo; 34.)</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_16">
+[16]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Sweep hearth and floor;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Be all your vessel's store</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Shining and clean.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Then bring the little guest</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And give Him of your best</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of meat and drink. Yet more</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Ye owe than meat.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">One gift at your King's feet</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lay now. I mean</span><br />
+<span class="i2">A heart full to the brim</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of love, and all for Him,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And from all envy clean.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(Translation by Miss Anne Macdonell, in &ldquo;Sons of Francis,&rdquo; 372.)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_17">
+[17]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Full of beauty stood the Mother,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">By the Manger, blest o'er other,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Where her little One she lays.</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For her inmost soul's elation,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In its fervid jubilation,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Thrills with ecstasy of praise.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(Translation by J. M. Neale.)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_18">
+[18]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;A spotless Rose is blowing,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Sprung from a tender root,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of ancient seers&rsquo; foreshowing,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Of Jesse promised fruit;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Its fairest bud unfolds to light</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Amid the cold, cold winter,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And in the dark midnight.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The Rose which I am singing,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Whereof Isaiah said,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Is from its sweet root springing</span><br />
+<span class="i3">In Mary, purest Maid;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For through our God's great love and might</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The Blessed Babe she bare us</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In a cold, cold winter's night.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(Translation by C. Winkworth, &ldquo;Christian Singers,&rdquo; 85.)</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_19">
+[19]</a>
+The tune is often used in England for Neale's carol, &ldquo;Good Christian men,
+rejoice.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_20">
+[20]</a>
+&ldquo;When Jesus Christ was born, then was it cold; in a little crib He was laid.
+There stood an ass and an ox which breathed over the Holy Child quite openly. He
+who has a pure heart need have no care.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_21">
+[21]</a>
+&ldquo;Dearest mother, take care of the Child; it is freezing hard, wrap Him up
+quickly. And you, old father, tuck the little one up, or the cold and the wind will
+give Him no rest. Now we must take our leave, O divine Child, remember us,
+pardon our sins. We are heartily glad that Thou art come; no one else could have
+helped us.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_22">
+[22]</a>
+&ldquo;The Child is laid in the crib, so hearty and so rare! My little Hans would be
+nothing by His side, were he finer than he is. Coal-black as cherries are His eyes, the
+rest of Him is white as chalk. His pretty hands are right tender and delicate, I
+touched Him carefully. Then He gave me a smile and a deep sigh too. If you were
+mine, thought I, you'd grow a merry boy. At home in the kitchen I'd comfortably
+house you; out here in the stable the cold wind comes in at every corner.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_23">
+[23]</a>
+Richard Rolle, poet, mystic, and wandering preacher, in many ways reminds us
+of Jacopone da Todi. Though he has left no Christmas verses, some lovely words of
+his show how deeply he felt the wonder and pathos of Bethlehem: &ldquo;Jhesu es thy
+name. A! A! that wondryrfull name! A! that delittabyll name! This es the
+name that es above all names.... I yede [went] abowte be Covaytyse of riches and
+I fand noghte Jhesu. I satt in companyes of Worldly myrthe and I fand noghte
+Jhesu.... Therefore I turnede by anothire waye, and I rane a-bowte be Poverte,
+and I fande Jhesu pure borne in the worlde, laid in a crybe and lappid in clathis.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-28" id="Nanchor_2-28" href="#Note_2-28">{28}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_24">
+[24]</a>
+&ldquo;When midnight sounded I leapt from my bed to the floor, and I saw a beautiful
+angel who sang a thousand times sweeter than a nightingale. The watch-dogs of the
+neighbourhood all came up. Never had they seen such a sight, and they suddenly
+began to bark. The shepherds under the straw were sleeping like logs: when they
+heard the sound of the barking they thought it was the wolves. They were reasonable
+folk; they came without waiting to be asked. They found in a little stable the Light,
+even the Truth.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_25">
+[25]</a>
+&ldquo;Within a poor manger and covered with hay lies Jesus of Nazareth. In the
+hay lies stretched the Eternal Son of God; to deliver from hell man whom He had
+created, and to kill sin, our Jesus of Nazareth is content with the hay. He rests
+between two animals who warm Him from the cold, He who remedies our ills with
+His great power; His kingdom and seigniory are the world and the calm heaven, and
+now He sleeps in the hay. He counts it good to bear the cold and fare thus, having no
+robe to protect or cover Him, and to give us life He suffered cold in the hay, our Jesus
+of Nazareth.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_26">
+[26]</a>
+&ldquo;In a porch, full of cobwebs, between the mule and the ox, the Saviour of souls is
+born.... In the porch at Bethlehem are star, sun, and moon: the Virgin and St.
+Joseph and the Child who lies in the cradle. In Bethlehem they touch fire, from the
+porch the flame issues; it is a star of heaven which has fallen into the straw. I am a
+poor gipsy who come hither from Egypt, and bring to God's Child a cock. I am a poor
+Galician who come from Galicia, and bring to God's Child linen for a shift. To the
+new-born Child all bring a gift; I am little and have nothing; I bring him my heart.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_27">
+[27]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Sleep, oh sleep, dear Baby mine,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">King Divine;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sleep, my Child, in sleep recline;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lullaby, mine Infant fair,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Heaven's King,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">All glittering,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Full of grace as lilies rare.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Close thine eyelids, O my treasure,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Loved past measure,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of my soul, the Lord, the pleasure;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lullaby, O regal Child,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">On the hay</span><br />
+<span class="i5">My joy I lay;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Love celestial, meek and mild.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Why dost weep, my Babe? alas!</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Cold winds that pass</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Vex, or is't the little ass?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Lullaby, O Paradise;</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Of my heart</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Thou Saviour art;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">On thy face I press a kiss.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-20" id="Nanchor_3-20" href="#Note_3-20">{20}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(Translation by Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco.)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_28">
+[28]</a>
+A Bas-Quer&ccedil;y bird-carol of this kind is printed by Mr. H. J. L. J. Mass&eacute; in his
+delightful &ldquo;Book of Old Carols,&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-26" id="Nanchor_3-26" href="#Note_3-26">{26}</a>
+ a collection of the words and music of Christmas
+songs in many languages&#xfeff;&mdash;English, Latin, German, Flemish, Basque, Swedish,
+Catalan, Proven&ccedil;al, and French of various periods and dialects.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_29">
+[29]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;I come from heaven to tell</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The best nowells that ever befell;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To you thir tidings true I bring,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And I will of them say and sing.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">This day to you is born ane child,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of Mary meek and virgin mild,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That blessed bairn, benign and kind,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sall you rejoice, baith heart and mind.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">My soul and life, stand up and see</span><br />
+<span class="i2">What lies in ane crib of tree [wood].</span><br />
+<span class="i2">What Babe is that, so gude and fair?</span><br />
+<span class="i2">It is Christ, Goddis Son and Heir.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">O God! that made all creature,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">How art Thou now become so puir,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That on the hay and stray will lie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Among the asses, oxen, and kye?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">O, my dear heart, young Jesus sweet,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Prepare Thy cradle in my spreit,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And I sall rock Thee in my heart,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And never mair from Thee depart</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">But I sall praise Thee ever moir,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With sangis sweet unto Thy gloir;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The knees of my heart sall I bow,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And sing that richt Balulalow.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-30" id="Nanchor_3-30" href="#Note_3-30">{30}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_30">
+[30]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Now blessed be Thou, Christ Jesu,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thou art man born, this is true;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The angels made a merry noise,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Yet have we more cause to rejoice,</span><br />
+<span class="i6"><i>Kirieleyson</i>.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The blessed Son of God only,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In a crib full poor did lie,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With our poor flesh and our poor blood,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Was clothed that everlasting Good.</span><br />
+<span class="i6"><i>Kirieleyson.</i></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">He that made heaven and earth of nought,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In our flesh hath our health brought,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">For our sake made He Himself full small,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">That reigneth Lord and King over all.</span><br />
+<span class="i6"><i>Kirieleyson.</i>&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-32" id="Nanchor_3-32" href="#Note_3-32">{32}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_31">
+[31]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;All my heart this night rejoices,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">As I hear,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Far and near,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sweetest angel voices;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;Christ is born,&rsquo; their choirs are singing,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Till the air</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Everywhere</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Now with joy is ringing.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Hark! a voice from yonder manger,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Soft and sweet,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Doth entreat,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">&lsquo;Flee from woe and danger;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Brethren, come, from all doth grieve you</span><br />
+<span class="i6">You are freed,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">All you need</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I will surely give you.&rsquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Blessed Saviour, let me find Thee!</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Keep Thou me</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Close to Thee,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Call me not behind Thee!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Life of life, my heart Thou stillest,</span><br />
+<span class="i6">Calm I rest</span><br />
+<span class="i6">On Thy breast,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">All this void Thou fillest.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-34" id="Nanchor_3-34" href="#Note_3-34">{34}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_32">
+[32]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;Triumph, ye heavens! rejoice ye with high adoration!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Sing to the Lord, to the Saviour, in glad exultation!</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Angels, give ear!</span><br />
+<span class="i5">God unto man hath drawn near,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Bringing to lost ones salvation.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</span><br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">King of the Glory! what grace in Thy humiliation!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Thou wert a child! who of old wert the Lord of creation.</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Thee will I own,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Thee would I follow, alone,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Heir of Thy wondrous salvation.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Faithful Immanuel! let me Thy glories be telling,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Come, O my Saviour, be born, in mine inmost heart dwelling,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">In me abide.</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Make me with Thee unified,</span><br />
+<span class="i5">Where the life-fountain is welling.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-36" id="Nanchor_3-36" href="#Note_3-36">{36}</a>
+</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_33">
+[33]</a>
+A few of the best traditional pieces have been published by Mr. F. Sidgwick in
+one of his charming &ldquo;Watergate Booklets&rdquo; under the title of &ldquo;Popular Carols.&rdquo; The
+two next quotations are from this source.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_34">
+[34]</a>
+Browning's great poem, &ldquo;Christmas Eve,&rdquo; is philosophical rather than devotional,
+and hardly comes within the scope of this chapter.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_35">
+[35]</a>
+The first mention of a season corresponding to Advent is at the Council of Tours,
+about 567, when a fast for monks in December is vaguely indicated. At the Council
+of M&acirc;con (581) it is enjoined that from Martinmas the second, fourth, and sixth days
+of the week should be fasting days; and at the close of the sixth century Rome, under
+Gregory the Great, adopted the rule of the four Sundays in Advent. In the next
+century it became prevalent in the West. In the Greek Church, forty days of fasting
+are observed before Christmas; this custom appears to have been established in the
+thirteenth century. In the Roman Church the practice as to fasting varies: in the
+British Isles Wednesday and Friday are observed, but in some countries no distinction
+is made between Advent and ordinary weeks of the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-2" id="Nanchor_4-2" href="#Note_4-2">{2}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_36">
+[36]</a>
+Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, bequeathed to his cathedral a Christmas
+candlestick of silver-gilt, on the base of which was an image of St. Mary with
+her Son lying in the crib.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_37">
+[37]</a>
+&ldquo;Joseph, dear nephew mine, help me to rock the Child.&rdquo; &ldquo;Gladly, dear aunt,
+will I help thee to rock thy Child.&rdquo; (Note the curious words of relationship; Joseph
+and Mary were both of the seed of David.)</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_38">
+[38]</a>
+&ldquo;Let us rock the Child and bow our hearts before the crib! Let us delight our
+spirits and bless the Child: sweet little Jesu! sweet little Jesu!... Let us greet
+His little hands and feet, His little heart of fire, and reverence Him humbly as our
+Lord and God! Sweet little Jesu! sweet little Jesu!&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_39">
+[39]</a>
+Turning for a moment from Sicilian domestic celebrations to a public and communal
+action, I may mention a strange ceremony that takes place at Messina in the
+dead of night; at two o'clock on Christmas morning a naked <i>Bambino</i> is carried in
+procession from the church of Santa Lucia to the cathedral and back.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-65" id="Nanchor_4-65" href="#Note_4-65">{65}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_40">
+[40]</a>
+Or on the Sunday following the Octave, if the Octave itself is a week-day.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_41">
+[41]</a>
+Tempting as it is to connect these dolls with the crib, it is possible that their
+origin should be sought rather in anthropomorphic representations of the spirits of
+vegetation, and that they are of the same nature as the images carried about with
+garlands in May and at other seasons.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-77" id="Nanchor_4-77" href="#Note_4-77">{77}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_42">
+[42]</a>
+Though no texts are extant of religious plays in English acted at Christmastide,
+there are occasional records of such performances:&#xfeff;&mdash;at Tintinhull for instance in 1451
+and at Dublin in 1528, while at Aberdeen a processional &ldquo;Nativity&rdquo; was performed at
+Candlemas. And the &ldquo;Stella,&rdquo; whether in English or Latin it is uncertain, is found
+at various places between 1462 and 1579.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-10" id="Nanchor_5-10" href="#Note_5-10">{10}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_43">
+[43]</a>
+Lodging.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_44">
+[44]</a>
+Once.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_45">
+[45]</a>
+Scarcely.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_46">
+[46]</a>
+Horses. Hous of haras = stable.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_47">
+[47]</a>
+Dwell.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_48">
+[48]</a>
+Darkness.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_49">
+[49]</a>
+Being.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_50">
+[50]</a>
+Wonderful.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_51">
+[51]</a>
+Worship.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_52">
+[52]</a>
+Shedder.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_53">
+[53]</a>
+Wrap.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_54">
+[54]</a>
+Crippled.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_55">
+[55]</a>
+Overreached.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_56">
+[56]</a>
+Deprive of.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_57">
+[57]</a>
+Curse.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_58">
+[58]</a>
+Strong in lordliness.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_59">
+[59]</a>
+Wizard.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_60">
+[60]</a>
+Shame.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_61">
+[61]</a>
+Noble being.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_62">
+[62]</a>
+Cursed.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_63">
+[63]</a>
+Warlock.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_64">
+[64]</a>
+Sorrow.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_65">
+[65]</a>
+Grows merry.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_66">
+[66]</a>
+Promise.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_67">
+[67]</a>
+Noble.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_68">
+[68]</a>
+Child.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_69">
+[69]</a>
+Baby.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_70">
+[70]</a>
+Head.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_71">
+[71]</a>
+Face.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_72">
+[72]</a>
+Hand.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_73">
+[73]</a>
+Besides the Nativity plays in the four great cycles there exists a &ldquo;Shearmen and
+Tailors&rsquo; Play&rdquo; which undoubtedly belongs to Coventry, unlike the &ldquo;Ludus Coventriae,&rdquo;
+whose connection with that town is, to say the least, highly doubtful. It opens with
+a prologue by the prophet Isaiah, and in a small space presents the events connected
+with the Incarnation from the Annunciation to the Murder of the Innocents. The
+Nativity and shepherd scenes have less character and interest than those in the great
+cycles, and need not be dealt with here.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-18" id="Nanchor_5-18" href="#Note_5-18">{18}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_74">
+[74]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>Riepl.</i>  What a noise there is. Everything seems so strange to me!</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J&ouml;rgl.</i>  Have the heavens fallen to-day; are the angels flying over our field?</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>R.</i>      They are leaping</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J.</i>      Down from above.</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>R.</i>      I couldn't do the thing; &lsquo;twould break my neck and legs.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_75">
+[75]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>J.</i>      My child, canst find no lodging? Must Thou bear such frost and cold?</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>R.</i>      Thou liest in cold swaddling-clothes! Come, put a garment about Him!</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J.</i>      Cover His feet up; wrap Him up delicately!&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_76">
+[76]</a>
+&ldquo;Three eggs and some butter we bring, too; deign to accept it! A fowl to make
+some broth if Thy mother can cook it&#xfeff;&mdash;put some dripping in, and &lsquo;twill be good.
+Because we've nothing else&#xfeff;&mdash;we are but poor shepherds&#xfeff;&mdash;accept our goodwill.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_77">
+[77]</a>
+ </p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&ldquo;<i>J.</i>  The best of health to thee ever, my little dear; when thou wantest anything, come to me.</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J.</i>  God keep thee ever!</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>R.</i>  Grow up fine and tall soon!</span><br />
+<span class="i2"><i>J.</i>  I'll take thee into service when thou'rt big enough.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_78">
+[78]</a>
+Jacopone da Todi, whose Christmas songs we have already considered, was probably
+connected with the movement.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_79">
+[79]</a>
+An interesting and pathetic Christmas example is given by Signor D'Ancona in his
+&ldquo;Origini del Teatro in Italia.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-35" id="Nanchor_5-35" href="#Note_5-35">{35}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_80">
+[80]</a>
+Though the ox and ass are not mentioned by St. Luke, it is an easy transition to
+them from the idea of the manger. Early Christian writers found a Scriptural sanction
+for them in two passages in the prophets: Isaiah i. 3, &ldquo;The ox knoweth his owner
+and the ass his master's crib,&rdquo; and Habakkuk iii. 2 (a mistranslation), &ldquo;In the midst
+of two beasts shall Thou be known.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_81">
+[81]</a>
+With this may be compared the fair still held in Rome in the Piazza Navona just
+before Christmas, at which booths are hung with little clay figures for use in <i>presepi</i>
+(see p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a>). One cannot help being reminded too, though probably there is no direct
+connection, of the biscuits in human shapes to be seen in German markets and
+shops at Christmas, and of the paste images which English bakers used to make at this
+season.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-10" id="Nanchor_7-10" href="#Note_7-10">{10}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_82">
+[82]</a>
+Among the Scandinavians, who were late in their conversion, a pre-Christian Yule
+feast seems to have been held in the ninth century, but it appears to have taken place
+not in December but about the middle of January, and to have been transferred to
+December&nbsp;25 by the Christian king Hakon the Good of Norway (940-63).&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-28" id="Nanchor_7-28" href="#Note_7-28">{28}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_83">
+[83]</a>
+It is only right to mention here Professor G. Bilfinger's monograph &ldquo;Das germanische
+Julfest&rdquo; (Stuttgart, 1901), where it is maintained that the only festivals from which the
+Christmas customs of the Teutonic peoples have sprung are the January Kalends of the
+Roman Empire and the Christian feast of the Nativity. Bilfinger holds that there is no
+evidence either of a November beginning-of-winter festival or of an ancient Teutonic
+midwinter feast. Bilfinger's is the most systematic of existing treatises on Christmas
+origins, but the considerations brought forward in Tille's &ldquo;Yule and Christmas&rdquo; in
+favour of the November festival are not lightly to be set aside, and while recognizing
+that its celebration must be regarded rather as a probable hypothesis than an established
+fact, I shall here follow in general the suggestions of Tille and try to show the contributions
+of this northern New Year feast to Christmas customs.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_84">
+[84]</a>
+Accounts of such maskings are to be found in innumerable books of travel. In
+<i>Folk-Lore</i>, June&nbsp;30, 1911, Professor Edward Westermarck gives a particularly full and
+interesting description of Moroccan customs of this sort. He describes at length various
+masquerades in the skins and heads of beasts, accompanied often by the dressing-up of
+men as women and by gross obscenities.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_85">
+[85]</a>
+Another suggested explanation connects the change of clothes with rites of initiation
+at the passage from boyhood to manhood. &ldquo;Manhood, among primitive peoples,
+seems to be envisaged as ceasing to be a woman.... Man is born of woman, reared
+of woman. When he passes to manhood, he ceases to be a woman-thing, and begins
+to exercise functions other and alien. That moment is one naturally of extreme peril;
+he at once emphasizes it and disguises it. He wears woman's clothes.&rdquo; From initiation
+rites, according to this theory, the custom spread to other occasions when it was
+desirable to &ldquo;change the luck.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_86">
+[86]</a>
+According to Sir John Rhys, in the Isle of Man <i>Hollantide</i> (November&nbsp;1, Old
+Style, therefore November&nbsp;12) is still to-day the beginning of a new year. But the
+ordinary calendar is gaining ground, and some of the associations of the old New Year's
+Day are being transferred to January&nbsp;1, the Roman date. &ldquo;In Wales this must have
+been decidedly helped by the influence of Roman rule and Roman ideas; but even
+there the adjuncts of the Winter Calends have never been wholly transferred to the
+Calends of January.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-4" id="Nanchor_8-4" href="#Note_8-4">{4}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_87">
+[87]</a>
+In Burne and Jackson's &ldquo;Shropshire Folk-Lore&rdquo; (p. 305&nbsp;f.) there are details about
+cakes and other doles given to the poor at funerals. These probably had the same
+origin as the November &ldquo;soul-cakes.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_88">
+[88]</a>
+Cf. pp. <a href="#Page_191">191-2</a> and <a href="#Page_235">235-6</a> of this volume.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_89">
+[89]</a>
+The prominence of &ldquo;Eves&rdquo; in festival customs is a point specially to be noticed;
+it is often to them rather than to the actual feast days that old practices cling. This
+is perhaps connected with the ancient Celtic and Teutonic habit of reckoning by nights
+instead of days&#xfeff;&mdash;a trace of this is left in our word &ldquo;fortnight&rdquo;&#xfeff;&mdash;but it must be
+remembered that the Church encouraged the same tendency by her solemn services on
+the Eves of festivals, and that the Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday evening.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_90" id="Footnote_90"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_90">
+[90]</a>
+Attempts are being made to suppress the November carnival at Hampstead, and
+perhaps the 1911 celebration may prove to have been the last.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_91" id="Footnote_91"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_91">
+[91]</a>
+&ldquo;Raise the glass at Martinmas, drink wine all through the year.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_92" id="Footnote_92"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_92">
+[92]</a>
+It is interesting to note that in the Italian province of Venetia, as well as in more
+northerly regions, Martinmas is especially a children's feast. In the sweetshops are
+sold little sugar images of the saint on horseback with a long sword, and in Venice
+itself children go about singing, playing on tambourines, and begging for money.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-93" id="Nanchor_8-93" href="#Note_8-93">{93}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_93" id="Footnote_93"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_93">
+[93]</a>
+&ldquo;At St. Andrew's Mass winter is certain.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_94" id="Footnote_94"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_94">
+[94]</a>
+This custom may be compared with the Scotch eating of sowans in bed on
+Christmas morning (see <a href="#Chapter_XII">Chapter XII.</a>).</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_95" id="Footnote_95"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_95">
+[95]</a>
+In a legend of the saint she is said to have plucked out her own eyes when their
+beauty caused a prince to seek to ravish her away from her convent.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-54" id="Nanchor_9-54" href="#Note_9-54">{54}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_96" id="Footnote_96"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_96">
+[96]</a>
+The bath-house in the old-fashioned Swedish farm is a separate building to which
+everyone repairs on Christmas Eve, but which is, or was, seldom used except on this
+one night of the year.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-23" id="Nanchor_10-23" href="#Note_10-23">{23}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_97" id="Footnote_97"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_97">
+[97]</a>
+Sometimes Christmas is reckoned as one of the Twelve Days, sometimes not.
+In the former case, of course, the Epiphany is the thirteenth day. In England we call
+the Epiphany Twelfth Day, in Germany it is generally called Thirteenth; in Belgium
+and Holland it is Thirteenth; in Sweden it varies, but is usually Thirteenth. Sometimes
+then the Twelve Days are spoken of, sometimes the Thirteen. &ldquo;The Twelve
+Nights,&rdquo; in accordance with the old Teutonic mode of reckoning by nights, is a natural
+and correct term.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-39" id="Nanchor_10-39" href="#Note_10-39">{39}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_98" id="Footnote_98"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_98">
+[98]</a>
+Those who wish to pursue further the study of the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i> should read the
+elaborate and fascinating, if not altogether convincing, theories of Mr. J. C. Lawson in
+his &ldquo;Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion.&rdquo; He distinguishes two
+classes of <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>, one of which he identifies with ordinary werewolves, while the
+other is the type of hairy, clawed demons above described. He sets forth a most
+ingenious hypothesis connecting them with the Centaurs.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_99" id="Footnote_99"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_99">
+[99]</a>
+It is to be borne in mind that the oak was a sacred tree among the heathen Slavs;
+it was connected with the thunder-god Perun, the counterpart of Jupiter, and a fire of
+oak burned night and day in his honour. The neighbours of the Slavs, the Lithuanians,
+had the same god, whom they called Perkunas; they too kept up a perpetual oak-fire
+in his honour, and in time of drought they used to pour beer on the flames, praying to
+Perkunas to send showers.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-10" id="Nanchor_11-10" href="#Note_11-10">{10}</a>
+ The libations of wine on the Yule log may conceivably
+have had a similar purpose.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_100" id="Footnote_100"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_100">
+[100]</a>
+Kindling.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_101" id="Footnote_101"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_101">
+[101]</a>
+The custom referred to in the last sentence may be compared with the Danish
+St. Thomas's Day practice (see <a href="#Chapter_VIII">Chapter VIII.</a>).</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_102" id="Footnote_102"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_102">
+[102]</a>
+At Wormesley in Herefordshire there is a Holy Thorn which is still believed to
+blossom exactly at twelve o'clock on Twelfth Night. &ldquo;The blossoms are thought to
+open at midnight, and drop off about an hour afterwards. A piece of thorn gathered at
+this hour brings luck, if kept for the rest of the year.&rdquo; As recently as 1908 about forty
+people went to see the thorn blossom at this time (see E. M. Leather, &ldquo;The Folk-Lore
+of Herefordshire&rdquo; [London, 1912], 17).</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_103" id="Footnote_103"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_103">
+[103]</a>
+Compare the struggle for the &ldquo;Haxey hood,&rdquo; described in Chapter XVI., p. <a href="#Page_347">347</a>.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_104" id="Footnote_104"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_104">
+[104]</a>
+This may be compared with the ancient Greek <i>Eiresione</i>, &ldquo;a portable May-pole, a
+branch hung about with wool, acorns, figs, cakes, fruits of all sorts and sometimes
+wine-jars.&rdquo;&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-35" id="Nanchor_12-35" href="#Note_12-35">{35}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_105" id="Footnote_105"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_105">
+[105]</a>
+It by no means necessarily follows, of course, that they were exclusively Roman in
+origin.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_106" id="Footnote_106"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_106">
+[106]</a>
+In Welsh it has also the name of &ldquo;the tree of pure gold,&rdquo; a rather surprising
+title for a plant with green leaves and white berries. Dr. Frazer has sought to explain
+this name by the theory that in a roundabout way the sun's golden fire was believed to
+be an emanation from the mistletoe, in which the life of the oak, whence fire was
+kindled, was held to reside.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-47" id="Nanchor_12-47" href="#Note_12-47">{47}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_107" id="Footnote_107"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_107">
+[107]</a>
+In the neighbourhood of Reichenberg children hang up their stockings at the
+windows on St. Andrew's Eve, and in the morning find them filled with apples and
+nuts&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-64" id="Nanchor_12-64" href="#Note_12-64">{64}</a>
+&#xfeff;&mdash;a parallel to Martinmas and St. Nicholas customs, at a date intermediate
+between the two festivals.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_108" id="Footnote_108"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_108">
+[108]</a>
+&ldquo;He has more to do than the ovens in England at Christmas.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_109" id="Footnote_109"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_109">
+[109]</a>
+The following quotation from an ancient account book is tersely suggestive of the
+English Christmas:&#xfeff;&mdash;</p>
+
+<pre>                                  s.  d.
+   &ldquo;Item payd to the preacher     vi  ii
+    Item payd to the minstrell   xii   o
+    Item payd to the coke         xv   o&rdquo;</pre></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_110" id="Footnote_110"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_110">
+[110]</a>
+In County Louth, Ireland, boys used to carry about a thorn-bush decked with
+streamers of coloured paper and with a wren tied to one of the branches.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-47" id="Nanchor_13-47" href="#Note_13-47">{47}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_111" id="Footnote_111"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_111">
+[111]</a>
+Dancing is, as everyone knows, a common and indeed a central feature of primitive
+festivals; and such dancing is wont to take a dramatic form, to be mimetic, whether
+re-enacting some past event or <i>pre</i>-doing something with magical intent to produce it.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-10" id="Nanchor_14-10" href="#Note_14-10">{10}</a>
+
+The Greek tragedy itself probably sprang from a primitive dance of a dramatic and
+magical character, centred in a death and re-birth.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-11" id="Nanchor_14-11" href="#Note_14-11">{11}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_112" id="Footnote_112"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_112">
+[112]</a>
+In Thessaly and Macedonia at Carnival time folk-plays of a somewhat similar
+character are performed, including a quarrel, a death, and a miraculous restoration to
+life&#xfeff;&mdash;evidently originating in magical ritual intended to promote the fertility of
+vegetation.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-12" id="Nanchor_14-12" href="#Note_14-12">{12}</a>
+ Parallels can be found in the Carnival customs of other countries.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_113" id="Footnote_113"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_113">
+[113]</a>
+A remarkably clear instance of the transference of customs from Hollantide Eve
+(Hallowe'en) to the modern New Year is given by Sir John Rhys. Certain
+methods of prognostication described by him are practised by some people in the
+Isle of Man on the one day and by some on the other, and the Roman date is
+gaining ground.&#xFEFF;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-1" id="Nanchor_16-1" href="#Note_16-1">{1}</a>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_114" id="Footnote_114"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_114">
+[114]</a>
+See p. <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_115" id="Footnote_115"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_115">
+[115]</a>
+&ldquo;Ope thy purse, and shut it then.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_116" id="Footnote_116"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_116">
+[116]</a>
+It is probable that some customs practised at the Epiphany belong in reality to
+Christmas Day, Old Style.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_117" id="Footnote_117"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_117">
+[117]</a>
+<i>Pasqua</i> is there used for great festivals in general, not only for Easter.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_118" id="Footnote_118"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_118">
+[118]</a>
+The custom of &ldquo;burning the bush,&rdquo; still surviving here and there in Herefordshire,
+shows a certain resemblance to this. The &ldquo;bush,&rdquo; a globe made of hawthorn,
+hangs throughout the year in the farmhouse kitchen, with the mistletoe. Early on
+New Year's Day it &ldquo;is carried to the earliest sown wheat field, where a large fire is
+lighted, of straw and bushes, in which it is burnt. While it is burning, a new one
+is made; in making it, the ends of the branches are scorched in the fire.&rdquo; Burning
+straw is carried over twelve ridges of the field, and then follow cider-drinking and
+cheering. (See Leather, &ldquo;Folk-Lore of Herefordshire,&rdquo; 91&nbsp;f.)</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,
+Christian and Pagan, by Clement A. Miles
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,
+Christian and Pagan, by Clement A. Miles
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan
+
+Author: Clement A. Miles
+
+Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #19098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS IN RITUAL AND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Starner, Robert Ledger and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Christmas In Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan
+
+by Clement A. Miles
+
+
+Published by T. Fisher Unwin
+
+1912
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (DETAIL).
+
+GENTILE DA FABRIANO
+
+(_Florence: Accademia_)]
+
+|5|
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In this volume I have tried to show how Christmas is or has been kept in
+various lands and ages, and to trace as far as possible the origin of the
+pagan elements that have mingled with the Church's feast of the Nativity.
+
+In Part I. I have dealt with the festival on its distinctively Christian
+side. The book has, however, been so planned that readers not interested
+in this aspect of Christmas may pass over Chapters II.-V., and proceed at
+once from the Introduction to Part II., which treats of pagan survivals.
+
+The book has been written primarily for the general reader, but I venture
+to hope that, with all its imperfections, it may be of some use to the
+more serious student, as a rough outline map of the field of Christmas
+customs, and as bringing together materials hitherto scattered through a
+multitude of volumes in various languages. There is certainly room for a
+comprehensive English book on Christmas, taking account of the results of
+modern historical and folk-lore research.
+
+The writer of a work of this kind necessarily owes an immense debt to the
+labours of others. In my bibliographical notes I have done my best to
+acknowledge the sources from which I have drawn. It is only right that
+I should express here my special obligation, both for information and for
+suggestions, to Mr. E. K. Chambers's "The Mediaeval Stage," an invaluable
+storehouse of fact, theory, and bibliographical references. I also owe
+much to the important monographs of Dr. A. Tille, "Die Geschichte der
+deutschen Weihnacht" and "Yule and Christmas"; to Dr. Feilberg's Danish
+work, "Jul," the fullest account of Christmas |6|  customs yet written;
+and of course, like every student of folk-lore, to Dr. Frazer's "The
+Golden Bough."
+
+References to authorities will be found at the end of the volume, and are
+indicated by small numerals in the text; notes requiring to be read in
+close conjunction with the text are printed at the foot of the pages to
+which they relate, and are indicated by asterisks, &c.
+
+   [Transcriber's Note: The 'small numerals' are represented in this
+   ebook by numbers in {curly braces}. The footnotes appear at the end
+   of the ebook and are indicated by numbers in [square brackets]. Page
+   numbers from the original edition have been retained and appear in
+   the text between |pipe characters|.]
+
+I have to thank Mr. Frank Sidgwick for most kindly reading my proofs and
+portions of my MS., and for some valuable suggestions.
+
+                                                                C. A. M.
+
+|7|
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  PREFACE                                                            5
+
+  CHAPTER I
+  INTRODUCTION                                                       15
+
+    The Origin and Purpose of Festivals--Ideas suggested by
+    Christmas--Pagan and Christian Elements--The Names of the
+    Festival--Foundation of the Feast of the Nativity--Its
+    Relation to the Epiphany--December 25 and the _Natalis
+    Invicti_--The Kalends of January--Yule and Teutonic
+    Festivals--The Church and Pagan Survivals--Two Conflicting
+    Types of Festival--Their Interaction--Plan of the Book.
+
+
+  PART I--THE CHRISTIAN FEAST
+
+  CHAPTER II
+  CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)                                               29
+
+    Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological
+    Character--Humanizing Influence of Franciscanism--Jacopone da
+    Todi's Vernacular Verse--German Catholic Poetry--Mediaeval
+    English Carols.
+
+  CHAPTER III
+  CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)                                              53
+
+    The French _Noel_--Latin Hymnody in Eighteenth-century
+    France--Spanish Christmas Verse--Traditional Carols of Many
+    Countries--Christmas Poetry in Protestant
+    Germany--Post-Reformation Verse in England--Modern English
+    Carols. |8|
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+  CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION                          87
+
+    Advent and Christmas Offices of the Roman Church--The Three
+    Masses of Christmas, their Origin and their Celebration in
+    Rome--The Midnight Mass in Many Lands--Protestant Survivals of
+    the Night Services--Christmas in the Greek Church--The Eastern
+    Epiphany and the Blessing of the Waters--The _Presepio_ or
+    Crib, its Supposed Institution by St. Francis--Early Traces of
+    the Crib--The Crib in Germany, Tyrol, &c.--Cradle-rocking in
+    Mediaeval Germany--Christmas Minstrels in Italy and
+    Sicily--The _Presepio_ in Italy--Ceremonies with the _Culla_
+    and the _Bambino_ in Rome--Christmas in Italian London--The
+    Spanish Christmas--Possible Survivals of the Crib in England.
+
+  CHAPTER V
+  CHRISTMAS DRAMA                                                    119
+
+    Origins of the Mediaeval Drama--Dramatic Tendencies in the
+    Liturgy--Latin Liturgical Plays--The Drama becomes
+    Laicized--Characteristics of the Popular Drama--The Nativity
+    in the English Miracle Cycles--Christmas Mysteries in
+    France--Later French Survivals of Christmas Drama--German
+    Christmas Plays--Mediaeval Italian Plays and Pageants--Spanish
+    Nativity Plays--Modern Survivals in Various Countries--The
+    Star Singers, &c.
+
+  POSTSCRIPT                                                         155
+
+
+  PART II--PAGAN SURVIVALS
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+  PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS                                     159
+
+    The Church and Superstition--Nature of Pagan Survivals--Racial
+    Origins--Roman Festivals of the _Saturnalia_ and Kalends--Was
+    there a Teutonic Midwinter Festival?--The Teutonic, Celtic, and
+    Slav New Year--Customs attracted to Christmas or January 1--
+    The Winter Cycle of Festivals--_Rationale_ of Festival Ritual:
+    (_a_) Sacrifice and Sacrament, (_b_) The Cult of the Dead,
+    (_c_) Omens and Charms for the New Year--Compromise in the
+    Later Middle Ages--The Puritans and Christmas--Decay of Old
+    Traditions. |9|
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+  ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS                                       187
+
+    All Saints' and All Souls' Days, their Relation to a New Year
+    Festival--All Souls' Eve and Tendance of the Departed--Soul
+    Cakes in England and on the Continent--Pagan Parallels of All
+    Souls'--Hallowe'en Charms and Omens--Hallowe'en Fires--Guy
+    Fawkes Day--"Old Hob," the _Schimmelreiter_, and other Animal
+    Masks--Martinmas and its Slaughter--Martinmas Drinking--St.
+    Martin's Fires in Germany--Winter Visitors in the Low
+    Countries and Germany--St. Martin as Gift-bringer--St.
+    Martin's Rod.
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+  ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS                                          209
+
+    St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions--St. Catherine's Day
+    as Spinsters' Festival--St. Andrew's Eve Auguries--The
+    _Kloepfelnaechte_--St. Nicholas's Day, the Saint as
+    Gift-bringer, and his Attendants--Election of the Boy
+    Bishop--St. Nicholas's Day at Bari--St. Lucia's Day in Sweden,
+    Sicily, and Central Europe--St. Thomas's Day as School
+    Festival--Its Uncanny Eve--"Going a-Thomassin'."
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+  CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS                                  227
+
+    Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht--Talking Animals
+    and other Wonders of Christmas Eve--Scandinavian Beliefs about
+    Trolls and the Return of the Dead--Traditional Christmas Songs
+    in Eastern Europe--The Twelve Days, their Christian Origin and
+    Pagan Superstitions--The Raging Host--Hints of Supernatural
+    Visitors in England--The German _Frauen_--The Greek
+    _Kallikantzaroi_.
+
+  CHAPTER X
+  THE YULE LOG                                                       249
+
+    The Log as Centre of the Domestic Christmas--Customs of the
+    Southern Slavs--The _Polaznik_--Origin of the Yule
+    Log--Probable Connection with Vegetation-cults or
+    Ancestor-worship--The _Souche de Noel_ in France--Italian and
+    German Christmas Logs--English Customs--The Yule Candle in
+    England and Scandinavia. |10|
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+  THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS                         261
+
+    The Christmas-tree a German Creation--Charm of the German
+    Christmas--Early Christmas-trees--The Christmas
+    Pyramid--Spread of the Tree in Modern Germany and other
+    Countries--Origin of the Christmas-tree--Beliefs about
+    Flowering Trees at Christmas--Evergreens at the
+    Kalends--Non-German Parallels to the Christmas-tree--Christmas
+    Decorations connected with Ancient Kalends Customs--Sacredness
+    of Holly and Mistletoe--Floors strewn with Straw--Christmas
+    and New Year Gifts, their Connection with the Roman _Strenae_
+    and St. Nicholas--Present-giving in Various
+    Countries--Christmas Cards.
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+  CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS                       281
+
+    Prominence of Eating in the English Christmas--The Boar's
+    Head, the Goose, and other Christmas Fare--Frumenty, Sowens,
+    Yule Cakes, and the Wassail Bowl--Continental Christmas
+    Dishes, their Possible Origins--French and German Cakes--The
+    Animals' Christmas Feast--Cakes in Eastern Europe--Relics of
+    Animal Sacrifice--Hunting the Wren--Various Games of
+    Sacrificial Origin.
+
+  CHAPTER XIII
+  MASKING, THE MUMMERS' PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE BOY BISHOP 295
+
+    English Court Masking--"The Lord of Misrule"--The Mummers'
+    Play, the Sword-Dance, and the Morris Dance--Origin of St.
+    George and other Characters--Mumming in Eastern Europe--The
+    Feast of Fools, its History and Suppression--The Boy Bishop,
+    his Functions and Sermons--Modern Survivals of the Boy Bishop.
+
+  CHAPTER XIV
+  ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS' DAYS                309
+
+    Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day--The Swedish St.
+    Stephen--St. John's Wine--Childermas and its Beatings. |11|
+
+  CHAPTER XV
+  NEW YEAR'S DAY                                                     319
+
+    Principle of New Year Customs--The New Year in France,
+    Germany, the United States, and Eastern
+    Europe--"First-footing" in Great Britain--Scottish New Year
+    Practices--Highland Fumigation and "Breast-strip"
+    Customs--Hogmanay and Aguillanneuf--New Year Processions in
+    Macedonia, Roumania, Greece, and Rome--Methods of
+    Augury--Sundry New Year Charms.
+
+  CHAPTER XVI
+  EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS                                              335
+
+    The Twelfth Cake and the "King of the Bean"--French Twelfth
+    Night Customs--St. Basil's Cake in Macedonia--Epiphany and the
+    Expulsion of Evils--The Befana in Italy--The Magi as
+    Present-bringers--Greek Epiphany Customs--Wassailing
+    Fruit-trees--Herefordshire and Irish Twelfth Night
+    Practices--The "Haxey Hood" and Christmas Football--St. Knut's
+    Day in Sweden--Rock Day--Plough Monday--Candlemas, its
+    Ecclesiastical and Folk Ceremonies--Farewells to Christmas.
+
+  CONCLUSION                                                         357
+
+  NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY                                             361
+
+  INDEX                                                              389
+
+|12|
+
+[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD. _By Albrecht Duerer._]
+
+|13|
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (DETAIL)                       Frontispiece
+    Gentile da Fabriano. (_Florence: Accademia_)
+
+  MADONNA AND CHILD                                                  13
+    Albert Duerer
+
+  MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS                           31
+    Pesellino. (_Empoli Gallery_)
+
+  JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN                              40
+    From "Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi" (Florence, 1490)
+
+  THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS                                     55
+    By Fouquet. (_Musee Conde, Chantilly_)
+
+  THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY                         70
+    Master of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. (Also attributed to Joachim
+    Patinir.) (_Vienna: Imperial Gallery_)
+
+  SINGING "VOM HIMMEL HOCH" FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS         71
+    By Ludwig Richter
+
+  THE NATIVITY                                                       89
+    From Add. MS. 32454 in the British Museum. (French, 15th Century)
+
+  A NEAPOLITAN _PRESEPIO_                                            108
+
+  CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS                   112
+    After an Etching by D. Allan. From Hone's "Every-day Book"
+    (London, 1826)
+
+  ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE _PRESEPIO_ AT GRECCIO                   114
+    By Giotto. (_Upper Church of St. Francis, Assisi_)
+
+|14|
+
+  THE _BAMBINO_ OF ARA COELI                                         115
+
+  THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS                                     121
+    From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the Society of
+    Antiquaries at Burlington House
+
+  THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM                                         140
+    From "Le grant Kalendrier & compost des Bergiers" (N. le Rouge,
+    Troyes, 1529)
+
+  THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI                                          154
+    Masaccio. (_Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum_)
+
+  NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA                                      161
+    An Asiatic example of animal masks
+
+  CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE--THE MUMMERS COMING IN                 229
+
+  THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                263
+    From an engraving by Joseph Kellner
+
+  CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA                                 281
+    By Ferdinand Waldmueller (b. 1793)
+
+  YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST. PETER        297
+    From an article by Mr. T. M. Fallow in _The Antiquary_, May, 1895
+
+  THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE                                           337
+
+|15| |16| |17|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+    The Origin and Purpose of Festivals--Ideas suggested by
+    Christmas--Pagan and Christian Elements--The Names of the
+    Festival--Foundation of the Feast of the Nativity--Its Relation to
+    the Epiphany--December 25 and the _Natalis Invicti_--The Kalends of
+    January--Yule and Teutonic Festivals--The Church and Pagan
+    Survivals--Two Conflicting Types of Festival--Their Interaction--Plan
+    of the Book.
+
+It has been an instinct in nearly all peoples, savage or civilized, to
+set aside certain days for special ceremonial observances, attended by
+outward rejoicing. This tendency to concentrate on special times answers
+to man's need to lift himself above the commonplace and the everyday, to
+escape from the leaden weight of monotony that oppresses him. "We tend to
+tire of the most eternal splendours, and a mark on our calendar, or a
+crash of bells at midnight maybe, reminds us that we have only recently
+been created."[1]{1} That they wake people up is the great justification
+of festivals, and both man's religious sense and his joy in life have
+generally tended to rise "into peaks and towers and turrets, into
+superhuman exceptions which really prove the rule."{2} It is difficult
+to be religious, impossible to be merry, at every moment of life, and
+festivals are as sunlit peaks, testifying, above dark valleys, to the
+eternal radiance. This is one view of the purpose and value of festivals,
+and their function of cheering people and giving them larger perspectives
+has no doubt been an important reason for their maintenance in the past.
+If we could trace the custom of festival-keeping back to its origins in
+primitive society |18| we should find the same principle of
+specialization involved, though it is probable that the practice came
+into being not for the sake of its moral or emotional effect, but from
+man's desire to lay up, so to speak, a stock of sanctity, magical not
+ethical, for ordinary days.
+
+The first holy-day-makers were probably more concerned with such material
+goods as food than with spiritual ideals, when they marked with sacred
+days the rhythm of the seasons.{3} As man's consciousness developed, the
+subjective aspect of the matter would come increasingly into prominence,
+until in the festivals of the Christian Church the main object is to
+quicken the devotion of the believer by contemplation of the mysteries of
+the faith. Yet attached, as we shall see, to many Christian festivals,
+are old notions of magical sanctity, probably quite as potent in the
+minds of the common people as the more spiritual ideas suggested by the
+Church's feasts.
+
+In modern England we have almost lost the festival habit, but if there is
+one feast that survives among us as a universal tradition it is
+Christmas. We have indeed our Bank Holidays, but they are mere days of
+rest and amusement, and for the mass of the people Easter and Whitsuntide
+have small religious significance--Christmas alone has the character of
+sanctity which marks the true festival. The celebration of Christmas has
+often little or nothing to do with orthodox dogma, yet somehow the sense
+of obligation to keep the feast is very strong, and there are few English
+people, however unconventional, who escape altogether the spell of
+tradition in this matter.
+
+_Christmas_--how many images the word calls up: we think of carol-singers
+and holly-decked churches where people hymn in time-honoured strains the
+Birth of the Divine Child; of frost and snow, and, in contrast, of warm
+hearths and homes bright with light and colour, very fortresses against
+the cold; of feasting and revelry, of greetings and gifts exchanged; and
+lastly of vaguely superstitious customs, relics of long ago, performed
+perhaps out of respect for use and wont, or merely in jest, or with a
+deliberate attempt to throw ourselves back into the past, to re-enter for
+a moment the mental childhood of the race. These are a few of |19| the
+pictures that rise pell-mell in the minds of English folk at the mention
+of Christmas; how many other scenes would come before us if we could
+realize what the festival means to men of other nations. Yet even these
+will suggest what hardly needs saying, that Christmas is something far
+more complex than a Church holy-day alone, that the celebration of the
+Birth of Jesus, deep and touching as is its appeal to those who hold the
+faith of the Incarnation, is but one of many elements that have entered
+into the great winter festival.
+
+In the following pages I shall try to present a picture, sketchy and
+inadequate though it must be, of what Christmas is and has been to the
+peoples of Europe, and to show as far as possible the various elements
+that have gone into its make-up. Most people have a vague impression that
+these are largely pagan, but comparatively few have any idea of the
+process by which the heathen elements have become mingled with that which
+is obviously Christian, and equal obscurity prevails as to the nature and
+meaning of the non-Christian customs. The subject is vast, and has not
+been thoroughly explored as yet, but the labours of historians and
+folk-lorists have made certain conclusions probable, and have produced
+hypotheses of great interest and fascination.
+
+I have spoken of "Christian"[2] and "pagan" elements. The distinction is
+blurred to some extent by the clothing of heathen customs in a
+superficial Christianity, but on the whole it is clear enough to justify
+the division of this book into two parts, one dealing with the Church's
+feast of the Holy Birth, the other with those remains of pagan winter
+festivals which extend from November to January, but cluster especially
+round Christmas and the Twelve Days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before we pass to the various aspects of the Church's Christmas, we must
+briefly consider its origins and its relation to certain |20| pagan
+festivals, the customs of which will be dealt with in detail in Part II.
+
+The names given to the feast by different European peoples throw a
+certain amount of light on its history. Let us take five of
+them--_Christmas_, _Weihnacht_, _Noel_, _Calendas_, and _Yule_--and see
+what they suggest.
+
+I. The English _Christmas_ and its Dutch equivalent _Kerstmisse_, plainly
+point to the ecclesiastical side of the festival; the German
+_Weihnacht_{4} (sacred night) is vaguer, and might well be either pagan
+or Christian; in point of fact it seems to be Christian, since it does
+not appear till the year 1000, when the Faith was well established in
+Germany.{5} _Christmas_ and _Weihnacht_, then, may stand for the
+distinctively Christian festival, the history of which we may now briefly
+study.
+
+When and where did the keeping of Christmas begin? Many details of its
+early history remain in uncertainty, but it is fairly clear that the
+earliest celebration of the Birth of Christ on December 25 took place at
+Rome about the middle of the fourth century, and that the observance of
+the day spread from the western to the eastern Church, which had before
+been wont to keep January 6 as a joint commemoration of the Nativity and
+the Baptism of the Redeemer.[3]
+
+The first mention of a Nativity feast on December 25 is found in a Roman
+document known as the Philocalian Calendar, dating from the year 354, but
+embodying an older document evidently belonging to the year 336. It is
+uncertain to which date the Nativity reference belongs;[4] but further
+back than 336 at all events the festival cannot be traced.
+
+From Rome, Christmas spread throughout the West, with the |21| conversion
+of the barbarians. Whether it came to England through the Celtic Church
+is uncertain, but St. Augustine certainly brought it with him, and
+Christmas Day, 598, witnessed a great event, the baptism of more than
+ten thousand English converts.{9} In 567 the Council of Tours had
+declared the Twelve Days, from Christmas to Epiphany, a festal tide;{10}
+the laws of Ethelred (991-1016) ordained it to be a time of peace and
+concord among Christian men, when all strife must cease.{11} In Germany
+Christmas was established by the Synod of Mainz in 813;{12} in Norway by
+King Hakon the Good about the middle of the tenth century.{13}
+
+In the East, as has been seen, the Birth of the Redeemer was at first
+celebrated not on December 25, but on January 6, the feast of the
+Epiphany or manifestation of Christ's glory. The Epiphany can be traced
+as far back as the second century, among the Basilidian heretics, from
+whom it may have spread to the Catholic Church. It was with them
+certainly a feast of the Baptism, and possibly also of the Nativity, of
+Christ. The origins of the Epiphany festival{14} are very obscure, nor
+can we say with certainty what was its meaning at first. It may be that
+it took the place of a heathen rite celebrating the birth of the World or
+AEon from the Virgin on January 6.[5] At all events one of its objects was
+to commemorate the Baptism, the appearance of the Holy Dove, and the
+Voice from heaven, "Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased"
+(or, as other MSS. read, "This day have I begotten thee").
+
+|22| In some circles of early Christianity the Baptism appears to have
+been looked upon as the true Birth of Christ, the moment when, filled by
+the Spirit, He became Son of God; and the carnal Birth was regarded as of
+comparatively little significance. Hence the Baptism festival may have
+arisen first, and the celebration of the Birth at Bethlehem may have been
+later attached to the same day, partly perhaps because a passage in St.
+Luke's Gospel was supposed to imply that Jesus was baptized on His
+thirtieth birthday. As however the orthodox belief became more sharply
+defined, increasing stress was laid on the Incarnation of God in Christ
+in the Virgin's womb, and it may have been felt that the celebration of
+the Birth and the Baptism on the same day encouraged heretical views.
+Hence very likely the introduction of Christmas on December 25 as a
+festival of the Birth alone. In the East the concelebration of the two
+events continued for some time after Rome had instituted the separate
+feast of Christmas. Gradually, however, the Roman use spread: at
+Constantinople it was introduced about 380 by the great theologian,
+Gregory Nazianzen; at Antioch it appeared in 388, at Alexandria in 432.
+The Church of Jerusalem long stood out, refusing to adopt the new feast
+till the seventh century, it would seem.{18} One important Church, the
+Armenian, knows nothing of December 25, and still celebrates the Nativity
+with the Epiphany on January 6.{19} Epiphany in the eastern Orthodox
+Church has lost its connection with the Nativity and is now chiefly a
+celebration of the Baptism of Christ, while in the West, as every one
+knows, it is primarily a celebration of the Adoration by the Magi, an
+event commemorated by the Greeks on Christmas Day. Epiphany is, however,
+as we shall see, a greater festival in the Greek Church than Christmas.
+
+Such in bare outline is the story of the spread of Christmas as an
+independent festival. Its establishment fitly followed the triumph of the
+Catholic doctrine of the perfect Godhead or Christ at the Council of
+Nicea in 325.
+
+II. The French _Noel_ is a name concerning whose origin there has been
+considerable dispute; there can, however, be little doubt that it is the
+same word as the Provencal _Nadau_ or _Nadal_, |23| the Italian
+_Natale_, and the Welsh _Nadolig_, all obviously derived from the Latin
+_natalis_, and meaning "birthday." One naturally takes this as referring
+to the Birth of Christ, but it may at any rate remind us of another
+birthday celebrated on the same date by the Romans of the Empire, that of
+the unconquered Sun, who on December 25, the winter solstice according to
+the Julian calendar, began to rise to new vigour after his autumnal
+decline.
+
+Why, we may ask, did the Church choose December 25 for the celebration of
+her Founder's Birth? No one now imagines that the date is supported by a
+reliable tradition; it is only one of various guesses of early Christian
+writers. As a learned eighteenth-century Jesuit{20} has pointed out,
+there is not a single month in the year to which the Nativity has not
+been assigned by some writer or other. The real reason for the choice of
+the day most probably was, that upon it fell the pagan festival just
+mentioned.
+
+The _Dies Natalis Invicti_ was probably first celebrated in Rome by order
+of the Emperor Aurelian (270-5), an ardent worshipper of the Syrian
+sun-god Baal.{21} With the _Sol Invictus_ was identified the figure of
+Mithra, that strange eastern god whose cult resembled in so many ways the
+worship of Jesus, and who was at one time a serious rival of the Christ
+in the minds of thoughtful men.[6]{22} It was the sun-god, poetically
+and philosophically conceived, whom the Emperor Julian made the centre of
+his ill-fated revival of paganism, and there is extant a fine prayer of
+his to "King Sun."{23}
+
+What more natural than that the Church should choose this day to
+celebrate the rising of her Sun of Righteousness with healing in His
+wings, that she should strive thus to draw away to His worship some
+adorers of the god whose symbol and representative was the earthly sun!
+There is no direct evidence of deliberate substitution, but at all events
+ecclesiastical writers soon after the foundation of Christmas made good
+use of the idea |24| that the birthday of the Saviour had replaced the
+birthday of the sun.[7]
+
+Little is known of the manner in which the _Natalis Invicti_ was kept; it
+was not a folk-festival, and was probably observed by the classes rather
+than the masses.{24} Its direct influence on Christmas customs has
+probably been little or nothing. It fell, however, just before a Roman
+festival that had immense popularity, is of great importance for our
+subject, and is recalled by another name for Christmas that must now be
+considered.
+
+III. The Provencal _Calendas_ or _Calenos_, the Polish _Kolenda_, the
+Russian _Kolyada_, the Czech _Koleda_ and the Lithuanian _Kalledos_, not
+to speak of the Welsh _Calenig_ for Christmas-box, and the Gaelic
+_Calluinn_ for New Year's Eve, are all derived from the Latin _Kalendae_,
+and suggest the connection of Christmas with the Roman New Year's Day,
+the Kalends or the first day of January, a time celebrated with many
+festive customs. What these were, and how they have affected Christmas we
+shall see in some detail in Part II.; suffice it to say here that the
+festival, which lasted for at least three days, was one of riotous life,
+of banqueting and games and licence. It was preceded, moreover, by the
+_Saturnalia_ (December 17 to 23) which had many like features, and must
+have formed practically one festive season with it. The word _Saturnalia_
+has become so familiar in modern usage as to suggest sufficiently the
+character of the festival for which it stands.
+
+|25| Into the midst of this season of revelry and licence the Church
+introduced her celebration of the beginning of man's redemption from the
+bondage of sin. Who can wonder that Christmas contains incongruous
+elements, for old things, loved by the people, cannot easily be uprooted.
+
+IV. One more name yet remains to be considered, _Yule_ (Danish _Jul_),
+the ordinary word for Christmas in the Scandinavian languages, and not
+extinct among ourselves. Its derivation has been widely discussed, but so
+far no satisfactory explanation of it has been found. Professor Skeat in
+the last edition of his Etymological Dictionary (1910) has to admit that
+its origin is unknown. Whatever its source may be, it is clearly the name
+of a Germanic season--probably a two-month tide covering the second half
+of November, the whole of December, and the first half of January.{26}
+It may well suggest to us the element added to Christmas by the barbarian
+peoples who began to learn Christianity about the time when the festival
+was founded. Modern research has tended to disprove the idea that the old
+Germans held a Yule feast at the winter solstice, and it is probable, as
+we shall see, that the specifically Teutonic Christmas customs come from
+a New Year and beginning-of-winter festival kept about the middle of
+November. These customs transferred to Christmas are to a great extent
+religious or magical rites intended to secure prosperity during the
+coming year, and there is also the familiar Christmas feasting,
+apparently derived in part from the sacrificial banquets that marked the
+beginning of winter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have now taken a general glance at the elements which have combined in
+Christmas. The heathen folk-festivals absorbed by the Nativity feast were
+essentially life-affirming, they expressed the mind of men who said "yes"
+to this life, who valued earthly good things. On the other hand
+Christianity, at all events in its intensest form, the religion of the
+monks, was at bottom pessimistic as regards this earth, and valued it
+only as a place of discipline for the life to come; it was essentially a
+religion of renunciation that said "no" to the world. The |26| Christian
+had here no continuing city, but sought one to come. How could the
+Church make a feast of the secular New Year; what mattered to her the
+world of time? her eye was fixed upon the eternal realities--the great
+drama of Redemption. Not upon the course of the temporal sun through the
+zodiac, but upon the mystical progress of the eternal Sun of
+Righteousness must she base her calendar. Christmas and New Year's
+Day--the two festivals stood originally for the most opposed of
+principles.
+
+Naturally the Church fought bitterly against the observance of the
+Kalends; she condemned repeatedly the unseemly doings of Christians in
+joining in heathenish customs at that season; she tried to make the first
+of January a solemn fast; and from the ascetic point of view she was
+profoundly right, for the old festivals were bound up with a lusty
+attitude towards the world, a seeking for earthly joy and well-being.
+
+The struggle between the ascetic principle of self-mortification,
+world-renunciation, absorption in a transcendent ideal, and the natural
+human striving towards earthly joy and well-being, is, perhaps, the most
+interesting aspect of the history of Christianity; it is certainly shown
+in an absorbingly interesting way in the development of the Christian
+feast of the Nativity. The conflict is keen at first; the Church
+authorities fight tooth and nail against these relics of heathenism,
+these devilish rites; but mankind's instinctive paganism is
+insuppressible, the practices continue as ritual, though losing much of
+their meaning, and the Church, weary of denouncing, comes to wink at
+them, while the pagan joy in earthly life begins to colour her own
+festival.
+
+The Church's Christmas, as the Middle Ages pass on, becomes increasingly
+"merry"--warm and homely, suited to the instincts of ordinary humanity,
+filled with a joy that is of this earth, and not only a mystical rapture
+at a transcendental Redemption. The Incarnate God becomes a real child to
+be fondled and rocked, a child who is the loveliest of infants, whose
+birthday is the supreme type of all human birthdays, and may be kept with
+feasting and dance and song. Such is the Christmas of popular tradition,
+the Nativity as it is reflected in the carols, the cradle-rocking, the
+mystery plays of the later Middle Ages. This |27| Christmas, which
+still lingers, though maimed, in some Catholic regions, is strongly
+life-affirming; the value and delight of earthly, material things is
+keenly felt; sometimes, even, it passes into coarseness and riot. Yet a
+certain mysticism usually penetrates it, with hints that this dear life,
+this fair world, are not all, for the soul has immortal longings in her.
+Nearly always there is the spirit of reverence, of bowing down before the
+Infant God, a visitor from the supernatural world, though bone of man's
+bone, flesh of his flesh. Heaven and earth have met together; the rough
+stable is become the palace of the Great King.
+
+This we might well call the "Catholic" Christmas, the Christmas of the
+age when the Church most nearly answered to the needs of the whole man,
+spiritual and sensuous. The Reformation in England and Germany did not
+totally destroy it; in England the carol-singers kept up for a while the
+old spirit; in Lutheran Germany a highly coloured and surprisingly
+sensuous celebration of the Nativity lingered on into the eighteenth
+century. In the countries that remained Roman Catholic much of the old
+Christmas continued, though the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, faced
+by the challenge of Protestantism, made for greater "respectability," and
+often robbed the Catholic Christmas of its humour, its homeliness, its
+truly popular stamp, substituting pretentiousness for simplicity, sugary
+sentiment for naive and genuine poetry.
+
+Apart from the transformation of the Church's Christmas from something
+austere and metaphysical into something joyous and human, warm and
+kindly, we shall note in our Second Part the survival of much that is
+purely pagan, continuing alongside of the celebration of the Nativity,
+and often little touched by its influence. But first we must consider the
+side of the festival suggested by the English and French names:
+_Christmas_ will stand for the liturgical rites commemorating the wonder
+of the Incarnation--God in man made manifest--_Noel_ or "the Birthday,"
+for the ways in which men have striven to realize the human aspect of the
+great Coming.
+
+How can we reach the inner meaning of the Nativity feast, its
+significance for the faithful? Better, perhaps, by the way of |28|
+poetry than by the way of ritual, for it is poetry that reveals the
+emotions at the back of the outward observances, and we shall understand
+these better when the singers of Christmas have laid bare to us their
+hearts. We may therefore first give attention to the Christmas poetry of
+sundry ages and peoples, and then go on to consider the liturgical and
+popular ritual in which the Church has striven to express her joy at the
+Redeemer's birth. Ceremonial, of course, has always mimetic tendencies,
+and in a further chapter we shall see how these issued in genuine drama;
+how, in the miracle plays, the Christmas story was represented by the
+forms and voices of living men.
+
+|29| |30| |31|
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part I--The Christian Feast
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)[8]{1}
+
+
+    Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological
+    Character--Humanizing Influence of Franciscanism--Jacopone da Todi's
+    Vernacular Verse--German Catholic Poetry--Mediaeval English Carols.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS.
+
+PESELLINO
+
+(_Empoli Gallery_)]
+
+Christmas, as we have seen, had its beginning at the middle of the fourth
+century in Rome. The new feast was not long in finding a hymn-writer to
+embody in immortal Latin the emotions called forth by the memory of the
+Nativity. "Veni, redemptor gentium" is one of the earliest of Latin
+hymns--one of the few that have come down to us from the father of Church
+song, Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan (d. 397). Great as theologian and
+statesman, Ambrose was great also as a poet and systematizer of Church
+music. "Veni, redemptor gentium" is above all things stately and severe,
+in harmony with the austere character of the zealous foe of the Arian
+heretics, the champion of monasticism. It is the theological aspect alone
+of Christmas, the redemption of sinful man by the mystery of the
+Incarnation and the miracle of the Virgin Birth, that we find in St.
+Ambrose's terse and pregnant Latin; there is no feeling for the human
+pathos and poetry of the scene at Bethlehem--
+
+   "Veni, redemptor gentium,
+    Ostende partum virginis;
+    Miretur omne saeculum:
+    Talis decet partus Deum. |32|
+    Non ex virili semine,
+    Sed mystico spiramine,
+    Verbum Dei factum caro,
+    Fructusque ventris floruit."[9]{2}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another fine hymn often heard in English churches is of a slightly later
+date. "Corde natus ex Parentis" ("Of the Father's love begotten") is a
+cento from a larger hymn by the Spanish poet Prudentius (_c._ 348-413).
+Prudentius did not write for liturgical purposes, and it was several
+centuries before "Corde natus" was adopted into the cycle of Latin hymns.
+Its elaborate rhetoric is very unlike the severity of "Veni, redemptor
+gentium," but again the note is purely theological; the Incarnation as a
+world-event is its theme. It sings the Birth of Him who is
+
+   "Corde natus ex Parentis
+    Ante mundi exordium,
+    Alpha et O cognominatus,
+    Ipse fons et clausula
+    Omnium quae sunt, fuerunt,
+    Quaeque post futura sunt
+        Saeculorum saeculis."[10]{3}
+
+Other early hymns are "A solis ortus cardine" ("From east to west, from
+shore to shore"), by a certain Coelius Sedulius (d. _c._ 450), still sung
+by the Roman Church at Lauds on Christmas Day, and "Jesu, redemptor
+omnium" (sixth century), the office hymn at Christmas Vespers. Like the
+poems of Ambrose and Prudentius, they are in classical metres, unrhymed,
+and based upon quantity, not accent, and they have the same general
+character, doctrinal rather than humanly tender.
+
+In the ninth and tenth centuries arose a new form of hymnody, the Prose
+or Sequence sung after the Gradual (the anthem between the Epistle and
+Gospel at Mass). The earliest writer of sequences was Notker, a monk of
+the abbey of St. Gall, near |33| the Lake of Constance. Among those
+that are probably his work is the Christmas "Natus ante saecula Dei
+filius." The most famous Nativity sequence, however, is the "Laetabundus,
+exsultet fidelis chorus" of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), once sung
+all over Europe, and especially popular in England and France. Here are
+its opening verses:--
+
+   "Laetabundus,
+    Exsultet fidelis chorus;
+        Alleluia!
+    Regem regum
+    Intactae profudit thorus;
+        Res miranda!
+
+    Angelus consilii
+    Natus est de Virgine,
+        Sol de stella!
+    Sol occasum nesciens,
+    Stella semper rutilans,
+        Semper clara."[11]{4}
+
+The "Laetabundus" is in rhymed stanzas; in this it differs from most
+early proses. The writing of rhymed sequences, however, became common
+through the example of the Parisian monk, Adam of St. Victor, in the
+second half of the twelfth century. He adopted an entirely new style of
+versification and music, derived from popular songs; and he and his
+successors in |34| the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries wrote
+various proses for the Christmas festival.
+
+If we consider the Latin Christmas hymns from the fourth century to the
+thirteenth, we shall find that however much they differ in form, they have
+one common characteristic: they are essentially theological--dwelling on
+the Incarnation and the Nativity as part of the process of man's
+redemption--rather than realistic. There is little attempt to imagine
+the scene in the stable at Bethlehem, little interest in the Child as a
+child, little sense of the human pathos of the Nativity. The explanation
+is, I think, very simple, and it lights up the whole observance of
+Christmas as a Church festival in the centuries we are considering:
+_this poetry is the poetry of monks, or of men imbued with the monastic
+spirit_.
+
+The two centuries following the institution of Christmas saw the break-up
+of the Roman Empire in the west, and the incursions of barbarians
+threatening the very existence of the Christian civilization that had
+conquered classic paganism. It was by her army of monks that the Church
+tamed and Christianized the barbarians, and both religion and culture
+till the middle of the twelfth century were predominantly monastic. "In
+writing of any eminently religious man of this period" [the eleventh
+century], says Dean Church, "it must be taken almost as a matter of
+course that he was a monk."{5} And a monastery was not the place for
+human feeling about Christmas; the monk was--at any rate in ideal--cut
+off from the world; not for him were the joys of parenthood or tender
+feelings for a new-born child. To the monk the world was, at least in
+theory, the vale of misery; birth and generation were, one may almost
+say, tolerated as necessary evils among lay folk unable to rise to the
+heights of abstinence and renunciation; one can hardly imagine a true
+early Benedictine filled with "joy that a man is born into the world."
+The Nativity was an infinitely important event, to be celebrated with a
+chastened, unearthly joy, but not, as it became for the later Middle Ages
+and the Renaissance, a matter upon which human affection might lavish
+itself, which imagination might deck with vivid concrete detail. In the
+later Christmas |35| the pagan and the Christian spirit, or delight in
+earthly things and joy in the invisible, seem to meet and mingle; to the
+true monk of the Dark and Early Middle Ages they were incompatible.
+
+What of the people, the great world outside the monasteries? Can we
+imagine that Christmas, on its Christian side, had a deep meaning for
+them? For the first ten centuries, to quote Dean Church again,
+Christianity "can hardly be said to have leavened society at all.... It
+acted upon it doubtless with enormous power; but it was as an extraneous
+and foreign agent, which destroys and shapes, but does not mingle or
+renew.... Society was a long time unlearning heathenism; it has not done
+so yet; but it had hardly begun, at any rate it was only just beginning,
+to imagine the possibility of such a thing in the eleventh century."{6}
+
+"The practical religion of the illiterate," says another ecclesiastical
+historian, Dr. W. R. W. Stephens, "was in many respects merely a survival
+of the old paganism thinly disguised. There was a prevalent belief in
+witchcraft, magic, sortilegy, spells, charms, talismans, which mixed
+itself up in strange ways with Christian ideas and Christian worship....
+Fear, the note of superstition, rather than love, which is the
+characteristic of a rational faith, was conspicuous in much of the
+popular religion. The world was haunted by demons, hobgoblins, malignant
+spirits of divers kinds, whose baneful influence must be averted by
+charms or offerings."{7}
+
+The writings of ecclesiastics, the decrees of councils and synods, from
+the fourth century to the eleventh, abound in condemnations of pagan
+practices at the turn of the year. It is in these customs, and in secular
+mirth and revelry, not in Christian poetry, that we must seek for the
+expression of early lay feeling about Christmas. It was a feast of
+material good things, a time for the fulfilment of traditional heathen
+usages, rather than a joyous celebration of the Saviour's birth. No doubt
+it was observed by due attendance at church, but the services in a tongue
+not understanded of the people cannot have been very full of meaning to
+them, and we can imagine |36| their Christmas church-going as rather a
+duty inspired by fear than an expression of devout rejoicing. It is
+noteworthy that the earliest of vernacular Christmas carols known to us,
+the early thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman "Seignors, ore entendez a nus,"
+is a song not of religion but of revelry. Its last verse is typical:
+
+   "Seignors, jo vus di par Noel,
+    E par li sires de cest hostel,
+            Car bevez ben;
+    E jo primes beverai le men,
+    E pois aprez chescon le soen,
+        Par mon conseil;
+    Si jo vus di trestoz, 'Wesseyl!'
+    Dehaiz eit qui ne dirra, 'Drincheyl!'"[12]{8}
+
+Not till the close of the thirteenth century do we meet with any
+vernacular Christmas poetry of importance. The verses of the
+_troubadours_ and _trouveres_ of twelfth-century France had little to do
+with Christianity; their songs were mostly of earthly and illicit love.
+The German Minnesingers of the thirteenth century were indeed pious, but
+their devout lays were addressed to the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, the
+ideal of womanhood, holding in glory the Divine Child in her arms, rather
+than to the Babe and His Mother in the great humility of Bethlehem.
+
+The first real outburst of Christmas joy in a popular tongue is found in
+Italy, in the poems of that strange "minstrel of the Lord," the
+Franciscan Jacopone da Todi (b. 1228, d. 1306). _Franciscan_, in that
+name we have an indication of the change in religious feeling that came
+over the western world, and |37| especially Italy, in the thirteenth
+century.{9} For the twenty all-too-short years of St. Francis's
+apostolate have passed, and a new attitude towards God and man and the
+world has become possible. Not that the change was due solely to St.
+Francis; he was rather the supreme embodiment of the ideals and
+tendencies of his day than their actual creator; but he was the spark
+that kindled a mighty flame. In him we reach so important a turning-point
+in the history of Christmas that we must linger awhile at his side.
+
+Early Franciscanism meant above all the democratizing, the humanizing of
+Christianity; with it begins that "carol spirit" which is the most
+winning part of the Christian Christmas, the spirit which, while not
+forgetting the divine side of the Nativity, yet delights in its simple
+humanity, the spirit that links the Incarnation to the common life of the
+people, that brings human tenderness into religion. The faithful no
+longer contemplate merely a theological mystery, they are moved by
+affectionate devotion to the Babe of Bethlehem, realized as an actual
+living child, God indeed, yet feeling the cold of winter, the roughness
+of the manger bed.
+
+St. Francis, it must be remembered, was not a man of high birth, but the
+son of a silk merchant, and his appeal was made chiefly to the traders
+and skilled workmen of the cities, who, in his day, were rising to
+importance, coming, in modern Socialist terms, to class-consciousness.
+The monks, although boys of low birth were sometimes admitted into the
+cloister, were in sympathy one with the upper classes, and monastic
+religion and culture were essentially aristocratic. The rise of the
+Franciscans meant the bringing home of Christianity to masses of
+town-workers, homely people, who needed a religion full of vivid
+humanity, and whom the pathetic story of the Nativity would peculiarly
+touch.
+
+Love to man, the sense of human brotherhood--that was the great thing
+which St. Francis brought home to his age. The message, certainly, was
+not new, but he realized it with infectious intensity. The second great
+commandment, "Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself," had not indeed
+been forgotten by |38| mediaeval Christianity; the common life of
+monasticism was an attempt to fulfil it; yet for the monk love to man was
+often rather a duty than a passion. But to St. Francis love was very
+life; he loved not by duty but by an inner compulsion, and his burning
+love of God and man found its centre in the God-man, Christ Jesus. For no
+saint, perhaps, has the earthly life of Christ been the object of such
+passionate devotion as for St. Francis; the Stigmata were the awful, yet,
+to his contemporaries, glorious fruit of his meditations on the Passion;
+and of the ecstasy with which he kept his Christmas at Greccio we shall
+read when we come to consider the _Presepio_. He had a peculiar affection
+for the festival of the Holy Child; "the Child Jesus," says Thomas of
+Celano, "had been given over to forgetfulness in the hearts of many in
+whom, by the working of His grace, He was raised up again through His
+servant Francis."{10}
+
+To the Early Middle Ages Christ was the awful Judge, the _Rex tremendae
+majestatis_, though also the divine bringer of salvation from sin and
+eternal punishment, and, to the mystic, the Bridegroom of the Soul. To
+Francis He was the little brother of all mankind as well. It was a new
+human joy that came into religion with him. His essentially artistic
+nature was the first to realize the full poetry of Christmas--the coming
+of infinity into extremest limitation, the Highest made the lowliest, the
+King of all kings a poor infant. He had, in a supreme degree, the mingled
+reverence and tenderness that inspire the best carols.
+
+Though no Christmas verses by St. Francis have come down to us, there is
+a beautiful "psalm" for Christmas Day at Vespers, composed by him partly
+from passages of Scripture. A portion of Father Paschal Robinson's
+translation may be quoted:--
+
+   "Rejoice to God our helper.
+    Shout unto God, living and true,
+    With the voice of triumph.
+    For the Lord is high, terrible:
+    A great King over all the earth.
+    For the most holy Father of heaven, |39|
+    Our King, before ages sent His Beloved
+      Son from on high, and He
+      was born of the Blessed Virgin,
+      holy Mary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+   This is the day which the Lord
+      hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.
+    For the beloved and most holy
+    Child has been given to us and
+      born for us by the wayside.
+    And laid in a manger because He
+      had no room in the inn.
+    Glory to God in the highest: and
+      on earth peace to men of good will."{11}
+
+[Illustration:
+
+JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN.
+
+From "Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi"
+
+(Florence, 1490).]
+
+It is in the poetry of Jacopone da Todi, born shortly after the death of
+St. Francis, that the Franciscan Christmas spirit finds its most intense
+expression. A wild, wandering ascetic, an impassioned poet, and a soaring
+mystic, Jacopone is one of the greatest of Christian singers, unpolished
+as his verses are. Noble by birth, he made himself utterly as the common
+people for whom he piped his rustic notes. "Dio fatto piccino" ("God made
+a little thing") is the keynote of his music; the Christ Child is for him
+"our sweet little brother"; with tender affection he rejoices in
+endearing diminutives--"Bambolino," "Piccolino," "Jesulino." He sings of
+the Nativity with extraordinary realism.[13] Here, in words, is a picture
+of the Madonna and her Child that might well have inspired an early
+Tuscan artist:--
+
+   "Veggiamo il suo Bambino
+    Gammettare nel fieno,
+    E le braccia scoperte
+    Porgere ad ella in seno, |40|
+    Ed essa lo ricopre
+    El meglio che puo almeno,
+    Mettendoli la poppa
+    Entro la sua bocchina.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    A la sua man manca,
+    Cullava lo Bambino,
+    E con sante carole
+    Nenciava il suo amor fino....
+    Gli Angioletti d' intorno
+    Se ne gian danzando,
+    Facendo dolci versi
+    E d' amor favellando."[14]{12}
+
+But there is an intense sense of the divine, as well as the human, in the
+Holy Babe; no one has felt more vividly the paradox of the Incarnation:--
+
+   "Ne la degna stalla del dolce Bambino
+    Gli Angeli cantano d' intorno al piccolino;
+      Cantano e gridano gli Angeli diletti,
+    Tutti riverenti timidi e subietti, |41|
+    Al Bambolino principe de gli eletti,
+    Che nudo giace nel pungente spino.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Il Verbo divino, che e sommo sapiente,
+    In questo di par che non sappia niente,
+    Guardal su' l fieno, che gambetta piangente,
+    Como elli non fusse huomo divino."[15]{13}
+
+Here, again, are some sweet and homely lines about preparation for the
+Infant Saviour:--
+
+      "Andiamo a lavare
+    La casa a nettare,
+    Che non trovi bruttura.
+      Poi el menaremo,
+    Et gli daremo
+    Ben da ber' e mangiare.
+      Un cibo espiato,
+    Et d' or li sia dato
+    Senza alcuna dimura.
+      Lo cor adempito
+    Dagiamoli fornito
+    Senza odio ne rancura."[16]{14}
+
+|42| There have been few more rapturous poets than Jacopone; men deemed
+him mad; but, "if he is mad," says a modern Italian writer, "he is mad as
+the lark"--"Nessun poeta canta a tutta gola come questo frate minore. S'
+e pazzo, e pazzo come l' allodola."
+
+To him is attributed that most poignant of Latin hymns, the "Stabat Mater
+dolorosa"; he wrote also a joyous Christmas pendant to it:--
+
+   "Stabat Mater speciosa,
+    Juxta foenum gaudiosa,
+      Dum jacebat parvulus.
+    Cujus animam gaudentem,
+    Laetabundam ac ferventem,
+      Pertransivit jubilus."[17]{15}
+
+In the fourteenth century we find a blossoming forth of Christmas poetry
+in another land, Germany.{16} There are indeed Christmas and Epiphany
+passages in a poetical Life of Christ by Otfrid of Weissenburg in the
+ninth century, and a twelfth-century poem by Spervogel, "Er ist gewaltic
+unde starc," opens with a mention of Christmas, but these are of little
+importance for us. The fourteenth century shows the first real outburst,
+and that is traceable, in part at least, to the mystical movement in the
+Rhineland caused by the preaching of the great Dominican, Eckhart of
+Strasburg, and his followers. It was a movement towards inward piety as
+distinguished from, though not excluding, external observances, which
+made its way largely by sermons listened to by great congregations in the
+towns. Its impulse came not from the monasteries proper, but from the
+convents of Dominican friars, and it was for Germany in the fourteenth
+century something like what Franciscanism had been for Italy in the
+thirteenth. One of the central doctrines of the school |43| was that of
+the Divine Birth in the soul of the believer; according to Eckhart the
+soul comes into immediate union with God by "bringing forth the Son"
+within itself; the historic Christ is the symbol of the divine humanity
+to which the soul should rise: "when the soul bringeth forth the Son," he
+says, "it is happier than Mary."{17} Several Christmas sermons by
+Eckhart have been preserved; one of them ends with the prayer, "To this
+Birth may that God, who to-day is new born as man, bring us, that we,
+poor children of earth, may be born in Him as God; to this may He bring
+us eternally! Amen."{18} With this profound doctrine of the Divine
+Birth, it was natural that the German mystics should enter deeply into
+the festival of Christmas, and one of the earliest of German Christmas
+carols, "Es komt ein schif geladen," is the work of Eckhart's disciple,
+John Tauler (d. 1361). It is perhaps an adaptation of a secular song:--
+
+   "A ship comes sailing onwards
+      With a precious freight on board;
+    It bears the only Son of God,
+      It bears the Eternal Word."
+
+The doctrine of the mystics, "Die in order to live," fills the last
+verses:--
+
+   "Whoe'er would hope in gladness
+      To kiss this Holy Child,
+    Must suffer many a pain and woe,
+      Patient like Him and mild;
+
+    Must die with Him to evil
+      And rise to righteousness,
+    That so with Christ he too may share
+      Eternal life and bliss."{19}
+
+To the fourteenth century may perhaps belong an allegorical carol still
+sung in both Catholic and Protestant Germany:--
+
+   "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
+    Aus einer Wurzel zart, |44|
+    Als uns die Alten sungen,
+    Von Jesse kam die Art,
+    Und hat ein Bluemlein bracht,
+    Mitten im kalten Winter,
+    Wohl zu der halben Nacht.
+    Das Roeslein, das ich meine,
+    Davon Jesajas sagt,
+    Hat uns gebracht alleine
+    Marie, die reine Magd.
+    Aus Gottes ew'gem Rat
+    Hat sie ein Kind geboren
+    Wohl zu der halben Nacht."[18]{20}
+
+In a fourteenth-century Life of the mystic Heinrich Suso it is told how
+one day angels came to him to comfort him in his sufferings, how they
+took him by the hand and led him to dance, while one began a glad song of
+the child Jesus, "In dulci jubilo." To the fourteenth century, then,
+dates back that most delightful of German carols, with its interwoven
+lines of Latin. I may quote the fine Scots translation in the "Godlie and
+Spirituall Sangis" of 1567:--
+
+   "_In dulci Jubilo_, Now lat us sing with myrth and jo
+    Our hartis consolatioun lyis _in praesepio_,
+    And schynis as the Sone, _Matris in gremio_,
+    _Alpha es et O, Alpha es et O._
+    _O Jesu parvule!_ I thrist sore efter the, |45|
+    Confort my hart and mynde, _O puer optime_,
+    God of all grace sa kynde, _et princeps gloriae_
+    _Trahe me post te, Trahe me post te_.
+    _Ubi sunt gaudia_, in ony place bot thair,
+    Quhair that the Angellis sing _Nova cantica_,
+    Bot and the bellis ring _in regis curia_,
+    God gif I war thair, God gif I war thair."{21}
+
+The music of "In dulci jubilo"[19] has, with all its religious feeling,
+something of the nature of a dance, and unites in a strange fashion
+solemnity, playfulness, and ecstatic delight. No other air, perhaps,
+shows so perfectly the reverent gaiety of the carol spirit.
+
+The fifteenth century produced a realistic type of German carol. Here is
+the beginning of one such:--
+
+   "Da Jesu Krist geboren wart,
+    do was es kalt;
+    in ain klaines kripplein
+    er geleget wart.
+    Da stunt ain esel und ain rint,
+    die atmizten ueber das hailig kint
+    gar unverborgen.
+    Der ain raines herze hat, der darf nit sorgen."[20]{22}
+
+It goes on to tell in naive language the story of the wanderings of the
+Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt.
+
+This carol type lasted, and continued to develop, in Austria and the
+Catholic parts of Germany through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
+eighteenth centuries, and even in the nineteenth. In Carinthia in the
+early nineteenth century, almost every parish had its local poet, who
+added new songs to the old treasury.{23} Particularly popular were the
+_Hirtenlieder_ or shepherd songs, in which the peasant worshippers joined
+themselves to the shepherds of Bethlehem, and sought to share their
+devout |46| emotions. Often these carols are of the most rustic
+character and in the broadest dialect. They breathe forth a great
+kindliness and homeliness, and one could fill pages with quotations. Two
+more short extracts must, however, suffice to show their quality.
+
+How warm and hearty is their feeling for the Child:--
+
+   "Du herzliabste Muater, gib Acht auf does Kind,
+    Es is ja gar frostig, thuas einfatschen gschwind.
+    Und du alter Voda, decks Kindlein schen zua,
+    Sonst hats von der Koelden und Winden kan Ruah.
+    Hiazt nemen mir Urlaub, o gettliches Kind,
+    Thua unser gedenken, verzeich unser Suend.
+    Es freut uns von Herzen dass d'ankomen bist;
+    Es haett uns ja niemand zu helfen gewist."[21]{24}
+
+And what fatherly affection is here:--
+
+   "Das Kind is in der Krippen gloegn,
+    So herzig und so rar!
+    Mei klaner Hansl war nix dgoegn,
+    Wenn a glei schener war.
+    Kolschwarz wie d'Kirchen d'Augen sein,
+    Sunst aber kreidenweiss;
+    Die Haend so huebsch recht zart und fein,
+    I hans angruert mit Fleiss.
+
+    Aft hats auf mi an Schmutza gmacht,
+    An Hoescheza darzue;
+    O warst du mein, hoan i gedacht,
+    Werst wol a munter Bue.
+    Dahoam in meiner Kachelstub
+    Liess i brav hoazen ein,
+    Do in den Stal kimt ueberal
+    Der kalte Wind herein."[22]{25}
+
+|47| We have been following on German ground a mediaeval tradition that
+has continued unbroken down to modern days; but we must now take a leap
+backward in time, and consider the beginnings of the Christmas carol in
+England.
+
+Not till the fifteenth century is there any outburst of Christmas poetry
+in English, though other forms of religious lyrics were produced in
+considerable numbers in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.
+When the carols come at last, they appear in the least likely of all
+places, at the end of a versifying of the whole duty of man, by John
+Awdlay, a blind chaplain of Haghmon, in Shropshire. In red letters he
+writes:--
+
+   "I pray you, sirus, boothe moore and lase,
+    Sing these caroles in Cristemas,"
+
+and then follows a collection of twenty-five songs, some of which are
+genuine Christmas carols, as one now understands the word.{26}
+
+A carol, in the modern English sense, may perhaps be defined as a
+religious song, less formal and solemn than the ordinary Church hymn--an
+expression of popular and often naive devotional feeling, a thing
+intended to be sung outside rather than within church walls. There still
+linger about the word some echoes of its original meaning, for "carol"
+had at first a secular or even pagan significance: in twelfth-century
+France it was used to describe the amorous song-dance which hailed the
+coming of spring; in Italian it meant a ring- or song-dance; while by
+English writers from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century it was used
+chiefly of singing joined with dancing, and had no necessary connection
+with religion. Much as the mediaeval Church, with its ascetic tendencies,
+disliked religious dancing, it could not always suppress it; and in
+Germany, as we shall see, there was choral dancing at Christmas round the
+cradle of the Christ Child. Whether Christmas carols were ever danced to
+in England |48| is doubtful; many of the old airs and words have,
+however, a glee and playfulness as of human nature following its natural
+instincts of joy even in the celebration of the most sacred mysteries. It
+is probable that some of the carols are religious parodies of love-songs,
+written for the melodies of the originals, and many seem by their
+structure to be indirectly derived from the choral dances of farm folk, a
+notable feature being their burden or refrain, a survival of the common
+outcry of the dancers as they leaped around.
+
+Awdlay's carols are perhaps meant to be sung by "wassailing neighbours,
+who make their rounds at Christmastide to drink a cup and take a gift,
+and bring good fortune upon the house"{27}--predecessors of those
+carol-singers of rural England in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Hardy
+depicts so delightfully in "Under the Greenwood Tree." Carol-singing by a
+band of men who go from house to house is probably a Christianization of
+such heathen processions as we shall meet in less altered forms in Part
+II.
+
+It must not be supposed that the carols Awdlay gives are his own work;
+and their exact date it is impossible to determine. Part of his book was
+composed in 1426, but one at least of the carols was probably written in
+the last half of the fourteenth century. They seem indeed to be the later
+blossomings of the great springtime of English literature, the period
+which produced Chaucer and Langland, an innumerable company of minstrels
+and ballad-makers, and the mystical poet, Richard Rolle of Hampole.[23]
+
+Through the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, the
+flowering continued; and something like two hundred carols of this period
+are known. It is impossible to attempt here anything like representative
+quotation; I can only sketch in |49| roughest outline the main
+characteristics of English carol literature, and refer the reader for
+examples to Miss Edith Rickert's comprehensive collection, "Ancient
+English Carols, MCCCC-MDCC," or to the smaller but fine selection in
+Messrs. E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick's "Early English Lyrics." Many may
+have been the work of _goliards_ or wandering scholars, and a common
+feature is the interweaving of Latin with English words.
+
+Some, like the exquisite "I sing of a maiden that is makeles,"{29} are
+rather songs to or about the Virgin than strictly Christmas carols; the
+Annunciation rather than the Nativity is their theme. Others again tell
+the whole story of Christ's life. The feudal idea is strong in such lines
+as these:--
+
+   "Mary is quene of alle thinge,
+    And her sone a lovely kinge.
+    God graunt us alle good endinge!
+          _Regnat dei gracia_."{30}
+
+On the whole, in spite of some mystical exceptions, the mediaeval English
+carol is somewhat external in its religion; there is little deep
+individual feeling; the caroller sings as a member of the human race,
+whose curse is done away, whose nature is exalted by the Incarnation,
+rather than as one whose soul is athirst for God:--
+
+   "Now man is brighter than the sonne;
+    Now man in heven an hie shall wonne;
+    Blessed be God this game is begonne
+      And his moder emperesse of helle."{31}
+
+Salvation is rather an objective external thing than an inward and
+spiritual process. A man has but to pray devoutly to the dear Mother and
+Child, and they will bring him to the heavenly court. It is not so much
+personal sin as an evil influence in humanity, that is cured by the great
+event of Christmas:--
+
+   "It was dark, it was dim,
+    For men that leved in gret sin;
+    Lucifer was all within,
+      Till on the Cristmes day. |50|
+
+    There was weping, there was wo,
+    For every man to hell gan go.
+    It was litel mery tho,
+      Till on the Cristmes day."{32}
+
+But now that Christ is born, and man redeemed, one may be blithe
+indeed:--
+
+   "Jhesus is that childes name,
+    Maide and moder is his dame,
+    And so oure sorow is turned to game.
+          _Gloria tibi domine._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Now sitte we downe upon our knee,
+    And pray that child that is so free;
+    And with gode herte now sing we
+          _Gloria tibi domine_."{33}
+
+Sometimes the religious spirit almost vanishes, and the carol becomes
+little more than a gay pastoral song:--
+
+   "The shepard upon a hill he satt;
+    He had on him his tabard and his hat,
+    His tar-box, his pipe, and his flagat;
+    His name was called Joly Joly Wat,
+      For he was a gud herdes boy.
+                  Ut hoy!
+      For in his pipe he made so much joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Whan Wat to Bedlem cum was,
+    He swet, he had gone faster than a pace;
+    He found Jesu in a simpell place,
+    Betwen an ox and an asse.
+                  Ut hoy!
+      For in his pipe he made so much joy.
+
+    'Jesu, I offer to thee here my pipe,
+    My skirt, my tar-box, and my scripe;
+    Home to my felowes now will I skipe,
+    And also look unto my shepe.'
+                  Ut hoy!
+      For in his pipe he made so much joy."{34}
+
+|51| But to others again, especially the lullabies, the hardness of the
+Nativity, the shadow of the coming Passion, give a deep note of sorrow
+and pathos; there is the thought of the sword that shall pierce Mary's
+bosom:--
+
+   "This endris night I saw a sight,
+      A maid a cradell kepe,
+    And ever she song and seid among
+      'Lullay, my child, and slepe.'
+
+    'I may not slepe, but I may wepe,
+      I am so wo begone;
+    Slepe I wold, but I am colde
+      And clothes have I none.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    'Adam's gilt this man had spilt;
+      That sin greveth me sore.
+    Man, for thee here shall I be
+      Thirty winter and more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    'Here shall I be hanged on a tree,
+      And die as it is skill.
+    That I have bought lesse will I nought;
+      It is my fader's will.'"{35}
+
+The lullabies are quite the most delightful, as they are the most human,
+of the carols. Here is an exquisitely musical verse from one of 1530:--
+
+   "In a dream late as I lay,
+    Methought I heard a maiden say
+      And speak these words so mild:
+    'My little son, with thee I play,
+    And come,' she sang, 'by, lullaby.'
+      Thus rocked she her child.
+
+    _By-by, lullaby, by-by, lullaby,_
+      _Rocked I my child._
+    _By-by, by-by, by-by, lullaby,_
+      _Rocked I my child._"{36}
+
+|52| |53| |54| |55|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)
+
+
+    The French _Noel_--Latin Hymnody in Eighteenth-century
+    France--Spanish Christmas Verse--Traditional Carols of Many
+    Countries--Christmas Poetry in Protestant Germany--Post-Reformation
+    Verse in England--Modern English Carols.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.
+
+_By Fouquet._
+
+(Musee Conde, Chantilly.)]
+
+The Reformation marks a change in the character of Christmas poetry in
+England and the larger part of Germany, and, instead of following its
+development under Protestantism, it will be well to break off and turn
+awhile to countries where Catholic tradition remained unbroken. We shall
+come back later to Post-Reformation England and Protestant Germany.
+
+In French{1} there is little or no Christmas poetry, religious in
+character, before the fifteenth century; the earlier carols that have
+come down to us are songs rather of feasting and worldly rejoicing than
+of sacred things. The true _Noel_ begins to appear in fifteenth-century
+manuscripts, but it was not till the following century that it attained
+its fullest vogue and was spread all over the country by the printing
+presses. Such _Noels_ seem to have been written by clerks or recognized
+poets, either for old airs or for specially composed music. "To a great
+extent," says Mr. Gregory Smith, "they anticipate the spirit which
+stimulated the Reformers to turn the popular and often obscene songs into
+good and godly ballads."{2}
+
+Some of the early _Noels_ are not unlike the English carols of the
+period, and are often half in Latin, half in French. Here are a few such
+"macaronic" verses:--
+
+   "Celebrons la naissance
+    _Nostri Salvatoris_, |56|
+    Qui fait la complaisance
+    _Dei sui Patris_.
+    Cet enfant tout aimable,
+    _In nocte media_,
+    Est ne dans une etable,
+    _De casta Maria_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Mille esprits angeliques,
+    _Juncti pastoribus_,
+    Chantent dans leur musique,
+    _Puer vobis natus_,
+    Au Dieu par qui nous sommes,
+    _Gloria in excelsis_,
+    Et la paix soit aux hommes
+    _Bonae voluntatis_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Qu'on ne soit insensible!
+    _Adeamus omnes_
+    A Dieu rendu passible,
+    _Propter nos mortales_,
+    Et tous, de compagnie,
+    _Deprecemur eum_
+    Qu'a la fin de la vie,
+    _Det regnum beatum_."{3}
+
+The sixteenth century is the most interesting _Noel_ period; we find then
+a conflict of tendencies, a conflict between Gallic realism and broad
+humour and the love of refined language due to the study of the ancient
+classics. There are many anonymous pieces of this time, but three
+important _Noelistes_ stand out by name: Lucas le Moigne, Cure of Saint
+Georges, Puy-la-Garde, near Poitiers; Jean Daniel, called "Maitre Mitou,"
+a priest-organist at Nantes; and Nicholas Denisot of Le Mans, whose
+_Noels_ appeared posthumously under the pseudonym of "Comte d'Alsinoys."
+
+Lucas le Moigne represents the _esprit gaulois_, the spirit that is often
+called "Rabelaisian," though it is only one side of the genius of
+Rabelais. The good Cure was a contemporary of |57| the author of
+"Pantagruel." His "Chansons de Noels nouvaulx" was published in 1520, and
+contains carols in very varied styles, some naive and pious, others
+hardly quotable at the present day. One of his best-known pieces is a
+dialogue between the Virgin and the singers of the carol: Mary is asked
+and answers questions about the wondrous happenings of her life. Here are
+four verses about the Nativity:--
+
+   "Or nous dites, Marie,
+    Les neuf mois accomplis,
+    Naquit le fruit de vie,
+    Comme l'Ange avoit dit?
+    --Oui, sans nulle peine
+    Et sans oppression,
+    Naquit de tout le monde
+    La vraie Redemption.
+
+      Or nous dites, Marie,
+    Du lieu imperial,
+    Fut-ce en chambre paree,
+    Ou en Palais royal?
+    --En une pauvre etable
+    Ouverte a l'environ
+    Ou n'avait feu, ni flambe
+    Ni latte, ni chevron.
+
+      Or nous dites, Marie,
+    Qui vous vint visiter;
+    Les bourgeois de la ville
+    Vous ont-ils confortee?
+    --Oncque, homme ni femme
+    N'en eut compassion,
+    Non plus que d'un esclave
+    D'etrange region.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Or nous dites, Marie,
+    Des pauvres pastoureaux
+    Qui gardaient es montagnes
+    Leurs brebis & aigneaux. |58|
+    --Ceux-la m'ont visitee
+    Par grande affection;
+    Moult me fut agreable
+    Leur visitation."{4}
+
+The influence of the "Pleiade," with its care for form, its respect for
+classical models, its enrichment of the French tongue with new Latin
+words, is shown by Jean Daniel, who also owes something to the poets of
+the late fifteenth century. Two stanzas may be quoted from him:--
+
+       "C'est ung tres grant mystere
+        Qu'ung roy de si hault pris
+        Vient naistre en lieu austere,
+        En si meschant pourpris:
+    Le Roy de tous les bons espritz,
+        C'est Jesus nostre frere,
+    Le Roy de tous les bons espritz,
+        Duquel sommes apris.
+
+    Saluons le doulx Jesuchrist,
+        Notre Dieu, notre frere,
+    Saluons le doulx Jesuchrist,
+        Chantons Noel d'esprit!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        En luy faisant priere,
+        Soyons de son party,
+        Qu'en sa haulte emperiere
+        Ayons lieu de party;
+    Comme il nous a droict apparty,
+        Jesus nostre bon frere,
+    Comme il nous a droict apparty
+        Au celeste convy.
+    Saluons, etc.
+        Amen. Noel."{5}
+
+As for Denisot, I may give two charming verses from one of his
+pastorals:--
+
+   "Suz, Bergiez, en campaigne,
+    Laissez la vos troppeaux, |59|
+    Avant qu'on s'accompaigne,
+    Enflez vos chalumeaux.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Enflez vos cornemuses,
+    Dansez ensemblement,
+    Et vos doucettes muses,
+    Accollez doucement."{6}
+
+One result of the Italian influences which came over France in the
+sixteenth century was a fondness for diminutives. Introduced into carols,
+these have sometimes a very graceful effect:--
+
+   "Entre le boeuf & le bouvet,
+        Noel nouvellet,
+    Voulust Jesus nostre maistre,
+    En un petit hostelet,
+        Noel nouvellet,
+    En ce pauvre monde naistre,
+        O Noel nouvellet!
+
+    Ne couche, ne bercelet,
+        Noel nouvellet,
+    Ne trouverent en cette estre,
+    Fors ung petit drappelet,
+        Noel nouvellet,
+    Pour envelopper le maistre,
+        O Noel nouvellet!"{7}
+
+These diminutives are found again, though fewer, in a particularly
+delightful carol:--
+
+      "Laissez paitre vos bestes
+    Pastoureaux, par monts et par vaux;
+      Laissez paitre vos bestes,
+      Et allons chanter Nau.
+
+    J'ai oui chanter le rossignol,
+    Qui chantoit un chant si nouveau,
+      Si haut, si beau,
+      Si resonneau, |60|
+
+      Il m'y rompoit la tete,
+    Tant il chantoit et flageoloit:
+      Adonc pris ma houlette
+      Pour aller voir Naulet.
+      Laissez paitre, etc."{8}
+
+The singer goes on to tell how he went with his fellow-shepherds and
+shepherdesses to Bethlehem:--
+
+   "Nous dimes tous une chanson
+    Les autres en vinrent au son,
+        Chacun prenant
+        Son compagnon:
+      Je prendrai Guillemette,
+    Margot tu prendras gros Guillot;
+      Qui prendra Peronelle?
+      Ce sera Talebot.
+      Laissez paitre, etc.
+
+    Ne chantons plus, nous tardons trop,
+    Pensons d'aller courir le trot.
+        Viens-tu, Margot?--
+        J'attends Guillot.--
+      J'ai rompu ma courette,
+    Il faut ramancher mon sabot.--
+      Or, tiens cette aiguillette,
+      Elle y servira trop.
+      Laissez paitre, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Nous courumes de grand' roideur
+    Pour voir notre doux Redempteur
+        Et Createur
+        Et Formateur,
+      Qui etait tendre d'aage
+    Et sans linceux en grand besoin,
+      Il gisait en la creche
+      Sur un botteau de foin.
+      Laissez paitre, etc. |61|
+
+    Sa mere avecque lui etait:
+    Et Joseph si lui eclairait,
+        Point ne semblait
+        Au beau fillet,
+      Il n'etait point son pere;
+    Je l'apercus bien au cameau (_visage_)
+      Il semblait a sa mere,
+      Encore est-il plus beau.
+      Laissez paitre, etc."
+
+This is but one of a large class of French _Noels_ which make the
+Nativity more real, more present, by representing the singer as one of a
+company of worshippers going to adore the Child. Often these are
+shepherds, but sometimes they are simply the inhabitants of a parish, a
+town, a countryside, or a province, bearing presents of their own produce
+to the little Jesus and His parents. Barrels of wine, fish, fowls,
+sucking-pigs, pastry, milk, fruit, firewood, birds in a cage--such are
+their homely gifts. Often there is a strongly satiric note: the
+peculiarities and weaknesses of individuals are hit off; the reputation
+of a place is suggested, a village whose people are famous for their
+stinginess offers cider that is half rain-water; elsewhere the
+inhabitants are so given to law-suits that they can hardly find time to
+go to Bethlehem.
+
+Such _Noels_ with their vivid local colour, are valuable pictures of the
+manners of their time. They are, unfortunately, too long for quotation
+here, but any reader who cares to follow up the subject will find some
+interesting specimens in a little collection of French carols that can be
+bought for ten _centimes_.{9} They are of various dates; some probably
+were written as late as the eighteenth century. In that century, and
+indeed in the seventeenth, the best Christmas verses are those of a
+provincial and rustic character, and especially those in _patois_; the
+more cultivated poets, with their formal classicism, can ill enter into
+the spirit of the festival. Of the learned writers the best is a woman,
+Francoise Paschal, of Lyons (b. about 1610); in spite of her Latinity she
+shows a real feeling for her subjects. Some of her _Noels_ are dialogues
+between the sacred personages; one presents |62| Joseph and Mary as
+weary wayfarers seeking shelter at all the inns of Bethlehem and
+everywhere refused by host or hostess:--
+
+        "_Saint Joseph._
+
+    Voyons la _Rose-Rouge_.
+    Madame de ceans,
+    Auriez-vous quelque bouge
+    Pour de petites gens?
+
+        _L'Hotesse._
+
+    Vous n'avez pas la mine
+    D'avoir de grands tresors;
+    Voyez chez ma voisine,
+    Car, quant a moi, je dors.
+
+        _Saint Joseph._
+
+    Monsieur des _Trois-Couronnes_,
+    Avez-vous logement,
+    Chez vous pour trois personnes,
+    Quelque trou seulement.
+
+        _L'Hote._
+
+    Vous perdez votre peine,
+    Vous venez un peu tard,
+    Ma maison est fort pleine,
+    Allez quelqu'autre part."{10}
+
+The most remarkable of the _patois Noelistes_ of the seventeenth century
+are the Provencal Saboly and the Burgundian La Monnoye, the one kindly
+and tender, the other witty and sarcastic. Here is one of Saboly's
+Provencal _Noels_:--
+
+   "Quand la miejonue sounavo,
+    Ai sauta dou liech au sou;
+    Ai vist un bel ange que cantavo
+    Milo fes pu dous qu'un roussignou.
+
+    Lei mastin dou vesinage
+    Se soun toutes atroupa; |63|
+    N'avien jamai vist aqueu visage
+    Se soun tout-d'un-cop mes a japa.
+
+    Lei pastre dessus la paio
+    Dourmien coume de soucas;
+    Quand an aussi lou bru dei sounaio
+    Au cresegu qu'ero lou souiras.
+
+    S'eron de gent resounable,
+    Vendrien sens estre envita:
+    Trouvarien dins un petit estable
+    La lumiero emai la verita."[24]{11}
+
+As for La Monnoye, here is a translation of one of his satirical
+verses:--"When in the time of frost Jesus Christ came into the world the
+ass and ox warmed Him with their breath in the stable. How many asses and
+oxen I know in this kingdom of Gaul! How many asses and oxen I know who
+would not have done as much!"{12}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Apart from the rustic _Noels_, the eighteenth century produced little
+French Christmas poetry of any charm. Some of the carols most sung in
+French churches to-day belong, however, to this period, _e.g._, the
+"Venez, divin Messie" of the Abbe Pellegrin.{13}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One cannot leave the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
+without some mention of its Latin hymnody. From a date near 1700,
+apparently, comes the sweet and solemn "Adeste, fideles"; by its music
+and its rhythm, perhaps, rather than by its actual words it has become
+the best beloved of Christmas hymns. The present writer has heard it sung
+with equal reverence and heartiness in English, German, French, and
+Italian churches, and no other hymn seems so full of the spirit of
+Christmas devotion--wonder, |64| awe, and tenderness, and the sense of
+reconciliation between Heaven and earth. Composed probably in France,
+"Adeste, fideles" came to be used in English as well as French Roman
+Catholic churches during the eighteenth century. In 1797 it was sung at
+the chapel of the Portuguese Embassy in London; hence no doubt its once
+common name of "Portuguese hymn." It was first used in an Anglican church
+in 1841, when the Tractarian Oakley translated it for his congregation at
+Margaret Street Chapel, London.
+
+Another fine Latin hymn of the eighteenth-century French Church is
+Charles Coffin's "Jam desinant suspiria."{14} It appeared in the
+Parisian Breviary in 1736, and is well known in English as "God from on
+high hath heard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Revolution and the decay of Catholicism in France seem to have killed
+the production of popular carols. The later nineteenth century, however,
+saw a revival of interest in the _Noel_ as a literary form. In 1875 the
+bicentenary of Saboly's death was celebrated by a competition for a
+_Noel_ in the Provencal tongue, and something of the same kind has been
+done in Brittany.{15} The _Noel_ has attracted by its aesthetic charm
+even poets who are anything but devout; Theophile Gautier, for instance,
+wrote a graceful Christmas carol, "Le ciel est noir, la terre est
+blanche."
+
+On a general view of the vernacular Christmas poetry of France it must be
+admitted that the devotional note is not very strong; there is indeed a
+formal reverence, a courtly homage, paid to the Infant Saviour, and the
+miraculous in the Gospel story is taken for granted; but there is little
+sense of awe and mystery. In harmony with the realistic instincts of the
+nation, everything is dramatically, very humanly conceived; at times,
+indeed, the personages of the Nativity scenes quite lose their sacred
+character, and the treatment degenerates into grossness. At its best,
+however, the French _Noel_ has a gaiety and a grace, joined to a genuine,
+if not very deep, piety, that are extremely charming. Reading these
+rustic songs, we are carried in imagination to French countrysides; we
+think of the long walk through the snow to the Midnight Mass, the
+cheerful _reveillon_ spread on the |65| return, the family gathered
+round the hearth, feasting on wine and chestnuts and _boudins_, and
+singing in traditional strains the joys of _Noel_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Across the Pyrenees, in Spain, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
+centuries saw a great output of Christmas verse. Among the chief writers
+were Juan Lopez de Ubeda, Francisco de Ocana, and Jose de
+Valdivielso.{16} Their _villancicos_ remind one of the paintings of
+Murillo; they have the same facility, the same tender and graceful
+sentiment, without much depth. They lack the homely flavour, the
+quaintness that make the French and German folk-carols so delightful;
+they have not the rustic tang, and yet they charm by their simplicity and
+sweetness.
+
+Here are a few stanzas by Ocana:--
+
+   "Dentro de un pobre pesebre
+    y cobijado con heno
+    yace Jesus Nazareno.
+
+      En el heno yace echado
+    el hijo de Dios eterno,
+    para librar del infierno
+    al hombre que hubo criado,
+    y por matar el pecado
+    el heno tiene por bueno
+    nuestro Jesus Nazareno.
+
+      Esta entre dos animales
+    que le calientan del frio,
+    quien remedia nuestros males
+    con su grande poderio:
+    es su reino y senorio
+    el mundo y el cielo sereno,
+    y agora duerme en el heno.
+
+      Tiene por bueno sufrir
+    el frio y tanta fortuna,
+    sin tener ropa ninguna
+    con que se abrigar ni cubrir, |66|
+    y por darnos el vivir
+    padecio frio en el heno,
+    nuestro Jesus Nazareno."[25]{17}
+
+More of a peasant flavour is found in some snatches of Christmas carols
+given by Fernan Caballero in her sketch, "La Noche de Navidad."
+
+      "Ha nacido en un portal,
+    Llenito de telaranas,
+    Entre la mula y el buey
+    El Redentor de las almas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      En el portal de Belen
+    Hay estrella, sol y luna:
+    La Virgen y San Jose
+    Y el nino que esta en la cuna.
+
+      En Belen tocan a fuego,
+    Del portal sale la llama,
+    Es una estrella del cielo,
+    Que ha caido entre la paja.
+
+      Yo soy un pobre gitano
+    Que vengo de Egipto aqui,
+    Y al nino de Dios le traigo
+    Un gallo quiquiriqui
+
+      Yo soy un pobre gallego
+    Que vengo de la Galicia,
+    Y al nino de Dios le traigo
+    Lienzo para una camisa. |67|
+
+      Al nino recien nacido
+    Todos le traen un don;
+    Yo soy chico y nada tengo;
+    Le traigo mi corazon."[26]{18}
+
+In nearly every western language one finds traditional Christmas carols.
+Europe is everywhere alive with them; they spring up like wild flowers.
+Some interesting Italian specimens are given by Signor de Gubernatis in
+his "Usi Natalizi." Here are a few stanzas from a Bergamesque cradle-song
+of the Blessed Virgin:--
+
+      "Dormi, dormi, o bel bambin,
+    Re divin.
+    Dormi, dormi, o fantolin.
+    Fa la nanna, o caro figlio,
+    Re del Ciel,
+    Tanto bel, grazioso giglio.
+
+      Chiuedi i luemi, o mio tesor,
+    Dolce amor,
+    Di quest' alma, almo Signor;
+    Fa la nanna, o regio infante,
+    Sopra il fien,
+    Caro ben, celeste amante.
+
+      Perche piangi, o bambinell,
+    Forse il giel
+    Ti da noia, o l'asinell?
+    Fa la nanna, o paradiso
+    Del mio cor,
+    Redentor, ti bacio il viso."[27]{19}
+
+|68| With this lullaby may be compared a singularly lovely and quite
+untranslatable Latin cradle-song of unknown origin:--
+
+   "Dormi, fili, dormi! mater
+         Cantat unigenito:
+    Dormi, puer, dormi! pater,
+         Nato clamat parvulo:
+    Millies tibi laudes canimus
+         Mille, mille, millies.
+
+    Lectum stravi tibi soli,
+         Dormi, nate bellule!
+    Stravi lectum foeno molli:
+         Dormi, mi animule.
+    Millies tibi laudes canimus
+         Mille, mille, millies.
+
+    Ne quid desit, sternam rosis,
+         Sternam foenum violis,
+    Pavimentum hyacinthis
+         Et praesepe liliis.
+    Millies tibi laudes canimus
+         Mille, mille, millies. |69|
+
+    Si vis musicam, pastores
+        Convocabo protinus;
+    Illis nulli sunt priores;
+        Nemo canit castius.
+    Millies tibi laudes canimus
+        Mille, mille, millies."{21}
+
+Curious little poems are found in Latin and other languages, making a
+dialogue of the cries of animals at the news of Christ's birth.{22} The
+following French example is fairly typical:--
+
+   "Comme les bestes autrefois
+    Parloient mieux latin que francois,
+    Le coq, de loin voyant le fait,
+    S'ecria: _Christus natus est._
+    Le boeuf, d'un air tout ebaubi,
+    Demande: _Ubi? Ubi? Ubi?_
+    La chevre, se tordant le groin,
+    Repond que c'est a _Bethleem_.
+    Maistre Baudet, _curiosus_
+    De l'aller voir, dit: _Eamus_;
+    Et, droit sur ses pattes, le veau
+    Beugle deux fois: _Volo, Volo!_"[28]{23}
+
+In Wales, in the early nineteenth century, carol-singing was more
+popular, perhaps, than in England; the carols were sung to the harp, in
+church at the _Plygain_ or early morning service on Christmas Day, in the
+homes of the people, and at the doors of the houses by visitors.{24} In
+Ireland, too, the custom of carol-singing then prevailed.{25} Dr.
+Douglas Hyde, in his "Religious Songs of Connacht," gives and translates
+an interesting Christmas hymn in Irish, from which two verses may be
+quoted. They set forth the great paradox of the Incarnation:--
+
+   "Little babe who art so great,
+      Child so young who art so old, |70|
+    In the manger small his room,
+      Whom not heaven itself could hold.
+
+    Father--not more old than thou?
+      Mother--younger, can it be?
+    Older, younger is the Son,
+      Younger, older, she than he."{27}
+
+Even in dour Scotland, with its hatred of religious festivals, some kind
+of carolling survived here and there among Highland folk, and a
+remarkable and very "Celtic" Christmas song has been translated from the
+Gaelic by Mr. J. A. Campbell. It begins:--
+
+   "Sing hey the Gift, sing ho the Gift,
+    Sing hey the Gift of the Living,
+    Son of the Dawn, Son of the Star,
+    Son of the Planet, Son of the Far [twice],
+    Sing hey the Gift, sing ho the Gift."{28}
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY
+
+MASTER OF THE SEVEN SORROWS OF MARY (ALSO ATTRIBUTED TO JOACHIM PATINIR)
+
+(_Vienna: Imperial Gallery_)]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+SINGING "VOM HIMMEL HOCH" FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS.
+
+_By Ludwig Richter._]
+
+Before I close this study with a survey of Christmas poetry in England
+after the Reformation, it may be interesting to follow the developments
+in Protestant Germany. The Reformation gave a great impetus to German
+religious song, and we owe to it some of the finest of Christmas hymns.
+It is no doubt largely due to Luther, that passionate lover of music and
+folk-poetry, that hymns have practically become the liturgy of German
+Protestantism; yet he did but give typical expression to the natural
+instincts of his countrymen for song. Luther, though a rebel, was no
+Puritan; we can hardly call him an iconoclast; he had a conservative
+mind, which only gradually became loosened from its old attachments. His
+was an essentially artistic nature: "I would fain," he said, "see all
+arts, especially music, in the service of Him who has given and created
+them," and in the matter of hymnody he continued, in many respects, the
+mediaeval German tradition. Homely, kindly, a lover of children, he had a
+deep feeling for the festival of Christmas; and not only did he translate
+into German "A solis ortus cardine" and "Veni, redemptor |71| gentium,"
+but he wrote for his little son Hans one of the most delightful and
+touching of all Christmas hymns--"Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her."
+
+   "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her,
+    Ich bring euch gute neue Maer,
+    Der guten Maer bring ich so viel,
+    Davon ich singen und sagen will.
+
+    Euch ist ein Kindlein heut gebor'n
+    Von einer Jungfrau auserkor'n,
+    Ein Kindelein so zart und fein,
+    Das soll eu'r Freud und Wonne sein.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Merk auf, mein Herz, und sich dort hin:
+    Was liegt doch in dem Kripplein drin?
+    Wess ist das schoene Kindelein?
+    Es ist das liebe Jesulein.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Ach Herr, du Schoepfer aller Ding,
+    Wie bist du worden so gering,
+    Dass du da liegst auf duerrem Gras,
+    Davon ein Rind und Esel ass?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein,
+    Mach dir ein rein sanft Bettelein,
+    Zu ruhen in mein's Herzens Schrein,
+    Dass ich nimmer vergesse dein.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Davon ich allzeit froehlich sei,
+    Zu springen, singen immer frei
+    Das rechte Lied dem Gottessohn
+    Mit Herzenslust, den suessen Ton."[29]{29}
+
+|72| "Vom Himmel hoch" has qualities of simplicity, directness, and
+warm human feeling which link it to the less ornate forms of carol
+literature. Its first verse is adapted from a secular song; its melody
+may, perhaps, have been composed by Luther himself. There is another
+Christmas hymn of Luther's, too--"Vom Himmel kam der Engel
+Schar"--written for use when "Vom Himmel hoch" was thought too long, and
+he also composed additional verses for the mediaeval "Gelobet seist du,
+Jesu Christ."
+
+   "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ,
+    Dass du Mensch geboren bist
+    Von einer Jungfrau, das ist wahr,
+    Des freuet sich der Engel Schar.
+              _Kyrieleis!_
+
+    Des ew'gen Vaters einig Kind
+    Jetzt man in der Krippe find't,
+    In unser armes Fleisch und Blut
+    Verkleidet sich das ewig Gut.
+              _Kyrieleis!_ |73|
+
+    Den aller Weltkreis nie beschloss,
+    Der lieget in Marie'n Schoss;
+    Er ist ein Kindlein worden klein,
+    Der alle Ding' erhaelt allein.
+              _Kyrieleis!_"[30]{31}
+
+The first stanza alone is mediaeval, the remaining six of the hymn are
+Luther's.
+
+The Christmas hymns of Paul Gerhardt, the seventeenth-century Berlin
+pastor, stand next to Luther's. They are more subjective, more finished,
+less direct and forcible. Lacking the finest qualities of poetry, they
+are nevertheless impressive by their dignity and heartiness. Made for
+music, the words alone hardly convey the full power of these hymns. They
+should be heard sung to the old chorales, massive, yet sweet, by the
+lusty voices of a German congregation. To English people they are
+probably best known through the verses introduced into the "Christmas
+Oratorio," where the old airs are given new beauty by Bach's marvellous
+harmonies. The tone of devotion, one feels, in Gerhardt and Bach is the
+same, immeasurably greater as is the genius of the composer; in both
+there is a profound joy in the Redemption begun by the Nativity, a robust
+faith joined to a deep sense of the mystery of suffering, and a keen
+sympathy with childhood, a tender fondness for the Infant King.
+
+|74| The finest perhaps of Gerhardt's hymns is the Advent "Wie soll ich
+dich empfangen?" ("How shall I fitly meet Thee?"), which comes early in
+the "Christmas Oratorio." More closely connected with the Nativity,
+however, are the _Weihnachtslieder_, "Wir singen dir, Emanuel," "O Jesu
+Christ, dein Kripplein ist," "Froehlich soll mein Herze springen," "Ich
+steh an deiner Krippen hier," and others. I give a few verses from the
+third:--
+
+   "Froehlich soll mein Herze springen
+            Dieser Zeit,
+            Da fuer Freud
+            Alle Engel singen.
+    Hoert, hoert, wie mit vollen Choren
+            Alle Luft
+            Laute ruft:
+            Christus ist geboren.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Nun, er liegt in seiner Krippen,
+            Ruft zu sich
+            Mich und dich,
+            Spricht mit suessen Lippen:
+    Lasset fahrn, O lieben Brueder
+            Was euch quaelt,
+            Was euch fehlt;
+            Ich bring alles wieder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Suesses Heil, lass dich umfangen;
+            Lass mich dir,
+            Meine Zier,
+            Unverrueckt anhangen.
+    Du bist meines Lebens Leben;
+            Nun kann ich
+            Mich durch dich
+            Wohl zufrieden geben."[31]{33}
+
+|75| One more German Christmas hymn must be mentioned, Gerhard
+Tersteegen's "Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Choere."
+Tersteegen represents one phase of the mystical and emotional reaction
+against the religious formalism and indifference of the eighteenth
+century. In the Lutheran Church the Pietists, though they never seceded,
+somewhat resembled the English Methodists; the Moravians formed a
+separate community, while from the "Reformed" or Calvinistic Church
+certain circles of spiritually-minded people, who drew inspiration from
+the mediaeval mystics and later writers like Boehme and Madame Guyon,
+gathered into more or less independent groups for religious intercourse.
+Of these last Tersteegen is a representative singer. Here are three
+verses from his best known Christmas hymn:--
+
+   "Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Choere,
+    Singet dem Herrn, dem Heiland der Menschen, zur Ehre:
+           Sehet doch da!
+           Gott will so freundlich und nah
+           Zu den Verlornen sich kehren. |76|
+
+    Koenig der Ehren, aus Liebe geworden zum Kinde,
+    Dem ich auch wieder mein Herz in der Liebe verbinde;
+           Du sollst es sein,
+           Den ich erwaehle allein,
+           Ewig entsag' ich der Suende.
+
+    Treuer Immanuel, werd' auch in mir neu geboren;
+    Komm doch, mein Heiland, und lass mich nicht laenger verloren;
+           Wohne in mir,
+           Mach mich ganz eines mit dir,
+           Den du zum Leben erkoren."[32]{35}
+
+The note of personal religion, as distinguished from theological
+doctrine, is stronger in German Christmas poetry than in that of any
+other nation--the birth of Christ in the individual soul, not merely the
+redemption of man in general, is a central idea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We come back at last to England. The great carol period is, as has
+already been said, the fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth,
+century; after the Reformation the English domestic Christmas largely
+loses its religious colouring, and the best carols of the late sixteenth
+and early seventeenth centuries are songs of |77| feasting and pagan
+ceremonies rather than of the Holy Child and His Mother. There is no lack
+of fine Christmas verse in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, but
+for the most part it belongs to the oratory and the chamber rather than
+the hall. The Nativity has become a subject for private contemplation,
+for individual devotion, instead of, as in the later Middle Ages, a
+matter for common jubilation, a wonder-story that really happened, in
+which, all alike and all together, the serious and the frivolous could
+rejoice, something that, with all its marvel, could be taken as a matter
+of course, like the return of the seasons or the rising of the sun on the
+just and on the unjust.
+
+English Christmas poetry after the mid-sixteenth century is, then,
+individual rather than communal in its spirit; it is also a thing less of
+the people, more of the refined and cultivated few. The Puritanism which
+so deeply affected English religion was abstract rather than dramatic in
+its conception of Christianity, it was concerned less with the events of
+the Saviour's life than with Redemption as a transaction between God and
+man; St. Paul and the Old Testament rather than the gospels were its
+inspiration. Moreover, the material was viewed not as penetrated by and
+revealing the spiritual, but as sheer impediment blocking out the vision
+of spiritual things. Hence the extremer Puritans were completely out of
+touch with the sensuous poetry of Christmas, a festival which, as we
+shall see, they actually suppressed when they came into power.
+
+The singing of sacred carols by country people continued, indeed, but the
+creative artistic impulse was lost. True carols after the Reformation
+tend to be doggerel, and no doubt many of the traditional pieces printed
+in such collections as Bramley and Stainer's[33]{37} are debased
+survivals from the Middle Ages, or perhaps new words written for old
+tunes. Such carols as "God rest you merry, gentlemen," have unspeakably
+delightful airs, and the words charm us moderns by their quaintness and
+rusticity, but they are far from the exquisite loveliness of the
+mediaeval |78| things. Gleams of great beauty are, however, sometimes
+found amid matter that in the process of transmission has almost ceased
+to be poetry. Here, for instance, are five stanzas from the traditional
+"Cherry-tree Carol":--
+
+   "As Joseph was a-walking,
+      He heard an angel sing:
+    'This night shall be born
+      Our heavenly King.
+
+    'He neither shall be born
+      In housen nor in hall,
+    Nor in the place of Paradise,
+      But in an ox's stall.
+
+    'He neither shall be clothed
+      In purple nor in pall,
+    But all in fair linen
+      As wear babies all.
+
+    'He neither shall be rocked
+      In silver nor in gold,
+    But in a wooden cradle
+      That rocks on the mould.
+
+    'He neither shall be christened
+      In white wine nor red,
+    But with fair spring water
+      With which we were christened.'"
+
+The old carols sung by country folk have often not much to do with the
+Nativity; they are sometimes rhymed lives of Christ or legends of the
+Holy Childhood. Of the latter class the strangest is "The Bitter Withy,"
+discovered in Herefordshire by Mr. Frank Sidgwick. It tells how the
+little Jesus asked three lads to play with Him at ball. But they
+refused:--
+
+   "'O we are lords' and ladies' sons,
+      Born in bower or in hall;
+    And you are but a poor maid's child,
+      Born in an oxen's stall.' |79|
+
+    'If I am but a poor maid's child,
+      Born in an oxen's stall,
+    I will let you know at the very latter end
+      That I am above you all.'
+
+    So he built him a bridge with the beams of the sun,
+      And over the sea went he,
+    And after followed the three jolly jerdins,
+      And drowned they were all three.
+
+    Then Mary mild called home her child,
+      And laid him across her knee,
+    And with a handful of green withy twigs
+      She gave him slashes three.
+
+    'O the withy, O the withy, O bitter withy
+      That causes me to smart!
+    O the withy shall be the very first tree
+      That perishes at the heart.'"
+
+From these popular ballads, mediaeval memories in the rustic mind, we
+must return to the devotional verse of the late sixteenth and early
+seventeenth centuries. Two of the greatest poets of the Nativity, the
+Roman priests Southwell and Crashaw, are deeply affected by the wave of
+mysticism which passed over Europe in their time. Familiar as is
+Southwell's "The Burning Babe," few will be sorry to find it here:--
+
+   "As I in hoary winter's night
+      Stood shivering in the snow,
+    Surprised I was with sudden heat,
+      Which made my heart to glow;
+    And lifting up a fearful eye
+      To view what fire was near,
+    A pretty Babe all burning bright
+      Did in the air appear;
+    Who, scorched with excessive heat,
+      Such floods of tears did shed,
+    As though His floods should quench His flames
+      Which with His tears were fed. |80|
+    'Alas!' quoth He, 'but newly born,
+      In fiery heats I fry,
+    Yet none approach to warm their hearts
+      Or feel my fire, but I!
+    My faultless breast the furnace is,
+      The fuel, wounding thorns;
+    Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,
+      The ashes, shame and scorns;
+    The fuel Justice layeth on,
+      And Mercy blows the coals,
+    The metal in this furnace wrought
+      Are men's defiled souls,
+    For which, as now on fire I am,
+      To work them to their good,
+    So will I melt into a bath,
+      To wash them in my blood.'
+    With this he vanished out of sight,
+      And swiftly shrunk away:
+    And straight I called unto mind
+      That it was Christmas Day."{38}
+
+As for Crashaw,
+
+   "That the great angel-blinding light should shrink
+    His blaze to shine in a poor shepherd's eye,
+    That the unmeasured God so low should sink
+    As Pris'ner in a few poor rags to lie,
+    That from His mother's breast He milk should drink
+    Who feeds with nectar heaven's fair family,
+      That a vile manger His low bed should prove
+      Who in a throne of stars thunders above:
+
+    That He, whom the sun serves, should faintly peep
+    Through clouds of infant flesh; that He the old
+    Eternal Word should be a Child and weep,
+    That He who made the fire should fear the cold:
+    That heaven's high majesty His court should keep
+    In a clay cottage, by each blast controll'd:
+      That glory's self should serve our griefs and fears,
+      And free Eternity submit to years--"{39}
+
+such are the wondrous paradoxes celebrated in his glowing imagery. The
+contrast of the winter snow with the burning |81| heat of Incarnate
+Love, of the blinding light of Divinity with the night's darkness, indeed
+the whole paradox of the Incarnation--Infinity in extremest
+limitation--is nowhere realized with such intensity as by him. Yet,
+magnificent as are his best lines, his verse sometimes becomes too like
+the seventeenth-century Jesuit churches, with walls overladen with
+decoration, with great languorous pictures and air heavy with incense;
+and then we long for the dewy freshness of the early carols.
+
+The representative Anglican poets of the seventeenth century, Herbert and
+Vaughan, scarcely rise to their greatest heights in their treatment of
+Christmas, but with them as with the Romanists it is the mystical note
+that is dominant. Herbert sings:--
+
+   "O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted, light,
+      Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;
+    Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,
+      To man, of all beasts, be not Thou a stranger.
+
+    Furnish and deck my soul, that thou may'st have
+    A better lodging than a rack or grave."{40}
+
+And Vaughan:--
+
+   "I would I had in my best part
+    Fit rooms for Thee! or that my heart
+          Were so clean as
+          Thy manger was!
+    But I am all filth, and obscene:
+    Yet, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make clean.
+
+    Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more
+    This leper haunt and soil thy door!
+          Cure him, ease him,
+          O release him!
+    And let once more, by mystic birth,
+    The Lord of life be born in earth."{41}
+
+In Herrick--how different a country parson from Herbert!--we find a sort
+of pagan piety towards the Divine Infant which, |82| though purely
+English in its expression, makes us think of some French _Noeliste_ or
+some present-day Italian worshipper of the _Bambino_:--
+
+   "Instead of neat enclosures
+    Of interwoven osiers,
+    Instead of fragrant posies
+    Of daffodils and roses,
+    Thy cradle, kingly Stranger,
+        As gospel tells,
+        Was nothing else
+    But here a homely manger.
+
+    But we with silks not crewels,
+    With sundry precious jewels,
+    And lily work will dress Thee;
+    And, as we dispossess Thee
+    Of clouts, we'll make a chamber,
+        Sweet Babe, for Thee,
+        Of ivory,
+    And plaster'd round with amber."{42}
+
+Poems such as Herrick's to the Babe of Bethlehem reveal in their writers
+a certain childlikeness, an _insouciance_ without irreverence, the spirit
+indeed of a child which turns to its God quite simply and naturally,
+which makes Him after its own child-image, and sees Him as a friend who
+can be pleased with trifles--almost, in fact, as a glorious playmate.
+Such a nature has no intense feeling of sin, but can ask for forgiveness
+and then forget; religion for it is rather an outward ritual to be duly
+and gracefully performed than an inward transforming power. Herrick is a
+strange exception among the Anglican singers of Christmas.
+
+Milton's great Nativity hymn, with its wondrous blending of pastoral
+simplicity and classical conceits, is too familiar for quotation here; it
+may be suggested, however, that this work of the poet's youth is far more
+Anglican than Puritan in its spirit.
+
+Sweet and solemn Spenserian echoes are these verses from Giles Fletcher's
+"Christ's Victory in Heaven":-- |83|
+
+   "Who can forget--never to be forgot--
+    The time, that all the world in slumber lies,
+    When, like the stars, the singing angels shot
+    To earth, and heaven awaked all his eyes
+    To see another sun at midnight rise
+      On earth? Was never sight of pareil fame,
+      For God before man like Himself did frame,
+    But God Himself now like a mortal man became.
+
+    A Child He was, and had not learnt to speak,
+    That with His word the world before did make;
+    His mother's arms Him bore, He was so weak,
+    That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake,
+    See how small room my infant Lord doth take,
+      Whom all the world is not enough to hold!
+      Who of His years, or of His age hath told?
+    Never such age so young, never a child so old."{43}
+
+The old lullaby tradition is continued by Wither, though the infant in
+the cradle is an ordinary human child, who is rocked to sleep with the
+story of his Lord:--
+
+   "A little Infant once was He,
+        And strength in weakness then was laid
+    Upon His virgin-mother's knee,
+        That power to thee might be conveyed.
+            Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;
+            Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Within a manger lodged thy Lord,
+        Where oxen lay and asses fed;
+    Warm rooms we do to thee afford,
+        An easy cradle or a bed.
+            Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;
+            Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep."{44}
+
+When we come to the eighteenth century we find, where we might least
+expect it, among the moral verses of Dr. Watts, a charming cradle-song
+conceived in just the same way:-- |84|
+
+   "Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,
+        Holy angels guard thy bed!
+    Heavenly blessings without number
+        Gently falling on thy head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Soft and easy is thy cradle;
+        Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay.
+    When His birthplace was a stable,
+        And His softest bed was hay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Lo He slumbers in His manger
+        Where the horned oxen fed;
+    --Peace, my darling, here's no danger;
+        Here's no ox a-near thy bed."{45}
+
+It is to the eighteenth century that the three most popular of English
+Christmas hymns belong. Nahum Tate's "While shepherds watched their
+flocks by night"--one of the very few hymns (apart from metrical psalms)
+in common use in the Anglican Church before the nineteenth century--is a
+bald and apparently artless paraphrase of St. Luke which, by some
+accident, has attained dignity, and is aided greatly by the simple and
+noble tune now attached to it. Charles Wesley's "Hark, the herald angels
+sing," or--as it should be--"Hark, how all the welkin rings," is much
+admired by some, but to the present writer seems a mere piece of
+theological rhetoric. Byrom's "Christians, awake, salute the happy morn,"
+has the stiffness and formality or its period, but it is not without a
+certain quaintness and dignity. One could hardly expect fine Christmas
+poetry of an age whose religion was on the one hand staid, rational,
+unimaginative, and on the other "Evangelical" in the narrow sense,
+finding its centre in the Atonement rather than the Incarnation.
+
+The revived mediaevalism, religious and aesthetic, of the nineteenth
+century, produced a number of Christmas carols. Some, like Swinburne's
+"Three damsels in the queen's chamber," with |85| its exquisite verbal
+music and delightful colour, and William Morris's less successful
+"Masters, in this hall," and "Outlanders, whence come ye last?" are the
+work of unbelievers and bear witness only to the aesthetic charm of the
+Christmas story; but there are others, mostly from Roman or
+Anglo-Catholic sources, of real religious inspiration.[34] The most
+spontaneous are Christina Rossetti's, whose haunting rhythms and delicate
+feeling are shown at their best in her songs of the Christ Child. More
+studied and self-conscious are the austere Christmas verses of Lionel
+Johnson and the graceful carols of Professor Selwyn Image. In one poem
+Mr. Image strikes a deeper and stronger note than elsewhere; its solemn
+music takes us back to an earlier century:--
+
+   "Consider, O my soul, what morn is this!
+        Whereon the eternal Lord of all things made,
+    For us, poor mortals, and our endless bliss,
+        Came down from heaven; and, in a manger laid,
+        The first, rich, offerings of our ransom paid:
+    Consider, O my soul, what morn is this!"{46}
+
+Not a few contemporary poets have given us Christmas carols or poems.
+Among the freshest and most natural are those of Katharine Tynan, while
+Mr. Gilbert Chesterton has written some Christmas lyrics full of colour
+and vitality, and with a true mystical quality. Singing of Christmas, Mr.
+Chesterton is at his best; he has instinctive sympathy with the spirit of
+the festival, its human kindliness, its democracy, its sacramentalism,
+its exaltation of the child:--
+
+   "The thatch of the roof was as golden
+        Though dusty the straw was and old;
+    The wind had a peal as of trumpets,
+        Though blowing and barren and cold. |86|
+
+    The mother's hair was a glory,
+        Though loosened and torn;
+    For under the eaves in the gloaming
+        A child was born."{47}
+
+Thus opens a fine poem on the Nativity as symbolizing miracle of birth,
+of childhood with its infinite possibilities, eternal renewal of faith
+and hope.
+
+|87| |88| |89|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION
+
+
+    Advent and Christmas Offices of the Roman Church--The Three Masses of
+    Christmas, their Origin and their Celebration in Rome--The Midnight
+    Mass in Many Lands--Protestant Survivals of the Night
+    Services--Christmas in the Greek Church--The Eastern Epiphany and the
+    Blessing of the Waters--The _Presepio_ or Crib, its Supposed
+    Institution by St. Francis--Early Traces of the Crib--The Crib in
+    Germany, Tyrol, &c.--Cradle-rocking in Mediaeval Germany--Christmas
+    Minstrels in Italy and Sicily--The _Presepio_ in Italy--Ceremonies
+    with the _Culla_ and the _Bambino_ in Rome--Christmas in Italian
+    London--The Spanish Christmas--Possible Survivals of the Crib in
+    England.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE NATIVITY.
+
+From Add. MS. 32454 in the British Museum
+
+(French, 15th century).]
+
+From a study of Christmas as reflected in lyric poetry, we now pass to
+other forms of devotion in which the Church has welcomed the Redeemer at
+His birth. These are of two kinds--liturgical and popular; and they
+correspond in a large degree to the successive ways of apprehending the
+meaning of Christmas which we traced in the foregoing chapters. Strictly
+liturgical devotions are little understanded of the people: only the
+clergy can fully join in them; for the mass of the lay folk they are
+mysterious rites in an unknown tongue, to be followed with reverence, as
+far as may be, but remote and little penetrated with humanity. Side by
+side with these, however, are popular devotions, full of vivid colour,
+highly anthropomorphic, bringing the mysteries of religion within the
+reach of the simplest minds, and warm with human feeling. The austere
+Latin hymns of the earlier centuries belong to liturgy; the vernacular
+Christmas poetry of later ages is largely associated with popular
+devotion.
+
+|90| Liturgiology is a vast and complicated, and except to the few, an
+unattractive, subject. To attempt here a survey of the liturgies in their
+relation to Christmas is obviously impossible; we must be content to
+dwell mainly upon the present-day Roman offices, which, in spite of
+various revisions, give some idea of the mediaeval services of Latin
+Christianity, and to cast a few glances at other western rites, and at
+those of the Greek Church.
+
+Whatever may be his attitude towards Catholicism, or, indeed,
+Christianity, no one sensitive to the music of words, or the suggestions
+of poetic imagery, can read the Roman Breviary and Missal without
+profound admiration for the amazing skill with which the noblest passages
+of Hebrew poetry are chosen and fitted to the expression of Christian
+devotion, and the gold of psalmists, prophets, and apostles is welded
+into coronals for the Lord and His saints. The office-books of the Roman
+Church are, in one aspect, the greatest of anthologies.
+
+Few parts of the Roman Breviary have more beauty than the Advent[35]
+offices, where the Church has brought together the majestic imagery of
+the Hebrew prophets, the fervent exhortation of the apostles, to prepare
+the minds of the faithful for the coming of the Christ, for the
+celebration of the Nativity.
+
+Advent begins with a stirring call. If we turn to the opening service of
+the Christian Year, the First Vespers of the First Sunday in Advent, we
+shall find as the first words in the "Proper of the Season" the
+trumpet-notes of St. Paul: "Brethren, it is high time to awake out of
+sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." This, the
+Little Chapter for the office, is followed by the ancient hymn, "Creator
+alme siderum,"{1} chanting in awful tones the two comings of |91|
+Christ, for redemption and for judgment; and then are sung the words that
+strike the keynote of the Advent services, and are heard again and again.
+
+   "_Rorate, coeli, desuper, et nubes pluant Justum_
+    (Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down the
+          Righteous One).
+    _Aperiatur terra et germinet Salvatorem_
+    (Let the earth open, and let her bring forth the Saviour)."
+
+_Rorate, coeli, desuper_--Advent is a time of longing expectancy. It is a
+season of waiting patiently for the Lord, whose coming in great humility
+is to be commemorated at Christmas, to whose coming again in His glorious
+majesty to judge both the quick and the dead the Christian looks forward
+with mingled hope and awe. There are four weeks in Advent, and an ancient
+symbolical explanation interprets these as typifying four comings of the
+Son of God: the first in the flesh, the second in the hearts of the
+faithful through the Holy Spirit, the third at the death of every man,
+and the fourth at the Judgment Day. The fourth week is never completed
+(Christmas Eve is regarded as not part of Advent), because the glory
+bestowed on the saints at the Last Coming will never end.
+
+The great Eucharistic hymn, "Gloria in excelsis," is omitted in Advent,
+in order, say the symbolists, that on Christmas night, when it was first
+sung by the angels, it may be chanted with the greater eagerness and
+devotion. The "Te Deum" at Matins too is left unsaid, because Christ is
+regarded as not yet come. But "Alleluia" is not omitted, because Advent
+is only half a time of penitence: there is awe at the thought of the
+Coming for Judgment, but joy also in the hope of the Incarnation to be
+celebrated at Christmas, and the glory in store for the faithful.{3}
+
+Looking forward is above all things the note of Advent; the Church seeks
+to share the mood of the Old Testament saints, and she draws more now
+than at any other season, perhaps, on the treasures of Hebrew prophecy
+for her lessons, antiphons, versicles, and responds. Looking for the
+glory that shall be revealed, she awaits, at this darkest time of the
+year, the rising |92| of the Sun of Righteousness. _Rorate, coeli,
+desuper_--the mood comes at times to all idealists, and even those
+moderns who hope not for a supernatural Redeemer, but for the triumph of
+social justice on this earth, must be stirred by the poetry of the Advent
+offices.
+
+It is at Vespers on the seven days before Christmas Eve that the Church's
+longing finds its noblest expression--in the antiphons known as the
+"Great O's," sung before and after the "Magnificat," one on each day. "O
+Sapientia," runs the first, "O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of
+the Most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly
+ordering all things: come and teach us the way of prudence." "O Adonai,"
+"O Root of Jesse," "O Key of David," "O Day-spring, Brightness of Light
+Everlasting," "O King of the Nations," thus the Church calls to her Lord,
+"O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations, and their
+Salvation: come and save us, O Lord our God."{4}
+
+At last Christmas Eve is here, and at Vespers we feel the nearness of the
+great Coming. "Lift up your heads: behold your redemption draweth nigh,"
+is the antiphon for the last psalm. "To-morrow shall be done away the
+iniquity of the earth," is the versicle after the Office Hymn. And before
+and after the "Magnificat" the Church sings: "When the sun shall have
+risen, ye shall see the King of kings coming forth from the Father, as a
+bridegroom out of his chamber."
+
+Yet only with the night office of Matins does the glory of the festival
+begin. There is a special fitness at Christmas in the Church's keeping
+watch by night, like the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the office is full
+of the poetry of the season, full of exultant joy. To the "Venite,
+exultemus Domino" a Christmas note is added by the oft-repeated
+Invitatory, "Unto us the Christ is born: O come, let us adore Him."
+Psalms follow--among them the three retained by the Anglican Church in
+her Christmas Matins--and lessons from the Old and New Testaments and the
+homilies of the Fathers, interspersed with Responsories bringing home to
+the faithful the wonders of the Holy Night. Some are almost dramatic;
+this, for instance:-- |93|
+
+ "Whom saw ye, O shepherds? speak; tell us who hath appeared on the earth.
+  We saw the new-born Child, and angels singing praise unto the Lord.
+  Speak, what saw ye? and tell us of the birth of Christ.
+  We saw the new-born Child, and angels singing praise unto the Lord."
+
+It is the wonder of the Incarnation, the marvel of the spotless Birth,
+the song of the Angels, the coming down from heaven of true peace, the
+daybreak of redemption and everlasting joy, the glory of the
+Only-begotten, now beheld by men--the supernatural side, in fact, of the
+festival, that the Church sets forth in her radiant words; there is
+little thought of the purely human side, the pathos of Bethlehem.
+
+It was customary at certain places, in mediaeval times, to lay on the
+altar three veils, and remove one at each nocturn of Christmas Matins.
+The first was black, and symbolised the time of darkness before the
+Mosaic Law; the second white, typifying, it would seem, the faith of
+those who lived under that Law of partial revelation; the third red,
+showing the love of Christ's bride, the Church, in the time of grace
+flowing from the Incarnation.{5}
+
+A stately ceremony took place in England in the Middle Ages at the end of
+Christmas Matins--the chanting of St. Matthew's genealogy of Christ. The
+deacon, in his dalmatic, with acolytes carrying tapers, with thurifer and
+cross-bearer, all in albs and unicles, went in procession to the pulpit
+or the rood-loft, to sing this portion of the Gospel. If the bishop were
+present, he it was who chanted it, and a rich candlestick was held to
+light him.[36] Then followed the chanting of the "Te Deum."{6} The
+ceremony does not appear in the ordinary Roman books, but it is still
+performed by the Benedictines, as one may read in the striking account of
+the monastic Christmas given by Huysmans in "L'Oblat."{7}
+
+|94| Where, as in religious communities, the offices of the Church are
+performed in their full order, there follows on Matins that custom
+peculiar to Christmas, the celebration of Midnight Mass. On Christmas
+morning every priest is permitted to say three Masses, which should in
+strictness be celebrated at midnight, at dawn, and in full daylight. Each
+has its own Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, each its own Introit, Gradual,
+and other anthems. In many countries the Midnight Mass is the distinctive
+Christmas service, a great and unique event in the year, something which
+by its strangeness gives to the feast of the Nativity a place by itself.
+Few Catholic rites are more impressive than this Midnight Mass,
+especially in country places; through the darkness and cold of the
+winter's night, often for long distances, the faithful journey to worship
+the Infant Saviour in the splendour of the lighted church. It is a
+re-enactment of the visit of the shepherds to the cave at Bethlehem,
+aglow with supernatural light.
+
+Various symbolical explanations of the three Masses were given by
+mediaeval writers. The midnight celebration was supposed to represent
+mankind's condition before the Law of Moses, when thick darkness covered
+the earth; the second, at dawn, the time of the Law and the Prophets with
+its growing light; the third, in full daylight, the Christian era of
+light and grace. Another interpretation, adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas,
+is more mystical; the three Masses stand for the threefold birth of
+Christ, the first typifying the dark mystery of the eternal generation of
+the Son, the second the birth of Christ the morning-star within the
+hearts of men, the third the bodily birth of the Son of Mary.{8}
+
+At the Christmas Masses the "Gloria in excelsis" resounds again. This
+song of the angels was at first chanted only at Christmas; it was
+introduced into Rome during the fifth century at Midnight Mass in
+imitation of the custom of the Church of Jerusalem.{9}
+
+It is, indeed, from imitation of the services at Jerusalem and Bethlehem
+that the three Roman Masses of Christmas seem to have sprung. From a late
+fourth-century document known as |95| the "Peregrinatio Silviae," the
+narrative of a pilgrimage to the holy places of the east by a great lady
+from southern Gaul, it appears that at the feast of the Epiphany--when
+the Birth of Christ was commemorated in the Palestinian Church--two
+successive "stations" were held, one at Bethlehem, the other at
+Jerusalem. At Bethlehem the station was held at night on the eve of the
+feast, then a procession was made to the church of the Anastasis or
+Resurrection--where was the Holy Sepulchre--arriving "about the hour when
+one man begins to recognise another, _i.e._, near daylight, but before
+the day has fully broken." There a psalm was sung, prayers were said, and
+the catechumens and faithful were blessed by the bishop. Later, Mass was
+celebrated at the Great Church at Golgotha, and the procession returned
+to the Anastasis, where another Mass was said.{10}
+
+At Bethlehem at the present time impressive services are held on the
+Latin Christmas Day. The Patriarch comes from Jerusalem, with a troop of
+cavalry and Kavasses in gorgeous array. The office lasts from 10 o'clock
+on Christmas Eve until long after midnight. "At the reading of the Gospel
+the clergy and as many of the congregation as can follow leave the
+church, and proceed by a flight of steps and a tortuous rock-hewn passage
+to the Grotto of the Nativity, an irregular subterranean chamber, long
+and narrow. They carry with them a waxen image of an infant--the
+_bambino_--wrap it in swaddling bands and lay it on the site which is
+said to be that of the manger."{11}
+
+The Midnight Mass appears to have been introduced into Rome in the first
+half of the fifth century. It was celebrated by the Pope in the church of
+Santa Maria Maggiore, while the second Mass was sung by him at Sant'
+Anastasia--perhaps because of the resemblance of the name to the
+Anastasis at Jerusalem--and the third at St. Peter's.{12} On Christmas
+Eve the Pope held a solemn "station" at Santa Maria Maggiore, and two
+Vespers were sung, the first very simple, the second, at which the Pope
+pontificated, with elaborate ceremonial. Before the second Vespers, in
+the twelfth century, a good meal had to |96| be prepared for the papal
+household by the Cardinal-Bishop of Albano. After Matins and Midnight
+Mass at Santa Maria Maggiore, the Pope went in procession to Sant'
+Anastasia for Lauds and the Mass of the Dawn. The third Mass, at St.
+Peter's, was an event of great solemnity, and at it took place in the
+year 800 that profoundly significant event, the coronation of Charlemagne
+by Leo III.--a turning-point in European history.{13}
+
+Later it became the custom for the Pope, instead of proceeding to St.
+Peter's, to return to Santa Maria Maggiore for the third Mass. On his
+arrival he was given a cane with a lighted candle affixed to it; with
+this he had to set fire to some tow placed on the capitals of the
+columns.{14} The ecclesiastical explanation of this strange ceremony was
+that it symbolised the end of the world by fire, but one may conjecture
+that some pagan custom lay at its root. Since 1870 the Pope, as "the
+prisoner of the Vatican," has of course ceased to celebrate at Santa
+Maria Maggiore or Sant' Anastasia. The Missal, however, still shows a
+trace of the papal visit to Sant' Anastasia in a commemoration of this
+saint which comes as a curious parenthesis in the Mass of the Dawn.
+
+On Christmas Day in the Vatican the Pope blesses a hat and a sword, and
+these are sent as gifts to some prince. The practice is said to have
+arisen from the mediaeval custom for the Holy Roman Emperor or some other
+sovereign to read one of the lessons at Christmas Matins, in the papal
+chapel, with his sword drawn.{15}
+
+Celebrated in countries as distant from one another, both geographically
+and in character, as Ireland and Sicily, Poland and South America, the
+Midnight Mass naturally varies greatly in its tone and setting. Sometimes
+it is little more than a fashionable function, sometimes the devotion of
+those who attend is shown by a tramp over miles of snow through the
+darkness and the bitter wind.
+
+In some charming memories of the Christmas of her childhood, Madame Th.
+Bentzon thus describes the walk to the Midnight Mass in a French country
+place about sixty years ago:-- |97|
+
+    "I can see myself as a little girl, bundled up to the tip of
+    my nose in furs and knitted shawls, tiny wooden shoes on my feet, a
+    lantern in my hand, setting out with my parents for the Midnight Mass
+    of Christmas Eve.... We started off, a number of us, together in a
+    stream of light.... Our lanterns cast great shadows on the white
+    road, crisp with frost. As our little group advanced it saw others on
+    their way, people from the farm and from the mill, who joined us, and
+    once on the Place de l'Eglise we found ourselves with all the
+    parishioners in a body. No one spoke--the icy north wind cut short
+    our breath; but the voice of the chimes filled the silence.... We
+    entered, accompanied by a gust of wind that swept into the porch at
+    the same time we did; and the splendours of the altar, studded with
+    lights, green with pine and laurel branches, dazzled us from the
+    threshold."{16}
+
+In devout Tyrol, the scenes on Christmas Eve before the Midnight Mass are
+often extremely impressive, particularly in narrow valleys where the
+houses lie scattered on the mountain slopes. Long before midnight the
+torches lighting the faithful on their way to Mass begin to twinkle;
+downward they move, now hidden in pine-woods and ravines, now reappearing
+on the open hill-side. More and more lights show themselves and throw
+ruddy flashes on the snow, until at last, the floor of the valley
+reached, they vanish, and only the church windows glow through the
+darkness, while the solemn strains of the organ and chanting break the
+silence of the night.{17}
+
+Not everywhere has the great Mass been celebrated amid scenes so still
+and devotional. In Madrid, says a writer of the early nineteenth century,
+"the evening of the vigil is scarcely dark when numbers of men, women,
+and boys are seen traversing the streets with torches, and many of them
+supplied with tambourines, which they strike loudly as they move along in
+a kind of Bacchanal procession. There is a tradition here that the
+shepherds who visited Bethlehem on the day of the Nativity had
+instruments of this sort upon which they expressed the sentiment of joy
+that animated them when they received the intelligence that a Saviour was
+born." At the Midnight Mass crowds of people who, perhaps, had been
+traversing the streets the whole night, came into the church |98| with
+their tambourines and guitars, and accompanied the organ. The Mass over,
+they began to dance in the very body of the church.{18} A later writer
+speaks of the Midnight Mass in Madrid as a fashionable function to which
+many gay young people went in order to meet one another.{19} Such is the
+character of the service in the Spanish-American cities. In Lima the
+streets on Christmas Eve are crowded with gaily dressed and noisy folks,
+many of them masked, and everybody goes to the Mass.{20} In Paris the
+elaborate music attracts enormous and often not very serious crowds. In
+Sicily there is sometimes extraordinary irreverence at the midnight
+services: people take provisions with them to eat in church, and from
+time to time go out to an inn for a drink, and between the offices they
+imitate the singing of birds.{21} We may see in such things the licence
+of pagan festivals creeping within the very walls of the sanctuary.
+
+In the Rhineland Midnight Mass has been abolished, because the
+conviviality of Christmas Eve led to unseemly behaviour at the solemn
+service, but Mass is still celebrated very early--at four or five--and
+great crowds of worshippers attend. It is a stirring thing, this first
+Mass of Christmas, in some ancient town, when from the piercing cold, the
+intense stillness of the early morning, one enters a great church
+thronged with people, bright with candles, warm with human fellowship,
+and hears the vast congregation break out into a slow solemn chorale,
+full of devout joy that
+
+   "In Bethlehem geboren
+    Ist uns ein Kindelein."
+
+It is interesting to trace survivals of the nocturnal Christmas offices
+in Protestant countries. In German "Evangelical" churches, midnight or
+early morning services were common in the eighteenth century; but they
+were forbidden in some places because of the riot and drunkenness which
+accompanied them. The people seem to have regarded them as a part of
+their Christmas revellings rather than as sacred functions; one writer
+compares the congregation to a crowd of wild drunken sailors in a |99|
+tavern, another gives disgusting particulars of disorders in a church
+where the only sober man was the preacher.{22}
+
+In Sweden the Christmas service is performed very early in the morning,
+the chancel is lighted up with many candles, and the celebrant is vested
+in a white chasuble with golden orphreys.{23}
+
+A Midnight Mass is now celebrated in many Anglican churches, but this is
+purely a modern revival. The most distinct British _survival_ is to be
+found in Wales in the early service known as _Plygain_ (dawn), sometimes
+a celebration of the Communion. At Tenby at four o'clock on Christmas
+morning it was customary for the young men of the town to escort the
+rector with lighted torches from his house to the church. Extinguishing
+their torches in the porch, they went in to the early service, and when
+it was ended the torches were relighted and the procession returned to
+the rectory. At St. Peter's Church, Carmarthen, an early service was
+held, to the light of coloured candles brought by the congregation. At
+St. Asaph, Caerwys, at 4 or 5 a.m., _Plygain_, consisting of carols sung
+round the church in procession, was held.{24} The _Plygain_ continued in
+Welsh churches until about the eighteen-fifties, and, curiously enough,
+when the Established Church abandoned it, it was celebrated in
+Nonconformist chapels.{25}
+
+In the Isle of Man on Christmas Eve, or _Oiel Verry_ (Mary's Eve), "a
+number of persons used to assemble in each parish church and proceed to
+shout carols or 'Carvals.' There was no unison or concert about the
+chanting, but a single person would stand up with a lighted candle in his
+or her hand, and chant in a dismal monotone verse after verse of some old
+Manx 'Carval,' until the candle was burnt out. Then another person would
+start up and go through a similar performance. No fresh candles might be
+lighted after the clock had chimed midnight."{26}
+
+One may conjecture that the common English practice of ringing bells
+until midnight on Christmas Eve has also some connection with the
+old-time Midnight Mass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the Greek Church Christmas is a comparatively unimportant festival by
+the side of the Epiphany, the celebration of |100| Christ's Baptism;
+the Christmas offices are, however, full of fine poetry. There is far
+less restraint, far less adherence to the words of Scripture, far greater
+richness of original composition, in the Greek than in the Roman
+service-books, and while there is less poignancy there is more amplitude
+and splendour. Christmas Day, with the Greeks, is a commemoration of the
+coming of the Magi as well as of the Nativity and the adoration of the
+shepherds, and the Wise Men are very prominent in the services. The
+following hymn of St. Anatolius (fifth century), from the First Vespers
+of the feast, is fairly typical of the character of the Christmas
+offices:--
+
+   "When Jesus Our Lord was born of Her,
+    The Holy Virgin, all the universe
+    Became enlightened.
+    For as the shepherds watched their flocks,
+    And as the Magi came to pray,
+    And as the Angels sang their hymn
+    Herod was troubled; for God in flesh appeared,
+    The Saviour of our souls.
+
+    Thy kingdom, Christ our God, the kingdom is
+    Of all the worlds, and Thy dominion
+    O'er every generation bears the sway,
+    Incarnate of the Holy Ghost,
+    Man of the Ever-Virgin Mary,
+    By Thy presence, Christ our God,
+    Thou hast shined a Light on us.
+    Light of Light, the Brightness of the Father,
+    Thou hast beamed on every creature.
+    All that hath breath doth praise Thee,
+    Image of the Father's glory.
+    Thou who art, and wast before,
+    God who shinedst from the Maid,
+    Have mercy upon us.
+
+    What gift shall we bring to Thee,
+    O Christ, since Thou as Man on earth
+    For us hast shewn Thyself? |101|
+    Since every creature made by Thee
+    Brings to Thee its thanksgiving.
+      The Angels bring their song,
+      The Heavens bring their star,
+      The Magi bring their gifts,
+      The Shepherds bring their awe,
+    Earth gives a cave, the wilderness a manger,
+    And we the Virgin-Mother bring.
+    God before all worlds, have mercy upon us!"{27}
+
+A beautiful rite called the "Peace of God" is performed in Slavonic
+churches at the end of the "Liturgy" or Mass on Christmas morning--the
+people kiss one another on both cheeks, saying, "Christ is born!" To this
+the answer is made, "Of a truth He is born!" and the kisses are returned.
+This is repeated till everyone has kissed and been kissed by all
+present.{28}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We must pass rapidly over the feasts of saints within the Octave of the
+western Christmas, St. Stephen (December 26), St. John the Evangelist
+(December 27), the Holy Innocents (December 28), and St. Sylvester
+(December 31). None of these, except the feast of the Holy Innocents,
+have any special connection with the Nativity or the Infancy, and the
+popular customs connected with them will come up for consideration in our
+Second Part.
+
+The commemoration of the Circumcision ("when eight days were accomplished
+for the circumcising of the child") falls naturally on January 1, the
+Octave of Christmas. It is not of Roman origin, and was not observed in
+Rome until it had long been established in the Byzantine and Gallican
+Churches.{29} In Gaul, as is shown by a decree of the Council of Tours
+in 567, a solemn fast was held on the Circumcision and the two days
+following it, in order to turn away the faithful from the pagan
+festivities of the Kalends.{30}
+
+The feast of the Epiphany on January 6, as we have seen, is in the
+eastern Church a commemoration of the Baptism of Christ. In the West it
+has become primarily the festival of the adoration |102| of the Magi,
+the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Still in the Roman offices
+many traces of the baptismal commemoration remain, and the memory of yet
+another manifestation of Christ's glory appears in the antiphon at
+"Magnificat" at the Second Vespers of the feast:--
+
+    "We keep holy a day adorned by three wonders: to-day a star led the
+    Magi to the manger; to-day at the marriage water was made wine;
+    to-day for our salvation Christ was pleased to be baptized of John in
+    Jordan. Alleluia."
+
+On the Octave of the Epiphany at Matins the Baptism is the central idea,
+and the Gospel at Mass bears on the same subject. In Rome itself even the
+Blessing of the Waters, the distinctive ceremony of the eastern Epiphany
+rite, is performed in certain churches according to a Latin ritual.{31}
+At Sant' Andrea della Valle, Rome, during the Octave of the Epiphany a
+Solemn Mass is celebrated every morning in Latin, and afterwards, on each
+of the days from January 7-13, there follows a Mass according to one of
+the eastern rites: Greco-Slav, Armenian, Chaldean, Coptic,
+Greco-Ruthenian, Greco-Melchite, and Greek.{32} It is a week of great
+opportunities for the liturgiologist and the lover of strange ceremonial.
+
+The Blessing of the Waters is an important event in all countries where
+the Greek Church prevails. In Greece the "Great Blessing," as it is
+called, is performed in various ways according to the locality; sometimes
+the sea is blessed, sometimes a river or reservoir, sometimes merely
+water in a church. In seaport towns, where the people depend on the water
+for their living, the celebration has much pomp and elaborateness. At the
+Piraeus enormous and enthusiastic crowds gather, and there is a solemn
+procession of the bishop and clergy to the harbour, where the bishop
+throws a little wooden cross, held by a long blue ribbon, into the water,
+withdraws it dripping wet, and sprinkles the bystanders. This is done
+three times. At Nauplia and other places a curious custom prevails: the
+archbishop throws a wooden cross into the waters of the harbour, and the
+fishermen |103| of the place dive in after it and struggle for its
+possession; he who wins it has the right of visiting all the houses of
+the town and levying a collection, which often brings in a large sum. In
+Samos all the women send to the church a vessel full of water to be
+blessed by the priest; with this water the fields and the trees are
+sprinkled.{33}
+
+The sense attached to the ceremony by the Church is shown in this
+prayer:--
+
+    "Thou didst sanctify the streams of Jordan by sending from Heaven Thy
+    Holy Spirit, and by breaking the heads of the dragons lurking there.
+    Therefore, O King, Lover of men, be Thou Thyself present also now by
+    the visitation of Thy Holy Spirit, and sanctify this water. Give also
+    to it the grace of ransom, the blessing of Jordan: make it a fountain
+    of incorruption; a gift of sanctification; a washing away of sins; a
+    warding off of diseases; destruction to demons; repulsion to the
+    hostile powers; filled with angelic strength; that all who take and
+    receive of it may have it for purification of souls and bodies, for
+    healing of sicknesses, for sanctification of houses, and meet for
+    every need."{34}
+
+Though for the Church the immersion of the cross represents the Baptism
+of Christ, and the blessings springing from that event are supposed to be
+carried to the people by the sprinkling with the water, it is held by
+some students that the whole practice is a Christianization of a
+primitive rain-charm--a piece of sympathetic magic intended to produce
+rain by imitating the drenching which it gives. An Epiphany song from
+Imbros connects the blessing of rain with the Baptism of Christ, and
+another tells how at the river Jordan "a dove came down, white and
+feathery, and with its wings opened; it sent rain down on the Lord, and
+again it rained and rained on our Lady, and again it rained and rained on
+its wings."{35}
+
+The Blessing of the Waters is performed in the Greek church of St.
+Sophia, Bayswater, London, on the morning of the Epiphany, which, through
+the difference between the old and new "styles," falls on our 19th of
+January. All is done within the church; the water to be blessed is placed
+on a table under |104| the dome, and is sanctified by the immersion of
+a small cross; afterwards it is sprinkled on everyone present, and some
+is taken home by the faithful in little vessels.{36}
+
+In Moscow and St. Petersburg the Blessing is a function of great
+magnificence, but it is perhaps even more interesting as performed in
+Russian country places. Whatever may be the orthodox significance of the
+rite, to the country people it is the chasing away of "forest demons,
+sprites, and fairies, once the gods the peasants worshipped, but now
+dethroned from their high estate," who in the long dark winter nights
+bewitch and vex the sons of men. A vivid and imaginative account of the
+ceremony and its meaning to the peasants is given by Mr. F. H. E. Palmer
+in his "Russian Life in Town and Country." The district in which he
+witnessed it was one of forests and of lakes frozen in winter. On one of
+these lakes had been erected "a huge cross, constructed of blocks of ice,
+that glittered like diamonds in the brilliant winter sunlight.... At
+length, far away could be heard the sound of human voices, singing a
+strange, wild melody. Presently there was a movement in the snow among
+the trees, and waving banners appeared as a procession approached, headed
+by the pope in his vestments, and surrounded by the village dignitaries,
+venerable, grey-bearded patriarchs." A wide space in the procession was
+left for "a strange and motley band of gnomes and sprites, fairies and
+wood-nymphs," who, as the peasants believed, had been caught by the holy
+singing and the sacred sign on the waving banner. The chanting still went
+on as the crowd formed a circle around the glittering cross, and all
+looked on with awe while half a dozen peasants with their axes cut a
+large hole in the ice. "And now the priest's voice is heard, deep and
+sonorous, as he pronounces the words of doom. Alas for the poor sprites!
+Into that yawning chasm they must leap, and sink deep, deep below the
+surface of that ice-cold water."{37}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Following these eastern Epiphany rites we have wandered far from the
+cycle of ideas generally associated with Christmas. We |105| must now
+pass to those popular devotions to the Christ Child which, though they
+form no part of the Church's liturgy, she has permitted and encouraged.
+It is in the West that we shall find them; the Latin Church, as we have
+seen, makes far more of Christmas than the Greek.
+
+Rome is often condemned for using in her liturgy the dead language of
+Latin, but it must not be forgotten that in every country she offers to
+the faithful a rich store of devotional literature in their own tongue,
+and that, supplementary to the liturgical offices, there is much public
+prayer and praise in the vernacular. Nor, in that which appeals to the
+eye, does she limit herself to the mysterious symbolism of the sacraments
+and the ritual which surrounds them; she gives to the people concrete,
+pictorial images to quicken their faith. How ritual grew in mediaeval
+times into full-fledged drama we shall see in the next chapter; here let
+us consider that cult of the Christ Child in which the scene of Bethlehem
+is represented not by living actors but in plastic art, often most simple
+and homely.
+
+The use of the "crib" (French _creche_, Italian _presepio_, German
+_krippe_) at Christmas is now universally diffused in the Roman Church.
+Most readers of this book must have seen one of these structures
+representing the stable at Bethlehem, with the Child in the manger, His
+mother and St. Joseph, the ox and the ass, and perhaps the shepherds, the
+three kings, or worshipping angels. They are the delight of children, who
+through the season of Christmas and Epiphany wander into the open
+churches at all times of day to gaze wide-eyed on the life-like scene and
+offer a prayer to their Little Brother. No one with anything of the
+child-spirit can fail to be touched by the charm of the Christmas crib.
+Faults of artistic taste there may often be, but these are wont to be
+softened down by the flicker of tapers, the glow of ruby lights, amidst
+the shades of some dim aisle or chapel, and the scene of tender humanity,
+gently, mysteriously radiant, as though with "bright shoots of
+everlastingness," is full of religious and poetic suggestions.
+
+The institution of the _presepio_ is often ascribed to St. Francis of
+Assisi, who in the year 1224 celebrated Christmas at Greccio |106| with
+a Bethlehem scene with a real ox and ass. About fifteen days before the
+Nativity, according to Thomas of Celano, the blessed Francis sent for a
+certain nobleman, John by name, and said to him: "If thou wilt that we
+celebrate the present festival of the Lord at Greccio, make haste to go
+before and diligently prepare what I tell thee. For I would fain make
+memorial of that Child who was born in Bethlehem, and in some sort behold
+with bodily eyes His infant hardships; how He lay in a manger on the hay,
+with the ox and the ass standing by." The good man prepared all that the
+Saint had commanded, and at last the day of gladness drew nigh. The
+brethren were called from many convents; the men and women of the town
+prepared tapers and torches to illuminate the night. Finding all things
+ready, Francis beheld and rejoiced: the manger had been prepared, the hay
+was brought, and the ox and ass were led in. "Thus Simplicity was
+honoured, Poverty exalted, Humility commended, and of Greccio there was
+made as it were a new Bethlehem. The night was lit up as the day, and was
+delightsome to men and beasts.... The woodland rang with voices, the
+rocks made answer to the jubilant throng." Francis stood before the
+manger, "overcome with tenderness and filled with wondrous joy"; Mass was
+celebrated, and he, in deacon's vestments, chanted the Holy Gospel in an
+"earnest, sweet, and loud-sounding voice." Then he preached to the people
+of "the birth of the poor King and the little town of Bethlehem."
+"Uttering the word 'Bethlehem' in the manner of a sheep bleating, he
+filled his mouth with the sound," and in naming the Child Jesus "he
+would, as it were, lick his lips, relishing with happy palate and
+swallowing the sweetness of that word." At length, the solemn vigil
+ended, each one returned with joy to his own place.{38}
+
+It has been suggested by Countess Martinengo{39} that this beautiful
+ceremony was "the crystallization of haunting memories carried away by
+St. Francis from the real Bethlehem"; for he visited the east in 1219-20,
+and the Greccio celebration took place in 1224. St. Francis and his
+followers may well have helped greatly to popularize the use of the
+_presepio_, but it can be |107| traced back far earlier than their
+time. In the liturgical drama known as the "Officium Pastorum," which
+probably took shape in the eleventh century, we find a _praesepe_ behind
+the altar as the centre of the action{40}; but long before this
+something of the kind seems to have been in existence in the church of
+Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome--at one time called "Beata Maria ad
+praesepe." Here Pope Gregory III. (731-41) placed "a golden image of the
+Mother of God embracing God our Saviour, in various gems."{41} According
+to Usener's views this church was founded by Pope Liberius (352-66), and
+was intended to provide a special home for the new festival of Christmas
+introduced by him, while an important part of the early Christmas ritual
+there was the celebration of Mass over a "manger" in which the
+consecrated Host was laid, as once the body of the Holy Child in the crib
+at Bethlehem.{42} Further, an eastern homily of the late fourth century
+suggests that the preacher had before his eyes a representation of the
+Nativity. Such material representations, Usener conjectures, may have
+arisen from the devotions of the faithful at the supposed actual
+birthplace at Bethlehem, which would naturally be adorned with the sacred
+figures of the Holy Night.{43}
+
+In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the crib can be traced at
+Milan, Parma, and Modena, and an Italian example carved in 1478 still
+exists.{44} The Bavarian National Museum at Munich has a fine collection
+of cribs of various periods and from various lands--Germany, Tyrol,
+Italy, and Sicily--showing what elaborate care has been bestowed upon the
+preparation of these models. Among them is a great erection made at
+Botzen in the first half of the nineteenth century, and large enough to
+fill a fair-sized room. It represents the central square of a town, with
+imposing buildings, including a great cathedral not unlike our St.
+Paul's. Figures of various sizes were provided to suit the perspective,
+and the crib itself was probably set up in the porch of the church, while
+processions of puppets were arranged on the wide open square. Another,
+made in Munich, shows the adoration of the shepherds in a sort of ruined
+castle, while others, from Naples, lay the scene among remains of
+classical temples. One Tyrolese crib has a wide landscape background with
+a |108| village and mountains typical of the country. The figures are
+often numerous, and, as their makers generally dressed them in the
+costume of their contemporaries, are sometimes exceedingly quaint. An
+angel with a wasp-waist, in a powdered wig, a hat trimmed with big
+feathers, and a red velvet dress with heavy gold embroidery, seems comic
+to us moderns, yet this is how the Ursuline nuns of Innsbruck conceived
+the heavenly messenger. Many of the cribs and figures, however, are of
+fine artistic quality, especially those from Naples and Sicily, and to
+the student of costume the various types of dress are of great
+interest.{45}
+
+The use of the Christmas crib is by no means confined to churches; it is
+common in the home in many Catholic regions, and in at least one
+Protestant district, the Saxon Erzgebirge.{46} In Germany the _krippe_
+is often combined with the Christmas-tree; at Treves, for instance, the
+present writer saw a magnificent tree covered with glittering lights and
+ornaments, and underneath it the cave of the Nativity with little figures
+of the holy persons. Thus have pagan and Christian symbols met together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There grew up in Germany, about the fourteenth century, the extremely
+popular Christmas custom of "cradle-rocking," a response to the people's
+need of a life-like and homely presentation of Christianity. By the
+_Kindelwiegen_ the lay-folk were brought into most intimate touch with
+the Christ Child; the crib became a cradle (_wiege_) that could be
+rocked, and the worshippers were thus able to express in physical action
+their devotion to the new-born Babe. The cradle-rocking seems to have
+been done at first by priests, who impersonated the Virgin and St.
+Joseph, and sang over the Child a duet:--
+
+   "Joseph, lieber neve min,
+    Hilf mir wiegen daz kindelin.
+
+    Gerne, liebe muome min,
+    Hilf ich dir wiegen din kindelin."[37]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+A NEAPOLITAN "PRESEPIO."
+
+_Photo_] [_Meisenbach, Riffarth & Co., Munich_.]
+
+|109| The choir and people took their part in the singing; and dancing,
+to the old Germans a natural accompaniment of festive song, became common
+around the cradle, which in time the people were allowed to rock with
+their own hands.{47} "In dulci jubilo" has the character of a dance, and
+the same is true of another delightful old carol, "Lasst uns das Kindlein
+wiegen," still used, in a form modified by later editors, in the churches
+of the Rhineland. The present writer has heard it sung, very slowly, in
+unison, by vast congregations, and very beautiful is its mingling of
+solemnity, festive joy, and tender sentiment:--
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+   "Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen,
+    Das Herz zum Krippelein biegen!
+    Lasst uns den Geist erfreuen,
+    Das Kindlein benedeien:
+    O Jesulein suess! O Jesulein suess!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Lasst uns sein Haendel und Fuesse,
+    Sein feuriges Herzlein gruessen!
+    Und ihn demuetiglich eren
+    Als unsern Gott und Herren!
+    O Jesulein suess! O Jesulein suess!"[38]{48}
+
+Two Latin hymns, "Resonet in laudibus" and "Quem pastores
+laudavere,"{49} were also sung at the _Kindelwiegen_, and |110| a
+charming and quite untranslatable German lullaby has come down to us:--
+
+   "Sausa ninne, gottes minne,
+    Nu sweig und ru!
+    Wen du wilt, so wellen wir deinen willen tun,
+    Hochgelobter edler furst, nu schweig und wein auch nicht,
+    Tuste das, so wiss wir, dass uns wol geschicht."{50}
+
+It was by appeals like this _Kindelwiegen_ to the natural, homely
+instincts of the folk that the Church gained a real hold over the masses,
+making Christianity during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
+centuries a genuinely popular religion in Germany. Dr. Alexander Tille,
+the best historian of the German Christmas, has an interesting passage on
+the subject: "In the dancing and jubilation around the cradle," he
+writes, "the religion of the Cross, however much it might in its inmost
+character be opposed to the nature of the German people and their
+essential healthiness, was felt no longer as something alien. It had
+become naturalized, but had lost in the process its very core. The
+preparation for a life after death, which was its Alpha and Omega, had
+passed into the background. It was not joy at the promised 'Redemption'
+that expressed itself in the dance around the cradle; for the German has
+never learnt to feel himself utterly vile and sinful: it was joy at the
+simple fact that a human being, a particular human being in peculiar
+circumstances, was born into the world.... The Middle Ages showed in the
+cradle-rocking 'a true German and most lovable childlikeness.' The Christ
+Child was the 'universal little brother of all children of earth,' and
+they acted accordingly, they lulled Him to sleep, they fondled and rocked
+Him, they danced before Him and leapt around Him _in dulci jubilo_."{51}
+There is much here that is true of the cult of the Christ Child in other
+countries than Germany, though perhaps Dr. Tille underestimates the
+religious feeling that is often joined to the human sentiment.
+
+The fifteenth century was the great period for the _Kindelwiegen_, the
+time when it appears to have been practised in all the churches of
+Germany; in the sixteenth it began to seem |111| irreverent to the
+stricter members of the clergy, and the figure of the infant Jesus was in
+many places no longer rocked in the cradle but enthroned on the
+altar.{52} This usage is described by Naogeorgus (1553):--
+
+         "A woodden childe in clowtes is on the aultar set,
+    About the which both boyes and gyrles do daunce and trymly jet,
+    And Carrols sing in prayse of Christ, and, for to helpe them heare,
+    The organs aunswere every verse with sweete and solemne cheare.
+    The priestes do rore aloude; and round about the parentes stande
+    To see the sport, and with their voyce do helpe them and their
+          hande."{53}
+
+The placing of a "Holy Child" above the altar at Christmas is still
+customary in many Roman Catholic churches.
+
+Protestantism opposed the _Kindelwiegen_, on the grounds both of
+superstition and of the disorderly proceedings that accompanied it, but
+it was long before it was utterly extinguished even in the Lutheran
+churches. In Catholic churches the custom did not altogether die out,
+though the unseemly behaviour which often attended it--and the growth of
+a pseudo-classical taste--caused its abolition in most places.{54}
+
+At Tuebingen as late as 1830 at midnight on Christmas Eve an image of the
+Christ Child was rocked on the tower of the chief church in a small
+cradle surrounded with lights, while the spectators below sang a
+cradle-song.{55} According to a recent writer the "rocking" is still
+continued in the Upper Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of
+Brixen it was once performed every day between Christmas and Candlemas by
+the sacristan or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be
+disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the
+sacristan: "Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the boys
+are often very ill-behaved."{57}
+
+There are records of other curious ceremonies in German or Austrian
+churches. At St. Peter am Windberge in Muehlkreis in Upper Austria, during
+the service on Christmas night a life-sized wooden figure of the Holy
+Child was offered in |112| a basket to the congregation; each person
+reverently kissed it and passed it on to his neighbour. This was done as
+late as 1883.{58} At Crimmitschau in Saxony a boy, dressed as an angel,
+used to be let down from the roof singing Luther's "Vom Himmel hoch," and
+the custom was only given up when the breaking of the rope which
+supported the singer had caused a serious accident.{59}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is in Italy, probably, that the cult of the Christ Child is most
+ardently practised to-day. No people have a greater love of children than
+the Italians, none more of that dramatic instinct which such a form of
+worship demands. "Easter," says Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, "is the
+great popular feast in the eastern Church, Christmas in the
+Latin--especially in Italy. One is the feast of the next world, and the
+other of this. Italians are fond of this world."{60} Christmas is for
+the poorer Italians a summing up of human birthdays, an occasion for
+pouring out on the _Bambino_ parental and fraternal affection as well as
+religious worship.
+
+In Rome, Christmas used to be heralded by the arrival, ten days before
+the end of Advent, of the Calabrian minstrels or _pifferari_ with their
+sylvan pipes (_zampogne_), resembling the Scottish bagpipe, but less
+harsh in sound. These minstrels were to be seen in every street in Rome,
+playing their wild plaintive music before the shrines of the Madonna,
+under the traditional notion of charming away her labour-pains. Often
+they would stop at a carpenter's shop "per politezza al messer San
+Giuseppe."{61} Since 1870 the _pifferari_ have become rare in Rome, but
+some were seen there by an English lady quite recently. At Naples, too,
+there are _zampognari_ before Christmas, though far fewer than there used
+to be; for one _lira_ they will pipe their rustic melodies before any
+householder's street Madonna through a whole _novena_.{62}
+
+[Illustration:
+
+CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS.
+
+_After an Etching by D. Allan._
+
+From Hone's "Every-day Book" (London, 1826).]
+
+In Sicily, too, men come down from the mountains nine days before
+Christmas to sing a _novena_ to a plaintive melody accompanied by 'cello
+and violin. "All day long," writes Signora Caico about Montedoro in
+Caltanissetta, "the melancholy dirge  |113| was sung round the village,
+house after house, always the same minor tune, the words being different
+every day, so that in nine days the whole song was sung out.... I often
+looked out of the window to see them at a short distance, grouped before
+a house, singing their stanzas, well muffled in shawls, for the air is
+cold in spite of the bright sunshine.... The flat, white houses all
+round, the pure sky overhead, gave an Oriental setting to the scene."
+
+Another Christmas custom in the same place was the singing of a _novena_
+not outside but within some of the village houses before a kind of altar
+gaily decorated and bearing at the top a waxen image of the Child Jesus.
+"Close to it the orchestra was grouped--a 'cello, two violins, a guitar,
+and a tambourine. The kneeling women huddled in front of the altar. All
+had on their heads their black _mantelline_. They began at once singing
+the _novena_ stanzas appointed for that day; the tune was primitive and
+very odd: the first half of the stanza was quick and merry, the second
+half became a wailing dirge." A full translation of a long and very
+interesting and pathetic _novena_ is given by Signora Caico.[39]{63}
+
+The _presepio_ both in Rome and at Naples is the special Christmas symbol
+in the home, just as the lighted tree is in Germany. In Rome the Piazza
+Navona is the great place for the sale of little clay figures of the holy
+persons. (Is there perchance a survival here of the _sigillaria_, the
+little clay dolls sold in Rome at the _Saturnalia_?) These are bought in
+the market for two _soldi_ each, and the _presepi_ or "Bethlehems" are
+made at home with cardboard and moss.{64} The home-made _presepi_ at
+Naples are well described by Matilde Serao; they are pasteboard models of
+the landscape of Bethlehem--a hill with the sacred cave beneath it and
+two or three paths leading down to the grotto, a little tavern, a
+shepherd's hut, a few trees, sometimes a stream in glittering glass. The
+ground is made verdant with moss, and there is |114| straw within the
+cave for the repose of the infant Jesus; singing angels are suspended by
+thin wires, and the star of the Wise Men hangs by an invisible thread.
+There is little attempt to realize the scenery of the East; the Child is
+born and the Magi adore Him in a Campanian or Calabrian setting.{66}
+
+Italian churches, as well as Italian homes, have their _presepi_.
+"Thither come the people, bearing humble gifts of chestnuts, apples,
+tomatoes, and the like, which they place as offerings in the hands of the
+figures. These are very often life-size. Mary is usually robed in blue
+satin, with crimson scarf and white head-dress. Joseph stands near her
+dressed in the ordinary working-garb. The onlookers are got up like
+Italian contadini. The Magi are always very prominent in their grand
+clothes, with satin trains borne by black slaves, jewelled turbans, and
+satin tunics all over jewels."{67}
+
+[Illustration:
+
+ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE "PRESEPIO" AT GRECCIO.
+
+_By Giotto._
+
+(Upper Church of St Francis, Assissi)]
+
+[Illustration: THE "BAMBINO" OF ARA COELI.]
+
+In Rome the two great centres of Christmas devotion are the churches of
+Santa Maria Maggiore, where are preserved the relics of the cradle of
+Christ, and Ara Coeli, the home of the most famous _Bambino_ in the
+world. A vivid picture of the scene at Santa Maria Maggiore in the early
+nineteenth century is given by Lady Morgan. She entered the church at
+midnight on Christmas Eve to wait for the procession of the _culla_, or
+cradle. "Its three ample naves, separated by rows of Ionic columns of
+white marble, produced a splendid vista. Thousands of wax tapers marked
+their form, and contrasted their shadows; some blazed from golden
+candlesticks on the superb altars of the lateral chapels.... Draperies of
+gold and crimson decked the columns, and spread their shadows from the
+inter-columniations over the marble pavement. In the midst of this
+imposing display of church magnificence, sauntered or reposed a
+population which displayed the most squalid misery. The haggard natives
+of the mountains ... were mixed with the whole mendicity of Rome.... Some
+of these terrific groups lay stretched in heaps on the ground,
+congregating for warmth; and as their dark eyes scowled from beneath the
+mantle which half hid a sheepskin dress, they had the air of banditti
+awaiting their prey; others with their wives and children knelt, half
+asleep, |115| round the chapel of the _Santa Croce_.... In the centre
+of the nave, multitudes of gay, gaudy, noisy persons, the petty
+shopkeepers, laquais, and _popolaccio_ of the city, strolled and laughed,
+and talked loud." About three o'clock the service began, with a choral
+swell, blazing torches, and a crowded procession of priests of every rank
+and order. It lasted for two hours; then began the procession to the cell
+where the cradle lay, enshrined in a blaze of tapers and guarded by
+groups of devotees. Thence it was borne with solemn chants to the chapel
+of _Santa Croce_. A musical Mass followed, and the _culla_ being at last
+deposited on the High Altar, the wearied spectators issued forth just as
+the dome of St. Peter's caught the first light of the morning.{68}
+
+Still to-day the scene in the church at the five o'clock High Mass on
+Christmas morning is extraordinarily impressive, with the crowds of poor
+people, the countless lights at which the children gaze in open-eyed
+wonder, the many low Masses said in the side chapels, the imposing
+procession and the setting of the silver casket on the High Altar. The
+history of the relics of the _culla_--five long narrow pieces of wood--is
+obscure, but it is admitted even by some orthodox Roman Catholics that
+there is no sufficient evidence to connect them with Bethlehem.{69}
+
+The famous _Bambino_ at the Franciscan church of Ara Coeli on the citadel
+of Rome is "a flesh-coloured doll, tightly swathed in gold and silver
+tissue, crowned, and sparkling with jewels," no thing of beauty, but
+believed to have miraculous powers. An inscription in the sacristy of the
+church states that it was made by a devout Minorite of wood from the
+Mount of Olives, and given flesh-colour by the interposition of God
+Himself. It has its own servants and its own carriage in which it drives
+out to visit the sick. There is a strange story of a theft of the
+wonder-working image by a woman who feigned sickness, obtained permission
+to have the _Bambino_ left with her, and then sent back to the friars
+another image dressed in its clothes. That night the Franciscans heard
+great ringing of bells and knockings at the church door, and found
+outside the true _Bambino_, naked in the wind and rain. Since then it has
+never been allowed out alone.{70}
+
+|116| All through the Christmas and Epiphany season Ara Coeli is
+crowded with visitors to the _Bambino_. Before the _presepio_, where it
+lies, is erected a wooden platform on which small boys and girls of all
+ranks follow one another with little speeches--"preaching" it is
+called--in praise of the infant Lord. "They say their pieces," writes
+Countess Martinengo, "with an infinite charm that raises half a smile and
+half a tear." They have the vivid dramatic gift, the extraordinary
+absence of self-consciousness, typical of Italian children, and their
+"preaching" is anything but a wooden repetition of a lesson learned by
+heart. Nor is there any irksome constraint; indeed to northerners the
+scene in the church might seem irreverent, for the children blow toy
+trumpets and their parents talk freely on all manner of subjects. The
+church is approached by one hundred and twenty-four steps, making an
+extraordinarily picturesque spectacle at this season, when they are
+thronged by people ascending and descending, and by vendors of all sorts
+of Christmas prints and images. On the Octave of the Epiphany there is a
+great procession, ending with the blessing of Rome by the Holy Child. The
+_Bambino_ is carried out to the space at the top of the giddy flight of
+marble steps, and a priest raises it on high and solemnly blesses the
+Eternal City.{71}
+
+A glimpse of the southern Christmas may be had in London in the Italian
+colony in and around Eyre Street Hill, off the Clerkenwell Road, a little
+town of poor Italians set down in the midst of the metropolis. The steep,
+narrow Eyre Street Hill, with its shops full of southern wares, is dingy
+enough by day, but after dark on Christmas Eve it looks like a bit of
+Naples. The windows are gay with lights and coloured festoons, there are
+lantern-decked sweetmeat stalls, one old man has a _presepio_ in his
+room, other people have little altars or shrines with candles burning,
+and bright pictures of saints adorn the walls. It is a strangely pathetic
+sight, this _festa_ of the children of the South, this attempt to keep an
+Italian Christmas amid the cold damp dreariness of a London slum. The
+colony has its own church, San Pietro, copied from some Renaissance
+basilica at Rome, a building half tawdry, half magnificent, which
+transports him who enters it far away to the South. Like every Italian
+church, it is |117| at once the Palace of the Great King and the refuge
+of the humblest--no other church in London is quite so intimately the
+home of the poor. Towards twelve o'clock on Christmas Eve the deep-toned
+bell of San Pietro booms out over the colony, and the people crowd to the
+Midnight Mass, and pay their devotions at a great _presepio_ set up for
+the veneration of the faithful. When on the Octave of the Epiphany[40]
+the time comes to close the crib, an impressive and touching ceremony
+takes place. The afternoon Benediction over, the priest, with the
+acolytes, goes to the _presepio_ and returns to the chancel with the
+_Bambino_. Holding it on his arm, he preaches in Italian on the story of
+the Christ Child. The sermon ended, the notes of "Adeste, fideles" are
+heard, and while the Latin words are sung the faithful kneel at the altar
+rails and reverently kiss the Holy Babe. It is their farewell to the
+_Bambino_ till next Christmas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few details may here be given about the religious customs at Christmas
+in Spain. The Midnight Mass is there the great event of the festival.
+Something has already been said as to its celebration in Madrid. The
+scene at the midnight service in a small Andalusian country town is thus
+described by an English traveller:--"The church was full; the service
+orderly; the people of all classes. There were muleteers, wrapped in
+their blue and white checked rugs; here, Spanish gentlemen, enveloped in
+their graceful capas, or capes ... here, again, were crowds of the
+commonest people,--miners, fruitsellers, servants, and the like,--the
+women kneeling on the rush matting of the dimly-lit church, the men
+standing in dark masses behind, or clustering in groups round every
+pillar.... At last, from under the altar, the senior priest ... took out
+the image of the Babe New-born, reverently and slowly, and held it up in
+his hands for adoration. Instantly every one crossed himself, and fell on
+his knees in silent worship."{72} The crib is very popular in Spanish
+homes and is the delight of children, as may be learnt from Fernan
+Caballero's interesting sketch of Christmas Eve in Spain, "La Noche de
+Navidad."{73}
+
+|118| In England the Christmas crib is to be found nowadays in most
+Roman, and a few Anglican, churches. In the latter it is of course an
+imitation, not a survival. It is, however, possible that the custom of
+carrying dolls about in a box at Advent or Christmas time, common in some
+parts of England in the nineteenth century, is a survival, from the
+Middle Ages, of something like the crib. The so-called "vessel-cup" was
+"a box containing two dolls, dressed up to represent the Virgin and the
+infant Christ, decorated with ribbons and surrounded by flowers and
+apples." The box had usually a glass lid, was covered by a white napkin,
+and was carried from door to door by a woman.{74} It was esteemed very
+unlucky for any household not to be visited by the "Advent images" before
+Christmas Eve, and the bearers sang the well-known carol of the "Joys of
+Mary."{75} In Yorkshire only one image was carried about.{76} At
+Gilmorton, Leicestershire, a friend of the present writer remembers that
+the children used to carry round what they called a "Christmas Vase," an
+open box without lid in which lay three dolls side by side, with oranges
+and sprigs of evergreen. Some people regarded these as images of the
+Virgin, the Christ Child, and Joseph.[41]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In this study of the feast of the Nativity as represented in liturgy and
+ceremonial we have already come close to what may strictly be called
+drama; in the next chapter we shall cross the border line and consider
+the religious plays of the Middle Ages and the relics of or parallels to
+them found in later times.
+
+|119| |120| |121|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CHRISTMAS DRAMA
+
+
+    Origins of the Mediaeval Drama--Dramatic Tendencies in the
+    Liturgy--Latin Liturgical Plays--The Drama becomes
+    Laicized--Characteristics of the Popular Drama--The Nativity in the
+    English Miracle Cycles--Christmas Mysteries in France--Later French
+    Survivals of Christmas Drama--German Christmas Plays--Mediaeval
+    Italian Plays and Pageants--Spanish Nativity Plays--Modern Survivals
+    in Various Countries--The Star-singers, &c.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.
+
+From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries at
+Burlington House (by permission).
+
+(Photo lent by Mr. F. Sidgwick, who has published the print on a modern
+Christmas broadside.)]
+
+In this chapter the Christian side only of the Christmas drama will be
+treated. Much folk-drama of pagan origin has gathered round the festival,
+but this we shall study in our Second Part. Our subject here is the
+dramatic representation of the story of the Nativity and the events
+immediately connected with it. The Christmas drama has passed through the
+same stages as the poetry of the Nativity. There is first a monastic and
+hieratic stage, when the drama is but an expansion of the liturgy, a
+piece of ceremonial performed by clerics with little attempt at
+verisimilitude and with Latin words drawn mainly from the Bible or the
+offices of the Church. Then, as the laity come to take a more personal
+interest in Christianity, we find fancy beginning to play around the
+subject, bringing out its human pathos and charm, until, after a
+transitional stage, the drama leaves the sanctuary, passes from Latin to
+the vulgar tongue, is played by lay performers in the streets and squares
+of the city, and, while its framework remains religious, takes into
+itself episodes of a more or less secular character. The Latin liturgical
+plays are to the "miracles" and "mysteries" of the later Middle Ages as a
+Romanesque church, solemn, oppressive, hieratic, to |122| a Gothic
+cathedral, soaring, audacious, reflecting every phase of the popular
+life.
+
+The mediaeval religious drama{1} was a natural development from the
+Catholic liturgy, not an imitation of classical models. The classical
+drama had expired at the break-up of the Roman Empire; its death was due
+largely, indeed, to the hostility of Christianity, but also to the rude
+indifference of the barbarian invaders. Whatever secular dramatic
+impulses remained in the Dark Ages showed themselves not in public and
+organized performances, but obscurely in the songs and mimicry of
+minstrels and in traditional folk-customs. Both of these classes of
+practices were strongly opposed by the Church, because of their
+connection with heathenism and the licence towards which they tended. Yet
+the dramatic instinct could not be suppressed. The folk-drama in such
+forms as the Feast of Fools found its way, as we shall see, even into the
+sanctuary, and--most remarkable fact of all--the Church's own services
+took on more and more a dramatic character.
+
+While the secular stage decayed, the Church was building up a stately
+system of ritual. It is needless to dwell upon the dramatic elements in
+Catholic worship. The central act of Christian devotion, the Eucharist,
+is in its essence a drama, a representation of the death of the Redeemer
+and the participation of the faithful in its benefits, and around this
+has gathered in the Mass a multitude of dramatic actions expressing
+different aspects of the Redemption. Nor, of course, is there merely
+symbolic _action_; the offices of the Church are in great part
+_dialogues_ between priest and people, or between two sets of singers. It
+was from this antiphonal song, this alternation of versicle and respond,
+that the religious drama of the Middle Ages took its rise. In the ninth
+century the "Antiphonarium" traditionally ascribed to Pope Gregory the
+Great had become insufficient for ambitious choirs, and the practice grew
+up of supplementing it by new melodies and words inserted at the
+beginning or end or even in the middle of the old antiphons. The new
+texts were called "tropes," and from the ninth to the thirteenth century
+many were written. An interesting Christmas |123| example is the
+following ninth-century trope ascribed to Tutilo of St. Gall:--
+
+    "Hodie cantandus est nobis puer, quem gignebat ineffabiliter ante
+    tempora pater, et eundem sub tempore generavit inclyta mater. (To-day
+    must we sing of a Child, whom in unspeakable wise His Father begat
+    before all times, and whom, within time, a glorious mother brought
+    forth.)
+
+    Int[errogatio].
+
+    Quis est iste puer quem tam magnis praeconiis dignum vociferatis?
+    Dicite nobis ut collaudatores esse possimus. (Who is this Child whom
+    ye proclaim worthy of so great laudations? Tell us that we also may
+    praise Him.)
+
+    Resp[onsio].
+
+    Hic enim est quem praesagus et electus symmista Dei ad terram
+    venturum praevidens longe ante praenotavit, sicque praedixit. (This
+    is He whose coming to earth the prophetic and chosen initiate into
+    the mysteries of God foresaw and pointed out long before, and thus
+    foretold.)"
+
+Here followed at once the Introit for the third Mass of Christmas Day,
+"Puer natus est nobis, et filius datus est nobis, &c. (Unto us a child is
+born, unto us a son is given.)" The question and answer were no doubt
+sung by different choirs.{2}
+
+One can well imagine that this might develop into a regular little drama.
+As a matter of fact, however, it was from an Easter trope in the same
+manuscript, the "Quem quaeritis," a dialogue between the three Maries and
+the angel at the sepulchre, that the liturgical drama sprang. The trope
+became very popular, and was gradually elaborated into a short symbolic
+drama, and its popularity led to the composition of similar pieces for
+Christmas and Ascensiontide. Here is the Christmas trope from a St. Gall
+manuscript:--
+
+    "_On the Nativity of the Lord at Mass let there be ready two deacons
+    having on dalmatics, behind the altar, saying_:
+
+    Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite? (Whom seek ye in the
+    manger, say, ye shepherds?) |124|
+
+    _Let two cantors in the choir answer_:
+
+    Salvatorem Christum Dominum, infantem pannis involutum, secundum
+    sermonem angelicum. (The Saviour, Christ the Lord, a child wrapped in
+    swaddling clothes, according to the angelic word.)
+
+    _And the deacons_:
+
+    Adest hic parvulus cum Maria, matre sua, de qua, vaticinando, Isaias
+    Propheta: ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium; et nuntiantes dicite
+    quia natus est. (Present here is the little one with Mary, His
+    Mother, of whom Isaiah the prophet foretold: Behold, a virgin shall
+    conceive, and shall bring forth a son; and do ye say and announce
+    that He is born.)
+
+    _Then let the cantor lift up his voice and say_:
+
+    Alleluia, alleluia, jam vere scimus Christum natum in terris, de quo
+    canite, omnes, cum Propheta dicentes: Puer natus est! (Alleluia,
+    alleluia. Now we know indeed that Christ is born on earth, of whom
+    sing ye all, saying with the Prophet: Unto us a child is born.)"{3}
+
+The dramatic character of this is very marked. A comparison with later
+liturgical plays suggests that the two deacons in their broad vestments
+were meant to represent the midwives mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel
+of St. James, and the cantors the shepherds.
+
+A development from this trope, apparently, was the "Office of the
+Shepherds," which probably took shape in the eleventh century, though it
+is first given in a Rouen manuscript of the thirteenth. It must have been
+an impressive ceremony as performed in the great cathedral, dimly lit
+with candles, and full of mysterious black recesses and hints of
+infinity. Behind the high altar a _praesepe_ or "crib" was prepared, with
+an image of the Virgin. After the "Te Deum" had been sung five canons or
+their vicars, clad in albs and amices, entered by the great door of the
+choir, and proceeded towards the apse. These were the shepherds. Suddenly
+from high above them came a clear boy's voice: "Fear not, behold I bring
+you good tidings of great joy," and the rest of the angelic message. The
+"multitude of the heavenly host" was represented by other boys stationed
+probably |125| in the triforium galleries, who broke out into the
+exultant "Gloria in excelsis." Singing a hymn, "Pax in terris nunciatur,"
+the shepherds advanced towards the crib where two priests--the
+midwives--awaited them. These addressed to the shepherds the question
+"Whom seek ye in the manger?" and then came the rest of the "Quem
+quaeritis" which we already know, a hymn to the Virgin being sung while
+the shepherds adored the Infant. Mass followed immediately, the little
+drama being merely a prelude.{4}
+
+More important than this Office of the Shepherds is an Epiphany play
+called by various names, "Stella," "Tres Reges," "Magi," or "Herodes,"
+and found in different forms at Limoges, Rouen, Laon, Compiegne,
+Strasburg, Le Mans, Freising in Bavaria, and other places. Mr. E. K.
+Chambers suggests that its kernel is a dramatized Offertory. It was a
+custom for Christian kings to present gold, frankincense, and myrrh at
+the Epiphany--the offering is still made by proxy at the Chapel Royal,
+St. James's--and Mr. Chambers takes "the play to have served as a
+substitute for this ceremony, when no king actually regnant was
+present."{5} Its most essential features were the appearance of the Star
+of Bethlehem to the Magi, and their offering of the mystic gifts. The
+star, bright with candles, hung from the roof of the church, and was
+sometimes made to move.
+
+In the Rouen version of the play it is ordered that on the day of the
+Epiphany, Terce having been sung, three clerics, robed as kings, shall
+come from the east, north, and south, and meet before the altar, with
+their servants bearing the offerings of the Magi. The king from the east,
+pointing to the star with his stick, exclaims:--
+
+    "Stella fulgore nimio rutilat. (The star glows with exceeding
+    brightness.)"
+
+The second monarch answers:
+
+    "Quae regem regum natum demonstrat. (Which shows the birth of the
+    King of Kings.)" |126|
+
+And the third:
+
+    "Quem venturum olim prophetiae signaverant. (To whose coming the
+    prophecies of old had pointed.)"
+
+Then the Magi kiss one another and together sing:
+
+    "Eamus ergo et inquiramus eum, offerentes ei munera: aurum, thus, et
+    myrrham. (Let us therefore go and seek Him, offering unto Him gifts:
+    gold, frankincense, and myrrh.)"
+
+Antiphons are sung, a procession is formed, and the Magi go to a certain
+altar above which an image of the Virgin has been placed with a lighted
+star before it. Two priests in dalmatics--apparently the
+midwives--standing on either side of the altar, inquire who the Magi are,
+and receiving their answer, draw aside a curtain and bid them approach to
+worship the Child, "for He is the redemption of the world." The three
+kings do adoration, and offer their gifts, each with a few pregnant
+words:--
+
+     "Suscipe, rex, aurum. (Receive, O King, gold.)"
+     "Tolle thus, tu vere Deus. (Accept incense, Thou very God.)"
+     "Myrrham, signum sepulturae. (Myrrh, the sign of burial.)"
+
+The clergy and people then make their offerings, while the Magi fall
+asleep and are warned by an angel to return home another way. This they
+do symbolically by proceeding back to the choir by a side aisle.{6}
+
+In its later forms the Epiphany play includes the appearance of Herod,
+who is destined to fill a very important place in the mediaeval drama.
+Hamlet's saying "he out-Herods Herod" sufficiently suggests the raging
+tyrant whom the playwrights of the Middle Ages loved. His appearance
+marks perhaps the first introduction into the Christian religious play of
+the evil principle so necessary to dramatic effect. At first Herod holds
+merely a mild conversation with the Magi, begging them to tell him when
+they have found the new-born King; in later versions of the play,
+however, his wrath is shown on learning that the Wise Men have |127|
+departed home by another way; he breaks out into bloodthirsty tirades,
+orders the slaying of the Innocents, and in one form takes a sword and
+brandishes it in the air. He becomes in fact the outstanding figure in
+the drama, and one can understand why it was sometimes named after him.
+
+In the Laon "Stella" the actual murder of the Innocents was represented,
+the symbolical figure of Rachel weeping over her children being
+introduced. The plaint and consolation of Rachel, it should be noted,
+seem at first to have formed an independent little piece performed
+probably on Holy Innocents' Day.{7} This later coalesced with the
+"Stella," as did also the play of the shepherds, and, at a still later
+date, another liturgical drama which we must now consider--the
+"Prophetae."
+
+This had its origin in a sermon (wrongly ascribed to St. Augustine)
+against Jews, Pagans, and Arians, a portion of which was used in many
+churches as a Christmas lesson. It begins with a rhetorical appeal to the
+Jews who refuse to accept Jesus as the Messiah in spite of the witness of
+their own prophets. Ten prophets are made to give their testimony, and
+then three Pagans are called upon, Virgil, Nebuchadnezzar and the
+Erythraean Sibyl. The sermon has a strongly dramatic character, and when
+chanted in church the parts of the preacher and the prophets were
+possibly distributed among different choristers. In time it developed
+into a regular drama, and more prophets were brought in. It was, indeed,
+the germ of the great Old Testament cycles of the later Middle Ages.{8}
+
+An extension of the "Prophetae" was the Norman or Anglo-Norman play of
+"Adam," which began with the Fall, continued with Cain and Abel, and
+ended with the witness of the prophets. In the other direction the
+"Prophetae" was extended by the addition of the "Stella." It so happens
+that there is no text of a Latin drama containing both these extensions
+at the same time, but such a play probably existed. From the
+mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century, indeed, there was a
+tendency for the plays to run together into cycles and become too long
+and too elaborate for performance in church. In the eleventh century,
+even, they had begun to pass out into the churchyard or |128| the
+market-place, and to be played not only by the clergy but by laymen. This
+change had extremely important effects on their character. In the first
+place the vulgar tongue crept in. As early, possibly, as the twelfth
+century are the Norman "Adam" and the Spanish "Misterio de los Reyes
+Magos," the former, as we have seen, an extended vernacular "Prophetae,"
+the latter, a fragment of a highly developed vernacular "Stella." They
+are the first of the popular as distinguished from the liturgical plays;
+they were meant, as their language shows, for the instruction and delight
+of the folk; they were not to be listened to, like the mysterious Latin
+of the liturgy, in uncomprehending reverence, but were to be understanded
+of the people.
+
+The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw a progressive supplanting of
+Latin by the common speech, until, in the great cycles, only a few scraps
+of the church language were left to tell of the liturgical origin of the
+drama. The process of popularization, the development of the plays from
+religious ceremonial to lively drama, was probably greatly helped by the
+_goliards_ or vagabond scholars, young, poor, and fond of amusement, who
+wandered over Europe from teacher to teacher, from monastery to
+monastery, in search of learning. Their influence is shown not merely in
+the broadening of the drama, but also in its passing from the Latin of
+the monasteries to the language of the common folk.
+
+A consequence of the outdoor performance of the plays was that Christmas,
+in the northern countries at all events, was found an unsuitable time for
+them. The summer was naturally preferred, and we find comparatively few
+mentions of plays at Christmas in the later Middle Ages. Whitsuntide and
+Corpus Christi became more popular dates, especially in England, and the
+pieces then performed were vast cosmic cycles, like the York, Chester,
+Towneley, and "Coventry" plays, in which the Christmas and Epiphany
+episodes formed but links in an immense chain extending from the Creation
+to the Last Judgment, and representing the whole scheme of salvation. It
+is in these Nativity scenes, however, that we have the only English
+renderings of the Christmas story in drama,{9} and though they |129|
+were actually performed not at the winter festival[42] but in the summer,
+they give in so striking a way the feelings, the point of view, of our
+mediaeval forefathers in regard to the Nativity that we are justified in
+dealing with them here at some length.
+
+As the drama became laicized, it came to reflect that strange medley of
+conflicting elements, pagan and Christian, materialistic and spiritual,
+which was the actual religion of the folk, as distinguished from the
+philosophical theology of the doctors and councils and the mysticism of
+the ascetics. The popularizing of Christianity had reached its climax in
+most countries of western Europe in the fifteenth century, approximately
+the period of the great "mysteries." However little the ethical teaching
+of Jesus may have been acted upon, the Christian religion on its external
+side had been thoroughly appropriated by the people and wrought into a
+many-coloured polytheism, a true reflection of their minds.
+
+The figures of the drama are contemporaries of the spectators both in
+garb and character; they are not Orientals of ancient times, but
+Europeans of the end of the Middle Ages. Bethlehem is a "faier borow,"
+Herod a "mody king," like unto some haughty, capricious, and violent
+monarch of the time, the shepherds are rustics of England or Germany or
+France or Italy, the Magi mighty potentates with gorgeous trains, and the
+Child Himself is a little being subject to all the pains and necessities
+of infancy, but delighted with sweet and pleasant things like a bob of
+cherries or a ball. The realism of the writers is sometimes astounding,
+and comic elements often appear--to the people of the Middle Ages
+religion was so real and natural a thing that they could laugh at it
+without ceasing to believe in or to love it.
+
+The English mediaeval playwrights, it may safely be said, are surpassed
+by no foreigners in their treatment of Christmas subjects. To illustrate
+their way of handling the scenes I may |130| gather from the four great
+cycles a few of the most interesting passages.
+
+From the so-called "Ludus Coventriae" I take the arrival of Joseph and
+Mary at Bethlehem; they ask a man in the street where they may find an
+inn:--
+
+   "_Joseph._  Heyl, wurchepful sere, and good day!
+      A ceteceyn of this cyte ye seme to be;
+    Of herborwe[43] ffor spowse and me I yow pray,
+      ffor trewly this woman is fful were,
+              And fayn at reste, sere, wold she be;
+
+    We wolde ffulffylle the byddynge of oure emperoure,
+    ffor to pay tribute, as right is oure,
+    And to kepe oureselfe ffrom dolowre,
+              We are come to this cyte.
+
+    _Cives._  Sere, ostage in this towne know I non,
+      Thin wyff and thou in for to slepe;
+    This cete is besett with pepyl every won,
+      And yett thei ly withowte fful every strete.
+
+    Withinne no walle, man, comyst thou nowth,
+      Be thou onys[44] withinne the cyte gate;
+    Onethys[45] in the strete a place may be sowth,
+      Theron to reste, withowte debate.
+
+    _Joseph._  Nay, sere, debate that wyl I nowth;
+      Alle suche thyngys passyn my powere:
+    But yitt my care and alle my thought
+      Is for Mary, my derlynge dere.
+
+    A! swete wyff, wat xal we do?
+      Wher xal we logge this nyght?
+    Onto the ffadyr of heffne pray we so,
+      Us to kepe ffrom every wykkyd whyt.
+
+    _Cives._  Good man, o word I wyl the sey,
+      If thou wylt do by the counsel of me;
+    Yondyr is an hous of haras[46] that stant be the wey,
+      Amonge the bestys herboryd may ye be. |131|
+
+    _Maria._  Now the fadyr of hefne he mut yow yelde!
+      His sone in my wombe forsothe he is;
+    He kepe the and thi good be fryth and ffelde!
+      Go we hens, husbond, for now tyme it is."{11}
+
+The scene immediately after the Nativity is delicately and reverently
+presented in the York cycle. The Virgin worships the Child, saluting Him
+thus:--
+
+   "Hayle my lord God! hayle prince of pees!
+    Hayle my fadir, and hayle my sone!
+    Hayle souereyne sege all synnes to sesse!
+    Hayle God and man in erth to wonne![47]
+                Hayle! thurgh whos myht
+    All this worlde was first be-gonne,
+                merkness[48] and light.
+
+    Sone, as I am sympill sugett of thyne,
+    Vowchesaffe, swete sone I pray the,
+    That I myght the take in the[r] armys of mine,
+    And in this poure wede to arraie the;
+                Graunte me thi blisse!
+    As I am thy modir chosen to be
+                in sothfastnesse."
+
+Joseph, who has gone out to get a light, returns, and this dialogue
+follows:--
+
+   "_Joseph._  Say, Marie doghtir, what chere with the?
+    _Mary._    Right goode, Joseph, as has been ay.
+    _Joseph._  O Marie! what swete thyng is that on thy kne?
+    _Mary._    It is my sone, the soth to saye, that is so gud
+    _Joseph._  Wel is me I bade this day, to se this foode![49]
+        Me merueles mekill of this light
+        That thus-gates shynes in this place,
+        For suth it is a selcouth[50] sight! |132|
+    _Mary._    This hase he ordand of his grace, my sone so ying,
+        A starne to be schynyng a space at his bering
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Joseph._ Nowe welcome, floure fairest of hewe,
+        I shall the menske[51] with mayne and myght.
+        Hayle! my maker, hayle Crist Jesu!
+        Hayle, riall king, roote of all right!
+                           Hayle, saueour.
+        Hayle, my lorde, lemer[52] of light,
+                           Hayle, blessid floure!
+
+    _Mary._    Nowe lord! that all this worlde schall wynne,
+        To the my sone is that I saye,
+        Here is no bedde to laye the inne,
+        Therfore my dere sone, I the praye sen it is soo,
+        Here in this cribbe I myght the lay betwene ther bestis two.
+        And I sall happe[53] the, myn owne dere childe,
+        With such clothes as we haue here.
+
+    _Joseph._  O Marie! beholde thes beestis mylde,
+        They make louyng in ther manere as thei wer men.
+        For-sothe it semes wele be ther chere thare lord thei ken.
+
+    _Mary._    Ther lorde thai kenne, that wate I wele,
+        They worshippe hym with myght and mayne;
+        The wedir is colde, as ye may feele,
+        To halde hym warme thei are full fayne, with thare warme
+            breth."{12}
+
+The playwrights are at their best in the shepherd scenes; indeed these
+are the most original parts of the cycles, for here the writers found
+little to help them in theological tradition, and were thrown upon their
+own wit. In humorous dialogue and naive sentiment the lusty burgesses of
+the fifteenth century were thoroughly at home, and the comedy and pathos
+of these scenes must have been as welcome a relief to the spectators,
+from the |133| long-winded solemnity of many of the plays, as they are
+to modern readers. In the York mysteries the shepherds make uncouth
+exclamations at the song of the angels and ludicrously try to imitate it.
+The Chester shepherds talk in a very natural way of such things as the
+diseases of sheep, sit down with much relish to a meal of "ale of
+Halton," sour milk, onions, garlick and leeks, green cheese, a sheep's
+head soused in ale, and other items; then they call their lad Trowle, who
+grumbles because his wages have not been paid, refuses to eat, wrestles
+with his masters and throws them all. They sit down discomfited; then the
+Star of Bethlehem appears, filling them with wonder, which grows when
+they hear the angels' song of "Gloria in excelsis." They discuss what the
+words were--"glore, glare with a glee," or, "glori, glory, glorious," or,
+"glory, glory, with a glo." At length they go to Bethlehem, and arrived
+at the stable, the first shepherd exclaims:--
+
+   "Sym, Sym, sickerlye
+    Heare I see Marye,
+    And Jesus Christe faste by,
+    Lapped in haye."{13}
+
+Joseph is strangely described:--
+
+   "Whatever this oulde man that heare is,
+    Take heede howe his head is whore,
+    His beirde is like a buske of breyers,
+    With a pound of heaire about his mouth and more."{14}
+
+Their gifts to the Infant are a bell, a flask, a spoon to eat pottage
+with, and a cape. Trowle the servant has nought to offer but a pair of
+his wife's old hose; four boys follow with presents of a bottle, a hood,
+a pipe, and a nut-hook. Quaint are the words of the last two givers:--
+
+        "_The Thirde Boye._
+
+    O, noble childe of thee!
+    Alas! what have I for thee,
+    Save only my pipe? |134|
+    Elles trewly nothinge,
+    Were I in the rockes or in,
+    I coulde make this pippe
+    That all this woode should ringe,
+    And quiver, as yt were.
+
+        _The Fourth Boye._
+
+    Nowe, childe, although thou be comon from God,
+    And be God thy selfe in thy manhoode,
+    Yet I knowe that in thy childehoode
+    Thou wylte for sweete meate loke,
+    To pull downe aples, peares, and plumes,
+    Oulde Joseph shall not nede to hurte his thombes,
+    Because thou hast not pleintie of crombes,
+    I geve thee heare my nutthocke."{15}
+
+Let no one deem this irreverent; the spirit of this adoration of the
+shepherds is intensely devout; they go away longing to tell all the world
+the wonder they have seen; one will become a pilgrim; even the rough
+Trowle exclaims that he will forsake the shepherd's craft and will betake
+himself to an anchorite's hard by, in prayers to "wache and wake."
+
+More famous than this Chester "Pastores" are the two shepherd plays in
+the Towneley cycle.{16} The first begins with racy talk, leading to a
+wrangle between two of the shepherds about some imaginary sheep; then a
+third arrives and makes fun of them both; a feast follows, with much
+homely detail; they go to sleep and are awakened by the angelic message;
+after much debate over its meaning and over the foretellings of the
+prophets--one of them, strangely enough, quotes a Latin passage from
+Virgil--they go to Bethlehem and present to the Child a "lytyll spruse
+cofer," a ball, and a gourd-bottle.
+
+The second play surpasses in humour anything else in the mediaeval drama
+of any country. We find the shepherds first complaining of the cold and
+their hard lot; they are "al lappyd in sorow." They talk, almost like
+modern Socialists, of the oppressions of the rich:--
+
+     "For the tylthe of our landys lyys falow as the floore,
+           As ye ken. |135|
+      We ar so hamyd,[54]
+      For-taxed and ramyd,[55]
+      We ar mayde hand-tamyd,
+        With thyse gentlery men.
+
+    Thus thay refe[56] us our rest, Our Lady theym wary![57]
+    These men that ar lord-fest,[58] they cause the ploghe tary."
+
+To these shepherds joins himself Mak, a thieving neighbour. Going to
+sleep, they make him lie between them, for they doubt his honesty. But
+for all their precautions he manages to steal a sheep, and carries it
+home to his wife. She thinks of an ingenious plan for concealing it from
+the shepherds if they visit the cottage seeking their lost property: she
+will pretend that she is in child-bed and that the sheep is the new-born
+infant. So it is wrapped up and laid in a cradle, and Mak sings a
+lullaby. The shepherds do suspect Mak, and come to search his house; his
+wife upbraids them and keeps them from the cradle. They depart, but
+suddenly an idea comes to one of them:--
+
+     "_The First Shepherd._  Gaf ye the chyld any thyng?
+      _The Second._  I trow not oone farthyng.
+      _The Third._  Fast agane will I flyng,
+          Abyde ye me there. [_He goes back._]
+    Mak, take it to no grefe, if I com to thi barne."
+
+Mak tries to put him off, but the shepherd will have his way:--
+
+   "Gyf me lefe hym to kys, and lyft up the clowtt.
+    What the devill is this? he has a long snowte."
+
+So the secret is out. Mak's wife gives a desperate explanation:--
+
+   "He was takyn with an elfe,
+    I saw it myself.
+    When the clok stroke twelf
+      Was he forshapyn."
+
+|136| Naturally this avails nothing, and her husband is given a good
+tossing by the shepherds until they are tired out and lie down to rest.
+Then comes the "Gloria in excelsis" and the call of the angel:--
+
+   "Ryse, hyrd men heynd! for now is he borne
+    That shall take fro the feynd that Adam had lorne:
+    That warloo[59] to sheynd,[60] this nyght is he borne,
+    God is made youre freynd: now at this morne
+      He behestys,
+    At Bedlem go se,
+    Ther lygys that fre[61]
+    In a cryb fulle poorely,
+      Betwyx two bestys."
+
+The shepherds wonder at the song, and one of them tries to imitate it;
+then they go even unto Bethlehem, and there follows the quaintest and
+most delightful of Christmas carols:--
+
+        "_Primus Pastor._
+
+    Hail, comly and clene,
+      Hail, yong child!
+    Hail, maker, as I meene,
+      Of a maden so milde!
+    Thou has wared,[62] I weene,
+      The warlo[63] so wilde;
+    The fals giler of teen,[64]
+      Now goes he begilde.
+        Lo! he merys,[65]
+    Lo! he laghes, my sweting.
+    A welfare meting!
+    I have holden my heting.[66]
+    Have a bob of cherys!
+
+        _Secundus Pastor._
+
+    Hail, sufferan Savioure,
+      For thou has us soght!
+    Hail, frely[67] foyde[68] and floure,
+      That all thing has wroght! |137|
+    Hail, full of favoure,
+      That made all of noght!
+    Hail, I kneel and I cowre.
+      A bird have I broght
+        To my barne.
+    Hail, litel tine mop![69]
+    Of oure crede thou art crop;[70]
+    I wold drink on thy cop,
+        Litel day starne.
+
+            _Tertius Pastor._
+
+    Hail, derling dere,
+      Full of godhede!
+    I pray thee be nere
+      When that I have nede.
+    Hail! swete is thy chere;[71]
+      My hart wolde blede
+    To see thee sitt here
+      In so poore wede,
+        With no pennys.
+    Hail! Put forth thy dall![72]
+    I bring thee bot a ball;
+    Have and play thee with all,
+        And go to the tenis!"{17}
+
+The charm of this will be felt by every reader; it lies in a curious
+incongruity--extreme homeliness joined to awe; the Infinite is contained
+within the narrowest human bounds; God Himself, the Creator and Sustainer
+of the universe, a weak, helpless child. But a step more, and all would
+have been irreverence; as it is we have devotion, human, naive, and
+touching.
+
+It would be interesting to show how other scenes connected with Christmas
+are handled in the English miracle-plays: how Octavian (Caesar Augustus)
+sent out the decree that all the world should be taxed, and learned from
+the Sibyl the birth of Christ; how the Magi were led by the star and
+offered their symbolic gifts; how the raging of the boastful tyrant
+Herod, the |138| Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt
+are treated; but these scenes, though full of colour, are on the whole
+less remarkable than the shepherd and Nativity pieces, and space forbids
+us to dwell upon them. They contain many curious anachronisms, as when
+Herod invokes Mahounde, and talks about his princes, prelates, barons,
+baronets and burgesses.[73]
+
+The religious play in England did not long survive the Reformation. Under
+the influence of Protestantism, with its vigilant dread of profanity and
+superstition, the cycles were shorn of many of their scenes, the
+performances became irregular, and by the end of the sixteenth century
+they had mostly ceased to be. Not sacred story, but the play of human
+character, was henceforth the material of the drama. The rich, variegated
+religion of the people, communal in its expression, tinged everywhere
+with human colour, gave place to a sterner, colder, more individual
+faith, fearful of contamination by the use of the outward and visible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is little or no trace in the vernacular Christmas plays of direct
+translation from one language into another, though there was some
+borrowing of motives. Thus the Christmas drama of each nation has its own
+special flavour.
+
+If we turn to France, we find a remarkable fifteenth-century cycle that
+belongs purely to the winter festival, and shows the strictly Christmas
+drama at its fullest development. This great mystery of the "Incarnacion
+et nativite de nostre saulveur et redempteur Jesuchrist" was performed
+out-of-doors at Rouen in 1474, an exceptional event for a northern city
+in winter-time. The twenty-four _establies_ or "mansions" set up for the
+various scenes reached across the market-place from the "Axe and Crown"
+Inn to the "Angel."
+
+|139| After a prologue briefly explaining its purpose, the mystery
+begins, like the old liturgical plays, with the witness of the prophets;
+then follows a scene in Limbo where Adam is shown lamenting his fate, and
+another in Heaven where the Redemption of mankind is discussed and the
+Incarnation decided upon. With the Annunciation and the Visitation of the
+Virgin the first day closed. The second day opened with the ordering by
+Octavian of the world-census. The edict is addressed:--
+
+   "A tous roys, marquis, ducs et contes,
+    Connestables, bailifs, vicomtes
+    Et tous autres generalment
+    Qui sont desoubz le firmament."
+
+Joseph, in order to fulfil the command of Cyrenius, governor of Syria,
+leaves Nazareth for Bethlehem. A comic shepherds' scene follows, with a
+rustic song:--
+
+   "Joyeusement, la garenlo,
+    Chantons en venant a la veille,
+    Puisque nous avons la bouteille
+    Nous y berons jusques a bo."
+
+When Joseph and Mary reach the stable where the Nativity is to take
+place, there is a charming dialogue. Joseph laments over the meanness of
+the stable, Mary accepts it with calm resignation.
+
+        _Joseph._
+
+   "Las! vecy bien povre merrien
+    Pour edifier un hostel
+    Et logis a ung seigneur tel.
+    Il naistra en bien povre place.
+
+        _Marie._
+
+    Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        _Joseph._
+
+    Ou sont ces chambres tant fournies
+    De Sarges, de Tapiceries |140|
+    Batus d'or, ou luyt mainte pierre,
+    Et nates mises sur la terre,
+    Affin que le froit ne mefface?
+
+        _Marie._
+
+    Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        _Joseph._
+
+    Helas! cy gerra povrement
+    Le createur du firmament
+    Celui qui fait le soleil luire,
+    Qui fait la terre fruis produire,
+    Qui tient la mer en son espace.
+
+        _Marie._
+
+    Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face."
+
+At last Christ is born, welcomed by the song of the angels, adored by His
+mother. In the heathen temples the idols fall; Hell mouth opens and shows
+the rage of the demons, who make a hideous noise; fire issues from the
+nostrils and eyes and ears of Hell, which shuts up with the devils within
+it. And then the angels in the stable worship the Child Jesus. The
+adoration of the shepherds was shown with many naive details for the
+delight of the people, and the performance ended with the offering of a
+sacrifice in Rome by the Emperor Octavian to an image of the Blessed
+Virgin.{19}
+
+The French playwrights, quite as much as the English, love comic shepherd
+scenes with plenty of eating and drinking and brawling. A traditional
+figure is the shepherd Rifflart, always a laughable type. In the strictly
+mediaeval plays the shepherds are true French rustics, but with the
+progress of the Renaissance classical elements creep into the pastoral
+scenes; in a mystery printed in 1507 Orpheus with the Nymphs and Oreads
+is introduced. As might be expected, anachronisms often occur; a
+peculiarly piquant instance is found in the S. Genevieve mystery, where
+Caesar Augustus gets a piece of Latin translated into French for his
+convenience.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM.
+
+From "Le grant Kalendrier compost des Bergiers"
+(N. le Rouge, Troyes, 1529).
+
+(Reproduced from a modern broadside published
+by Mr. F. Sidgwick.)]
+
+|141| Late examples of French Christmas mysteries are the so-called
+"comedies" of the Nativity, Adoration of the Kings, Massacre of the
+Innocents, and Flight into Egypt contained in the "Marguerites"
+(published in 1547) of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, sister of Francois
+I. Intermingled with the traditional figures treated more or less in the
+traditional way are personified abstractions like Philosophy,
+Tribulation, Inspiration, Divine Intelligence, and Contemplation, which
+largely rob the plays of dramatic effect. There is some true poetry in
+these pieces, but too much theological learning and too little
+simplicity, and in one place the ideas of Calvin seem to show
+themselves.{20}
+
+The French mystery began to fall into decay about the middle of the
+sixteenth century. It was attacked on every side: by the new poets of the
+Renaissance, who preferred classical to Christian subjects; by the
+Protestants, who deemed the religious drama a trifling with the solemn
+truths of Scripture; and even by the Catholic clergy, who, roused to
+greater strictness by the challenge of Protestantism, found the comic
+elements in the plays offensive and dangerous, and perhaps feared that
+too great familiarity with the Bible as represented in the mysteries
+might lead the people into heresy.{21} Yet we hear occasionally of
+Christmas dramas in France in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
+centuries. In the neighbourhood of Nantes, for instance, a play of the
+Nativity by Claude Macee, hermit, probably written in the seventeenth
+century, was commonly performed in the first half of the nineteenth.{22}
+At Clermont the adoration of the shepherds was still performed in 1718,
+and some kind of representation of the scene continued in the diocese of
+Cambrai until 1834, when it was forbidden by the bishop. In the south,
+especially at Marseilles, "pastorals" were played towards the end of the
+nineteenth century; they had, however, largely lost their sacred
+character, and had become a kind of review of the events of the
+year.{23} At Dinan, in Brittany, some sort of Herod play was performed,
+though it was dying out, in 1886. It was acted by young men on the
+Epiphany, and there was an "innocent" whose throat they pretended to cut
+with a wooden sword.{24}
+
+|142| An interesting summary of a very full Nativity play performed in
+the churches of Upper Gascony on Christmas Eve is given by Countess
+Martinengo-Cesaresco.{25} It ranges from the arrival of Joseph and Mary
+at Bethlehem to the Flight into Egypt and the Murder of the Innocents,
+but perhaps the most interesting parts are the shepherd scenes. After the
+message of the angel--a child in a surplice, with wings fastened to his
+shoulders, seated on a chair drawn up to the ceiling and supported by
+ropes--the shepherds leave the church, the whole of which is now regarded
+as the stable of the Divine Birth. They knock for admittance, and Joseph,
+regretting that the chamber is "so badly lighted," lets them in. They
+fall down before the manger, and so do the shepherdesses, who "deposit on
+the altar steps a banner covered with flowers and greenery, from which
+hang strings of small birds, apples, nuts, chestnuts, and other fruits.
+It is their Christmas offering to the cure; the shepherds have already
+placed a whole sheep before the altar, in a like spirit." The play is not
+mere dumb-show, but has a full libretto.
+
+A rather similar piece of dramatic ceremonial is described by Barthelemy
+in his edition of Durandus,{26} as customary in the eighteenth century
+at La Villeneuve-en-Chevrie, near Mantes. At the Midnight Mass a _creche_
+with a wax figure of the Holy Child was placed in the choir, with tapers
+burning about it. After the "Te Deum" had been sung, the celebrant,
+accompanied by his attendants, censed the _creche_, to the sound of
+violins, double-basses, and other instruments. A shepherd then prostrated
+himself before the crib, holding a sheep with a sort of little saddle
+bearing sixteen lighted candles. He was followed by two shepherdesses in
+white with distaffs and tapers. A second shepherd, between two
+shepherdesses, carried a laurel branch, to which were fastened oranges,
+lemons, biscuits, and sweetmeats. Two others brought great _pains-benits_
+and lighted candles; then came four shepherdesses, who made their
+adoration, and lastly twenty-six more shepherds, two by two, bearing in
+one hand a candle and in the other a festooned crook. The same ceremonial
+was practised at the Offertory and after the close of the Mass. All was
+done, it is said, with such piety and edification that |143| St. Luke's
+words about the Bethlehem shepherds were true of these French
+swains--they "returned glorifying and praising God for all the things
+they had heard and seen."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In German there remain very few Christmas plays earlier than the
+fifteenth century. Later periods, however, have produced a multitude, and
+dramatic performances at Christmas have continued down to quite modern
+times in German-speaking parts.
+
+At Oberufer near Pressburg--a German Protestant village in Hungary--some
+fifty years ago, a Christmas play was performed under the direction of an
+old farmer, whose office as instructor had descended from father to son.
+The play took place at intervals of from three to ten years and was acted
+on all Sundays and festivals from Advent to the Epiphany. Great care was
+taken to ensure the strictest piety and morality in the actors, and no
+secular music was allowed in the place during the season for the
+performances. The practices began as early as October. On the first
+Sunday in Advent there was a solemn procession to the hall hired for the
+play. First went a man bearing a gigantic star--he was called the "Master
+Singer"--and another carrying a Christmas-tree decked with ribbons and
+apples; then came all the actors, singing hymns. There was no scenery and
+no theatrical apparatus beyond a straw-seated chair and a wooden stool.
+When the first was used, the scene was understood to be Jerusalem, when
+the second, Bethlehem. The Christmas drama, immediately preceded by an
+Adam and Eve play, and succeeded by a Shrove Tuesday one, followed
+mediaeval lines, and included the wanderings of Joseph and Mary round the
+inns of Bethlehem, the angelic tidings to the shepherds, their visit to
+the manger, the adoration of the Three Kings, and various Herod scenes.
+Protestant influence was shown by the introduction of Luther's "Vom
+Himmel hoch," but the general character was very much that of the old
+mysteries, and the dialogue was full of quaint naivete.{27}
+
+At Brixlegg, in Tyrol, as late as 1872 a long Christmas play was acted
+under Catholic auspices; some of its dialogue was in |144| the Tyrolese
+_patois_ and racy and humorous, other parts, and particularly the
+speeches of Mary and Joseph--out of respect for these holy
+personages--had been rewritten in the eighteenth century in a very
+stilted and undramatic style. Some simple shepherd plays are said to be
+still presented in the churches of the Saxon Erzgebirge.{28}
+
+The German language is perhaps richer in real Christmas plays, as
+distinguished from Nativity and Epiphany episodes in great cosmic cycles,
+than any other. There are some examples in mediaeval manuscripts, but the
+most interesting are shorter pieces performed in country places in
+comparatively recent times, and probably largely traditional in
+substance. Christianity by the fourteenth century had at last gained a
+real hold upon the German people, or perhaps one should rather say the
+German people had laid a strong hold upon Christianity, moulding it into
+something very human and concrete, materialistic often, yet not without
+spiritual significance. In cradle-rocking and religious dancing at
+Christmas the instincts of a lusty, kindly race expressed themselves, and
+the same character is shown in the short popular Christmas dramas
+collected by Weinhold and others.{29} Many of the little pieces--some
+are rather duets than plays--were sung or acted in church or by the
+fireside in the nineteenth century, and perhaps even now may linger in
+remote places. They are in dialect, and the rusticity of their language
+harmonizes well with their naive, homely sentiment. In them we behold the
+scenes of Bethlehem as realized by peasants, and their mixture of rough
+humour and tender feeling is thoroughly in keeping with the subject.
+
+One is made to feel very vividly the amazement of the shepherds at the
+wondrous and sudden apparition of the angels:--
+
+   "_Riepl._ Woas is das fuer a Getuemmel,
+             I versteh mi nit in d'Welt.
+    _Joergl._ Is den heunt eingfalln der Himmel,
+             Fleugn d'Engeln auf unserm Feld?
+    _R._     Thuen Sprueng macha
+    _J._     Von oben acha! |145|
+    _R._     I turft das Ding nit noacha thoan,
+             that mir brechn Hals und Boan."[74]{30}
+
+The cold is keenly brought home to us when they come to the manger:--
+
+   "_J._     Mei Kind, kanst kei Herberg finden?
+             Muest so viel Frost leiden schoan.
+    _R._     Ligst du under kalden Windeln!
+             Laegts ihm doch a Gwandl oan!
+    _J._     Machts ihm d'Fueess ein,
+             Huellts in zue fein!"[75]{31}
+
+Very homely are their presents to the Child:--
+
+   "Ein drei Eier und ein Butter
+    Bringen wir auch, nemt es an!
+    Einen Han zu einer Suppen,
+    Wanns die Mutter kochen kann.
+    Giessts ein Schmalz drein, wirds wol guet sein.
+    Weil wir sonsten gar nix han,
+    Sind wir selber arme Hirten,
+    Nemts den guten Willen an."[76]{32}
+
+One of the dialogues ends with a curious piece of ordinary human
+kindliness, as if the Divine nature of the Infant were quite forgotten
+for the moment:--
+
+   "_J._     Bleib halt fein gsund, mein kloans Liebl,
+             Wannst woas brauchst, so komm ze mir.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _J._     Pfueet di Got halt! |146|
+    _R._     Waer fein gross bald!
+    _J._     Kannst in mein Dienst stehen ein,
+             Wann darzu wirst gross gnue sein."[77]{33}
+
+Far more interesting in their realism and naturalness are these little
+plays of the common folk than the elaborate Christmas dramas of more
+learned German writers, Catholic and Lutheran, who in the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries became increasingly stilted and bombastic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Italian religious drama{34} evolved somewhat differently from that
+of the northern countries. The later thirteenth century saw the outbreak
+of the fanaticism of the Flagellants or _Battuti_, vast crowds of people
+of all classes who went in procession from church to church, from city to
+city, scourging their naked bodies in terror and repentance till the
+blood flowed. When the wild enthusiasm of this movement subsided it left
+enduring traces in the foundation of lay communities throughout the land,
+continuing in a more sober way the penitential practices of the
+Flagellants. One of their aids to devotion was the singing or reciting of
+vernacular poetry, less formal than the Latin hymns of the liturgy, and
+known as _laude_.[78] These _laude_ developed a more or less dramatic
+form, which gained the name of _divozioni_.[79] They were, perhaps
+(though not certainly, for there seems to have been another tradition
+derived from the regular liturgical drama), the source from which sprang
+the gorgeously produced _sacre rappresentazioni_ of the fifteenth
+century.
+
+The _sacre rappresentazioni_ corresponded, though with considerable
+differences, to the miracle-plays of England and France. Their great
+period was the fifty years from 1470 to 1520, and |147| they were
+performed, like the _divozioni_, by confraternities of religious laymen.
+The actors were boys belonging to the brotherhoods, and the plays were
+intended to be edifying for youth. They are more refined than the
+northern religious dramas, but only too often fall into insipidity.
+
+Among the texts given by D'Ancona in his collection of _sacre
+rappresentazioni_ is a Tuscan "Nativita,"{36} opening with a pastoral
+scene resembling those in the northern mysteries, but far less vigorous.
+It cannot compare, for character and humour, with the Towneley plays.
+Still the shepherds, whose names are Bobi del Farucchio, Nencio di
+Pucchio, Randello, Nencietto, Giordano, and Falconcello, are at least
+meant to have a certain rusticity, as they feast on bread and cheese and
+wine, play to the Saviour on bagpipe or whistle, and offer humble
+presents like apples and cheese. The scenes which follow, the coming of
+the Magi and the Murder of the Innocents, are not intrinsically of great
+interest.
+
+It is possible that this play may have been the spectacle performed in
+Florence in 1466, as recorded by Machiavelli, "to give men something to
+take away their thoughts from affairs of state." It "represented the
+coming of the three Magi Kings from the East, following the star which
+showed the Nativity of Christ, and it was of so great pomp and
+magnificence that it kept the whole city busy for several months in
+arranging and preparing it."{37}
+
+An earlier record of an Italian pageant of the Magi is this account by
+the chronicler Galvano Flamma of what took place at Milan in 1336:--
+
+    "There were three kings crowned, on great horses, ... and an
+    exceeding great train. And there was a golden star running through
+    the air, which went before these three kings, and they came to the
+    columns of San Lorenzo, where was King Herod in effigy, with the
+    scribes and wise men. And they were seen to ask King Herod where
+    Christ was born, and having turned over many books they answered,
+    that He should be born in the city of David distant five miles from
+    Jerusalem. And having heard this, those three kings, crowned with
+    golden crowns, holding in their hands golden cups with gold, incense,
+    |148| and myrrh, came to the church of Sant' Eustorgio, the star
+    preceding them through the air, ... and a wonderful train, with
+    resounding trumpets and horns going before them, with apes, baboons,
+    and diverse kinds of animals, and a marvellous tumult of people.
+    There at the side of the high altar was a manger with ox and ass, and
+    in the manger was the little Christ in the arms of the Virgin Mother.
+    And those kings offered gifts unto Christ; then they were seen to
+    sleep, and a winged angel said to them that they should not return by
+    the region of San Lorenzo but by the Porta Romana; which also was
+    done. There was so great a concourse of the people and soldiers and
+    ladies and clerics that scarce anything like it was ever beheld. And
+    it was ordered that every year this festal show should be
+    performed."{38}
+
+How suggestive this is of the Magi pictures of the fifteenth century,
+with their gorgeous eastern monarchs and retinues of countless servants
+and strange animals. No other story in the New Testament gives such
+opportunity for pageantry as the Magi scene. All the wonder, richness,
+and romance of the East, all the splendour of western Renaissance princes
+could lawfully be introduced into the train of the Three Kings. With
+Gentile da Fabriano and Benozzo Gozzoli it has become a magnificent
+procession; there are trumpeters, pages, jesters, dwarfs, exotic
+beasts--all the motley, gorgeous retinue of the monarchs of the time,
+while the kings themselves are romantic figures in richest attire,
+velvet, brocade, wrought gold, and jewels. It may be that much of this
+splendour was suggested to the painters by dramatic spectacles which
+actually passed before their eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have already alluded to the Spanish "Mystery of the Magi Kings," a mere
+fragment, but of peculiar interest to the historian of the drama as one
+of the two earliest religious plays in a modern European language. Though
+plays are known to have been performed in Spain at Christmas and Easter
+in the Middle Ages,{39} we have no further texts until the very short
+"Representation of the Birth of Our Lord," by Gomez Manrique, Senor de
+Villazopeque (1412-91), acted at the convent at Calabazanos, of which the
+author's sister was Superior. The characters |149| introduced are the
+Virgin, St. Joseph, St. Gabriel, St. Michael, St. Raphael, another angel,
+and three shepherds.{40}
+
+Touched by the spirit of the Renaissance, and particularly by the
+influence of Virgil, is Juan del Encina of Salamanca (1469-1534), court
+poet to the Duke of Alba, and author of two Christmas eclogues.{41} The
+first introduces four shepherds who bear the names of the Evangelists,
+Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and are curiously mixed personages, their
+words being half what might be expected from the shepherds of Bethlehem
+and half sayings proper only to the authors of the Gospels. It ends with
+a _villancico_ or carol. The second eclogue is far more realistic, and
+indeed resembles the English and French pastoral scenes. The shepherds
+grumble about the weather--it has been raining for two months, the floods
+are terrible, and no fords or bridges are left; they talk of the death of
+a sacristan, a fine singer; and they play a game with chestnuts; then
+comes the angel--whom one of them calls a "smartly dressed lad" (_garzon
+repicado_)--to tell them of the Birth, and they go to adore the Child,
+taking Him a kid, butter-cakes, eggs, and other presents.
+
+Infinitely more ambitious is "The Birth of Christ"{42} by the great Lope
+de Vega (1562-1635). It opens in Paradise, immediately after the
+Creation, and ends with the adoration of the Three Kings. Full of
+allegorical conceits and personified qualities, it will hardly please the
+taste of modern minds. Another work of Lope's, "The Shepherds of
+Bethlehem," a long pastoral in prose and verse, published in 1612,
+contains, amid many incongruities, some of the best of his shorter poems;
+one lullaby, sung by the Virgin in a palm-grove while her Child sleeps,
+has been thus translated by Ticknor:--
+
+   "Holy angels and blest,
+      Through these palms as ye sweep,
+    Hold their branches at rest,
+      For my babe is asleep.
+
+    And ye Bethlehem palm-trees,
+      As stormy winds rush |150|
+    In tempest and fury,
+      Your angry noise hush;
+    Move gently, move gently,
+      Restrain your wild sweep;
+    Hold your branches at rest,
+      My babe is asleep.
+
+    My babe all divine,
+      With earth's sorrows oppressed,
+    Seeks in slumber an instant
+      His grievings to rest;
+    He slumbers, he slumbers,
+      O, hush, then, and keep
+    Your branches all still,
+      My babe is asleep!"{43}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Apart from such modern revivals of the Christmas drama as Mr. Laurence
+Housman's "Bethlehem," Miss Buckton's "Eager Heart," Mrs. Percy Dearmer's
+"The Soul of the World," and similar experiments in Germany and France, a
+genuine tradition has lingered on in some parts of Europe into modern
+times. We have already noticed some French and German instances; to these
+may be added a few from other countries.
+
+In Naples there is no Christmas without the "Cantata dei pastori"; it is
+looked forward to no less than the Midnight Mass. Two or three theatres
+compete for the public favour in the performance of this play in rude
+verse. It begins with Adam and Eve and ends with the birth of Jesus and
+the adoration of the shepherds. Many devils are brought on the stage,
+their arms and legs laden with brass chains that rattle horribly. Awful
+are their names, Lucifero, Satanasso, Belfegor, Belzebu, &c. They not
+only tempt Adam and Eve, but annoy the Virgin and St. Joseph, until an
+angel comes and frightens them away. Two non-Biblical figures are
+introduced, Razzullo and Sarchiapone, who are tempted by devils and aided
+by angels.{44} In Sicily too the Christmas play still lingers under the
+name of _Pastorale_.{45}
+
+|151| A nineteenth-century Spanish survival of the "Stella" is
+described in Fernan Caballero's sketch, "La Noche de Navidad."{46} At
+the foot of the altar of the village church, according to this account,
+images of the Virgin and St. Joseph were placed, with the Holy Child
+between them, lying on straw. On either side knelt a small boy dressed as
+an angel. Solemnly there entered the church a number of men attired as
+shepherds, bearing their offerings to the Child; afterwards they danced
+with slow and dignified movements before the altar. The shepherds were
+followed by the richest men of the village dressed as the Magi Kings,
+mounted on horseback, and followed by their train. Before them went a
+shining star. On reaching the church they dismounted; the first,
+representing a majestic old man with white hair, offered incense to the
+Babe; the others, Caspar and Melchior, myrrh and gold respectively. This
+was done on the feast of the Epiphany.
+
+A remnant possibly of the "Stella" is to be found in a Christmas custom
+extremely widespread in Europe and surviving even in some Protestant
+lands--the carrying about of a star in memory of the Star of Bethlehem.
+It is generally borne by a company of boys, who sing some sort of carol,
+and expect a gift in return.
+
+The practice is--or was--found as far north as Sweden. All through the
+Christmas season the "star youths" go about from house to house. Three
+are dressed up as the Magi Kings, a fourth carries on a stick a paper
+lantern in the form of a six-pointed star, made to revolve and lighted by
+candles. There are also a Judas, who bears the purse for the collection,
+and, occasionally, a King Herod. A doggerel rhyme is sung, telling the
+story of the Nativity and offering good wishes.{47} In Norway and
+Denmark processions of a like character were formerly known.{48}
+
+In Normandy at Christmas children used to go singing through the village
+streets, carrying a lantern of coloured paper on a long osier rod.{49}
+At Pleudihen in Brittany three young men representing the Magi sang
+carols in the cottages, dressed in their holiday clothes covered with
+ribbons.{50}
+
+|152| In England there appears to be no trace of the custom, which is
+however found in Germany, Austria, Holland, Italy, Bohemia, Roumania,
+Poland, and Russia.{51}
+
+In Thuringia a curious carol used to be sung, telling how Herod tried to
+tempt the Wise Men--
+
+   "'Oh, good Wise Men, come in and dine;
+    I will give you both beer and wine,
+    And hay and straw to make your bed,
+    And nought of payment shall be said.'"
+
+But they answer:--
+
+   "'Oh, no! oh, no! we must away,
+    We seek a little Child to-day,
+    A little Child, a mighty King,
+    Him who created everything.'"{52}
+
+In Tyrol the "star-singing" is very much alive at the present day. In the
+Upper Innthal three boys in white robes, with blackened faces and gold
+paper crowns, go to every house on Epiphany Eve, one of them carrying a
+golden star on a pole. They sing a carol, half religious, half
+comic--almost a little drama--and are given money, cake, and drink. In
+the Ilsethal the boys come on Christmas Eve, and presents are given them
+by well-to-do people. In some parts there is but one singer, an old man
+with a white beard and a turban, who twirls a revolving star. A
+remarkable point about the Tyrolese star-singers is that before anything
+is given them they are told to stamp on the snowy fields outside the
+houses, in order to promote the growth of the crops in summer.{53}
+
+In Little Russia the "star" is made of pasteboard and has a transparent
+centre with a picture of Christ through which the light of a candle
+shines. One boy carries the star and another twirls the points.{54} In
+Roumania it is made of wood and adorned with frills and little bells. A
+representation of the "manger," illuminated from behind, forms the
+centre, and the star also shows pictures of Adam and Eve and angels.{55}
+
+|153| A curious traditional drama, in which pagan elements seem to have
+mingled with the Herod story, is still performed by the Roumanians during
+the Christmas festival. It is called in Wallachia "Vicleim" (from
+Bethlehem), in Moldavia and Transylvania "Irozi" (plural from _Irod_ =
+Herod). At least ten persons figure in it: "Emperor" Herod, an old
+grumbling monarch who speaks in harsh tones to his followers; an officer
+and two soldiers in Roman attire; the three Magi, in Oriental garb, a
+child, and "two comical figures--the _paiata_ (the clown) and the
+_mosul_, or old man, the former in harlequin accoutrement, the latter
+with a mask on his face, a long beard, a hunch on his back, and dressed
+in a sheepskin with the wool on the outside. The plot of the play is
+quite simple. The officer brings the news that three strange men have
+been caught, going to Bethlehem to adore the new-born Messiah; Herod
+orders them to be shown in: they enter singing in a choir. Long dialogues
+ensue between them and Herod, who at last orders them to be taken to
+prison. But then they address the Heavenly Father, and shout imprecations
+on Herod, invoking celestial punishment on him, at which unaccountable
+noises are heard, seeming to announce the fulfilment of the curse. Herod
+falters, begs the Wise Men's forgiveness, putting off his anger till more
+opportune times. The Wise Men retire.... Then a child is introduced, who
+goes on his knees before Herod, with his hands on his breast, asking
+pity. He gives clever answers to various questions and foretells the
+Christ's future career, at which Herod stabs him. The whole troupe now
+strikes up a tune of reproach to Herod, who falls on his knees in deep
+repentance." The play is sometimes performed by puppets instead of living
+actors.{56}
+
+Christmas plays performed by puppets are found in other countries too. In
+Poland "during the week between Christmas and New Year is shown the
+_Jaselki_ or manger, a travelling series of scenes from the life of
+Christ or even of modern peasants, a small travelling puppet-theatre,
+gorgeous with tinsel and candles, and something like our 'Punch and Judy'
+show. The market-place of Cracow, especially at night, is a very pretty
+spectacle, its sidewalks all lined with these glittering Jaselki."{57}
+In Madrid |154| at the Epiphany a puppet-play was common, in which the
+events of the Nativity and the Infancy were mimed by wooden figures,{58}
+and in Provence, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Christmas scenes were
+represented in the same way.{59}
+
+Last may be mentioned a curious Mexican mixture of religion and
+amusement, a sort of drama called the "Posadas," described by Madame
+Calderon de la Barca in her "Life in Mexico" (1843).{60} The custom was
+based upon the wanderings of the Virgin and St. Joseph in Bethlehem in
+search of repose. For eight days these wanderings of the holy pair to the
+different _posadas_ were represented. On Christmas Eve, says the
+narrator, "a lighted candle was put into the hand of each lady [this was
+at a sort of party], and a procession was formed, two by two, which
+marched all through the house ... the whole party singing the
+Litanies.... A group of little children, dressed as angels, joined the
+procession.... At last the procession drew up before a door, and a shower
+of fireworks was sent flying over our heads, I suppose to represent the
+descent of the angels; for a group of ladies appeared, dressed to
+represent the shepherds.... Then voices, supposed to be those of Mary and
+Joseph, struck up a hymn, in which they begged for admittance, saying
+that the night was cold and dark, that the wind blew hard, and that they
+prayed for a night's shelter. A chorus of voices from within refused
+admittance. Again those without entreated shelter, and at length declared
+that she at the door, who thus wandered in the night, and had not where
+to lay her head, was the Queen of Heaven! At this name the doors were
+thrown wide open, and the Holy Family entered singing. The scene within
+was very pretty: a _nacimiento_.... One of the angels held a waxen baby
+in her arms.... A padre took the baby from the angel and placed it in the
+cradle, and the _posada_ was completed. We then returned to the
+drawing-room--angels, shepherds, and all, and danced till
+supper-time."{60} Here the religious drama has sunk to little more than
+a "Society" game.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. MASACCIO
+
+(_Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum_)]
+
+|155|
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT
+
+
+Before we pass on to the pagan aspects of Christmas, let us gather up our
+thoughts in an attempt to realize the peculiar appeal of the Feast of the
+Nativity, as it has been felt in the past, as it is felt to-day even by
+moderns who have no belief in the historical truth of the story it
+commemorates.
+
+This appeal of Christmas seems to lie in the union of two modes of
+feeling which may be called the _carol spirit_ and the _mystical spirit_.
+The _carol spirit_--by this we may understand the simple, human
+joyousness, the tender and graceful imagination, the kindly, intimate
+affection, which have gathered round the cradle of the Christ Child. The
+folk-tune, the secular song adapted to a sacred theme--such is the carol.
+What a sense of kindliness, not of sentimentality, but of genuine human
+feeling, these old songs give us, as though the folk who first sang them
+were more truly comrades, more closely knit together than we under modern
+industrialism.
+
+One element in the carol spirit is the rustic note that finds its
+sanction as regards Christmas in St. Luke's story of the shepherds
+keeping watch over their flocks by night. One thinks of the stillness
+over the fields, of the hinds with their rough talk, "simply chatting in
+a rustic row," of the keen air, and the great burst of light and song
+that dazes their simple wits, of their journey to Bethlehem where "the
+heaven-born Child all meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies," of the ox
+and ass linking the beasts of the field to the Christmas adoration of
+mankind.[80]
+
+For many people, indeed, the charm of Christmas is inseparably associated
+with the country; it is lost in London--the city is too vast, too modern,
+too sophisticated. It is bound up with the thought of frosty fields, of
+bells heard far away, of bare trees |156| against the starlit sky, of
+carols sung not by trained choirs but by rustic folk with rough accent,
+irregular time, and tunes learnt by ear and not by book.
+
+Again, without the idea of winter half the charm of Christmas would be
+gone. Transplanted in the imagination of western Christendom from an
+undefined season in the hot East to Europe at midwinter, the Nativity
+scenes have taken on a new pathos with the thought of the bitter cold to
+which the great Little One lay exposed in the rough stable, with the
+contrast between the cold and darkness of the night and the fire of love
+veiled beneath that infant form. _Lux in tenebris_ is one of the
+strongest notes of Christmas: in the bleak midwinter a light shines
+through the darkness; when all is cold and gloom, the sky bursts into
+splendour, and in the dark cave is born the Light of the World.
+
+There is the idea of royalty too, with all it stands for of colour and
+magnificence, though not so much in literature as in painting is this
+side of the Christmas story represented. The Epiphany is the great
+opportunity for imaginative development of the regal idea. Then is seen
+the union of utter poverty with highest kingship; the monarchs of the
+East come to bow before the humble Infant for whom the world has found no
+room in the inn. How suggestive by their long, slow syllables are the
+Italian names of the Magi. Gasparre, Baldassarre, Melchiorre--we picture
+Oriental monarchs in robes mysteriously gorgeous, wrought with strange
+patterns, heavy with gold and precious stones. With slow processional
+motion they advance, bearing to the King of Kings their symbolic gifts,
+gold for His crowning, incense for His worship, myrrh for His mortality,
+and with them come the mystery, colour, and perfume of the East, the
+occult wisdom which bows itself before the revelation in the Child.
+
+Above all, as the foregoing pages have shown, it is the _childhood_ of
+the Redeemer that has won the heart of Europe for Christmas; it is the
+appeal to the parental instinct, the love for the tender, weak, helpless,
+yet all-potential babe, that has given the Church's festival its
+strongest hold. And this side of Christmas is penetrated often by the
+_mystical spirit_--that sense of the Infinite in the finite without which
+the highest human life is impossible.
+
+|157| The feeling for Christmas varies from mere delight in the Christ
+Child as a representative symbol on which to lavish affection, as a child
+delights in a doll, to the mystical philosophy of Eckhart, in whose
+Christmas sermons the Nativity is viewed as a type of the Birth of God in
+the depths of man's being. Yet even the least spiritual forms of the cult
+of the Child are seldom without some hint of the supersensual, the
+Infinite, and even in Eckhart there is a love of concrete symbolism.
+Christmas stands peculiarly for the sacramental principle that the
+outward and visible is a sign and shadow of the inward and spiritual. It
+means the seeing of common, earthly things shot through by the glory of
+the Infinite. "Its note," as has been said of a stage of the mystic
+consciousness, the Illuminative Way, "is sacramental not ascetic. It
+entails ... the discovery of the Perfect One ablaze in the Many, not the
+forsaking of the Many in order to find the One ... an ineffable radiance,
+a beauty and a reality never before suspected, are perceived by a sort of
+clairvoyance shining in the meanest things."{1} Christmas is the
+festival of the Divine Immanence, and it is natural that it should have
+been beloved by the saint and mystic whose life was the supreme
+manifestation of the _Via Illuminativa_, Francis of Assisi.
+
+Christmas is the most human and lovable of the Church's feasts. Easter
+and Ascensiontide speak of the rising and exaltation of a glorious being,
+clothed in a spiritual body refined beyond all comparison with our
+natural flesh; Whitsuntide tells of the coming of a mysterious,
+intangible Power--like the wind, we cannot tell whence It cometh and
+whither It goeth; Trinity offers for contemplation an ineffable paradox
+of Pure Being. But the God of Christmas is no ethereal form, no mere
+spiritual essence, but a very human child, feeling the cold and the
+roughness of the straw, needing to be warmed and fed and cherished.
+Christmas is the festival of the natural body, of this world; it means
+the consecration of the ordinary things of life, affection and
+comradeship, eating and drinking and merrymaking; and in some degree the
+memory of the Incarnation has been able to blend with the pagan joyance
+of the New Year.
+
+|158| |159|
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part II--Pagan Survivals
+
+|160| |161|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS
+
+
+    The Church and Superstition--Nature of Pagan Survivals--Racial
+    Origins--Roman Festivals of the _Saturnalia_ and Kalends--Was there a
+    Teutonic Midwinter Festival?--The Teutonic, Celtic, and Slav New
+    Year--Customs attracted to Christmas or January 1--The Winter Cycle
+    of Festivals--_Rationale_ of Festival Ritual: (_a_) Sacrifice and
+    Sacrament, (_b_) the Cult of the Dead, (_c_) Omens and Charms for the
+    New Year--Compromise in the Later Middle Ages--The Puritans and
+    Christmas--Decay of Old Traditions.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA.
+
+An Asiatic example of animal masks.]
+
+We have now to leave the commemoration of the Nativity of Christ, and to
+turn to the other side of Christmas--its many traditional observances
+which, though sometimes coloured by Christianity, have nothing to do with
+the Birth of the Redeemer. This class of customs has often, especially in
+the first millennium of our era, been the object of condemnations by
+ecclesiastics, and represents the old paganism which Christianity failed
+to extinguish. The Church has played a double part, a part of sheer
+antagonism, forcing heathen customs into the shade, into a more or less
+surreptitious and unprogressive life, and a part of adaptation, baptizing
+them into Christ, giving them a Christian name and interpretation, and
+often modifying their form. The general effect of Christianity upon pagan
+usages is well suggested by Dr. Karl Pearson:--
+
+    "What the missionary could he repressed, the more as his church grew
+    in strength; what he could not repress he adopted or simply left
+    unregarded.... What the missionary tried to repress became mediaeval
+    witchcraft; what he judiciously disregarded survives to this |162|
+    day in peasant weddings and in the folk-festivals at the great
+    changes of season."{1}
+
+We find then many pagan practices concealed beneath a superficial
+Christianity--often under the mantle of some saint--but side by side with
+these are many usages never Christianized even in appearance, and
+obviously identical with heathen customs against which the Church
+thundered in the days of her youth. Grown old and tolerant--except of
+novelties--she has long since ceased to attack them, and they have
+themselves mostly lost all definite religious meaning. As the old pagan
+faith decayed, they tended to become in a literal sense "superstition,"
+something standing over, like shells from which the living occupant has
+gone. They are now often mere "survivals" in the technical folk-lore
+sense, pieces of custom separated from the beliefs that once gave them
+meaning, performed only because in a vague sort of way they are supposed
+to bring good luck. In many cases those who practise them would be quite
+unable to explain how or why they work for good.
+
+Mental inertia, the instinct to do and believe what has always been done
+and believed, has sometimes preserved the animating faith as well as the
+external form of these practices, but often all serious significance has
+departed. What was once religious or magical ritual, upon the due
+observance of which the welfare of the community was believed to depend,
+has become mere pageantry and amusement, often a mere children's
+game.{2}
+
+Sometimes the spirit of a later age has worked upon these pagan customs,
+revivifying and transforming them, giving them charm. Often, however, one
+does not find in them the poetry, the warm humanity, the humour, which
+mark the creations of popular Catholicism. They are fossils and their
+interest is that of the fossil: they are records of a vanished world and
+help us to an imaginative reconstruction of it. But further, just as on a
+stratum of rock rich in fossils there may be fair meadows and gardens and
+groves, depending for their life on the denudation of the rock beneath,
+so have these ancient religious products largely supplied the soil in
+which more spiritual and more |163| beautiful things have flourished.
+Amid these, as has been well said, "they still emerge, unchanged and
+unchanging, like the quaint outcrops of some ancient rock formation amid
+rich vegetation and fragrant flowers."{3}
+
+The survivals of pagan religion at Christian festivals relate not so much
+to the worship of definite divinities--against this the missionaries made
+their most determined efforts, and the names of the old gods have
+practically disappeared--as to cults which preceded the development of
+anthropomorphic gods with names and attributes. These cults, paid to less
+personally conceived spirits, were of older standing and no doubt had
+deeper roots in the popular mind. Fundamentally associated with
+agricultural and pastoral life, they have in many cases been preserved by
+the most conservative element in the population, the peasantry.
+
+Many of the customs we shall meet with are magical, rather than religious
+in the proper sense; they are not directed to the conciliation of
+spiritual beings, but spring from primitive man's belief "that in order
+to produce the great phenomena of nature on which his life depended he
+had only to imitate them."{4} Even when they have a definitely religious
+character, and are connected with some spirit, magical elements are often
+found in them.
+
+Before we consider these customs in detail it will be necessary to survey
+the pagan festivals briefly alluded to in Chapter I., to note the various
+ideas and practices that characterized them, and to study the attitude of
+the Church towards survivals of such practices while the conversion of
+Europe was in progress, and also during the Middle Ages.
+
+The development of religious custom and belief in Europe is a matter of
+such vast complexity that I cannot in a book of this kind attempt more
+than the roughest outline of the probable origins of the observances,
+purely pagan or half-Christianized, clustering round Christmas. It is
+difficult, in the present state of knowledge, to discern clearly the
+contributions of different peoples to the traditional customs of Europe,
+and even, in many cases, to say whether a given custom is "Aryan" or
+pre-Aryan. The proportion of the Aryan military aristocracy to the
+peoples whom they conquered was not uniform in all countries, and |164|
+probably was often small. While the families of the conquerors succeeded
+in imposing their languages, it by no means necessarily follows that the
+folk-practices of countries now Aryan in speech came entirely or even
+chiefly from Aryan sources. Religious tradition has a marvellous power of
+persistence, and it must be remembered that the lands conquered by men of
+Aryan speech had been previously occupied for immense periods.{5}
+Similarly, in countries like our own, which have been successively
+invaded by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, it is often
+extraordinarily hard to say even to what _national_ source a given custom
+should be assigned.
+
+It is but tentatively and with uncertain hands that scholars are trying
+to separate the racial strains in the folk-traditions of Europe, and here
+I can hardly do more than point out three formative elements in Christian
+customs: the ecclesiastical, the classical (Greek and Roman), and the
+barbarian, taking the last broadly and without a minute racial analysis.
+So far, indeed, as ritual, apart from mythology, is concerned, there
+seems to be a broad common ground of tradition among the Aryan-speaking
+peoples. How far this is due to a common derivation we need not here
+attempt to decide. The folk-lore of the whole world, it is to be noted,
+"reveals for the same stages of civilization a wonderful uniformity and
+homogeneity.... This uniformity is not, however, due to necessary
+uniformity of origin, but to a great extent to the fact that it
+represents the state of equilibrium arrived at between minds at a certain
+level and their environment."{6}
+
+The scientific study of primitive religion is still almost in its
+infancy, and a large amount of conjecture must necessarily enter into any
+explanations of popular ritual that can be offered. In attempting to
+account for Christmas customs we must be mindful, therefore, of the
+tentative nature of the theories put forward. Again, it is important to
+remember that ritual practices are far more enduring than the
+explanations given to them. "The antique religions," to quote the words
+of Robertson Smith, "had for the most part no creed; they consisted
+entirely of institutions and practices ... as a rule we find that while
+the practice was |165| rigorously fixed, the meaning attached to it was
+extremely vague, and the same rite was explained by different people in
+different ways."{7}
+
+Thus if we can arrive at the significance of a rite at a given period, it
+by no means follows that those who began it meant the same thing. At the
+time of the conflict of the heathen religions with Christianity elaborate
+structures of mythology had grown up around their traditional ceremonial,
+assigning to it meanings that had often little to do with its original
+purpose. Often, too, when the purpose was changed, new ceremonies were
+added, so that a rite may look very unlike what it was at first.
+
+With these cautions and reservations we must now try to trace the
+connection between present-day or recent goings-on about Christmas-time
+and the festival practices of pre-Christian Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christmas, as we saw in Chapter I., has taken the date of the _Natalis
+Invicti_. We need not linger over this feast, for it was not attended by
+folk-customs, and there is nothing to connect it with modern survivals.
+The Roman festivals that really count for our present purpose are the
+Kalends of January and, probably, the _Saturnalia_. The influence of the
+Kalends is strongest naturally in the Latin countries, but is found also
+all over Europe. The influence of the _Saturnalia_ is less certain; the
+festival is not mentioned in ecclesiastical condemnations after the
+institution of Christmas, and possibly its popularity was not so
+widespread as that of the Kalends. There are, however, some curiously
+interesting Christmas parallels to its usages.
+
+The strictly religious feast of the _Saturnalia_{8} was held on December
+17, but the festal customs were kept up for seven days, thus lasting
+until the day before our Christmas Eve. Among them was a fair called the
+_sigillariorum celebritas_, for the sale of little images of clay or
+paste which were given away as presents.[81] Candles seem also to have
+been given away, perhaps |166| as symbols of, or even charms to ensure,
+the return of the sun's power after the solstice. The most remarkable and
+typical feature, however, of the _Saturnalia_ was the mingling of all
+classes in a common jollity. Something of the character of the
+celebration (in a Hellenized form) may be gathered from the "Cronia" or
+"Saturnalia" of Lucian, a dialogue between Cronus or Saturn and his
+priest. We learn from it that the festivities were marked by "drinking
+and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and
+feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an
+occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water," and that slaves had
+licence to revile their lords.{9}
+
+The spirit of the season may be judged from the legislation which Lucian
+attributes to Cronosolon, priest and prophet of Cronus, much as a modern
+writer might make Father Christmas or Santa Klaus lay down rules for the
+due observance of Yule. Here are some of the laws:--
+
+    "_All business, be it public or private, is forbidden during the
+    feast days, save such as tends to sport and solace and delight. Let
+    none follow their avocations saving cooks and bakers._
+
+    _All men shall be equal, slave and free, rich and poor, one with
+    another._
+
+    _Anger, resentment, threats, are contrary to law._
+
+    _No discourse shall be either composed or delivered, except it be
+    witty and lusty, conducing to mirth and jollity._"
+
+There follow directions as to the sending of presents of money, clothing,
+or vessels, by rich men to poor friends, and as to poor men's gifts in
+return. If the poor man have learning, his return gift is to be "an
+ancient book, but of good omen and festive humour, or a writing of his
+own after his ability.... For the unlearned, let him send a garland or
+grains of frankincense." The "Cronosolon" closes with "Laws of the
+Board," of which the following are a few:--
+
+    "_Every man shall take place as chance may direct; dignities and
+    birth and wealth shall give no precedence._ |167|
+
+    _All shall be served with the same wine.... Every man's
+    portion of meat shall be alike._
+
+    _When the rich man shall feast his slaves, let his friends serve with
+    him._"{11}
+
+Over the whole festival brooded the thought of a golden age in the
+distant past, when Saturn ruled, a just and kindly monarch, when all men
+were good and all men were happy.
+
+A striking feature of the _Saturnalia_ was the choosing by lot of a mock
+king, to preside over the revels. His word was law, and he was able to
+lay ridiculous commands upon the guests; "one," says Lucian, "must shout
+out a libel on himself, another dance naked, or pick up the flute-girl
+and carry her thrice round the house."{12} This king may have been
+originally the representative of the god Saturn himself. In the days of
+the classical writers he is a mere "Lord of Misrule," but Dr. Frazer has
+propounded the very interesting theory that this time of privilege and
+gaiety was once but the prelude to a grim sacrifice in which he had to
+die in the character of the god, giving his life for the world.{13} Dr.
+Frazer's theory, dependent for its evidence upon the narrative of the
+martyrdom of a fourth-century saint, Dasius by name, has been keenly
+criticized by Dr. Warde Fowler. He holds that there is nothing whatever
+to show that the "Saturn" who in the fourth century, according to the
+story, was sacrificed by soldiers on the Danube, had anything to do with
+the customs of ancient Rome.{14} Still, in whatever way the king of the
+_Saturnalia_ may be explained, it is interesting to note his existence
+and compare him with the merry monarchs whom we shall meet at Christmas
+and Twelfth Night.
+
+How far the Saturnalian customs in general were of old Latin origin it is
+difficult to say; the name Saturnus (connected with the root of _serere_,
+to sow) and the date point to a real Roman festival of the sowing of the
+crops, but this was heavily overlaid with Greek ideas and practice.{15}
+It is especially important to bear this in mind in considering Lucian's
+statements.
+
+The same is true of the festival of the January Kalends, a few days after
+the _Saturnalia_. On January 1, the Roman New |168| Year's Day, the new
+consuls were inducted into office, and for at least three days high
+festival was kept. The houses were decorated with lights and
+greenery--these, we shall find, may be partly responsible for the modern
+Christmas-tree. As at the _Saturnalia_ masters drank and gambled with
+slaves. _Vota_, or solemn wishes of prosperity for the Emperor during the
+New Year, were customary, and the people and the Senate were even
+expected to present gifts of money to him. The Emperor Caligula excited
+much disgust by publishing an edict requiring these gifts and by standing
+in the porch of his palace to receive them in person. Such gifts, not
+only presented to the Emperor, but frequently exchanged between private
+persons, were called _strenae_, a name still surviving in the French
+_etrennes_ (New Year's presents).{16}
+
+An interesting and very full account of the Kalends celebrations is given
+in two discourses of Libanius, the famous Greek sophist of the fourth
+century:--
+
+    "The festival of the Kalends," he says, "is celebrated everywhere as
+    far as the limits of the Roman Empire extend.... Everywhere may be
+    seen carousals and well-laden tables; luxurious abundance is found in
+    the houses of the rich, but also in the houses of the poor better
+    food than usual is put upon the table. The impulse to spend seizes
+    everyone. He who the whole year through has taken pleasure in saving
+    and piling up his pence, becomes suddenly extravagant. He who
+    erstwhile was accustomed and preferred to live poorly, now at this
+    feast enjoys himself as much as his means will allow.... People are
+    not only generous towards themselves, but also towards their
+    fellow-men. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides....
+    The highroads and footpaths are covered with whole processions of
+    laden men and beasts.... As the thousand flowers which burst forth
+    everywhere are the adornment of Spring, so are the thousand presents
+    poured out on all sides, the decoration of the Kalends feast. It may
+    justly be said that it is the fairest time of the year.... The
+    Kalends festival banishes all that is connected with toil, and allows
+    men to give themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment. From the minds of
+    young people it removes two kinds of dread: the dread of the
+    schoolmaster and the dread of the stern pedagogue. The slave also it
+    allows, so far as possible, to breathe the air of freedom.... |169|
+    Another great quality of the festival is that it teaches men not to
+    hold too fast to their money, but to part with it and let it pass
+    into other hands."{17}
+
+The resemblances here to modern Christmas customs are very striking. In
+another discourse Libanius speaks of processions on the Eve of the
+festival. Few people, he says, go to bed; most go about the streets with
+singing and leaping and all sorts of mockery. The severest moralist
+utters no blame on this occasion. When morning begins to dawn they
+decorate their houses with laurels and other greenery, and at daybreak
+may go to bed to sleep off their intoxication, for many deem it necessary
+at this feast to follow the flowing bowl. On the 1st of January money is
+distributed to the populace; on the 2nd no more presents are given: it is
+customary to stay at home playing dice, masters and slaves together. On
+the 3rd there is racing; on the 4th the festivities begin to decline, but
+they are not altogether over on the 5th.{18}
+
+Another feature of the Kalends, recorded not in the pages of classical
+writers but in ecclesiastical condemnations, was the custom of dressing
+up in the hides of animals, in women's clothes, and in masks of various
+kinds.{19} Dr. Tille{20} regards this as Italian in origin, but it
+seems likely that it was a native custom in Greece, Gaul, Germany, and
+other countries conquered by the Romans. In Greece the skin-clad mummers
+may have belonged to the winter festivals of Dionysus supplanted by the
+_Kalendae_.{21}
+
+The Church's denunciations of pagan festal practices in the winter season
+are mainly directed against the Kalends celebrations, and show into how
+many regions the keeping of the feast had spread. Complaints of its
+continued observance abound in the writings of churchmen and the decrees
+of councils. In the second volume of his "Mediaeval Stage"{22} Mr.
+Chambers has made an interesting collection of forty excerpts from such
+denunciations, ranging in date from the fourth century to the eleventh,
+and coming from Spain, Italy, Antioch, northern Africa, Constantinople,
+Germany, England, and various districts of what is now France.
+
+|170| As a specimen I may translate a passage describing at some length
+the practices condemned. It is from a sermon often ascribed to St.
+Augustine of Hippo, but probably composed in the sixth century, very
+likely by Caesarius of Arles in southern Gaul:--
+
+    "On those days," says the preacher, speaking of the Kalends of
+    January, "the heathen, reversing the order of all things, dress
+    themselves up in indecent deformities.... These miserable men, and
+    what is worse, some who have been baptized, put on counterfeit forms
+    and monstrous faces, at which one should rather be ashamed and sad.
+    For what reasonable man would believe that any men in their senses
+    would by making a stag (_cervulum_) turn themselves into the
+    appearance of animals? Some are clothed in the hides of cattle;
+    others put on the heads of beasts, rejoicing and exulting that they
+    have so transformed themselves into the shapes of animals that they
+    no longer appear to be men.... How vile, further, it is that those
+    who have been born men are clothed in women's dresses, and by the
+    vilest change effeminate their manly strength by taking on the forms
+    of girls, blushing not to clothe their warlike arms in women's
+    garments; they have bearded faces, and yet they wish to appear
+    women.... There are some who on the Kalends of January practise
+    auguries, and do not allow fire out of their houses or any other
+    favour to anyone who asks. Also they both receive and give diabolical
+    presents (_strenas_). Some country people, moreover, lay tables with
+    plenty of things necessary for eating ... thinking that thus the
+    Kalends of January will be a warranty that all through the year their
+    feasting will be in like measure abundant. Now as for them who on
+    those days observe any heathen customs, it is to be feared that the
+    name of Christian will avail them nought. And therefore our holy
+    fathers of old, considering that the majority of men on those days
+    became slaves to gluttony and riotous living and raved in drunkenness
+    and impious dancing, determined for the whole world that throughout
+    the Churches a public fast should be proclaimed.... Let us therefore
+    fast, beloved brethren, on those days.... For he who on the Kalends
+    shows any civility to foolish men who are wantonly sporting, is
+    undoubtedly a partaker of their sin."{23}
+
+There are several points to be noted here. First, the zeal of the Church
+against the Kalends celebrations as impious relics of |171| heathenism:
+to root them out she even made the first three days of the year a solemn
+fast with litanies.{24} Next, the particular offences should be
+observed. These are: first, the dressing up of men in the hides of
+animals and the clothes of women; next, the New Year auguries and the
+superstition about fire, the giving of presents, and the laying of tables
+with good things; and last, drunkenness and riot in general. All these we
+shall find fully represented in modern Christmas customs.
+
+That Roman customs either spread to Germany, or were paralleled there, is
+shown by a curious letter written in 742 by St. Boniface to Pope
+Zacharias. The saint complained that certain Alamanni, Bavarians, and
+Franks refused to give up various heathen practices because they had seen
+such things done in the sacred city of Rome, close to St. Peter's, and,
+as they deemed, with the sanction of the clergy. On New Year's Eve, it
+was alleged, processions went through the streets of Rome, with impious
+songs and heathen cries; tables of fortune were set up, and at that time
+no one would lend fire or iron or any other article to his neighbour. The
+Pope replied that these things were odious to him, and should be so to
+all Christians; and next year all such practices at the January Kalends
+were formally forbidden by the Council of Rome.{25}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So much for Roman customs; if indeed such practices as beast-masking are
+Roman, and not derived from the religion of peoples conquered by the
+imperial legions. We must now turn to the winter festivals of the
+barbarians with whom the Church began to come into contact soon after the
+establishment of Christmas.
+
+Much attention has been bestowed upon a supposed midwinter festival of
+the ancient Germans. In the mid-nineteenth century it was customary to
+speak of Christmas and the Twelve Nights as a continuation of the holy
+season kept by our forefathers at the winter solstice. The festive fires
+of Christmas were regarded as symbols of the sun, who then began his
+upward journey in the heavens, while the name Yule was traced back to the
+Anglo-Saxon word _hweol_ (wheel), and connected with the circular |172|
+course of the sun through the wheeling-points of the solstices and
+equinoxes. More recent research, however, has thrown the gravest doubts
+upon the existence of any Teutonic festival at the winter solstice.[82]
+It appears from philology and the study of surviving customs that the
+Teutonic peoples had no knowledge of the solstices and equinoxes, and
+until the introduction of the Roman Calendar divided their year not into
+four parts but into two, three, and six, holding their New Year's Day
+with its attendant festivities not at the end of December or beginning of
+January, but towards the middle of November. At that time in Central
+Europe the first snowfall usually occurred and the pastures were closed
+to the flocks. A great slaughter of cattle would then take place, it
+being impossible to keep the beasts in stall throughout the winter, and
+this time of slaughter would naturally be a season of feasting and
+sacrifice and religious observances.[83]{26}
+
+The Celtic year, like the Teutonic, appears to have begun in November
+with the feast of _Samhain_--a name that may mean either "summer-end" or
+"assembly." It appears to have been in origin a "pastoral and
+agricultural festival, which in time came to be looked upon as affording
+assistance to the powers of growth in their conflict with the powers of
+blight," and to have had many features in common with the Teutonic feast
+at the same season, for instance animal sacrifice, commemoration of the
+dead, and omens and charms for the New Year.{27}
+
+There is some reason also to believe that the New Year |173| festival
+of the Slavs took place in the autumn and that its usages have been
+transferred to the feast of the Nativity.{29} A description based on
+contemporary documents cannot be given of these barbarian festivals; we
+have, rather, to reconstruct them from survivals in popular custom. At
+the close of this book, when such relics have been studied, we may have
+gained some idea of what went on upon these pre-Christian holy-days. It
+is the Teutonic customs that have been most fully recorded and discussed
+by scholars, and these will loom largest in our review; at the same time
+Celtic and Slav practices will be considered, and we shall find that they
+often closely resemble those current in Teutonic lands.
+
+The customs of the old New Year feasts have frequently wandered from
+their original November date, and to this fact we owe whatever elements
+of northern paganism are to be found in Christmas. Some practices seem to
+have been put forward to Michaelmas; one side of the festivals, the cult
+of the dead, is represented especially by All Saints' and All Souls' days
+(November 1 and 2). St. Martin's Day (November 11) probably marks as
+nearly as possible the old Teutonic date, and is still in Germany an
+important folk-feast attended by many customs derived from the
+beginning-of-winter festival. Other practices are found strewn over
+various holy-days between Martinmas and Epiphany, and concentrated above
+all on the Church's feast of the Nativity and the Roman New Year's Day,
+January 1, both of which had naturally great power of attraction.{30}
+
+The progress of agriculture, as Dr. Tille points out,{31} tended to
+destroy the mid-November celebration. In the Carolingian period an
+improvement took place in the cultivation of meadows, and the increased
+quantity of hay made it possible to keep the animals fattening in stall,
+instead of slaughtering them as soon as the pastures were closed. Thus
+the killing-time, with its festivities, became later and later. St.
+Andrew's Day (November 30) and St. Nicholas's (December 6) may mark
+stages in its progress into the winter. In St. Nicholas's Day, indeed, we
+find a feast that closely resembles Martinmas, and seems to be the same
+folk-festival transferred to a later date. Again, as regards England we
+|174| must remember the difference between its climate and that of
+Central Europe. Mid-November would here not be a date beyond which
+pasturing was impossible, and thus the slaughter and feast held then by
+Angles and Saxons in their old German home would tend to be delayed.{32}
+
+Christmas, as will be gathered from the foregoing, cannot on its pagan
+side be separated from the folk-feasts of November and December. The
+meaning of the term will therefore here be so extended as to cover the
+whole period between All Saints' Day and Epiphany. That this is not too
+violent a proceeding will be seen later on.
+
+For the purposes of this book it seems best to treat the winter festivals
+calendarially, so to speak: to start at the beginning of November, and
+show them in procession, suggesting, as far as may be, the probable
+origins of the customs observed. Thus we may avoid the dismemberment
+caused by taking out certain practices from various festivals and
+grouping them under their probable origins, a method which would,
+moreover, be perilous in view of the very conjectural nature of the
+theories offered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before we pass to our procession of festivals, something must be said
+about the general nature and _rationale_ of the customs associated with
+them. For convenience these customs may be divided into three groups:--
+
+  I. _Sacrificial or Sacramental Practices._
+  II. _Customs connected with the Cult of the Dead and the Family Hearth._
+  III. _Omens and Charms for the New Year._
+
+Though these three classes overlap and it is sometimes difficult to place
+a given practice exclusively in one of them, they will form a useful
+framework for a brief account of the primitive ritual which survives at
+the winter festivals.
+
+
+I. SACRIFICIAL AND SACRAMENTAL PRACTICES.
+
+To most people, probably, the word "sacrifice" suggests an offering,
+something presented to a divinity in order to obtain his favour. Such
+seems to have been the meaning generally given to |175| sacrificial
+rites in Europe when Christianity came into conflict with paganism. It
+is, however, held by many scholars that the original purpose of sacrifice
+was sacramental--the partaking by the worshipper of the divine life,
+conceived of as present in the victim, rather than the offering of a gift
+to a divinity.{33}
+
+The whole subject of sacred animals is obscure, and in regard,
+especially, to totemism--defined by Dr. Frazer{34} as "belief in the
+kinship of certain families with certain species of animals" and
+practices based upon that belief--the most divergent views are held by
+scholars. The religious significance which some have seen in totemistic
+customs is denied by others, while there is much disagreement as to the
+probability of their having been widespread in Europe. Still, whatever
+may be the truth about totemism, there is much that points to the
+sometime existence in Europe of sacrifices that were not offerings, but
+solemn feasts of communion in the flesh and blood of a worshipful
+animal.{35} That the idea of sacrificial communion preceded the
+sacrifice-gift is suggested by the fact that in many customs which appear
+to be sacrificial survivals the body of the victim has some kind of
+sacramental efficacy; it conveys a blessing to that which is brought into
+contact with it. The actual eating and drinking of the flesh and blood is
+the most perfect mode of contact, but the same end seems to have been
+aimed at in such customs as the sprinkling of worshippers with blood, the
+carrying of the victim in procession from house to house, the burying of
+flesh in furrows to make the crops grow, and the wearing of hides, heads,
+or horns of sacrificed beasts.{36} We shall meet, during the Christmas
+season, with various practices that seem to have originated either in a
+sacrificial feast or in some such sacramental rites as have just been
+described. So peculiarly prominent are animal masks, apparently derived
+from hide-, head-, and horn-wearing, that we may dwell upon them a little
+at this point.
+
+We have already seen how much trouble the Kalends custom of beast-masking
+gave the ecclesiastics. Its probable origin is thus suggested by
+Robertson Smith:--
+
+    "It is ... appropriate that the worshipper should dress himself in
+    |176| the skin of a victim, and so, as it were, envelop himself in
+    its sanctity. To rude nations dress is not merely a physical comfort,
+    but a fixed part of social religion, a thing by which a man
+    constantly bears on his body the token of his religion, and which is
+    itself a charm and a means of divine protection.... When the dress of
+    sacrificial skin, which at once declared a man's religion and his
+    sacred kindred, ceased to be used in ordinary life, it was still
+    retained in holy and especially in piacular functions; ... examples
+    are afforded by the Dionysiac mysteries and other Greek rites, and by
+    almost every rude religion; while in later cults the old rite
+    survives at least in the religious use of animal masks."[84]{37}
+
+If we accept the animal-worship and sacrificial communion theory, many a
+Christmas custom will carry us back in thought to a stage of religion far
+earlier than the Greek and Roman classics or the Celtic and Teutonic
+mythology of the conversion period: we shall be taken back to a time
+before men had come to have anthropomorphic gods, when they were not
+conscious of their superiority to the beasts of the field, but regarded
+these beings, mysterious in their actions, extraordinary in their powers,
+as incarnations of potent spirits. At this stage of thought, it would
+seem, there were as yet no definite divinities with personal names and
+characters, but the world was full of spirits immanent in animal or plant
+or chosen human being, and able to pass from one incarnation to another.
+Or indeed it may be that animal sacrifice originated at a stage of
+religion before the idea of definite "spirits" had arisen, when man was
+conscious rather of a vague force like the Melanesian _mana_, in himself
+and in almost everything, and "constantly trembling on the verge of
+personality."{38} "_Mana_" better than "god" or "spirit" may express
+that with which the partaker in the communal feast originally sought
+contact. "When you sacrifice," to quote some words of Miss Jane Harrison,
+"you build as it were a bridge between your _mana_, your will, your
+desire, which is weak and impotent, and |177| that unseen outside
+_mana_ which you believe to be strong and efficacious. In the fruits of
+the earth which grow by some unseen power there is much _mana_; you want
+that _mana_. In the loud-roaring bull and the thunder is much _mana_; you
+want that _mana_. It would be well to get some, to eat a piece of that
+bull raw, but it is dangerous, not a thing to do unawares alone; so you
+consecrate the first-fruits, you sacrifice the bull and then in safety
+you--communicate."{39} "Sanctity"--the quality of awfulness and
+mystery--rather than divinity or personality, may have been what
+primitive man saw in the beasts and birds which he venerated in "their
+silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of their limited doings."{40}
+When we use the word "spirit" in connection with the pagan sacramental
+practices of Christmastide, it is well to bear in mind the possibility
+that at the origin of these customs there may have been no notion of
+communion with strictly personal beings, but rather some such _mana_ idea
+as has been suggested above.
+
+It is probable that animal-cults had their origin at a stage of human
+life preceding agriculture, when man lived not upon cultivated plants or
+tamed beasts, but upon roots and fruits and the products of the chase.
+Some scholars, indeed, hold that the domestication of animals for
+practical use was an outcome of the sacred, inviolable character of
+certain creatures: they may originally have been spared not for reasons
+of convenience but because it was deemed a crime to kill them--except
+upon certain solemn occasions--and may have become friendly towards man
+through living by his side.{41} On the other hand it is possible that
+totems were originally staple articles of food, that they were sacred
+because they were eaten with satisfaction, and that the very awe and
+respect attached to them because of their life-giving powers tended to
+remove them from common use and limit their consumption to rare
+ceremonial occasions.
+
+Closely akin to the worship of animals is that of plants, and especially
+trees, and there is much evidence pointing to sacramental cults in
+connection with the plant-world.{42} Some cakes and special vegetable
+dishes eaten on festal days may be survivals of sacramental feasts
+parallel to those upon the flesh and blood of |178| an animal victim.
+Benediction by external contact, again, is suggested by the widespread
+use in various ways of branches or sprigs or whole trees. The
+Christmas-tree and evergreen decorations are the most obvious examples;
+we shall see others in the course of our survey, and in connection with
+plants as well as with animals we shall meet with processions intended to
+convey a blessing to every house by carrying about the sacred
+elements--to borrow a term from Christian theology. Even the familiar
+practice of going carol-singing may be a Christianized form of some such
+perambulation.
+
+It is possible that men and women had originally separate cults. The cult
+of animals, according to a theory set forth by Mr. Chambers, would at
+first belong to the men, who as hunters worshipped the beasts they slew,
+apologizing to them, as some primitive people do to-day, for the
+slaughter they were obliged to commit. Other animals, apparently, were
+held too sacred to be slain, except upon rare and solemn occasions, and
+hence, as we have seen, may have arisen domestication and the pastoral
+life which, with its religious rites, was the affair of the men. To
+women, on the other hand, belonged agriculture; the cult of Mother Earth
+and the vegetation-spirits seems to have been originally theirs. Later
+the two cults would coalesce, but a hint of the time when certain rites
+were practised only by women may be found in that dressing up of men in
+female garments which appears not merely in the old Kalends customs but
+in some modern survivals.[85]{43}
+
+Apart from any special theory of the origin of sacrifice, we may note the
+association at Christmas of physical feasting with religious rejoicing.
+In this the modern European is the heir of an agelong tradition.
+"Everywhere," says Robertson Smith, |179| "we find that a sacrifice
+ordinarily involves a feast, and that a feast cannot be provided without
+a sacrifice. For a feast is not complete without flesh, and in early
+times the rule that all slaughter is sacrifice was not confined to the
+Semites. The identity of religious occasions and festal seasons may
+indeed be taken as the determining characteristic of the type of ancient
+religion generally; when men meet their god they feast and are glad
+together, and whenever they feast and are glad they desire that the god
+should be of the party."{45} To the paganism that preceded Christianity
+we must look for the origin of that Christmas feasting which has not
+seldom been a matter of scandal for the severer type of churchman.
+
+   [Transcriber's Note: The marker for note {44} was not present in
+   the page scan]
+
+A letter addressed in 601 by Pope Gregory the Great to Abbot Mellitus,
+giving him instructions to be handed on to Augustine of Canterbury,
+throws a vivid light on the process by which heathen sacrificial feasts
+were turned into Christian festivals. "Because," the Pope says of the
+Anglo-Saxons, "they are wont to slay many oxen in sacrifices to demons,
+some solemnity should be put in the place of this, so that on the day of
+the dedication of the churches, or the nativities of the holy martyrs
+whose relics are placed there, they may make for themselves tabernacles
+of branches of trees around those churches which have been changed from
+heathen temples, and may celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting.
+Nor let them now sacrifice animals to the Devil, but to the praise of God
+kill animals for their own eating, and render thanks to the Giver of all
+for their abundance; so that while some outward joys are retained for
+them, they may more readily respond to inward joys. For from obdurate
+minds it is undoubtedly impossible to cut off everything at once, because
+he who strives to ascend to the highest place rises by degrees or steps
+and not by leaps."{46}
+
+We see here very plainly the mind of the ecclesiastical compromiser.
+Direct sacrifice to heathen gods the Church of course could not dream of
+tolerating; it had been the very centre of her attack since the days of
+St. Paul, and refusal to take part in it had cost the martyrs their
+lives. Yet the festivity and merrymaking to which it gave occasion were
+to be left to the |180| people, for a time at all events. The policy
+had its advantages, it made the Church festivals popular; but it had also
+its dangers, it encouraged the intrusion of a pagan fleshly element into
+their austere and chastened joys. A certain orgiastic licence crept in,
+an unbridling of the physical appetites, which has ever been a source of
+sorrow and anger to the most earnest Christians and even led the Puritans
+of the seventeenth century to condemn all festivals as diabolical.
+
+Before we leave the subject of sacrificial survivals, it must be added
+that certain Christmas customs may come, little as those who practise
+them suspect it, from that darkest of religious rites, human sacrifice.
+Reference has already been made to Dr. Frazer's view of the Saturnalian
+king and his awful origin. We shall meet with various similar figures
+during the Christmas season--the "King of the Bean," for instance, and
+the "Bishop of Fools." If the theories about human sacrifice set forth in
+"The Golden Bough" be accepted, we may regard these personages as having
+once been mock kings chosen to suffer instead of the real kings, who had
+at first to perish by a violent death in order to preserve from the decay
+of age the divine life incarnate in them. Such mock monarchs, according
+to Dr. Frazer, were exalted for a brief season to the glory and luxury of
+kingship ere their doom fell upon them;{47} in the Christmas "kings" the
+splendour alone has survived, the dark side is forgotten.
+
+
+II. THE CULT OF THE DEAD AND THE FAMILY HEARTH.
+
+Round the winter festival cluster certain customs apparently connected
+with distinctively domestic religion, rather than with such public and
+communal cults as we have considered under the heading of Sacrifice and
+Sacrament. A festival of the family--that is, perhaps, what Christmas
+most prominently is to-day: it is the great season for gatherings "round
+the old fireside"; it is a joyous time for the children of the house, and
+the memory of the departed is vivid then, if unexpressed. Further, by the
+Yule log customs and certain other ceremonies still practised in the
+remoter corners of Europe, we are carried back to a stage of thought at
+which the dead were conceived as hovering about or |181| visiting the
+abodes of the living. Ancestral spirits, it seems, were once believed to
+be immanent in the fire that burned on the hearth, and had to be
+propitiated with libations, while elsewhere the souls of the dead were
+thought to return to their old homes at the New Year, and meat and drink
+had to be set out for them. The Church's establishment of All Souls' Day
+did much to keep practices of tendance of the departed to early November,
+but sometimes these have wandered to later dates and especially to
+Christmas. In folk-practices directed towards the dead two tendencies are
+to be found: on the one hand affection or at all events consideration for
+the departed persists, and efforts are made to make them comfortable; on
+the other, they are regarded with dread, and the sight of them is avoided
+by the living.
+
+In the passage quoted from Caesarius of Arles there was mention of the
+laying of tables with abundance of food at the Kalends. The same practice
+is condemned by St. Jerome in the fifth century, and is by him specially
+connected with Egypt.{48} He, like Caesarius and others, regards it as a
+kind of charm to ensure abundance during the coming year, but it is very
+possible that its real purpose was different, that the food was an
+offering to supernatural beings, the guardians and representatives of the
+dead.{49} Burchardus of Worms in the early eleventh century says
+definitely that in his time tables were laid with food and drink and
+three knives for "those three Sisters whom the ancients in their folly
+called _Parcae_."{50} The _Parcae_ were apparently identified with the
+three "weird" Sisters known in England and in other Teutonic regions, and
+seem to have some connection with the fairies. As we shall see later on,
+it is still in some places the custom to lay out tables for supernatural
+beings, whether, as at All Souls' tide, explicitly for the dead, or for
+Frau Perchta, or for the Virgin or some other Christian figure. Possibly
+the name _Modranicht_ (night of mothers), which Bede gives to Christmas
+Eve,{51} may be connected with this practice.
+
+Not remote, probably, in origin from a belief in "ghosts" is the driving
+away of spirits that sometimes takes place about |182| Christmas-time.
+Many peoples, as Dr. Frazer has shown, have an annual expulsion of
+goblins, ghosts, devils, witches, and evil influences, commonly at the
+end of the Old or beginning of the New Year. Sometimes the beings so
+driven away are definitely the spirits of the departed. An appalling
+racket and a great flare of torches are common features of these
+expulsions, and we shall meet with similar customs during the Christmas
+season. Such purifications, according to Dr. Frazer, are often preceded
+or followed by periods of licence, for when the burden of evil is about
+to be, or has just been, removed, it is felt that a little temporary
+freedom from moral restraints may be allowed with impunity.{52} Hence
+possibly, in part, the licence which has often attended the Christmas
+season.
+
+
+III. OMENS AND CHARMS FOR THE NEW YEAR.
+
+Customs of augury are to be met with at various dates, which may mark the
+gradual shifting of the New Year festival from early November to January
+1, while actual charms to secure prosperity are commonest at Christmas
+itself or at the modern New Year. Magical rather than religious in
+character, they are attempts to discover or influence the future by a
+sort of crude scientific method based on supposed analogies. Beneath the
+charms lie the primitive ideas that like produces like and that things
+which have once been in contact continue to act upon one another after
+they are separated in space.{53} The same ideas obviously underlie many
+of the sacramental practices alluded to a few pages back, and these are
+often of the nature of charms. Probably, too, among New Year charms
+should be included such institutions as the bonfires on Hallowe'en in
+Celtic countries, on Guy Fawkes Day in England, and at Martinmas in
+Germany, for it would seem that they are intended to secure by imitation
+a due supply of sunshine.{54} The principle that "well begun is well
+ended"--or, as the Germans have it, "_Anfang gut, alles gut_"--is
+fundamental in New Year practices: hence the custom of giving presents as
+auguries of wealth during the coming year; hence perhaps partly the heavy
+eating and drinking--a kind of charm to ensure abundance.
+
+|183| Enough has already been said about the attitude of the early
+Church towards traditional folk-customs. Of the position taken up by the
+later mediaeval clergy we get an interesting glimpse in the "Largum Sero"
+of a certain monk Alsso of Brevnov, an account of Christmas practices in
+Bohemia written about the year 1400. It supplies a link between modern
+customs and the Kalends prohibitions of the Dark Ages. Alsso tells of a
+number of laudable Christmas Eve practices, gives elaborate Christian
+interpretations of them, and contrasts them with things done by bad
+Catholics with ungodly intention. Here are some of his complaints:--
+
+    Presents, instead of being given, as they should be, in memory of
+    God's great Gift to man, are sent because he who does not give freely
+    will be unlucky in the coming year. Money, instead of being given to
+    the poor, as is seemly, is laid on the table to augur wealth, and
+    people open their purses that luck may enter. Instead of using fruit
+    as a symbol of Christ the Precious Fruit, men cut it open to predict
+    the future [probably from the pips]. It is a laudable custom to make
+    great white loaves at Christmas as symbols of the True Bread, but
+    evil men set out such loaves that the gods may eat of them.
+
+Alsso's assumption is that the bad Catholics are diabolically perverting
+venerable Christmas customs, but there can be little doubt that precisely
+the opposite was really the case--the Christian symbolism was merely a
+gloss upon pagan practices. In one instance Alsso admits that the Church
+had adopted and transformed a heathen usage: the old _calendisationes_ or
+processions with an idol Bel had been changed into processions of clergy
+and choir-boys with the crucifix. Round the villages on the Eve and
+during the Octave of Christmas went these messengers of God, robed in
+white raiment as befitted the servants of the Lord of purity; they would
+chant joyful anthems of the Nativity, and receive in return some money
+from the people--they were, in fact, carol-singers. Moreover with their
+incense they would drive out the Devil from every corner.{55}
+
+Alsso's attitude is one of compromise, or at least many of the old
+heathen customs are allowed by him, when reinterpreted in a |184|
+Christian sense. Such seems to have been the general tendency of the
+later Catholic Church, and also of Anglicanism in so far as it continued
+the Catholic tradition. It will be seen, however, from what has already
+been said, that the English Puritans were but following early Christian
+precedents when they attacked the paganism that manifested itself at
+Christmas.
+
+A strong Puritan onslaught is to be found in the "Anatomie of Abuses" by
+the Calvinist, Philip Stubbes, first published in 1583. "Especially," he
+says, "in Christmas tyme there is nothing els vsed but cardes, dice,
+tables, maskyng, mumming, bowling, and suche like fooleries; and the
+reason is, that they think they haue a commission and prerogatiue that
+tyme to doe what they list, and to followe what vanitie they will. But
+(alas!) doe they thinke that they are preuiledged at that time to doe
+euill? The holier the time is (if one time were holier than an other, as
+it is not), the holier ought their exercises to bee. Can any tyme
+dispence with them, or giue them libertie to sinne? No, no; the soule
+which sinneth shall dye, at what tyme soeuer it offendeth....
+Notwithstandyng, who knoweth not that more mischeef is that tyme
+committed than in all the yere besides?"{56}
+
+When the Puritans had gained the upper hand they proceeded to the
+suppression not only of abuses, but of the festival itself. An excellent
+opportunity for turning the feast into a fast--as the early Church had
+done, it will be remembered, with the Kalends festival--came in 1644. In
+that year Christmas Day happened to fall upon the last Wednesday of the
+month, a day appointed by the Lords and Commons for a Fast and
+Humiliation. In its zeal against carnal pleasures Parliament published
+the following "Ordinance for the better observation of the Feast of the
+Nativity of Christ":--
+
+    "Whereas some doubts have been raised whether the next Fast shall be
+    celebrated, because it falleth on the day which, heretofore, was
+    usually called the Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour; the lords
+    and commons do order and ordain that public notice be given, that the
+    Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every month, ought
+    to be observed until it be otherwise ordered by both houses; |185|
+    and that this day particularly is to be kept with the more solemn
+    humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins and the sins
+    of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory
+    of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to
+    carnal and sensual delights; being contrary to the life which Christ
+    himself led here upon earth, and to the spiritual life of Christ in
+    our souls; for the sanctifying and saving whereof Christ was pleased
+    both to take a human life, and to lay it down again."{57}
+
+But the English people's love of Christmas could not be destroyed. "These
+poor simple creatures are made after superstitious festivals, after
+unholy holidays," said a speaker in the House of Commons. "I have known
+some that have preferred Christmas Day before the Lord's Day," said
+Calamy in a sermon to the Lords in Westminster Abbey, "I have known those
+that would be sure to receive the Sacrament on Christmas Day though they
+did not receive it all the year after. This was the superstition of this
+day, and the profaneness was as great. There were some that did not play
+cards all the year long, yet they must play at Christmas." Various
+protests were made against the suppression of the festival. Though
+Parliament sat every Christmas Day from 1644 to 1656, the shops in London
+in 1644 were all shut, and in 1646 the people who opened their shops were
+so roughly used that next year they petitioned Parliament to protect them
+in future. In 1647 the shops were indeed all closed, but evergreen
+decorations were put up in the City, and the Lord Mayor and City Marshal
+had to ride about setting fire to them. There were even riots in country
+places, notably at Canterbury. With the Restoration Christmas naturally
+came back to full recognition, though it may be doubted whether it has
+ever been quite the same thing since the Puritan Revolution.{58}
+
+Protestantism, in proportion to its thoroughness and the strength of its
+Puritan elements, has everywhere tended to destroy old pagan traditions
+and the festivals to which they cling. Calvinism has naturally been more
+destructive than Lutheranism, which in the Scandinavian countries has
+left standing many of the externals of Catholicism and also many
+Christmas customs that are purely pagan, while in Germany it has
+tolerated and even hallowed the |186| ritual of the Christmas-tree. But
+more powerful than religious influences, in rooting out the old customs,
+have been modern education and the growth of modern industry, breaking up
+the old traditional country life, and putting in its place the mobile,
+restless life of the great town. Many of the customs we shall have to
+consider belong essentially to the country, and have no relation to the
+life of the modern city. When communal in their character, a man could
+not perform them in separation from his rustic neighbours. Practices
+domestic in their purpose may indeed be transferred to the modern city,
+but it is the experience of folk-lorists that they seldom descend to the
+second generation.
+
+It is in regions like Bavaria, Tyrol, Styria, or the Slav parts of the
+Austrian Empire, or Roumania and Servia, that the richest store of
+festival customs is to be found nowadays. Here the old agricultural life
+has been less interfered with, and at the same time the Church, whether
+Roman or Greek, has succeeded in keeping modern ideas away from the
+people and in maintaining a popular piety that is largely polytheistic in
+its worship of the saints, and embodies a great amount of traditional
+paganism. In our half-suburbanized England but little now remains of
+these vestiges of primitive religion and magic whose interest and
+importance were only realized by students in the later nineteenth
+century, when the wave of "progress" was fast sweeping them away.
+
+Old traditions have a way of turning up unexpectedly in remote corners,
+and it is hard to say for certain that any custom is altogether extinct;
+every year, however, does its work of destruction, and it may well be
+that some of the practices here described in the present tense have
+passed into the Limbo of discarded things.
+
+|187| |188| |189|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS
+
+
+    All Saints' and All Souls' Days, their Relation to a New Year
+    Festival--All Souls' Eve and Tendance of the Departed--Soul Cakes in
+    England and on the Continent--Pagan Parallels of All
+    Souls'--Hallowe'en Charms and Omens--Hallowe'en Fires--Guy Fawkes
+    Day--"Old Hob," the _Schimmelreiter_, and other Animal
+    Masks--Martinmas and its Slaughter--Martinmas Drinking--St. Martin's
+    Fires in Germany--Winter Visitors in the Low Countries and
+    Germany--St. Martin as Gift-bringer--St. Martin's Rod.
+
+
+ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS' DAYS.
+
+In the reign of Charles I. the young gentlemen of the Middle Temple were
+accustomed to reckon All Hallow Tide (November 1) the beginning of
+Christmas.{1} We may here do likewise and start our survey of winter
+festivals with November, in the earlier half of which, apparently, fell
+the Celtic and Teutonic New Year's Days. It is impossible to fix precise
+dates, but there is reason for thinking that the Celtic year began about
+November 1,[86]{2} and the Teutonic about November 11.{3}
+
+On November 1 falls one of the greater festivals of the western Church,
+All Saints'--or, to give it its old English name, All Hallows'--and on
+the morrow is the solemn commemoration of the departed--All Souls'. In
+these two anniversaries the Church has |190| preserved at or near the
+original date one part of the old beginning-of-winter festival--the part
+concerned with the cult of the dead. Some of the practices belonging to
+this side of the feast have been transferred to the season of Christmas
+and the Twelve Days, but these have often lost their original meaning,
+and it is to All Souls' Day that we must look for the most conscious
+survivals of that care for the departed which is so marked a feature of
+primitive religion. Early November, when the leaves are falling, and all
+around speaks of mortality, is a fitting time for the commemoration of
+the dead.
+
+The first clear testimony to All Souls' Day is found at the end of the
+tenth century, and in France. All Saints' Day, however, was certainly
+observed in England, France, and Germany in the eighth century,{5} and
+probably represents an attempt on the part of the Church to turn the
+minds of the faithful away from the pagan belief in and tendance of
+"ghosts" to the contemplation of the saints in the glory of Paradise. It
+would seem that this attempt failed, that the people needed a way of
+actually doing something for their own dead, and that All Souls' Day with
+its solemn Mass and prayers for the departed was intended to supply this
+need and replace the traditional practices.{6} Here again the attempt
+was only partly successful, for side by side with the Church's rites
+there survived a number of usages related not to any Christian doctrine
+of the after-life, but to the pagan idea, widespread among many peoples,
+that on one day or night of the year the souls of the dead return to
+their old homes and must be entertained.
+
+All Souls' Day then appeals to instincts older than Christianity. How
+strong is the hold of ancient custom even upon the sceptical and
+irreligious is shown very strikingly in Roman Catholic countries: even
+those who never go to church visit the graves of their relations on All
+Souls' Eve to deck them with flowers.
+
+The special liturgical features of the Church's celebration are the
+Vespers, Matins, and Lauds of the Dead on the evening of November 1, and
+the solemn Requiem Mass on November 2, with the majestic "Dies irae" and
+the oft-recurrent versicle, "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux
+perpetua luceat |191| eis," that most beautiful of prayers. The priest
+and altar are vested in black, and a catafalque with burning tapers round
+it stands in the body of the church. For the popular customs on the Eve
+we may quote Dr. Tylor's general description:--
+
+    "In Italy the day is given to feasting and drinking in honour of the
+    dead, while skulls and skeletons in sugar and paste form appropriate
+    children's toys. In Tyrol, the poor souls released from purgatory
+    fire for the night may come and smear their burns with the melted fat
+    of the 'soul light' on the hearth, or cakes are left for them on the
+    table, and the room is kept warm for their comfort. Even in Paris the
+    souls of the departed come to partake of the food of the living. In
+    Brittany the crowd pours into the churchyard at evening, to kneel
+    barefoot at the grave of dead kinsfolk, to fill the hollow of the
+    tombstone with holy water, or to pour libations of milk upon it. All
+    night the church bells clang, and sometimes a solemn procession of
+    the clergy goes round to bless the graves. In no household that night
+    is the cloth removed, for the supper must be left for the souls to
+    come and take their part, nor must the fire be put out, where they
+    will come to warm themselves. And at last, as the inmates retire to
+    rest, there is heard at the door a doleful chant--it is the souls,
+    who, borrowing the voices of the parish poor, have come to ask the
+    prayers of the living."{7}
+
+To this may be added some further accounts of All Souls' Eve as the one
+night in the year when the spirits of the departed are thought to revisit
+their old homes.
+
+In the Vosges mountains while the bells are ringing in All Souls' Eve it
+is a custom to uncover the beds and open the windows in order that the
+poor souls may enter and rest. Prayer is made for the dead until late in
+the night, and when the last "De profundis" has been said "the head of
+the family gently covers up the beds, sprinkles them with holy water, and
+shuts the windows."{8}
+
+The Esthonians on All Souls' Day provide a meal for the dead and invite
+them by name. The souls arrive at the first cock-crow and depart at the
+second, being lighted out of the house by the head of the family, who
+waves a white cloth after them and bids them come again next year.{9}
+
+In Brittany, as we have seen, the dead are thought to return at |192|
+this season. It is believed that on the night between All Saints' and All
+Souls' the church is lighted up and the departed attend a nocturnal Mass
+celebrated by a phantom priest. All through the week, in one district,
+people are afraid to go out after nightfall lest they should see some
+dead person.{10} In Tyrol it is believed that the "poor souls" are
+present in the howling winds that often blow at this time.{11}
+
+In the Abruzzi on All Souls' Eve "before people go to sleep they place on
+the table a lighted lamp or candle and a frugal meal of bread and water.
+The dead issue from their graves and stalk in procession through every
+street of the village.... First pass the souls of the good, and then the
+souls of the murdered and the damned."{12}
+
+In Sicily a strange belief is connected with All Souls' Day (_jornu di li
+morti_): the family dead are supposed, like Santa Klaus in the North, to
+bring presents to children; the dead relations have become the good
+fairies of the little ones. On the night between November 1 and 2 little
+Sicilians believe that the departed leave their dread abode and come to
+town to steal from rich shopkeepers sweets and toys and new clothes.
+These they give to their child relations who have been "good" and have
+prayed on their behalf. Often they are clothed in white and wear silken
+shoes, to elude the vigilance of the shopkeepers. They do not always
+enter the houses; sometimes the presents are left in the children's shoes
+put outside doors and windows. In the morning the pretty gifts are
+attributed by the children to the _morti_ in whose coming their parents
+have taught them to believe.{13}
+
+A very widespread custom at this season is to burn candles, perhaps in
+order to lighten the darkness for the poor souls. In Catholic Ireland
+candles shine in the windows on the Vigil of All Souls',{14} in Belgium
+a holy candle is burnt all night, or people walk in procession with
+lighted tapers, while in many Roman Catholic countries, and even in the
+Protestant villages of Baden, the graves are decked with lights as well
+as flowers.{15}
+
+Another practice on All Saints' and All Souls' Days, curiously |193|
+common formerly in Protestant England, is that of making and giving
+"soul-cakes." These and the quest of them by children were customary in
+various English counties and in Scotland.{16} The youngsters would beg
+not only for the cakes but also sometimes for such things as "apples and
+strong beer," presumably to make a "wassail-bowl" of "lambswool," hot
+spiced ale with roast apples in it.{17} Here is a curious rhyme which
+they sang in Shropshire as they went round to their neighbours,
+collecting contributions:--
+
+   "Soul! soul! for a soul-cake!
+    I pray, good missis, a soul-cake!
+    An apple or pear, a plum or a cherry,
+    Any good thing to make us merry.
+    One for Peter, two for Paul,
+    Three for Him who made us all.
+    Up with the kettle, and down with the pan,
+    Give us good alms, and we'll be gone."{18}
+
+Shropshire is a county peculiarly rich in "souling" traditions, and one
+old lady had cakes made to give away to the souling-children up to the
+time of her death in 1884. At that period the custom of "souling" had
+greatly declined in the county, and where it still existed the rewards
+were usually apples or money. Grown men, as well as children, sometimes
+went round, and the ditties sung often contained verses of good-wishes
+for the household practically identical with those sung by wassailers at
+Christmas.{19}
+
+The name "soul-cake" of course suggests that the cakes were in some way
+associated with the departed, whether given as a reward for prayers for
+souls in Purgatory, or as a charity for the benefit of the "poor souls,"
+or baked that the dead might feast upon them.[87] It seems most probable
+that they were relics of a feast once laid out for the souls. On the
+other hand it is just possible that they were originally a sacrament of
+the corn-spirit. |194| A North Welsh tradition recorded by Pennant may
+conceivably have preserved a vague memory of some agricultural
+connection: he tells us that on receiving soul-cakes the poor people used
+to pray to God to bless the next crop of wheat.{20}
+
+Not in Great Britain alone are soul-cakes found; they are met with in
+Belgium, southern Germany, and Austria. In western Flanders children set
+up on All Souls' Eve little street altars, putting a crucifix or Madonna
+with candles on a chair or stool, and begging passers-by for money "for
+cakes for the souls in Purgatory." On All Souls' morning it is customary,
+all over the Flemish part of Belgium, to bake little cakes of finest
+white flour, called "soul-bread." They are eaten hot, and a prayer is
+said at the same time for the souls in Purgatory. It is believed that a
+soul is delivered for every cake eaten. At Antwerp the cakes are coloured
+yellow with saffron to suggest the Purgatorial flames. In southern
+Germany and Austria little white loaves of a special kind are baked; they
+are generally oval in form, and are usually called by some name into
+which the word "soul" enters. In Tyrol they are given to children by
+their godparents; those for the boys have the shape of horses or hares,
+those for the girls, of hens. In Tyrol the cakes left over at supper
+remain on the table and are said to "belong to the poor souls."{21}
+
+In Friuli in the north-east of Italy there is a custom closely
+corresponding to our "soul-cakes." On All Souls' Day every family gives
+away a quantity of bread. This is not regarded as a charity; all the
+people of the village come to receive it and before eating it pray for
+the departed of the donor's family. The most prosperous people are not
+ashamed to knock at the door and ask for this _pane dei morti_.{22}
+
+In Tyrol All Souls' is a day of licensed begging, which has become a
+serious abuse. A noisy rabble of ragged and disorderly folk, with bags
+and baskets to receive gifts, wanders from village to village, claiming
+as a right the presents of provisions that were originally a freewill
+offering for the benefit of the departed, and angrily abusing those who
+refuse to give.{23}
+
+The New Year is the time for a festival of the dead in many parts of the
+world.{24} I may quote Dr. Frazer's account of what |195| goes on in
+Tonquin; it shows a remarkable likeness to some European customs[88]:--
+
+    "In Tonquin, as in Sumba, the dead revisit their kinsfolk and their
+    old homes at the New Year. From the hour of midnight, when the New
+    Year begins, no one dares to shut the door of his house for fear of
+    excluding the ghosts, who begin to arrive at that time. Preparations
+    have been made to welcome and refresh them after their long journey.
+    Beds and mats are ready for their weary bodies to repose upon, water
+    to wash their dusty feet, slippers to comfort them, and canes to
+    support their feeble steps."{25}
+
+In Lithuania, the last country in Europe to be converted to Christianity,
+heathen traditions lingered long, and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
+travellers give accounts of a pagan New Year's feast which has great
+interest. In October, according to one account, on November 2, according
+to another, the whole family met together, strewed the tables with straw
+and put sacks on the straw. Bread and two jugs of beer were then placed
+on the table, and one of every kind of domestic animal was roasted before
+the fire after a prayer to the god Zimiennik (possibly an ancestral
+spirit), asking for protection through the year and offering the animals.
+Portions were thrown to the corners of the room with the words "Accept
+our burnt sacrifice, O Zimiennik, and kindly partake thereof." Then
+followed a great feast. Further, the spirits of the dead were invited to
+leave their graves and visit the bath-house, where platters of food were
+spread out and left for three days. At the end of this time the remains
+of the repast were set out over the graves and libations poured.{26}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The beginning of November is not solely a time of memory of the dead;
+customs of other sorts linger, or until lately used to linger, about it,
+especially in Scotland, northern England, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, and
+the West Midlands. One may conjecture that these are survivals from the
+Celtic New Year's Day, for most of them are of the nature of omens or
+charms. Apples and nuts are prominent on Hallowe'en, the Eve of All
+|196| Saints;[89] they may be regarded either as a kind of sacrament of
+the vegetation-spirit, or as simply intended by homoeopathic magic to
+bring fulness and fruitfulness to their recipients. A custom once common
+in the north of England{27} and in Wales{28} was to catch at apples
+with the mouth, the fruit being suspended on a string, or on one end of a
+large transverse beam with a lighted candle at the other end. In the
+north apples and nuts were the feature of the evening feast, hence the
+name "Nutcrack night."{29}
+
+Again, at St. Ives in Cornwall every child is given a big apple on
+Allhallows' Eve--"Allan Day" as it is called.{30} Nuts and apples were
+also used as means of forecasting the future. In Scotland for instance
+nuts were put into the fire and named after particular lads and lasses.
+"As they burn quietly together or start from beside one another, the
+course and issue of the courtship will be."{31} On Hallowe'en in
+Nottinghamshire if a girl had two lovers and wanted to know which would
+be the more constant, she took two apple-pips, stuck one on each cheek
+(naming them after her lovers) and waited for one to fall off. The poet
+Gay alludes to this custom:--
+
+   "See from the core two kernels now I take,
+    This on my cheek for Lubberkin is worn,
+    And Booby Clod on t'other side is borne;
+    But Booby Clod soon falls upon the ground,
+    A certain token that his love's unsound;
+    While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last;
+    Oh! were his lips to mine but joined so fast."{32}
+
+In Nottinghamshire apples are roasted and the parings thrown over the
+left shoulder. "Notice is taken of the shapes which the parings assume
+when they fall to the ground. Whatever letter a paring resembles will be
+the initial letter of the Christian name of the man or woman whom you
+will marry."{33}
+
+|197| Hallowe'en is indeed in the British Isles the favourite time for
+forecasting the future, and various methods are employed for this
+purpose.
+
+A girl may cross her shoes upon her bedroom floor in the shape of a T and
+say these lines:--
+
+   "I cross my shoes in the shape of a T,
+    Hoping this night my true love to see,
+    Not in his best or worst array,
+    But in the clothes of every day."
+
+Then let her get into bed backwards without speaking any more that night,
+and she will see her future husband in her dreams.{34}
+
+"On All Hallowe'en or New Year's Eve," says Mr. W. Henderson, "a Border
+maiden may wash her sark, and hang it over a chair to dry, taking care to
+tell no one what she is about. If she lie awake long enough, she will see
+the form of her future spouse enter the room and turn the sark. We are
+told of one young girl who, after fulfilling this rite, looked out of bed
+and saw a coffin behind the sark; it remained visible for some time and
+then disappeared. The girl rose up in agony and told her family what had
+occurred, and the next morning she heard of her lover's death."{35}
+
+In Scotland{36} and Ireland{37} other methods of foreseeing the future
+are practised on Hallowe'en; we need not consider them here, for we shall
+have quite enough of such auguries later on. (Some Scottish customs are
+introduced by Burns into his poem "Hallowe'en.") I may, however, allude
+to the custom formerly prevalent in Wales for women to congregate in the
+church on this "Night of the Winter Kalends," in order to discover who of
+the parishioners would die during the year.{38} East of the Welsh
+border, at Dorstone in Herefordshire, there was a belief that on All
+Hallows' Eve at midnight those who were bold enough to look through the
+windows would see the church lighted with an unearthly glow, and Satan in
+monk's habit fulminating anathemas from the pulpit and calling out the
+names of those who were to render up their souls.{39}
+
+|198| Again, there are numerous Hallowe'en fire customs, probably
+sun-charms for the New Year, a kind of homoeopathic magic intended to
+assist the sun in his struggle with the powers of darkness. To this day
+great bonfires are kindled in the Highlands, and formerly brands were
+carried about and the new fire was lit in each house.{40} It would seem
+that the Yule log customs (see Chapter X.) are connected with this new
+lighting of the house-fire, transferred to Christmas.
+
+In Ireland fire was lighted at this time at a place called Tlachtga, from
+which all the hearths in Ireland are said to have been annually
+supplied.{41} In Wales the habit of lighting bonfires on the hills is
+perhaps not yet extinct.{42} Within living memory when the flames were
+out somebody would raise the cry, "May the tailless black sow seize the
+hindmost," and everyone present would run for his life.{43} This may
+point to a former human sacrifice, possibly of a victim laden with the
+accumulated evils of the past year.{44}
+
+In North Wales, according to another account, each family used to make a
+great bonfire in a conspicuous place near the house. Every person threw
+into the ashes a white stone, marked; the stones were searched for in the
+morning, and if any one were missing the person who had thrown it in
+would die, it was believed, during the year.{45} The same belief and
+practice were found at Callander in Perthshire.{46}
+
+Though, probably, the Hallowe'en fire rites had originally some
+connection with the sun, the conscious intention of those who practised
+them in modern times was often to ward off witchcraft. With this object
+in one place the master of the family used to carry a bunch of burning
+straw about the corn, in Scotland the red end of a fiery stick was waved
+in the air, in Lancashire a lighted candle was borne about the fells, and
+in the Isle of Man fires were kindled.{47}
+
+
+GUY FAWKES DAY.
+
+Probably the burning of Guy Fawkes on November 5 is a survival of a New
+Year bonfire. There is every reason to think that the commemoration of
+the deliverance from "gunpowder |199| treason and plot" is but a modern
+meaning attached to an ancient traditional practice, for the burning of
+the effigy has many parallels in folk-custom. Dr. Frazer{48} regards
+such effigies as representatives of the spirit of vegetation--by burning
+them in a fire that represented the sun men thought they secured sunshine
+for trees and crops. Later, when the ideas on which the custom was based
+had faded away, people came to identify these images with persons whom
+they regarded with aversion, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther (in Catholic
+Tyrol), and, apparently, Guy Fawkes in England. At Ludlow in Shropshire,
+it is interesting to note, if any well-known local man had aroused the
+enmity of the populace his effigy was substituted for, or added to, that
+of Guy Fawkes. Bonfire Day at Ludlow is marked by a torchlight procession
+and a huge conflagration.{49} At Hampstead the Guy Fawkes fire and
+procession are still in great force. The thing has become a regular
+carnival, and on a foggy November night the procession along the steep
+curving Heath Street, with the glare of the torches lighting up the faces
+of dense crowds, is a strangely picturesque spectacle.[90]
+
+
+ANIMAL MASKS.
+
+On All Souls' Day in Cheshire there began to be carried about a curious
+construction called "Old Hob," a horse's head enveloped in a sheet; it
+was taken from door to door, and accompanied by the singing of begging
+rhymes.{50} Old Hob, who continued to appear until Christmas, is an
+English parallel to the German _Schimmel_ or white horse. We have here to
+do with one of those strange animal forms which are apparently relics of
+sacrificial customs. They come on various days in the winter festival
+season, and also at other times, and may as well be considered at this
+point. In some cases they are definitely imitations of animals, and may
+have replaced real sacrificial beasts taken about in procession, in
+others they are simply men wearing the head, horn, hide, or tail of a
+beast, like the worshippers at many |200| a heathen sacrifice to-day.
+(Of the _rationale_ of masking something has already been said in Chapter
+VI.)
+
+The mingling of Roman and non-Roman customs makes it very hard to
+separate the different elements in the winter festivals. In regard
+particularly to animal masks it is difficult to pronounce in favour of
+one racial origin rather than another; we may, however, infer with some
+probability that when a custom is attached not to Christmas or the
+January Kalends but to one of the November or early December feasts, it
+is not of Roman origin. For, as the centuries have passed, Christmas and
+the Kalends--the Roman festivals ecclesiastical and secular--have
+increasingly tended to supplant the old northern festal times, and a
+transference of, for instance, a Teutonic custom from Martinmas to
+Christmas or January 1, is far more conceivable than the attraction of a
+Roman practice to one of the earlier and waning festivals.
+
+Let us take first the horse-forms, seemingly connected with that
+sacrificial use of the horse among the Teutons to which Tacitus and other
+writers testify.{51} "Old Hob" is doubtless one form of the hobby horse,
+so familiar in old English festival customs. His German parallel, the
+_Schimmel_, is mostly formed thus in the north: a sieve with a long pole
+to whose end a horse's head is fastened, is tied beneath the chest of a
+young man, who goes on all fours, and some white cloths are thrown over
+the whole. In Silesia the _Schimmel_ is formed by three or four youths.
+The rider is generally veiled, and often wears on his head a pot with
+glowing coals shining forth through openings that represent eyes and a
+mouth.{52} In Pomerania the thing is called simply _Schimmel_,{53} in
+other parts emphasis is laid upon the rider, and the name
+_Schimmelreiter_ is given. Some mythologists have seen in this rider on a
+white horse an impersonation of Woden on his great charger; but it is
+more likely that the practice simply originated in the taking round of a
+real sacrificial horse.{54} The _Schimmelreiter_ is often accompanied by
+a "bear," a youth dressed in straw who plays the part of a bear tied to a
+pole.{55} He may be connected with some such veneration of the animal as
+is suggested by the custom still surviving at Berne, of keeping bears at
+the public expense.
+
+To return to Great Britain, here is an account of a so-called |201|
+"hodening" ceremony once performed at Christmas-time at Ramsgate: "A
+party of young people procure the head of a dead horse, which is affixed
+to a pole about four feet in length, a string is tied to the lower jaw, a
+horse-cloth is then attached to the whole, under which one of the party
+gets, and by frequently pulling the string keeps up a loud snapping noise
+and is accompanied by the rest of the party grotesquely habited and
+ringing hand-bells. They thus proceed from house to house, sounding their
+bells and singing carols and songs."{56}
+
+Again, in Wales a creature called "the Mari Llwyd" was known at
+Christmas. A horse's skull is "dressed up with ribbons, and supported on
+a pole by a man who is concealed under a large white cloth. There is a
+contrivance for opening and shutting the jaws, and the figure pursues and
+bites everybody it can lay hold of, and does not release them except on
+payment of a fine."{57} The movable jaws here give the thing a likeness
+to certain Continental figures representing other kinds of animals and
+probably witnessing to their former sacrificial use. On the island of
+Usedom appears the _Klapperbock_, a youth who carries a pole with the
+hide of a buck thrown over it and a wooden head at the end. The lower jaw
+moves up and down and clatters, and he charges at children who do not
+know their prayers by heart.{58} In Upper Styria we meet the
+_Habergaiss_. Four men hold on to one another and are covered with white
+blankets. The foremost one holds up a wooden goat's head with a movable
+lower jaw that rattles, and he butts children.{59} At Ilsenburg in the
+Harz is found the _Habersack_, formed by a person taking a pole ending in
+a fork, and putting a broom between the prongs so that the appearance of
+a head with horns is obtained. The carrier is concealed by a sheet.{60}
+
+In connection with horns we must not forget the "horn-dance" at Abbots
+Bromley in Staffordshire, held now in September, but formerly at
+Christmas. Six of the performers wear sets of horns kept from year to
+year in the church.{61} Plot, in his "Natural History of Staffordshire"
+(1686, p. 434) calls it a "_Hobby-horse Dance_ from a person who carried
+the image of a horse between his legs, made of thin boards."{62}
+
+|202| In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway creatures resembling both the
+_Schimmelreiter_ and the _Klapperbock_ are or were to be met with at
+Christmas. The name _Julebuk_ (yule buck) is used for various objects:
+sometimes for a person dressed up in hide and horns, or with a buck's
+head, who "goes for" little boys and girls; sometimes for a straw puppet
+set up or tossed about from hand to hand; sometimes for a cake in the
+form of a buck. People seem to have had a bad conscience about these
+things, for there are stories connecting them with the Devil. A girl, for
+instance, who danced at midnight with a straw _Julebuk_, found that her
+partner was no puppet but the Evil One himself. Again, a fellow who had
+dressed himself in black and put horns on his head, claws on his hands,
+and fiery tow in his mouth, was carried off by the Prince of Darkness
+whose form he had mimicked.{63} The association of animal maskings with
+the infernal powers is doubtless the work of the Church. To the zealous
+missionary the old heathen ritual was no mere foolish superstition but a
+service of intensely real and awful beings, the very devils of hell, and
+one may even conjecture that the traditional Christian devil-type, half
+animal half human, was indirectly derived from skin-clad worshippers at
+pagan festivals.
+
+
+MARTINMAS.
+
+Between All Souls' Day and Martinmas (November 11) there are no
+folk-festivals of great importance, though on St. Hubert's Day, November
+3, in Flemish Belgium special little cakes are made, adorned with the
+horn of the saint, the patron of hunting, and are eaten not only by human
+beings but by dogs, cats, and other domestic animals.{64} The English
+Guy Fawkes Day has already been considered, while November 9, Lord
+Mayor's Day, the beginning of the municipal year, may remind us of the
+old Teutonic New Year.
+
+Round Martinmas popular customs cluster thickly, as might be expected,
+since it marks as nearly as possible the date of the old
+beginning-of-winter festival, the feast perhaps at which Germanicus
+surprised the Marsi in A.D. 14.{65}
+
+The most obvious feature of Martinmas is its physical feasting. |203|
+Economic causes, as we saw in Chapter VI., must have made the middle of
+November a great killing season among the old Germans, for the snow which
+then began rendered it impossible longer to pasture the beasts, and there
+was not fodder enough to keep the whole herd through the winter. Thus it
+was a time of feasting on flesh, and of animal sacrifices, as is
+suggested by the Anglo-Saxon name given to November by Bede,
+_Blot-monath_, sacrifice-month.{66}
+
+Christmas does not seem to have quickly superseded the middle of November
+as a popular feast in Teutonic countries; rather one finds an outcome of
+the conciliatory policy pursued by Gregory the Great (see Chapter VI.) in
+the development of Martinmas. Founded in the fifth century, it was made a
+great Church festival by Pope Martin I. (649-654),{67} and it may well
+have been intended to absorb and Christianize the New Year festivities of
+the Teutonic peoples. The veneration of St. Martin spread rapidly in the
+churches of northern Europe, and he came to be regarded as one of the
+very chief of the saints.{68} His day is no longer a Church feast of
+high rank, but its importance as a folk festival is great.
+
+The tradition of slaughter is preserved in the British custom of killing
+cattle on St. Martin's Day--"Martlemas beef"{69}--and in the German
+eating of St. Martin's geese and swine.{70} The St. Martin's goose,
+indeed, is in Germany as much a feature of the festival as the English
+Michaelmas goose is of the September feast of the angels.
+
+In Denmark too a goose is eaten at Martinmas, and from its breast-bone
+the character of the coming winter can be foreseen. The white in it is a
+sign of snow, the brown of very great cold. Similar ideas can be traced
+in Germany, though there is not always agreement as to what the white and
+the brown betoken.{71}
+
+At St. Peter's, Athlone, Ireland, a very obviously sacrificial custom
+lasted on into the nineteenth century. Every household would kill an
+animal of some kind, and sprinkle the threshold with its blood. A cow or
+sheep, a goose or turkey, or merely a cock or hen, was used according to
+the means of the family.{72} It seems that the animal was actually
+offered to St. Martin, apparently as |204| the successor of some god,
+and bad luck came if the custom were not observed. Probably these rites
+were transferred to Martinmas from the old Celtic festival of _Samhain_.
+Again, in a strange Irish legend the saint himself is said to have been
+cut up and eaten in the form of an ox.{73}
+
+In the wine-producing regions of Germany Martinmas was the day for the
+first drinking of the new wine, and the feasting in general on his day
+gave the saint the reputation of a guzzler and a glutton; it even became
+customary to speak of a person who had squandered his substance in
+riotous living as a _Martinsmann_.{74} As we have seen survivals of
+sacrifice in the Martinmas slaughter, so we may regard the _Martinsminne_
+or toast as originating in a sacrifice of liquor.{75} In the Boehmerwald
+it is believed that wine taken at Martinmas brings strength and beauty,
+and the lads and girls gather in the inns to drink, while a common German
+proverb runs:--
+
+   "Heb an Martini,
+    Trink Wein per circulum anni."[91]{76}
+
+Here, by the way, is a faint suggestion that Martinmas is regarded as the
+beginning of the year; as such it certainly appears in a number of legal
+customs, English, French, and German, which existed in the Middle Ages
+and in some cases in quite recent times. It was often at Martinmas that
+leases ended, rents had to be paid, and farm-servants changed their
+places.{77}
+
+There is a survival, perhaps, of a cereal sacrifice or sacrament in the
+so-called "Martin's horns," horseshoe pastries given at Martinmas in many
+parts of Germany.{78} Another kind of sacrifice is suggested by a Dutch
+custom of throwing baskets of fruit into Martinmas bonfires, and by a
+German custom of casting in empty fruit-baskets.{79} In Venetia the
+peasants keep over from the vintage a few grapes to form part of their
+Martinmas supper, and as far south as Sicily it is considered essential
+to taste the new wine at this festival.{80}
+
+Bonfires appear at Martinmas in Germany, as at All Hallows tide in the
+British Isles. On St. Martin's Eve in the Rhine |205| Valley between
+Cologne and Coblentz, numbers of little fires burn on the heights and by
+the river-bank,{81} the young people leap through the flames and dance
+about them, and the ashes are strewn on the fields to make them
+fertile.{82} Survivals of fire-customs are found also in other regions.
+In Belgium, Holland, and north-west Germany processions of children with
+paper or turnip lanterns take place on St. Martin's Eve. In the Eichsfeld
+district the little river Geislede glows with the light of candles placed
+in floating nutshells. Even the practice of leaping through the fire
+survives in a modified form, for in northern Germany it is not uncommon
+for people on St. Martin's Day or Eve to jump over lighted candles set on
+the parlour floor.{83} In the fifteenth century the Martinmas fires were
+so many that the festival actually got the name of _Funkentag_ (Spark
+Day).{84}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On St. Martin's Eve in Germany and the Low Countries we begin to meet
+those winter visitors, bright saints and angels on the one hand,
+mock-terrible bogeys and monsters on the other, who add so much to the
+romance and mystery of the children's Christmas. Such visitors are to be
+found in many countries, but it is in the lands of German speech that
+they take on the most vivid and picturesque forms. St. Martin, St.
+Nicholas, Christkind, Knecht Ruprecht, and the rest are very real and
+personal beings to the children, and are awaited with pleasant
+expectation or mild dread. Often they are beheld not merely with the
+imagination but with the bodily eye, when father or friend is wondrously
+transformed into a supernatural figure.
+
+What are the origins of these holy or monstrous beings? It is hard to say
+with certainty, for many elements, pagan and Christian, seem here to be
+closely blended. It is pretty clear, however, that the grotesque
+half-animal shapes are direct relics of heathendom, and it is highly
+probable that the forms of saints or angels--even, perhaps, of the Christ
+Child Himself--represent attempts of the Church to transform and sanctify
+alien things which she could not suppress. What some of these may have
+been we shall tentatively guess as we go along. Though no grown-up person
+would take the mimic Martin or Nicholas |206| seriously nowadays, there
+seem to be at the root of them things once regarded as of vital moment.
+Just as fairy-tales, originally serious attempts to explain natural
+facts, have now become reading for children, so ritual practices which
+our ancestors deemed of vast importance for human welfare have become
+mere games to amuse the young.
+
+On St. Martin's Eve, to come back from speculation to the facts of
+popular custom, the saint appears in the nurseries of Antwerp and other
+Flemish towns. He is a man dressed up as a bishop, with a pastoral staff
+in his hand. His business is to ask if the children have been "good," and
+if the result of his inquiries is satisfactory he throws down apples,
+nuts, and cakes. If not, it is rods that he leaves behind. At Ypres he
+does not visibly appear, but children hang up stockings filled with hay,
+and next morning find presents in them, left by the saint in gratitude
+for the fodder provided for his horse. He is there imagined as a rider on
+a white horse, and the same conception prevails in Austrian Silesia,
+where he brings the "Martin's horns" already mentioned.{85} In Silesia
+when it snows at Martinmas people say that the saint is coming on his
+white horse, and there, it may be noted, the _Schimmelreiter_ appears at
+the same season.{86} In certain respects, it has been suggested, St.
+Martin may have taken the place of Woden.{87} It is perhaps not without
+significance that, like the god, he is a military hero, and conceived as
+a rider on horseback. At Duesseldorf he used to be represented in his
+festival procession by a man riding on another fellow's back.{88}
+
+At Mechlin and other places children go round from house to house,
+singing and collecting gifts. Often four boys with paper caps on their
+heads, dressed as Turks, carry a sort of litter whereon St. Martin sits.
+He has a long white beard of flax and a paper mitre and stole, and holds
+a large wooden spoon to receive apples and other eatables that are given
+to the children, as well as a leather purse for offerings of money.{89}
+
+In the Ansbach region a different type of being used to
+appear--Pelzmaerten (Skin Martin) by name; he ran about and frightened the
+children, before he threw them their apples and nuts. In several places
+in Swabia, too, Pelzmaerte was known; |207| he had a black face, a
+cow-bell hung on his person, and he distributed blows as well as nuts and
+apples.{90} In him there is obviously more of the pagan mummer than the
+Christian bishop.
+
+In Belgium St. Martin is chiefly known as the bringer of apples and nuts
+for children; in Bavaria and Austria he has a different aspect: a _gerte_
+or rod, supposed to promote fruitfulness among cattle and prosperity in
+general, is connected with his day. The rods are taken round by the
+neatherds to the farmers, and one is given to each--two to rich
+proprietors; they are to be used, when spring comes, to drive out the
+cattle for the first time. In Bavaria they are formed by a birch-bough
+with all the leaves and twigs stripped off--except at the top, to which
+oak-leaves and juniper-twigs are fastened. At Etzendorf a curious old
+rhyme shows that the herdsman with the rod is regarded as the
+representative of St. Martin.{91}
+
+Can we connect this custom with the saint who brings presents to
+youngsters?[92] There seems to be a point of contact when we note that at
+Antwerp St. Martin throws down rods for naughty children as well as nuts
+and apples for good ones, and that Pelzmaerte in Swabia has blows to
+bestow as well as gifts. St. Martin's main functions--and, as we shall
+see, St. Nicholas has the same--are to beat the bad children and reward
+the good with apples, nuts, and cakes. Can it be that the ethical
+distinction is of comparatively recent origin, an invention perhaps for
+children when the customs came to be performed solely for their benefit,
+and that the beating and the gifts were originally shared by all alike
+and were of a sacramental character? We shall meet with more whipping
+customs later on, they are common enough in folk-ritual, and are not
+punishments, but kindly services; their purpose is to drive away evil
+influences, and to bring to the flogged one the life-giving virtues of
+the tree from which the twigs or boughs are taken.{92} Both the flogging
+and the eating of fruit may, indeed, be means of contact with the
+vegetation-spirit, the one in |208| an external, the other in a more
+internal way. Or possibly the rod and the fruit may once have been
+conjoined, the beating being performed with fruit-laden boughs in order
+to produce prosperity. It is noteworthy that at Etzendorf so many head of
+cattle and loads of hay are augured for the farmer as there are
+juniper-_berries_ and twigs on St. Martin's _gerte_.{94}
+
+Attempts to account for the figures of SS. Martin and Nicholas in
+northern folk-customs have been made along various lines. Some scholars
+regard them as Christianizations of the pagan god Woden; but they might
+also be taken as akin to the "first-foots" whom we shall meet on January
+1--visitors who bring good luck--or as maskers connected with animal
+sacrifices (Pelzmaerte suggests this), or again as related to the Boy
+Bishop, the Lord of Misrule and the Twelfth Night King. May I suggest
+that some at least of their aspects could be explained on the supposition
+that they represent administrants of primitive vegetation sacraments, and
+that these administrants, once ordinary human beings, have taken on the
+name and attributes of the saint who under the Christian dispensation
+presides over the festival? In any case it is a strange irony of history
+that around the festival of Martin of Tours, the zealous soldier of
+Christ and deadly foe of heathenism, should have gathered so much that is
+unmistakably pagan.
+
+|209| |210| |211|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS
+
+
+    St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions--St. Catherine's Day as
+    Spinsters' Festival--St. Andrew's Eve Auguries--The
+    _Kloepfelnaechte_--St. Nicholas's Day, the Saint as Gift-bringer, and
+    his Attendants--Election of the Boy Bishop--St. Nicholas's Day at
+    Bari--St. Lucia's Day in Sweden, Sicily, and Central Europe--St.
+    Thomas's Day as School Festival--Its Uncanny Eve--"Going
+    a-Thomassin'."
+
+
+ST. CLEMENT'S DAY.
+
+The next folk-feast after Martinmas is St. Clement's Day, November 23,
+once reckoned the first day of winter in England.{1} It marks apparently
+one of the stages in the progress of the winter feast towards its present
+solstitial date. In England some interesting popular customs existed on
+this day. In Staffordshire children used to go round to the village
+houses begging for gifts, with rhymes resembling in many ways the
+"souling" verses I have already quoted. Here is one of the Staffordshire
+"clemencing" songs:--
+
+   "Clemany! Clemany! Clemany mine!
+    A good red apple and a pint of wine,
+    Some of your mutton and some of your veal,
+    If it is good, pray give me a deal;
+    If it is not, pray give me some salt.
+    Butler, butler, fill your bowl;
+    If thou fill'st it of the best,
+    The Lord'll send your soul to rest;
+    If thou fill'st it of the small,
+    Down goes butler, bowl and all. |212|
+
+    Pray, good mistress, send to me
+    One for Peter, one for Paul,
+    One for Him who made us all;
+    Apple, pear, plum, or cherry,
+    Any good thing to make us merry;
+    A bouncing buck and a velvet chair,
+    Clement comes but once a year;
+    Off with the pot and on with the pan,
+    A good red apple and I'll be gone."{2}
+
+In Worcestershire on St. Clement's Day the boys chanted similar rhymes,
+and at the close of their collection they would roast the apples received
+and throw them into ale or cider.{3} In the north of England men used to
+go about begging drink, and at Ripon Minster the choristers went round
+the church offering everyone a rosy apple with a sprig of box on it.{4}
+The Cambridge bakers held their annual supper on this day,{5} at Tenby
+the fishermen were given a supper,{6} while the blacksmiths' apprentices
+at Woolwich had a remarkable ceremony, akin perhaps to the Boy Bishop
+customs. One of their number was chosen to play the part of "Old Clem,"
+was attired in a great coat, and wore a mask, a long white beard, and an
+oakum wig. Seated in a large wooden chair, and surrounded by attendants
+bearing banners, torches, and weapons, he was borne about the town on the
+shoulders of six men, visiting numerous public-houses and the blacksmiths
+and officers of the dockyard. Before him he had a wooden anvil, and in
+his hands a pair of tongs and a wooden hammer, the insignia of the
+blacksmith's trade.{7}
+
+
+ST. CATHERINE'S DAY.
+
+November 25 is St. Catherine's Day, and at Woolwich Arsenal a similar
+ceremony was then performed: a man was dressed in female attire, with a
+large wheel by his side to represent the saint, and was taken round the
+town{8} in a wooden chair. At Chatham there was a torchlight procession
+on St. Catherine's Day, and a woman in white muslin with a gilt crown was
+carried about in a chair. She was said to represent not the saint, but
+Queen Catherine.{9}
+
+|213| St. Catherine's Day was formerly a festival for the lacemakers of
+Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire. She was the
+patroness of spinsters in the literal as well as the modern sense of the
+word, and at Peterborough the workhouse girls used to go in procession
+round the city on her day, dressed in white with coloured ribbons; the
+tallest was chosen as Queen and bore a crown and sceptre. As they went to
+beg money of the chief inhabitants they sang a quaint ballad which begins
+thus:--
+
+   "Here comes Queen Catherine, as fine as any queen,
+    With a coach and six horses a-coming to be seen,
+        And a-spinning we will go, will go, will go,
+        And a-spinning we will go."{10}
+
+We may perhaps see in this Saint or Queen Catherine a female counterpart
+of the Boy Bishop, who began his career on St. Nicholas's Day. Catherine,
+it must be remembered, is the patron saint of girls as Nicholas is of
+boys. In Belgium her day is still a festival for the "young person" both
+in schools and in families.{11} Even in modern Paris the
+dressmaker-girls celebrate it, and in a very charming way, too.
+
+"At midday the girls of every workroom present little mob-caps trimmed
+with yellow ribbons to those of their number who are over twenty-five and
+still unmarried. Then they themselves put on becoming little caps with
+yellow flowers and yellow ribbons and a sprig of orange blossom on them,
+and out they go arm-in-arm to parade the streets and collect a tribute of
+flowers from every man they meet.... Instead of working all the
+afternoon, the midinettes entertain all their friends (no men admitted,
+though, for it is the day of St. Catherine) to concerts and even to
+dramatic performances in the workrooms, where the work-tables are turned
+into stages, and the employers provide supper."{12}
+
+
+ST. ANDREW'S DAY.
+
+The last day of November is the feast of St. Andrew. Of English customs
+on this day the most interesting perhaps are those connected with the
+"Tander" or "Tandrew" merrymakings |214| of the Northamptonshire
+lacemakers. A day of general licence used to end in masquerading. Women
+went about in male attire and men and boys in female dress.{13} In Kent
+and Sussex squirrel-hunting was practised on this day{14}--a survival
+apparently of some old sacrificial custom comparable with the hunting of
+the wren at Christmas (see Chapter XII.).
+
+In Germany St. Andrew's Eve is a great occasion for prognostications of
+the future. Indeed, like Hallowe'en in Great Britain, _Andreasabend_ in
+Germany seems to have preserved the customs of augury connected with the
+old November New Year festival.{15} To a large extent the practices are
+performed by girls anxious to know what sort of husband they will get.
+Many and various are the methods.
+
+Sometimes it suffices to repeat some such rhyme as the following before
+going to sleep, and the future husband will appear in a dream:--
+
+   "St. Andrew's Eve is to-day,
+    Sleep all people,
+    Sleep all children of men,
+    Who are between heaven and earth,
+    Except this only man,
+    Who may be mine in marriage."{16}
+
+Again, at nightfall let a girl shut herself up naked in her bedroom, take
+two beakers, and into one pour clear water, into the other wine. These
+let her place on the table, which is to be covered with white, and let
+the following words be said:--
+
+   "My dear St. Andrew!
+    Let now appear before me
+    My heart's most dearly beloved.
+    If he shall be rich,
+    He will pour a cup of wine;
+    If he is to be poor,
+    Let him pour a cup of water."
+
+This done, the form of the future husband will enter and drink |215| of
+one of the cups. If he is poor, he will take the water; if rich, the
+wine.{17}
+
+One of the most common practices is to pour molten lead or tin through a
+key into cold water, and to discover the calling of the future husband by
+the form it takes, which will represent the tools of his trade. The white
+of an egg is sometimes used for the same purpose.{18} Another very
+widespread custom is to put nutshells to float on water with little
+candles burning in them. There are twice as many shells as there are
+girls present; each girl has her shell, and to the others the names of
+possible suitors are given. The man and the girl whose shells come
+together will marry one another. Sometimes the same method is practised
+with little cups of silver foil.{19}
+
+On the border of Saxony and Bohemia, a maiden who wishes to know the
+bodily build of her future husband goes in the darkness to a stack of
+wood and draws out a piece. If the wood is smooth and straight the man
+will be slim and well built; if it is crooked, or knotted, he will be
+ill-developed or even a hunchback.{20}
+
+These are but a few of the many ways in which girls seek to peer into the
+future and learn something about the most important event in their lives.
+Far less numerous, but not altogether absent on this night, are other
+kinds of prognostication. A person, for instance, who wishes to know
+whether he will die in the coming year, must on St. Andrew's Eve before
+going to bed make on the table a little pointed heap of flour. If by the
+morning it has fallen asunder, the maker will die.{21}
+
+The association of St. Andrew's Eve with the foreseeing of the future is
+not confined to the German race; it is found also on Slavonic and
+Roumanian ground. In Croatia he who fasts then will behold his future
+wife in a dream,{22} and among the Roumanians mothers anxious about
+their children's luck break small sprays from fruit-trees, bind them
+together in bunches, one for each child, and put them in a glass of
+water. The branch of the lucky one will blossom.{23}
+
+In Roumania St. Andrew's Eve is a creepy time, for on it vampires are
+supposed to rise from their graves, and with coffins |216| on their
+heads walk about the houses in which they once lived. Before nightfall
+every woman takes some garlic and anoints with it the door locks and
+window casements; this will keep away the vampires. At the cross-roads
+there is a great fight of these loathsome beings until the first cock
+crows; and not only the dead take part in this, but also some living men
+who are vampires from their birth. Sometimes it is only the souls of
+these living vampires that join in the fight; the soul comes out through
+the mouth in the form of a bluish flame, takes the shape of an animal,
+and runs to the crossway. If the body meanwhile is moved from its place
+the person dies, for the soul cannot find its way back.{24}
+
+St. Andrew's Day is sometimes the last, sometimes the first important
+festival of the western Church's year. It is regarded in parts of Germany
+as the beginning of winter, as witness the saying:--
+
+   "Suenten-Dres-Misse,
+    es de Winter gewisse."[93]{25}
+
+The nights are now almost at their longest, and as November passes away,
+giving place to the last month of the year, Christmas is felt to be near
+at hand.
+
+In northern Bohemia it is customary for peasant girls to keep for
+themselves all the yarn they spin on St. Andrew's Eve, and the _Hausfrau_
+gives them also some flax and a little money. With this they buy coffee
+and other refreshments for the lads who come to visit the parlours where
+in the long winter evenings the women sit spinning. These evenings, when
+many gather together in a brightly lighted room and sing songs and tell
+stories while they spin, are cheerful enough, and spice is added by the
+visits of the village lads, who in some places come to see the girls
+home.{26}
+
+
+THE KLOePFELNAeCHTE.
+
+On the Thursday nights in Advent it is customary in southern Germany for
+children or grown-up people to go from house |217| to house, singing
+hymns and knocking on the doors with rods or little hammers, or throwing
+peas, lentils, and the like against the windows. Hence these evenings
+have gained the name of _Kloepfel_ or _Knoepflinsnaechte_ (Knocking
+Nights).{27} The practice is described by Naogeorgus in the sixteenth
+century:--
+
+   "Three weekes before the day whereon was borne the Lord of Grace,
+    And on the Thursdaye Boyes and Girles do runne in every place,
+    And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps,
+    And crie, the Advent of the Lorde not borne as yet perhaps.
+    And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell,
+    A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well:
+    Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee,
+    For these three nightes are alwayes thought, unfortunate to bee;
+    Wherein they are afrayde of sprites and cankred witches' spight,
+    And dreadfull devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest
+          might."{28}
+
+With it may be compared the Macedonian custom for village boys to go in
+parties at nightfall on Christmas Eve, knocking at the cottage doors with
+sticks, shouting _Kolianda! Kolianda!_ and receiving presents,{29} and
+also one in vogue in Holland between Christmas and the Epiphany. There
+"the children go out in couples, each boy carrying an earthenware pot,
+over which a bladder is stretched, with a piece of stick tied in the
+middle. When this stick is twirled about, a not very melodious grumbling
+sound proceeds from the contrivance, which is known by the name of
+'Rommelpot.' By going about in this manner the children are able to
+collect some few pence."{30}
+
+Can such practices have originated in attempts to drive out evil spirits
+from the houses by noise? Similar methods are used for that purpose by
+various European and other peoples.{31} Anyhow something mysterious
+hangs about the _Kloepfelnaechte_. They are occasions for girls to learn
+about their future husbands, and upon them in Swabia goes about
+Pelzmaerte, whom we already know.{32}
+
+|218| In Tyrol curious mummeries are then performed. At Pillersee in
+the Lower Innthal two youths combine to form a mimic ass, upon which a
+third rides, and they are followed by a motley train. The ass falls sick
+and has to be cured by a "vet," and all kinds of satirical jokes are made
+about things that have happened in the parish during the year. Elsewhere
+two men dress up in straw as husband and wife, and go out with a masked
+company. The pair wrangle with one another and carry on a play of wits
+with the peasants whose house they are visiting. Sometimes the satire is
+so cutting that permanent enmities ensue, and for this reason the
+practice is gradually being dropped.{33}
+
+
+ST. NICHOLAS'S DAY.
+
+On December 6 we reach the most distinctive children's festival of the
+whole year, St. Nicholas's Day. In England it has gone out of mind, and
+in the flat north of Germany Protestantism has largely rooted it out, as
+savouring too much of saint-worship, and transferred its festivities to
+the more Evangelical season of Christmas.{34} In western and southern
+Germany, however, and in Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, it
+is still a day of joy for children, though in some regions even there its
+radiance tends to pale before the greater glory of the Christmas-tree.
+
+It is not easy either to get at the historic facts about St. Nicholas,
+the fourth-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, or to ascertain why he
+became the patron saint of boys. The legends of his infant piety and his
+later wondrous works for the benefit of young people may either have
+given rise, or be themselves due to, his connection with children.{35}
+In eastern Europe and southern Italy he is above all things the saint of
+seafaring men, and among the Greeks his cult has perhaps replaced that of
+Artemis as a sea divinity.{36} This aspect of him does not, however,
+appear in the German festival customs with which we are here chiefly
+concerned.
+
+It has already been hinted that in some respects St. Nicholas is a
+duplicate of St. Martin. His feast, indeed, is probably a later
+beginning-of-winter festival, dating from the period when |219|
+improved methods of agriculture and other causes made early December,
+rather than mid-November, the time for the great annual slaughter and its
+attendant rejoicings. Like St. Martin he brings sweet things for the good
+children and rods for the bad.
+
+St. Nicholas's Eve is a time of festive stir in Holland and Belgium; the
+shops are full of pleasant little gifts: many-shaped biscuits, gilt
+gingerbreads, sometimes representing the saint, sugar images, toys, and
+other trifles. In many places, when evening comes on, people dress up as
+St. Nicholas, with mitre and pastoral staff, enquire about the behaviour
+of the children, and if it has been good pronounce a benediction and
+promise them a reward next morning. Before they go to bed the children
+put out their shoes, with hay, straw, or a carrot in them for the saint's
+white horse or ass. When they wake in the morning, if they have been
+"good" the fodder is gone and sweet things or toys are in its place; if
+they have misbehaved themselves the provender is untouched and no gift
+but a rod is there.{37}
+
+In various parts of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria St. Nicholas is
+mimed by a man dressed up as a bishop.{38} In Tyrol children pray to the
+saint on his Eve and leave out hay for his white horse and a glass of
+_schnaps_ for his servant. And he comes in all the splendour of a
+church-image, a reverend grey-haired figure with flowing beard,
+gold-broidered cope, glittering mitre, and pastoral staff. Children who
+know their catechism are rewarded with sweet things out of the basket
+carried by his servant; those who cannot answer are reproved, and St.
+Nicholas points to a terrible form that stands behind him with a rod--the
+hideous Klaubauf, a shaggy monster with horns, black face, fiery eyes,
+long red tongue, and chains that clank as he moves.{39}
+
+In Lower Austria the saint is followed by a similar figure called Krampus
+or Grampus;{40} in Styria this horrible attendant is named Bartel;{41}
+all are no doubt related to such monsters as the _Klapperbock_ (see
+Chapter VII.). Their heathen origin is evident though it is difficult to
+trace their exact pedigree. Sometimes St. Nicholas himself appears in a
+non-churchly form like Pelzmaerte, with a bell,{42} or with a sack of
+ashes which gains him the name of Aschenklas.{43}
+
+|220| Not only by hideous figures is St. Nicholas attended. Sometimes,
+as at Warnsdorf near Rumburg, there come with him the forms of Christ
+Himself, St. Peter, an angel, and the famous Knecht Ruprecht, whom we
+shall meet again on Christmas Eve. They are represented by children, and
+a little drama is performed, one personage coming in after the other and
+calling for the next in the manner of the English mummers' play. St.
+Nicholas, St. Peter, and Ruprecht accuse the children of all kinds of
+naughtiness, the "Heiliger Christ" intercedes and at last throws nuts
+down and receives money from the parents.{44} In Tyrol there are St.
+Nicholas plays of a more comic nature, performed publicly by large
+companies of players and introducing a number of humorous characters and
+much rude popular wit.{45}
+
+Sometimes a female bogey used to appear: Budelfrau in Lower Austria,
+Berchtel in Swabia, Buzebergt in the neighbourhood of Augsburg.{46} The
+last two are plainly variants of Berchte, who is specially connected with
+the Epiphany. Berchtel used to punish the naughty children with a rod,
+and reward the good with nuts and apples; Buzebergt wore black rags, had
+her face blackened and her hair hanging unkempt, and carried a pot of
+starch which she smeared upon people's faces.{47}
+
+As Santa Klaus St. Nicholas is of course known to every English child,
+but rather as a sort of incarnation of Christmas than as a saint with a
+day of his own. Santa Klaus, probably, has come to us _via_ the United
+States, whither the Dutch took him, and where he has still immense
+popularity.
+
+In the Middle Ages in England as elsewhere the Eve of St. Nicholas was a
+day of great excitement for boys. It was then that the small choristers
+and servers in cathedral and other churches generally elected their "Boy
+Bishop" or "Nicholas."{48} He had in some places to officiate at First
+Vespers and at the services on the festival itself. As a rule, however,
+the feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, was probably the most
+important day in the Boy Bishop's career, and we may therefore postpone
+our consideration of him. We will here only note his connection with the
+festival of the patron saint of boys, a connection perhaps implying a
+common origin for him and |221| for the St. Nicholases who in bishops'
+vestments make their present-giving rounds.
+
+The festival of St. Nicholas is naturally celebrated with most splendour
+at the place where his body lies, the seaport of Bari in south-eastern
+Italy. The holy bones are preserved in a sepulchre beneath a crypt of
+rich Saracenic architecture, above which rises a magnificent church.
+Legend relates that in the eleventh century they were stolen by certain
+merchants of Bari from the saint's own cathedral at Myra in Asia Minor.
+The tomb of St. Nicholas is a famous centre for pilgrimages, and on the
+6th of December many thousands of the faithful, bearing staves bound with
+olive and pine, visit it. An interesting ceremony on the festival is the
+taking of the saint's image out to sea by the sailors of the port. They
+return with it at nightfall, and a great procession escorts it back to
+the cathedral with torches and fireworks and chanting.{49} Here may be
+seen the other, the seafaring, aspect of St. Nicholas; by this mariners'
+cult we are taken far away from the present-giving saint who delights the
+small children of the North.
+
+
+ST. LUCIA'S DAY.
+
+The only folk-festivals of note between St. Nicholas's Day and Christmas
+are those of St. Lucia (December 13) and St. Thomas the Apostle (December
+21).
+
+In Sweden St. Lucia's Day was formerly marked by some interesting
+practices. It was, so to speak, the entrance to the Christmas festival,
+and was called "little Yule."{50} At the first cock-crow, between 1 and
+4 a.m., the prettiest girl in the house used to go among the sleeping
+folk, dressed in a white robe, a red sash, and a wire crown covered with
+whortleberry-twigs and having nine lighted candles fastened in it. She
+awakened the sleepers and regaled them with a sweet drink or with
+coffee,[94] sang a special song, and was named "Lussi" or "Lussibruden"
+(Lucy bride). When everyone was dressed, breakfast was taken, the room
+being lighted by many candles. The domestic animals |222| were not
+forgotten on this day, but were given special portions. A peculiar
+feature of the Swedish custom is the presence of lights on Lussi's crown.
+Lights indeed are the special mark of the festival; it was customary to
+shoot and fish on St. Lucy's Day by torchlight, the parlours, as has been
+said, were brilliantly illuminated in the early morning, in West Gothland
+Lussi went round the village preceded by torchbearers, and in one parish
+she was represented by a cow with a crown of lights on her head. In
+schools the day was celebrated with illuminations.{51}
+
+What is the explanation of this feast of lights? There is nothing in the
+legend of the saint to account for it; her name, however, at once
+suggests _lux_--light. It is possible, as Dr. Feilberg supposes, that the
+name gave rise to the special use of lights among the Latin-learned monks
+who brought Christianity to Sweden, and that the custom spread from them
+to the common people. A peculiar fitness would be found in it because St.
+Lucia's Day according to the Old Style was the shortest day of the year,
+the turning-point of the sun's light.{52}
+
+In Sicily also St. Lucia's festival is a feast of lights. After sunset on
+the Eve a long procession of men, lads, and children, each flourishing a
+thick bunch of long straws all afire, rushes wildly down the streets of
+the mountain village of Montedoro, as if fleeing from some danger, and
+shouting hoarsely. "The darkness of the night," says an eye-witness, "was
+lighted up by this savage procession of dancing, flaming torches, whilst
+bonfires in all the side streets gave the illusion that the whole village
+was burning." At the end of the procession came the image of Santa Lucia,
+holding a dish which contained her eyes.[95] In the midst of the _piazza_
+a great mountain of straw had been prepared; on this everyone threw his
+own burning torch, and the saint was placed in a spot from which she
+could survey the vast bonfire.{53}
+
+In central Europe we see St. Lucia in other aspects. In the Boehmerwald
+she goes round the village in the form of a nanny-goat with horns, gives
+fruit to the good children, and threatens to rip open the belly of the
+naughty. Here she is evidently related |223| to the pagan monsters
+already described. In Tyrol she plays a more graceful part: she brings
+presents for girls, an office which St. Nicholas is there supposed to
+perform for boys only.{55}
+
+In Lower Austria St. Lucia's Eve is a time when special danger from
+witchcraft is feared and must be averted by prayer and incense. A
+procession is made through each house to cense every room. On this
+evening, too, girls are afraid to spin lest in the morning they should
+find their distaffs twisted, the threads broken, and the yarn in
+confusion. (We shall meet with like superstitions during the Twelve
+Nights.) At midnight the girls practise a strange ceremony: they go to a
+willow-bordered brook, cut the bark of a tree partly away, without
+detaching it, make with a knife a cross on the inner side of the cut
+bark, moisten it with water, and carefully close up the opening. On New
+Year's Day the cutting is opened, and the future is augured from the
+markings found. The lads, on the other hand, look out at midnight for a
+mysterious light, the _Luzieschein_, the forms of which indicate coming
+events.{56}
+
+In Denmark, too, St. Lucia's Eve is a time for seeing the future. Here is
+a prayer of Danish maids: "Sweet St. Lucy let me know: whose cloth
+I shall lay, whose bed I shall make, whose child I shall bear, whose
+darling I shall be, whose arms I shall sleep in."{57}
+
+
+ST. THOMAS'S DAY.
+
+Many and various are the customs and beliefs associated with the feast of
+St. Thomas (December 21). In Denmark it was formerly a great children's
+day, unique in the year, and rather resembling the mediaeval Boy Bishop
+festival. It was the breaking-up day for schools; the children used to
+bring their master an offering of candles and money, and in return he
+gave them a feast. In some places it had an even more delightful side:
+for this one day in the year the children were allowed the mastery in the
+school. Testimonials to their scholarship and industry were made out, and
+elaborate titles were added to their names, as exalted sometimes as
+"Pope," "Emperor," or "Empress." Poor children used to go about showing
+these |224| documents and collecting money. Games and larks of all
+sorts went on in the schools without a word of reproof, and the children
+were wont to burn their master's rod.{58}
+
+In the neighbourhood of Antwerp children go early to school on St.
+Thomas's Day, and lock the master out, until he promises to treat them
+with ale or other drink. After this they buy a cock and hen, which are
+allowed to escape and have to be caught by the boys or the girls
+respectively. The girl who catches the hen is called "queen," the boy who
+gets the cock, "king." Elsewhere in Belgium children lock out their
+parents, and servants their masters, while schoolboys bind their teacher
+to his chair and carry him over to the inn. There he has to buy back his
+liberty by treating his scholars with punch and cakes. Instead of the
+chase for the fowls, it was up to 1850 the custom in the Ardennes for the
+teacher to give the children hens and let them chop the heads off.{59}
+Some pagan sacrifice no doubt lies at the root of this barbarous
+practice, which has many parallels in the folk-lore of western and
+southern Europe.{60}
+
+As for schoolboys' larks with their teachers, the custom of "barring out
+the master" existed in England, and was practised before Christmas{61}
+as well as at other times of the year, notably Shrove Tuesday. At
+Bromfield in Cumberland on Shrove Tuesday there was a regular siege, the
+school doors were strongly barricaded within, and the boy-defenders were
+armed with pop-guns. If the master won, heavy tasks were imposed, but if,
+as more often happened, he was defeated in his efforts to regain his
+authority, he had to make terms with the boys as to the hours of work and
+play.{62}
+
+St. Thomas's Eve is in certain regions one of the uncanniest nights in
+the year. In some Bohemian villages the saint is believed to drive about
+at midnight in a chariot of fire. In the churchyard there await him all
+the dead men whose name is Thomas; they help him to alight and accompany
+him to the churchyard cross, which glows red with supernatural radiance.
+There St. Thomas kneels and prays, and then rises to bless his namesakes.
+This done, he vanishes beneath the cross, and each Thomas returns to his
+grave. The saint here seems to have taken over |225| the character of
+some pagan god, who, like the Teutonic Odin or Woden, ruled the souls of
+the departed. In the houses the people listen with awe for the sound of
+his chariot, and when it is heard make anxious prayer to him for
+protection from all ill. Before retiring to rest the house-father goes to
+the cowhouse with holy water and consecrated salt, asperges it from
+without, and then entering, sprinkles every cow. Salt is also thrown on
+the head of each animal with the words, "St. Thomas preserve thee from
+all sickness." In the Boehmerwald the cattle are fed on this night with
+consecrated bayberries, bread, and salt, in order to avert disease.{63}
+
+In Upper and Lower Austria St. Thomas's Eve is reckoned as one of the
+so-called _Rauchnaechte_ (smoke-nights) when houses and farm-buildings
+must be sanctified with incense and holy water, the other nights being
+the Eves of Christmas, the New Year, and the Epiphany.{64}
+
+In Germany St. Thomas's, like St. Andrew's Eve, is a time for forecasting
+the future, and the methods already described are sometimes employed by
+girls who wish to behold their future husbands. A widely diffused custom
+is that of throwing shoes backwards over the shoulders. If the points are
+found turned towards the door the thrower is destined to leave the house
+during the year; if they are turned away from it another year will be
+spent there. In Westphalia a belief prevails that you must eat and drink
+heartily on this night in order to avert scarcity.{65}
+
+In Lower Austria it is supposed that sluggards can cure themselves of
+oversleeping by saying a special prayer before they go to bed on St.
+Thomas's Eve, and in Westphalia in the mid-nineteenth century the same
+association of the day with slumber was shown by the schoolchildren's
+custom of calling the child who arrived last at school _Domesesel_
+(Thomas ass). In Holland, again, the person who lies longest in bed on
+St. Thomas's Day is greeted with shouts of "lazybones." Probably the fact
+that December 21 is the shortest day is enough to account for this.{66}
+
+In England there was divination by means of "St. Thomas's onion." Girls
+used to peel an onion, wrap it in a handkerchief and put it under their
+heads at night, with a prayer to the satin |226| to show them their
+true love in a dream.{67} The most notable English custom on this day,
+however, was the peregrinations of poor people begging for money or
+provisions for Christmas. Going "a-gooding," or "a-Thomassin'," or
+"a-mumping," this was called. Sometimes in return for the charity
+bestowed a sprig of holly or mistletoe was given.{68} Possibly the sprig
+was originally a sacrament of the healthful spirit of growth: it may be
+compared with the olive- or cornel-branches carried about on New Year's
+Eve by Macedonian boys,{69} and also with the St. Martin's rod (see last
+chapter).
+
+One more English custom on December 21 must be mentioned--it points to a
+sometime sacrifice--the bull-baiting practised until 1821 at Wokingham in
+Berkshire. Its abolition in 1822 caused great resentment among the
+populace, although the flesh continued to be duly distributed.{70}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are now four days from the feast of the Nativity, and many things
+commonly regarded as distinctive of Christmas have already come under
+notice. We have met, for instance, with several kinds of present-giving,
+with auguries for the New Year, with processions of carol-singers and
+well-wishers, with ceremonial feasting that anticipates the Christmas
+eating and drinking, and with various figures, saintly or monstrous,
+mimed or merely imagined, which we shall find reappearing at the greatest
+of winter festivals. These things would seem to have been attracted from
+earlier dates to the feast of the Nativity, and the probability that
+Christmas has borrowed much from an old November festival gradually
+shifted into December, is our justification for having dwelt so long upon
+the feasts that precede the Twelve Days.
+
+|227| |228| |229|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS
+
+
+    Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht--Talking Animals and
+    other Wonders of Christmas Eve--Scandinavian Beliefs about Trolls and
+    the Return of the Dead--Traditional Christmas Songs in Eastern
+    Europe--The Twelve Days, their Christian Origin and Pagan
+    Superstitions--The Raging Host--Hints of Supernatural Visitors in
+    England--The German _Frauen_--The Greek _Kallikantzaroi_.
+
+[Illustration: CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE--THE MUMMERS COMING IN]
+
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE.
+
+Christmas in the narrowest sense must be reckoned as beginning on the
+evening of December 24. Though Christmas Eve is not much observed in
+modern England, throughout the rest of Europe its importance so far as
+popular customs are concerned is far greater than that of the Day itself.
+Then in Germany the Christmas-tree is manifested in its glory; then, as
+in the England of the past, the Yule log is solemnly lighted in many
+lands; then often the most distinctive Christmas meal takes place.
+
+We shall consider these and other institutions later; though they appear
+first on Christmas Eve, they belong more or less to the Twelve Days as a
+whole. Let us look first at the supernatural visitors, mimed by human
+beings, who delight the minds of children, especially in Germany, on the
+evening of December 24, and at the beliefs that hang around this most
+solemn night of the year.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+First of all, the activities of St. Nicholas are not confined to his own
+festival; he often appears on Christmas Eve. We have already seen how he
+is attended by various companions, including |230| Christ Himself, and
+how he comes now vested as a bishop, now as a masked and shaggy figure.
+The names and attributes of the Christmas and Advent visitors are rather
+confused, but on the whole it may be said that in Protestant north
+Germany the episcopal St. Nicholas and his Eve have been replaced by
+Christmas Eve and the Christ Child, while the name Klas has become
+attached to various unsaintly forms appearing at or shortly before
+Christmas.
+
+We can trace a deliberate substitution of the Christ Child for St.
+Nicholas as the bringer of gifts. In the early seventeenth century a
+Protestant pastor is found complaining that parents put presents in their
+children's beds and tell them that St. Nicholas has brought them. "This,"
+he says, "is a bad custom, because it points children to the saint, while
+yet we know that not St. Nicholas but the holy Christ Child gives us all
+good things for body and soul, and He alone it is whom we ought to call
+upon."{1}
+
+The ways in which the figure, or at all events the name, of Christ
+Himself, is introduced into German Christmas customs, are often
+surprising. The Christ Child, "Christkind," so familiar to German
+children, has now become a sort of mythical figure, a product of
+sentiment and imagination working so freely as almost to forget the
+sacred character of the original. Christkind bears little resemblance to
+the Infant of Bethlehem; he is quite a tall child, and is often
+represented by a girl dressed in white, with long fair hair. He hovers,
+indeed, between the character of the Divine Infant and that of an angel,
+and is regarded more as a kind of good fairy than as anything else.
+
+In Alsace the girl who represents Christkind has her face "made up" with
+flour, wears a crown of gold paper with lighted candles in it--a parallel
+to the headgear of the Swedish Lussi; in one hand she holds a silver
+bell, in the other, a basket of sweetmeats. She is followed by the
+terrible Hans Trapp, dressed in a bearskin, with blackened face, long
+beard, and threatening rod. He "goes for" the naughty children, who are
+only saved by the intercession of Christkind.{2}
+
+In the Mittelmark the name of _de hele_ (holy) _Christ_ is strangely
+|231| given to a skin- or straw-clad man, elsewhere called Knecht
+Ruprecht, Klas, or Joseph.{3} In the Ruppin district a man dresses up in
+white with ribbons, carries a large pouch, and is called _Christmann_ or
+_Christpuppe_. He is accompanied by a _Schimmelreiter_ and by other
+fellows who are attired as women, have blackened faces, and are named
+_Feien_ (we may see in them a likeness to the Kalends maskers condemned
+by the early Church). The procession goes round from house to house. The
+_Schimmelreiter_ as he enters has to jump over a chair; this done, the
+_Christpuppe_ is admitted. The girls present begin to sing, and the
+_Schimmelreiter_ dances with one of them. Meanwhile the _Christpuppe_
+makes the children repeat some verse of Scripture or a hymn; if they know
+it well, he rewards them with gingerbreads from his wallet; if not, he
+beats them with a bundle filled with ashes. Then both he and the
+_Schimmelreiter_ dance and pass on. Only when they are gone are the
+_Feien_ allowed to enter; they jump wildly about and frighten the
+children.{4}
+
+Knecht Ruprecht, to whom allusion has already been made, is a prominent
+figure in the German Christmas. On Christmas Eve in the north he goes
+about clad in skins or straw and examines children; if they can say their
+prayers perfectly he rewards them with apples, nuts and gingerbreads; if
+not, he punishes them. In the Mittelmark, as we have seen, a personage
+corresponding to him is sometimes called "the holy Christ"; in
+Mecklenburg he is "ru Klas" (rough Nicholas--note his identification with
+the saint); in Brunswick, Hanover, and Holstein "Klas," "Klawes," "Klas
+Bur" and "Bullerklas"; and in Silesia "Joseph." Sometimes he wears bells
+and carries a long staff with a bag of ashes at the end--hence the name
+"Aschenklas" occasionally given to him.{5} An ingenious theory connects
+this aspect of him with the _polaznik_ of the Slavs, who on Christmas Day
+in Crivoscian farms goes to the hearth, takes up the ashes of the Yule
+log and dashes them against the cauldron-hook above so that sparks fly
+(see Chapter X.).{6} As for the name "Ruprecht" the older mythologists
+interpreted it as meaning "shining with glory," _hruodperaht_, and
+identified its owner with the god Woden.{7} Dr. Tille, however, regards
+him |232| as dating only from the seventeenth century.{8} It can
+hardly be said that any satisfactory account has as yet been given of the
+origins of this personage, or of his relation to St. Nicholas, Pelzmaerte,
+and monstrous creatures like the _Klapperbock_.
+
+In the south-western part of Lower Austria, both St. Nicholas--a proper
+bishop with mitre, staff, and ring--and Ruprecht appear on Christmas Eve,
+and there is quite an elaborate ceremonial. The children welcome the
+saint with a hymn; then he goes to a table and makes each child repeat a
+prayer and show his lesson-books. Meanwhile Ruprecht in a hide, with
+glowing eyes and a long red tongue, stands at the door to overawe the
+young people. Each child next kneels before the saint and kisses his
+ring, whereupon Nicholas bids him put his shoes out-of-doors and look in
+them when the clock strikes ten. After this the saint lays on the table a
+rod dipped in lime, solemnly blesses the children, sprinkling them with
+holy water, and noiselessly departs. The children steal out into the
+garden, clear a space in the snow, and set out their shoes; when the last
+stroke of ten has sounded they find them filled with nuts and apples and
+all kinds of sweet things.{9}
+
+In the Troppau district of Austrian Silesia, three figures go round on
+Christmas Eve--Christkindel, the archangel Gabriel, and St. Peter--and
+perform a little play before the presents they bring are given.
+Christkindel announces that he has gifts for the good children, but the
+bad shall feel the rod. St. Peter complains of the naughtiness of the
+youngsters: they play about in the streets instead of going straight to
+school; they tear up their lesson-books and do many other wicked things.
+However, the children's mother pleads for them, and St. Peter relents and
+gives out the presents.{10}
+
+In the Erzgebirge appear St. Peter and Ruprecht, who is clad in skin and
+straw, has a mask over his face, a rod, a chain round his body, and a
+sack with apples, nuts, and other gifts; and a somewhat similar
+performance is gone through.{11}
+
+If we go as far east as Russia we find a parallel to the girl Christkind
+in Kolyada, a white-robed maiden driven about in a sledge from house to
+house on Christmas Eve. The young people who attended her sang carols,
+and presents were given |233| them in return. _Kolyada_ is the name for
+Christmas and appears to be derived from _Kalendae_, which probably
+entered the Slavonic languages by way of Byzantium. The maiden is one of
+those beings who, like the Italian Befana, have taken their names from
+the festival at which they appear.{12}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No time in all the Twelve Nights and Days is so charged with the
+supernatural as Christmas Eve. Doubtless this is due to the fact that the
+Church has hallowed the night of December 24-5 above all others in the
+year. It was to the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks _by night_
+that, according to the Third Evangelist, came the angelic message of the
+Birth, and in harmony with this is the unique Midnight Mass of the Roman
+Church, lending a peculiar sanctity to the hour of its celebration. And
+yet many of the beliefs associated with this night show a large admixture
+of paganism.
+
+First, there is the idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve animals have
+the power of speech. This superstition exists in various parts of Europe,
+and no one can hear the beasts talk with impunity. The idea has given
+rise to some curious and rather grim tales. Here is one from Brittany:--
+
+"Once upon a time there was a woman who starved her cat and dog. At
+midnight on Christmas Eve she heard the dog say to the cat, 'It is quite
+time we lost our mistress; she is a regular miser. To-night burglars are
+coming to steal her money; and if she cries out they will break her
+head.' ''Twill be a good deed,' the cat replied. The woman in terror got
+up to go to a neighbour's house; as she went out the burglars opened the
+door, and when she shouted for help they broke her head."{13}
+
+Again a story is told of a farm servant in the German Alps who did not
+believe that the beasts could speak, and hid in a stable on Christmas Eve
+to learn what went on. At midnight he heard surprising things. "We shall
+have hard work to do this day week," said one horse. "Yes, the farmer's
+servant is heavy," answered the other. "And the way to the churchyard is
+long and steep," said the first. The servant was buried that day
+week.{14}
+
+|234| It may well have been the traditional association of the ox and
+ass with the Nativity that fixed this superstition to Christmas Eve, but
+the conception of the talking animals is probably pagan.
+
+Related to this idea, but more Christian in form, is the belief that at
+midnight all cattle rise in their stalls or kneel and adore the new-born
+King. Readers of Mr. Hardy's "Tess" will remember how this is brought
+into a delightful story told by a Wessex peasant. The idea is widespread
+in England and on the Continent,{15} and has reached even the North
+American Indians. Howison, in his "Sketches of Upper Canada," relates
+that an Indian told him that "on Christmas night all deer kneel and look
+up to Great Spirit."{16} A somewhat similar belief about bees was held
+in the north of England: they were said to assemble on Christmas Eve and
+hum a Christmas hymn.{17} Bees seem in folk-lore in general to be
+specially near to humanity in their feelings.
+
+It is a widespread idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve all water turns
+to wine. A Guernsey woman once determined to test this; at midnight she
+drew a bucket from the well. Then came a voice:--
+
+   "Toute l'eau se tourne en vin,
+    Et tu es proche de ta fin."
+
+She fell down with a mortal disease, and died before the end of the year.
+In Sark the superstition is that the water in streams and wells turns
+into blood, and if you go to look you will die within the year.{18}
+
+There is also a French belief that on Christmas Eve, while the genealogy
+of Christ is being chanted at the Midnight Mass, hidden treasures are
+revealed.{19} In Russia all sorts of buried treasures are supposed to be
+revealed on the evenings between Christmas and the Epiphany, and on the
+eves of these festivals the heavens are opened, and the waters of springs
+and rivers turn into wine.{20}
+
+Another instance of the supernatural character of the night is found in a
+Breton story of a blacksmith who went on working after the sacring bell
+had rung at the Midnight Mass. To him |235| came a tall, stooping man
+with a scythe, who begged him to put in a nail. He did so; and the
+visitor in return bade him send for a priest, for this work would be his
+last. The figure disappeared, the blacksmith felt his limbs fail him, and
+at cock-crow he died. He had mended the scythe of the _Ankou_--Death the
+reaper.{21}
+
+In the Scandinavian countries simple folk have a vivid sense of the
+nearness of the supernatural on Christmas Eve. On Yule night no one
+should go out, for he may meet uncanny beings of all kinds. In Sweden the
+Trolls are believed to celebrate Christmas Eve with dancing and revelry.
+"On the heaths witches and little Trolls ride, one on a wolf, another on
+a broom or a shovel, to their assemblies, where they dance under their
+stones.... In the mount are then to be heard mirth and music, dancing and
+drinking. On Christmas morn, during the time between cock-crowing and
+daybreak, it is highly dangerous to be abroad."{22}
+
+Christmas Eve is also in Scandinavian folk-belief the time when the dead
+revisit their old homes, as on All Souls' Eve in Roman Catholic lands.
+The living prepare for their coming with mingled dread and desire to make
+them welcome. When the Christmas Eve festivities are over, and everyone
+has gone to rest, the parlour is left tidy and adorned, with a great fire
+burning, candles lighted, the table covered with a festive cloth and
+plentifully spread with food, and a jug of Yule ale ready. Sometimes
+before going to bed people wipe the chairs with a clean white towel; in
+the morning they are wiped again, and, if earth is found, some kinsman,
+fresh from the grave, has sat there. Consideration for the dead even
+leads people to prepare a warm bath in the belief that, like living
+folks, the kinsmen will want a wash before their festal meal.[96] Or
+again beds were made ready for them while the living slept on straw. Not
+always is it consciously the dead for whom these preparations are made,
+sometimes they are said to be for the Trolls and sometimes even for
+|236| the Saviour and His angels.{24} (We may compare with this
+Christian idea the Tyrolese custom of leaving some milk for the Christ
+Child and His Mother{25} at the hour of Midnight Mass, and a Breton
+practice of leaving food all through Christmas night in case the Virgin
+should come.{26})
+
+It is difficult to say how far the other supernatural beings--their name
+is legion--who in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland are believed to
+come out of their underground hiding-places during the long dark
+Christmas nights, were originally ghosts of the dead. Twenty years ago
+many students would have accounted for them all in this way, but the
+tendency now is strongly against the derivation of all supernatural
+beings from ancestor-worship. Elves, trolls, dwarfs, witches, and other
+uncanny folk--the beliefs about their Christmas doings are too many to be
+treated here; readers of Danish will find a long and very interesting
+chapter on this subject in Dr. Feilberg's "Jul."{27} I may mention just
+one familiar figure of the Scandinavian Yule, Tomte Gubbe, a sort of
+genius of the house corresponding very much to the "drudging goblin" of
+Milton's "L'Allegro," for whom the cream-bowl must be duly set. He may
+perhaps be the spirit of the founder of the family. At all events on
+Christmas Eve Yule porridge and new milk are set out for him, sometimes
+with other things, such as a suit of small clothes, spirits, or even
+tobacco. Thus must his goodwill be won for the coming year.{28}
+
+In one part of Norway it used to be believed that on Christmas Eve, at
+rare intervals, the old Norse gods made war on Christians, coming down
+from the mountains with great blasts of wind and wild shouts, and
+carrying off any human being who might be about. In one place the memory
+of such a visitation was preserved in the nineteenth century. The people
+were preparing for their festivities, when suddenly from the mountains
+came the warning sounds. "In a second the air became black, peals of
+thunder echoed among the hills, lightning danced about the buildings, and
+the inhabitants in the darkened rooms heard the clatter of hoofs and the
+weird shrieks of the hosts of the gods."{29}
+
+|237| The Scandinavian countries, Protestant though they are, have
+retained many of the outward forms of Catholicism, and the sign of the
+cross is often used as a protection against uncanny visitors. The
+cross--perhaps the symbol was originally Thor's hammer--is marked with
+chalk or tar or fire upon doors and gates, is formed of straw or other
+material and put in stables and cowhouses, or is smeared with the remains
+of the Yule candle on the udders of the beasts--it is in fact displayed
+at every point open to attack by a spirit of darkness.{30}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christmas Eve is in Germany a time for auguries. Some of the methods
+already noted on other days are practised upon it--for instance the
+pouring of molten lead into water, the flinging of shoes, the pulling out
+of pieces of wood, and the floating of nutshells--and there are various
+others which it might be tedious to describe.{31}
+
+Among the southern Slavs if a girl wants to know what sort of husband she
+will get, she covers the table on Christmas Eve, puts on it a white loaf,
+a plate, and a knife, spoon, and fork, and goes to bed. At midnight the
+spirit of her future husband will appear and fling the knife at her. If
+it falls without injuring her she will get a good husband and be happy,
+but if she is hurt she will die early. There is a similar mode of
+divination for a young fellow. On Christmas Eve, when everybody else has
+gone to church, he must, naked and in darkness, sift ashes through a
+sieve. His future bride will then appear, pull him thrice by the nose,
+and go away.{32}
+
+In eastern Europe Christmas, and especially Christmas Eve, is the time
+for the singing of carols called in Russian _Kolyadki_, and in other Slav
+countries by similar names derived from _Kalendae_.{33} More often than
+not these are without connection with the Nativity; sometimes they have a
+Christian form and tell of the doings of God, the Virgin and the saints,
+but frequently they are of an entirely secular or even pagan character.
+Into some the sun, moon, and stars and other natural objects are
+introduced, and they seem to be based on myths to which a Christian
+appearance has been given by a sprinkling of names of holy persons of the
+|238| Church. Here for instance is a fragment from a Carpathian song:--
+
+   "A golden plough goes ploughing,
+    And behind that plough is the Lord Himself.
+    The holy Peter helps Him to drive,
+    And the Mother of God carries the seed corn,
+    Carries the seed corn, prays to the Lord God,
+    'Make, O Lord, the strong wheat to grow,
+    The strong wheat and the vigorous corn!
+    The stalks then shall be like reeds!'"{34}
+
+Often they contain wishes for the prosperity of the household and end
+with the words, "for many years, for many years." The Roumanian songs are
+frequently very long, and a typical, oft-recurring refrain is:--
+
+   "This evening is a great evening,
+        White flowers;
+    Great evening of Christmas,
+        White flowers."{35}
+
+Sometimes they are ballads of the national life.
+
+In Russia a carol beginning "Glory be to God in heaven, Glory!" and
+calling down blessings on the Tsar and his people, is one of the most
+prominent among the _Kolyadki_, and opens the singing of the songs called
+_Podblyudnuiya_. "At the Christmas festival a table is covered with a
+cloth, and on it is set a dish or bowl (_blyudo_) containing water. The
+young people drop rings or other trinkets into the dish, which is
+afterwards covered with a cloth, and then the _Podblyudnuiya_ Songs
+commence. At the end of each song one of the trinkets is drawn at random,
+and its owner deduces an omen from the nature of the words which have
+just been sung."{36}
+
+
+THE TWELVE DAYS.
+
+Whatever the limits fixed for the beginning and end of the Christmas
+festival, its core is always the period between Christmas |239| Eve and
+the Epiphany--the "Twelve Days."[97] A cycle of feasts falls within this
+time, and the customs peculiar to each day will be treated in calendarial
+order. First, however, it will be well to glance at the character of the
+Twelve Days as a whole, and at the superstitions which hang about the
+season. So many are these superstitions, so "bewitched" is the time, that
+the older mythologists not unnaturally saw in it a Teutonic festal
+season, dating from pre-Christian days. In point of fact it appears to be
+simply a creation of the Church, a natural linking together of Christmas
+and Epiphany. It is first mentioned as a festal tide by the eastern
+Father, Ephraem Syrus, at the end of the fourth century, and was declared
+to be such by the western Council of Tours in 567.{37}
+
+While Christmas Eve is the night _par excellence_ of the supernatural,
+the whole season of the Twelve Days is charged with it. It is hard to see
+whence Shakespeare could have got the idea which he puts into the mouth
+of Marcellus in "Hamlet":--
+
+   "Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
+    Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
+    The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
+    And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
+    The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
+    No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
+    So hallow'd and so gracious is the time."{38}
+
+Against this is the fact that in folk-lore Christmas is a quite
+peculiarly uncanny time. Not unnatural is it that at this midwinter
+season of darkness, howling winds, and raging storms, men should have
+thought to see and hear the mysterious shapes and voices of dread beings
+whom the living shun.
+
+Throughout the Teutonic world one finds the belief in a "raging |240|
+host" or "wild hunt" or spirits, rushing howling through the air on
+stormy nights. In North Devon its name is "Yeth (heathen) hounds";{40}
+elsewhere in the west of England it is called the "Wish hounds."{41} It
+is the train of the unhappy souls of those who died unbaptized, or by
+violent hands, or under a curse, and often Woden is their leader.{42} At
+least since the seventeenth century this "raging host" (_das wuethende
+Heer_) has been particularly associated with Christmas in German
+folk-lore,{43} and in Iceland it goes by the name of the "Yule
+host."{44}
+
+In Guernsey the powers of darkness are supposed to be more than usually
+active between St. Thomas's Day and New Year's Eve, and it is dangerous
+to be out after nightfall. People are led astray then by Will o' the
+Wisp, or are preceded or followed by large black dogs, or find their path
+beset by white rabbits that go hopping along just under their feet.{45}
+
+In England there are signs that supernatural visitors were formerly
+looked for during the Twelve Days. First there was a custom of cleansing
+the house and its implements with peculiar care. In Shropshire, for
+instance, "the pewter and brazen vessels had to be made so bright that
+the maids could see to put their caps on in them--otherwise the fairies
+would pinch them, but if all was perfect, the worker would find a coin in
+her shoe." Again in Shropshire special care was taken to put away any
+suds or "back-lee" for washing purposes, and no spinning might be done
+during the Twelve Days.{46} It was said elsewhere that if any flax were
+left on the distaff, the Devil would come and cut it.{47}
+
+The prohibition of spinning may be due to the Church's hallowing of the
+season and the idea that all work then was wrong. This churchly hallowing
+may lie also at the root of the Danish tradition that from Christmas till
+New Year's Day nothing that runs round should be set in motion,{48} and
+of the German idea that no thrashing must be done during the Twelve Days,
+or all the corn within hearing will spoil. The expectation of uncanny
+visitors in the English traditions calls, however, for special attention;
+it is perhaps because of their coming that the house must be left
+spotlessly clean and with as little as possible about on which they can
+work mischief.{49} Though I know of no distinct English belief in the
+|241| return of the family dead at Christmas, it may be that the fairies
+expected in Shropshire were originally ancestral ghosts. Such a
+derivation of the elves and brownies that haunt the hearth is very
+probable.{50}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The belief about the Devil cutting flax left on the distaff links the
+English superstitions to the mysterious _Frau_ with various names, who in
+Germany is supposed to go her rounds during the Twelve Nights. She has a
+special relation to spinning, often punishing girls who leave their flax
+unspun. In central Germany and in parts of Austria she is called Frau
+Holle or Holda, in southern Germany and Tyrol Frau Berchta or Perchta, in
+the north down to the Harz Mountains Frau Freen or Frick, or Fru Gode or
+Fru Harke, and there are other names too.{51} Attempts have been made to
+dispute her claim to the rank of an old Teutonic goddess and to prove her
+a creation of the Middle Ages, a representative of the crowd of ghosts
+supposed to be specially near to the living at Christmastide.{52} It is
+questionable whether she can be thus explained away, and at the back of
+the varying names, and much overlaid no doubt with later superstitions,
+there may be a traditional goddess corresponding to that old divinity
+Frigg to whom we owe the name of Friday. The connection of Frick with
+Frigg is very probable, and Frick shares characteristics with the other
+_Frauen_.{53}
+
+All are connected with spinning and spinsters (in the literal sense). Fru
+Frick or Freen in the Uckermark and the northern Harz permits no spinning
+during the time when she goes her rounds, and if there are lazy spinsters
+she soils the unspun flax on their distaff. In like manner do Holda,
+Harke, Berchta, and Gode punish lazy girls.{54}
+
+The characters of the _Frauen_ can best be shown by the things told of
+them in different regions. They are more dreaded than loved, but if
+severe in their chastisements they are also generous in rewarding those
+who do them service.
+
+Frau Gaude (also called Gode, Gaue, or Wode) is said in Mecklenburg to
+love to drive through the village streets on the Twelve Nights with a
+train of dogs. Wherever she finds a street-door open she sends a little
+dog in. Next morning he wags his |242| tail at the inmates and whines,
+and will not be driven away. If killed, he turns into a stone by day;
+this, though it may be thrown away, always returns and is a dog again by
+night. All through the year he whines and brings ill luck upon the house;
+so people are careful to keep their street-doors shut during the Twelve
+Nights.{55}
+
+Good luck, however, befalls those who do Frau Gaude a service. A man who
+put a new pole to her carriage was brilliantly repaid--the chips that
+fell from the pole turned to glittering gold. Similar stories of golden
+chips are told about Holda and Berchta.{56}
+
+A train of dogs belongs not only to Frau Gaude but also to Frau Harke;
+with these howling beasts they go raging through the air by night.{57}
+The _Frauen_ in certain aspects are, indeed, the leaders of the "Wild
+Host."
+
+Holda and Perchta, as some strange stories show, are the guides and
+guardians of the _heimchen_ or souls of children who have died
+unbaptized. In the valley of the Saale, so runs a tale, Perchta, queen of
+the _heimchen_, had her dwelling of old, and at her command the children
+watered the fields, while she worked with her plough. But the people of
+the place were ungrateful, and she resolved to leave their land. One
+night a ferryman beheld on the bank of the Saale a tall, stately lady
+with a crowd of weeping children. She demanded to be ferried across, and
+the children dragged a plough into the boat, crying bitterly. As a reward
+for the ferrying, Perchta, mending her plough, pointed to the chips. The
+man grumblingly took three, and in the morning they had turned to
+gold-pieces.{58}
+
+Holda, whose name means "the kindly one," is the most friendly of the
+_Frauen_. In Saxony she brings rewards for diligent spinsters, and on
+every New Year's Eve, between nine and ten o'clock, she drives in a
+carriage full of presents through villages where respect has been shown
+to her. At the crack of her whip the people come out to receive her
+gifts. In Hesse and Thuringia she is imagined as a beautiful woman clad
+in white with long golden hair, and, when it snows hard, people say,
+"Frau Holle is shaking her featherbed."{59}
+
+|243| More of a bugbear on the whole is Berchte or Perchte (the name is
+variously spelt). She is particularly connected with the Eve of the
+Epiphany, and it is possible that her name comes from the old German
+_giper(c)hta Na(c)ht_, the bright or shining night, referring to the
+manifestation of Christ's glory.{60} In Carinthia the Epiphany is still
+called _Berchtentag_.{61}
+
+Berchte is sometimes a bogey to frighten children. In the mountains round
+Traunstein children are told on Epiphany Eve that if they are naughty she
+will come and cut their stomachs open.{62} In Upper Austria the girls
+must finish their spinning by Christmas; if Frau Berch finds flax still
+on their distaffs she will be angered and send them bad luck.{63}
+
+In the Orlagau (between the Saale and the Orle) on the night before
+Twelfth Day, Perchta examines the spinning-rooms and brings the spinners
+empty reels with directions to spin them full within a very brief time;
+if this is not done she punishes them by tangling and befouling the flax.
+She also cuts open the body of any one who has not eaten _zemmede_
+(fasting fare made of flour and milk and water) that day, takes out any
+other food he has had, fills the empty space with straw and bricks, and
+sews him up again.{64} And yet, as we have seen, she has a kindly
+side--at any rate she rewards those who serve her--and in Styria at
+Christmas she even plays the part of Santa Klaus, hearing children repeat
+their prayers and rewarding them with nuts and apples.{65}
+
+There is a charming Tyrolese story about her. At midnight on Epiphany Eve
+a peasant--not too sober--suddenly heard behind him "a sound of many
+voices, which came on nearer and nearer, and then the Berchtl, in her
+white clothing, her broken ploughshare in her hand, and all her train of
+little people, swept clattering and chattering close past him. The least
+was the last, and it wore a long shirt which got in the way of its little
+bare feet, and kept tripping it up. The peasant had sense enough left to
+feel compassion, so he took his garter off and bound it for a girdle
+round the infant, and then set it again on its way. When the Berchtl saw
+what he had done, she turned back and thanked him, and told him that in
+return for his compassion his children should never come to want."{66}
+
+|244| In Tyrol, by the way, it is often said that the Perchtl is
+Pontius Pilate's wife, Procula.{67} In the Italian dialects of south
+Tyrol the German Frau Berchta has been turned into _la donna Berta_.{68}
+If one goes further south, into Italy itself, one meets with a similar
+being, the Befana, whose name is plainly nothing but a corruption of
+_Epiphania_. She is so distinctly a part of the Epiphany festival that we
+may leave her to be considered later.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all supernatural Christmas visitors, the most vividly realized and
+believed in at the present day are probably the Greek _Kallikantzaroi_ or
+_Karkantzaroi_.{69} They are the terror of the Greek peasant during the
+Twelve Days; in the soil of his imagination they flourish luxuriantly,
+and to him they are a very real and living nuisance.
+
+Traditions about the _Kallikantzaroi_ vary from region to region, but in
+general they are half-animal, half-human monsters, black, hairy, with
+huge heads, glaring red eyes, goats' or asses' ears, blood-red tongues
+hanging out, ferocious tusks, monkeys' arms, and long curved nails, and
+commonly they have the foot of some beast. "From dawn till sunset they
+hide themselves in dark and dank places ... but at night they issue forth
+and run wildly to and fro, rending and crushing those who cross their
+path. Destruction and waste, greed and lust mark their course." When a
+house is not prepared against their coming, "by chimney and door alike
+they swarm in, and make havoc of the home; in sheer wanton mischief they
+overturn and break all the furniture, devour the Christmas pork, befoul
+all the water and wine and food which remains, and leave the occupants
+half dead with fright or violence." Many like or far worse pranks do they
+play, until at the crowing of the third cock they get them away to their
+dens. The signal for their final departure does not come until the
+Epiphany, when, as we saw in Chapter IV., the "Blessing of the Waters"
+takes place. Some of the hallowed water is put into vessels, and with
+these and with incense the priests sometimes make a round of the village,
+sprinkling the people and their houses. The fear of the |245|
+_Kallikantzaroi_ at this purification is expressed in the following
+lines:--
+
+   "Quick, begone! we must begone,
+    Here comes the pot-bellied priest,
+    With his censer in his hand
+    And his sprinkling-vessel too;
+    He has purified the streams
+    And he has polluted us."
+
+Besides this ecclesiastical purification there are various Christian
+precautions against the _Kallikantzaroi_--_e.g._, to mark the house-door
+with a black cross on Christmas Eve, the burning of incense and the
+invocation of the Trinity--and a number of other means of aversion: the
+lighting of the Yule log, the burning of something that smells strong,
+and--perhaps as a peace-offering--the hanging of pork-bones, sweetmeats,
+or sausages in the chimney.
+
+Just as men are sometimes believed to become vampires temporarily during
+their lifetime, so, according to one stream of tradition, do living men
+become _Kallikantzaroi_. In Greece children born at Christmas are thought
+likely to have this objectionable characteristic as a punishment for
+their mothers' sin in bearing them at a time sacred to the Mother of God.
+In Macedonia{70} people who have a "light" guardian angel undergo the
+hideous transformation.
+
+Many attempts have been made to account for the _Kallikantzaroi_. Perhaps
+the most plausible explanation of the outward form, at least, of the
+uncanny creatures, is the theory connecting them with the masquerades
+that formed part of the winter festival of Dionysus and are still to be
+found in Greece at Christmastide. The hideous bestial shapes, the noise
+and riot, may well have seemed demoniacal to simple people slightly
+"elevated," perhaps, by Christmas feasting, while the human nature of the
+maskers was not altogether forgotten.{71} Another theory of an even more
+prosaic character has been propounded--"that the Kallikantzaroi are
+nothing more than established nightmares, limited like indigestion to the
+twelve days of feasting. This view is |246| taken by Allatius, who says
+that a Kallikantzaros has all the characteristics of nightmare, rampaging
+abroad and jumping on men's shoulders, then leaving them half senseless
+on the ground."{72}
+
+Such theories are ingenious and suggestive, and may be true to a certain
+degree, but they hardly cover all the facts. It is possible that the
+_Kallikantzaroi_ may have some connection with the departed; they
+certainly appear akin to the modern Greek and Slavonic vampire, "a corpse
+imbued with a kind of half-life," and with eyes gleaming like live
+coals.{73} They are, however, even more closely related to the werewolf,
+a man who is supposed to change into a wolf and go about ravening. It is
+to be noted that "man-wolves" ([Greek: lykanthropoi]) is the very name
+given to the _Kallikantzaroi_ in southern Greece, and that the word
+_Kallikantzaros_ itself has been conjecturally derived by Bernhard
+Schmidt from two Turkish words meaning "black" and "werewolf."{74} The
+connection between Christmas and werewolves is not confined to Greece.
+According to a belief not yet extinct in the north and east of Germany,
+even where the real animals have long ago been extirpated, children born
+during the Twelve Nights become werewolves, while in Livonia and Poland
+that period is the special season for the werewolf's ravenings.{75}
+
+Perhaps on no question connected with primitive religion is there more
+uncertainty than on the ideas of early man about the nature of animals
+and their relation to himself and the world. When we meet with
+half-animal, half-human beings we must be prepared to find much that is
+obscure.
+
+With the _Kallikantzaroi_ may be compared some goblins of the Celtic
+imagination; especially like is the Manx _Fynnodderee_ (lit. "the
+hairy-dun one"), "something between a man and a beast, being covered with
+black shaggy hair and having fiery eyes," and prodigiously strong.{76}
+The Russian _Domovy_ or house-spirit is also a hirsute creature,{77} and
+the Russian _Ljeschi_, goat-footed woodland sprites, are, like the
+_Kallikantzaroi_, supposed to be got rid of by the "Blessing of the
+Waters" at the Epiphany.{78} Some of the monstrous German figures
+already dealt with here |247| bear strong resemblances to the Greek
+demons. And, of course, on Greek ground one cannot help thinking of Pan
+and the Satyrs and Centaurs.[98]
+
+|248| |249| |250| |251|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE YULE LOG
+
+
+    The Log as Centre of the Domestic Christmas--Customs of the Southern
+    Slavs--The _Polaznik_--Origin of the Yule Log--Probable Connection
+    with Vegetation-cults or Ancestor-worship--The _Souche de Noel_ in
+    France--Italian and German Christmas Logs--English Customs--The Yule
+    Candle in England and Scandinavia.
+
+The peoples of Europe have various centres for their Christmas rejoicing.
+In Spain and Italy the crib is often the focus of the festival in the
+home as well as the church. In England--after the old tradition--, in
+rural France, and among the southern Slavs, the centre is the great log
+solemnly brought in and kindled on the hearth, while in Germany, one need
+hardly say, the light-laden tree is the supreme symbol of Christmas. The
+crib has already been treated in our First Part, the Yule log and the
+Christmas-tree will be considered in this chapter and the next.
+
+The log placed on the fire on the Vigil of the Nativity no longer forms
+an important part of the English Christmas. Yet within the memory of many
+it was a very essential element in the celebration of the festival, not
+merely as giving out welcome warmth in the midwinter cold, but as
+possessing occult, magical properties. In some remote corners of England
+it probably lingers yet. We shall return to the traditional English Yule
+log after a study of some Continental customs of the same kind.
+
+First, we may travel to a part of eastern Europe where the log ceremonies
+are found in their most elaborate form. Among the Serbs and Croats on
+Christmas Eve two or three young oaks are felled for every house, and, as
+twilight comes on, are brought in and laid on the fire. (Sometimes there
+is one for each male |252| member of the family, but one large log is
+the centre of the ritual.) The felling takes place in some districts
+before sunrise, corn being thrown upon the trees with the words, "Good
+morning, Christmas!" At Risano and other places in Lower Dalmatia the
+women and girls wind red silk and gold wire round the oak trunks, and
+adorn them with leaves and flowers. While they are being carried into the
+house lighted tapers are held on either side of the door. As the
+house-father crosses the threshold in the twilight with the first log,
+corn--or in some places wine--is thrown over him by one of the family.
+The log or _badnjak_ is then placed on the fire. At Ragusa the
+house-father sprinkles corn and wine upon the _badnjak_, saying, as the
+flame shoots up, "Goodly be thy birth!" In the mountains above Risano he
+not only pours corn and wine but afterwards takes a bowl of corn, an
+orange, and a ploughshare, and places them on the upper end of the log in
+order that the corn may grow well and the beasts be healthy during the
+year. In Montenegro, instead of throwing corn, he more usually breaks a
+piece of unleavened bread, places it upon the log, and pours over it a
+libation of wine.{1}
+
+The first visit on Christmas Day is considered important--we may compare
+this with "first-footing" in the British Isles on January 1--and in order
+that the right sort of person may come, some one is specially chosen to
+be the so-called _polaznik_. No outsider but this _polaznik_ may enter a
+house on Christmas Day, where the rites are strictly observed. He appears
+in the early morning, carries corn in his glove and shakes it out before
+the threshold with the words, "Christ is born," whereupon some member of
+the household sprinkles him with corn in return, answering, "He is born
+indeed." Afterwards the _polaznik_ goes to the fire and makes sparks fly
+from the remains of the _badnjak_, at the same time uttering a wish for
+the good luck of the house-father and his household and farm. Money and
+sometimes an orange are then placed on the _badnjak_. It is not allowed
+to burn quite away; the last remains of the fire are extinguished and the
+embers are laid between the branches of young fruit-trees to promote
+their growth.{2}
+
+How shall we interpret these practices? Mannhardt regards the log as an
+embodiment of the vegetation-spirit, and its burning |253| as an
+efficacious symbol of sunshine, meant to secure the genial vitalizing
+influence of the sun during the coming year.{3} It is, however, possible
+to connect it with a different circle of ideas and to see in its burning
+the solemn annual rekindling of the sacred hearth-fire, the centre of the
+family life and the dwelling-place of the ancestors. Primitive peoples in
+many parts of the world are accustomed to associate fire with human
+generation,{4} and it is a general belief among Aryan and other peoples
+that ancestral spirits have their seat in the hearth. In Russia, for
+instance, "in the Nijegorod Government it is still forbidden to break up
+the smouldering faggots in a stove, because to do so might cause the
+ancestors to fall through into hell. And when a Russian family moves from
+one house to another, the fire is conveyed to the new one, where it is
+received with the words, 'Welcome, grandfather, to the new home!'"{5}
+
+Sir Arthur Evans in three articles in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for 1881{6}
+gave a minute account of the Christmas customs of the Serbian highlanders
+above Risano, who practise the log-rites with elaborate ceremonial, and
+explained them as connected in one way or other with ancestor-worship,
+though the people themselves attach a Christian meaning to many of them.
+He pointed to the following facts as showing that the Serbian Christmas
+is at bottom a feast of the dead:--(1) It is said on Christmas Eve,
+"To-night Earth is blended with Paradise" [_Raj_, the abode of the dead
+among the heathen Slavs]. (2) There is talk of unchristened folk beneath
+the threshold wailing "for a wax-light and offerings to be brought them;
+when that is done they lie still enough"--here there may be a modified
+survival of the idea that ancestral spirits dwell beneath the doorway.
+(3) The food must on no account be cleared away after the Christmas meal,
+but is left for three days, apparently for the house-spirits. (4)
+Blessings are invoked upon the "Absent Ones," which seems to mean the
+departed, and (5) a toast is drunk and a bread-cake broken in memory of
+"the Patron Namegiver of all house-fathers," ostensibly Christ but
+perhaps originally the founder of the family. Some of these customs
+resemble those we have noted on All Souls' Eve and--in Scandinavia--on
+Christmas Eve; other parallels we shall meet |254| with later. Among
+the Slav races the old organization of the family under an elective
+house-elder and holding things in common has been faithfully preserved,
+and we might expect to find among the remote Serbian highlanders
+specially clear traces of the old religion of the hearth. One remarkable
+point noted by Sir Arthur Evans was that in the Crivoscian cottage where
+he stayed the fire-irons, the table, and the stools were removed to an
+obscure corner before the logs were brought in and the Christmas rites
+began--an indication apparently of the extreme antiquity of the
+celebration, as dating from a time when such implements were unknown.{7}
+
+If we take the view that ancestral spirits are the centre of the
+_badnjak_ observances, we may regard the libations upon the fire as
+intended for their benefit. On the sun and vegetation hypothesis,
+however, the libations would be meant to secure, by homoeopathic magic,
+that sunshine should alternate with the rain necessary for the welfare of
+plants.[99]{8} The fertilizing powers possessed by the sparks and ashes
+of the Christmas log appear frequently in folk-lore, and may be explained
+either by the connection of fire with human generation already noted, or,
+on the other theory, by the burning log being a sort of sacrament of
+sunshine. It is not perhaps necessary to exclude the idea of the log's
+connection with the vegetation-spirit even on the ancestral cult
+hypothesis, for the tree which furnished the fuel may have been regarded
+as the source of the life of the race.{9} The Serbian rites certainly
+suggest very strongly some sort of veneration for the log itself as well
+as for the fire that it feeds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We may now return to western Europe. In France the Christmas log or
+_souche de Noel_ is common in the less modernized places, particularly in
+the south. In Dauphine it is called _chalendal_, |255| in Provence
+_calignaou_ (from _Kalendae_, of course) or _trefoir_, in Orne
+_trefouet_. On Christmas Eve in Provence the whole family goes solemnly
+out to bring in the log. A carol meanwhile is sung praying for blessings
+on the house, that the women may bear children, the nanny-goats kids, and
+the ewes lambs, that corn and flour may abound, and the cask be full of
+wine. Then the youngest child in the family pours wine on the log in the
+name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The log is then thrown upon the
+fire, and the charcoal is kept all the year and used as a remedy for
+various ills.{11}
+
+Another account is given in his Memoirs by Frederic Mistral, the
+Provencal poet. On Christmas Eve everyone, he says, speaking of his
+boyhood, sallied forth to fetch the Yule log, which had to be cut from a
+fruit-tree:--
+
+    "Walking in line we bore it home, headed by the oldest at one end,
+    and I, the last born, bringing up the rear. Three times we made the
+    tour of the kitchen, then, arrived at the flagstones of the hearth,
+    my father solemnly poured over the log a glass of wine, with the
+    dedicatory words:
+
+    'Joy, joy. May God shower joy upon us, my dear children. Christmas
+    brings us all good things. God give us grace to see the New Year, and
+    if we do not increase in numbers may we at all events not decrease.'
+
+    In chorus we responded:
+
+    'Joy, joy, joy!' and lifted the log on the fire dogs. Then as the
+    first flame leapt up my father would cross himself, saying, 'Burn the
+    log, O fire,' and with that we all sat down to the table."{12}
+
+In some places the _trefoir_ or _tison de Noel_ is burnt every evening
+during the Thirteen Nights. If put under the bed its charcoal protects
+the house all the year round from lightning; contact with it preserves
+people from chilblains and animals from various diseases; mixed with
+fodder it makes cows calve; its brands thrown into the soil keep the corn
+healthy. In Perigord the portion which has not been burnt is used to form
+part of a plough, and is believed to make the seed prosper; women also
+keep some fragments until Epiphany that their poultry may thrive.{13} In
+|256| Brittany the _tison_ is a protection against lightning and its
+ashes are put in wells to keep the water good.{14}
+
+In northern Italy also the _ceppo_ or log is (or was) known--the
+Piedmontese call it _suc_--and in Tuscany Christmas is called after it
+_Festa di Ceppo_. In the Val di Chiana on Christmas Eve the family
+gathers, a great log is set on the fire, the children are blindfolded and
+have to beat it with tongs, and an _Ave Maria del Ceppo_ is sung.{15}
+Under the name in Lombardy of _zocco_, in Tuscany of _ciocco_, _di
+Natale_, the Yule log was in olden times common in Italian cities; the
+custom can there be traced back to the eleventh century. A little book
+probably printed in Milan at the end of the fifteenth century gives
+minute particulars of the ritual observed, and we learn that on Christmas
+Eve the father, or the head of the household, used to call all the family
+together and with great devotion, in the name of the Holy Trinity, take
+the log and place it on the fire. Juniper was put under it, and on the
+top money was placed, afterwards to be given to the servants. Wine in
+abundance was poured three times on the fire when the head of the house
+had drunk and given drink to all present. It was an old Italian custom to
+preserve the ashes of the _zocco_ as a protection against hail. A modern
+superstition is to keep some splinters of the wood and burn them in the
+fires made for the benefit of silkworms; so burnt, they are supposed to
+keep ills away from the creatures.{16}
+
+In many parts of Germany Yule log customs can be traced. In Hesse and
+Westphalia, for instance, it was the custom on Christmas Eve or Day to
+lay a large block of wood on the fire and, as soon as it was charred a
+little, to take it off and preserve it. When a storm threatened, it was
+kindled again as a protection against lightning. It was called the
+_Christbrand_.{17} In Thuringia a _Christklotz_ (Christ log) is put on
+the fire before people go to bed, so that it may burn all through the
+night. Its remains are kept to protect the house from fire and ill-luck.
+In parts of Thuringia and in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, East Prussia,
+Saxony, and Bohemia, the fire is kept up all night on Christmas or New
+Year's Eve, and the ashes are used to rid cattle of vermin and protect
+plants and fruit-trees from insects, while in the country between the
+Sieg |257| and Lahn the powdered ashes of an oaken log are strewn
+during the Thirteen Nights on the fields, to increase their
+fertility.{18} In Sweden, too, some form of Yule log was known,{19} and
+in Greece, as we have seen, the burning of a log is still supposed to be
+a protection against _Kallikantzaroi_.
+
+As for the English customs, they can hardly be better introduced than in
+Herrick's words:--
+
+     "Come, bring, with a noise,
+      My merry, merry boys,
+    The Christmas Log to the firing:
+      While my good Dame she
+      Bids ye all be free,
+    And drink to your hearts' desiring.
+
+      With the last year's Brand
+      Light the new Block, and
+    For good success in his spending,
+      On your psaltries play,
+      That sweet luck may
+    Come while the log is a-teending."[100]{20}
+
+We may note especially that the block must be kindled with last year's
+brand; here there is a distinct suggestion that the lighting of the log
+at Christmas is a shrunken remnant of the keeping up of a perpetual fire,
+the continuity being to some extent preserved by the use of a brand from
+last year's blaze.
+
+Another tradition and its origin are thus described by Sir Laurence
+Gomme:--
+
+    "From there being an ever-burning fire, it has come to be that the
+    fire must not be allowed to be extinguished on the last day of the
+    old year, so that the old year's fire may last into the new year. In
+    Lanarkshire it is considered unlucky to give out a light to any one
+    on the morning of the new year, and therefore if the house-fire has
+    been allowed to become extinguished recourse must be had to the
+    embers of |258| the village pile [for on New Year's Eve a great
+    public bonfire is made]. In some places the self-extinction of the
+    yule-log at Christmas is portentous of evil."{21}
+
+In the north of England in the days of tinder-boxes, if any one could not
+get a light it was useless to ask a neighbour for one, so frightfully
+unlucky was it to allow any light to leave the house between Christmas
+Eve and New Year's Day.{22} The idea of the unluckiness of giving out
+fire at the Kalends of January can be traced back to the eighth century
+when, as we saw in Chapter VI., St. Boniface alluded to this superstition
+among the people or Rome.
+
+In Shropshire the idea is extended even to ashes, which must not be
+thrown out of the house on Christmas Day, "for fear of throwing them in
+Our Saviour's face." Perhaps such superstitions may originally have had
+to do with dread that the "luck" of the family, the household spirit,
+might be carried away with the gift of fire from the hearth.{23}
+
+When Miss Burne wrote in the eighties there were still many West
+Shropshire people who could remember seeing the "Christmas Brand" drawn
+by horses to the farmhouse door, and placed at the back of the wide open
+hearth, where the flame was made up in front of it. "The embers," says
+one informant, "were raked up to it every night, and it was carefully
+tended that it might not go out during the whole season, during which
+time no light might either be struck, given, or borrowed." At Cleobury
+Mortimer in the south-east of the county the silence of the curfew bell
+during "the Christmas" points to a time when fires might not be
+extinguished during that season.{24}
+
+The place of the Yule log in Devonshire is taken by the "ashen [sometimes
+"ashton"] faggot," still burnt in many a farm on Christmas Eve. The
+sticks of ash are fastened together by ashen bands, and the traditional
+custom is for a quart of cider to be called for and served to the
+merrymaking company, as each band bursts in the flames.{25}
+
+In England the Yule log was often supplemented or replaced |259| by a
+great candle. At Ripon in the eighteenth century the chandlers sent their
+customers large candles on Christmas Eve, and the coopers, logs of
+wood.{26} Hampson, writing in 1841, says:--
+
+    "In some places candles are made of a particular kind, because the
+    candle that is lighted on Christmas Day must be so large as to burn
+    from the time of its ignition to the close of the day, otherwise it
+    will portend evil to the family for the ensuing year. The poor were
+    wont to present the rich with wax tapers, and yule candles are still
+    in the north of Scotland given by merchants to their customers. At
+    one time children at the village schools in Lancashire were required
+    to bring each a mould candle before the _parting_ or separation for
+    the Christmas holidays."[101]{27}
+
+In the Scandinavian countries the Yule candle is, or was, very prominent
+indeed. In West Jutland (Denmark) two great tallow candles stood on the
+festive board. No one dared to touch or extinguish them, and if by any
+mischance one went out it was a portent of death. They stood for the
+husband and wife, and that one of the wedded pair whose candle burnt the
+longer would outlive the other.{28}
+
+In Norway also two lights were placed on the table.{29} All over the
+Scandinavian lands the Yule candle had to burn throughout the night; it
+was not to be extinguished till the sun rose or--as was said
+elsewhere--till the beginning of service on Christmas Day. Sometimes the
+putting-out had to be done by the oldest member of the family or the
+father of the household. In Norway the candle was lighted every evening
+until New Year's Day. While it foreshadowed death if it went out, so long
+as it duly burned it shed a blessing with its light, and, in order to
+secure abundance of good things, money, clothes, food, and drink were
+spread out that its rays might fall upon them. The remains of the candle
+were used in various ways to benefit man and beast. Sometimes a cross was
+branded with them upon the animals on Christmas morning; in Sweden the
+plough was smeared with |260| the tallow, when used for the first time
+in spring. Or again the tallow was given to the fowls; and, lastly, in
+Denmark the ends were preserved and burnt in thundery weather to protect
+the house from lightning.{30} There is an analogy here with the use of
+the Christmas log, and also of the candles of the Purification (see
+Chapter XVI.).
+
+|261| |262| |263|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS
+
+
+    The Christmas-tree a German Creation--Charm of the German
+    Christmas--Early Christmas-trees--The Christmas Pyramid--Spread of
+    the Tree in Modern Germany and other Countries--Origin of the
+    Christmas-tree--Beliefs about Flowering Trees at
+    Christmas--Evergreens at the Kalends--Non-German Parallels to the
+    Christmas-tree--Christmas Decorations connected with Ancient Kalends
+    Customs--Sacredness of Holly and Mistletoe--Floors strewn with
+    Straw--Christmas and New Year Gifts, their Connection with the Roman
+    _Strenae_ and St. Nicholas--Present-giving in Various
+    Countries--Christmas Cards.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+From an engraving by Joseph Kellner.]
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS-TREE.
+
+The most widespread, and to children the most delightful, of all festal
+institutions is the Christmas-tree. Its picturesqueness and gay charm
+have made it spread rapidly all over Europe without roots in national
+tradition, for, as most people know, it is a German creation, and even in
+Germany it attained its present immense popularity only in the nineteenth
+century. To Germany, of course, one should go to see the tree in all its
+glory. Many people, indeed, maintain that no other Christmas can compare
+with the German _Weihnacht_. "It is," writes Miss I. A. R. Wylie, "that
+childish, open-hearted simplicity which, so it seems to me, makes
+Christmas essentially German, or at any rate explains why it is that
+nowhere else in the world does it find so pure an expression. The German
+is himself simple, warm-hearted, unpretentious, with something at the
+bottom of him which is childlike in the best sense. He is the last
+'Naturmensch' in civilization." Christmas suits him "as well as a play
+suits an actor for whose character and temperament it has been especially
+written."{1}
+
+|264| In Germany the Christmas-tree is not a luxury for well-to-do
+people as in England, but a necessity, the very centre of the festival;
+no one is too poor or too lonely to have one. There is something about a
+German _Weihnachtsbaum_--a romance and a wonder--that English
+Christmas-trees do not possess. For one thing, perhaps, in a land of
+forests the tree seems more in place; it is a kind of sacrament linking
+mankind to the mysteries of the woodland. Again the German tree is simply
+a thing of beauty and radiance; no utilitarian presents hang from its
+boughs--they are laid apart on a table--and the tree is purely splendour
+for splendour's sake. However tawdry it may look by day, at night it is a
+true thing of wonder, shining with countless lights and glittering
+ornaments, with fruit of gold and shimmering festoons of silver. Then
+there is the solemnity with which it is surrounded; the long secret
+preparations behind the closed doors, and, when Christmas Eve arrives,
+the sudden revelation of hidden glory. The Germans have quite a religious
+feeling for their _Weihnachtsbaum_, coming down, one may fancy, from some
+dim ancestral worship of the trees of the wood.
+
+As Christmas draws near the market-place in a German town is filled with
+a miniature forest of firs; the trees are sold by old women in quaint
+costumes, and the shop-windows are full of candles and ornaments to deck
+them. Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in her "Home Life in Germany" gives a
+delightful picture of such a Christmas market in "one of the old German
+cities in the hill country, when the streets and the open places are
+covered with crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white with it....
+The air is cold and still, and heavy with the scent of the
+Christmas-trees brought from the forest for the pleasure of the children.
+Day by day you see the rows of them growing thinner, and if you go to the
+market on Christmas Eve itself you will find only a few trees left out in
+the cold. The market is empty, the peasants are harnessing their horses
+or their oxen, the women are packing up their unsold goods. In every home
+in the city one of the trees that scented the open air a week ago is
+shining now with lights and little gilded nuts and apples, and is helping
+to make that Christmas smell, all compact of the pine forest, wax |265|
+candles, cakes and painted toys, you must associate so long as you live
+with Christmas in Germany."{2}
+
+Even in London one may get a glimpse of the Teutonic Christmas in the
+half-German streets round Fitzroy Square. They are bald and drab enough,
+but at Christmas here and there a window shines with a lighted tree, and
+the very prosaic Lutheran church in Cleveland Street has an unwonted
+sight to show--two great fir-trees decked with white candles, standing
+one on each side of the pulpit. The church of the German Catholics, too,
+St. Boniface's, Whitechapel, has in its sanctuary two Christmas-trees
+strangely gay with coloured glistening balls and long strands of gold and
+silver _engelshaar_. The candles are lit at Benediction during the
+festival, and between the shining trees the solemn ritual is performed by
+the priest and a crowd of serving boys in scarlet and white with tapers
+and incense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a pretty story about the institution of the _Weihnachtsbaum_ by
+Martin Luther: how, after wandering one Christmas Eve under the clear
+winter sky lit by a thousand stars, he set up for his children a tree
+with countless candles, an image of the starry heaven whence Christ came
+down. This, however, belongs to the region of legend; the first
+historical mention of the Christmas-tree is found in the notes of a
+certain Strasburg citizen of unknown name, written in the year 1605. "At
+Christmas," he writes, "they set up fir-trees in the parlours at
+Strasburg and hang thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples,
+wafers, gold-foil, sweets, &c."{3}
+
+We next meet with the tree in a hostile allusion by a distinguished
+Strasburg theologian, Dr. Johann Konrad Dannhauer, Professor and Preacher
+at the Cathedral. In his book, "The Milk of the Catechism," published
+about the middle of the seventeenth century, he speaks of "the
+Christmas- or fir-tree, which people set up in their houses, hang with
+dolls and sweets, and afterwards shake and deflower." "Whence comes the
+custom," he says, "I know not; it is child's play.... Far better were it
+to point the children to the spiritual cedar-tree, Jesus Christ."{4}
+
+In neither of these references is there any mention of candles--the
+|266| most fascinating feature of the modern tree. These appear,
+however, in a Latin work on Christmas presents by Karl Gottfried Kissling
+of the University of Wittenberg, written in 1737. He tells how a certain
+country lady of his acquaintance set up a little tree for each of her
+sons and daughters, lit candles on or around the trees, laid out presents
+beneath them, and called her children one by one into the room to take
+the trees and gifts intended for them.{5}
+
+With the advance of the eighteenth-century notices of the
+_Weihnachtsbaum_ become more frequent: Jung Stilling, Goethe, Schiller,
+and others mention it, and about the end of the century its use seems to
+have been fairly general in Germany.{6} In many places, however, it was
+not common till well on in the eighteen hundreds: it was a Protestant
+rather than a Catholic institution, and it made its way but slowly in
+regions where the older faith was held.{7} Well-to-do townspeople
+welcomed it first, and the peasantry were slow to adopt it. In Old
+Bavaria, for instance, in 1855 it was quite unknown in country places,
+and even to-day it is not very common there, except in the towns.{8} "It
+is more in vogue on the whole," wrote Dr. Tille in 1893, "in the
+Protestant north than in the Catholic south,"{9} but its popularity was
+rapidly growing at that time.
+
+A common substitute for the Christmas-tree in Saxony during the
+nineteenth century, and one still found in country places, was the
+so-called "pyramid," a wooden erection adorned with many-coloured paper
+and with lights. These pyramids were very popular among the smaller
+_bourgeoisie_ and artisans, and were kept from one Christmas to
+another.{10} In Berlin, too, the pyramid was once very common. It was
+there adorned with green twigs as well as with candles and coloured
+paper, and had more resemblance to the Christmas-tree.{11} Tieck refers
+to it in his story, "Weihnacht-Abend" (1805).{12}
+
+Pyramids, without lights apparently, were known in England before 1840.
+In Hertfordshire they were formed of gilt evergreens, apples, and nuts,
+and were carried about just before Christmas for presents. In
+Herefordshire they were known at the New Year.{13}
+
+|267| The Christmas-tree was introduced into France in 1840, when
+Princess Helene of Mecklenburg brought it to Paris. In 1890 between
+thirty and thirty-five thousand of the trees are said to have been sold
+in Paris.{14}
+
+In England it is alluded to in 1789,{15} but its use did not become at
+all general until about the eighteen-forties. In 1840 Queen Victoria and
+Prince Albert had a Christmas-tree, and the fashion spread until it
+became completely naturalized.{16} In Denmark and Norway it was known in
+1830, and in Sweden in 1863 (among the Swedish population on the coast of
+Finland it seems to have been in use in 1800).{17} In Bohemia it is
+mentioned in 1862.{18} It is also found in Russia, the United States,
+Spain, Italy, and Holland,{19} and of course in Switzerland and Austria,
+so largely German in language and customs. In non-German countries it is
+rather a thing for the well-to-do classes than for the masses of the
+people.
+
+The Christmas-tree is essentially a domestic institution. It has,
+however, found its way into Protestant churches in Germany and from them
+into Catholic churches. Even the Swiss Zwinglians, with all their
+Puritanism, do not exclude it from their bare, white-washed fanes. In the
+Muensterthal, for instance, a valley of Romonsch speech, off the Lower
+Engadine, a tree decked with candles, festoons, presents, and
+serpent-squibs, stands in church at Christmas, and it is difficult for
+the minister to conduct service, for all the time, except during the
+prayers, the people are letting off fireworks. On one day between
+Christmas Eve and New Year there is a great present-giving in
+church.{20}
+
+In Munich, and doubtless elsewhere, the tree appears not only in the
+church and in the home, but in the cemetery. The graves of the dead are
+decked on Christmas Eve with holly and mistletoe and a little
+Christmas-tree with gleaming lights, a touching token of remembrance, an
+attempt, perhaps, to give the departed a share in the brightness of the
+festival.{21}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The question of the origin of Christmas-trees is of great interest.
+Though their affinity to other sacraments of the |268| vegetation-spirit
+is evident, it is difficult to be certain of their exact ancestry. Dr.
+Tille regards them as coming from a union of two elements: the old Roman
+custom of decking houses with laurels and green trees at the Kalends of
+January, and the popular belief that every Christmas Eve apple and other
+trees blossomed and bore fruit.{22}
+
+Before the advent of the Christmas-tree proper--a fir with lights and
+ornaments often imitating and always suggesting flowers and fruit--it
+was customary to put trees like cherry or hawthorn into water or into
+pots indoors, so that they might bud and blossom at New Year or
+Christmas.{23} Even to-day the practice of picking boughs in order that
+they may blossom at Christmas is to be found in some parts of Austria.
+In Carinthia girls on St. Lucia's Day (December 13) stick a
+cherry-branch into wet sand; if it blooms at Christmas their wishes will
+be fulfilled. In other parts the branches--pear as well as cherry--are
+picked on St. Barbara's Day (December 4), and in South Tyrol
+cherry-trees are manured with lime on the first Thursday in Advent so
+that they may blossom at Christmas.{24} The custom may have had to do
+with legendary lore about the marvellous transformation of Nature on the
+night of Christ's birth, when the rivers ran wine instead of water and
+trees stood in full blossom in spite of ice and snow.{25}
+
+In England there was an old belief in trees blossoming at Christmas,
+connected with the well-known legend of St. Joseph of Arimathea. When the
+saint settled at Glastonbury he planted his staff in the earth and it put
+forth leaves; moreover it blossomed every Christmas Eve. Not only the
+original thorn at Glastonbury but trees of the same species in other
+parts of England had this characteristic. When in 1752 the New Style was
+substituted for the Old, making Christmas fall twelve days earlier, folks
+were curious to see what the thorns would do. At Quainton in
+Buckinghamshire two thousand people, it is said, went out on the new
+Christmas Eve to view a blackthorn which had the Christmas blossoming
+habit. As no sign of buds was visible they agreed that the new Christmas
+could not be right, and refused to keep it. At Glastonbury itself nothing
+|269| happened on December 24, but on January 5, the right day according
+to the Old Style, the thorn blossomed as usual.[102]{26}
+
+Let us turn to the customs of the Roman Empire which may be in part
+responsible for the German Christmas-tree. The practice of adorning
+houses with evergreens at the January Kalends was common throughout the
+Empire, as we learn from Libanius, Tertullian, and Chrysostom. A grim
+denunciation of such decorations and the lights which accompanied them
+may be quoted from Tertullian; it makes a pregnant contrast of pagan and
+Christian. "Let them," he says of the heathen, "kindle lamps, they who
+have no light; let them fix on the doorposts laurels which shall
+afterwards be burnt, they for whom fire is close at hand; meet for them
+are testimonies of darkness and auguries of punishment. But thou," he
+says to the Christian, "art a light of the world and a tree that is ever
+green; if thou hast renounced temples, make not a temple of thy own
+house-door."{27}
+
+That these New Year practices of the Empire had to do with the
+_Weihnachtsbaum_ is very possible, but on the other hand it has closer
+parallels in certain folk-customs that in no way suggest Roman or Greek
+influence. Not only at Christmas are ceremonial "trees" to be found in
+Germany. In the Erzgebirge there is dancing at the summer solstice round
+"St. John's tree," a pyramid decked with garlands and flowers, and lit up
+at night by candles.{28} At midsummer "in the towns of the Upper Harz
+Mountains tall fir-trees, with the bark peeled off their lower trunks,
+were set up in open places and decked with flowers and eggs, which were
+painted yellow and red. Round these trees the young folk danced by day
+and the old folk in the evening";{29} while on Dutch ground in
+Gelderland and Limburg at the beginning of May trees were adorned with
+lights.{30}
+
+Nearer to Christmas is a New Year's custom found in some |270| Alsatian
+villages: the adorning of the fountain with a "May." The girls who visit
+the fountain procure a small fir-tree or holly-bush, and deck it with
+ribbons, egg-shells, and little figures representing a shepherd or a man
+beating his wife. This is set up above the fountain on New Year's Eve. On
+the evening of the next day the snow is carefully cleared away and the
+girls dance and sing around the fountain. The lads may only take part in
+the dance by permission of the girls. The tree is kept all through the
+year as a protection to those who have set it up.{31}
+
+In Sweden, before the advent of the German type of tree, it was customary
+to place young pines, divested of bark and branches, outside the houses
+at Christmastide.{32} An English parallel which does not suggest any
+borrowing from Germany, was formerly to be found at Brough in
+Westmoreland on Twelfth Night. A holly-tree with torches attached to its
+branches was carried through the town in procession. It was finally
+thrown among the populace, who divided into two parties, one of which
+endeavoured to take the tree to one inn, and the other, to a rival
+hostelry.{33} We have here pretty plainly a struggle of two
+factions--perhaps of two quarters of a town that were once separate
+villages--for the possession of a sacred object.[103]
+
+We may find parallels, lastly, in two remote corners of Europe. In the
+island of Chios--here we are on Greek ground--tenants are wont to offer
+to their landlords on Christmas morning a _rhamna_, a pole with wreaths
+of myrtle, olive, and orange leaves bound around it; "to these are fixed
+any flowers that may be found--geraniums, anemones, and the like, and, by
+way of further decoration, oranges, lemons, and strips of gold and
+coloured paper."[104]{34} Secondly, among the Circassians in the early
+half of the nineteenth century, a young pear-tree used to be carried into
+each house at an autumn festival, to the sound of music and joyous cries.
+It was covered with candles, and a cheese was fastened to its top. Round
+about it they ate, drank, and sang. Afterwards it was |271| removed to
+the courtyard, where it remained for the rest of the year.{36}
+
+Though there is no recorded instance of the use of a tree at Christmas in
+Germany before the seventeenth century, the _Weihnachtsbaum_ may well be
+a descendant of some sacred tree carried about or set up at the
+beginning-of-winter festival. All things considered, it seems to belong
+to a class of primitive sacraments of which the example most familiar to
+English peoples is the May-pole. This is, of course, an early summer
+institution, but in France and Germany a Harvest May is also known--a
+large branch or a whole tree, which is decked with ears of corn, brought
+home on the last waggon from the harvest field, and fastened to the roof
+of farmhouse or barn, where it remains for a year.{37} Mannhardt has
+shown that such sacraments embody the tree-spirit conceived as the spirit
+of vegetation in general, and are believed to convey its life-giving,
+fructifying influences. Probably the idea of contact with the spirit of
+growth lay also beneath the Roman evergreen decorations, so that whether
+or not we connect the Christmas-tree with these, the principle at the
+bottom is the same.
+
+Certain Christian ideas, finally, besides that of trees blossoming on the
+night of the Nativity, may have affected the fortunes of the
+Christmas-tree. December 24 was in old Church calendars the day of Adam
+and Eve, the idea being that Christ the second Adam had repaired by His
+Incarnation the loss caused by the sin of the first. A legend grew up
+that Adam when he left Paradise took with him an apple or sprout from the
+Tree of Knowledge, and that from this sprang the tree from which the
+Cross was made. Or it was said that on Adam's grave grew a sprig from the
+Tree of Life, and that from it Christ plucked the fruit of redemption.
+The Cross in early Christian poetry was conceived as the Tree of Life
+planted anew, bearing the glorious fruit of Christ's body, and repairing
+the mischief wrought by the misuse of the first tree. We may recall a
+verse from the "Pange, lingua" of Passiontide:--
+
+   "Faithful Cross! above all other,
+      One and only noble tree! |272|
+    None in foliage, none in blossom,
+      None in fruit thy peer may be:
+    Sweetest wood and sweetest iron!
+      Sweetest weight is hung on thee."
+
+In the religious Christmas plays the tree of Paradise was sometimes shown
+to the people. At Oberufer, for instance, it was a fine juniper-tree,
+adorned with apples and ribbons. Sometimes Christ Himself was regarded as
+the tree of Paradise.{38} The thought of Him as both the Light of the
+World and the Tree of Life may at least have given a Christian meaning to
+the light-bearing tree, and helped to establish its popularity among
+pious folk.
+
+
+CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.
+
+We have seen that the Christmas-tree may be a development, partly at
+least, from the custom of decorating buildings with evergreens at the New
+Year, and that such decorations were common throughout the Roman
+Empire.[105] Some further consideration may now be given to the subject
+of Christmas decorations in various lands. In winter, when all is brown
+and dead, the evergreens are manifestations of the abiding life within
+the plant-world, and they may well have been used as sacramental means of
+contact with the spirit of growth and fertility, threatened by the powers
+of blight. Particularly precious would be plants like the holly, the ivy,
+and the mistletoe, which actually bore fruit in the winter-time.{39}
+
+In spite of ecclesiastical condemnations of Kalends decorations--as late
+as the sixth century the _capitula_ of Bishop Martin of Braga forbid the
+adorning of houses with laurels and green trees{40}--the custom has
+found its way even into churches, and nowhere more than in England. At
+least as far back as the fifteenth century, according to Stow's "Survay
+of London," it was the custom at Christmas for "every man's house, as
+also the parish churches," to be "decked with holm, ivy, bays, and
+whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green. The conduits and
+|273| standards in the streets were likewise garnished."{41} Many
+people of the last generation will remember the old English mode of
+decoration--how sprigs of holly and yew, stuck into holes in the high
+pews, used to make the churches into miniature forests. Only upon the
+mistletoe does a trace of the ecclesiastical taboo remain, and even that
+is not universal, for at York Minster, for instance, some was laid upon
+the altar.{42}
+
+English popular custom has connected particular plants with the winter
+festival in a peculiarly delightful way; at the mere mention of holly or
+mistletoe the picture of Christmas with its country charm rises to the
+mind--we think of snowy fields and distant bells, of warm hearths and
+kindly merrymaking.
+
+It is no wonder that the mistletoe has a special place in Christmas
+decorations, for it is associated with both Teutonic myth and Celtic
+ritual. It was with mistletoe that the beloved Balder was shot, and the
+plant played an important part in a Druidic ceremony described by Pliny.
+A white-robed Druid climbed a sacred oak and cut the mistletoe with a
+golden sickle. As it fell it was caught in a white cloth, and two white
+bulls were then sacrificed, with prayer. The mistletoe was called
+"all-healer" and was believed to be a remedy against poison and to make
+barren animals fruitful.{43} The significance of the ritual is not easy
+to find. Pliny's account, Dr. MacCulloch has suggested, may be
+incomplete, and the cutting of the mistletoe may have been a preliminary
+to some other ceremony--perhaps the felling of the tree on which it grew,
+whose soul was supposed to be in it, or perhaps the slaying of a
+representative of the tree-spirit; while the white oxen of Pliny's time
+may have replaced a human victim.{44}
+
+It is interesting to find that the name "all-healer" is still given to
+the mistletoe in Celtic speech,[106]{45} and that in various European
+countries it is believed to possess marvellous powers of healing sickness
+or averting misfortune.{46}
+
+|274| It is hard to say exactly what is the origin of the English
+"kissing under the mistletoe," but the practice would appear to be due to
+an imagined relation between the love of the sexes and the spirit of
+fertility embodied in the sacred bough, and it may be a vestige of the
+licence often permitted at folk-festivals. According to one form of the
+English custom the young men plucked, each time they kissed a girl, a
+berry from the bough. When the berries were all picked, the privilege
+ceased.{48}
+
+Sometimes a curious form, reminding one both of the German Christmas-tree
+and of the _Krippe_, is taken by the "kissing bunch." Here is an account
+from Derbyshire:--
+
+    "The 'kissing bunch' is always an elaborate affair. The size depends
+    upon the couple of hoops--one thrust through the other--which form
+    its skeleton. Each of the ribs is garlanded with holly, ivy, and
+    sprigs of other greens, with bits of coloured ribbons and paper
+    roses, rosy-cheeked apples, specially reserved for this occasion, and
+    oranges. Three small dolls are also prepared, often with much taste,
+    and these represent our Saviour, the mother of Jesus, and Joseph.
+    These dolls generally hang within the kissing bunch by strings from
+    the top, and are surrounded by apples, oranges tied to strings, and
+    various brightly coloured ornaments. Occasionally, however, the dolls
+    are arranged in the kissing bunch to represent a manger-scene....
+    Mistletoe is not very plentiful in Derbyshire; but, generally, a bit
+    is obtainable, and this is carefully tied to the bottom of the
+    kissing bunch, which is then hung in the middle of the house-place,
+    the centre of attention during Christmastide."{49}
+
+Kissing under the mistletoe seems to be distinctively English. There is,
+however, a New Year's Eve custom in Lower Austria and the Rhaetian Alps
+that somewhat resembles our mistletoe bough practices. People linger late
+in the inns, the walls and windows of which are decorated with green
+pine-twigs. In the centre of the inn-parlour hangs from a roof-beam a
+wreath of the same greenery, and in a dark corner hides a masked figure
+known as "Sylvester," old and ugly, with a flaxen beard and _a wreath of
+mistletoe_. If a youth or maiden happens to pass under the pine wreath
+Sylvester springs out and imprints a rough kiss. When midnight comes he
+is driven out as the representative of the old year.{50}
+
+|275| There are traces in Britain of the sacredness of holly as well as
+mistletoe. In Northumberland it is used for divination: nine leaves are
+taken and tied with nine knots into a handkerchief, and put under the
+pillow by a person who desires prophetic dreams.{51} For this purpose
+smooth leaves (without prickles) must be employed, and it is to be noted
+that at Burford in Shropshire smooth holly only was used for the
+Christmas decorations.{52} Holly is hated by witches,{53} but perhaps
+this may be due not to any pre-Christian sanctity attached to it but to
+the association of its thorns and blood-red berries with the Passion--an
+association to which it owes its Danish name, _Kristdorn_.
+
+In some old English Christmas carols holly and ivy are put into a curious
+antagonism, apparently connected with a contest of the sexes. Holly is
+the men's plant, ivy the women's, and the carols are debates as to the
+respective merits of each. Possibly some sort of rude drama may once have
+been performed.{54} Here is a fifteenth-century example of these
+carols:--
+
+   "Holly and Ivy made a great party,
+    Who should have the mastery,
+      In landes where they go.
+
+    Then spoke Holly, 'I am free and jolly,
+    I will have the mastery,
+      In landes where we go.'
+
+    Then spake Ivy, 'I am lov'd and prov'd,
+    And I will have the mastery,
+      In landes where we go.'
+
+    Then spake Holly, and set him down on his knee,
+    'I pray thee, gentle Ivy,
+    Say me no villainy,
+      In landes where we go.'"{55}
+
+The sanctity of Christmas house-decorations in England is shown by the
+care taken in disposing of them when removed from the walls. In
+Shropshire old-fashioned people never threw them away, for fear of
+misfortune, but either burnt them or gave them to the cows; it was very
+unlucky to let a piece |276| fall to the ground. The Shropshire custom
+was to leave the holly and ivy up until Candlemas, while the
+mistletoe-bough was carefully preserved until the time came for a new one
+next year. West Shropshire tradition, by the way, connects the mistletoe
+with the New Year rather than with Christmas; the bough ought not to be
+put up until New Year's Eve.{56}
+
+In Sweden green boughs, apparently, are not used for decoration, but the
+floor of the parlour is strewn with sprigs of fragrant juniper or
+spruce-pine, or with rye-straw.{57} The straw was probably intended
+originally to bring to the house, by means of sacramental contact, the
+wholesome influences of the corn-spirit, though the common people connect
+it with the stable at Bethlehem. The practice of laying straw and the
+same Christian explanation are found also in Poland{58} and in
+Crivoscia.{59} In Poland before the cloth is laid on Christmas Eve, the
+table is covered with a layer of hay or straw, and a sheaf stands in the
+corner. Years ago straw was also spread on the floor. Sometimes it is
+given to the cattle as a charm and sometimes it is used to tie up
+fruit-trees.{60}
+
+Dr. Frazer conjectures that the Swedish Yule straw comes in part at least
+from the last sheaf at harvest, to which, as embodying the corn-spirit, a
+peculiar significance is attached. The Swedish, like the Polish, Yule
+straw has sundry virtues; scattered on the ground it will make a barren
+field productive; and it is used to bind trees and make them
+fruitful.{61} Again the peasant at Christmas will sit on a log and throw
+up Yule straws one by one to the roof; as many as lodge in the rafters,
+so many will be the sheaves of rye at harvest.{62}
+
+
+CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR GIFTS.
+
+We have come across presents of various kinds at the pre-Christmas
+festivals; now that we have reached Christmastide itself we may dwell a
+little upon the festival as the great present-giving season of the year,
+and try to get at the origins of the custom.
+
+The Roman _strenae_ offered to the Emperor or exchanged between private
+citizens at the January Kalends have already |277| been noted.
+According to tradition they were originally merely branches plucked from
+the grove of the goddess Strenia, and the purpose of these may well have
+been akin to that of the greenery used for decorations, viz., to secure
+contact with a vegetation-spirit. In the time of the Empire, however, the
+_strenae_ were of a more attractive character, "men gave honeyed things,
+that the year of the recipient might be full of sweetness, lamps that it
+might be full of light, copper and silver and gold that wealth might flow
+in amain."{63} Such presents were obviously a kind of charm for the New
+Year, based on the principle that as the beginning was, so would the rest
+of the year be.
+
+With the adoption of the Roman New Year's Day its present-giving customs
+appear to have spread far and wide. In France, where the Latin spirit is
+still strong, January 1 is even now the great day for presents, and they
+are actually called _etrennes_, a name obviously derived from _strenae_.
+In Paris boxes of sweets are then given by bachelors to friends who have
+entertained them at their houses during the year--a survival perhaps of
+the "honeyed things" given in Roman times.
+
+In many countries, however, present-giving is attached to the
+ecclesiastical festival of Christmas. This is doubtless largely due to
+attraction from the Roman New Year's Day to the feast hallowed by the
+Church, but readers of the foregoing pages will have seen that Christmas
+has also drawn to itself many practices of a November festival, and it is
+probable that German Christmas presents, at least, are connected as much
+with the apples and nuts of St. Martin and St. Nicholas[107] as with the
+Roman _strenae_. It has already been pointed out that the German St.
+Nicholas as present-giver appears to be a duplicate of St. Martin, and
+that St. Nicholas himself has often wandered from his own day to
+Christmas, or has been replaced by the Christ Child. We have also noted
+the rod associated with the two saints, and seen reason for thinking that
+its original purpose was not disciplinary but health-giving.
+
+|278| It is interesting to find that while, if we may trust tradition,
+the Roman _strenae_ were originally twigs, Christmas gifts in
+sixteenth-century Germany showed a connection with the twigs or rods of
+St. Martin and St. Nicholas. The presents were tied together in a bundle,
+and a twig was added to them.{65} This was regarded by the pedagogic
+mind of the period not as a lucky twig but as a rod in the sinister
+sense. In some Protestant sermons of the latter half of the century there
+are curious detailed references to Christmas presents. These are supposed
+to be brought to children by the Saviour Himself, strangely called the
+_Haus-Christ_. Among the gifts mentioned as contained in the
+"Christ-bundles" are pleasant things like money, sugar-plums, cakes,
+apples, nuts, dolls; useful things like clothes; and also things "that
+belong to teaching, obedience, chastisement, and discipline, as A.B.C.
+tablets, Bibles and handsome books, writing materials, paper, &c., _and
+the_ '_Christ-rod_.'"{66}
+
+A common gift to German children at Christmas or the New Year was an
+apple with a coin in it; the coin may conceivably be a Roman
+survival,{67} while the apple may be connected with those brought by St.
+Nicholas.
+
+The Christ Child is still supposed to bring presents in Germany; in
+France, too, it is sometimes _le petit Jesus_ who bears the welcome
+gifts.{68} In Italy we shall find that the great time for children's
+presents is Epiphany Eve, when the Befana comes, though in the northern
+provinces Santa Lucia is sometimes a gift-bringer.{69} In Sicily the
+days for gifts and the supposed bringers vary; sometimes, as we have
+already seen, it is the dead who bring them, on All Souls' Eve; sometimes
+it is _la Vecchia di Natali_--the Christmas old woman--who comes with
+them on Christmas Eve; sometimes they are brought by the old woman
+Strina--note the derivation from _strenae_--at the New Year; sometimes by
+the Befana at the Epiphany.{70}
+
+A curious mode of giving presents on Christmas Eve belongs particularly
+to Sweden, though it is also found--perhaps borrowed--in Mecklenburg,
+Pomerania, and other parts of Germany. The so-called _Julklapp_ is a gift
+wrapped up in innumerable coverings. The person who brings it raps
+noisily at |279| the door, and throws or pushes the _Julklapp_ into the
+room. It is essential that he should arrive quite unexpectedly, and come
+and go like lightning without revealing his identity. Great efforts are
+made to conceal the gift so that the recipient after much trouble in
+undoing the covering may have to search and search again to find it.
+Sometimes in Sweden a thin gold ring is hidden away in a great heavy box,
+or a little gold heart is put in a Christmas cake. Occasionally a man
+contrives to hide in the _Julklapp_ and thus offer himself as a Christmas
+present to the lady whom he loves. The gift is often accompanied by some
+satirical rhyme, or takes a form intended to tease the recipient.{71}
+
+Another custom, sometimes found in "better-class" Swedish households, is
+for the Christmas presents to be given by two masked figures, an old man
+and an old woman. The old man holds a bell in his hand and rings it, the
+old woman carries a basket full of sealed packets, which she delivers to
+the addressees.{72}
+
+There is nothing specially interesting in modern English modes of
+present-giving. We may, however, perhaps see in the custom of Christmas
+boxes, inexorably demanded and not always willingly bestowed, a
+degeneration of what was once friendly entertainment given in return for
+the good wishes and the luck brought by wassailers. Instances of gifts to
+calling neighbours have already come before our notice at several
+pre-Christmas festivals, notably All Souls', St. Clement's, and St.
+Thomas's. As for the name "Christmas box," it would seem to have come
+from the receptacles used for the gifts. According to one account
+apprentices, journeymen, and servants used to carry about earthen boxes
+with a slit in them, and when the time for collecting was over, broke
+them to obtain the contents.{73}
+
+The Christmas card, a sort of attenuated present, seems to be of quite
+modern origin. It is apparently a descendant of the "school pieces" or
+"Christmas pieces" popular in England in the first half of the nineteenth
+century--sheets of writing-paper with designs in pen and ink or
+copper-plate headings. The first Christmas card proper appears to have
+been issued in 1846, but it was not till about 1862 that the custom of
+card-sending obtained any foothold.{74}
+
+|280|
+
+[Illustration:
+
+CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA.
+
+_By Ferdinand Waldmuller (b. 1793)._]
+
+|281| |282| |283|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS
+
+
+    Prominence of Eating in the English Christmas--The Boar's Head, the
+    Goose, and other Christmas Fare--Frumenty, Sowens, Yule Cakes, and
+    the Wassail Bowl--Continental Christmas Dishes, their Possible
+    Origins--French and German Cakes--The Animals' Christmas Feast--Cakes
+    in Eastern Europe--Relics of Animal Sacrifice--Hunting the
+    Wren--Various Games of Sacrificial Origin.
+
+
+FEASTING CUSTOMS.
+
+In the mind of the average sensual Englishman perhaps the most vivid
+images called up by the word Christmas are those connected with eating
+and drinking. "Ha piu da fare che i forni di Natale in Inghilterra,"[108]
+an Italian proverb used of a very busy person, sufficiently suggests the
+character of our Christmas.[109] It may be that the Christmas dinner
+looms larger among the English than among most other peoples, but in
+every country a distinctive meal of some kind is associated with the
+season. We have already seen how this illustrates the immemorial
+connection between material feasting and religious rejoicing.
+
+Let us note some forms of "Christmas fare" and try to get an idea of
+their origin. First we may look at English feasting customs, though, as
+they have been pretty fully described by |284| previous writers, no
+very elaborate account of them need be given.
+
+The gross eating and drinking in former days at Christmas, of which our
+present mild gluttony is but a pale reflection, would seem to be
+connected with the old November feast, though transferred to the season
+hallowed by Christ's birth. The show of slaughtered beasts, adorned with
+green garlands, in an English town just before Christmas, reminds one
+strongly of the old November killing. In displays of this kind the pig's
+head is specially conspicuous, and points to the time when the swine was
+a favourite sacrificial animal.{1} We may recall here the traditional
+carol sung at Queen's College, Oxford, as the boar's head is solemnly
+brought in at Christmas, and found elsewhere in other forms:--
+
+   "The boar's head in hand bear I,
+    Bedeck'd with bays and rosemary;
+    And I pray you, my masters, be merry,
+      _Quot estis in convivio._
+      _Caput apri defero,_
+      _Reddens laudes Domino._"{2}
+
+The Christmas bird provided by the familiar "goose club" may be compared
+with the German Martinmas goose. The more luxurious turkey must be
+relatively an innovation, for that bird seems not to have been introduced
+into England until the sixteenth century.{3}
+
+Cakes and pies, partly or wholly of vegetable origin, are, of course, as
+conspicuous at the English Christmas as animal food. The peculiar
+"luckiness" attached to some of them (as when mince-pies, eaten in
+different houses during the Twelve Days, bring a happy month each) makes
+one suspect some more serious original purpose than mere gratification of
+the appetite. A sacrificial or sacramental origin is probable, at least
+in certain cases; a cake made of flour, for instance, may well have been
+regarded as embodying the spirit immanent in the corn.{4} Whether any
+mystic significance ever belonged to the plum-pudding it is hard to say,
+though the sprig of holly stuck into its |285| top recalls the lucky
+green boughs we have so often come across, and a resemblance to the
+libations upon the Christmas log might be seen in the burning brandy.
+
+A dish once prominent at Christmas was "frumenty" or "furmety" (variously
+spelt, and derived from the Latin _frumentum_, corn). It was made of
+hulled wheat boiled in milk and seasoned with cinnamon, sugar, &c.{5}
+This too may have been a cereal sacrament. In Yorkshire it was the first
+thing eaten on Christmas morning, just as ale posset was the last thing
+drunk on Christmas Eve. Ale posset was a mixture of beer and milk, and
+each member of the family in turn had to take a "sup," as also a piece of
+a large apple-pie.{6}
+
+In the Highlands of Scotland, among those who observed Christmas, a
+characteristic dish was new sowens (the husks and siftings of oatmeal),
+given to the family early on Christmas Day in their beds. They were
+boiled into the consistence of molasses and were poured into as many
+bickers as there were people to partake of them. Everyone on despatching
+his bicker jumped out of bed.{7} Here, as in the case of the Yorkshire
+frumenty, the eating has a distinctly ceremonial character.
+
+In the East Riding of Yorkshire a special Yule cake was eaten on
+Christmas Eve, "made of flour, barm, large cooking raisins, currants,
+lemon-peel, and nutmeg," and about as large as a dinner-plate.{8} In
+Shropshire "wigs" or caraway buns dipped in ale were eaten on Christmas
+Eve.{9} Again elsewhere there were Yule Doughs or Dows, little images of
+paste, presented by bakers to their customers.{10} We shall see plenty
+of parallels to these on the Continent. When they are in animal or even
+human form they may in some cases have taken the place of actual
+sacrificial victims.{11}
+
+In Nottinghamshire the Christmas cake was associated with the
+wassail-bowl in a manner which may be compared with the Macedonian custom
+described later; it was broken up and put into the bowl, hot ale was
+poured over it, and so it was eaten.{12}
+
+The wassail-bowl--one cannot leave the subject of English Yuletide
+feasting without a few words upon this beloved beaker of hot spiced ale
+and toasted apples ("lambswool"). _Wassail_ is |286| derived from the
+Anglo-Saxon _wes hal_ = be whole, and wassailing is in its essence the
+wishing of a person's very good health. The origin of drinking healths is
+not obvious; perhaps it may be sacramental: the draught may have been at
+first a means of communion with some divinity, and then its consumption
+may have come to be regarded not only as benefiting the partaker, but as
+a rite that could be performed for the welfare of another person. Apart
+from such speculations, we may note the frequent mention of wassailing in
+old English carols of the less ecclesiastical type; the singers carried
+with them a bowl or cup which they expected their wealthier neighbours to
+fill with drink.{13} Sometimes the bowl was adorned with ribbons and had
+a golden apple at the top,{14} and it is a noteworthy fact that the box
+with the Christmas images, mentioned in Chapter IV. (p. 118), is
+sometimes called "the Vessel [Wassail] Cup."{15}
+
+The various Christmas dishes of Europe would form an interesting subject
+for exhaustive study. To suggest a religious origin for each would be
+going too far, for merely economic considerations must have had much to
+do with the matter, but it is very probable that in some cases they are
+relics of sacrifices or sacraments.
+
+The pig is a favourite food animal at Christmas in other countries than
+our own, a fact probably connected with sacrificial customs. In Denmark
+and Sweden a pig's head was one of the principal articles of the great
+Christmas Eve repast.{16} In Germany it is a fairly widespread custom to
+kill a pig shortly before Christmas and partake of it on Christmas Day;
+its entrails and bones and the straw which has been in contact with it
+are supposed to have fertilizing powers.{17} In Roumania a pig is the
+Christmas animal _par excellence_,{18} in Russia pigs' trotters are a
+favourite dish at the New Year,{19} and in every Servian house roast pig
+is the principal Christmas dish.{20}
+
+In Upper Bavaria there is a custom which almost certainly has at its root
+a sacrifice: a number of poor people club together at Christmas-time and
+buy a cow to be killed and eaten at a common feast.{21}
+
+More doubtful is the sacrificial origin of the dishes of certain |287|
+special kinds of fish on Christmas Eve. In Saxony and Thuringia herring
+salad is eaten--he who bakes it will have money all the year--and in many
+parts of Germany and also in Styria carp is then consumed.{22} Round
+Erce in Brittany the family dish is cod.{23} In Italy the _cenone_ or
+great supper held on Christmas Eve has fish for its animal basis, and
+stewed eels are particularly popular. It is to be remembered that in
+Catholic countries the Vigil of the Nativity is a fast, and meat is not
+allowed upon it; this alone would account for the prominence of fish on
+Christmas Eve.
+
+We have already come across peculiar cakes eaten at various pre-Christmas
+festivals; at Christmas itself special kinds of bread, pastry, and cakes
+abound on the Continent, and in some cases at least may have a religious
+origin.
+
+In France various sorts of cakes and loaves are known at the season of
+_Noel_. In Berry on Christmas morning loaves called _cornaboeux_, made in
+the shape of horns or a crescent, are distributed to the poor. In
+Lorraine people give one another _cognes_ or _cogneux_, a kind of pastry
+in the shape of two crescents back to back, or else long and narrow in
+form and with a crescent at either end. In some parts of France the
+_cornaboeux_ are known as _holais_, and ploughmen give to the poor as many
+of these loaves as they possess oxen and horses.{24} These horns may be
+substitutes for a sacrifice of oxen.
+
+Sometimes the French Christmas cakes have the form of complete oxen or
+horses--such were the thin unleavened cakes sold in the early nineteenth
+century at La Chatre (Indre). In the neighbourhood of Chartres there are
+_cochenilles_ and _coquelins_ in animal and human shapes. Little cakes
+called _naulets_ are sold by French bakers, and actually represent the
+Holy Child. With them may be compared the _coignoles_ of French Flanders,
+cakes of oblong form adorned with the figure of the infant Jesus in
+sugar.{25} Sometimes the Christmas loaf or cake in France has healing
+properties; a certain kind of cake in Berry and Limousin is kept all
+through the year, and a piece eaten in sickness has marvellous
+powers.{26}
+
+Cortet gives an extraordinary account of a French custom |288|
+connected with eating and drinking. At Mouthe (Doubs) there used to be
+brought to the church at Christmas pies, cakes, and other eatables, and
+wine of the best. They were called the "De fructu," and when at Vespers
+the verse "De fructu ventris tui ponam super sedem tuam" was reached, all
+the congregation made a rush for these refreshments, contended for them,
+and carried them off with singing and shouting.{27}
+
+The most remarkable of Christmas cakes or loaves is the Swedish and
+Danish "Yule Boar," a loaf in the form of a boar-pig, which stands on the
+table throughout the festal season. It is often made from the corn of the
+last sheaf of the harvest, and in it Dr. Frazer finds a clear expression
+of the idea of the corn-spirit as embodied in pig form. "Often it is kept
+till sowing-time in spring, when part of it is mixed with the seed corn
+and part given to the ploughman and plough-horses or plough-oxen to eat,
+in the expectation of a good harvest." In some parts of the Esthonian
+island of Oesel the cake has not the form of a boar, but bears the same
+name, and on New Year's Day is given to the cattle. In other parts of the
+island the "Yule Boar" is actually a little pig, roasted on Christmas Eve
+and set up on the table.{28}
+
+In Germany, besides _stollen_--a sort of plum-loaf--biscuits, often of
+animal or human shape, are very conspicuous on Christmas Eve. Any one who
+has witnessed a German Christmas will remember the extraordinary variety
+of them, _lebkuchen_, _pfeffernuesse_, _printen_, _spekulatius_ biscuits,
+&c. In Berlin a great pile of biscuits heaped up on your plate is an
+important part of the Christmas Eve supper. These of course are nowadays
+mere luxuries, but they may well have had some sort of sacrificial
+origin. An admirable and exhaustive study of Teutonic Christmas cakes and
+biscuits has been made, with infinite pains, by an Austrian professor,
+Dr. Hoefler, who reproduces some curious old biscuits, stamped with highly
+artistic patterns, preserved in museums.{29}
+
+Among unsophisticated German peasants there is a belief in magical powers
+possessed by bread baked at Christmas, particularly when moistened by
+Christmas dew. (This dew is held to be peculiarly sacred, perhaps on
+account of the words "Rorate, coeli, |289| desuper" used at the Advent
+Masses.) In Franconia such bread, thrown into a dangerous fire, stills
+the flames; in the north of Germany, if put during the Twelve Days into
+the fodder of the cattle, it makes them prolific and healthy throughout
+the year.{30}
+
+It is pleasant to note that animals are often specially cared for at
+Christmas. Up till the early nineteenth century the cattle in Shropshire
+were always better fed at Christmas than at other times, and Miss Burne
+tells of an old gentleman in Cheshire who used then to give his poultry a
+double portion of grain, for, he said, "all creation should rejoice at
+Christmas, and the dumb creatures had no other manner of doing so."{31}
+The saying reminds one of that lover of Christmas and the animals, St.
+Francis of Assisi. It will be remembered how he wished that oxen and
+asses should have extra corn and hay at Christmas, "for reverence of the
+Son of God, whom on such a night the most Blessed Virgin Mary did lay
+down in the stall betwixt the ox and the ass."{32} It was a gracious
+thought, and no doubt with St. Francis, as with the old Cheshireman, it
+was a purely Christian one; very possibly, however, the original object
+of such attention to the dumb creatures was to bring to the animals, by
+means of the corn, the influence of the spirit of fertility.
+
+In Silesia on Christmas night all the beasts are given wheat to make them
+thrive, and it is believed that if wheat be kept in the pocket during the
+Christmas service and then given to fowls, it will make them grow fat and
+lay many eggs.{33} In Sweden on Christmas Eve the cattle are given the
+best forage the house can afford, and afterwards a mess of all the viands
+of which their masters have partaken; the horses are given the choicest
+hay and, later on, ale; and the other animals are treated to good
+things.{34}
+
+At Loblang in Hungary the last sheaf at harvest is kept, and given on New
+Year's morning to the wild birds.{35} In southern Germany corn is put on
+the roof for them on Christmas Eve, or,{36} as also in Sweden,{37} an
+unthreshed sheaf is set on a pole. In these cases it is possible that the
+food was originally an offering to ancestral or other spirits.
+
+_Revenons a nos gateaux._ In Rome and elsewhere in Italy an important
+article of Christmas food is the _panettone_, a currant loaf. |290|
+Such loaves are sent as presents to friends. In eastern Europe, too,
+Christmas loaves or cakes are very conspicuous. The _chesnitza_ and
+_kolatch_ cakes among the southern Slavs are flat and wheel-like, with a
+circular hole in the middle and a number of lines radiating from it. In
+the central hole is sometimes placed a lighted taper or a small
+Christmas-tree hung with ribbons, tinsel, and sweetmeats. These cakes,
+made with elaborate ceremonial early in the morning, are solemnly broken
+by the house-father on Christmas Day, and a small piece is eaten by each
+member of the family. In some places one is fixed on the horn of the
+"eldest ox," and if he throws it off it is a good sign.{38} The last
+practice may be compared with a Herefordshire custom which we shall meet
+with on Twelfth Night (p. 346).
+
+In southern Greece a special kind of flat loaves with a cross on the top
+is made on Christmas Eve. The name given is "Christ's Loaves." "The cloth
+is not removed from the table; but everything is left as it is in the
+belief that 'Christ will come and eat' during the night."{39} Probably
+Christ has here taken the place of ancestral spirits.
+
+In Tyrol peasants eat at Christmastide the so-called _zelten_, a kind of
+pie filled with dried pear-slices, nuts, figs, raisins, and the like. It
+is baked on the Eve of St. Thomas, and its filling is as important an
+event for the whole family as was the plum-pudding and mincemeat making
+in old-fashioned English households. When the _zelten_ is filled the sign
+of the cross is made upon it and it is sprinkled with holy water and put
+in the oven. When baked and cooled, it is laid in the family stock of rye
+and is not eaten until St. Stephen's Day or Epiphany. Its cutting by the
+father of the family is a matter of considerable solemnity. Smaller pies
+are made at the same time for the maid-servants, and a curious custom is
+connected with them. It is usual for the maids to visit their relations
+during the Christmas holidays and share with them their _zelten_. A young
+man who wishes to be engaged to a maid should offer to carry her pie for
+her. This is his declaration of love, and if she accepts the offer she
+signifies her approval of him. To him falls the duty or privilege of
+cutting the _zelten_.{40}
+
+|291| Other cake customs are associated with the Epiphany, and will be
+considered in connection with that festival. We may here in conclusion
+notice a few further articles of Christmas good cheer.
+
+In Italy and Spain{41} a sort of nougat known as _torrone_ or _turron_
+is eaten at Christmas. You may buy it even in London in the Italian
+quarter; in Eyre Street Hill it is sold on Christmas Eve on little
+gaily-decked street stalls. Its use may well be a survival of the Roman
+custom of giving sweet things at the Kalends in order that the year might
+be full of sweetness.
+
+Some Little Russian feasting customs are probably pagan in origin, but
+have received a curious Christian interpretation. All Little Russians sit
+down to honey and porridge on Christmas Eve. They call it _koutia_, and
+cherish the custom as something that distinguishes them from Great and
+White Russians. Each dish is said to represent the Holy Crib. First
+porridge is put in, which is like putting straw in the manger; then each
+person helps himself to honey and fruit, and that symbolizes the Babe. A
+place is made in the porridge, and then the honey and fruit are poured
+in; the fruit stands for the body, the honey for the spirit or the
+blood.{42}
+
+Something like this is the special dish eaten in every Roumanian peasant
+household on Christmas Eve--the _turte_. It is made up of a pile of thin
+dry leaves of dough, with melted sugar or honey, or powdered walnut, or
+the juice of the hemp-seed. The _turte_ are traditionally said to
+represent the swaddling clothes of the Holy Child.{43}
+
+In Poland a few weeks before Christmas monks bring round small packages
+of wafers made of flour and water, blessed by a priest, and with figures
+stamped upon them. No Polish family is without these _oplatki_; they are
+sent in letters to relations and friends, as we send Christmas cards.
+When the first star appears on Christmas Eve the whole family, beginning
+with the eldest member, break one of these wafers between themselves, at
+the same time exchanging good wishes. Afterwards the master and mistress
+go to the servants' quarters to divide the wafer there.{44}
+
+|292|
+
+
+RELICS OF SACRIFICE.
+
+We have noted a connection, partial at least, between Christmas good
+cheer and sacrifice; let us now glance at a few customs of a different
+character but seemingly of sacrificial origin.
+
+Traces of sacrifices of cats and dogs are to be found in Germany and
+Bohemia. In Lauenburg and Mecklenburg on Christmas morning, before the
+cattle are watered, a dog is thrown into their drinking water, in order
+that they may not suffer from the mange. In the Uckermark a cat may be
+substituted for the dog. In Bohemia a black cat is caught, boiled, and
+buried by night under a tree, to keep evil spirits from injuring the
+fields.{45}
+
+A strange Christmas custom is the "hunting of the wren," once widespread
+in England and France and still practised in Ireland. In the Isle of Man
+very early on Christmas morning, when the church bells had rung out
+midnight, servants went out to hunt the wren. They killed the bird,
+fastened it to the top of a long pole, and carried it in procession to
+every house, chanting these words:--
+
+   "We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
+      We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can,
+    We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
+      We hunted the wren for every one."
+
+At each house they sought to collect money. At last, when all had been
+visited, they laid the wren on a bier, carried it to the churchyard, and
+buried it with the utmost solemnity, singing Manx dirges. Another
+account, from the mid-nineteenth century, describes how on St. Stephen's
+Day Manx boys went from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs in
+the centre of two hoops crossing one another at right angles and
+decorated with evergreens and ribbons. In exchange for a small coin they
+would give a feather of the wren, which was carefully kept as a
+preservative against shipwreck during the year.[110]{46} |293| There
+are also traces of a Manx custom of boiling and eating the bird.{48}
+
+The wren is popularly called "the king of birds," and it is supposed to
+be highly unlucky to kill one at ordinary times. Probably it was once
+regarded as sacred, and the Christmas "hunting" is the survival of an
+annual custom of slaying the divine animal, such as is found among
+primitive peoples.{49} The carrying of its body from door to door is
+apparently intended to convey to each house a portion of its virtues,
+while the actual eating of the bird would be a sort of communion feast.
+Perhaps the custom, in a Cornish village, of eating blackbird pie on
+Twelfth Day should be explained in the same way.{50}
+
+I can here hardly do more than allude to the many games{51} that were
+traditional in England at Christmas--hoodman-blind, shoe the wild mare,
+hot cockles, steal the white loaf, snap-dragon, and the rest. To attempt
+to describe and explain them would lead me too far, but it is highly
+probable that some at least might be traced to an origin in sacrificial
+ritual. The degeneration of religious rites into mere play is, indeed, as
+we have seen, a process illustrated by the whole history of Christmas.
+
+Only two British Christmas games can be discussed in this book:
+blindman's buff and football. An account of a remarkable Christmas
+football match will be found in the chapter on Epiphany customs, where it
+is brought into connection with that closely related game, the "Haxey
+hood."
+
+As for blindman's buff, it is distinctly a Christmas sport, and it is
+known nearly all over Europe by names derived from animals, _e.g._,
+"blind cow" and "blind mouse." Mr. N. W. Thomas has suggested that "the
+explanation of these names is that the players originally wore masks; the
+game is known in some cases as the 'blinde Mumm,' or blind mask.... The
+player who is 'it' seems to be the sacrificer; he bears the same name as
+the victim, just as in agricultural customs the reaper of the last corn
+bears the same name as the last sheaf."{52}
+
+The Scandinavian countries are very rich in Christmas games and
+dances,{53} of which it would be interesting to attempt explanations if
+space allowed. One Swedish song and dance game--it |294| may be related
+to the sword-dance (see Chapter XIII.)--is obviously sacrificial. Several
+youths, with blackened faces and persons disguised, are the performers.
+One of them is put to death with a knife by a woman in hideous attire.
+Afterwards, with gross gestures, she dances with the victim.{54}
+According to another account, from Gothland, the victim sits clad in a
+skin, holding in his mouth a wisp of straw cut sharp at the ends and
+standing out. It has been conjectured that this is meant to resemble a
+swine's bristles, and that the man represents a hog sacrificed to
+Frey.{55}
+
+Lastly a Russian game may be mentioned, though it has no sacrificial
+suggestion. During the Christmas season girls play at what is called "the
+Burial of the Gold." They form a circle, with one girl standing in the
+centre, and pass from hand to hand a gold ring, which the maiden inside
+tries to detect. Meanwhile a song is sung, "Gold I bury, gold I bury."
+Some imaginative mythologists interpret the ring as representing the sun,
+buried by the clouds of winter.{56}
+
+|295| |296| |297|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MASKING, THE MUMMERS' PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE BOY BISHOP
+
+
+    English Court Masking--"The Lord of Misrule"--The Mummers' Play, the
+    Sword-Dance, and the Morris Dance--Origin of St. George and other
+    Characters--Mumming in Eastern Europe--The Feast of Fools, its
+    History and Suppression--The Boy Bishop, his Functions and
+    Sermons--Modern Survivals of the Boy Bishop.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST. PETER.
+
+From an article by Mr. T. M. Fallow in _The Antiquary_, May, 1895.
+
+(By permission of Messrs. Elliot Stock.)]
+
+We have already seen a good deal of masking in connection with St.
+Nicholas, Knecht Ruprecht, and other figures of the German Christmas; we
+may next give some attention to English customs of the same sort during
+the Twelve Days, and then pass on to the strange burlesque ceremonies of
+the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop, ceremonies which show an intrusion
+of pagan mummery into the sanctuary itself.
+
+
+CHRISTMAS MASKING.
+
+The custom of Christmas masking, "mumming," or "disguising" can be traced
+at the English court as early as the reign of Edward III. It is in all
+probability connected with that wearing of beasts' heads and skins of
+which we have already noted various examples--its origin in folk-custom
+seems to have been the coming of a band of worshippers clad in this
+uncouth but auspicious garb to bring good luck to a house.{1} The most
+direct English survival is found in the village mummers who still call
+themselves "guisers" or "geese-dancers" and claim the right to enter
+every house. These will be dealt with shortly, after a consideration of
+more courtly customs of the same kind.
+
+|298| In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the English
+court masque reached its greatest developments; the fundamental idea was
+then generally overlaid with splendid trappings, the dresses and the
+arrangements were often extremely elaborate, and the introduction of
+dialogued speech made these "disguises" regular dramatic performances. A
+notable example is Ben Jonson's "Masque of Christmas."{2} Shakespeare,
+however, gives us in "Henry VIII."{3} an example of a simpler impromptu
+form: the king and a party dressed up as shepherds break in upon a
+banquet of Wolsey's.
+
+In this volume we are more concerned with the popular Christmas than with
+the festivities of kings and courts and grandees. Mention must, however,
+be made of a personage who played an important part in the Christmas of
+the Tudor court and appeared also in colleges, Inns of Court, and the
+houses of the nobility--the "Lord of Misrule."{4} He was annually
+elected to preside over the revels, had a retinue of courtiers, and was
+surrounded by elaborate ceremonial. He seems to be the equivalent and was
+probably the direct descendant of the "Abbot" or "Bishop" of the Feast of
+Fools, who will be noticed later in this chapter. Sometimes indeed he is
+actually called "Abbot of Misrule." A parallel to him is the Twelfth
+Night "king," and he appears to be a courtly example of the temporary
+monarch of folk-custom, though his name is sometimes extended to "kings"
+of quite vulgar origin elected not by court or gentry but by the common
+people. The "Lord of Misrule" was among the relics of paganism most
+violently attacked by Puritan writers like Stubbes and Prynne, and the
+Great Rebellion seems to have been the death of him.
+
+
+MUMMERS' PLAYS AND MORRIS DANCES.
+
+Let us turn now to the rustic Christmas mummers, to-day fast
+disappearing, but common enough in the mid-nineteenth century. Their
+goings-on are really far more interesting, because more traditional, than
+the elaborate shows and dressings-up of the court. Their names vary:
+"mummers" and "guisers" are the commonest; in Sussex they are
+"tipteerers," perhaps because of |299| the perquisites they collect, in
+Cornwall "geese-dancers" ("geese" no doubt comes from "disguise"), in
+Shropshire "morris"--or "merry"--"dancers."{5} It is to be noted that
+they are unbidden guests, and enter your house as of right.{6} Sometimes
+they merely dance, sing, and feast, but commonly they perform a rude
+drama.{7}
+
+The plays acted by the mummers{8} vary so much that it is difficult to
+describe them in general terms. There is no reason to suppose that the
+words are of great antiquity--the earliest form may perhaps date from the
+seventeenth century; they appear to be the result of a crude dramatic and
+literary instinct working upon the remains of traditional ritual, and
+manipulating it for purposes of entertainment. The central figure is St.
+George (occasionally he is called Sir, King, or Prince George), and the
+main dramatic substance, after a prologue and introduction of the
+characters, is a fight and the arrival of a doctor to bring back the
+slain to life. At the close comes a _quete_ for money. The name George is
+found in all the Christmas plays, but the other characters have a
+bewildering variety of names ranging from Hector and Alexander to
+Bonaparte and Nelson.
+
+Mr. Chambers in two very interesting and elaborately documented chapters
+has traced a connection between these St. George players and the
+sword-dancers found at Christmas or other festivals in Germany, Spain,
+France, Italy, Sweden, and Great Britain. The sword-dance in its simplest
+form is described by Tacitus in his "Germania": "they have," he says of
+the Germans, "but one kind of public show: in every gathering it is the
+same. Naked youths, who profess this sport, fling themselves in dance
+among swords and levelled lances."{9} In certain forms of the dance
+there are figures in which the swords are brought together on the heads
+of performers, or a pretence is made to cut at heads and feet, or the
+swords are put in a ring round a person's neck. This strongly suggests
+that an execution, probably a sacrifice, lies at the bottom of the
+dances. In several cases, moreover, they are accompanied by sets of
+verses containing the incident of a quarrel and the violent death of one
+of the performers. The likeness to the central feature of the |300|
+St. George play--the slaying--will be noticed. In one of the dances, too,
+there is even a doctor who revives the victim.
+
+In England the sword-dance is found chiefly in the north, but with it
+appear to be identical the morris-dances--characterized by the wearing of
+jingling bells--which are commoner in the southern counties. Blackened
+faces are common in both, and both have the same grotesque figures, a man
+and a woman, often called Tommy and Bessy in the sword-dance and "the
+fool" and Maid Marian in the morris. Moreover the morris-dancers in
+England sometimes use swords, and in one case the performers of an
+undoubted sword-dance were called "morrice" dancers in the eighteenth
+century. Bells too, so characteristic of the morris, are mentioned in
+some Continental accounts of the sword-dance.[111]
+
+Intermediate between these dances and the fully developed St. George
+dramas are the plays performed on Plough Monday in Lincolnshire and the
+East Midlands. They all contain a good deal of dancing, a violent death
+and a revival, and grotesques found both in the dances and in the
+Christmas plays.
+
+The sword-dance thus passes by a gradual transition, the dancing
+diminishing, the dramatic elements increasing, into the mummers' plays of
+St. George. The central motive, death and revival, Mr. Chambers regards
+as a symbol of the resurrection of the year or the spirit of
+vegetation,[112] like the Thuringian custom of executing a "wild man"
+covered with leaves, whom a doctor brings to life again by bleeding. This
+piece of ritual has apparently been attracted to Christmas from an early
+feast of spring, and Plough Monday, when the East Midland plays take
+place, is just such an early spring feast. Again, in some places the
+|301| St. George play is performed at Easter, a date alluded to in the
+title, "Pace-eggers'" or "Pasque-eggers'" play.{13}
+
+Two grotesque figures appear with varying degrees of clearness and with
+various names in the dances and in the plays--the "fool" (Tommy) who
+wears the skin and tail of a fox or other animal, and a man dressed in
+woman's clothes (Bessy). In these we may recognize the skin-clad mummer
+and the man aping a woman whom we meet in the old Kalends denunciations.
+Sometimes the two are combined, while a hobby-horse also not unfrequently
+appears.{14}
+
+How exactly St. George came to be the central figure of the Christmas
+plays is uncertain; possibly they may be a development of a dance in
+which appeared the "Seven Champions," the English national heroes--of
+whom Richard Johnson wrote a history in 1596--with St. George at their
+head. It is more probable, however, that the saint came in from the
+mediaeval pageants held on his day in many English towns.{15}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Can it be that the German St. Nicholas plays are more Christianized and
+sophisticated forms of folk-dramas like in origin to those we have been
+discussing? They certainly resemble the English plays in the manner in
+which one actor calls in another by name; while the grotesque figures
+introduced have some likeness to the "fool" of the morris.
+
+Christmas mumming, it may be added, is found in eastern as well as
+western Europe. In Greece, where ecclesiastical condemnations of such
+things can be traced with remarkable clearness from early times to the
+twelfth century, it takes sundry forms. "At Pharsala," writes Mr. J. C.
+Lawson, "there is a sort of play at the Epiphany, in which the mummers
+represent bride, bridegroom, and 'Arab'; the Arab tries to carry off the
+bride, and the bridegroom defends her.... Formerly also at 'Kozane and in
+many other parts of Greece,' according to a Greek writer in the early
+part of the nineteenth century, throughout the Twelve Days boys carrying
+bells used to go round the houses, singing songs and having 'one or more
+of their company dressed up with masks and bells and foxes' brushes and
+other such things to give them a weird and monstrous look.'"{16}
+
+|302| In Russia, too, mummers used to go about at Christmastide,
+visiting houses, dancing, and performing all kinds of antics. "Prominent
+parts were always played by human representatives of a goat and a bear.
+Some of the party would be disguised as 'Lazaruses,' that is, as blind
+beggars." A certain number of the mummers were generally supposed to play
+the part of thieves anxious to break in.{17} Readers of Tolstoy's "War
+and Peace" may remember a description of some such maskings in the year
+1810.
+
+
+THE FEAST OF FOOLS.
+
+So far, in this Second Part, we have been considering customs practised
+chiefly in houses, streets, and fields. We must now turn to certain
+festivities following hard upon Christmas Day, which, though pagan in
+origin and sometimes even blasphemous, found their way in the Middle Ages
+within the walls of the church.
+
+Shortly after Christmas a group of _tripudia_ or revels was held by the
+various inferior clergy and ministrants of cathedrals and other churches.
+These festivals, of which the best known are the Feast of Fools and the
+Boy Bishop ceremonies, have been so fully described by other writers, and
+my space here is so limited, that I need but treat them in outline, and
+for detail refer the reader to such admirable accounts as are to be found
+in Chapters XIII., XIV., and XV. of Mr. Chamber's "The Mediaeval
+Stage."{18}
+
+Johannes Belethus, Rector of Theology at Paris towards the end of the
+twelfth century, speaks of four _tripudia_ held after Christmas:--those
+of the deacons on St. Stephen's Day, the priests on St. John's, the
+choir-boys on Holy Innocents', and the subdeacons on the Circumcision,
+the Epiphany, or the Octave of the Epiphany. The feast of subdeacons,
+says Belethus, "we call that of fools." It is this feast which, though
+not apparently the earliest in origin of the four, was the most riotous
+and disorderly, and shows most clearly its pagan character. Belethus'
+mention of it is the first clear notice, though disorderly revels of the
+same kind seem to have existed at Constantinople as early as the ninth
+century. At first confined to the subdeacons, the Feast of Fools became
+in its later developments a festival not only of that order but of the
+|303| inferior clergy in general, of the vicars choral, the chaplains,
+and the choir-clerks, as distinguished from the canons. For this rabble
+of poor and low-class clergy it was no doubt a welcome relaxation, and
+one can hardly wonder that they let themselves go in burlesquing the
+sacred but often wearisome rites at which it was their business to be
+present through many long hours, or that they delighted to usurp for once
+in a way the functions ordinarily performed by their superiors. The
+putting down of the mighty from their seat and the exalting of them of
+low degree was the keynote of the festival. While "Deposuit potentes de
+sede: et exaltavit humiles" was being sung at the "Magnificat," it would
+appear that the precentor's _baculus_ or staff was handed over to the
+clerk who was to be "lord of the feast" for the year, and throughout the
+services of the day the inferior clergy predominated, under the
+leadership of this chosen "lord." He was usually given some title of
+ecclesiastical dignity, "bishop," "prelate," "archbishop," "cardinal," or
+even "pope," was vested in full pontificals, and in some cases sat on the
+real bishop's throne, gave benedictions, and issued indulgences.
+
+These lower clergy, it must be remembered, belonged to the peasant or
+small _bourgeois_ class and were probably for the most part but
+ill-educated. They were likely to bring with them into the Church the
+superstitions floating about among the people, and the Feast of Fools may
+be regarded as a recoil of paganism upon Christianity in its very
+sanctuary. "An ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock" it has
+been called by Mr. Chambers, and many of its usages may be explained by
+the reaction of coarse natures freed for once from restraint. It brought
+to light, however, not merely personal vulgarity, but a whole range of
+traditional customs, derived probably from a fusion of the Roman feast of
+the Kalends of January with Teutonic or Celtic heathen festivities.
+
+A general account of its usages is given in a letter addressed in 1445 by
+the Paris Faculty of Theology to the bishops and chapters of France:--
+
+    "Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages
+    at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as |304|
+    women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black
+    puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying Mass.
+    They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the
+    soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a
+    blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its
+    theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their
+    fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent
+    gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste."{19}
+
+The letter also speaks of "bishops" or "archbishops" of Fools, who wore
+mitres and held pastoral staffs. We here see clearly, besides mere
+irreverence, an outcrop of pagan practices. Topsy-turvydom, the temporary
+exaltation of inferiors, was itself a characteristic of the Kalends
+celebrations, and a still more remarkable feature of them was, as we have
+seen, the wearing of beast-masks and the dressing up of men in women's
+clothes. And what is the "bishop" or "archbishop" but a parallel to, and,
+we may well believe, an example of, the mock king whom Dr. Frazer has
+traced in so many a folk-festival, and who is found at the _Saturnalia_?
+
+One more feature of the Feast of Fools must be considered, the Ass who
+gave to it the not uncommon title of _asinaria festa_. At Bourges, Sens,
+and Beauvais, a curious half-comic hymn was sung in church, the so-called
+"Prose of the Ass." It begins as follows:--
+
+   "Orientis partibus
+     Adventavit Asinus,
+     Pulcher et fortissimus,
+     Sarcinis aptissimus.
+     Hez, Sir Asnes, car chantez,
+     Belle bouche rechignez,
+     Vous aurez du foin assez
+     Et de l'avoine a plantez."
+
+And after eight verses in praise of the beast, with some mention of his
+connection with Bethlehem and the Wise Men, it closes thus:--
+
+   "Amen dicas, Asine,
+    Iam satur de gramine, |305|
+    Amen, Amen, itera,
+    Aspernare vetera.
+    Hez va, hez va! hez va, hez!
+    Bialx Sire Asnes, car allez:
+    Belle bouche, car chantez."{20}
+
+An ass, it would seem, was actually brought into church, at Beauvais at
+all events, during the singing of this song on the feast of the
+Circumcision. On January 14 an extraordinary ceremony took place there. A
+girl with a child in her arms rode upon an ass into St. Stephen's church,
+to represent the Flight into Egypt. The Introit, "Kyrie," "Gloria," and
+"Credo" at Mass ended in a bray, and at the close of the service the
+priest instead of saying "Ite, missa est," had to bray three times, and
+the people to respond in like manner. Mr. Chambers's theory is that the
+ass was a descendant of the _cervulus_ or hobby-buck who figures so
+largely in ecclesiastical condemnations of Kalends customs.
+
+The country _par excellence_ of the Feast of the Fools was France. It can
+also be traced in Germany and Bohemia, while in England too there are
+notices of it, though far fewer than in France. Its abuses were the
+subject of frequent denunciations by Church reformers from the twelfth to
+the fifteenth century. The feast was prohibited at various times, and
+notably by the Council of Basle in 1435, but it was too popular to be
+quickly suppressed, and it took a century and a half to die out after
+this condemnation by a general council of the Church. In one cathedral,
+Amiens, it even lingered until 1721.
+
+When in the fifteenth century and later the Feast of Fools was expelled
+from the churches of France, associations of laymen sprang up to carry on
+its traditions outside. It was indeed a form of entertainment which the
+townsfolk as well as the lower clergy thoroughly appreciated, and they
+were by no means willing to let it die. A _Prince des Sots_ took the
+place of the "bishop," and was chosen by _societes joyeuses_ organized by
+the youth of the cities for New Year merrymaking. Gradually their
+activities grew, and their celebrations came to take place at other
+festive times beside the Christmas season. The _sots_ had a distinctive
+dress, its |306| most characteristic feature being a hood with asses'
+ears, probably a relic of the primitive days when the heads of sacrificed
+animals were worn by festal worshippers.{21}
+
+
+THE BOY BISHOP.
+
+Of older standing than the Feast of Fools were the Christmas revels of
+the deacons, the priests, and the choir-boys. They can be traced back to
+the early tenth century, and may have originated at the great song-school
+of St. Gall near Constance. The most important of the three feasts was
+that of the boys on Holy Innocents' Day, a theoretically appropriate
+date. Corresponding to the "lord" of the Feast of Fools was the famous
+"Boy Bishop," a choir-boy chosen by the lads themselves, who was vested
+in cope and mitre, held a pastoral staff, and gave the benediction. Other
+boys too usurped the dignities of their elders, and were attired as dean,
+archdeacons, and canons. Offices for the festival, in which the Boy
+Bishop figures largely, are to be found in English, French, and German
+service-books, the best known in this country being those in the Sarum
+Processional and Breviary. In England these ceremonies were far more
+popular and lasting than the Feast of Fools, and, unlike it, they were
+recognized and approved by authority, probably because boys were more
+amenable to discipline than men, and objectionable features could be
+pruned away with comparative ease. The festivities must have formed a
+delightful break in the year of the mediaeval schoolboy, for whom
+holidays, as distinguished from holy-days for church-going, scarcely
+existed. The feast, as we shall see, was by no means confined within the
+church walls; there was plenty of merrymaking and money-making outside.
+
+Minute details have been preserved of the Boy Bishop customs at St.
+Paul's Cathedral in the thirteenth century. It had apparently been usual
+for the "bishop" to make the cathedral dignitaries act as taper- and
+incense-bearers, thus reversing matters so that the great performed the
+functions of the lowly. In 1263 this was forbidden, and only clerks of
+lower rank might be chosen for these offices. But the "bishop" had the
+right to demand |307| after Compline on the Eve of the Innocents a
+supper for himself and his train from the Dean or one of his canons. The
+number of his following must, however, be limited; if he went to the
+Dean's he might take with him a train of fifteen: two chaplains, two
+taper-bearers, five clerks, two vergers, and four residentiary canons; if
+to a lesser dignitary his attendants were to be fewer.
+
+On Innocents' Day he was given a dinner, after which came a cavalcade
+through the city, that the "bishop" might bless the people. He had also
+to preach a sermon--no doubt written for him.
+
+Examples of such discourses are still extant,{22} and are not without
+quaint touches. For instance the bidding prayer before one of them
+alludes to "the ryghte reverende fader and worshypfull lorde my broder
+Bysshopp of London, your dyoceasan," and "my worshypfull broder [the]
+Deane of this cathedrall chirche,"{23} while in another the preacher
+remarks, speaking of the choristers and children of the song-school, "Yt
+is not so long sens I was one of them myself."{24}
+
+In some places it appears, though this is by no means certain, that the
+boy actually sang Mass. The "bishop's" office was a very desirable one
+not merely because of the feasting, but because he had usually the right
+to levy contributions on the faithful, and the amounts collected were
+often very large. At York, for instance, in 1396 the "bishop" pocketed
+about L77, all expenses paid.
+
+The general parallelism of the Boy Bishop customs and the Feast of Fools
+is obvious, and no doubt they had much the same folk-origin. One point,
+already mentioned, should specially be noticed: the election of the Boy
+Bishop generally took place on December 5, the Eve of St. Nicholas,
+patron of children; he was often called "Nicholas bishop"; and sometimes,
+as at Eton and Mayence, he exercised episcopal functions at divine
+service on the eve and the feast itself. It is possible, as Mr. Chambers
+suggests, that St. Nicholas's Day was an older date for the boys'
+festival than Holy Innocents', and that from the connection with St.
+Nicholas, the bishop saint _par excellence_ (he was said to have been
+consecrated by divine command when still a mere layman), sprang |308|
+the custom of giving the title "bishop" to the "lord" first of the boys'
+feast and later of the Feast of Fools.
+
+In the late Middle Ages the Boy Bishop was found not merely in cathedral,
+monastic, and collegiate churches but in many parish churches throughout
+England and Scotland. Various inventories of the vestments and ornaments
+provided for him still exist. With the beginnings of the Reformation came
+his suppression: a proclamation of Henry VIII., dated July 22, 1541,
+commands "that from henceforth all suche superstitions be loste and
+clyerlye extinguisshed throughowte all this his realmes and dominions,
+forasmoche as the same doo resemble rather the unlawfull superstition of
+gentilitie [paganism], than the pure and sincere religion of
+Christe."{25} In Mary's reign the Boy Bishop reappeared, along with
+other "Popish" usages, but after Elizabeth's accession he naturally fell
+into oblivion. A few traces of him lingered in the seventeenth century.
+"The Schoole-boies in the west," says Aubrey, "still religiously observe
+St. Nicholas day (Decemb. 6th), he was the Patron of the Schoole-boies.
+At Curry-Yeovill in Somersetshire, where there is a Howschole (or schole)
+in the Church, they have annually at that time a Barrell of good Ale
+brought into the church; and that night they have the priviledge to
+breake open their Masters Cellar-dore."{26}
+
+In France he seems to have gradually vanished, as, after the Reformation,
+the Catholic Church grew more and more "respectable," but traces of him
+are to be found in the eighteenth century at Lyons and Rheims; and at
+Sens, even in the nineteenth, the choir-boys used to play at being
+bishops on Innocents' Day and call their "archbishop" _ane_--a memory
+this of the old _asinaria festa_.{27} In Denmark a vague trace of him
+was retained in the nineteenth century in a children's game. A boy was
+dressed up in a white shirt, and seated on a chair, and the children sang
+a verse beginning, "Here we consecrate a Yule-bishop," and offered him
+nuts and apples.{28}
+
+|309| |310| |311|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS' DAYS
+
+
+    Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day--The Swedish St. Stephen--St.
+    John's Wine--Childermas and its Beatings.
+
+The three saints' days immediately following Christmas--St. Stephen's
+(December 26), St. John the Evangelist's (December 27), and the Holy
+Innocents' (December 28)--have still various folk-customs associated with
+them, in some cases purely secular, in others hallowed by the Church.
+
+
+ST. STEPHEN'S DAY.
+
+In Tyrolese churches early in the morning of St. Stephen's Day there
+takes place a consecration of water and of salt brought by the people.
+The water is used by the peasants to sprinkle food, barns, and fields in
+order to avert the influence of witches and evil spirits, and bread
+soaked in it is given to the cattle when they are driven out to pasture
+on Whit Monday. The salt, too, is given to the beasts, and the peasants
+themselves partake of it before any important journey like a pilgrimage.
+Moreover when a storm is threatening some is thrown into the fire as a
+protection against hail.{1}
+
+The most striking thing about St. Stephen's Day, however, is its
+connection with horses. St. Stephen is their patron; in England in former
+times they were bled on his festival in the belief that it would benefit
+them,{2} and the custom is still continued in some parts of Austria.{3}
+In Tyrol it is the custom not only to |312| bleed horses on St.
+Stephen's Day, but also to give them consecrated salt and bread or oats
+and barley.{4}
+
+In some of the Carinthian valleys where horse-breeding is specially
+carried on, the young men ride into the village on their unsaddled
+steeds, and a race is run four or five times round the church, while the
+priest blesses the animals, sprinkling them with holy water and
+exorcizing them.{5}
+
+Similar customs are or were found in various parts of Germany. In Munich,
+formerly, during the services on St. Stephen's Day more than two hundred
+men on horseback used to ride three times round the interior of a church.
+The horses were decorated with many-coloured ribbons, and the practice
+was not abolished till 1876.{6} At Backnang in Swabia horses were ridden
+out, as fast as possible, to protect them from the influence of witches,
+and in the Hohenlohe region men-servants were permitted by their masters
+to ride in companies to neighbouring places, where much drinking went
+on.{7} In Holstein the lads on Stephen's Eve used to visit their
+neighbours in a company, groom the horses, and ride about in the
+farmyards, making a great noise until the people woke up and treated them
+to beer and spirits.{8} At the village of Wallsbuell near Flensburg the
+peasant youths in the early morning held a race, and the winner was
+called Steffen and entertained at the inn. At Vioel near Bredstadt the
+child who got up last on December 26 received the name of Steffen and had
+to ride to a neighbour's house on a hay-fork. In other German districts
+the festival was called "the great horse-day," consecrated food was given
+to the animals, they were driven round and round the fields until they
+sweated violently, and at last were ridden to the blacksmith's and bled,
+to keep them healthy through the year. The blood was preserved as a
+remedy for various illnesses.{9}
+
+It is, however, in Sweden that the "horsy" aspect of the festival is most
+obvious.{10} Formerly there was a custom, at one o'clock on St.
+Stephen's morning, for horses to be ridden to water that flowed
+northward; they would then drink "the cream of the water" and flourish
+during the year. There was a violent race to the water, and the servant
+who got there first was rewarded by a drink of something stronger. Again,
+early that morning one |313| peasant would clean out another's stable,
+often at some distance from his home, feed, water, and rub down the
+horses, and then be entertained to breakfast. In olden times after
+service on St. Stephen's Day there was a race home on horseback, and it
+was supposed that he who arrived first would be the first to get his
+harvest in. But the most remarkable custom is the early morning jaunt of
+the so-called "Stephen's men," companies of peasant youths, who long
+before daybreak ride in a kind of race from village to village and awaken
+the inhabitants with a folk-song called _Staffansvisa_, expecting to be
+treated to ale or spirits in return.
+
+The cavalcade is supposed to represent St. Stephen and his followers, yet
+the saint is not, as might be expected, the first martyr of the New
+Testament, but a dauntless missionary who, according to old legends, was
+one of the first preachers of the Gospel in Sweden, and was murdered by
+the heathen in a dark forest. A special trait, his love of horses,
+connects him with the customs just described. He had, the legends tell,
+five steeds: two red, two white, one dappled; when one was weary he
+mounted another, making every week a great round to preach the Word.
+After his death his body was fastened to the back of an unbroken colt,
+which halted not till it came near Norrala, his home. There he was
+buried, and a church built over his grave became a place of pilgrimage to
+which sick animals, especially horses, were brought for healing.
+
+Mannhardt and Feilberg hold that this Swedish St. Stephen is not a
+historical personage but a mythical figure, like many other saints, and
+that his legend, so bound up with horses, was an attempt to account for
+the folk-customs practised on the day dedicated to St. Stephen the first
+martyr. It is interesting to note that legendary tradition has played
+about a good deal with the New Testament Stephen; for instance an old
+English carol makes him a servant in King Herod's hall at the time of
+Christ's birth:--
+
+   "Stephen out of kitchen came,
+        With boares head on hand,
+     He saw a star was fair and bright
+        Over Bethlehem stand."
+
+|314| Thereupon he forsook King Herod for the Child Jesus, and was
+stoned to death.{11}
+
+To return, however, to the horse customs of the day after Christmas, it
+is pretty plain that they are of non-Christian origin. Mannhardt has
+suggested that the race which is their most prominent feature once formed
+the prelude to a ceremony of lustration of houses and fields with a
+sacred tree. Somewhat similar "ridings" are found in various parts of
+Europe in spring, and are connected with a procession that appears to be
+an ecclesiastical adaptation of a pre-Christian lustration-rite.{12} The
+great name of Mannhardt lends weight to this theory, but it seems a
+somewhat roundabout way of accounting for the facts. Perhaps an
+explanation of the "horsiness" of the day might be sought in some
+pre-Christian sacrifice of steeds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have already noted that St. Stephen's Day is often the date for the
+"hunting of the wren" in the British Isles; it was also in England
+generally devoted to hunting and shooting, it being held that the game
+laws were not in force on that day.{13} This may be only an instance of
+Christmas licence, but it is just possible that there is here a survival
+of some tradition of sacrificial slaughter.
+
+
+ST. JOHN'S DAY.
+
+An ecclesiastical adaptation of a pagan practice may be seen in the
+_Johannissegen_ customary on St. John's Day in many parts of Catholic
+Germany and Austria. A quantity of wine is brought to church to be
+blessed by the priest after Mass, and is taken away by the people to be
+drunk at home. There are many popular beliefs about the magical powers of
+this wine, beliefs which can be traced back through at least four
+centuries. In Tyrol and Bavaria it is supposed to protect its drinker
+from being struck by lightning, in the Rhenish Palatinate it is drunk in
+order that the other wine a man possesses may be kept from injury, or
+that next year's harvest may be good. In Nassau, Carinthia, and other
+regions some is poured into the wine-casks to preserve the precious drink
+from harm, while in Bavaria some is kept for use as medicine in sickness.
+|315| In Syria St. John's wine is said to keep the body sound and
+healthy, and on his day even babes in the cradle are made to join in the
+family drinking.{14}
+
+It appears that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a
+great drinking on St. John's Day of ordinary, as well as consecrated,
+wine, often to excess, and scholars of that time seriously believed that
+_Weihnacht_, the German name for Christmas, should properly be spelt
+_Weinnacht_.{15} The _Johannissegen_, or _Johannisminne_ as it was
+sometimes called, seems, all things considered, to be a survival of an
+old wine sacrifice like the _Martinsminne_. That it does not owe its
+origin to the legend about the cup of poison drunk by St. John is shown
+by the fact that a similar custom was in old times practised in Germany
+and Sweden on St. Stephen's Day.{16}
+
+
+HOLY INNOCENTS' DAY.
+
+Holy Innocents' Day or Childermas, whether or not because of Herod's
+massacre, was formerly peculiarly unlucky; it was a day upon which no
+one, if he could possibly avoid it, should begin any piece of work. It is
+said of that superstitious monarch, Louis XI. of France, that he would
+never do any business on that day, and of our own Edward IV. that his
+coronation was postponed, because the date originally fixed was
+Childermas. In Cornwall no housewife would scour or scrub on Childermas,
+and in Northamptonshire it was considered very unlucky to begin any
+undertaking or even to do washing throughout the year on the day of the
+week on which the feast fell. Childermas was there called Dyzemas and a
+saying ran: "What is begun on Dyzemas Day will never be finished." In
+Ireland it was called "the cross day of the year," and it was said that
+anything then begun must have an unlucky ending.{17}
+
+In folk-ritual the day is remarkable for its association with whipping
+customs. The seventeenth-century writer Gregorie mentions a custom of
+whipping up children on Innocents' Day in the morning, and explains its
+purpose as being that the memory of Herod's "murther might stick the
+closer; and, in a moderate proportion, to act over the crueltie again in
+kind."{18}
+
+|316| This explanation will hardly hold water; the many and various
+examples of the practice of whipping at Christmas collected by
+Mannhardt{19} show that it is not confined either to Innocents' Day or
+to children. Moreover it is often regarded not as a cruel infliction, but
+as a service for which return must be made in good things to eat.
+
+In central and southern Germany the custom is called "peppering"
+(_pfeffern_) and also by other names. In the Orlagau the girls on St.
+Stephen's, and the boys on St. John's Day beat their parents and
+godparents with green fir-branches, while the menservants beat their
+masters with rosemary sticks, saying:
+
+   "Fresh green! Long life!
+     Give me a bright _thaler_ [or nuts, &c.]."
+
+They are entertained with plum-loaf or gingerbreads and brandy. In the
+Saxon Erzgebirge the young fellows whip the women and girls on St.
+Stephen's Day, if possible while they are still in bed, with birch-rods,
+singing the while:
+
+   "Fresh green, fair and fine,
+     Gingerbread and brandy-wine";
+
+and on St. John's Day the women pay the men back. At several places in
+the Thuringian Forest children on Innocents' Day beat passers-by with
+birch-boughs, and get in return apples, nuts, and other dainties. Various
+other German examples of the same class of practice are given by
+Mannhardt.{20}
+
+In France children who let themselves be caught in bed on the morning of
+Holy Innocents' came in for a whipping from their parents; while in one
+province, Normandy, the early risers among the young people themselves
+gave the sluggards a beating. The practice even gave birth to a
+verb--_innocenter_.{21}
+
+There can be little doubt that the Innocents' Day beating is a survival
+of a pre-Christian custom. Similar ritual scourging is found in many
+countries at various seasons of the year, and is by no means confined to
+Europe.{22} As now practised, it has |317| often a harsh appearance,
+or has become a kind of teasing, as when in Bohemia at Easter young men
+whip girls until they give them something. Its original purpose, however,
+as we have seen in connection with St. Martin's rod, seems to have been
+altogether kindly. The whipping was not meant as a punishment or
+expiation or to harden people to pain, but either to expel harmful
+influences and drive out evil spirits or to convey by contact the virtues
+of some sacred tree.
+
+|318| |319| |320| |321|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+NEW YEAR'S DAY
+
+
+    Principle of New Year Customs--The New Year in France, Germany, the
+    United States, and Eastern Europe--"First-footing" in Great
+    Britain--Scottish New Year Practices--Highland Fumigation and
+    "Breast-strip" Customs--Hogmanay and Aguillanneuf--New Year
+    Processions in Macedonia, Roumania, Greece, and Rome--Methods of
+    Augury--Sundry New Year Charms.
+
+Coming to January 1, the modern and the Roman New Year's Day, we shall
+find that most of its customs have been anticipated at earlier festivals;
+the Roman Kalends practices have often been shifted to Christmas, while
+old Celtic and Teutonic New Year practices have frequently been
+transferred to the Roman date.[113]
+
+The observances of New Year's Day mainly rest, as was said in Chapter
+VI., on the principle that "a good beginning makes a good ending," that
+as the first day is so will the rest be. If you would have plenty to eat
+during the year, dine lavishly on New Year's Day, if you would be rich
+see that your pockets are not empty at this critical season, if you would
+be lucky avoid like poison at this of all times everything of ill omen.
+
+"On the Borders," says Mr. W. Henderson, "care is taken that no one
+enters a house empty-handed on New Year's Day. A visitor must bring in
+his hand some eatable; he will be doubly welcome if he carries in a hot
+stoup or 'plotie.' Everybody |322| should wear a new dress on New
+Year's Day, and if its pockets contain money of every description they
+will be certain not to be empty throughout the year."{2}
+
+The laying of stress on what happens on New Year's Day is by no means
+peculiarly European. Hindus, for instance, as Mr. Edgar Thurston tells
+us, "are very particular about catching sight of some auspicious object
+on the morning of New Year's Day, as the effects of omens seen on that
+occasion are believed to last throughout the year." It is thought that a
+man's whole prosperity depends upon the things that he then happens to
+fix his eyes upon.{3}
+
+Charms, omens, and good wishes are naturally the most prominent customs
+of January 1 and its Eve. The New Year in England can hardly be called a
+popular festival; there is no public holiday and the occasion is more
+associated with penitential Watch Night services and good resolutions
+than with rejoicing. But let the reader, if he be in London, pay a visit
+to Soho at this time, and he will get some idea of what the New Year
+means to the foreigner. The little restaurants are decorated with gay
+festoons of all colours and thronged with merrymakers, the shop-windows
+are crowded with all manner of _recherche_ delicacies; it is the gala
+season of the year.
+
+In France January 1 is a far more festal day than Christmas; it is then
+that presents are given, family gatherings held, and calls paid. In the
+morning children find their stockings filled with gifts, and then rush
+off to offer good wishes to their parents. In the afternoon the younger
+people call upon their older relations, and in the evening all meet for
+dinner at the home of the head of the family.{4}
+
+In Germany the New Year is a time of great importance. Cards are far more
+numerous than at Christmas, and "New Year boxes" are given to the
+tradespeople, while on the Eve (_Sylvesterabend_) there are dances or
+parties, the custom of forecasting the future by lead-pouring is
+practised, and at the stroke of midnight there is a general cry of
+"Prosit Neu Jahr!", a drinking of healths, and a shaking of hands.{5}
+
+New Year wishes and "compliments of the season" are |323| familiar to
+us all, but in England we have not that custom of paying formal calls
+which in France is so characteristic of January 1, when not only
+relations and personal friends, but people whose connection is purely
+official are expected to visit one another. In devout Brittany the wish
+exchanged takes a beautiful religious form--"I wish you a good year and
+Paradise at the end of your days."{6}
+
+New Year calling is by no means confined to France. In the United States
+it is one of the few traces left by the early Dutch settlers on American
+manners. The custom is now rapidly falling into disuse,{7} but in New
+York up to the middle of the nineteenth century "New Year's Day was
+devoted to the universal interchange of visits. Every door was thrown
+wide open. It was a breach of etiquette to omit any acquaintance in these
+annual calls, when old friendships were renewed and family differences
+amicably settled. A hearty welcome was extended even to strangers of
+presentable appearance." At that time the day was marked by tremendous
+eating and drinking, and its visiting customs sometimes developed into
+wild riot. Young men in barouches would rattle from one house to another
+all day long. "The ceremony of calling was a burlesque. There was a noisy
+and hilarious greeting, a glass of wine was swallowed hurriedly,
+everybody shook hands all round, and the callers dashed out and rushed
+into the carriage and were driven rapidly to the next house."{8}
+
+The New Year calling to offer good wishes resembles in some respects the
+widespread custom of "first-footing," based on the belief that the
+character of the first visitor on New Year's Day affects the welfare of
+the household during the year. We have already met with a "first-foot" in
+the _polaznik_ of the southern Slavs on Christmas Day. It is to be borne
+in mind that for them, or at all events for the Crivoscian highlanders
+whose customs are described by Sir Arthur Evans, Christmas is essentially
+the festival of the New Year: New Year's Day is not spoken of at all, its
+name and ceremonies being completely absorbed by the feasts of "Great"
+and "Little" Christmas.{9}
+
+The "first-foot" superstition is found in countries as far apart as
+|324| Scotland and Macedonia. Let us begin with some English examples of
+it. In Shropshire the most important principle is that if luck is to rest
+on a house the "first-foot" must not be a woman. To provide against such
+an unlucky accident as that a woman should call first, people often
+engage a friendly man or boy to pay them an early visit. It is
+particularly interesting to find a Shropshire parallel to the
+_polaznik's_ action in going straight to the hearth and striking sparks
+from the Christmas log,[114] when Miss Burne tells us that one old man
+who used to "let the New Year in" "always entered without knocking or
+speaking, and silently stirred the fire before he offered any greeting to
+the family."{10}
+
+In the villages of the Teme valley, Worcestershire and Herefordshire, "in
+the old climbing-boy days, chimneys used to be swept on New Year's
+morning, that one of the right sex should be the first to enter; and the
+young urchins of the neighbourhood went the round of the houses before
+daylight singing songs, when one of their number would be admitted into
+the kitchen 'for good luck all the year.'" In 1875 this custom was still
+practised; and at some of the farmhouses, if washing-day chanced to fall
+on the first day of the year, it was either put off, or to make sure,
+before the women could come, the waggoner's lad was called up early that
+he might be let out and let in again.{11}
+
+The idea of the unluckiness of a woman's being the "first-foot" is
+extraordinarily widespread; the present writer has met with it in an
+ordinary London restaurant, where great stress was laid upon a man's
+opening the place on New Year's morning before the waitresses arrived. A
+similar belief is found even in far-away China: it is there unlucky on
+New Year's Day to meet a woman on first going out.{12} Can the belief be
+connected with such ideas about dangerous influences proceeding from
+women as have been described by Dr. Frazer in Vol. III. of "The Golden
+Bough,"{13} or does it rest merely on a view of woman as the inferior
+sex? The unluckiness of first meeting a woman is, we may note, not
+confined to, but merely intensified on New Year's Day; in Shropshire{14}
+and in Germany{15} it belongs to any ordinary day.
+
+|325| As to the general attitude towards woman suggested by these
+superstitions I may quote a striking passage from Miss Jane Harrison's
+"Themis." "Woman to primitive man is a thing at once weak and magical, to
+be oppressed, yet feared. She is charged with powers of child-bearing
+denied to man, powers only half understood, forces of attraction, but
+also of danger and repulsion, forces that all over the world seem to fill
+him with dim terror. The attitude of man to woman, and, though perhaps in
+a less degree, of woman to man, is still to-day essentially
+magical."{16}
+
+"First-foot" superstitions flourish in the north of England and in
+Scotland. In the northern counties a man is often specially retained as
+"first-foot" or "lucky bird"; in some parts he must be a bachelor, and he
+is often expected to bring a present with him--a shovelful of coals, or
+some eatable, or whisky.{17} In the East Riding of Yorkshire a boy
+called the "lucky bird" used to come at dawn on Christmas morning as well
+as on New Year's Day, and bring a sprig of evergreens{18}--an offering
+by now thoroughly familiar to us. In Scotland, especially in Edinburgh,
+it is customary for domestic servants to invite their sweethearts to be
+their "first-foots." The old Scotch families who preserve ancient customs
+encourage their servants to "first-foot" them, and grandparents like
+their grandchildren to perform for them the same service.{19} In
+Aberdeenshire it is considered most important that the "first-foot"
+should not come empty-handed. Formerly he carried spiced ale; now he
+brings a whisky-bottle. Shortbread, oat-cakes, "sweeties," or sowens,
+were also sometimes brought by the "first-foot," and occasionally the
+sowens were sprinkled on the doors and windows of the houses visited--a
+custom strongly suggesting a sacramental significance of some sort.{20}
+
+Before we leave the subject of British "first-footing" we may notice one
+or two things that have possibly a racial significance. Not only must the
+"first-foot" be a man or boy, he is often required to be dark-haired; it
+is unlucky for a fair- or red-haired person to "let in" the New
+Year.{21} It has been suggested by Sir John Rhys that this idea rested
+in the first instance upon |326| racial antipathy--the natural
+antagonism of an indigenous dark-haired people to a race of blonde
+invaders.{22} Another curious requirement--in the Isle of Man and
+Northumberland--is that the "first-foot" shall not be flat-footed: he
+should be a person with a high-arched instep, a foot that "water runs
+under." Sir John Rhys is inclined to connect this also with some racial
+contrast. He remarks, by way of illustration, that English shoes do not
+as a rule fit Welsh feet, being made too low in the instep.{23}
+
+Some reference has already been made to Scottish New Year customs. In
+Scotland, the most Protestant region of Europe, the country in which
+Puritanism abolished altogether the celebration of Christmas, New Year's
+Day is a great occasion, and is marked by various interesting usages, its
+importance being no doubt largely due to the fact that it has not to
+compete with the Church feast of the Nativity. Nowadays, indeed, the
+example of Anglicanism is affecting the country to a considerable extent,
+and Christmas Day is becoming observed in the churches. The New Year,
+however, is still the national holiday, and January 1 a great day for
+visiting and feasting, the chief, in fact, of all festivals.{24} New
+Year's Day and its Eve are often called the "Daft Days"; cakes and pastry
+of all kinds are eaten, healths are drunk, and calls are paid.{25}
+
+In Edinburgh there are striking scenes on New Year's Eve. "Towards
+evening," writes an observer, "the thoroughfares become thronged with the
+youth of the city.... As the midnight hour approaches, drinking of
+healths becomes frequent, and some are already intoxicated.... The eyes
+of the immense crowd are ever being turned towards the lighted clock-face
+of 'Auld and Faithful'' Tron [Church], the hour approaches, the hands
+seem to stand still, but in one second more the hurrahing, the cheering,
+the hand-shaking, the health-drinking, is all kept up as long as the
+clock continues to ring out the much-longed-for midnight hour.... The
+crowds slowly disperse, the much-intoxicated and helpless ones being
+hustled about a good deal, the police urging them on out of harm's way.
+The first-footers are off and away, flying in every direction through the
+city, singing, cheering, and shaking hands with all and sundry."{26}
+
+|327| One need hardly allude to the gathering of London Scots around
+St. Paul's to hear the midnight chime and welcome the New Year with the
+strains of "Auld Lang Syne," except to say that times have changed and
+Scotsmen are now lost in the swelling multitude of roysterers of all
+nationalities.
+
+Drinking is and was a great feature of the Scottish New Year's Eve. "On
+the approach of twelve o'clock, a _hot pint_ was prepared--that is, a
+kettle or flagon full of warm, spiced, and sweetened ale, with an
+infusion of spirits. When the clock had struck the knell of the departed
+year, each member of the family drank of this mixture 'A good health and
+a happy New Year and many of them' to all the rest, with a general
+hand-shaking." The elders of the family would then sally out to visit
+their neighbours, and exchange greetings.{27}
+
+At Biggar in Lanarkshire it was customary to "burn out the old year" with
+bonfires, while at Burghead in Morayshire a tar-barrel called the
+"Clavie" was set on fire and carried about the village and the fishing
+boats. Its embers were scrambled for by the people and carefully kept as
+charms against witchcraft.{28} These fire-customs may be compared with
+those on Hallowe'en, which, as we have seen, is probably an old New
+Year's Eve.
+
+Stewart in his "Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland" tells
+how on the last night of the year the Strathdown Highlanders used to
+bring home great loads of juniper, which on New Year's Day was kindled in
+the different rooms, all apertures being closed so that the smoke might
+produce a thorough fumigation. Not only human beings had to stand this,
+but horses and other animals were treated in the same way to preserve
+them from harm throughout the year. Moreover, first thing on New Year's
+morning, everybody, while still in bed, was asperged with a large
+brush.{29} There is a great resemblance here to the Catholic use of
+incense and holy water in southern Germany and Austria on the
+_Rauchnaechte_ (see also Chapter VIII.). In Tyrol these nights are
+Christmas, New Year's, and Epiphany Eves. When night falls the Tyrolese
+peasant goes with all his household through each room and outhouse, his
+wife bearing the holy water vessel and the censer. Every corner of the
+buildings, every animal, |328| every human being is purified with the
+sacred smoke and the holy sprinkling, and even the Christmas pie must be
+hallowed in this way. In Orthodox Greek countries something of the same
+kind takes place, as we shall see, at the Epiphany. To drive away evil
+spirits is no doubt the object of all these rites.{30}
+
+The most interesting of Scottish New Year customs, considered as
+religious survivals, is a practice found in the Highlands on New Year's
+Eve, and evidently of sacrificial origin. It has been described by
+several writers, and has various forms. According to one account the hide
+of the mart or winter cow was wrapped round the head of one of a company
+of men, who all made off belabouring the hide with switches. The
+disorderly procession went three times _deiseal_ (according to the course
+of the sun) round each house in the village, striking the walls and
+shouting on coming to a door a rhyme demanding admission. On entering,
+each member of the party was offered refreshments, and their leader gave
+to the goodman of the house the "breast-stripe" of a sheep, deer, or
+goat, wrapped round the point of a shinty stick.{31}
+
+We have here another survival of that oft-noted custom of skin-wearing,
+which, as has been seen, originated apparently in a desire for contact
+with the sanctity of the sacrificed victim. Further, the "breast-stripe"
+given to the goodman of each house is evidently meant to convey the
+hallowed influences to each family. It is an oval strip, and no knife may
+be used in removing it from the flesh. The head of the house sets fire to
+it, and it is given to each person in turn to smell. The inhaling of its
+fumes is a talisman against fairies, witches, and demons. In the island
+of South Uist, according to a quite recent account, each person seizes
+hold of it as it burns, making the sign of the cross, if he be a
+Catholic, in the name of the Trinity, and it is put thrice sun-wise about
+the heads of those present. If it should be extinguished it is a bad omen
+for the New Year.{32}
+
+The writer of the last account speaks of the "breast-strip" as the
+"Hogmanay," and it is just possible that the well-known Hogmanay
+processions of children on New Year's Eve (in Scotland and elsewhere) may
+have some connection with the ritual above described. It is customary for
+the poorer children to |329| swaddle themselves in a great sheet,
+doubled up in front so as to form a vast pocket, and then go along the
+streets in little bands, calling out "Hogmanay" at the doors of the
+wealthier classes, and expecting a dole of oaten bread. Each child gets a
+quadrant of oat-cake (sometimes with cheese), and this is called the
+"Hogmanay." Here is one of the rhymes they sing:--
+
+   "Get up, goodwife, and shake your feathers,
+    And dinna think that we are beggars;
+    For we are bairns come out to play,
+    Get up and gie's our hogmanay!"{33}
+
+The word _Hogmanay_--it is found in various forms in the northern English
+counties as well as in Scotland--has been a puzzle to etymologists. It is
+used both for the last day of the year and for the gift of the oaten cake
+or the like; and, as we have seen, it is shouted by the children in their
+quest. Exactly corresponding to it in sense and use is the French word
+_aguillanneuf_, from which it appears to be derived. Although the
+phonetic difference between this and the Scottish word is great, the
+Norman form _hoguinane_ is much closer. There is, moreover, a Spanish
+word _aguinaldo_ (formerly _aguilando_) = Christmas-box. The popular
+explanation of the French term as _au-guy-l'an-neuf_ (to the mistletoe
+the New Year) is now rejected by scholars, and it seems likely that the
+word is a corruption of the Latin _Kalendae_.{34}
+
+A few instances of _aguillanneuf_ customs may be given. Here are
+specimens of rhymes sung by the New Year _queteurs_:--
+
+   "Si vous veniez a la depense,
+    A la depense de chez nous,
+    Vous mangeriez de bons choux,
+    On vous servirait du rost.
+            Hoguinano.
+
+    Donnez-moi mes hoguignettes
+    Dans un panier que voicy.
+    Je l'achetai samedy
+    D'un bon homme de dehors;
+    Mais il est encore a payer.
+            Hoguinano."{35}
+
+|330| Formerly at Matignon and Ploubalay in Brittany on Christmas Eve
+the boys used to get together, carry big sticks and wallets, and knock at
+farmhouse doors. When the inmates called out, "Who's there?" they would
+answer, "The _hoguihanneu_," and after singing something they were given
+a piece of lard. This was put on a pointed stick carried by one of the
+boys, and was kept for a feast called the _bouriho_.{36} Elsewhere in
+Brittany poor children went round crying "_au guyane_," and were given
+pieces of lard or salt beef, which they stuck on a long spit.{37} In
+Guernsey the children's quest at the New Year was called _oguinane_. They
+chanted the following rhyme:--
+
+   "Oguinani! Oguinano!
+     Ouvre ta pouque, et pis la recclios."[115]{38}
+
+Similar processions are common in eastern Europe at the New Year. In some
+parts of Macedonia on New Year's Eve men or boys go about making a noise
+with bells. In other districts, early on New Year's morning, lads run
+about with sticks or clubs, knock people up, cry out good wishes, and
+expect to be rewarded with something to eat. Elsewhere again they carry
+green olive- or cornel-boughs, and touch with them everyone they
+meet.{39} We have already considered various similar customs, the noise
+and knocking being apparently intended to drive away evil spirits, and
+the green boughs to bring folks into contact with the spirit of growth
+therein immanent.
+
+In Roumania on New Year's Eve there is a custom known as the "little
+plough." Boys and men go about after dark from house to house, with long
+greetings, ringing of bells, and cracking of whips. On New Year's morning
+Roumanians throw handfuls of corn at one another with some appropriate
+greeting, such as:--
+
+   "May you live,
+    May you flourish
+    Like apple-trees, |331|
+    Like pear-trees
+    In springtime,
+    Like wealthy autumn,
+    Of all things plentiful."
+
+Generally this greeting is from the young to the old or from the poor to
+the rich, and a present in return is expected.{40}
+
+In Athens models of war-ships are carried round by waits, who make a
+collection of money in them. "St. Basil's ships" they are called, and
+they are supposed to represent the vessel on which St. Basil, whose feast
+is kept on January 1, sailed from Caesarea.{41} It is probable that this
+is but a Christian gloss on a pagan custom. Possibly there may be here a
+survival of an old Greek practice of bearing a ship in procession in
+honour of Dionysus,{42} but it is to be noted that similar observances
+are found at various seasons in countries like Germany and Belgium where
+no Greek influence can be traced. The custom is widespread, and it has
+been suggested by Mannhardt that it was originally intended either to
+promote the success of navigation or to carry evil spirits out to
+sea.{43}
+
+It is interesting, lastly, to read a mediaeval account of a New Year
+_quete_ in Rome. "The following," says the writer, "are common Roman
+sports at the Kalends of January. On the Eve of the Kalends at a late
+hour boys arise and carry a shield. One of them wears a mask; they
+whistle and beat a drum, they go round to the houses, they surround the
+shield, the drum sounds, and the masked figure whistles. This playing
+ended, they receive a present from the master of the house, whatever he
+thinks fit to give. So they do at every house. On that day they eat all
+kinds of vegetables. And in the morning two of the boys arise, take
+olive-branches and salt, enter into the houses, and salute the master
+with the words, 'Joy and gladness be in the house, so many sons, so many
+little pigs, so many lambs,' and they wish him all good things. And
+before the sun rises they eat either a piece of honeycomb or something
+sweet, that the whole year may pass sweetly, without strife and great
+trouble."{44}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Various methods of peering into the future, more or less like |332|
+those described at earlier festivals, are practised at the New Year.
+Especially popular at German New Year's Eve parties is the custom of
+_bleigiessen_. "This ceremony consists of boiling specially prepared
+pieces of lead in a spoon over a candle; each guest takes his spoonful
+and throws it quickly into the basin of water which is held ready.
+According to the form which the lead takes so will his future be in the
+coming year ... ships (which indicate a journey), or hearts (which have,
+of course, only one meaning), or some other equally significant shape is
+usually discerned."{45}
+
+In Macedonia St. Basil's Eve (December 31) is a common time for
+divination: a favourite method is to lay on the hot cinders a pair of
+wild-olive-leaves to represent a youth and a maid. If the leaves crumple
+up and draw near each other, it is concluded that the young people love
+one another dearly, but if they recoil apart the opposite is the case. If
+they flare up and burn, it is a sign of excessive passion.{46}
+
+In Lithuania on New Year's Eve nine sorts of things--money, cradle,
+bread, ring, death's head, old man, old woman, ladder, and key--are baked
+of dough, and laid under nine plates, and every one has three grabs at
+them. What he gets will fall to his lot during the year.{47}
+
+Lastly, in Brittany it is supposed that the wind which prevails on the
+first twelve days of the year will blow during each of the twelve months,
+the first day corresponding to January, the second to February, and so
+on.{48} Similar ideas of the prophetic character of Christmastide
+weather are common in our own and other countries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Practically all the customs discussed in this chapter have been of the
+nature of charms; one or two more, practised on New Year's Day or Eve,
+may be mentioned in conclusion.
+
+There are curious superstitions about New Year water. At Bromyard in
+Herefordshire it was the custom, at midnight on New Year's Eve, to rush
+to the nearest spring to snatch the "cream of the well"--the first
+pitcherful of water--and with it the prospect of the best luck.{49} A
+Highland practice was to send |333| some one on the last night of the
+year to draw a pitcherful of water in silence, and without the vessel
+touching the ground. The water was drunk on New Year's morning as a charm
+against witchcraft and the evil eye.{50} A similar belief about the
+luckiness of "new water" exists at Canzano Peligno in the Abruzzi. "On
+New Year's Eve, the fountain is decked with leaves and bits of coloured
+stuff, and fires are kindled round it. As soon as it is light, the girls
+come as usual with their copper pots on their head; but the youths are on
+this morning guardians of the well, and sell the 'new water' for nuts and
+fruits--and other sweet things."{51}
+
+In some of the Aegean islands when the family return from church on New
+Year's Day, the father picks up a stone and leaves it in the yard, with
+the wish that the New Year may bring with it "as much gold as is the
+weight of the stone."{52} Finally, in Little Russia "corn sheaves are
+piled upon a table, and in the midst of them is set a large pie. The
+father of the family takes his seat behind them, and asks his children if
+they can see him. 'We cannot see you,' they reply. On which he proceeds
+to express what seems to be a hope that the corn will grow so high in his
+fields that he may be invisible to his children when he walks there at
+harvest-time."{53}
+
+With a curious and beautiful old carol from South Wales I must bring this
+chapter to a close. It was formerly sung before dawn on New Year's Day by
+poor children who carried about a jug of water drawn that morning from
+the well. With a sprig of box or other evergreen they would sprinkle
+those they met, wishing them the compliments of the season. To pay their
+respects to those not abroad at so early an hour, they would serenade
+them with the following lines, which, while connected with the "new
+water" tradition, contain much that is of doubtful interpretation, and
+are a fascinating puzzle for folk-lorists:--
+
+   "Here we bring new water
+      From the well so clear,
+    For to worship God with,
+      This happy New Year. |334|
+    Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew,
+      The water and the wine;
+    The seven bright gold wires
+      And the bugles they do shine.
+
+    Sing reign of Fair Maid,
+      With gold upon her toe,--
+    Open you the West Door,
+      And turn the Old Year go:
+    Sing reign of Fair Maid,
+      With gold upon her chin,--
+    Open you the East Door,
+      And let the New Year in."{54}
+
+|335| |336| |337|
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS
+
+
+    The Twelfth Cake and the "King of the Bean"--French Twelfth Night
+    Customs--St. Basil's Cake in Macedonia--Epiphany and the Expulsion of
+    Evils--The Befana in Italy--The Magi as Present-bringers--Greek
+    Epiphany Customs--Wassailing Fruit-trees--Herefordshire and Irish
+    Twelfth Night Practices--The "Haxey Hood" and Christmas Football--St.
+    Knut's Day in Sweden--Rock Day--Plough Monday--Candlemas, its
+    Ecclesiastical and Folk Ceremonies--Farewells to Christmas.
+
+[Illustration: THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE.]
+
+
+THE EPIPHANY.
+
+Though the Epiphany has ceased to be a popular festival in England, it
+was once a very high day indeed, and in many parts of Europe it is still
+attended by folk-customs of great interest.[116] For the peasant of
+Tyrol, indeed, it is New Year's Day, the first of January being kept only
+by the townsfolk and modernized people.{1}
+
+To Englishmen perhaps the best known feature of the secular festival is
+the Twelfth Cake. Some words of Leigh Hunt's will show what an important
+place this held in the mid-nineteenth century:--
+
+    "Christmas goes out in fine style,--with Twelfth Night. It is a
+    finish worthy of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the
+    season; New Year's Day the middle of it, or noon; Twelfth Night is
+    the night, brilliant with innumerable planets of Twelfth-cakes. The
+    whole island keeps court; nay, all Christendom. All the world are
+    |338| kings and queens. Everybody is somebody else, and learns at
+    once to laugh at, and to tolerate, characters different from his own,
+    by enacting them. Cakes, characters, forfeits, lights, theatres,
+    merry rooms, little holiday-faces, and, last not least, the painted
+    sugar on the cakes, so bad to eat but so fine to look at, useful
+    because it is perfectly useless except for a sight and a moral--all
+    conspire to throw a giddy splendour over the last night of the
+    season, and to send it to bed in pomp and colours, like a
+    Prince."{2}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For seventeenth-century banqueting customs and the connection of the cake
+with the "King of the Bean" Herrick may be quoted:--
+
+     "Now, now the mirth comes
+      With the cake full of plums,
+    Where bean's the king of the sport here;
+      Besides we must know,
+      The pea also
+    Must revel as queen in the court here.
+
+      Begin then to choose
+      This night as ye use,
+    Who shall for the present delight here
+      Be a king by the lot,
+      And who shall not
+    Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here
+
+      Which known, let us make
+      Joy-sops with the cake;
+    And let not a man then be seen here,
+      Who unurg'd will not drink,
+      To the base from the brink,
+    A health to the king and the queen here."{3}
+
+There are many English references to the custom of electing a Twelfth Day
+monarch by means of a bean or pea, and this "king" is mentioned in royal
+accounts as early as the reign of Edward II.{4} He appears, however, to
+have been even more popular in France than in England.
+
+|339| The method of choosing the Epiphany king is thus described by the
+sixteenth-century writer, Etienne Pasquier:--
+
+    "When the cake has been cut into as many portions as there are
+    guests, a small child is put under the table, and is interrogated by
+    the master under the name of Phebe [Phoebus], as if he were a child
+    who in the innocence of his age represented a kind of Apollo's
+    oracle. To this questioning the child answers with a Latin word:
+    _Domine_. Thereupon the master calls on him to say to whom he shall
+    give the piece of cake which he has in his hand: the child names
+    whoever comes into his head, without respect of persons, until the
+    portion where the bean is given out. He who gets it is reckoned king
+    of the company, although he may be a person of the least importance.
+    This done, everyone eats, drinks, and dances heartily."{5}
+
+In Berry at the end of the festive repast a cake is brought before the
+head of the household, and divided into as many portions as there are
+guests, plus one. The youngest member of the family distributes them. The
+portion remaining is called _la part du bon Dieu_ and is given to the
+first person who asks for it. A band of children generally come to claim
+it, with a leader who sings a little song.{6} There was formerly a
+custom of dressing up a king in full robes. He had a fool to amuse him
+during the feast, and shots were fired when he drank.{7}
+
+Here is a nineteenth-century account from Lorraine:--
+
+    "On the Vigil of the Epiphany all the family and the guests assemble
+    round the table, which is illuminated by a lamp hanging above its
+    centre. Lots are cast for the king of the feast, and if the head of
+    anyone present casts no shadow on the wall it is a sign that he will
+    die during the year. Then the king chooses freely his queen: they
+    have the place of honour, and each time they raise their glasses to
+    their mouths cries of 'The king drinks, the queen drinks!' burst
+    forth on all sides.... The next day an enormous cake, divided into
+    equal portions, is distributed to the company by the youngest boy.
+    The first portion is always for _le bon Dieu_, the second for the
+    Blessed Virgin (these two portions are always given to the first poor
+    person who presents himself); then come those of relations, servants,
+    and visitors. He who finds a bean in his portion is proclaimed king;
+    if it is a lady she chooses her |340| king, and he invites the
+    company to a banquet on the Sunday following, at which black kings
+    are made by rubbing the face with a burnt cork."{8}
+
+The use of the _gateau des Rois_ goes pretty far back. At the monastery
+of Mont-St.-Michel in the thirteenth century the Epiphany king was chosen
+from among the monks by means of a number of cakes in one of which a bean
+was placed. At Matins, High Mass, and Vespers he sat upon a special
+throne.{9}
+
+It may be added that there is a quaint old story of a curate "who having
+taken his preparations over evening, when all men cry (as the manner is)
+_the king drinketh_, chanting his Masse the next morning, fell asleep in
+his Memento: and, when he awoke, added with a loud voice, _The king
+drinketh_."{10}
+
+One more French "king" custom may be mentioned, though it relates to
+Christmas Day, not Epiphany. At Salers in the centre of France there were
+formerly a king and queen whose function was to preside over the
+festival, sit in a place of honour in church, and go first in the
+procession. The kingship was not elective, but was sold by auction at the
+church door, and it is said to have been so much coveted that worthy
+citizens would sell their heritage in order to purchase it.{11}
+
+It may be remarked that Epiphany kings and cakes similar to the French
+can be traced in Holland and Germany,{12} and that the "King of the
+Bean" is known in modern Italy, though there he may be an importation
+from the north.{13}
+
+How is this merry monarch to be accounted for? His resemblance to the
+king of the _Saturnalia_, who presided over the fun of the feast in the
+days of imperial Rome, is certainly striking, but it is impossible to say
+whether he derives directly from that personage. No doubt his association
+with the feast of the Three Kings has helped to maintain his rule. As for
+the bean, it appears to have been a sacred vegetable in ancient times.
+There is a story about the philosopher Pythagoras, how, when flying
+before a host of rebels, he came upon a field of beans and refused to
+pass through it for fear of crushing the plants, thus enabling his
+pursuers to overtake him. Moreover, the _flamen dialis_ in Rome was
+forbidden to eat or even name the vegetable, and the |341| name of the
+Fabii, a Roman _gens_, suggests a totem tribe of the bean.{14}
+
+In eastern Europe, though I know of no election of a king, there are New
+Year customs with cakes, closely resembling some of the French practices
+described a page or two back. "St. Basil's Cake" on New Year's Eve in
+Macedonia is a kind of shortbread with a silver coin and a cross of green
+twigs in it. When all are seated round the table the father and mother
+take the cake, "and break it into two pieces, which are again subdivided
+by the head of the family into shares. The first portion is destined for
+St. Basil, the Holy Virgin, or the patron saint whose icon is in the
+house. The second stands for the house itself. The third for the cattle
+and domestic animals belonging thereto. The fourth for the inanimate
+property, and the rest for each member of the household according to age.
+Each portion is successively dipped in a cup of wine." He who finds the
+cross or the coin in his share of the cake will prosper during the year.
+The money is considered sacred and is used to buy a votive taper.{15}
+
+In Macedonia when the New Year's supper is over, the table, with the
+remnants of the feast upon it, is removed to a corner of the room in
+order that St. Basil may come and partake of the food.{16} He appears to
+have been substituted by the Church for the spirits of the departed, for
+whom, as we have seen, food is left in the West on All Souls' and
+Christmas Eves. Probably the Macedonian practice of setting aside a
+portion of the cake for a saint, and the pieces cut in France for _le bon
+Dieu_ and the Virgin or the three Magi, have a like origin. One may
+compare them with the Serbian breaking of the _kolatch_ cake in honour of
+Christ "the Patron Namegiver." Is it irrelevant, also, to mention here
+the Greek Church custom, at the preparation of the elements for the
+Eucharist, of breaking portions of the bread in memory of the Virgin and
+other saints?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In many countries the Epiphany is a special time for the expulsion of
+evils. At Brunnen in Switzerland boys go about in procession on Twelfth
+Night, with torches and lanterns, and make a great noise with horns,
+bells, whips, &c., in order to |342| frighten away two wood-spirits. In
+Labruguiere in southern France on the Eve of Twelfth Day the inhabitants
+rush through the streets, making discordant noises and a huge uproar,
+with the object of scaring away ghosts and devils.{17}
+
+In parts of the eastern Alps there takes place what is called
+_Berchtenlaufen_. Lads, formerly to the number of two or three hundred,
+rush about in the strangest masks, with cowbells, whips, and all sorts of
+weapons, and shout wildly.{18} In Nuremberg up to the year 1616 on
+_Bergnacht_ or Epiphany Eve boys and girls used to run about the streets
+and knock loudly at the doors.{19} Such knocking, as we have seen, may
+well have been intended to drive away spirits from the houses.
+
+At Eschenloh near Partenkirchen in Upper Bavaria three women used to
+_berchten_ on that evening. They all had linen bags over their heads,
+with holes for the mouth and eyes. One carried a chain, another a rake,
+and the third a broom. Going round to the houses, they knocked on the
+door with the chain, scraped the ground with the rake, and made a noise
+of sweeping with the broom.{20} The suggestion of a clearing away of
+evils is here very strong.
+
+In connection with the _Kallikantzaroi_ mention has already been made of
+the purification of houses with holy water, performed by Greek priests on
+the Epiphany. In Roumania, where a similar sprinkling is performed, a
+curious piece of imitative magic is added--the priest is invited to sit
+upon the bed, in order that the brooding hen may sit upon her eggs.
+Moreover there should be maize grains under the mattress; then the hen
+will lay eggs in abundance.{21}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We noted in an earlier chapter the name _Berchtentag_ applied in southern
+Germany and in Austria to the Epiphany, and we saw also how the
+mysterious Frau Berchta was specially connected with the day. On the
+Epiphany and its Eve in the Moellthal in Carinthia a female figure, "the
+Berchtel," goes the round of the houses. She is generally dressed in a
+hide, wears a hideous wooden mask, and hops wildly about, inquiring as to
+the behaviour of children, and demanding gifts.{22}
+
+|343| Something of the terrible, as well as the beneficent, belongs to
+the "Befana," the Epiphany visitor who to Italian children is the great
+gift-bringer of the year, the Santa Klaus of the South. "Delightful," say
+Countess Martinengo, "as are the treasures she puts in their shoes when
+satisfied with their behaviour, she is credited with an unpleasantly
+sharp eye for youthful transgressions."{23} Mothers will sometimes warn
+their children that if they are naughty the Befana will fetch and eat
+them. To Italian youngsters she is a very real being, and her coming on
+Epiphany Eve is looked forward to with the greatest anxiety. Though she
+puts playthings and sweets in the stockings of good children, she has
+nothing but a birch and coal for those who misbehave themselves.{24}
+
+Formerly at Florence images of the Befana were put up in the windows of
+houses, and there were processions through the streets, guys being borne
+about, with a great blowing of trumpets.{25} Toy trumpets are still the
+delight of little boys at the Epiphany in Italy.
+
+The Befana's name is obviously derived from _Epiphania_. In Naples the
+little old woman who fills children's stockings is called "Pasqua
+Epiphania,"[117] the northern contraction not having been acclimatized
+there.{26}
+
+In Spain as well as Italy the Epiphany is associated with presents for
+children, but the gift-bringers for little Spaniards are the Three Holy
+Kings themselves. There is an old Spanish tradition that the Magi go
+every year to Bethlehem to adore the infant Jesus, and on their way visit
+children, leaving sweets and toys for them if they have behaved well. On
+Epiphany Eve the youngsters go early to bed, put out their shoes on the
+window-sill or balcony to be filled with presents by the Wise Men, and
+provide a little straw for their horses.{27}
+
+It is, or was, a custom in Madrid to look out for the Kings on Epiphany
+Eve. Companies of men go out with bells and pots and pans, and make a
+great noise. There is loud shouting, and torches cast a fantastic light
+upon the scene. One of the men carries a large ladder, and mounts it to
+see if the Kings are |344| coming. Here, perhaps, some devil-scaring
+rite, resembling those described above, has been half-Christianized.{28}
+
+In Provence, too, there was a custom of going to meet the Magi. In a
+charming chapter of his Memoirs Mistral tells us how on Epiphany Eve all
+the children of his countryside used to go out to meet the Kings, bearing
+cakes for the Magi, dried figs for their pages, and handfuls of hay for
+their horses. In the glory and colour of the sunset young Mistral thought
+he saw the splendid train; but soon the gorgeous vision died away, and
+the children stood gaping alone on the darkening highway--the Kings had
+passed behind the mountain. After supper the little ones hurried to
+church, and there in the Chapel of the Nativity beheld the Kings in
+adoration before the Crib.{29}
+
+At Trest not only did the young people carry baskets or dried fruit, but
+there were three men dressed as Magi to receive the offerings and accept
+compliments addressed to them by an orator. In return they presented him
+with a purse full of counters, upon which he rushed off with the treasure
+and was pursued by the others in a sort of dance.{30} Here again the
+Magi are evidently mixed up with something that has no relation to
+Christianity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We noted in Chapter IV. the elaborate ceremonies connected in Greece with
+the Blessing of the Waters at the Epiphany, and the custom of diving for
+a cross. It would seem, as was pointed out, that the latter is an
+ecclesiastically sanctioned form of a folk-ceremony. This is found in a
+purer state in Macedonia, where, after Matins on the Epiphany, it is the
+custom to thrust some one into water, be it sea or river, pond or well.
+On emerging he has to sprinkle the bystanders.{31} The rite may be
+compared with the drenchings of human beings in order to produce rain
+described by Dr. Frazer in "The Magic Art."{32}
+
+Another Greek custom combines the purifying powers of Epiphany water with
+the fertilizing influences of the Christmas log--round Mount Olympos
+ashes are taken from the hearth where a cedar log has been burning since
+Christmas, and are baptized in the blessed water of the river. They are
+then borne |345| to the vineyards, and thrown at their four corners,
+and also at the foot of apple- and fig-trees.{33}
+
+This may remind us that in England fruit-trees used to come in for
+special treatment on the Vigil of the Epiphany. In Devonshire the farmer
+and his men would go to the orchard with a large jug of cider, and drink
+the following toast at the foot of one of the best-bearing apple-trees,
+firing guns in conclusion:--
+
+           "Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
+    Whence thou may'st bud, and whence thou may'st blow!
+    And whence thou may'st bear apples enow!
+            Hats full! caps full!
+            Bushel!--bushel--sacks full,
+            And my pockets full too! Huzza!"{34}
+
+In seventeenth-century Somersetshire, according to Aubrey, a piece of
+toast was put upon the roots.{35} According to another account each
+person in the company used to take a cupful of cider, with roasted apples
+pressed into it, drink part of the contents, and throw the rest at the
+tree.{36} The custom is described by Herrick as a Christmas Eve
+ceremony:--
+
+   "Wassail the trees, that they may bear
+    You many a plum and many a pear;
+    For more or less fruits they will bring,
+    As you do give them wassailing."{37}
+
+In Sussex the wassailing (or "worsling") of fruit-trees took place on
+Christmas Eve, and was accompanied by a trumpeter blowing on a cow's
+horn.{38}
+
+The wassailing of the trees may be regarded as either originally an
+offering to their spirits or--and this seems more probable--as a
+sacramental act intended to bring fertilizing influences to bear upon
+them. Customs of a similar character are found in Continental countries
+during the Christmas season. In Tyrol, for instance, when the Christmas
+pies are a-making on St. Thomas's Eve, the maids are told to go
+out-of-doors and put their arms, sticky with paste, round the
+fruit-trees, in order that they |346| may bear well next year.{39} The
+uses of the ashes of the Christmas log have already been noticed.
+
+Sometimes, as in the Thurgau, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and Tyrol, the
+trees are beaten to make them bear. On New Year's Eve at Hildesheim
+people dance and sing around them,{40} while the Tyrolese peasant on
+Christmas Eve will go out to his trees, and, knocking with bent fingers
+upon them, will bid them wake up and bear.{41} There is a Slavonic
+custom, on the same night, of threatening apple-trees with a hatchet if
+they do not produce fruit during the year.{42}
+
+Another remarkable agricultural rite was practised on Epiphany Eve in
+Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. The farmer and his servants would meet
+in a field sown with wheat, and there light thirteen fires, with one
+larger than the rest. Round this a circle was formed by the company, and
+all would drink a glass of cider to the success of the harvest.[118] This
+done, they returned to the farm, to feast--in Gloucestershire--on cakes
+made with caraways, and soaked in cider. The Herefordshire accounts give
+particulars of a further ceremony. A large cake was provided, with a hole
+in the middle, and after supper everyone went to the wain-house. The
+master filled a cup with strong ale, and standing opposite the finest ox,
+pledged him in a curious toast; the company followed his example with the
+other oxen, addressing each by name. Afterwards the large cake was put on
+the horn of the first ox.{43}
+
+It is extremely remarkable, and can scarcely be a mere coincidence, that
+far away among the southern Slavs, as we saw in Chapter XII., a Christmas
+cake with a hole in its centre is likewise put upon the horn of the chief
+ox. The wassailing of the animals is found there also. On Christmas Day,
+Sir Arthur |347| Evans relates, the house-mother "entered the stall set
+apart for the goats, and having first sprinkled them with corn, took the
+wine-cup in her hand and said, 'Good morning, little mother! The Peace of
+God be on thee! Christ is born; of a truth He is born. May'st thou be
+healthy. I drink to thee in wine; I give thee a pomegranate; may'st thou
+meet with all good luck!' She then lifted the cup to her lips, took a
+sup, tossed the pomegranate among the herd, and throwing her arms round
+the she-goat, whose health she had already drunk, gave it the 'Peace of
+God'--kissed it, that is, over and over again." The same ceremony was
+then performed for the benefit of the sheep and cows, and all the animals
+were beaten with a leafy olive-branch.{44}
+
+As for the fires, an Irish custom to some extent supplies a parallel. On
+Epiphany Eve a sieve of oats was set up, "and in it a dozen of candles
+set round, and in the centre one larger, all lighted." This was said to
+be in memory of the Saviour and His apostles, lights of the world.{45}
+Here is an account of a similar custom practised in Co. Leitrim:--
+
+    "A piece of board is covered with cow-dung, and twelve rushlights are
+    stuck therein. These are sprinkled with ash at the top, to make them
+    light easily, and then set alight, each being named by some one
+    present, and as each dies so will the life of its owner. A ball is
+    then made of the dung, and it is placed over the door of the cowhouse
+    for an increase of cattle. Sometimes mud is used, and the ball placed
+    over the door of the dwelling-house."{46}
+
+There remains to be considered under Epiphany usages an ancient and very
+remarkable game played annually on January 6 at Haxey in Lincolnshire. It
+is known traditionally as "Haxey Hood," and its centre is a struggle
+between the men of two villages for the possession of a roll of sacking
+or leather called the "hood." Over it preside the "boggans" or "bullocks"
+of Plough Monday (see p. 352), headed by a figure known as "My Lord," who
+is attended by a fool. The proceedings are opened on the village green by
+a mysterious speech from the fool:--
+
+"Now, good folks, this is Haxa' Hood. We've killed two |348| bullocks
+and a half, but the other half we had to leave running about field: we
+can fetch it if it's wanted. Remember it's--
+
+   'Hoose agin hoose, toon agin toon,
+    And if you meet a man knock him doon.'"
+
+Then, in an open field, the hoods--there are six of them, one apparently
+for each of the chief hamlets round--are thrown up and struggled for.
+"The object is to carry them off the field away from the boggans. If any
+of these can get hold of them, or even touch them, they have to be given
+up, and carried back to My Lord. For every one carried off the field the
+boggans forfeit half-a-crown, which is spent in beer, doubtless by the
+men of the particular hamlet who have carried off the hood." The great
+event of the day is the struggle for the last hood--made of
+leather--between the men of Haxey and the men of Westwoodside--"that is
+to say really between the customers of the public-houses there--each
+party trying to get it to his favourite 'house.' The publican at the
+successful house stands beer."{47}
+
+Mr. Chambers regards the fool's strange speech as preserving the
+tradition that the hood is the half of a bullock--the head of a
+sacrificial victim, and he explains both the Haxey game and also the
+familiar games of hockey and football as originating in a struggle
+between the people of two villages to get such a head, with all its
+fertilizing properties, over their own boundary.{48} At Hornchurch in
+Essex, if we may trust a note given by Hone, an actual boar's head was
+wrestled for on Christmas Day, and afterwards feasted upon at one of the
+public-houses by the victor and his friends.{49}
+
+One more feature of the Haxey celebration must be mentioned (it points
+apparently to a human sacrifice): the fool, the morning after the game,
+used to be "smoked" over a straw fire. "He was suspended above the fire
+and swung backwards and forwards over it until almost suffocated; then
+allowed to drop into the smouldering straw, which was well wetted, and to
+scramble out as he could."{50}
+
+Returning to the subject of football, I may here condense an |349|
+account of a Welsh Christmas custom quoted by Sir Laurence Gomme, in his
+book "The Village Community," from the _Oswestry Observer_ of March 2,
+1887:--"In South Cardiganshire it seems that about eighty years ago the
+population, rich and poor, male and female, of opposing parishes, turned
+out on Christmas Day and indulged in the game of football with such
+vigour that it became little short of a serious fight." Both in north and
+south Wales the custom was found. At one place, Llanwenog near Lampeter,
+there was a struggle between two parties with different traditions of
+race. The Bros, supposed to be descendants from Irish people, occupied
+the high ground of the parish; the Blaenaus, presumably pure-bred
+Brythons, occupied the lowlands. After morning service on Christmas Day,
+"the whole of the Bros and Blaenaus, rich and poor, male and female,
+assembled on the turnpike road which divided the highlands from the
+lowlands." The ball was thrown high in the air, "and when it fell Bros
+and Blaenaus scrambled for its possession.... If the Bros, by hook or by
+crook, could succeed in taking the ball up the mountain to their hamlet
+of Rhyddlan they won the day, while the Blaenaus were successful if they
+got the ball to their end of the parish at New Court." Many severe kicks
+were given, and the whole thing was taken so keenly "that a Bro or a
+Blaenau would as soon lose a cow from his cowhouse as the football from
+his portion of the parish." There is plainly more than a mere pastime
+here; the thing appears to have been originally a struggle between two
+clans.{51}
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Anciently the Carnival, with its merrymaking before the austerities of
+Lent, was held to begin at the Epiphany. This was the case in Tyrol even
+in the nineteenth century.{52} As a rule, however, the Carnival in Roman
+Catholic countries is restricted to the last three days before Ash
+Wednesday. The pagan origin of its mummeries and licence is evident, but
+it is a spring rather than a winter festival, and hardly calls for
+treatment here.
+
+The Epiphany is in many places the end of Christmas. In Calvados,
+Normandy, it is marked by bonfires; red flames mount |350| skywards,
+and the peasants join hands, dance, and leap through blinding smoke and
+cinders, shouting these rude lines:--
+
+   "Adieu les Rois
+    Jusqu'a douze mois,
+    Douze mois passes
+    Les bougelees."{53}
+
+Another French Epiphany _chanson_, translated by the Rev. R. L. Gales, is
+a charming farewell to Christmas:--
+
+   "Noel is leaving us,
+    Sad 'tis to tell,
+    But he will come again,
+    Adieu, Noel.
+
+    His wife and his children
+    Weep as they go:
+    On a grey horse
+    They ride thro' the snow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The Kings ride away
+    In the snow and the rain,
+    After twelve months
+    We shall see them again."{54}
+
+
+POST-EPIPHANY FESTIVALS.
+
+Though with Twelfth Day the high festival of Christmas generally ends,
+later dates have sometimes been assigned as the close of the season. At
+the old English court, for instance, the merrymaking was sometimes
+carried on until Candlemas, while in some English country places it was
+customary, even in the late nineteenth century, to leave Christmas
+decorations up, in houses and churches, till that day.{55} The whole
+time between Christmas and the Presentation in the Temple was thus
+treated as sacred to the Babyhood of Christ; the withered evergreens
+would keep alive memories of Christmas joys, even, sometimes, after
+Septuagesima had struck the note of penitence.
+
+Before we pass on to a short notice of Candlemas, we may |351| glance
+at a few last sparks, so to speak, of the Christmas blaze, and then at
+the English festivals which marked the resumption of work after the
+holidays.
+
+In Sweden Yule is considered to close with the Octave of the Epiphany,
+January 13, "St. Knut's Day," the twentieth after Christmas.
+
+   "Twentieth day Knut
+    Driveth Yule out"
+
+sing the old folks as the young people dance in a ring round the festive
+Yule board, which is afterwards robbed of the viands that remain on it,
+including the Yule boar. On this day a sort of mimic fight used to take
+place, the master and servants of the house pretending to drive away the
+guests with axe, broom, knife, spoon, and other implements.{56} The
+name, "St. Knut's Day," is apparently due to the fact that in the laws of
+Canute the Great (1017-36) it is commanded that there is to be no fasting
+from Christmas to the Octave of the Epiphany.{57}
+
+In England the day after the Epiphany was called St. Distaff's or Rock
+Day (the word Rock is evidently the same as the German _Rocken_ =
+distaff). It was the day when the women resumed their spinning after the
+rest and gaiety of Christmas. From a poem of Herrick's it appears that
+the men in jest tried to burn the women's flax, and the women in return
+poured water on the men:--
+
+   "Partly work, and partly play
+    You must on St. Distaff's day:
+    From the plough soon free your team,
+    Then come home and fother them;
+    If the maids a-spinning go,
+    Burn the flax and fire the tow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Bring in pails of water then,
+    Let the maids bewash the men;
+    Give St. Distaff all the right,
+    Then bid Christmas sport good night;
+    And next morrow, every one
+    To his own vocation."{58}
+
+|352| A more notable occasion was Plough Monday, the first after
+Twelfth Day. Men's labour then began again after the holidays.{59} We
+have already seen that it is sometimes associated with the mummers'
+plays. Often, however, its ritual is not developed into actual drama, and
+the following account from Derbyshire gives a fairly typical description
+of its customs:--
+
+    "On Plough Monday the 'Plough bullocks' are occasionally seen; they
+    consist of a number of young men from various farmhouses, who are
+    dressed up in ribbons.... These young men yoke themselves to a
+    plough, which they draw about, preceded by a band of music, from
+    house to house, collecting money. They are accompanied by the Fool
+    and Bessy; the fool being dressed in the skin of a calf, with the
+    tail hanging down behind, and Bessy generally a young man in female
+    attire. The fool carries an inflated bladder tied to the end of a
+    long stick, by way of whip, which he does not fail to apply pretty
+    soundly to the heads and shoulders of his team. When anything is
+    given a cry of 'Largess!' is raised, and a dance performed round the
+    plough. If a refusal to their application for money is made they not
+    unfrequently plough up the pathway, door-stone, or any other portion
+    of the premises they happen to be near."{60}
+
+By Plough Monday we have passed, it seems probable, from New Year
+festivals to one that originally celebrated the beginning of spring. Such
+a feast, apparently, was kept in mid-February when ploughing began at
+that season; later the advance of agriculture made it possible to shift
+it forward to early January.{61}
+
+
+CANDLEMAS.
+
+Nearer to the original date of the spring feast is Candlemas, February 2;
+though connected with Christmas by its ecclesiastical meaning, it is
+something of a vernal festival.{62}
+
+The feast of the Purification of the Virgin or Presentation of Christ in
+the Temple was probably instituted by Pope Liberius at Rome in the fourth
+century. The ceremonial to which it owes its popular name, Candlemas, is
+the blessing of candles in church and the procession of the faithful,
+carrying them lighted in their hands. During the blessing the "Nunc
+dimittis" is chanted, |353| with the antiphon "Lumen ad revelationem
+gentium et gloriam plebis tuae Israel," the ceremony being thus brought
+into connection with the "light to lighten the Gentiles" hymned by
+Symeon. Usener has however shown reason for thinking that the Candlemas
+procession was not of spontaneous Christian growth, but was inspired by a
+desire to Christianize a Roman rite, the _Amburbale_, which took place at
+the same season and consisted of a procession round the city with lighted
+candles.{63}
+
+The Candlemas customs of the sixteenth century are thus described by
+Naogeorgus:
+
+   "Then numbers great of Tapers large, both men and women beare
+    To Church, being halowed there with pomp, and dreadful words to heare.
+    This done, eche man his Candell lightes, where chiefest seemeth hee,
+    Whose taper greatest may be seene, and fortunate to bee,
+    Whose Candell burneth cleare and brighte; a wondrous force and might
+    Doth in these Candells lie, which if at any time they light,
+    They sure beleve that neyther storme or tempest dare abide,
+    Nor thunder in the skies be heard, nor any devils spide,
+    Nor fearefull sprites that walke by night, nor hurts of frost or
+          haile."{64}
+
+Still, in many Roman Catholic regions, the candles blessed in church at
+the Purification are believed to have marvellous powers. In Brittany,
+Franche-Comte, and elsewhere, they are preserved and lighted in time of
+storm or sickness.{65} In Tyrol they are lighted on important family
+occasions such as christenings and funerals, as well as on the approach
+of a storm{66}; in Sicily in time of earthquake or when somebody is
+dying.{67}
+
+In England some use of candles on this festival continued long after the
+Reformation. In 1628 the Bishop of Durham gave serious offence by
+sticking up wax candles in his cathedral at the Purification; "the number
+of all the candles burnt that evening was two hundred and twenty, besides
+sixteen torches; sixty of |354| those burning tapers and torches
+standing upon and near the high Altar."{68} Ripon Cathedral, as late as
+the eighteenth century, was brilliantly illuminated with candles on the
+Sunday before the festival.{69} And, to come to domestic customs, at
+Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire the person who bought the wood-ashes of a
+family used to send a present of a large candle at Candlemas. It was
+lighted at night, and round it there was festive drinking until its going
+out gave the signal for retirement to rest.{70}
+
+There are other British Candlemas customs connected with fire. In the
+western isles of Scotland, says an early eighteenth-century writer, "as
+Candlemas Day comes round, the mistress and servants of each family
+taking a sheaf of oats, dress it up in woman's apparel, and after putting
+it in a large basket, beside which a wooden club is placed, they cry
+three times, 'Briid is come! Briid is welcome!' This they do just before
+going to bed, and as soon as they rise in the morning, they look among
+the ashes, expecting to see the impression of Briid's club there, which
+if they do, they reckon it a true presage of a good crop and prosperous
+year, and the contrary they take as an ill-omen."{71} Sir Laurence Gomme
+regards this as an illustration of belief in a house-spirit whose
+residence is the hearth and whose element is the ever-burning sacred
+flame. He also considers the Lyme Regis custom mentioned above to be a
+modernized relic of the sacred hearth-fire.{72}
+
+Again, the feast of the Purification was the time to kindle a "brand"
+preserved from the Christmas log. Herrick's Candlemas lines may be
+recalled:--
+
+   "Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
+      Till sunne-set let it burne;
+    Which quencht, then lay it up agen,
+      Till Christmas next returne.
+
+    Part must be kept wherewith to teend
+      The Christmas Log next yeare;
+    And where 'tis safely kept, the Fiend
+      Can do no mischiefe there."{73}
+
+|355| Candlemas Eve was the moment for the last farewells to Christmas;
+Herrick sings:--
+
+   "End now the White Loafe and the Pye,
+     And let all sports with Christmas dye,"
+
+and
+
+   "Down with the Rosemary and Bayes,
+       Down with the Misleto;
+     Instead of Holly, now up-raise
+       The greener Box for show.
+
+     The Holly hitherto did sway;
+       Let Box now domineere
+     Until the dancing Easter Day,
+       Or Easter's Eve appeare."{74}
+
+An old Shropshire servant, Miss Burne tells us, was wont, when she took
+down the holly and ivy on Candlemas Eve, to put snow-drops in their
+place.{75} We may see in this replacing of the winter evergreens by the
+delicate white flowers a hint that by Candlemas the worst of the winter
+is over and gone; Earth has begun to deck herself with blossoms, and
+spring, however feebly, has begun. With Candlemas we, like the older
+English countryfolk, may take our leave of Christmas.
+
+|356| |357|
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+The reader who has had patience to persevere will by now have gained some
+idea of the manner in which Christmas is, and has been, kept throughout
+Europe. We have traced the evolution of the festival, seen it take its
+rise soon after the victory of the Catholic doctrine of Christ's person
+at Nicea, and spread from Rome to every quarter of the Empire, not as a
+folk-festival but as an ecclesiastical holy-day. We have seen the Church
+condemn with horror the relics of pagan feasts which clung round the same
+season of the year; then, as time went on, we have found the two
+elements, pagan and Christian, mingling in some degree, the pagan losing
+most of its serious meaning, and continuing mainly as ritual performed
+for the sake of use and wont or as a jovial tradition, the Christian
+becoming humanized, the skeleton of dogma clothed with warm flesh and
+blood.
+
+We have considered, as represented in poetry and liturgy, the strictly
+ecclesiastical festival, the commemoration of the Nativity as the
+beginning of man's redemption. We have seen how in the carols, the cult
+of the _presepio_, and the religious drama, the Birth of the King of
+Glory in the stable at midwinter has presented itself in concrete form to
+the popular mind, calling up a host of human emotions, a crowd of quaint
+and beautiful fancies. Lastly we have noted the survival, in the most
+varied degrees of transformation, of things which are alien to
+Christianity and in some cases seem to go back to very primitive stages
+of thought and feeling. An antique reverence for the plant-world may lie,
+as we have seen, beneath the familiar institution of the Christmas-tree,
+some sort of animal-worship may be at the bottom of the |358|
+beast-masks common at winter festivals, survivals of sacrifice may linger
+in Christmas feasting, and in the family gatherings round the hearth may
+be preserved a dim memory of ancient domestic rites.
+
+Christmas, indeed, regarded in all its aspects, is a microcosm of
+European religion. It reflects almost every phase of thought and feeling
+from crude magic and superstition to the speculative mysticism of
+Eckhart, from mere delight in physical indulgence to the exquisite
+spirituality and tenderness of St. Francis. Ascetic and _bon-vivant_,
+mystic and materialist, learned and simple, noble and peasant, all have
+found something in it of which to lay hold. It is a river into which have
+flowed tributaries from every side, from Oriental religion, from Greek
+and Roman civilization, from Celtic, Teutonic, Slav, and probably
+pre-Aryan, society, mingling their waters so that it is often hard to
+discover the far-away springs.
+
+We have seen how the Reformation broke up the great mediaeval synthesis
+of paganism and Christianity, how the extremer forms of Protestantism
+aimed at completely destroying Christmas, and how the general tendency of
+modern civilization, with its scientific spirit, its popular education,
+its railways, its concentration of the people in great cities, has been
+to root out traditional beliefs and customs both Christian and pagan, so
+that if we would seek for relics of the old things we must go to the
+regions of Europe that are least industrially and intellectually
+"advanced." Yet amongst the most sceptical and "enlightened" of moderns
+there is generally a large residuum of tradition. "Emotionally," it has
+been said, "we are hundreds of thousands of years old; rationally we are
+embryos"{1}; and many people who deem themselves "emancipated" are
+willing for once in the year to plunge into the stream of tradition,
+merge themselves in inherited social custom, and give way to sentiments
+and impressions which in their more reflective moments they spurn. Most
+men are ready at Christmas to put themselves into an instinctive rather
+than a rational attitude, to drink of the springs of wonder, and return
+in some degree to earlier, less intellectual stages of human
+development--to become in fact children again.
+
+|359| Many elements enter into the modern Christmas. There is the
+delight of its warmth and brightness and comfort against the bleak
+midwinter. A peculiar charm of the northern Christmas lies in the thought
+of the cold barred out, the home made a warm, gay place in contrast with
+the cheerless world outside. There is the physical pleasure of "good
+cheer," of plentiful eating and drinking, joined to, and partly resulting
+in, a sense of goodwill and expansive kindliness towards the world at
+large, a temporary feeling of the brotherhood of man, a desire that the
+poor may for once in the year "have a good time." Here perhaps we may
+trace the influence of the _Saturnalia_, with its dreams of the age of
+gold, its exaltation of them of low degree. Mixed with a little
+sentimental Christianity this is the Christmas of Dickens--the Christmas
+which he largely helped to perpetuate in England.
+
+Each nation, naturally, has fashioned its own Christmas. The English have
+made it a season of solid material comfort, of good-fellowship and
+"charity," with a slight flavour of soothing religion. The modern French,
+sceptical and pagan, make little of Christmas, and concentrate upon the
+secular celebration of the _jour de l'an_. For the Scandinavians
+Christmas is above all a time of sport, recreation, good living, and
+social gaiety in the midst of a season when little outdoor work can be
+done and night almost swallows up day. The Germans, sentimental and
+childlike, have produced a Christmas that is a very Paradise for children
+and at which the old delight to play at being young again around the
+Tree. For the Italians Christmas is centred upon the cult of the
+_Bambino_, so fitted to their dramatic instincts, their love of display,
+their strong parental affection. (How much of the sentiment that
+surrounds the _presepio_ is, though religiously heightened, akin to the
+delight of a child in its doll!) If the Germans may be called the good,
+industrious, sentimental children of Europe, making the most of simple
+things, the Italians are the lively, passionate, impulsive children,
+loving gay clothes and finery; and the contrast shows in their keeping of
+Christmas.
+
+The modern Christmas is above all things a children's feast, and the
+elders who join in it put themselves upon their children's |360| level.
+We have noted how ritual acts, once performed with serious purpose, tend
+to become games for youngsters, and have seen many an example of this
+process in the sports and mummeries kept up by the elder folk for the
+benefit of the children. We have seen too how the radiant figure of the
+Christ Child has become a gift-bringer for the little ones. At no time in
+the world's history has so much been made of children as to-day, and
+because Christmas is their feast its lustre continues unabated in an age
+upon which dogmatic Christianity has largely lost its hold, which laughs
+at the pagan superstitions of its forefathers. Christmas is the feast of
+beginnings, of instinctive, happy childhood; the Christian idea of the
+Immortal Babe renewing weary, stained humanity, blends with the thought
+of the New Year, with its hope and promise, laid in the cradle of Time.
+
+|361| |362| |363|
+
+
+
+
+NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTION
+
+1.  #G. K. Chesterton# in #"The Daily News,"# Dec. 26, 1903.
+
+2.  _Ibid._ Dec. 23, 1911.
+
+3.  Cf. #J. E. Harrison, "Themis: a Study of the Social Origins of Greek
+    Religion"# (Cambridge, 1912), 139, 184.
+
+4.  Or plural _Weihnachten_. The name _Weihnachten_ was applied in five
+    different ways in mediaeval Germany: (1) to Dec. 25, (2) to Dec.
+    25-8, (3) to the whole Christmas week, (4) to Dec. 25 to Jan. 6, (5)
+    to the whole time from Christmas to the Octave of the Epiphany. #G.
+    Bilfinger, "Das germanische Julfest"# (Stuttgart, 1901), 39.
+
+5.  #A. Tille, "Die Geschichte der deutschen Weihnacht"# (Leipsic, 1893),
+    22. [Referred to as "D. W."]
+
+6.  #H. Usener, "Das Weihnachtsfest"# (Kap. i., bis. iii. 2nd Edition,
+    Bonn, 1911), 273 f.
+
+7.  #L. Duchesne, "Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution"# (Eng.
+    Trans., Revised Edition, London, 1912), 257 f.
+
+8.  #J. Hastings, "Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics"# (Edinburgh,
+    1910), iii. 601 f.
+
+9.  #E. K. Chambers, "The Mediaeval Stage"# (Oxford, 1903), i. 244.
+    [Referred to as "M. S."]
+
+10. #A. Tille, "Yule and Christmas: their Place in the Germanic Year"#
+    (London, 1899), 122. [Referred to as "Y. & C."]
+
+11. _Ibid._ 164.
+
+12. Tille, "D. W.," 21.
+
+13. Tille, "Y. & C.," 203.
+
+14. #K. Lake# in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia" and in #"The Guardian,"# Dec.
+    29, 1911; #F. C. Conybeare#, Preface to #"The Key of Truth, a Manual
+    of the Paulician Church of Armenia"# (Oxford, 1898), clii. f.;
+    Usener, 18 f.
+
+15. Usener, 27 f.
+
+16. _Ibid._ 31; #J. E. Harrison, "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
+    Religion"# (Cambridge, 1903), 550.
+
+17. Harrison, "Prolegomena," 402 f., 524 f., 550. |364|
+
+18. #Lake#, and #G. Rietschel, "Weihnachten in Kirche, Kunst and
+    Volksleben"# (Bielefeld and Leipsic, 1902), 10.
+
+19. Conybeare, lxxviii.
+
+20. #A. Lupi, "Dissertazioni, lettere ed altre operette"# (Faenza, 1785),
+    i. 219 f., mentioned in article "Nativity" in #T. K. Cheyne's
+    "Encyclopaedia Biblica"# (London, 1902), iii. 3346.
+
+21. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 234.
+
+22. _Ibid._ i. 235; #F. Cumont, "The Monuments of Mithra"# (Eng. Trans.,
+    London, 1903), 190.
+
+23. #G. Negri, "Julian the Apostate"# (Eng. Trans., London, 1905),
+    i. 240 f.
+
+24. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 235.
+
+25. Duchesne, "Christian Worship," 265.
+
+26. Tille, "Y. & C.," 146.
+
+
+PART I.--THE CHRISTIAN FEAST
+
+
+CHAPTER II.--CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)
+
+1.  See especially for Latin, German, and English hymnody #J. Julian, "A
+    Dictionary of Hymnology"# (New Edition, London, 1907), and the
+    #Historical Edition of "Hymns Ancient and Modern"# (London, 1909).
+
+2.  #H. C. Beeching, "A Book of Christmas Verse"# (London, 1895), 3.
+
+3.  Beeching, 8.
+
+4.  #A. Gastoue, "Noel"# (Paris, 1907), 38.
+
+5.  #R. W. Church, "St. Anselm"# (London, 1870), 6.
+
+6.  _Ibid._ 3 f.
+
+7.  #W. R. W. Stephens, "The English Church from the Norman Conquest to
+    the Accession of Edward I."# (London, 1901), 309.
+
+8.  #W. Sandys, "Christmastide: its History, Festivities, and Carols"#
+    (London, n.d.), 216; #E. Rickert, "Ancient English Carols.
+    MCCCC-MDCC"# (London, 1910), 133.
+
+9.  For the Franciscan influence on poetry and art see: #Vernon Lee,
+    "Renaissance Fancies and Studies"# (London, 1895); #H. Thode, "Franz
+    von Assisi und die Anfaenge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien"#
+    (Berlin, 1885); #A. Macdonell, "Sons of Francis"# (London, 1902); #J.
+    A. Symonds, "The Renaissance in Italy. Italian Literature,"# Part I.
+    (New Edition, London, 1898).
+
+10. #Thomas of Celano, "Lives of St. Francis"# (Eng. Trans. by A. G.
+    Ferrers Howell, London, 1908), 84.
+
+11. #P. Robinson, "Writings of St. Francis"# (London, 1906), 175.
+
+12. #"Le poesie spirituali del B. Jacopone da Todi,"# con annotationi di
+    Fra Francesco Tresatti (Venice, 1617), 266.
+
+13. _Ibid._ 275.
+
+14. _Ibid._ 867.
+
+15. #"Stabat Mater speciosa,"# trans. and ed. by J. M. Neale (London,
+    1866). |365|
+
+16. For German Christmas poetry see, besides Julian: #Hoffmann von
+    Fallersleben, "Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes bis auf Luthers
+    Zeit"# (2nd Edition, Hanover, 1854); #P. Wackernagel, "Das deutsche
+    Kirchenlied"# (Leipsic, 1867); and #C. Winkworth, "Christian Singers
+    of Germany"# (London, n.d.).
+
+17. #R. M. Jones, "Studies in Mystical Religion"# (London, 1909), 235,
+    237.
+
+18. #"Meister Eckharts Schriften und Predigten,"# edited by H. Buttner
+    (Leipsic, 1903), i. 44.
+
+19. Translation by C. Winkworth, "Christian Singers," 84. German text in
+    Wackernagel, ii. 302 f.
+
+20. #"Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch"# (Hamburg-Grossborstel, 1907), 125.
+
+21. #"A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs,"# reprinted from
+    the Edition of 1567 by A. F. Mitchell (Edinburgh and London, 1897),
+    53. This translation is abridged and Protestantized. The mediaeval
+    German text, which is partly addressed to the Virgin, is given in
+    #Hoffmann von Fallersleben, "In Dulci Jubilo"# (Hanover, 1854), 46.
+    For the music see #G. R. Woodward, "The Cowley Carol Book"# (New
+    Edition, London, 1909), 20 f. [a work peculiarly rich in old German
+    airs].
+
+22. #K. Weinhold, "Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus Sueddeutschland und
+    Schlesien"# (2nd Edition, Vienna, 1875), 385.
+
+23. _Ibid._ 396. [For help in the translation of German dialect I am
+    indebted to Dr. M. A. Muegge.]
+
+24. _Ibid._ 400.
+
+25. _Ibid._ 417.
+
+26. E. K. Chambers, essay on "Some Aspects of Mediaeval Lyric" in #"Early
+    English Lyrics,"# chosen by #E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick# (London,
+    1907), 290. [Twenty-five of Awdlay's carols were printed by Messrs.
+    #Chambers and Sidgwick# in #"The Modern Language Review"#
+    (Cambridge), Oct., 1910, and Jan., 1911.]
+
+27. _Ibid._ 293.
+
+28. Quoted by #J. J. Jusserand, "A Literary History of the English
+    People"# (2nd Edition, London, 1907), i. 218.
+
+29. Rickert, 6; Beeching, 13.
+
+30. No. lv. in Chambers and Sidgwick, "Early English Lyrics."
+
+31. No. lix., _ibid._
+
+32. No. lxi., _ibid._
+
+33. No. lxx., _ibid._
+
+34. No. lxvii., _ibid._
+
+35. No. lxiii., _ibid._
+
+36. Rickert, 67.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.--CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)
+
+1.  #Noel Herve, "Les Noels francais"# (Niort, 1905), Gastoue, 57 f.; #G.
+    Gregory Smith, "The Transition Period"# (Edinburgh and London, 1900),
+    217.
+
+2.  Gregory Smith, 217.
+
+3.  #H. Lemeignen, "Vieux Noels composes en l'honneur de la Naissance de
+    Notre-Seigneur Jesus-Christ"# (Nantes, 1876), iii. 2 f.
+
+4.  _Ibid._ i. 10, 11.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ ii. 93, 95.
+
+6.  Herve, 46.
+
+7.  Lemeignen, i. 55. |366|
+
+8.  Lemeignen, i. 29.
+
+9.  #"Les Vieux Noels,"# in #"Nouvelle Bibliotheque Populaire"#
+    (published by Henri Gautier, 55 Quai des Grands Augustins, Paris).
+
+10. Lemeignen, i. 93.
+
+11. #H. J. L. J. Masse, "A Book Of Old Carols"# (London, 1910), i. 21.
+
+12. Herve, 86.
+
+13. Lemeignen, i. 71.
+
+14. "Hymns Ancient and Modern" (Historical Edition), 79. Translation is
+    No. 58 in Ordinary Edition.
+
+15. Herve, 132.
+
+16. A great number of these _villancicos_ and _romances_ may be found in
+    #Justo de Sancha, "Romancero y Cancionero Sagrados"# (Madrid,
+    1855, vol. 35 of Rivadeneyra's Library of Spanish Authors), and there
+    are some good examples in #J. N. Boehl de Faber, "Rimas Antiguas
+    Castellanas"# (Hamburg, 1823).
+
+17. Boehl de Faber, ii. 36.
+
+18. #F. Caballero, "Elia y La Noche de Navidad"# (Leipsic, 1864), 210.
+
+19. #A. de Gubernatis, "Storia Comparata degli Usi Natalizi"# (Milan,
+    1878), 90.
+
+20. These three verses are taken from #Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco's#
+    charming translation of the poem, in her #"Essays in the Study of
+    Folk-Songs"# (London, 1886), 304 f.
+
+21. Martinengo, "Folk-Songs," 302 f.
+
+22. Latin text in Tille, "D. W.," 311; Italian game in De Gubernatis, 93.
+
+23. Herve, 115 f.
+
+24. #W. Hone, "The Ancient Mysteries Described"# (London, 1823), 103.
+
+25. _Ibid._ 103.
+
+26. See Note 11.
+
+27. #D. Hyde, "Religious Songs of Connacht"# (London, 1906), ii. 225 f.
+
+28. #"The Vineyard"# (London), Dec., 1910, 144.
+
+29. "Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch," 120 f.
+
+30. "A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs," 49 f. (spelling
+    here modernized); Rickert, 82 f.
+
+31. "Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch," 123, and most German Protestant
+    hymnbooks.
+
+32. Translation by Miles Coverdale, in Rickert, 192 f.
+
+33. No. 5 in #Paulus Gerhardt, "Geistliche Lieder,"# ed. by P.
+    Wackernagel and W. Tuempel (9th Edition, Guetersloh, 1907).
+
+34. Translation by #C. Winkworth# in #"Lyra Germanica"# (New Edition,
+    London, 1869), ii. 13 f.
+
+35. "Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch," 128 f.
+
+36. Translation (last verse altered) in #"The British Herald"# (London),
+    Sept., 1866, 329.
+
+37. #"Christmas Carols New and Old,"# the words edited by #H. R.
+    Bramley#, the music edited by #Sir John Stainer# (London, n.d.).
+
+38. Beeching, 27 f.
+
+39. _Ibid._ 67.
+
+40. _Ibid._ 49.
+
+41. _Ibid._ 76.
+
+42. _Ibid._ 48.
+
+43. _Ibid._ 45.
+
+44. _Ibid._ 42 f. |367|
+
+45. Beeching, 85 f.
+
+46. #Selwyn Image, "Poems and Carols"# (London, 1894), 25.
+
+47. #G. K. Chesterton# in #"The Commonwealth"# (London), Dec., 1902, 353.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.--CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION
+
+1.  Translation, "Creator of the starry height," in "Hymns A. and M."
+    (Ordinary Edition), No. 45.
+
+2.  #J. Dowden, "The Church Year and Kalendar"# (Cambridge, 1910), 76 f.
+
+3.  #"Rational ou Manuel des divins Offices de Guillaume Durand, Eveque
+    de Mende au treizieme siecle,"# traduit par #M. C. Barthelemy#
+    (Paris, 1854), iii. 155 f.
+
+4.  See translation of the Great O's in "The English Hymnal," No. 734.
+
+5.  Barthelemy, iii. 220 f.
+
+6.  #D. Rock, "The Church of Our Fathers"# (London, 1853), vol. iii. pt.
+    ii. 214.
+
+7.  #J. K. Huysmans, "L'Oblat"# (Paris, 1903), 194.
+
+8.  Gastoue, 44 f.
+
+9.  #E. G. C. F. Atchley, "Ordo Romanus Primus"# (London, 1905), 71.
+
+10. #"The Pilgrimage of S. Silvia of Aquitaine"# (Eng. Trans. by J. H.
+    Bernard, London, 1891), 50 f.
+
+11. #S. D. Ferriman# in #"The Daily News,"# Dec. 25, 1911.
+
+12. #G. Bonaccorsi, "Il Natale: appunti d'esegesi e di storia"# (Rome,
+    1903), 73.
+
+13. Gastoue, 41 f.
+
+14. Bonaccorsi, 75.
+
+15. #H. Malleson and M. A. R. Tuker, "Handbook to Christian and
+    Ecclesiastical Rome"# (London, 1897), pt. ii. 211.
+
+16. #Th. Bentzon, "Christmas In France"# in #"The Century Magazine"# (New
+    York), Dec., 1901, 170 f.
+
+17. #L. von Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben"# (Stuttgart, 1909), 232.
+
+18. #M. J. Quin, "A Visit to Spain"# (2nd Edition, London, 1824), 126 f.
+
+19. #"Madrid in 1835,"# by a #Resident Officer# (London, 1836), i. 395 f.
+
+20. #W. S. Walsh, "Curiosities of Popular Customs"# (London, 1898), 237.
+
+21. #G. Pitre, "Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane"# (Palermo, 1880),
+    444.
+
+22. Tille, "D. W.," 70 f.
+
+23. #F. H. Woods, "Sweden and Norway"# (London, 1882), 209; #L. Lloyd,
+    "Peasant Life in Sweden"# (London, 1870), 201 f.
+
+24. #J. E. Vaux, "Church Folklore"# (London, 1894), 222 f.
+
+25. #M. Trevelyan, "Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales"# (London, 1909),
+    28.
+
+26. Vaux, 262 f.
+
+27. #R. F. Littledale, "Offices from the Service-Books of the Holy
+    Eastern Church"# (London, 1863), 174 f.
+
+28. #[Sir] A. J. Evans, "Christmas and Ancestor Worship in the Black
+    Mountain,"# in #"Macmillan's Magazine"# (London), vol. xliii., 1881,
+    228.
+
+29. Duchesne, 273.
+
+30. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 245.
+
+31. #"The Roman Breviary,"# translated by #John, Marquess of Bute# (New
+    Edition Edinburgh and London, 1908), 186.
+
+32. See announcement in #"The Roman Mail"# in Jan., 1912. |368|
+
+33. #Mary Hamilton, "Greek Saints and their Festivals"# (London, 1910),
+    113 f.
+
+34. #H. Holloway, "An Eastern Epiphany Service"# in #"Pax"# (the Magazine
+    of the Caldey Island Benedictines), Dec., 1910.
+
+35. Hamilton, 119 f.
+
+36. Holloway, as above.
+
+37. #F. H. E. Palmer, "Russian Life in Town and Country"# (London, 1901),
+    176 f.
+
+38. Thomas of Celano, trans. by Howell, 82 f.
+
+39. #Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, "Puer Parvulus"# in #"The Outdoor
+    Life in the Greek and Roman Poets"# (London, 1911), 248.
+
+40. Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 41.
+
+41. Bonaccorsi, 85; Usener, 298.
+
+42. Usener, 290.
+
+43. _Ibid._ 295, 299.
+
+44. Rietschel, 55.
+
+45. _Ibid._ 56 f.
+
+46. _Ibid._ 60.
+
+47. _Ibid._ 69 f.; Tille, "D. W.," 59 f.
+
+48. Music from #Trier "Gesangbuch"# (1911), No. 18, where a very much
+    weakened text is given. Text from Weinhold, 114. Another form of the
+    air is given in "The Cowley Carol Book," No. 36.
+
+49. Text and music in Masse, i. 6.
+
+50. Tille, "D. W.," 60.
+
+51. _Ibid._ 61 f.
+
+52. _Ibid._ 63.
+
+53. #Thomas Naogeorgus, "The Popish Kingdome,"# Englyshed by Barnabe
+    Googe, 1570 (ed. by R. C. Hope, London, 1880), 45.
+
+54. Tille, "D. W.," 68.
+
+55. _Ibid._ 68.
+
+56. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 235.
+
+57. _Ibid._ 235.
+
+58. Tille, "D. W.," 64.
+
+59. Rietschel, 75.
+
+60. Martinengo, "Outdoor Life," 249.
+
+61. #Lady Morgan, "Italy"# (New Edition, London, 1821), iii. 72.
+
+62. #Matilde Serao, "La Madonna e i Santi"# (Naples, 1902), 223 f.
+
+63. #L. Caico, "Sicilian Ways and Days"# (London, 1910), 192 f.
+
+64. Information kindly given to the author by Mrs. C. G. Crump.
+
+65. Information derived by the author from a resident in Messina.
+
+66. Serao, _see_ Note 62.
+
+67. #W. H. D. Rouse, "Religious Tableaux in Italian Churches,"# in
+    #"Folk-Lore"# (London), vol. v., 1894, 6 f.
+
+68. Morgan, iii. 76 f.
+
+69. Bonaccorsi, 45 f.
+
+70. #A. J. C. Hare, "Walks in Rome"# (11th Edition, London, 1883), 157.
+
+71. Martinengo, "Outdoor Life," 253; Bonaccorsi, 110 f.; #R. Ellis
+    Roberts, "A Roman Pilgrimage"# (London, 1911), 185 f.
+
+72. #H. J. Rose, "Untrodden Spain"# (London, 1875), 276.
+
+73. See Note 18 to Chapter III. |369|
+
+74. #T. F. Thiselton Dyer, "British Popular Customs"# (London, 1876),
+    464.
+
+75. Vaux, 216.
+
+76. Dyer, 464.
+
+77. Cf. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 120.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.--CHRISTMAS DRAMA
+
+1.  This account of the mediaeval Christmas drama owes much to Chambers,
+    "The Mediaeval Stage," especially chaps. xviii. to xx., and to #W.
+    Creizenach, "Geschichte des neueren Dramas"# (Halle a/S.,
+    1893), vol. i., bks. ii.-iv. See also: #Karl Pearson#, essay on #"The
+    German Passion Play"# in #"The Chances of Death, and other Studies in
+    Evolution"# (London, 1897), ii. 246 f.; #E. Du Meril, "Origines
+    latines du theatre moderne"# (Paris, 1849); #L. Petit de Julleville,
+    "Histoire du theatre en France au moyen age. I. Les Mysteres"#
+    (Paris, 1880); and other works cited later.
+
+2.  Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 8 f.
+
+3.  _Ibid._ ii. 11.
+
+4.  Du Meril, 147.
+
+5.  Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 52.
+
+6.  Text in Du Meril, 153 f.
+
+7.  Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 44.
+
+8.  _Ibid._ ii. 52 f.
+
+9.  On the English plays see: Chambers, "M. S.," chaps. xx. and xxi.; #A.
+    W. Ward, "A History of English Dramatic Literature"# (London,
+    1875), vol. i. chap. i.; Creizenach, vol. i.; #K. L. Bates, "The
+    English Religious Drama"# (London, 1893).
+
+10. Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 129, 131, 139.
+
+11. #"Ludus Coventriae,"# ed. by J. O. Halliwell (London, 1841), 146 f.
+
+12. #"York Plays,"# ed. by L. Toulmin Smith (Oxford, 1885), 114 f.
+
+13. #"The Chester Plays,"# ed. by T. Wright (London, 1843), 137.
+
+14. _Ibid._ 138.
+
+15. _Ibid._ 143.
+
+16. #"The Towneley Plays,"# ed. by George England, with Introduction by
+    A. W. Pollard (London, 1897). The first Shepherds' Play is on p.
+    100 f., the second on p. 116 f.
+
+17. Text from Chambers and Sidgwick, "Early English Lyrics," 124 f.
+
+18. Text in #T. Sharp, "A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic
+    Mysteries anciently performed at Coventry"# (Coventry, 1825).
+
+19. Petit de Julleville, ii. 36 f and 431 f.
+
+20. _Ibid._ ii. 620 f.; #"Les marguerites de la Marguerite des
+    princesses,"# ed. from the edition of 1547 by F. Frank (Paris, 1873),
+    ii. 1 f.
+
+21. Petit de Julleville, i. 441.
+
+22. _Ibid._ i. 455. Text in Lemeignen, ii. 1 f.
+
+23. Petit de Julleville, i. 79 f.
+
+24. #P. Sebillot, "Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne"# (Paris,
+    1886), 177.
+
+25. Martinengo, "Folk-Songs," xxxiii. f. In her essay, "Puer Parvulus,"
+    in "The Outdoor Life," 260 f., the Countess gives a charming
+    description of a somewhat similar Piedmontese play.
+
+26. Barthelemy, iii. 411 f. |370|
+
+27. Rietschel, 88 f.; #O. von Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, "Das festliche
+    Jahr"# (2nd Edition, Leipsic, 1898), 439 f.
+
+28. Rietschel, 92 f.
+
+29. An interesting book on popular Christmas plays is #F. Vogt, "Die
+    schlesischen Weihnachtspiele"# (Leipsic, 1901).
+
+30. Weinhold, 94.
+
+31. _Ibid._ 95 f.
+
+32. _Ibid._ 100 f.
+
+33. _Ibid._ 96 f.
+
+34. See Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 91 f.; Symonds, "Renaissance," iv. 242,
+    272 f.; #A. d'Ancona, "Origini del Teatro italiano"# (Florence,
+    1877), i. 87 f.
+
+35. D'Ancona, "Origini," i. 126 f.
+
+36. #A. d'Ancona, "Sacre Rappresentazioni dei secoli xiv, xv e xvi"#
+    (Florence, 1872), i. 191 f.
+
+37. _Ibid._ i. 192.
+
+38. Latin original quoted by D'Ancona, "Origini," i. 91, and Chambers,
+    "M. S.," ii. 93.
+
+39. Creizenach, i. 347.
+
+40. #J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, "A History of Spanish Literature"# (London,
+    1898), 113.
+
+41. #Juan del Encina, "Teatro Completo"# (Madrid, 1893), 3 f., 137 f.
+
+42. See #G. Ticknor, "History of Spanish Literature"# (6th American
+    Edition, Boston, 1888), ii. 283 f.
+
+43. _Ibid._ ii. 208.
+
+44. #"Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari"# (Palermo and
+    Turin), vol. xxi., 1902, 381.
+
+45. Pitre, 448.
+
+46. Fernan Caballero, "Elia y La Noche de Navidad," 222 f.
+
+47. Lloyd, 213 f.
+
+48. #H. F. Feilberg, "Jul"# (Copenhagen, 1904), ii. 242 f.
+
+49. #E. Cortet, "Essai sur les fetes religieuses"# (Paris, 1867), 38.
+
+50. Sebillot, 215.
+
+51. Feilberg, ii. 250; Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 31 f.; #T. Stratilesco,
+    "From Carpathian to Pindus: Pictures of Roumanian Country Life"#
+    (London, 1906), 195 f.; #E. van Norman, "Poland: the Knight among
+    Nations"# (London and New York, 3rd Edition, n.d.), 302; #S. Graham,
+    "A Vagabond in the Caucasus. With some Notes of his Experiences among
+    the Russians"# (London, 1910), 28.
+
+52. Translation in #Karl Hase, "Miracle Plays and Sacred Dramas"# (Eng.
+    Trans., London, 1880), 9; German text in Weinhold, 132.
+
+53. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 247 f.
+
+54. Graham, 28.
+
+55. Stratilesco, 195 f.
+
+56. _Ibid._ 355 f.
+
+57. Van Norman, 302.
+
+58. Cortet, 42.
+
+59. Barthelemy, iii. 411 f.
+
+60. #Madame Calderon de la Barca, "Life in Mexico"# (London, 1843),
+    237 f.
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT
+
+1.  #E. Underhill, "Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of
+    Man's Spiritual Consciousness"# (London, 1911), 305. |371|
+
+
+PART II.--PAGAN SURVIVALS
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.--PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS
+
+1.  #Karl Pearson#, essay on #"Woman as Witch"# in #"The Chances of Death
+    and other Studies in Evolution"# (London, 1897), ii. 16.
+
+2.  Cf. #J. G. Frazer, "The Dying God"# (London, 1911), 269.
+
+3.  #J. A. MacCulloch, "The Religion of the Ancient Celts"# (Edinburgh,
+    1911), 278.
+
+4.  Frazer, "Dying God," 266.
+
+5.  #E. Anwyl, "Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times"# (London, 1906),
+    1 f.
+
+6.  _Ibid._ 20; cf. #E. K. Chambers, "The Mediaeval Stage"# (Oxford,
+    1903), i. 100 f. [Referred to as "M. S."]
+
+7.  #W. Robertson Smith, "Lectures on the Religion of the Semites"# (New
+    Edition, London, 1894), 16.
+
+8.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 236; #W. W. Fowler, "The Roman Festivals of the
+    Period of the Republic"# (London, 1899), 272.
+
+9.  #"The Works of Lucian of Samosata"# (Eng. Trans. by H. W. and F. G.
+    Fowler, Oxford, 1905), iv. 108 f.
+
+10. #John Brand, "Observations on Popular Antiquities"# (New Edition,
+    with the Additions of Sir Henry Ellis, London, Chatto & Windus,
+    1900), 283.
+
+11. "Works of Lucian," iv. 114 f.
+
+12. _Ibid._ iv. 109.
+
+13. #J. G. Frazer, "The Golden Bough"# (2nd Edition, London, 1900), iii.
+    138 f., and #"The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kingship"# (London,
+    1911), ii. 310 f.
+
+14. #W. W. Fowler, "The Religious Experience of the Roman People"#
+    (London, 1911), 107, 112.
+
+15. Fowler, "Roman Festivals," 268, and "Religious Experience," 107; #C.
+    Bailey, "The Religion of Ancient Rome"# (London, 1907), 70.
+
+16. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 237 f.; Fowler, "Roman Festivals," 278.
+
+17. Quoted from #"Libanii Opera,"# ed. by Reiske, i. 256 f., by #G.
+    Bilfinger, "Das germanische Julfest"# (vol. ii. of "Untersuchungen
+    ueber die Zeitrechnung der alten Germanen," Stuttgart, 1901), 41 f.
+
+18. "Libanii Opera," iv. 1053 f., quoted by Bilfinger, 43 f.
+
+19. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 237 f., 258.
+
+20. #A. Tille, "Yule and Christmas"# (London, 1899), 96. [Referred to as
+    "Y. & C."]
+
+21. #J. C. Lawson, "Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion"#
+    (Cambridge, 1910), 221 f. Cf. #M. Hamilton, "Greek Saints and their
+    Festivals"# (London, 1910), 98.
+
+22. Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 290 f.
+
+23. Latin text in Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 297 f.
+
+24. _Ibid._ i. 245.
+
+25. Tille, "Y. & C.," 88 f.; Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 303 f. |372|
+
+26. Tille, "Y. & C.," throughout; Chambers, "M. S.," i. 288 f.;
+    #Chantepie de la Saussaye, "The Religion of the Ancient Teutons"#
+    (Boston, 1902), 382. Cf. #O. Schrader#, in #Hastings's "Encyclopaedia
+    of Religion and Ethics"# (Edinburgh, 1909), ii. 47 f.
+
+27. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 258 f. Cf. Chambers, "M.
+    S.," i. 228, 234.
+
+28. Tille, "Y. & C.," 203.
+
+29. #[Sir] A. J. Evans, "Christmas and Ancestor Worship in the Black
+    Mountain,"# in #"Macmillan's Magazine"# (London), vol. xliii., 1881,
+    363.
+
+30. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 247.
+
+31. Tille, "Y. & C.," 64.
+
+32. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 232.
+
+33. _Ibid._ i. 130; W. Robertson Smith, 213 f.
+
+34. Frazer, "Dying God," 129 f.
+
+35. See #N. W. Thomas# in #"Folk-Lore"# (London), vol. xi., 1900, 227 f.
+
+36. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 132 f.
+
+37. W. Robertson Smith, 437 f.
+
+38. #J. E. Harrison, "Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek
+    Religion"# (Cambridge, 1912), 67. Cf. #E. F. Ames, "The Psychology of
+    Religious Experience"# (London and Boston, 1910), 95 f.
+
+39. Harrison, "Themis," 137.
+
+40. _Ibid._ 110.
+
+41. #S. Reinach, "Cultes, mythes, et religions"# (Paris, 1905), i. 93.
+    For the theory that totems were originally food-objects, see Ames,
+    118 f.
+
+42. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 133.
+
+43. _Ibid._ i. 105 f., 144.
+
+44. Harrison, "Themis," 507.
+
+45. W. Robertson Smith, 255.
+
+46. #Bede, "Historia Ecclesiastica,"# lib. i. cap. 30. Latin text in
+    Bede's Works, edited by J. A. Giles (London, 1843), vol. ii. p. 142.
+
+47. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 143.
+
+48. #Jerome, "Comm. in Isaiam,"# lxv. 11. Latin text in Chambers, "M. S.,"
+    ii. 294.
+
+49. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 266.
+
+50. Latin text in Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 306.
+
+51. #Bede, "De Temporum Ratione,"# cap. 15, quoted by Chambers, i. 231.
+    See also Tille, "Y. & C.," 152 f., and Bilfinger, 131, for other
+    views.
+
+52. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 70 f.
+
+53. See Frazer, "Magic Art," i. 52.
+
+54. Cf. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 300 f.
+
+55. Latin text in #H. Usener, "Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen,"#
+    part ii. (Bonn, 1889), 43 f. See also #A. Tille, "Die Geschichte der
+    deutschen Weihnacht"# (Leipsic, 1893), 44 f. [Referred to as "D. W."]
+
+56. #Philip Stubbs, "Anatomie Of Abuses"# (Reprint of 3rd Edition of
+    1585, edited by W. B. Turnbull, London, 1836), 205.
+
+57. Quoted by #J. Ashton, "A righte Merrie Christmasse!!"#
+    (London, n.d.), 26 f.
+
+58. _Ibid._ 27 f. |373|
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.--ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS
+
+1.  #R. Chambers, "The Book Of Days"# (London, n.d.), ii. 538 [referred
+    to as "B. D."]; #T. F. Thiselton Dyer, "British Popular Customs"#
+    (London, 1876), 396 f.
+
+2.  #[Sir] J. Rhys, "Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
+    illustrated by Celtic Heathendom"# (London, 1888), 514, #"Celtic
+    Folklore: Welsh and Manx"# (Oxford, 1901), i. 321.
+
+3.  Tille, "Y. & C.," 57 f.
+
+4.  Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 315 f.
+
+5.  #J. Dowden, "The Church Year and Kalendar"# (Cambridge, 1910), 23 f.
+
+6.  Cf. #J. G. Frazer, "Adonis, Attis, Osiris"# (2nd Edition, London,
+    1907), 315 f.
+
+7.  #E. B. Tylor, "Primitive Culture"# (3rd Edition, London, 1891),
+    ii. 38.
+
+8.  Frazer, "Adonis," 310.
+
+9.  _Ibid._ 312 f.
+
+10. #P. Sebillot, "Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne"# (Paris,
+    1886), 206.
+
+11. #L. von Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben"# (Stuttgart, 1909), 193.
+
+12. Frazer, "Adonis," 315.
+
+13. #G. Pitre, "Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane"# (Palermo, 1880),
+    393 f. Cf. #H. F. Feilberg, "Jul"# (Copenhagen, 1904), i. 67.
+
+14. #"Notes and Queries"# (London), 3rd Series, vol. i. 446; Dyer, 408.
+
+15. Frazer, "Adonis," 250.
+
+16. Dyer, 405 f.
+
+17. _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. iv. 381; Dyer, 407.
+
+18. #C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, "Shropshire Folk-Lore"# (London,
+    1883), 383.
+
+19. _Ibid._ 381 f.
+
+20. Quoted by Dyer, 410.
+
+21. #O. von Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, "Das festliche Jahr der germanischen
+    Voelker"# (2nd Edition, Leipsic, 1898), 390.
+
+22. #"Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari"#
+    (Palermo), vol. viii. 574.
+
+23. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 189 f.
+
+24. Frazer, "Adonis," 303 f.
+
+25. _Ibid._ 306 f.
+
+26. Evans, 363 f.
+
+27. Dyer, 394.
+
+28. _Ibid._ 398.
+
+29. _Ibid._ 394. Cf. Chambers, "B. D.," ii. 519 f.
+
+30. Dyer, 395.
+
+31. _Ibid._ 399.
+
+32. _Ibid._ 397 f.
+
+33. #S. O. Addy, "Household Tales, with other Traditional Remains.
+    Collected in the Counties of Lincoln, Derby, and Nottingham"# (London
+    and Sheffield, 1895), 82.
+
+34. _Ibid._ 85.
+
+35. #W. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the
+    Borders"# (2nd Edition, London, 1879), 101.
+
+36. Dyer, 399.
+
+37. _Ibid._ 403. |374|
+
+38. Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 321, "Celtic Heathendom," 514.
+
+39. Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 328.
+
+40. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 259, 261.
+
+41. Rhys, "Celtic Heathendom," 515.
+
+42. _Ibid._ 515.
+
+43. _Ibid._ 515, "Celtic Folklore," i. 225.
+
+44. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 262.
+
+45. Brand, 211.
+
+46. Dyer, 402.
+
+47. _Ibid._ 394 f.
+
+48. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 299 f.
+
+49. Burne and Jackson, 389.
+
+50. Dyer, 409.
+
+51. #J. Grimm, "Teutonic Mythology"# (Eng. Trans. by J. S. Stallybrass,
+    London, 1880-8), i. 47.
+
+52. #K. Weinhold, "Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus Sueddeutschland und
+    Schlesien"# (Vienna, 1875), 6.
+
+53. #U. Jahn, "Die deutschen Opfergebraeuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht"#
+    (Breslau, 1884), 262.
+
+54. _Ibid._ 262.
+
+55. Weinhold, 6.
+
+56. Dyer, 472.
+
+57. _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. i. 173; Dyer, 486.
+
+58. Weinhold, 7.
+
+59. _Ibid._ 10.
+
+60. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 449.
+
+61. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 166.
+
+62. Dyer, 480.
+
+63. Feilberg, ii. 228 f.
+
+64. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 393.
+
+65. #Tacitus, "Annales,"# lib. i. cap. 50, quoted by Tille, "Y. & C.,"
+    25.
+
+66. Tille, "Y. & C.," 26.
+
+67. _Ibid._ 52.
+
+68. _Ibid._ 27.
+
+69. Brand, 216 f.
+
+70. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 401 f. For German Martinmas feasting, see also
+    Jahn, 229 f.
+
+71. Grimm, iv. 1838, for Danish custom; Jahn, 235 f., for German.
+
+72. #"The Folk-Lore Record"# (London), vol. iv., 1881, 107; Dyer, 420.
+
+73. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 260.
+
+74. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 403.
+
+75. Jahn, 246 f.
+
+76. _Ibid._ 246; Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 403.
+
+77. Tille, "Y. & C.," 34 f.
+
+78. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 404; Jahn, 250.
+
+79. Jahn, 247.
+
+80. Angela Nardo-Cibele in _Archivio trad. pop._, vol. v. 238 f., for
+    Venetia; Pitre, 411 f., for Sicily.
+
+81. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 405. |375|
+
+82. Jahn, 240.
+
+83. _Ibid._ 241 f.
+
+84. _Ibid._ 241.
+
+85. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 404.
+
+86. Weinhold, 7.
+
+87. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 268; Weinhold, 7; Tille, "D. W.," 25.
+
+88. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, illustration facing p. 406.
+
+89. _Ibid._ 405.
+
+90. _Ibid._ 404.
+
+91. _Ibid._ 410; Tille, "D. W.," 26 f.; #W. Mannhardt, "Der Baumkultus
+    der Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstaemme"# (Berlin, 1875. Vol. i. of
+    "Wald- und Feldkulte"), 273.
+
+92. Cf. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 303, and Reinach, i. 180.
+
+93. _Archivio trad. pop._, vol. v. 238 f., 358 f.
+
+94. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 274.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS
+
+1.  Dyer, 423.
+
+2.  _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. viii. 618; Dyer, 425.
+
+3.  Brand, 222 f.
+
+4.  Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 97.
+
+5.  _Notes and Queries_, 3rd Series, vol. iv. 492; Dyer, 423.
+
+6.  Dyer, 425.
+
+7.  Brand, 222.
+
+8.  _Ibid._ 223.
+
+9.  _Notes and Queries_, 2nd Series, vol. v. 47; Dyer, 427.
+
+10. Dyer, 426 f.
+
+11. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 415.
+
+12. #J. N. Raphael# in #"The Daily Express,"# Nov. 28, 1911.
+
+13. Dyer, 430.
+
+14. _Ibid._ 429.
+
+15. Tille, "D. W.," 148.
+
+16. #B. Thorpe, "Northern Mythology"# (London, 1852), iii. 143.
+
+17. _Ibid._ iii. 144.
+
+18. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 416 f. Cf. Grimm, iv. 1800.
+
+19. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 417. Cf. Thorpe, iii. 145.
+
+20. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 418.
+
+21. Thorpe, iii. 145.
+
+22. #F. S. Krauss, "Sitte und Brauch der Suedslaven"# (Vienna, 1885), 179.
+
+23. #T. Stratilesco, "From Carpathian to Pindus: Pictures of Roumanian
+    Country Life"# (London, 1906), 189.
+
+24. _Ibid._ 188 f.
+
+25. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 416.
+
+26. _Ibid._ 420 f.
+
+27. _Ibid._ 425. |376|
+
+28. #Thomas Naogeorgus, "The Popish Kingdome,"# Englyshed by Barnabe
+    Googe, 1570 (ed. by R. C. Hope, London, 1880), 44.
+
+29. #G. F. Abbott, "Macedonian Folklore"# (Cambridge, 1903), 76.
+
+30. #P. M. Hough, "Dutch Life in Town and Country"# (London, 1901), 96.
+
+31. Cf. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 90, and also the Epiphany
+    noise-makings described in the present volume.
+
+32. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 426.
+
+33. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 218 f.
+
+34. Tille, "D. W.," 30.
+
+35. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 370.
+
+36. Hamilton, 30. Cf. article on St. Nicholas by Professor Anichkof in
+    _Folk-Lore_, vol. v., 1894, 108 f.
+
+37. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 428 f.
+
+38. Tille, "D. W.," 35 f.; Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 430.
+
+39. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 209 f.
+
+40. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 430.
+
+41. Weinhold, 9.
+
+42. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 326.
+
+43. Weinhold, 9.
+
+44. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 431 f.
+
+45. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 212 f.
+
+46. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 433.
+
+47. _Ibid._ 433.
+
+48. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 369.
+
+49. #W. S. Walsh, "Curiosities of Popular Customs"# (London, 1898),
+    753 f. Cf. Chambers, "B. D.," ii. 664.
+
+50. Feilberg, i. 165, 170.
+
+51. _Ibid._ i. 169 f.
+
+52. _Ibid._ i. 171.
+
+53. #L. Caico, "Sicilian Ways and Days"# (London, 1910), 188 f.
+
+54. Feilberg, i. 168.
+
+55. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 434.
+
+56. _Ibid._ 434 f.
+
+57. Grimm, iv. 1867.
+
+58. Feilberg, i. 108 f.
+
+59. _Ibid._ i. 111.
+
+60. N. W. Thomas in _Folk-Lore_, vol. xi., 1900, 252.
+
+61. Ashton, 52.
+
+62. Dyer, 72 f.
+
+63. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 436 f.
+
+64. _Ibid._ 437.
+
+65. _Ibid._ 438.
+
+66. _Ibid._ 439.
+
+67. Dyer, 439.
+
+68. _Ibid._ 438 f.; Chambers, "B. D.," ii. 724.
+
+69. Abbott, 81.
+
+70. _Notes and Queries_, 2nd Series, vol. v. 35; Dyer, 439. |377|
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.--CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS
+
+1.  Tille, "D. W.," 32 f.
+
+2.  Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 446.
+
+3.  _Ibid._ 448.
+
+4.  _Ibid._ 449.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ 448; Weinhold, 8 f.
+
+6.  Evans, 229.
+
+7.  Weinhold, 8.
+
+8.  Tille, "Y. & C.," 116.
+
+9.  Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 444 f.
+
+10. _Ibid._ 442 f.
+
+11. _Ibid._ 444.
+
+12. #W. R. S. Ralston, "Songs of the Russian People"# (1st Edition,
+    London, 1872), 186 f.
+
+13. Sebillot, 216.
+
+14. Walsh, 232.
+
+15. Burne and Jackson, 406; Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern
+    Counties," 311; #Sir Edgar MacCulloch, "Guernsey Folk Lore"# (London,
+    1903), 34; Thorpe, ii. 272.
+
+16. Walsh, 232.
+
+17. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 311.
+
+18. MacCulloch, "Guernsey Folk Lore," 34 f. Cf. for Germany, Grimm,
+    iv. 1779, 1809.
+
+19. Grimm, iv. 1840.
+
+20. Ralston, 201.
+
+21. #A. Le Braz, "La Legende de la Mort chez les Bretons armoricains"#
+    (Paris, 1902), i. 114 f.
+
+22. Thorpe, ii. 89.
+
+23. Lloyd, 171.
+
+24. Feilberg, ii. 7 f.
+
+25. _Ibid._ ii. 14.
+
+26. Bilfinger, 52.
+
+27. Feilberg, ii. 3 f.
+
+28. _Ibid._ ii. 20 f.
+
+29. #A. F. M. Ferryman, "In the Northman's Land"# (London, 1896), 112.
+
+30. Feilberg, ii. 64.
+
+31. Grimm, iv. 1781, 1783, 1793, 1818.
+
+32. Krauss, 181.
+
+33. Accounts of the carols used in Little Russia are given by Mr.
+    Ralston, 186 f., while those sung by the Roumanians are described by
+    Mlle. Stratilesco, 192 f., and those customary in Dalmatia by Sir A.
+    J. Evans, 224 f.
+
+34. Ralston, 193.
+
+35. Stratilesco, 192.
+
+36. Ralston, 197.
+
+37. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 244.
+
+38. #Shakespeare, "Hamlet," Act I. Sc. 1.#
+
+39. Bilfinger, 37 f.
+
+40. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 132. |378|
+
+41. Tylor, i. 362.
+
+42. #W. Golther, "Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie"# (Leipsic, 1895),
+    283 f.
+
+43. Tille, "D. W.," 173.
+
+44. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 132.
+
+45. MacCulloch, "Guernsey Folk Lore," 33 f.
+
+46. Burne and Jackson, 396 f., 403.
+
+47. #R. T. Hampson, "Medii Aevi Kalendarium"# (London, 1841), i. 90.
+
+48. Grimm, iv. 1836; Thorpe, ii. 272.
+
+49. Burne and Jackson, 405.
+
+50. _Ibid._ 405; MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 166.
+
+51. #E. H. Meyer, "Mythologie der Germanen"# (Strassburg, 1903), 424;
+    Golther, 491; Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 22 f.
+
+52. Golther, 493.
+
+53. Meyer, 425 f.
+
+54. _Ibid._ 425 f.
+
+55. Grimm, iii. 925 f.
+
+56. _Ibid._ i. 268, 275 f.
+
+57. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 22.
+
+58. Grimm, i. 275; Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 23.
+
+59. _Ibid._ 23.
+
+60. Meyer, 425; Grimm, i. 281.
+
+61. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 21.
+
+62. Golther, 493.
+
+63. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 24.
+
+64. Grimm, i. 274.
+
+65. Meyer, 428.
+
+66. #R. H. Busk, "The Valleys of Tirol"# (London, 1874), 116.
+
+67. _Ibid._ 118.
+
+68. _Ibid._ 417.
+
+69. The details given about the _Kallikantzaroi_ are taken, unless
+    otherwise stated, from Lawson, 190 f.
+
+70. Abbott, 74.
+
+71. Hamilton, 108 f.
+
+72. _Ibid._ 109.
+
+73. Abbott, 218.
+
+74. _Ibid._ 73 f.
+
+75. Meyer, 85 f.
+
+76. #G. Henderson, "Survivals of Belief among the Celts"# (Glasgow, 1911),
+    178.
+
+77. _Ibid._ 177.
+
+78. #F. H. E. Palmer, "Russian Life In Town and Country"# (London, 1901),
+    178.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.--THE YULE LOG
+
+1.  Evans, 221 f.; Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 224 f. Cf. the account of the
+    Servian Christmas in #Chedo Mijatovitch, "Servia and the Servians"#
+    (London, 1908), 98 f.
+
+2.  Same sources. |379|
+
+3.  Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 236.
+
+4.  Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 208.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ ii. 232.
+
+6.  Evans, 219, 295, and 357.
+
+7.  _Ibid._ 222.
+
+8.  Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 237.
+
+9.  Cf. Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 233.
+
+10. _Ibid._ ii. 365 f.
+
+11. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 226 f.
+
+12. #"Memoirs of Mistral"# (Eng. Trans. by C. E. Maud, London, 1907),
+    29 f.
+
+13. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 226 f.
+
+14. Sebillot, 218.
+
+15. #A. de Gubernatis, "Storia Comparata degli Usi Natalizi"# (Milan,
+    1878), 112.
+
+16. C. Casati in _Archivio trad. pop._, vol. vi. 168 f.
+
+17. Jahn, 253.
+
+18. _Ibid._ 254.
+
+19. _Ibid._ 257.
+
+20. Brand, 245; Dyer, 466.
+
+21. #[Sir] G. L. Gomme, "Folk Lore Relics of Early Village Life"# (London
+    1883), 99.
+
+22. Ashton, 111.
+
+23. Burne and Jackson, 402.
+
+24. _Ibid._ 398 f.
+
+25. _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. iv. 309; Dyer, 446 f.
+
+26. #"The Gentleman's Magazine,"# 1790, 719.
+
+27. Hampson, i. 109.
+
+28. Feilberg, i. 118 f.
+
+29. _Ibid._ i. 146.
+
+30. _Ibid._ ii. 66 f.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.--THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS
+
+1.  #I. A. R. Wylie, "My German Year"# (London, 1910), 68.
+
+2.  #Mrs. A. Sidgwick, "Home Life in Germany"# (London, 1908), 176.
+
+3.  Tille, "D. W.," 258. For the history and associations of the
+    Christmas-tree see also #E. M. Kronfeld, "Der Weihnachtsbaum"#
+    (Oldenburg, 1906).
+
+4.  Tille, "D. W.," 259.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ 261.
+
+6.  _Ibid._ 261 f.
+
+7.  #G. Rietschel, "Weihnachten in Kirche, Kunst und Volksleben"#
+    (Bielefeld and Leipsic, 1902), 153.
+
+8.  _Ibid._, 153.
+
+9.  Tille, "D. W.," 270.
+
+10. Rietschel, 151.
+
+11. _Ibid._ 151.
+
+12. Tille, "D. W.," 267. |380|
+
+13. Dyer, 442; E. M. Leather, #"The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire"# (London,
+    1912), 90.
+
+14. Rietschel, 154.
+
+15. Ashton, 189.
+
+16. _Ibid._ 190.
+
+17. Tille, "D. W.," 271.
+
+18. _Ibid._ 272.
+
+19. _Ibid._ 277; Rietschel, 254.
+
+20. Information supplied by the Rev. E. W. Lummis, who a few years ago
+    was a pastor in the Muensterthal.
+
+21. #L. Macdonald# in #"The Pall Mall Gazette"# (London), Dec. 28, 1911.
+
+22. Tille, "Y. & C.," 174.
+
+23. _Ibid._ 175 f.
+
+24. Rietschel, 141.
+
+25. Tille, "Y. & C.," 175.
+
+26. _Ibid._ 172 f.; Chambers, "B. D.," ii. 759.
+
+27. Latin text in Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 290.
+
+28. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 244.
+
+29. Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 65.
+
+30. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 244.
+
+31. _Ibid._ 241; Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 18.
+
+32. Lloyd, 168.
+
+33. Dyer, 35.
+
+34. #W. F. Dawson, "Christmas: its Origin and Associations"# (London,
+    1902), 325.
+
+35. Harrison, "Themis," 321.
+
+36. Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 55 f.
+
+37. Frazer, "Magic Art," ii. 48.
+
+38. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 242 f.
+
+39. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 251.
+
+40. Latin text, _ibid._ ii. 300.
+
+41. #J. Stow, "A Survay of London,"# edited by Henry Morley (London,
+    1893), 123.
+
+42. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 251.
+
+43. Grimm, iii. 1206; Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 327; MacCulloch,
+    "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 162, 205.
+
+44. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 162 f.
+
+45. Grimm, iii. 1206.
+
+46. Burne and Jackson, 246; #Laisnel de la Salle, "Croyances et legendes
+    du centre de la France"# (Paris, 1875), i. 58.
+
+47. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 451 f.
+
+48. #Washington Irving, "The Sketch-Book"# (Revised Edition, New York,
+    1860), 245.
+
+49. _Notes and Queries_, 5th Series, vol. viii. 481.
+
+50. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 472.
+
+51. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 100.
+
+52. Burne and Jackson, 245.
+
+53. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 226.
+
+54. #E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, "Early English Lyrics"# (London,
+    1907), 293; #E. Rickert, "Ancient English Carols"# (London, 1910),
+    262. |381|
+
+55. Rickert, 262.
+
+56. Burne and Jackson, 245 f., 397, 411.
+
+57. Lloyd, 169.
+
+58. Van Norman, 300.
+
+59. Evans, 222.
+
+60. Van Norman, 300 f.
+
+61. Frazer, "Golden Bough," ii. 286 f.
+
+62. Grimm, iv. 1831.
+
+63. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 238. Cf. Tille, "Y. & C.," 104.
+
+64. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 420.
+
+65. Tille, "D. W.," 195.
+
+66. _Ibid._ 197.
+
+67. Bilfinger, 48.
+
+68. #Th. Bentzon, "Christmas in France"# in #"The Century Magazine"# (New
+    York), Dec., 1901, 173.
+
+69. Feilberg, ii. 179 f.
+
+70. Pitre, 167, 404.
+
+71. Feilberg, i. 196; Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 453 f.; Wylie, 77 f.
+
+72. Lloyd, 172.
+
+73. #W. Sandys, "Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern"# (London, 1833),
+    xcv.
+
+74. Walsh, 240 f.; Ashton, 194 f.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.--CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS
+
+1.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 257.
+
+2.  Rickert, 259.
+
+3.  #W. Sandys, "Christmastide: its History, Festivities, and Carols"#
+    (London, n.d.), 112.
+
+4.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 133.
+
+5.  #J. A. H. Murray, "A New English Dictionary"# (Oxford, 1888, &c.)
+    iv. (1) 577.
+
+6.  Addy, 103.
+
+7.  Dawson, 254.
+
+8.  Addy, 104.
+
+9.  Burne and Jackson, 407.
+
+10. Brand, 283.
+
+11. Cf. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xi., 1900, 260.
+
+12. Addy, 103.
+
+13. Cf. carols in Brand, 3, and Rickert, 243 f.
+
+14. Brand, 3.
+
+15. Dyer, 464.
+
+16. Feilberg, i. 119, 184; Lloyd, 173.
+
+17. Jahn, 265.
+
+18. Stratilesco, 190.
+
+19. Ralston, 193, 203.
+
+20. Mijatovich, 98.
+
+21. Jahn, 261.
+
+22. Rietschel, 106. Cf. Weinhold, 25, and Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 463.
+
+23. Sebillot, 217. |382|
+
+24. Laisnel, i. 7 f.
+
+25. _Ibid._ i. 12 f.
+
+26. _Ibid._ i. 11.
+
+27. #E. Cortet, "Essai sur les Fetes religieuses"# (Paris, 1867), 265.
+
+28. Frazer, "Golden Bough," ii. 286 f.
+
+29. #M. Hoefler, "Weihnachtsgebaecke. Eine vergleichende Studie der
+    germanischen Gebildbrote zur Weihnachtszeit"# in #"Zeitschrift fuer
+    oesterreichische Volkskunde,"# Jahrg. 11, Supplement-Heft 3 (Vienna,
+    1905).
+
+30. Jahn, 280 f.
+
+31. Burne and Jackson, 406 f.
+
+32. #"The Mirror of Perfection,"# trans. by Sebastian Evans (London,
+    1898), 206.
+
+33. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 233 f.
+
+34. Lloyd, 170 f.
+
+35. Jahn, 276.
+
+36. _Ibid._ 276.
+
+37. Lloyd, 168.
+
+38. Evans, 231 f.; for the ox-custom, see Evans, 233.
+
+39. Abbott, 76.
+
+40. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 244 f., 238, 245.
+
+41. Dawson, 339.
+
+42. #S. Graham, "A Vagabond in the Caucasus. With some Notes of his
+    Experiences among the Russians"# (London, 1910), 25 f.
+
+43. Stratilesco, 190.
+
+44. Van Norman, 299 f.
+
+45. Jahn, 267.
+
+46. Frazer, "Golden Bough," ii. 442 f., where other examples, British and
+    Continental, of the wren-hunt are given. Cf. Dyer, 494 f.
+
+47. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xviii., 1907, 439 f.
+
+48. MacCulloch, "Religion of the Ancient Celts," 221.
+
+49. See Frazer, "Golden Bough," ii. 380, 441, for examples of similar
+    practices with sacred animals.
+
+50. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xi., 1900, 259.
+
+51. Brand, 272.
+
+52. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xi., 1900, 262.
+
+53. Lloyd, 181 f.
+
+54. _Ibid._ 181.
+
+55. Thorpe, ii. 49 f.
+
+56. Ralston, 200.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.--MASKING, THE MUMMERS' PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE
+                 BOY BISHOP
+
+1.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 390 f.
+
+2.  #The Works Of Ben Jonson#, ed. by Barry Cornwall (London, 1838), 600.
+
+3.  #Shakespeare, "Henry VIII.,"# Act I. Sc. IV.
+
+4.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 403 f.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ i. 227, 402.
+
+6.  _Ibid._ i. 402. Cf. Burne and Jackson, 410.
+
+7.  For a bibliography of texts of the mummers' plays see Chambers,
+    "M. S.," i. 205 f. |383|
+
+8.  This account of the plays and dances is based upon Chambers, "M. S.,"
+    i. 182 f. (chapters ix. and x.).
+
+9.  #Tacitus, "Germania,"# cap. xxiv. (Eng. Trans. by W. Hamilton Fyfe,
+    Oxford, 1908).
+
+10. Cf. Harrison, "Themis," 43 f.
+
+11. Professor Gilbert Murray in "Themis," 341 f.
+
+12. Harrison, "Themis," 232.
+
+13. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 226.
+
+14. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 192, 213 f.
+
+15. _Ibid._ i. 220 f.
+
+16. Lawson, 223 f.
+
+17. _Notes and Queries_, 5th Series, vol. x. 482.
+
+18. This account of the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop is mainly
+    derived from Chambers, "M. S.," i. 274-371, and from #Mr. A. F.
+    Leach's# article, #"The Schoolboys' Feast,"# in #"The Fortnightly
+    Review"# (London), vol. lix., 1896, 128 f.
+
+19. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 294.
+
+20. Full text in Chambers, "M. S.," ii. 280 f.
+
+21. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 372 f.
+
+22. #"Two Sermons preached by the Boy Bishop at St. Paul's,"# ed. by J.
+    G. Nichols, with an Introduction by E. F. Rimbault (London, printed
+    for the Camden Society, 1875).
+
+23. _Ibid._ 3.
+
+24. Quoted by #F. J. Snell, "The Customs Of Old England"# (London, 1911),
+    44.
+
+25. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 366.
+
+26. #J. Aubrey, "Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme"# (1686-7), ed. by
+    J. Britten (London, 1881), 40 f.
+
+27. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 350.
+
+28. Feilberg, ii. 254.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.--ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS' DAYS
+
+1.  Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 237 f.
+
+2.  Dyer, 492.
+
+3.  #L. von Hoermann, "Das Tiroler Bauernjahr"# (Innsbruck, 1899), 204.
+
+4.  _Ibid._ 204.
+
+5.  _Ibid._ 204 f.
+
+6.  Feilberg, i. 212.
+
+7.  Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 402.
+
+8.  Feilberg, i. 211.
+
+9.  Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 402 f.
+
+10. _Ibid._ 402 f.; Feilberg, i. 204 f.; Lloyd, 203 f.
+
+11. #H. C. Beeching, "A Book of Christmas Verse"# (London, 1895), 21 f.
+
+12. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 406.
+
+13. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 67.
+
+14. Jahn, 269 f.
+
+15. _Ibid._ 270 f.
+
+16. _Ibid._ 273. |384|
+
+17. Dyer, 497 f.
+
+18. _Ibid._ 498; Brand, 290.
+
+19. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 264 f.
+
+20. _Ibid._ 265 f.
+
+21. _Ibid._ 268.
+
+22. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 129 f.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.--NEW YEAR'S DAY
+
+1.  Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 320 f.
+
+2.  Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 72.
+
+3.  #E. Thurston, "Omens and Superstitions of Southern India"# (London,
+    1912), 17 f.
+
+4.  Walsh, 742.
+
+5.  Wylie, 81.
+
+6.  Sebillot, 176.
+
+7.  #A. Maurice Low, "The American People"# (London, 1911), ii. 6.
+
+8.  Walsh, 739 f.
+
+9.  Evans, 229.
+
+10. Burne and Jackson, 315 f.
+
+11. _Notes and Queries_, 5th Series, vol. iii. 6.
+
+12. Information given by the Rev. E. J. Hardy, formerly Chaplain to the
+    Forces at Hongkong.
+
+13. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 204 f.
+
+14. Burne and Jackson, 265.
+
+15. Grimm, iv. 1784.
+
+16. Harrison, "Themis," 36.
+
+17. Henderson, "Folk Lore of the Northern Counties," 72 f.
+
+18. Addy, 205.
+
+19. G. Hastie in _Folk-Lore_, vol. iv., 1893, 309 f.
+
+20. J. E. Crombie in same volume, 316 f.
+
+21. Addy, 106; Burne and Jackson, 314; Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 337.
+
+22. Rhys, "Celtic Folklore," i. 339.
+
+23. _Ibid._ 339 f.; W. Henderson, 74. Cf. _Folk-Lore_, vol. iii., 1892,
+    253 f.; vol. iv., 1893, 309 f.
+
+24. Hastie (see Note 19), 311.
+
+25. Walsh, 738.
+
+26. Hastie, 312.
+
+27. Chambers, "B. D.," i. 28.
+
+28. _Ibid._ ii. 789 f.; _Notes and Queries_, 2nd Series, vol. ix., 322;
+    Dyer, 506.
+
+29. Ashton, 228.
+
+30. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 230 f.
+
+31. #J. G. Campbell, "Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and
+    Islands of Scotland"# (Glasgow, 1902), 232. Cf. the account given by
+    Dr. Johnson, in Brand, 278.
+
+32. Henderson, "Survivals of Belief among the Celts," 263 f.
+
+33. #R. Chambers, "Popular Rhymes of Scotland"# (Edinburgh, 1847), 296,
+    and "B. D.," ii. 788. |385|
+
+34. "New English Dictionary," v. (1) 327.
+
+35. Cortet, 18.
+
+36. Sebillot, 213.
+
+37. _Ibid._ 213.
+
+38. MacCulloch, "Guernsey Folk Lore," 37.
+
+39. Abbott, 80 f.
+
+40. Stratilesco, 197 f.
+
+41. Hamilton, 103.
+
+42. _Ibid._ 104.
+
+43. Mannhardt, "Baumkultus," 593 f.
+
+44. Latin text from Ducange in Chambers, "M. S.," i. 254.
+
+45. Wylie, 81.
+
+46. Abbott, 78.
+
+47. Grimm, iv. 1847.
+
+48. Sebillot, 171.
+
+49. Dyer, 7.
+
+50. Ashton, 228.
+
+51. #A. Macdonell, "In the Abruzzi"# (London, 1908), 102.
+
+52. Abbott, 77.
+
+53. Ralston, 205.
+
+54. #"The Athenaeum"# (London), Feb. 5, 1848; _Notes and Queries_, 1st
+    Series, vol. v., 5.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.--EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS
+
+1.  Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 240 f.
+
+2.  #Leigh Hunt, "The Seer; or, Common-Places Refreshed"# (London, 1850),
+    part ii. 31.
+
+3.  Beeching, 148 f.
+
+4.  Chambers, "M. S.," i. 261.
+
+5.  #E. Pasquier, "Les Recherches de la France"# (Paris, 1621), livre
+    iv., chap. ix. p. 375.
+
+6.  Cortet, 33.
+
+7.  _Ibid._ 34.
+
+8.  _Ibid._ 43.
+
+9.  #E. Du Meril, "Origines latines du theatre moderne"# (Paris, 1849),
+    26 f.
+
+10. Brand, 13.
+
+11. #A. de Nore, "Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de
+    France"# (Paris, 1846), 173.
+
+12. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 29 f.; Brand, 13.
+
+13. #Matilde Serao, "La Madonna e i Santi"# (Naples, 1902), 128.
+
+14. Reinach, i. 45 f.
+
+15. Abbott, 77.
+
+16. _Ibid._ 78.
+
+17. Frazer, "Golden Bough," iii. 93.
+
+18. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 246; Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 21.
+
+19. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 21.
+
+20. _Ibid._ 21 f. |386|
+
+21. Stratilesco, 198.
+
+22. Reinsberg-Dueringsfeld, 21.
+
+23. #Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, "Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs"#
+    (London, 1886), 334.
+
+24. #D. N. Lees, "Tuscan Feasts and Tuscan Friends"# (London, 1907), 87.
+
+25. _Ibid._ 83.
+
+26. Serao, 127 f.
+
+27. #E. de Olavarria y Huarte, "El Folk-Lore de Madrid,"# 90. [Vol. ii.
+    of "Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Espanolas" (Seville,
+    1884).]
+
+28. _Ibid._ 92.
+
+29. "Memoirs of Mistral," 32 f.
+
+30. Nore, 17.
+
+31. Abbott, 87.
+
+32. Frazer, "Magic Art," i. 275 f.
+
+33. Hamilton, 118.
+
+34. Brand, 16; Chambers, "B. D.," i. 56; Dyer, 21.
+
+35. Aubrey, 40.
+
+36. Brand, 16.
+
+37. Beeching, 147.
+
+38. Ashton, 87 f.
+
+39. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 225.
+
+40. Tille, "D. W.," 254.
+
+41. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 230.
+
+42. #W. S. Lach-Szyrma# in #"The Folk-Lore Record"# (London), vol. iv.,
+    1881, 53.
+
+43. Brand, 17; Chambers, "B. D.," i. 55 f.; Dyer, 22 f. Several accounts
+    have been collected by Mrs. Leather, "Folk-Lore of Herefordshire,"
+    93 f.
+
+44. Evans, 228.
+
+45. Dyer, 24.
+
+46. _Folk-Lore_, vol. v., 1894, 192.
+
+47. _Ibid._ vol. vii., 1896, 340 f.
+
+48. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 149 f.
+
+49. W. Hone, "Every Day Book" (London, 1838), ii. 1649.
+
+50. _Folk-Lore_, vol. vii., 1896, 342.
+
+51. #[Sir] G. L. Gomme, "The Village Community"# (London, 1890), 242 f.
+
+52. Busk, 99.
+
+53. Dawson, 320.
+
+54. #"The Nation"# (London), Dec. 10, 1910.
+
+55. Burne and Jackson, 411.
+
+56. Lloyd, 217.
+
+57. Bilfinger, 24.
+
+58. Brand, 18 f.
+
+59. Dyer, 37.
+
+60. Quoted from #"Journal of the Archaeological Association,"# vol. vii.,
+    1852, 202, by Dyer, 39.
+
+61. Chambers, "M. S.," i. 113.
+
+62. _Ibid._ i. 114.
+
+63. Usener, 310 f.
+
+64. Naogeorgus, 48.
+
+65. Sebillot, 179 f. |387|
+
+66. Hoermann, "Tiroler Volksleben," 7.
+
+67. Usener, 321.
+
+68. Brand, 25. Cf. #G. W. Kitchin, "Seven Sages Of Durham"# (London,
+    1911), 113.
+
+69. _The Gentleman's Magazine_, 1790, 719.
+
+70. Dyer, 55 f.
+
+71. Quoted by Dyer, 57, from #Martin's "Description of the Western Isles
+    of Scotland"# (1703), 119.
+
+72. Gomme, "Folk-Lore Relics," 95.
+
+73. Brand, 26.
+
+74. _Ibid._ 26.
+
+75. Burne and Jackson, 411.
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+1.  E. Clodd in Presidential Address to the Folk-Lore Society, 1894. See
+    _Folk-Lore_, vol. vi., 1895, 77.
+
+|388| |389| |390| |391|
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Abbots Bromley, horn-dance at, 201
+
+Abruzzi, All Souls' Eve in, 192;
+    "new water" in, 333
+
+"Adam," drama, 127-8
+
+Adam and Eve, their Day, 271
+
+Adam of St. Victor, 33-4
+
+"Adeste, fideles," 63-4
+
+Advent, 90-2;
+    "Advent images," 118;
+    _Kloepfelnaechte_, 216-8
+
+Alexandria, pagan rites at, 20
+
+All Saints' Day, and the cult of the dead, 173, 189-90
+
+All Souls' Day, and the cult of the dead, 173, 181, 189-95
+
+Alsace, Christkind in, 230;
+    New Year's "May" in, 269-70
+
+Alsso of Brevnov, 183
+
+Ambrose, St., 31-2
+
+_Amburbale_, 353
+
+Amiens, Feast of Fools at, 305
+
+Anatolius, St., hymn of, 100
+
+Ancestor-worship, 181, 253-4, 290, 341
+
+Andrew, St., his Day, 173, 213-6, 277
+
+Animals, carol of, 69;
+    ox and ass at the Nativity, 155;
+    cult of, 174-8;
+    masks of, 175-6, 199-202;
+    on Christmas Eve, 233-4;
+    specially fed at Christmas, 289;
+    wassailing, 346-7
+
+Ansbach, Martinmas in, 206
+
+Antwerp, soul-cakes at, 194;
+    St. Martin at, 206-7;
+    St. Thomas's Day at, 224
+
+Apples, customs with, 195-6, 207, 278
+
+Ara Coeli, Rome, 115-6
+
+Ardennes, St. Thomas's Day in, 224
+
+Armenian Church, Epiphany in, 22
+
+Artemis and St. Nicholas, 218
+
+Aryan and pre-Aryan customs, 163-4
+
+Aschenklas, 219, 231
+
+Ashes, superstition about, 258
+
+Ass, Prose of the, 304-5
+
+Athens, New Year in, 331
+
+Aubrey, J., 308
+
+Augury, 182, 195-8, 214-5, 225, 237, 321-33
+
+Augustine, St. (of Canterbury), 21, 179
+
+Aurelian, 23
+
+Austria, Christmas poetry in, 45-46;
+    Christmas drama in, 143-6;
+    soul-cakes in, 194;
+    St. Nicholas in, 218-20;
+    St. Lucia's Eve in, 223;
+    St. Thomas's Eve in, 225;
+    Frau Perchta, etc., in, 241-4, 342;
+    Sylvester in, 274.
+    _See also_ Bohemia, Carinthia, Styria, Tyrol
+
+Awdlay, John, 47-8
+
+
+Bach, J. S., 73-4
+
+Baden, All Souls' Eve in, 192
+
+Balder, 273
+
+Baptism of Christ, celebrated at Epiphany, 20-2, 101-4
+
+Barbara, St., her festival, 268
+
+Bari, festival of St. Nicholas at, 221
+
+Barring out the master, 224
+
+Bartel, 219
+
+Basil, St., his festival, 331
+
+Basilidians, 21
+
+Basle, Council of, 305
+
+Bavaria, St. Martin's rod in, 207;
+    Christmas-trees in, 266-7;
+    sacrificial feast in, 286;
+    St. John's wine in, 314
+
+Beauvais, Feast of the Ass at, 305
+
+Bede, Venerable, 181, 203 |392|
+
+Bees on Christmas Eve, 234
+
+Befana, 244, 278, 343
+
+Belethus, Johannes, 302
+
+Belgium, All Souls' Eve in, 192, 194;
+    St. Hubert's Day in, 202;
+    Martinmas in, 204-7;
+    St. Catherine's Day in, 213;
+    St. Nicholas in, 219;
+    St. Thomas's Day in, 224
+
+Bentzon, Madame Th., 96-7
+
+Berchta. _See_ Perchta
+
+Berlin, pyramids in, 266;
+    biscuits in, 288
+
+Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, 33
+
+Berry, cake customs in, 287, 339
+
+Bethlehem, Christmas at, 94-5, 107
+
+Biggar, bonfires at, 327
+
+Bilfinger, Dr. G., 172
+
+Birds fed at Christmas, 289
+
+Blindman's buff, 293
+
+Boar's head, 284, 348
+
+Bohemia, the "star" in, 152;
+    fifteenth-century Christmas customs in, 183;
+    St. Andrew's Eve in, 215-6;
+    St. Thomas's Eve in, 224-5
+
+Boniface, St., 171
+
+Boy Bishop, 212-3, 306-8;
+    connection with St. Nicholas, 220-1, 307-8
+
+"Breast-strip" rites, 328
+
+Breviary, the Roman, 90
+
+Briid, 354
+
+Brimo, 21
+
+Brittany, Herod play in, 141;
+    Magi actors in, 151;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 191-2;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 233-5, 236;
+    Christmas log in, 256;
+    New Year in, 323;
+    _aguillanneuf_ in, 330;
+    weather superstition in, 332
+
+Brixen, cradle-rocking at, 111
+
+Brixlegg, Christmas play at, 143 f.
+
+Bromfield, Cumberland, barring out the master at, 224
+
+Brough, Westmoreland, Twelfth Night tree at, 270
+
+Brunnen, Epiphany at, 341
+
+Budelfrau, 220
+
+Burchardus of Worms, 181
+
+Burford, Christmas holly at, 275
+
+Burghead, "Clavie" at, 327
+
+Burns, Robert, 197
+
+"Bush, burning the," 346
+
+Buzebergt, 220
+
+Byrom, John, 84
+
+
+Caballero, Fernan, 66-7, 117, 151
+
+Caesarius of Arles, 170-1, 181
+
+Cakes, "feasten," 177;
+    soul, 192-4;
+    St. Hubert's, 202;
+    Martin's horns, 204;
+    Christmas, 287-8, 289-90;
+    Twelfth Night, 337-40, 346;
+    St. Basil's, 341
+
+Calabrian minstrels, 112
+
+Calamy, 185
+
+Caligula, 168
+
+Callander, Hallowe'en at, 198
+
+Cambridge, St. Clement's Day at, 212
+
+Canada, Christmas Eve superstition in, 234
+
+Candlemas, 350, 352-5
+
+Candles, on St. Lucia's Day, 212-2;
+    Yule, 258-60
+
+Cards, Christmas, 279
+
+Carinthia, St. Stephen's Day in, 312
+
+Carnival, 300, 349
+
+Carols, meaning of the word, 47-8;
+    English sacred, 47-51, 76-8, 84-5;
+    Welsh, 69;
+    Irish, 69-70;
+    Highland, 70
+
+Catholicism and Christmas, 27, 186
+
+Celtic New Year, 172, 189, 195, 203-4, 321
+
+Centaurs, 247
+
+Cereal sacraments, 177-8.
+    _See also_ Cakes
+
+Chambers, Mr. E. K., 5, 125, 299-300, 302-7, 348
+
+Charlemagne, coronation of, 96
+
+Charms, New Year, 182, 195-8, 321-34
+
+Cheshire, Old Hob in, 199;
+    poultry specially fed at Christmas, 289
+
+Chester plays, 128, 133-4
+
+Chesterton, Mr. G. K., 85-6
+
+Childermas, 315
+
+Children's festivals, 205-7, 218-20, 223-4, 359-60
+
+China, New Year in, 324
+
+Chios, Christmas _rhamna_ in, 270
+
+Christkind as gift-bringer, 205, 230, 277-8
+
+Christmas, pagan and Christian elements in, 18-28, 161-86, 357-60;
+    names of, 20-5;
+    establishment of, 20-2; |393|
+    its connection with earlier festivals, 20-8;
+    becomes humanized, 25-7, 34-8;
+    in poetry, 31-86;
+    liturgical aspects of, 89-101;
+    in popular devotion, 104-18;
+    in drama, 121-54;
+    its human appeal, 155-7, 357-60;
+    attracts customs from other festivals, 173, 226, 277-8, 284;
+    decorations, 178, 272-6;
+    feasting, 178-80, 283-91;
+    presents, 276-9;
+    masking customs, 297-308;
+    log, _see_ Yule Log
+
+Christmas Eve, 229-38;
+    superstitions about the supernatural, 233-7;
+    log customs, 251-8;
+    fish supper on, 286-7
+
+Christmas-tree, 168, 178, 263-72;
+    its origin, 267-72
+
+Christpuppe, 231
+
+Chrysostom, 269
+
+Church, Dean, 34
+
+Circumcision, Feast of, 101, 302.
+    _See also_ New Year's Day
+
+Clement, St., his Day, 211-2
+
+Cleobury Mortimer, curfew at, 258
+
+Clermont, shepherd play at, 141
+
+Coffin, Charles, 64
+
+Communion, sacrificial, 174-8
+
+"Comte d'Alsinoys," 56, 58-9
+
+Cornwall, Hallowe'en custom in, 196;
+    blackbird pie in, 293;
+    Childermas in, 315
+
+Coventry plays, 128, 130-1, 138
+
+Cradle-rocking, 108-11
+
+Crashaw, 79-81
+
+Crib, Christmas, 105-8, 113-8;
+    possible survivals in England, 118, 274
+
+Crimmitschau, 112
+
+Crivoscian customs, 231, 253-4, 276, 346-7
+
+Croatia, St. Andrew's Eve in, 215;
+    Christmas log customs in, 251
+
+_Cronia_, 166
+
+
+Dalmatia, Yule log customs in, 252
+
+Dancing, 47-8, 293-4, 298-300, 302
+
+Daniel, Jean, 56, 58
+
+Dannhauer, J. K., 265
+
+Dasius, St., 167
+
+Dead, feasts of the, 173, 180-1, 189-95, 235-6, 240, 253-4, 341
+
+Decorations, evergreen, 168, 178, 350, 355
+
+Denisot, Nicholas, 56, 58-9
+
+Denmark, "star-singing" in, 151;
+    animal masks in, 202;
+    Martinmas goose in, 203;
+    St. Lucia's Eve in, 223;
+    St. Thomas's Day in, 223-4;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 235-6;
+    Yule candles in, 259-60;
+    Christmas-tree in, 267;
+    pig's head eaten in, 286;
+    Yule-bishop in, 308
+
+Derbyshire, "kissing-bunch" in, 274;
+    Plough Monday in, 352
+
+Devil, and beast masks, 202;
+    and flax, 240
+
+Devon, "Yeth hounds" in, 240;
+    "ashton faggot" in, 258;
+    wassailing fruit-trees in, 345
+
+Dew, Christmas, 288-9
+
+Dickens, Charles, 359
+
+Dinan, Herod play at, 141
+
+Dionysus, as child-god, 21;
+    winter festivals of, 169, 331
+
+Dorstone, Hallowe'en at, 197
+
+Drama, Christmas, in Latin, 121-7;
+    in English, 128-38;
+    in French, 128, 138-43;
+    in Spanish, 128, 148-50;
+    in German, 143-6;
+    in Italian, 147-8, 150;
+    survivals of, 150-4;
+    St. Nicholas plays, 220, 232;
+    pagan folk-drama, 298-302
+
+Drinking customs, 36, 204, 285-6, 314-5, 327
+
+Druids and mistletoe, 273
+
+Duchesne, Monsignor, 20, 24
+
+Durham, Candlemas at, 353-4
+
+Duesseldorf, Martinmas at, 206
+
+Dyzemas, 315
+
+
+Eckhart, 42-3, 157
+
+Edinburgh, New Year in, 325-6
+
+_Eiresione_, 270
+
+Encina, Juan del, 149
+
+England, Christmas poetry in, 47-51, 76-86;
+    Midnight Mass in, 99;
+    possible survivals of the Christmas crib in, 118, 274;
+    the Nativity in the miracle cycles, 128-38;
+    "souling" in, 192-4;
+    Hallowe'en in, 195-8;
+    Guy Fawkes Day in, 198-9;
+    animal masks in, 199-201; |394|
+    Martinmas in, 203;
+    St. Clement's Day in, 211-2;
+    St. Catherine's Day in, 212-3;
+    St. Andrew's Day in, 213-4;
+    St. Thomas's Day in, 225-6;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 234;
+    Yule log in, 257-8;
+    Yule candle in, 259;
+    pyramids and Christmas-trees in, 266-7, 270;
+    the Holy Thorn in, 268-9;
+    evergreen decorations in, 272-6;
+    Christmas boxes in, 279;
+    Christmas fare in, 283-6;
+    sacrificial survivals and Christmas games in, 292-3;
+    mummers and sword-dancers in, 297-301;
+    Feast of Fools in, 305;
+    Boy Bishop in, 220, 306-8;
+    St. Stephen's Day in, 292, 311-4;
+    Holy Innocents' Day in, 315;
+    New Year's Day in, 321-9, 332;
+    Epiphany customs in, 337-8, 345-8;
+    Candlemas in, 350, 353-5;
+    Rock Day in, 351;
+    Plough Monday in, 352
+
+Ephraem Syrus, 31, 239
+
+Epiphanius, 21
+
+Epiphany, early history of the festival, 20-2;
+    in the Roman Church, 101-2;
+    in the Greek Church, 102-4;
+    Blessing of the Waters at, 102-4, 244, 246, 344;
+    Italian religious ceremonies at, 116-7;
+    in drama, 125-8;
+    old German name for, 243;
+    folk customs on, 293;
+    Twelfth Night cakes and kings, 337-41;
+    expulsion of evils, 341-2;
+    the Befana and the Magi, 343-4;
+    wassailing, 345-7;
+    "Haxey Hood," 347-8;
+    farewells to Christmas, 349-50
+
+Erzgebirge, Christmas plays in, 144, 232;
+    St. John's tree in, 269;
+    _pfeffern_ in, 316
+
+Eschenloh, _berchten_ at, 342
+
+Esthonians, All Souls' Day among, 191
+
+Ethelred, laws of, 21
+
+Etzendorf, St. Martin's rod at, 207-8
+
+Evans, Sir Arthur, 253-4
+
+Eves, importance of for festival customs, 196
+
+Expulsion rites, 104, 181-2, 217, 327-8, 341-2, 344
+
+
+Fabriano, Gentile da, 148
+
+Fare, Christmas, 283-91
+
+Feasting, connected with sacrifice, 178-9, 284;
+    at Martinmas, 202-4;
+    at Christmas, 283-91;
+    at New Year, 321-3;
+    at Epiphany, 337-41
+
+_Feien_, 231
+
+Feilberg, Dr. H. F., 6, 236, 313-4
+
+Festivals, origin and purpose of, 17-8;
+    relation of pagan and Christian, 19-27, 169-74
+
+Fire, not given out at Christmas or New Year, 170-1, 257-8;
+    bonfires, 182, 198-9, 204-5, 327, 346-50;
+    new fire lit, 198;
+    Christmas log and ancestor-worship, 251-4;
+    the Yule log and candle in western Europe, 254-60;
+    Candlemas fires and lights, 352-4
+
+"First-foots," 208, 252, 323-6
+
+Fish eaten on Christmas Eve, 287
+
+Flagellants, 146
+
+Flamma, Galvano, 147-8
+
+Fletcher, Giles, 82-3
+
+Florence, Nativity plays at, 147;
+    Befana at, 343
+
+Fools, Feast of, 180, 302-6
+
+Football, 349
+
+Fowler, Dr. W. Warde, 167
+
+France, Christmas poetry in, 55-65;
+    Midnight Mass in, 96-8;
+    Christmas drama in, 124-7, 138-43;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 191-2;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 234-5;
+    Christmas log in, 254-6;
+    Christmas-tree in, 267;
+    Harvest May in, 271;
+    presents brought by _le petit Jesus_, 278;
+    Christmas cakes in, 287-8;
+    Feast of Fools in, 302-6;
+    Boy Bishop in, 308;
+    Innocents' Day in, 316;
+    New Year in, 322-3;
+    _aguillanneuf_ in, 329-30;
+    Epiphany in, 339-42, 344, 349-50;
+    Candlemas candles in, 353
+
+Francis, St. (of Assisi), and Christmas, 36-8, 105-6, 157, 289
+
+Frazer, Dr. J. G., 6, 167, 180, 182, 199, 276, 288, 324
+
+Frick, Frau, 241
+
+Frigg, 241
+
+Friuli, All Souls' Day in, 194
+
+Frumenty, 285
+
+
+Games, Christmas, 293-4 |395|
+
+Gaude, Frau, 241-2
+
+Gautier, Theophile, 64
+
+Gay, 196
+
+Geese-dancers, 299
+
+Genealogy, chanting of the, 93
+
+George, St., in mummers' plays, 299-301
+
+Gerhardt, Paul, 73-4
+
+Germanicus, 202
+
+Germany, Christmas established in, 21;
+    Christmas poetry in Catholic, 42-7;
+    Protestant hymns in, 70-6;
+    Christmas services in, 98-9;
+    the crib and _Kindelwiegen_ in, 107-12;
+    Christmas drama in, 143-6;
+    "star-singing" in, 152;
+    Roman customs in, 171;
+    pre-Christian New Year in, 171-4;
+    soul-cakes in, 194;
+    the _Schimmel_ and other animal masks in, 199-201;
+    Martinmas customs in, 202-8;
+    St. Andrew's Eve in, 214-6;
+    St. Nicholas in, 218-9, 229-32;
+    St. Thomas's Eve in, 225;
+    Christmas Eve in, 229, 237;
+    Twelve Days superstitions in, 240-3;
+    Frau Berchta, etc., in, 241-3;
+    werewolves in, 246;
+    Christmas log in, 256;
+    Christmas-tree in, 263-7, 359;
+    Harvest May in, 271;
+    Christmas presents in, 277-9;
+    Christmas fare in, 286-9;
+    sacrificial relics in, 292;
+    St. Stephen's Day in, 312, 315-6;
+    St. John's Day in, 314-6;
+    Holy Innocents' Day in, 316;
+    New Year in, 322, 332
+
+Gilmorton, "Christmas Vase" at, 118
+
+Glastonbury thorns, 268-9
+
+"Gloria in excelsis," 91, 94
+
+Goethe, 266
+
+_Goliards_, 49, 128
+
+Gomme, Sir Laurence, 257-8, 354
+
+Goose, Martinmas, 203;
+    Christmas, 284
+
+Gozzoli, Benozzo, 148
+
+Grampus, 219
+
+Greece, Epiphany ceremonies in, 102-3, 244-5, 344;
+    winter festivals of Dionysus in, 169, 245;
+    _Kallikantzaroi_ in, 244-7, 257;
+    Christmas log in, 257, 344;
+    _rhamna_ in Chios, 270;
+    "Christ's Loaves" in, 290;
+    folk-plays in, 300-1;
+    New Year in, 331, 333
+
+Greek Church, Epiphany in, 22, 102-4;
+    Christmas in, 22, 99-101;
+    Advent in, 90
+
+Gregorie, 315
+
+Gregory III., 107
+
+Gregory the Great, letter to Mellitus, 179, 203
+
+Guernsey, Christmas superstitions in, 234, 240;
+    _oguinane_ in, 330
+
+Guisers, 297-8
+
+Guy Fawkes Day, 182, 198-9
+
+
+_Habergaiss_, 201
+
+_Habersack_, 201
+
+Hakon the Good, 21, 172
+
+Hallowe'en, 182, 195-8
+
+Hampstead, Guy Fawkes Day at, 199
+
+Hans Trapp, 230
+
+Hardy, Mr. Thomas, 48, 234
+
+Harke, Frau, 241
+
+Harrison, Miss Jane, 21, 176-7, 325
+
+"Haxey Hood," 347-8
+
+Herbert, George, 81
+
+Herefordshire, Hallowe'en in, 197;
+    pyramids in, 266;
+    Holy Thorn in, 269;
+    New Year water in, 332;
+    Epiphany and New Year ceremonies in, 346
+
+Herod plays, 126-7, 129, 141, 153
+
+Herrick, 81-2, 257, 338, 345, 354-5
+
+Hertfordshire, pyramids in, 266
+
+Hindu New Year, 322
+
+Hoefler, Dr., 288
+
+Hogmanay, 328-30
+
+Holda, Frau, 241-2
+
+Holland, the "star" in, 152;
+    Martinmas in, 204-5;
+    _Rommelpot_ in, 217;
+    St. Nicholas in, 219;
+    St. Thomas's Day in, 225
+
+Holly, 272, 275-6
+
+Holy Innocents' Day, 127, 302, 306-8, 315-7
+
+Horn-cakes, 202, 204
+
+Hornchurch, boar's head at, 348
+
+Horn-dance, 201
+
+Horse, as a sacrificial animal, 200;
+    hobby-horse, hodening, and the _Schimmel_, 199-201;
+    customs on St. Stephen's Day, 311-4 |396|
+
+Howison, 234
+
+Hubert, St., his Day, 202
+
+Hunt, Leigh, 337-8
+
+Huysmans, J. K., 93
+
+Hymns, Latin, 31-4, 42
+
+
+Iceland, "Yule host" in, 240
+
+Image, Prof. Selwyn, 85
+
+"In dulci jubilo," 44-5
+
+Incense used for purification, 183, 225, 244-5, 327-8
+
+Ireland, Christmas carols in, 69-70;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 192;
+    Hallowe'en customs in, 197-8;
+    Martinmas slaughter in, 203-4;
+    "hunting of the wren" in, 292;
+    Holy Innocents' Day in, 315;
+    Epiphany in, 350
+
+Italy, Christmas poetry in, 36-42, 67;
+    _presepio_ in, 105-7, 112-6, 359;
+    Christmas drama in, 146-8, 152;
+    All Souls' in, 192, 194;
+    Martinmas in, 204;
+    Christmas log in, 256;
+    Santa Lucia in, 278;
+    Christmas fare in, 287, 289-91;
+    Epiphany in, 343
+
+Ivy, 272, 275-6
+
+
+Jacopone da Todi, 36, 39-42, 146
+
+James, St., Gospel of, 124
+
+Jerome, St., 181
+
+Jerusalem, Christmas at, 22, 94-5
+
+John, St., Evangelist, his Day, 302, 314-5
+
+Johnson, Lionel, 85
+
+Johnson, Richard, 301
+
+Jonson, Ben, 298
+
+_Julebuk_, 202
+
+Julian the Apostate, 23
+
+_Julklapp_, 278-9
+
+
+Kalends of January, the Roman festival, 24, 165, 167-71, 200, 269;
+    made a fast, 101, 170-1.
+    _See also_ New Year's Day
+
+_Kallikantzaroi_, 244-7
+
+_Kindelwiegen_, 108-11
+
+King of the Bean, 180, 338-41
+
+"Kissing-bunch," 274
+
+Kissling, K. G., 266
+
+_Klapperbock_, 201
+
+Klaubauf, 219
+
+_Kloepfelnaechte_, 216-7
+
+Knecht Ruprecht, 220, 231-2
+
+Kore, 21
+
+Krampus, 219
+
+
+Labruguiere, Epiphany in, 342
+
+Lake, Prof. K., 20, 24
+
+La Monnoye, 62-3
+
+Lancashire, Hallowe'en in, 198
+
+Latin Christmas poetry, 31-4, 42, 63-4, 68-9
+
+Lawson, Mr. J. C., 247, 301
+
+Lead-pouring, 215, 237, 332
+
+Leather, Mrs., 269, 346
+
+Le Moigne, Lucas, 56-8
+
+Libanius, 168-9, 269
+
+Liberius, Pope, 107, 352-3
+
+Lima, Christmas Eve at, 98
+
+Lithuania, feast of the dead in, 195;
+    New Year's Eve in, 332
+
+Log customs. _See_ Yule log
+
+Lombardy, Christmas log in, 256
+
+London, Greek Epiphany ceremonies in, 103;
+    Italian Christmas in, 116-7, 291;
+    Christmas in, under Puritans, 185;
+    German Christmas in, 265;
+    Boy Bishop in, 306-7;
+    New Year in, 322, 327
+
+Lord Mayor's day, 202
+
+Lord of Misrule, 298
+
+Lorraine, cake customs in, 287, 339-40
+
+Lucia, St., her festival, 221-3, 268
+
+Lucian, 166-7
+
+Ludlow, Guy Fawkes Day at, 199
+
+Lullabies, 51, 67-9, 83-4, 109-10
+
+Luther, Martin, 70-3, 265
+
+Lyme Regis, Candlemas at, 354
+
+
+Macedonia, Christmas Eve in, 217;
+    New Year's Eve in, 226, 330, 332;
+    _Kallikantzaroi_ in, 245;
+    folk-play in, 300;
+    Epiphany in, 344
+
+Macee, Claude, 141
+
+Madrid, 97-8, 153, 343
+
+Magi in drama, 125-6, 128-9, 151-3;
+    as present-bringers, 343
+
+Magic, 163
+
+Man, Isle of, carol-singing in, 99;
+    _Hollantide_ in, 189, 198, 321; |397|
+    _Fynnodderee_ in, 246;
+    "hunting of the wren" in, 292-3
+
+_Mana_, 176-7
+
+Mannhardt, W., 252-3, 313-4
+
+Marguerite of Navarre, 141
+
+Marseilles, "pastorals" at, 141
+
+Martin of Braga, 272
+
+Martin I., Pope, 203
+
+Martinengo-Cesaresco, Countess, 106, 112, 142
+
+Martinmas, an old winter festival, 173, 182, 200, 202-3;
+    its feasting customs, 202-4;
+    its bonfires, 204-5;
+    St. Martin as gift-bringer, and his relation to St. Nicholas, 205-8,
+      218-9, 277-8
+
+Masking customs, 169-71, 175-6, 199-202, 206, 219, 230-2, 245, 297-302,
+    304-305, 352
+
+Mass, Midnight, 94-9;
+    the three Christmas Masses, 94-6
+
+Mechlin, Martinmas at, 206
+
+Mellitus, Abbot, 179
+
+Mexico, Christmas drama in, 154
+
+Michaelmas, 173
+
+Milan, Epiphany play at, 147-8
+
+Milton, 82
+
+Mince-pies, 284
+
+Minnesingers, 36
+
+"Misterio de los Reyes Magos," 128
+
+Mistletoe, 272-4, 276
+
+Mistral, Frederic, 255
+
+Mithra, 23
+
+_Modranicht_, 181
+
+Monasticism and Christmas, 34-5
+
+Mont-St.-Michel, Epiphany king at, 340
+
+Montenegro, Christmas log customs in, 252
+
+Morgan, Lady, 114-5
+
+Morris, William, 85
+
+Morris-dancers, 299-301
+
+Mouthe, "De fructu" at, 288
+
+Mummers' plays, 297-302
+
+Munich, Bavarian National Museum at, 107-8;
+    Christmas-tree at, 267;
+    St. Stephen's Day at, 312
+
+Murillo, 65
+
+Mythology, in relation to ritual, 164-5, 176
+
+
+Naogeorgus, 111, 217, 353
+
+Naples, _zampognari_ at, 112;
+    _presepio_ at, 113-4;
+    Christmas plays at, 150;
+    Epiphany at, 343
+
+_Natalis Invicti_, 23-4, 165
+
+New Year's Day, in Roman Empire, 24, 167-71, 276-7;
+    opposed in character to Christmas, 25-6;
+    Teutonic and Celtic, 25, 171-3, 189, 202-4;
+    Slav, 173;
+    January 1 made a fast, 101, 170-1;
+    customs attracted to January 1, 173, 189, 200, 321;
+    fire not given out, 170-1, 257-8;
+    charms, omens, and other customs, 182, 321-34;
+    presents, 168-71, 276-7;
+    mistletoe connected with, 276
+
+Nicea, Council of, 22
+
+Nicholas, St., his Day related to Martinmas, 173, 207-8, 277-8;
+    as patron of boys, 218, 220,
+    of sailors, 218, 221;
+    his festival, 218-21;
+    on Christmas Eve, 229-32
+
+_Noel_, origin of the name, 22;
+    the French carol, 55-65
+
+Normandy, "star-singing" in, 151;
+    Innocents' Day in, 316;
+    Epiphany in, 349-50
+
+Northamptonshire, St. Catherine's and St. Andrew's Days in, 213-4;
+    Dyzemas in, 315
+
+Northumberland, holly in, 275
+
+Norway, Christmas established in, 21;
+    "star-singing" in, 151;
+    pre-Christian Yule festival in, 172;
+    animal masks in, 202;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 235-6;
+    Yule candles in, 259-60
+
+Notker, 32
+
+Nottinghamshire, Hallowe'en customs in, 196;
+    Christmas cake and wassail-bowl in, 285
+
+Nuremberg, Epiphany at, 342
+
+Nuts, customs with, 195-6, 207
+
+
+"O's," Great, 92
+
+Oak as a sacred tree, 254
+
+Oberufer, Christmas play at, 143, 272
+
+Ocana, F. de, 65-6
+
+Oesel, "Yule Boar" in, 288
+
+Old Hob, 199-200 |398|
+
+Otfrid of Weissenburg, 42
+
+Oxford, boars head at, 284
+
+
+Palmer, Mr. F. H. E., 104
+
+_Parcae_, 181
+
+Paris, Christmas in, 98;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 191;
+    St. Catherine's Day in, 213;
+    Christmas-tree in, 267;
+    New Year in, 277;
+    Feast of Fools in, 302-3
+
+Paschal, Francoise, 61-2
+
+Pasquier, Etienne, 339
+
+Pearson, Dr. Karl, 161-2
+
+Pellegrin, Abbe, 63
+
+Pelzmaerte, 206-8, 217
+
+Perchta, 181, 241-4, 342
+
+Perun, 254
+
+Peterborough, St. Catherine's Day at, 213
+
+Philocalian Calendar, 20
+
+_Pifferari_, 112
+
+Pillersee, Advent mummeries at, 218
+
+Pliny, 273
+
+Plough Monday, 300
+
+Plum-pudding, 284-5
+
+_Plygain_, 99
+
+Poland, the "star" in, 152;
+    puppet-shows in, 153;
+    werewolves in, 246;
+    Christmas straw in, 276;
+    Christmas wafers in, 291
+
+_Polaznik_, 231, 252, 323-4
+
+Presents, at the Roman Kalends, 168-71, 276-7;
+    on All Souls' Eve, 192;
+    at Martinmas, 205-8;
+    on St. Nicholas's Day, 218-20;
+    at Christmas, 183, 230, 277-9;
+    at New Year and other seasons, 277-8;
+    at Epiphany, 343
+
+_Presepio._ _See_ Crib
+
+"Prophetae," 127
+
+Protestantism, effects of, on Christmas, 27, 70-8, 111, 138, 141, 185-6,
+    229-30
+
+Provence, remains of Christmas drama in, 141, 154;
+    Christmas log in, 255;
+    Magi in, 344
+
+Prudentius, 32
+
+Puppet-plays, 153 f.
+
+Purification, feast of the. _See_ Candlemas
+
+Puritans, their attitude towards Christmas, 77, 180, 184-5, 298
+
+Pyramids, 266
+
+
+Quainton, blossoming thorn at, 268
+
+
+"Raging host," 240, 242
+
+Ragusa, Christmas log customs at, 252
+
+Ramsgate, hodening at, 200-1
+
+_Rauchnaechte_, 225, 327-8
+
+Rhys, Sir John, 189, 321, 325-6
+
+Ripon, St. Clement's Day at, 212;
+    Yule candles at, 259;
+    Candlemas at, 354
+
+Risano, Christmas log customs at, 252
+
+Rolle, Richard, 48
+
+Rome, Christmas established in, 20-1;
+    pagan winter festivals in, 23-4, 165-71;
+    Christmas services and customs in, 95-6, 112-6, 289-90;
+    mediaeval New Year _quete_ in, 331
+
+Rossetti, Christina, 85
+
+Rouen, religious plays at, 124-5, 138-40
+
+Roumania, the "star" in, 152;
+    Christmas drama in, 153;
+    St. Andrew's Eve in, 215-6;
+    Christmas songs in, 238;
+    Christmas fare in, 287, 291;
+    New Year in, 330-1;
+    Epiphany in, 342
+
+Russia, Epiphany ceremonies in, 104, 246;
+    the "star" in, 152;
+    Christmas Eve in, 232-3, 237;
+    fire superstitions in, 253;
+    Christmas fare in, 287, 291;
+    Christmas games in, 294;
+    mummers in, 302;
+    New Year in, 333
+
+
+Saboly, 62
+
+Sacrifice, theories of, 174-8;
+    connected with festivals, 178-9;
+    survivals of, 199, 283-7, 292-4, 328, 347-9
+
+Salers, Christmas king at, 340
+
+_Samhain_, 172, 204
+
+Sant' Andrea della Valle, Rome, 102
+
+Santa Klaus, 220
+
+Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, 95-6, 107, 114-5
+
+_Saturnalia_, 24, 113, 165-7, 180, 359
+
+Schiller, 266
+
+_Schimmel_ and _Schimmelreiter_, 199-200, 206, 231
+
+Schoolboys' festival, 223-4.
+    _See also_ Boy Bishop
+
+Scotland, Christmas carols in, 70;
+    Hallowe'en customs in, 197-8;
+    sowens eaten in, 285;
+    "first-foot" in, 325-6;
+    other New Year customs in, 326-9, 332-3;
+    Candlemas in, 354 |399|
+
+Sedulius, Coelius, 32
+
+Sequences, 32-3
+
+Serao, Matilde, 113
+
+Serbs, Christmas customs of, 251-4, 341
+
+Shakespeare, 239, 298
+
+Shepherds in Christmas drama, 123-4, 132-7, 139-43
+
+Shropshire, soul-cakes in, 192-3;
+    Guy Fawkes Day at Ludlow, 199;
+    Twelve Days superstitions in, 240-1, 258;
+    Christmas Brand in, 258;
+    Christmas decorations in, 275-6, 355;
+    "wigs" in, 285;
+    cattle specially fed at Christmas, 289;
+    morris-dancers in, 299;
+    New Year in, 324;
+    Candlemas in, 355
+
+Sicily, Midnight Mass in, 98;
+    Christmas _novena_ in, 112-3;
+    Christmas procession at Messina, 113;
+    Christmas plays in, 150;
+    All Souls' Eve in, 192;
+    Martinmas in, 204;
+    St. Lucia's Eve in, 222;
+    presents in, 278;
+    Candlemas candles in, 353
+
+Sidgwick, Mr. F., 6, 77-8
+
+Sidgwick, Mrs. Alfred, 264
+
+Silesia, _Schimmel_ in, 200;
+    Martinmas in, 206;
+    Christmas Eve in, 232;
+    animals specially fed at Christmas, 289
+
+Slav New Year, 172-3;
+    Christmas songs and customs, 237-8, 251-4, 290, 341.
+    _See also_ Bohemia, Crivoscia, Poland, Russia
+
+Smith, W. Robertson, 164-5, 175-6, 178-9
+
+Somersetshire wassailing, 345
+
+Soul cakes, 192-4
+
+South America, Christmas in, 98
+
+Southwell, 79-80
+
+Sowens eaten, 285, 325
+
+Spain, Christmas poetry in, 65-7;
+    Midnight Mass in, 97-8, 117;
+    the crib in, 117;
+    Christmas drama in, 128, 148-51, 153;
+    _turron_ in, 291;
+    Epiphany in, 343-4
+
+Spervogel, 42
+
+Spinning, during Twelve Days, 240-3
+
+Staffordshire, St. Clement's Day in, 211-2
+
+"Star-singing," 151-2
+
+"Stella," 125-7, 129
+
+Stephen, St., his festival, 292, 302, 311-6
+
+Stephens, Dean, 35
+
+Stow's "Survay," 272
+
+Strasburg, early Christmas-trees at, 265-6
+
+_Strenae_, 168, 277-8
+
+Stubbes, Philip, 184, 298
+
+Styles, Old and New, 268-9
+
+Styria, _Habergaiss_ in, 201;
+    Perchta in, 243;
+    St. John's wine in, 315
+
+Sun, the, December 25 as festival of, 23;
+    Yule not connected with, 171-2;
+    sun-charms, 182, 198, 252, 254
+
+Suso, 44
+
+Sussex, squirrel-hunting in, 214;
+    tipteerers in, 298;
+    wassailing fruit-trees in, 345
+
+Swabia, Pelzmaerte in, 206-7, 217
+
+Sweden, Christmas service in, 99;
+    "star-singing" in, 151;
+    animal masks in, 202;
+    St. Lucia's Day in, 221-4;
+    Christmas Eve superstitions in, 235-6;
+    Yule log in, 257;
+    Yule candles in, 259-60;
+    Christmas-trees in, 267, 270;
+    Yule straw in, 276;
+    Christmas presents in, 278-9;
+    pig's head eaten in, 286;
+    dances in, 293-4;
+    St. Stephen's Day in, 312-3, 315;
+    "St. Knut's Day" in, 351
+
+Swinburne, 84-5
+
+Swine as sacrificial animal, 284, 286
+
+Switzerland, St. Nicholas in, 218-9;
+    Christmas-tree in, 267;
+    birds fed at Christmas, 289
+
+Sword-dance, 294, 299-301
+
+_Sylvesterabend_, 274, 322
+
+
+Tacitus, 200, 299
+
+Tate, Nahum, 84
+
+Tauler, 43
+
+Teme valley, "first-footing" in, 324
+
+Tenby, _Plygain_ at, 99;
+    St. Clement's Day at, 212
+
+Tersteegen, Gerhard, 75-6
+
+Tertullian, 269
+
+Teutonic New Year, 171-3, 189, 202-4
+
+Thomas of Celano, 38
+
+Thomas, Mr. N. W., 293
+
+Thomas, St., his festival, 223-6
+
+"Thomassin'," 226
+
+Thurston, Mr. Edgar, 322
+
+Tieck, 266 |400|
+
+Tille, Dr. A., 5, 110, 169, 172-3, 231-2, 268
+
+Tipteerers, 298
+
+Tolstoy's "War and Peace," 302
+
+Tomte Gubbe, 236
+
+Tonquin, feast of the dead in, 195
+
+Totemism, 175-8
+
+Tours, Council of, 21, 101, 239
+
+Towneley plays, 128, 134-7
+
+Trees, sacred, 177-8, 254, 269-71;
+    flowering at Christmas, 268-9;
+    Christian symbols, 271-2
+
+Trest, Epiphany at, 344
+
+Trolls on Christmas Eve, 235-6
+
+Troppau, Christmas Eve at, 232
+
+Troubadours, 36
+
+Tuebingen, cradle-rocking at, 111
+
+Tuscany, Christmas log in, 256
+
+Tutilo of St. Gall, 123
+
+Twelfth Night. _See_ Epiphany
+
+Twelve Days, declared a festal tide, 21, 239;
+    variously reckoned, 239;
+    supernatural visitors on, 239-47
+
+Tylor, Dr. E. B., 191
+
+Tynan, Katharine, 85
+
+Tyrol, Midnight Mass in, 97;
+    the crib in, 107-8;
+    cradle-rocking in, 111;
+    Christmas drama in, 143;
+    "star-singing" in, 152;
+    All Souls in, 191-2, 194;
+    _Kloepfelnaechte_ in, 218;
+    St. Nicholas in, 220;
+    St. Lucia in, 223;
+    Christmas Eve in, 236, 346;
+    Berchta in, 243-4;
+    customs with fruit-trees in, 268;
+    Christmas pie in, 290, 345-6;
+    St. Stephen's Day in, 311-2;
+    St. John's Day in, 314;
+    Epiphany in, 337;
+    Carnival in, 349;
+    Purification candles in, 353
+
+
+Ubeda, J. L. de, 65
+
+Uist, South, "breast-strip" in, 328
+
+United States, Santa Klaus in, 220;
+    New Year in, 323
+
+Usedom, 201
+
+Usener, H., 20, 107
+
+
+Valdivielso, J. de, 65
+
+Vampires, 215-6, 245-6
+
+Vaughan, Henry, 81
+
+Vega, Lope de, 149-50
+
+Vegetation-cults, 177-8
+
+Venetia, Martinmas in, 204, 207
+
+Vessel-cup, 118
+
+Villazopeque, 148-9
+
+Vosges mountains, All Souls' Eve in, 191
+
+
+Wales, Christmas carols in, 69;
+    _Plygain_ in, 99;
+    soul-cakes in, 193-4;
+    Hallowe'en in, 189, 196-8;
+    the "Mari Llwyd" in, 201;
+    "new water" carol in, 333-4;
+    Christmas football in, 349
+
+Warnsdorf, St. Nicholas play at, 220
+
+Wassail-bowl, 193, 285-6
+
+Water, New Year, 332-4
+
+Watts, Isaac, 83-4
+
+Weather, ideas about, 203, 332
+
+_Weihnacht_, origin of the name, 20
+
+Werewolves, 246
+
+Wesley, Charles, 84
+
+Westermarck, Dr. E., 176
+
+Westphalia, St. Thomas's Day in, 225
+
+Whipping customs, 207-8, 315-7, 330
+
+"Wild hunt," 239-40
+
+Wine, Martinmas, 204;
+    St. John's and St. Stephen's, 314-5
+
+"Wish hounds," 240
+
+Wither, George, 83
+
+Woden, 200, 206, 208, 231, 240
+
+Women, their clothes worn by men at folk-festivals, 178, 301, 304;
+    unlucky at New Year, 324-5
+
+Woolwich, St. Clement's and St. Catherine's Days at, 212
+
+Worcestershire. St. Clement's Day in, 212;
+    New Year in, 324
+
+Wormesley, Holy Thorn at, 269
+
+Wren, hunting of, 292-3
+
+Wylie, Miss I. A. R., 263
+
+
+"Yeth hounds," 240
+
+York Minster, mistletoe at, 273;
+    Boy Bishop at, 307
+
+York plays, 128, 131-3
+
+Yorkshire, possible survival of the crib in, 118;
+    frumenty, ale posset, and Yule cakes in, 285;
+    "lucky bird" in, 325
+
+Ypres, St. Martin at, 206
+
+Yule, origin of the name, 25, 171-2
+
+"Yule Boar," 288
+
+Yule log, 180, 245, 251-8, 344, 354
+
+
+Zacharias, Pope, 171
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[1]   For an explanation of the small numerals in the text see Preface.
+
+      [Transcriber's Note: In this edition the numerals are enclosed in
+      {curly brackets}, so they will not be confused with footnotes.]
+
+[2]   "Christianity," as here used, will stand for the system of
+      orthodoxy which had been fixed in its main outlines when the
+      festival of Christmas took its rise. The relation of the orthodox
+      creed to historical fact need not concern us here, nor need we for
+      the purposes of this study attempt to distinguish between the
+      Christianity of Jesus and ecclesiastical accretions around his
+      teaching.
+
+[3]   Whether the Nativity had previously been celebrated at Rome on
+      January 6 is a matter of controversy; the affirmative view was
+      maintained by Usener in his monograph on Christmas,{6} the
+      negative by Monsignor Duchesne.{7} A very minute, cautious, and
+      balanced study of both arguments is to be found in Professor
+      Kirsopp Lake's article on Christmas in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia of
+      Religion and Ethics,"{8} and a short article was contributed by
+      the same writer to _The Guardian_, December 29, 1911. Professor
+      Lake, on the whole, inclines to Usener's view. The early history of
+      the festival is also treated by Father Cyril Martindale in "The
+      Catholic Encyclopaedia" (article "Christmas").
+
+[4]   Usener says 354, Duchesne 336.
+
+[5]   The eastern father, Epiphanius (fourth century), gives a strange
+      account of a heathen, or perhaps in reality a Gnostic, rite held at
+      Alexandria on the night of January 5-6. In the temple of Kore--the
+      Maiden--he tells us, worshippers spent the night in singing and
+      flute-playing, and at cock-crow brought up from a subterranean
+      sanctuary a wooden image seated naked on a litter. It had the sign
+      of the cross upon it in gold in five places--the forehead, the
+      hands, and the knees. This image was carried seven times round the
+      central hall of the temple with flute-playing, drumming, and hymns,
+      and then taken back to the underground chamber. In explanation of
+      these strange actions it was said: "To-day, at this hour, hath Kore
+      (the Maiden) borne the AEon."{15} Can there be a connection between
+      this festival and the Eleusinian mysteries? In the latter there was
+      a nocturnal celebration with many lights burning, and the cry went
+      forth, "Holy Brimo (the Maiden) hath borne a sacred child,
+      Brimos."{16} The details given by Miss Harrison in her
+      "Prolegomena" of the worship of the child Dionysus{17} are of
+      extraordinary interest, and a minute comparison of this cult with
+      that of the Christ Child might lead to remarkable results.
+
+[6]   Mithraism resembled Christianity in its monotheistic tendencies,
+      its sacraments, its comparatively high morality, its doctrine of an
+      Intercessor and Redeemer, and its vivid belief in a future life and
+      judgment to come. Moreover Sunday was its holy-day dedicated to the
+      Sun.
+
+[7]   This is the explanation adopted by most scholars (cf. Chambers, "M.
+      S.," i., 241-2). Duchesne suggests as an explanation of the choice
+      of December 25 the fact that a tradition fixed the Passion of
+      Christ on March 25. The same date, he thinks, would have been
+      assigned to His Conception in order to make the years of His life
+      complete, and the Birth would come naturally nine months after the
+      Conception. He, however, "would not venture to say, in regard to
+      the 25th of December, that the coincidence of the _Sol novus_
+      exercised no direct or indirect influence on the ecclesiastical
+      decision arrived at in regard to the matter."{25} Professor Lake
+      also, in his article in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia," seeks to account
+      for the selection of December 25 without any deliberate competition
+      with the _Natalis Invicti_. He points out that the Birth of Christ
+      was fixed at the vernal equinox by certain early chronologists, on
+      the strength of an elaborate and fantastic calculation based on
+      Scriptural data, and connecting the Incarnation with the Creation,
+      and that when the Incarnation came to be viewed as beginning at the
+      Conception instead of the Birth, the latter would naturally be
+      placed nine months later.
+
+[8]   Cf. chap. xviii. of Dr. Yrjoe Hirn's "The Sacred Shrine" (London,
+      1912). Dr. Hirn finds a solitary anticipation of the Franciscan
+      treatment of the Nativity in the Christmas hymns of the
+      fourth-century eastern poet, Ephraem Syrus.
+
+[9]   No. 55 in "Hymns Ancient and Modern" (Ordinary Edition).
+
+[10]  No. 56 in "Hymns Ancient and Modern" (Ordinary Edition).
+
+[11]
+
+         "Come rejoicing,
+          Faithful men, with rapture singing
+              Alleluya!
+          Monarch's Monarch,
+          From a holy maiden springing,
+              Mighty wonder!
+
+          Angel of the Counsel here,
+          Sun from star, he doth appear,
+              Born of maiden:
+          He a sun who knows no night,
+          She a star whose paler light
+              Fadeth never."
+
+      (Translation in "The English Hymnal," No. 22.)
+
+[12]
+
+         "Lords, by Christmas and the host
+          Of this mansion hear my toast--
+                  Drink it well--
+          Each must drain his cup of wine,
+          And I the first will toss off mine:
+                Thus I advise.
+          Here then I bid you all _Wassail_,
+          Cursed be he who will not say, _Drinkhail!_"
+
+      (Translation by F. Douce.)
+
+[13]  It is difficult to be sure of the authenticity of the verse
+      attributed to Jacopone. Many of the poems in Tresatti's edition,
+      from which the quotations in the text are taken, may be the work of
+      his followers.
+
+[14]
+
+         "Come and look upon her child
+          Nestling in the hay!
+          See his fair arms opened wide,
+          On her lap to play!
+          And she tucks him by her side,
+          Cloaks him as she may!
+          Gives her paps unto his mouth,
+          Where his lips are laid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          She with left hand cradling
+          Rocked and hushed her boy,
+          And with holy lullabies
+          Quieted her toy....
+          Little angels all around
+          Danced, and carols flung;
+          Making verselets sweet and true,
+          Still of love they sung."
+
+      (Translation by John Addington Symonds in "The Renaissance in
+      Italy. Italian Literature" [1898 Edn.], Part I., 468.)
+
+[15]  "In the worthy stable of the sweet baby the angels are singing
+      round the little one; they sing and cry out, the beloved angels,
+      quite reverent, timid and shy round the little baby Prince of the
+      Elect who lies naked among the prickly hay.... The Divine Verb,
+      which is highest knowledge, this day seems as if He knew nothing of
+      anything. Look at Him on the hay, crying and kicking as if He were
+      not at all a divine man."
+
+      (Translation by Vernon Lee in "Renaissance Fancies and Studies," 34.)
+
+[16]
+
+         "Sweep hearth and floor;
+          Be all your vessel's store
+          Shining and clean.
+          Then bring the little guest
+          And give Him of your best
+          Of meat and drink. Yet more
+          Ye owe than meat.
+          One gift at your King's feet
+          Lay now. I mean
+          A heart full to the brim
+          Of love, and all for Him,
+          And from all envy clean."
+
+      (Translation by Miss Anne Macdonell, in "Sons of Francis," 372.)
+
+[17]
+
+         "Full of beauty stood the Mother,
+          By the Manger, blest o'er other,
+            Where her little One she lays.
+          For her inmost soul's elation,
+          In its fervid jubilation,
+            Thrills with ecstasy of praise."
+
+      (Translation by J. M. Neale.)
+
+[18]
+
+         "A spotless Rose is blowing,
+            Sprung from a tender root,
+          Of ancient seers' foreshowing,
+            Of Jesse promised fruit;
+          Its fairest bud unfolds to light
+            Amid the cold, cold winter,
+          And in the dark midnight.
+
+          The Rose which I am singing,
+            Whereof Isaiah said,
+          Is from its sweet root springing
+            In Mary, purest Maid;
+          For through our God's great love and might
+            The Blessed Babe she bare us
+          In a cold, cold winter's night."
+
+      (Translation by C. Winkworth, "Christian Singers," 85.)
+
+[19]  The tune is often used in England for Neale's carol, "Good
+      Christian men, rejoice."
+
+[20]  "When Jesus Christ was born, then was it cold; in a little crib He
+      was laid. There stood an ass and an ox which breathed over the Holy
+      Child quite openly. He who has a pure heart need have no care."
+
+[21]  "Dearest mother, take care of the Child; it is freezing hard, wrap
+      Him up quickly. And you, old father, tuck the little one up, or the
+      cold and the wind will give Him no rest. Now we must take our
+      leave, O divine Child, remember us, pardon our sins. We are
+      heartily glad that Thou art come; no one else could have helped
+      us."
+
+[22]  "The Child is laid in the crib, so hearty and so rare! My little
+      Hans would be nothing by His side, were he finer than he is.
+      Coal-black as cherries are His eyes, the rest of Him is white as
+      chalk. His pretty hands are right tender and delicate, I touched
+      Him carefully. Then He gave me a smile and a deep sigh too. If you
+      were mine, thought I, you'd grow a merry boy. At home in the
+      kitchen I'd comfortably house you; out here in the stable the cold
+      wind comes in at every corner."
+
+[23]  Richard Rolle, poet, mystic, and wandering preacher, in many ways
+      reminds us of Jacopone da Todi. Though he has left no Christmas
+      verses, some lovely words of his show how deeply he felt the wonder
+      and pathos of Bethlehem: "Jhesu es thy name. A! A! that wondryrfull
+      name! A! that delittabyll name! This es the name that es above all
+      names.... I yede [went] abowte be Covaytyse of riches and I fand
+      noghte Jhesu. I satt in companyes of Worldly myrthe and I fand
+      noghte Jhesu.... Therefore I turnede by anothire waye, and I rane
+      a-bowte be Poverte, and I fande Jhesu pure borne in the worlde,
+      laid in a crybe and lappid in clathis."{28}
+
+[24]  "When midnight sounded I leapt from my bed to the floor, and I saw
+      a beautiful angel who sang a thousand times sweeter than a
+      nightingale. The watch-dogs of the neighbourhood all came up. Never
+      had they seen such a sight, and they suddenly began to bark. The
+      shepherds under the straw were sleeping like logs: when they heard
+      the sound of the barking they thought it was the wolves. They were
+      reasonable folk; they came without waiting to be asked. They found
+      in a little stable the Light, even the Truth."
+
+[25]  "Within a poor manger and covered with hay lies Jesus of Nazareth.
+      In the hay lies stretched the Eternal Son of God; to deliver from
+      hell man whom He had created, and to kill sin, our Jesus of
+      Nazareth is content with the hay. He rests between two animals who
+      warm Him from the cold, He who remedies our ills with His great
+      power; His kingdom and seigniory are the world and the calm heaven,
+      and now He sleeps in the hay. He counts it good to bear the cold
+      and fare thus, having no robe to protect or cover Him, and to give
+      us life He suffered cold in the hay, our Jesus of Nazareth."
+
+[26]  "In a porch, full of cobwebs, between the mule and the ox, the
+      Saviour of souls is born.... In the porch at Bethlehem are star,
+      sun, and moon: the Virgin and St. Joseph and the Child who lies in
+      the cradle. In Bethlehem they touch fire, from the porch the flame
+      issues; it is a star of heaven which has fallen into the straw.
+      I am a poor gipsy who come hither from Egypt, and bring to God's
+      Child a cock. I am a poor Galician who come from Galicia, and bring
+      to God's Child linen for a shift. To the new-born Child all bring a
+      gift; I am little and have nothing; I bring him my heart."
+
+[27]
+
+         "Sleep, oh sleep, dear Baby mine,
+          King Divine;
+          Sleep, my Child, in sleep recline;
+          Lullaby, mine Infant fair,
+                 Heaven's King,
+                 All glittering,
+          Full of grace as lilies rare.
+
+          Close thine eyelids, O my treasure,
+                 Loved past measure,
+          Of my soul, the Lord, the pleasure;
+          Lullaby, O regal Child,
+                 On the hay
+                 My joy I lay;
+          Love celestial, meek and mild.
+
+          Why dost weep, my Babe? alas!
+                 Cold winds that pass
+          Vex, or is't the little ass?
+          Lullaby, O Paradise;
+                 Of my heart
+                 Thou Saviour art;
+          On thy face I press a kiss."{20}
+
+      (Translation by Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco.)
+
+[28]  A Bas-Quercy bird-carol of this kind is printed by Mr. H. J. L. J.
+      Masse in his delightful "Book of Old Carols,"{26} a collection of
+      the words and music of Christmas songs in many languages--English,
+      Latin, German, Flemish, Basque, Swedish, Catalan, Provencal, and
+      French of various periods and dialects.
+
+[29]
+
+         "I come from heaven to tell
+          The best nowells that ever befell;
+          To you thir tidings true I bring,
+          And I will of them say and sing.
+
+          This day to you is born ane child,
+          Of Mary meek and virgin mild,
+          That blessed bairn, benign and kind,
+          Sall you rejoice, baith heart and mind.
+
+          My soul and life, stand up and see
+          What lies in ane crib of tree [wood].
+          What Babe is that, so gude and fair?
+          It is Christ, Goddis Son and Heir.
+
+          O God! that made all creature,
+          How art Thou now become so puir,
+          That on the hay and stray will lie,
+          Among the asses, oxen, and kye?
+
+          O, my dear heart, young Jesus sweet,
+          Prepare Thy cradle in my spreit,
+          And I sall rock Thee in my heart,
+          And never mair from Thee depart
+
+          But I sall praise Thee ever moir,
+          With sangis sweet unto Thy gloir;
+          The knees of my heart sall I bow,
+          And sing that richt Balulalow."{30}
+
+[30]
+
+         "Now blessed be Thou, Christ Jesu,
+          Thou art man born, this is true;
+          The angels made a merry noise,
+          Yet have we more cause to rejoice,
+                  _Kirieleyson_.
+
+          The blessed Son of God only,
+          In a crib full poor did lie,
+          With our poor flesh and our poor blood,
+          Was clothed that everlasting Good.
+                  _Kirieleyson._
+
+          He that made heaven and earth of nought,
+          In our flesh hath our health brought,
+          For our sake made He Himself full small,
+          That reigneth Lord and King over all.
+                  _Kirieleyson._"{32}
+
+[31]
+
+         "All my heart this night rejoices,
+                  As I hear,
+                  Far and near,
+          Sweetest angel voices;
+          'Christ is born,' their choirs are singing,
+                  Till the air
+                  Everywhere
+          Now with joy is ringing.
+
+          Hark! a voice from yonder manger,
+                  Soft and sweet,
+                  Doth entreat,
+          'Flee from woe and danger;
+          Brethren, come, from all doth grieve you
+                  You are freed,
+                  All you need
+          I will surely give you.'
+
+          Blessed Saviour, let me find Thee!
+                  Keep Thou me
+                  Close to Thee,
+          Call me not behind Thee!
+          Life of life, my heart Thou stillest,
+                  Calm I rest
+                  On Thy breast,
+          All this void Thou fillest."{34}
+
+[32]
+
+         "Triumph, ye heavens! rejoice ye with high adoration!
+          Sing to the Lord, to the Saviour, in glad exultation!
+                 Angels, give ear!
+                 God unto man hath drawn near,
+                 Bringing to lost ones salvation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          King of the Glory! what grace in Thy humiliation!
+          Thou wert a child! who of old wert the Lord of creation.
+                 Thee will I own,
+                 Thee would I follow, alone,
+                 Heir of Thy wondrous salvation.
+
+          Faithful Immanuel! let me Thy glories be telling,
+          Come, O my Saviour, be born, in mine inmost heart dwelling,
+                 In me abide.
+                 Make me with Thee unified,
+                 Where the life-fountain is welling."{36}
+
+[33]  A few of the best traditional pieces have been published by Mr. F.
+      Sidgwick in one of his charming "Watergate Booklets" under the
+      title of "Popular Carols." The two next quotations are from this
+      source.
+
+[34]  Browning's great poem, "Christmas Eve," is philosophical rather
+      than devotional, and hardly comes within the scope of this chapter.
+
+[35]  The first mention of a season corresponding to Advent is at the
+      Council of Tours, about 567, when a fast for monks in December is
+      vaguely indicated. At the Council of Macon (581) it is enjoined
+      that from Martinmas the second, fourth, and sixth days of the week
+      should be fasting days; and at the close of the sixth century Rome,
+      under Gregory the Great, adopted the rule of the four Sundays in
+      Advent. In the next century it became prevalent in the West. In the
+      Greek Church, forty days of fasting are observed before Christmas;
+      this custom appears to have been established in the thirteenth
+      century. In the Roman Church the practice as to fasting varies: in
+      the British Isles Wednesday and Friday are observed, but in some
+      countries no distinction is made between Advent and ordinary weeks
+      of the year.{2}
+
+[36]  Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, bequeathed to his cathedral a
+      Christmas candlestick of silver-gilt, on the base of which was an
+      image of St. Mary with her Son lying in the crib.
+
+[37]  "Joseph, dear nephew mine, help me to rock the Child." "Gladly,
+      dear aunt, will I help thee to rock thy Child." (Note the curious
+      words of relationship; Joseph and Mary were both of the seed of
+      David.)
+
+[38]  "Let us rock the Child and bow our hearts before the crib! Let us
+      delight our spirits and bless the Child: sweet little Jesu! sweet
+      little Jesu!... Let us greet His little hands and feet, His little
+      heart of fire, and reverence Him humbly as our Lord and God! Sweet
+      little Jesu! sweet little Jesu!"
+
+[39]  Turning for a moment from Sicilian domestic celebrations to a
+      public and communal action, I may mention a strange ceremony that
+      takes place at Messina in the dead of night; at two o'clock on
+      Christmas morning a naked _Bambino_ is carried in procession from
+      the church of Santa Lucia to the cathedral and back.{65}
+
+[40]  Or on the Sunday following the Octave, if the Octave itself is a
+      week-day.
+
+[41]  Tempting as it is to connect these dolls with the crib, it is
+      possible that their origin should be sought rather in
+      anthropomorphic representations of the spirits of vegetation, and
+      that they are of the same nature as the images carried about with
+      garlands in May and at other seasons.{77}
+
+[42]  Though no texts are extant of religious plays in English acted at
+      Christmastide, there are occasional records of such
+      performances:--at Tintinhull for instance in 1451 and at Dublin in
+      1528, while at Aberdeen a processional "Nativity" was performed at
+      Candlemas. And the "Stella," whether in English or Latin it is
+      uncertain, is found at various places between 1462 and 1579.{10}
+
+[43]  Lodging.
+
+[44]  Once.
+
+[45]  Scarcely.
+
+[46]  Horses. Hous of haras = stable.
+
+[47]  Dwell.
+
+[48]  Darkness.
+
+[49]  Being.
+
+[50]  Wonderful.
+
+[51]  Worship.
+
+[52]  Shedder.
+
+[53]  Wrap.
+
+[54]  Crippled.
+
+[55]  Overreached.
+
+[56]  Deprive of.
+
+[57]  Curse.
+
+[58]  Strong in lordliness.
+
+[59]  Wizard.
+
+[60]  Shame.
+
+[61]  Noble being.
+
+[62]  Cursed.
+
+[63]  Warlock.
+
+[64]  Sorrow.
+
+[65]  Grows merry.
+
+[66]  Promise.
+
+[67]  Noble.
+
+[68]  Child.
+
+[69]  Baby.
+
+[70]  Head.
+
+[71]  Face.
+
+[72]  Hand.
+
+[73]  Besides the Nativity plays in the four great cycles there exists a
+      "Shearmen and Tailors' Play" which undoubtedly belongs to Coventry,
+      unlike the "Ludus Coventriae," whose connection with that town is,
+      to say the least, highly doubtful. It opens with a prologue by the
+      prophet Isaiah, and in a small space presents the events connected
+      with the Incarnation from the Annunciation to the Murder of the
+      Innocents. The Nativity and shepherd scenes have less character and
+      interest than those in the great cycles, and need not be dealt with
+      here.{18}
+
+[74]
+
+         "_Riepl._  What a noise there is. Everything seems so strange
+                      to me!
+          _Joergl._  Have the heavens fallen to-day; are the angels flying
+                      over our field?
+          _R._  They are leaping
+          _J._  Down from above.
+          _R._  I couldn't do the thing; 'twould break my neck and legs."
+
+[75]
+
+         "_J._  My child, canst find no lodging? Must Thou bear such
+                  frost and cold?
+          _R._  Thou liest in cold swaddling-clothes! Come, put a
+                  garment about Him!
+          _J._  Cover His feet up; wrap Him up delicately!"
+
+[76]  "Three eggs and some butter we bring, too; deign to accept it! A
+      fowl to make some broth if Thy mother can cook it--put some
+      dripping in, and 'twill be good. Because we've nothing else--we are
+      but poor shepherds--accept our goodwill."
+
+[77]
+
+         "_J._  The best of health to thee ever, my little dear; when
+                  thou wantest anything, come to me.
+          _J._  God keep thee ever!
+          _R._  Grow up fine and tall soon!
+          _J._  I'll take thee into service when thou'rt big enough."
+
+[78]  Jacopone da Todi, whose Christmas songs we have already considered,
+      was probably connected with the movement.
+
+[79]  An interesting and pathetic Christmas example is given by Signor
+      D'Ancona in his "Origini del Teatro in Italia."{35}
+
+[80]  Though the ox and ass are not mentioned by St. Luke, it is an easy
+      transition to them from the idea of the manger. Early Christian
+      writers found a Scriptural sanction for them in two passages in the
+      prophets: Isaiah i. 3, "The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his
+      master's crib," and Habakkuk iii. 2 (a mistranslation), "In the
+      midst of two beasts shall Thou be known."
+
+[81]  With this may be compared the fair still held in Rome in the Piazza
+      Navona just before Christmas, at which booths are hung with little
+      clay figures for use in _presepi_ (see p. 113). One cannot help
+      being reminded too, though probably there is no direct connection,
+      of the biscuits in human shapes to be seen in German markets and
+      shops at Christmas, and of the paste images which English bakers
+      used to make at this season.{10}
+
+[82]  Among the Scandinavians, who were late in their conversion, a
+      pre-Christian Yule feast seems to have been held in the ninth
+      century, but it appears to have taken place not in December but
+      about the middle of January, and to have been transferred to
+      December 25 by the Christian king Hakon the Good of Norway
+      (940-63).{28}
+
+[83]  It is only right to mention here Professor G. Bilfinger's monograph
+      "Das germanische Julfest" (Stuttgart, 1901), where it is maintained
+      that the only festivals from which the Christmas customs of the
+      Teutonic peoples have sprung are the January Kalends of the Roman
+      Empire and the Christian feast of the Nativity. Bilfinger holds
+      that there is no evidence either of a November beginning-of-winter
+      festival or of an ancient Teutonic midwinter feast. Bilfinger's is
+      the most systematic of existing treatises on Christmas origins, but
+      the considerations brought forward in Tille's "Yule and Christmas"
+      in favour of the November festival are not lightly to be set aside,
+      and while recognizing that its celebration must be regarded rather
+      as a probable hypothesis than an established fact, I shall here
+      follow in general the suggestions of Tille and try to show the
+      contributions of this northern New Year feast to Christmas customs.
+
+[84]  Accounts of such maskings are to be found in innumerable books of
+      travel. In _Folk-Lore_, June 30, 1911, Professor Edward Westermarck
+      gives a particularly full and interesting description of Moroccan
+      customs of this sort. He describes at length various masquerades in
+      the skins and heads of beasts, accompanied often by the dressing-up
+      of men as women and by gross obscenities.
+
+[85]  Another suggested explanation connects the change of clothes with
+      rites of initiation at the passage from boyhood to manhood.
+      "Manhood, among primitive peoples, seems to be envisaged as ceasing
+      to be a woman.... Man is born of woman, reared of woman. When he
+      passes to manhood, he ceases to be a woman-thing, and begins to
+      exercise functions other and alien. That moment is one naturally of
+      extreme peril; he at once emphasizes it and disguises it. He wears
+      woman's clothes." From initiation rites, according to this theory,
+      the custom spread to other occasions when it was desirable to
+      "change the luck."
+
+[86]  According to Sir John Rhys, in the Isle of Man _Hollantide_
+      (November 1, Old Style, therefore November 12) is still to-day the
+      beginning of a new year. But the ordinary calendar is gaining
+      ground, and some of the associations of the old New Year's Day are
+      being transferred to January 1, the Roman date. "In Wales this must
+      have been decidedly helped by the influence of Roman rule and Roman
+      ideas; but even there the adjuncts of the Winter Calends have never
+      been wholly transferred to the Calends of January."{4}
+
+[87]  In Burne and Jackson's "Shropshire Folk-Lore" (p. 305 f.) there are
+      details about cakes and other doles given to the poor at funerals.
+      These probably had the same origin as the November "soul-cakes."
+
+[88]  Cf. pp. 191-2 and 235-6 of this volume.
+
+[89]  The prominence of "Eves" in festival customs is a point specially
+      to be noticed; it is often to them rather than to the actual feast
+      days that old practices cling. This is perhaps connected with the
+      ancient Celtic and Teutonic habit of reckoning by nights instead of
+      days--a trace of this is left in our word "fortnight"--but it must
+      be remembered that the Church encouraged the same tendency by her
+      solemn services on the Eves of festivals, and that the Jewish
+      Sabbath begins on Friday evening.
+
+[90]  Attempts are being made to suppress the November carnival at
+      Hampstead, and perhaps the 1911 celebration may prove to have been
+      the last.
+
+[91]  "Raise the glass at Martinmas, drink wine all through the year."
+
+[92]  It is interesting to note that in the Italian province of Venetia,
+      as well as in more northerly regions, Martinmas is especially a
+      children's feast. In the sweetshops are sold little sugar images of
+      the saint on horseback with a long sword, and in Venice itself
+      children go about singing, playing on tambourines, and begging for
+      money.{93}
+
+[93]  "At St. Andrew's Mass winter is certain."
+
+[94]  This custom may be compared with the Scotch eating of sowans in bed
+      on Christmas morning (see Chapter XII.).
+
+[95]  In a legend of the saint she is said to have plucked out her own
+      eyes when their beauty caused a prince to seek to ravish her away
+      from her convent.{54}
+
+[96]  The bath-house in the old-fashioned Swedish farm is a separate
+      building to which everyone repairs on Christmas Eve, but which is,
+      or was, seldom used except on this one night of the year.{23}
+
+[97]  Sometimes Christmas is reckoned as one of the Twelve Days,
+      sometimes not. In the former case, of course, the Epiphany is the
+      thirteenth day. In England we call the Epiphany Twelfth Day, in
+      Germany it is generally called Thirteenth; in Belgium and Holland
+      it is Thirteenth; in Sweden it varies, but is usually Thirteenth.
+      Sometimes then the Twelve Days are spoken of, sometimes the
+      Thirteen. "The Twelve Nights," in accordance with the old Teutonic
+      mode of reckoning by nights, is a natural and correct term.{39}
+
+[98]  Those who wish to pursue further the study of the _Kallikantzaroi_
+      should read the elaborate and fascinating, if not altogether
+      convincing, theories of Mr. J. C. Lawson in his "Modern Greek
+      Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion." He distinguishes two classes
+      of _Kallikantzaroi_, one of which he identifies with ordinary
+      werewolves, while the other is the type of hairy, clawed demons
+      above described. He sets forth a most ingenious hypothesis
+      connecting them with the Centaurs.
+
+[99]  It is to be borne in mind that the oak was a sacred tree among the
+      heathen Slavs; it was connected with the thunder-god Perun, the
+      counterpart of Jupiter, and a fire of oak burned night and day in
+      his honour. The neighbours of the Slavs, the Lithuanians, had the
+      same god, whom they called Perkunas; they too kept up a perpetual
+      oak-fire in his honour, and in time of drought they used to pour
+      beer on the flames, praying to Perkunas to send showers.{10} The
+      libations of wine on the Yule log may conceivably have had a
+      similar purpose.
+
+[100] Kindling.
+
+[101] The custom referred to in the last sentence may be compared with
+      the Danish St. Thomas's Day practice (see Chapter VIII.).
+
+[102] At Wormesley in Herefordshire there is a Holy Thorn which is still
+      believed to blossom exactly at twelve o'clock on Twelfth Night.
+      "The blossoms are thought to open at midnight, and drop off about
+      an hour afterwards. A piece of thorn gathered at this hour brings
+      luck, if kept for the rest of the year." As recently as 1908 about
+      forty people went to see the thorn blossom at this time (see E. M.
+      Leather, "The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire" [London, 1912], 17).
+
+[103] Compare the struggle for the "Haxey hood," described in Chapter
+      XVI., p. 347.
+
+[104] This may be compared with the ancient Greek _Eiresione_, "a
+      portable May-pole, a branch hung about with wool, acorns, figs,
+      cakes, fruits of all sorts and sometimes wine-jars."{35}
+
+[105] It by no means necessarily follows, of course, that they were
+      exclusively Roman in origin.
+
+[106] In Welsh it has also the name of "the tree of pure gold," a rather
+      surprising title for a plant with green leaves and white berries.
+      Dr. Frazer has sought to explain this name by the theory that in a
+      roundabout way the sun's golden fire was believed to be an
+      emanation from the mistletoe, in which the life of the oak, whence
+      fire was kindled, was held to reside.{47}
+
+[107] In the neighbourhood of Reichenberg children hang up their
+      stockings at the windows on St. Andrew's Eve, and in the morning
+      find them filled with apples and nuts{64}--a parallel to Martinmas
+      and St. Nicholas customs, at a date intermediate between the two
+      festivals.
+
+[108] "He has more to do than the ovens in England at Christmas."
+
+[109] The following quotation from an ancient account book is tersely
+      suggestive of the English Christmas:--
+
+                                         s.  d.
+          "Item payd to the preacher     vi  ii
+           Item payd to the minstrell   xii   o
+           Item payd to the coke         xv   o"
+
+[110] In County Louth, Ireland, boys used to carry about a thorn-bush
+      decked with streamers of coloured paper and with a wren tied to one
+      of the branches.{47}
+
+[111] Dancing is, as everyone knows, a common and indeed a central
+      feature of primitive festivals; and such dancing is wont to take a
+      dramatic form, to be mimetic, whether re-enacting some past event
+      or _pre_-doing something with magical intent to produce it.{10}
+      The Greek tragedy itself probably sprang from a primitive dance of
+      a dramatic and magical character, centred in a death and
+      re-birth.{11}
+
+[112] In Thessaly and Macedonia at Carnival time folk-plays of a somewhat
+      similar character are performed, including a quarrel, a death, and
+      a miraculous restoration to life--evidently originating in magical
+      ritual intended to promote the fertility of vegetation.{12}
+      Parallels can be found in the Carnival customs of other countries.
+
+[113] A remarkably clear instance of the transference of customs from
+      Hollantide Eve (Hallowe'en) to the modern New Year is given by Sir
+      John Rhys. Certain methods of prognostication described by him are
+      practised by some people in the Isle of Man on the one day and by
+      some on the other, and the Roman date is gaining ground.{1}
+
+[114] See p. 252.
+
+[115] "Ope thy purse, and shut it then."
+
+[116] It is probable that some customs practised at the Epiphany belong
+      in reality to Christmas Day, Old Style.
+
+[117] _Pasqua_ is there used for great festivals in general, not only for
+      Easter.
+
+[118] The custom of "burning the bush," still surviving here and there in
+      Herefordshire, shows a certain resemblance to this. The "bush," a
+      globe made of hawthorn, hangs throughout the year in the farmhouse
+      kitchen, with the mistletoe. Early on New Year's Day it "is carried
+      to the earliest sown wheat field, where a large fire is lighted, of
+      straw and bushes, in which it is burnt. While it is burning, a new
+      one is made; in making it, the ends of the branches are scorched in
+      the fire." Burning straw is carried over twelve ridges of the
+      field, and then follow cider-drinking and cheering. (See Leather,
+      "Folk-Lore of Herefordshire," 91 f.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,
+Christian and Pagan, by Clement A. Miles
+
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