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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 “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<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 “The Golden Bough.”</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, &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—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 <i>Natalis Invicti</i>—The Kalends of January—Yule and Teutonic +Festivals—The Church and Pagan Survivals—Two Conflicting Types +of Festival—Their Interaction—Plan of the Book. +</p></blockquote> + + + +<h3 class="title2">PART I—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—Humanizing +Influence of Franciscanism—Jacopone da Todi's Vernacular +Verse—German Catholic Poetry—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>Noël</i>—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.<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—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 <i>Presepio</i> 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 <i>Presepio</i> in Italy—Ceremonies with the <i>Culla</i> and the <i>Bambino</i> +in Rome—Christmas in Italian London—The Spanish Christmas—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—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. +</p></blockquote> + + +<h3 class="title">POSTSCRIPT<a class="pgref" href="#POSTSCRIPT">155</a></h3> + + +<h3 class="title2">PART II—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—Nature of Pagan Survivals—Racial Origins—Roman +Festivals of the <i>Saturnalia</i> 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—<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—Compromise +in the Later Middle Ages—The Puritans and Christmas—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—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 +<i>Schimmelreiter</i>, 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. +</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—St. Catherine's Day as +Spinsters' Festival—St. Andrew's Eve Auguries—The <i>Klöpfelnächte</i>—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'.” +</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—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 <i>Frauen</i>—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—Customs of the Southern +Slavs—The <i>Polaznik</i>—Origin of the Yule Log—Probable Connection +with Vegetation-cults or Ancestor-worship—The <i>Souche de Noël</i> in +France—Italian and German Christmas Logs—English Customs—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—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 <i>Strenae</i> and St. Nicholas—Present-giving +in Various Countries—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—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. +</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—“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. +</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—The Swedish St. Stephen—St. +John's Wine—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—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. +</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 “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. +</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 Dürer.</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: Accademia</i>)</p> + + +<h3 class="title">MADONNA AND CHILD<a class="pgref" href="#image02">13</a></h3> +<p>Albert Dürer</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 “Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi” (Florence, 1490)</p> + +<h3 class="title">THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS<a class="pgref" href="#image05">55</a></h3> +<p>By Fouquet. (<i>Musée Condé, 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: Imperial Gallery</i>)</p> + +<h3 class="title">SINGING “VOM HIMMEL HOCH” 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, 15th 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 “Every-day Book” (London, 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 “Le grant Kalendrier & compost des Bergiers” (N. le Rouge, Troyes, 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—THE MUMMERS COMING 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 Waldmüller (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, 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—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 <i>Natalis Invicti</i>—The +Kalends of January—Yule and Teutonic Festivals—The Church and Pagan +Survivals—Two Conflicting Types of Festival—Their Interaction—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. “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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a><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 “into peaks and towers and turrets, into +superhuman exceptions which really prove the rule.”<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.<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—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>—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 “Christian”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a> 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.</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—<i>Christmas</i>, <i>Weihnacht</i>, <i>Noël</i>, <i>Calendas</i>, and <i>Yule</i>—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><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.<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 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.<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 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;<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.<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;<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.<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;<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.<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 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<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 Æon from the Virgin on January 6.<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, “Thou art my +beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” (or, as other MSS. +read, “This day have I begotten thee”).</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 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.<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 25, and still celebrates the Nativity with the Epiphany +on January 6.<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>Noël</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 Provençal <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 “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.</p> + +<p>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<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.<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.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a><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 “King Sun.”<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.<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.<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 Provençal <i>Calendas</i> or <i>Calenos</i>, the Polish <i>Kolenda</i>, +the Russian <i>Kolyáda</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 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—probably a two-month tide +covering the second half of November, the whole of December, +and the first half of January.<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 “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 +<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—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.</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 “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 +<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 “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.</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—God +in man made manifest—<i>Noël</i> or “the Birthday,” 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—The Christian Feast</h2> + + + + + +<h2 class="title"><a name="Chapter_II" id="Chapter_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<h2 class="title1">CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a><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—Humanizing Influence +of Franciscanism—Jacopone da Todi's Vernacular Verse—German +Catholic Poetry—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. “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—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9">[9]</a><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. “Corde natus ex Parentis” (“Of the +Father's love begotten”) 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 “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</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10">[10]</a><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 “A solis ortus cardine” (“From east +to west, from shore to shore”), by a certain Coelius Sedulius +(d. <i>c.</i> 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.</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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a><a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-4" id="Nanchor_2-4" href="#Note_2-4">{4}</a> +</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>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 +<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—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: +<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. +“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.”<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—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 +<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 “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.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-6" id="Nanchor_2-6" href="#Note_2-6">{6}</a> +</p> + +<p>“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.”<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 “Seignors, ore entendez +à nus,” is a song not of religion but of revelry. Its last verse +is typical:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Seignors, jo vus di par Noël,</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 aprèz chescon le soen,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Par mon conseil;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Si jo vus di trestoz, ‘Wesseyl!’</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Dehaiz eit qui ne dirra, ‘Drincheyl!’”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12">[12]</a><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>trouvères</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 “minstrel of the +Lord,” 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.<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 “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.</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—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 +<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; “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.”<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—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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">* * * * *</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.”<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. “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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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 può 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">* * * * *</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’ 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’ amor favellando.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14">[14]</a><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:—</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 “Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi”</p> +<p>(Florence, 1490).</p> +</div> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Ne la degna stalla del dolce Bambino</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Gli Angeli cantano d’ 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">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">Il Verbo divino, che è sommo sapiente,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">In questo dì par che non sappia niente,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Guardal su’ l fieno, che gambetta piangente,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Como elli non fusse huomo divino.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15">[15]</a><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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">“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’ e mangiare.</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Un cibo espiato,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Et d’ 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16">[16]</a><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, “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.”</p> + +<p>To him is attributed that most poignant of Latin hymns, the +“Stabat Mater dolorosa”; he wrote also a joyous Christmas +pendant to it:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a><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.<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, “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 +<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 “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.”<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, “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.”<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, +“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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>The doctrine of the mystics, “Die in order to live,” fills +the last verses:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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 Blümlein 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 Röslein, 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18">[18]</a><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, +“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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“<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 thé,<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.”<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 “In dulci jubilo”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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 über das hailig kint</span><br /> +<span class="i2">gar unverborgen.</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Der ain raines herze hat, der darf nit sorgen.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20">[20]</a><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 naïve 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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Du herzliabste Muater, gib Acht auf dös 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 Kölden 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 Sünd.</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Es freut uns von Herzen dass d'ankomen bist;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Es hätt uns ja niemand zu helfen gewist.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21">[21]</a><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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Das Kind is in der Krippen glögn,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">So herzig und so rar!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Mei klâner Hansl war nix dgögn,</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 Händ so hübsch recht zart und fein,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">I hans angrürt mit Fleiss.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Aft hats auf mi an Schmutza gmacht,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">An Höscheza 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 Stâl kimt überâl</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Der kalte Wind herein.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22">[22]</a><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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“I pray you, sirus, boothe moore and lase,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Sing these caroles in Cristëmas,”</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.<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—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 +<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 “wassailing +neighbours, who make their rounds at Christmastide to drink a +cup and take a gift, and bring good fortune upon the house”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_2-27" id="Nanchor_2-27" href="#Note_2-27">{27}</a> +—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.</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.<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, “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 <i>goliards</i> or wandering scholars, and a +common feature is the interweaving of Latin with English words.</p> + +<p>Some, like the exquisite “I sing of a maiden that is makeles,”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Mary is quene of allë thinge,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And her sone a lovely kinge.</span><br /> +<span class="i2">God graunt us allë good endinge!</span><br /> +<span class="i5"><i>Regnat dei gracia</i>.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">Blessëd be God this game is begonne</span><br /> +<span class="i3">And his moder emperesse of helle.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“It was dark, it was dim,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">For men that levëd 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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Jhesus is that childës 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">* * * * *</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 hertë now sing we</span><br /> +<span class="i5"><i>Gloria tibi domine</i>.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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 herdës 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">* * * * *</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">‘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.’</span><br /> +<span class="i9">Ut hoy!</span><br /> +<span class="i3">For in his pipe he made so much joy.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">‘Lullay, my child, and slepe.’</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">‘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 clothës have I none.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">‘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">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">‘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.’”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">‘My little son, with thee I play,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And come,’ she sang, ‘by, lullaby.’</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Thus rockëd 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>Rockëd I my child.</i></span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>By-by, by-by, by-by, lullaby,</i></span><br /> +<span class="i3"><i>Rockëd I my child.</i> ”<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>Noël</i>—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.</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>(Musée Condé, 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<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>Noël</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>Noëls</i> 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.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-2" id="Nanchor_3-2" href="#Note_3-2">{2}</a> +</p> + +<p>Some of the early <i>Noëls</i> 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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Célébrons 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 mediâ</i>,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Est né dans une étable,</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>De castâ Mariâ</i>.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Mille esprits angéliques,</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">* * * * *</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’à la fin de la vie,</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>Det regnum beatum</i>.”<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>Noël</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>Noëlistes</i> 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 <i>Noëls</i> appeared posthumously under the pseudonym of +“Comte d'Alsinoys.”</p> + +<p>Lucas le Moigne represents the <i>esprit gaulois</i>, 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 +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_57" id="Page_57" href="#Page_57">57</a>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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">—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 Rédemption.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">Or nous dites, Marie,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Du lieu impérial,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Fut-ce en chambre parée,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Ou en Palais royal?</span><br /> +<span class="i2">—En une pauvre étable</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Ouverte à 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 confortée?</span><br /> +<span class="i2">—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’étrange région.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</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 ès montagnes</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Leurs brebis & aigneaux.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_58" id="Page_58" href="#Page_58">58</a></span><br /> +<span class="i2">—Ceux-là m'ont visitée</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Par grande affection;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Moult me fut agréable</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Leur visitation.”<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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">“C'est ung très grant mystère</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Qu'ung roy de si hault pris</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Vient naistre en lieu austère,</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 Jésus nostre frère,</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 Jésuchrist,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Notre Dieu, notre frère,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Saluons le doulx Jésuchrist,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Chantons Noel d'esprit!</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">En luy faisant prière,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Soyons de son party,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Qu'en sa haulte emperière</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">Jésus nostre bon frère,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Comme il nous a droict apparty</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Au céleste convy.</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Saluons, etc.</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Amen. Noel.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Suz, Bergiez, en campaigne,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Laissez là 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">* * * * *</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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Entre le boeuf & le bouvet,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Noel nouvellet,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Voulust Jésus 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 trouvèrent 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!”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">“Laissez paître vos bestes</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Pastoureaux, par monts et par vaux;</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Laissez paître vos bestes,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Et allons chanter Nau.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">J'ai ouï 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 résonneau,<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 tête,</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 paître, etc.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Nous dîmes 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 Péronelle?</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Ce sera Talebot.</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Laissez paître, 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?—</span><br /> +<span class="i4">J'attends Guillot.—</span><br /> +<span class="i3">J'ai rompu ma courette,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Il faut ramancher mon sabot.—</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Or, tiens cette aiguillette,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Elle y servira trop.</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Laissez paître, etc.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Nous courumes de grand’ roideur</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Pour voir notre doux Rédempteur</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Et Créateur</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Et Formateur,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Qui était tendre d'aage</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Et sans linceux en grand besoin,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Il gisait en la crêche</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Sur un botteau de foin.</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Laissez paître, 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 mère avecque lui était:</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Et Joseph si lui éclairait,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Point ne semblait</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Au beau fillet,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Il n’était point son père;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Je l'aperçus bien au cameau (<i>visage</i>)</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Il semblait à sa mère,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Encore est-il plus beau.</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Laissez paître, etc.”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>This is but one of a large class of French <i>Noëls</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—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>Noëls</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>.<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, Françoise +Paschal, of Lyons (b. about 1610); in spite of her +Latinity she shows a real feeling for her subjects. Some of her +<i>Noëls</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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">“<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 céans,</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'Hôtesse.</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 trésors;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Voyez chez ma voisine,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Car, quant à 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'Hôte.</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.”<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 Noëlistes</i> 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 <i>Noëls</i>:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Quand la mièjonue sounavo,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Ai sautà dóu liech au sòu;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Ai vist un bèl ange que cantavo</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Milo fes pu dous qu'un roussignòu.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Lei mastin dóu 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 aquéu visage</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Se soun tout-d'un-cop mes à 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 sèns èstre envita:</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Trouvarien dins un petit estable</span><br /> +<span class="i2">La lumiero emai la verita.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24">[24]</a><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:—“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!”<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>Noëls</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 “Venez, divin Messie” of the Abbé Pellegrin.<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 “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, +<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, +“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.</p> + +<p>Another fine Latin hymn of the eighteenth-century French +Church is Charles Coffin's “Jam desinant suspiria.”<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 “God from on high hath heard.”</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>Noël</i> as a +literary form. In 1875 the bicentenary of Saboly's death was +celebrated by a competition for a <i>Noël</i> in the Provençal tongue, +and something of the same kind has been done in Brittany.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-15" id="Nanchor_3-15" href="#Note_3-15">{15}</a> + +The <i>Noël</i> 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.”</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>Noël</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>réveillon</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>Noël</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 López de Ubeda, Francisco +de Ocaña, and José de Valdivielso.<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 Ocaña:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">Está 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 poderío:</span><br /> +<span class="i2">es su reino y señorío</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">padeció frio en el heno,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">nuestro Jesus Nazareno.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25">[25]</a><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, “La +Noche de Navidad.”</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">“Ha nacido en un portal,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Llenito de telarañas,</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">* * * * *</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 José</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Y el niño que está en la cuna.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">En Belen tocan á 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 aquí,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Y al niño de Dios le traigo</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Un gallo quiquiriquí</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 niño 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 niño 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26">[26]</a><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 “Usi Natalizi.” Here are a +few stanzas from a Bergamesque cradle-song of the Blessed +Virgin:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">“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">Chiüdi i lümi, o mio tesor,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Dolce amor,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Di quest’ 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">Perchè piangi, o bambinell,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Forse il giel</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Ti dà 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27">[27]</a><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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-22" id="Nanchor_3-22" href="#Note_3-22">{22}</a> + The following French example is fairly +typical:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Comme les bestes autrefois</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Parloient mieux latin que françois,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Le coq, de loin voyant le fait,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">S’écria: <i>Christus natus est.</i></span><br /> +<span class="i2">Le bœuf, d'un air tout ébaubi,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Demande: <i>Ubi? Ubi? Ubi?</i></span><br /> +<span class="i2">La chèvre, se tordant le groin,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Répond que c'est à <i>Béthléem</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> ”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28">[28]</a><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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-25" id="Nanchor_3-25" href="#Note_3-25">{25}</a> + 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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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—not more old than thou?</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Mother—younger, can it be?</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Older, younger is the Son,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Younger, older, she than he.”<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 “Celtic” Christmas song has +been translated from the Gaelic by Mr. J. A. Campbell. It +begins:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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 “VOM HIMMEL HOCH” FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS." + title="SINGING “VOM HIMMEL HOCH” FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS." /> + </a> + <p class="caption">SINGING “VOM HIMMEL HOCH” 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: “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 +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_71" id="Page_71" href="#Page_71">71</a>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.”</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Ich bring euch gute neue Mär,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Der guten Mär 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">* * * * *</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 schöne Kindelein?</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Es ist das liebe Jesulein.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Ach Herr, du Schöpfer aller Ding,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Wie bist du worden so gering,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Dass du da liegst auf dürrem Gras,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Davon ein Rind und Esel ass?</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</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">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Davon ich allzeit fröhlich 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 süssen Ton.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29">[29]</a><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>“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.”</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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’ erhält allein.</span><br /> +<span class="i7"><i>Kyrieleis!</i> ”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30">[30]</a><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 “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.</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 “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 <i>Weihnachtslieder</i>, +“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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Dieser Zeit,</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Da für Freud</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Alle Engel singen.</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Hört, hört, 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">* * * * *</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 süssen Lippen:</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Lasset fahrn, O lieben Brüder</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Was euch quält,</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">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Süsses Heil, lass dich umfangen;</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Lass mich dir,</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Meine Zier,</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Unverrückt 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31">[31]</a><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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Chöre,</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">König 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 erwähle allein,</span><br /> +<span class="i5">Ewig entsag’ ich der Sünde.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Treuer Immanuel, werd’ auch in mir neu geboren;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Komm doch, mein Heiland, und lass mich nicht länger 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32">[32]</a><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—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<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33">[33]</a><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 “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 +<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 “Cherry-tree Carol”:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“As Joseph was a-walking,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">He heard an angel sing:</span><br /> +<span class="i2">‘This night shall be born</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Our heavenly King.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">‘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">‘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">‘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">‘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.’”</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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“’O we are lords’ and ladies’ 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.’<a class="pagenum" name="Page_79" id="Page_79" href="#Page_79">79</a></span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">‘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.’</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">‘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.’”</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 “The Burning Babe,” +few will be sorry to find it here:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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, scorchèd 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">‘Alas!’ quoth He, ‘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 defilèd 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.’</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 callèd unto mind</span><br /> +<span class="i3">That it was Christmas Day.”<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">“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—”<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—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.</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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-40" id="Nanchor_3-40" href="#Note_3-40">{40}</a> +</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>And Vaughan:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_3-41" id="Nanchor_3-41" href="#Note_3-41">{41}</a> +</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>In Herrick—how different a country parson from Herbert!—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>Noëliste</i> or some present-day Italian worshipper of the +<i>Bambino</i>:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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—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 “Christ's Victory in Heaven”:—<a class="pagenum" name="Page_83" id="Page_83" href="#Page_83">83</a></p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Who can forget—never to be forgot—</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 awakèd 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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">* * * * *</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.”<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:—<a class="pagenum" name="Page_84" id="Page_84" href="#Page_84">84</a></p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">* * * * *</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">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Lo He slumbers in His manger</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Where the hornèd oxen fed;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">—Peace, my darling, here's no danger;</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Here's no ox a-near thy bed.”<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 +“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.</p> + +<p>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 +<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 “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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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!”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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—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 <i>Presepio</i> 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 <i>Presepio</i> in Italy—Ceremonies with the <i>Culla</i> and +the <i>Bambino</i> in Rome—Christmas in Italian London—The Spanish Christmas—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—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<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 +“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,”<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">“<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).”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p><i>Rorate, coeli, desuper</i>—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, “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.<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>—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—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.”<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. “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.”</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 “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:—<a class="pagenum" name="Page_93" id="Page_93" href="#Page_93">93</a></p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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—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.<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—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.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36">[36]</a> Then followed the chanting of the “Te Deum.”<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 “L'Oblat.”<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-8" id="Nanchor_4-8" href="#Note_4-8">{8}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<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 “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>i.e.</i>, 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.<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. “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 <i>bambino</i>—wrap it in +swaddling bands and lay it on the site which is said to be +that of the manger.”<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’ Anastasia—perhaps +because of the resemblance of the name to the Anastasis at +Jerusalem—and the third at St. Peter's.<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 “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 +<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’ 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.<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.<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 “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.</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.<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:—<a class="pagenum" name="Page_97" id="Page_97" href="#Page_97">97</a></p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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.<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, “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 +<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.<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.<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.<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.<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—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</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“In Bethlehem geboren</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Ist uns ein Kindelein.”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>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 +<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.<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.<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.<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.<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), “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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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!”<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 “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.<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 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.</p> + +<p>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.<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.<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 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 “Magnificat” at the +Second Vespers of the feast:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”</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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-31" id="Nanchor_4-31" href="#Note_4-31">{31}</a> + 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.<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 +“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 +<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.<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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—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.”<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 “styles,” 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.<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 “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.”<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 “crib” (French <i>crèche</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 “bright shoots of everlastingness,” 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: “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.<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<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-39" id="Nanchor_4-39" href="#Note_4-39">{39}</a> + 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 <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 “Officium Pastorum,” which probably took shape +in the eleventh century, we find a <i>praesepe</i> behind the altar as the +centre of the action<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—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.”<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 “manger” in which the consecrated Host +was laid, as once the body of the Holy Child in the crib at Bethlehem.<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.<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.<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—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 +<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.<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.<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 “cradle-rocking,” 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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Joseph, lieber neve mîn,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Hilf mir wiegen daz kindelîn.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Gerne, liebe muome mîn,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Hilf ich dir wiegen dîn kindelîn.”<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 “PRESEPIO.”" + title="A NEAPOLITAN “PRESEPIO.”" /> + </a> + <p class="caption">A NEAPOLITAN “PRESEPIO.”</p> + +<p><i>Photo</i>] [<i>Meisenbach, Riffarth & 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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-47" id="Nanchor_4-47" href="#Note_4-47">{47}</a> + “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:—</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">“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 süss! O Jesulein süss!</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Lasst uns sein Händel und Füsse,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Sein feuriges Herzlein grüssen!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Und ihn demütiglich eren</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Als unsern Gott und Herren!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">O Jesulein süss! O Jesulein süss!”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38">[38]</a><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, “Resonet in laudibus” and “Quem +pastores laudavere,”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">Tûste das, so wiss wir, dass uns wol geschicht.”<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: “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 <i>in +dulci jubilo</i>.”<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-52" id="Nanchor_4-52" href="#Note_4-52">{52}</a> + This usage is +described by Naogeorgus (1553):—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">“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.”<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 “Holy Child” 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—and the growth of a pseudo-classical taste—caused +its abolition in most places.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-54" id="Nanchor_4-54" href="#Note_4-54">{54}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_4-55" id="Nanchor_4-55" href="#Note_4-55">{55}</a> + According to a recent +writer the “rocking” is still continued in the Upper Innthal.<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: “Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the +boys are often very ill-behaved.”<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 +Mühlkreis 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.<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 +“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.<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. “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.”<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 “per politezza al messer San +Giuseppe.”<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>.<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 “Every-day Book” (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 ‘cello and violin. “All day long,” writes Signora +Caico about Montedoro in Caltanissetta, “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.”</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. “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 <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.” A full translation of +a long and very interesting and pathetic <i>novena</i> is given by +Signora Caico.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39">[39]</a><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 “Bethlehems” are made at home with cardboard +and moss.<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—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.<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>. +“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.”<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 “PRESEPIO” AT GRECCIO." + title="ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE “PRESEPIO” AT GRECCIO." /> + </a> + <p class="caption">ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE “PRESEPIO” 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 “BAMBINO” OF ARA COELI." + title="THE “BAMBINO” OF ARA COELI." /> + </a> + <p class="caption">THE “BAMBINO” 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. +“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.” 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.<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>—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.<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 “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 <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.<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—“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 <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.<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—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<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 “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 <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:—“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.”<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, “La Noche de +Navidad.”<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 “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.<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 “Advent images” before Christmas Eve, and the bearers +sang the well-known carol of the “Joys of Mary.”<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.<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 “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.<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—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.</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 “miracles” and “mysteries” 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<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—most remarkable +fact of all—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 “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 +<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.)”</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>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.<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 “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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“<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.)”<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 “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 <i>praesepe</i> 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 +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_125" id="Page_125" href="#Page_125">125</a>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.<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, “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.”<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“Stella fulgore nimio rutilat. (The star glows with exceeding +brightness.)”</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>The second monarch answers:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“Quae regem regum natum demonstrat. (Which shows the birth +of the King of Kings.)”<a class="pagenum" name="Page_126" id="Page_126" href="#Page_126">126</a></p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>And the third:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“Quem venturum olim prophetiae signaverant. (To whose coming +the prophecies of old had pointed.)”</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Then the Magi kiss one another and together sing:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.)”</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—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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“Suscipe, rex, aurum. (Receive, O King, gold.)”</span><br /> +<span class="i2">“Tolle thus, tu vere Deus. (Accept incense, Thou very God.)”</span><br /> +<span class="i2">“Myrrham, signum sepulturae. (Myrrh, the sign of burial.)”</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.<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 “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 +<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 “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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-7" id="Nanchor_5-7" href="#Note_5-7">{7}</a> + 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.”</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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-8" id="Nanchor_5-8" href="#Note_5-8">{8}</a> +</p> + +<p>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 +<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 “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.</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 “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,<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<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 “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.</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 “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.</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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“<i>Joseph.</i> Heyl, wurchepful sere, and good day!</span><br /> +<span class="i3">A ceteceyn of this cytë ye seme to be;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Of herborwe<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 werë,</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 cytë.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2"><i>Cives.</i> 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 cetë 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<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44">[44]</a> withinne the cytë gate;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Onethys<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> 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> 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<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> 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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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!<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<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.”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>Joseph, who has gone out to get a light, returns, and this +dialogue follows:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“<i>Joseph.</i> Say, Marie doghtir, what chere with the?</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>Mary.</i> Right goode, Joseph, as has been ay.</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>Joseph.</i> O Marie! what swete thyng is that on thy kne?</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>Mary.</i> It is my sone, the soth to saye, that is so gud</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>Joseph.</i> Wel is me I bade this day, to se this foode!<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<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> 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">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2"><i>Joseph.</i> Nowe welcome, floure fairest of hewe,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">I shall the menske<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<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> 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<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> 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> 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.”<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 +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 +<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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">“<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.”<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 “wache and wake.”</p> + +<p>More famous than this Chester “Pastores” are the two +shepherd plays in the Towneley cycle.<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—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.</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 “al lappyd +in sorow.” They talk, almost like modern Socialists, of the +oppressions of the rich:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“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,<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54">[54]</a></span><br /> +<span class="i3">For-taxed and ramyd,<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<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56">[56]</a> us our rest, Our Lady theym wary!<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,<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58">[58]</a> they cause the ploghe tary.”</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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“<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.”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>Mak tries to put him off, but the shepherd will have +his way:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>So the secret is out. Mak's wife gives a desperate explanation:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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 “Gloria in excelsis” and the +call of the angel:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59">[59]</a> to sheynd,<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<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.”</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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">“<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 warëd,<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62">[62]</a> I weene,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">The warlo<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,<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,<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65">[65]</a></span><br /> +<span class="i2">Lo! he laghës, my sweting.</span><br /> +<span class="i2">A welfare meting!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">I have holden my heting.<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<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67">[67]</a> foyde<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 tinë mop!<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;<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;<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71">[71]</a></span><br /> +<span class="i3">My hart woldë blede</span><br /> +<span class="i2">To see thee sitt here</span><br /> +<span class="i3">In so poorë wede,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">With no pennys.</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Hail! Put forth thy dall!<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!”<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—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.</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.<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 “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 <i>establies</i> or “mansions” set up for the various +scenes reached across the market-place from the “Axe and +Crown” Inn to the “Angel.”</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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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">“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">* * * * *</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">* * * * *</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.”</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 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.<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. Geneviève +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 “Le grant Kalendrier compost des Bergiers” +(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 +“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.<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.<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 Macée, hermit, probably written in the +seventeenth century, was commonly performed in the first half +of the nineteenth.<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, “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.<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 +“innocent” whose throat they pretended to cut with a wooden +sword.<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.<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—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.</p> + +<p>A rather similar piece of dramatic ceremonial is described by +Barthélemy in his edition of Durandus,<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>crèche</i> 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 <i>crèche</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-bénits</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—they “returned glorifying and praising +God for all the things they had heard and seen.”</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—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.<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—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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-29" id="Nanchor_5-29" href="#Note_5-29">{29}</a> + 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.</p> + +<p>One is made to feel very vividly the amazement of the shepherds +at the wondrous and sudden apparition of the angels:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“<i>Riepl.</i> Woas is das für a Getümmel,</span><br /> +<span class="i6">I versteh mi nit in d'Welt.</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>Jörgl.</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 Sprüng 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74">[74]</a><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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“<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">Lägts ihm doch a Gwandl oan!</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>J.</i> Machts ihm d'Füess ein,</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Hüllts in zue fein!”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75">[75]</a><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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76">[76]</a><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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“<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">* * * * *</span><br /></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2"><i>J.</i> Pfüet di Gôt halt!<a class="pagenum" name="Page_146" id="Page_146" href="#Page_146">146</a></span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>R.</i> Wär 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77">[77]</a><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<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>.<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>.<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 “Natività,”<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, +“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.”<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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’ 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.”<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—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 “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,<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 “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 +<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.<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.<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—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” +(<i>garzon repìcado</i>)—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 “The Birth of Christ”<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, “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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!”<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 “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.</p> + +<p>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.<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>.<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 “Stella” is +described in Fernan Caballero's sketch, “La Noche de Navidad.”<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 “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.</p> + +<p>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.<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.<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.<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.<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.<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—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“‘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.’”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>But they answer:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“‘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.’”<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 “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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_5-53" id="Nanchor_5-53" href="#Note_5-53">{53}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<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 +“manger,” illuminated from behind, forms the centre, and the +star also shows pictures of Adam and Eve and angels.<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 “Vicleim” (from Bethlehem), in Moldavia and +Transylvania “Irozi” (plural from <i>Irod</i> = 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 <i>paiaţa</i> (the clown) +and the <i>moşul</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.” The play is sometimes +performed by puppets instead of living actors.<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 “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 ‘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.”<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,<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.<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 “Posadas,” described +by Madame Calderon de la Barca in her “Life in Mexico” +(1843).<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, +“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—angels, shepherds, and all, and +danced till supper-time.”<a class="noteanchor" href="#Note_5-60">{60}</a> + Here the religious drama has sunk to +little more than a “Society” 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>—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.</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, +“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.<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—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—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>—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. “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.”<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—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—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—Nature of Pagan Survivals—Racial Origins—Roman +Festivals of the <i>Saturnalia</i> 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—<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—Compromise in the Later Middle Ages—The Puritans +and Christmas—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—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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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—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.</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.<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, “they still emerge, unchanged and unchanging, like the +quaint outcrops of some ancient rock formation amid rich +vegetation and fragrant flowers.”<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—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.</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 “that in order to produce the great phenomena of nature +on which his life depended he had only to imitate them.”<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 “Aryan” 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.<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, “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.”<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. “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 +<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.”<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><a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-8" id="Nanchor_7-8" href="#Note_7-8">{8}</a> + 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 <i>sigillariorum celebritas</i>, for the sale +of little images of clay or paste which were given away as +presents.<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 “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.<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“<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> ”</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 “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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“<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> ”<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; “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.”<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 “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.<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 “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.<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.<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 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—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>étrennes</i> (New +Year's presents).<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.... +<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.”<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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-19" id="Nanchor_7-19" href="#Note_7-19">{19}</a> + Dr. Tille<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>.<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 “Mediaeval Stage”<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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 (<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.”<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.<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.<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>hwéol</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.<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.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83">[83]</a><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>—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.<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.<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’ 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.<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,<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 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 +<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.<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’ 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:—</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 “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 +<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—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.<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—defined by Dr. Frazer<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-34" id="Nanchor_7-34" href="#Note_7-34">{34}</a> + 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.<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.<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84">[84]</a><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 +“spirits” had arisen, when man was conscious rather of a vague +force like the Melanesian <i>mana</i>, in himself and in almost everything, +and “constantly trembling on the verge of personality.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-38" id="Nanchor_7-38" href="#Note_7-38">{38}</a> + +“<i>Mana</i> ” 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 +<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—communicate.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-39" id="Nanchor_7-39" href="#Note_7-39">{39}</a> + “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.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-40" id="Nanchor_7-40" href="#Note_7-40">{40}</a> + 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 <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—except upon certain +solemn occasions—and may have become friendly towards man +through living by his side.<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.<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—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.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85">[85]</a><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. “Everywhere,” says Robertson Smith, +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_179" id="Page_179" href="#Page_179">179</a>“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.”<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. “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.”<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—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;<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-47" id="Nanchor_7-47" href="#Note_7-47">{47}</a> + in the Christmas “kings” 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—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 +<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’ 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.<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.<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 “those three Sisters whom the +ancients in their folly called <i>Parcae</i>.”<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 “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 <i>Modranicht</i> (night of mothers), which +Bede gives to Christmas Eve,<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 “ghosts” 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.<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 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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_7-54" id="Nanchor_7-54" href="#Note_7-54">{54}</a> + The principle that “well begun +is well ended”—or, as the Germans have it, “<i>Anfang gut, alles +gut</i> ”—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.</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 “Largum Sero” of a certain monk Alsso of Brĕvnov, 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:—</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—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—they were, in fact, carol-singers. Moreover with their +incense they would drive out the Devil from every corner.<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 “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?”<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—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”:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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. “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.<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 “progress” 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’ 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 <i>Schimmelreiter</i>, 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.</p> + +</blockquote> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">All Saints’ and All Souls’ 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 1) +the beginning of Christmas.<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 1,<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86">[86]</a><a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-2" id="Nanchor_8-2" href="#Note_8-2">{2}</a> + and the Teutonic about November 11.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-3" id="Nanchor_8-3" href="#Note_8-3">{3}</a> +</p> + +<p>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 +<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—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.</p> + +<p>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,<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 “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.<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’ 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.</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 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 +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_191" id="Page_191" href="#Page_191">191</a>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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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’ 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’ 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.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-8" id="Nanchor_8-8" href="#Note_8-8">{8}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<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’ +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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-10" id="Nanchor_8-10" href="#Note_8-10">{10}</a> + In Tyrol it is believed that +the “poor souls” are present in the howling winds that often blow +at this time.<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’ 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.”<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’ 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 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 +<i>morti</i> in whose coming their parents have taught them to +believe.<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’,<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-15" id="Nanchor_8-15" href="#Note_8-15">{15}</a> +</p> + +<p>Another practice on All Saints’ and All Souls’ 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 “soul-cakes.” These and the quest of them by children +were customary in various English counties and in Scotland.<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 “apples and strong beer,” presumably to +make a “wassail-bowl” of “lambswool,” hot spiced ale with roast +apples in it.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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 “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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-19" id="Nanchor_8-19" href="#Note_8-19">{19}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<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.<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’ 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.”<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 “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 <i>pane dei morti</i>.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-22" id="Nanchor_8-22" href="#Note_8-22">{22}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<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.<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<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88">[88]</a>:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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 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.<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;<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<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-27" id="Nanchor_8-27" href="#Note_8-27">{27}</a> + and in Wales<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 “Nutcrack night.”<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’ Eve—“Allan Day” as it is called.<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. “As they burn quietly together +or start from beside one another, the course and issue of the +courtship will be.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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. “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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-34" id="Nanchor_8-34" href="#Note_8-34">{34}</a> +</p> + +<p>“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.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-35" id="Nanchor_8-35" href="#Note_8-35">{35}</a> +</p> + +<p>In Scotland<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-36" id="Nanchor_8-36" href="#Note_8-36">{36}</a> + and Ireland<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 +“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.<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’ 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.<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.<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.<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.<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, “May +the tailless black sow seize the hindmost,” and everyone present +would run for his life.<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.<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.<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.<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.<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 5 is a +survival of a New Year bonfire. There is every reason to think +that the commemoration of the deliverance from “gunpowder +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_199" id="Page_199" href="#Page_199">199</a>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<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—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.<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.<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’ 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.<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—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.</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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-51" id="Nanchor_8-51" href="#Note_8-51">{51}</a> + “Old Hob” 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.<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>,<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.<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 “bear,” a youth dressed in straw +who plays the part of a bear tied to a pole.<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>“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.”<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 “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.”<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.<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.<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.<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 “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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-61" id="Nanchor_8-61" href="#Note_8-61">{61}</a> + Plot, in +his “Natural History of Staffordshire” (1686, p. 434) calls it a +“<i>Hobby-horse Dance</i> from a person who carried the image of a horse +between his legs, made of thin boards.”<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 “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 <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.<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’ 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.<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 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.<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.<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),<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.<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—“Martlemas beef”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-69" id="Nanchor_8-69" href="#Note_8-69">{69}</a> +—and in +the German eating of St. Martin's geese and swine.<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.<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.<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.<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>.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_8-75" id="Nanchor_8-75" href="#Note_8-75">{75}</a> + 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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Heb an Martini,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Trink Wein per circulum anni.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91">[91]</a><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.<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 “Martin's horns,” horseshoe pastries given at +Martinmas in many parts of Germany.<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.<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.<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,<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.<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.<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).<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—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 +<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 “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.<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.<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.<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 Düsseldorf +he used to be represented in his festival procession by a man +riding on another fellow's back.<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.<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—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; +<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.<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—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.<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?<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 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.<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>.<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 “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.</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—St. Catherine's Day as Spinsters’ Festival—St. +Andrew's Eve Auguries—The <i>Klöpfelnächte</i>—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’.”</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 23, once reckoned the first day of winter in +England.<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 +“souling” verses I have already quoted. Here is one of the +Staffordshire “clemencing” songs:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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.<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.<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,<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,<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-6" id="Nanchor_9-6" href="#Note_9-6">{6}</a> + 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.<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 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<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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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 “young person” both in schools and in +families.<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>“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.”<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 “Tander” or “Tandrew” 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.<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<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-14" id="Nanchor_9-14" href="#Note_9-14">{14}</a> +—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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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.<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.<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.<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.<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.<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,<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.<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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Sünten-Dres-Misse,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">es de Winter gewisse.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_93" id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93">[93]</a><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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-26" id="Nanchor_9-26" href="#Note_9-26">{26}</a> +</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Klöpfelnächte.</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>Klöpfel</i> or <i>Knöpflinsnächte</i> (Knocking Nights).<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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’ spight,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And dreadfull devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.”<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,<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 “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.”<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-31" id="Nanchor_9-31" href="#Note_9-31">{31}</a> + Anyhow +something mysterious hangs about the <i>Klöpfelnächte</i>. They are +occasions for girls to learn about their future husbands, and +upon them in Swabia goes about Pelzmärte, whom we already +know.<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 “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.<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 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.<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.<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.<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 +“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.<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.<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—the +hideous Klaubauf, a shaggy monster with horns, black face, fiery +eyes, long red tongue, and chains that clank as he moves.<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;<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;<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 Pelzmärte, +with a bell,<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.<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’ 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.<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.<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.<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.<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>viâ</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 “Boy Bishop” or “Nicholas.”<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 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’ 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.<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’ 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 13) and St. +Thomas the Apostle (December 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 “little Yule.”<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,<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_94" id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94">[94]</a> +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 +<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.<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>—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.<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. “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.<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.<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 +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 +<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.<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.<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: “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.”<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 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 +<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.<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 “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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_9-60" id="Nanchor_9-60" href="#Note_9-60">{60}</a> +</p> + +<p>As for schoolboys’ larks with their teachers, the custom of +“barring out the master” existed in England, and was practised +before Christmas<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.<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, “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.<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>Rauchnächte</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.<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.<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 “lazybones.” Probably the fact that December 21 +is the shortest day is enough to account for this.<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 “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 +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_226" id="Page_226" href="#Page_226">226</a>to show them their true love in a dream.<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 +“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.<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,<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 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.<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—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 <i>Frauen</i>—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—THE MUMMERS COMING IN" + title="CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE—THE MUMMERS COMING IN" /> + </a> + <p class="caption">CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE—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 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 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. “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.”<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, “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.</p> + +<p>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.<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 hêle</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.<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.<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 “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.<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>).<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-6" id="Nanchor_10-6" href="#Note_10-6">{6}</a> + As for +the name “Ruprecht” the older mythologists interpreted it +as meaning “shining with glory,” <i>hruodperaht</i>, and identified its +owner with the god Woden.<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.<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, +Pelzmärte, and monstrous creatures like the <i>Klapperbock</i>.</p> + +<p>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.<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—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.<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.<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 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 +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_233" id="Page_233" href="#Page_233">233</a>them in return. <i>Kolyáda</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.<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:—</p> + +<p>“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.”<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. “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.<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 “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,<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 “Sketches of Upper Canada,” relates that an +Indian told him that “on Christmas night all deer kneel and +look up to Great Spirit.”<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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Toute l'eau se tourne en vin,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Et tu es proche de ta fin.”</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.<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.<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.<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>—Death the +reaper.<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. “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.”<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’ 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.<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.<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<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.<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—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.”<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 +“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.<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. “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.”<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—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.<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—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.<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.<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>Kolyádki</i>, and in +other Slav countries by similar names derived from <i>Kalendae</i>.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">‘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!’”<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, “for many years, for many years.” The +Roumanian songs are frequently very long, and a typical, oft-recurring +refrain is:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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 “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 <i>Kolyádki</i>, and opens the +singing of the songs called <i>Podblyudnuiya</i>. “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.”<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—the “Twelve Days.”<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 “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.<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 “Hamlet”:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Some say that ever ‘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.”<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 “raging +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_240" id="Page_240" href="#Page_240">240</a>host” or “wild hunt” or spirits, rushing howling through the air +on stormy nights. In North Devon its name is “Yeth (heathen) +hounds”;<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 “Wish +hounds.”<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-42" id="Nanchor_10-42" href="#Note_10-42">{42}</a> + At least since the seventeenth century this +“raging host” (<i>das wüthende Heer</i>) has been particularly associated +with Christmas in German folk-lore,<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 “Yule host.”<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’ 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.<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, “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.<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.<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,<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.<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.<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.<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.<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>.<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.<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.<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—the chips that fell from the pole turned to glittering +gold. Similar stories of golden chips are told about Holda and +Berchta.<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.<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 “Wild Host.”</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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-58" id="Nanchor_10-58" href="#Note_10-58">{58}</a> +</p> + +<p>Holda, whose name means “the kindly one,” 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, “Frau +Holle is shaking her featherbed.”<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.<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>.<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.<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.<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.<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—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.<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—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.”<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.<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>.<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>.<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’ +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 +<a href="#Chapter_IV">Chapter IV.</a>, 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 +<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>Besides this ecclesiastical purification there are various Christian +precautions against the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i>—<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—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.</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’ sin in +bearing them at a time sacred to the Mother of God. In Macedonia<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_10-70" id="Nanchor_10-70" href="#Note_10-70">{70}</a> + +people who have a “light” 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 “elevated,” perhaps, +by Christmas feasting, while the human nature of the maskers +was not altogether forgotten.<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—“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.”<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, “a corpse imbued with a kind of half-life,” and +with eyes gleaming like live coals.<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 +“man-wolves” (λυκανθρωποι) 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 “black” and “werewolf.”<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.<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. +“the hairy-dun one”), “something between a man and a beast, +being covered with black shaggy hair and having fiery eyes,” and +prodigiously strong.<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,<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 “Blessing of the Waters” at the Epiphany.<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.<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—Customs of the Southern Slavs—The +<i>Polaznik</i>—Origin of the Yule Log—Probable Connection with Vegetation-cults or +Ancestor-worship—The <i>Souche de Noël</i> in France—Italian and German Christmas +Logs—English Customs—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—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.</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, “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 <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, +“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.<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—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 <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, “Christ is born,” whereupon some +member of the household sprinkles him with corn in return, +answering, “He is born indeed.” 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.<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.<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,<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, “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!’”<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<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:—(1) It is said on Christmas Eve, “To-night +Earth is blended with Paradise” [<i>Raj</i>, 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 +<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—an indication apparently of the extreme antiquity of +the celebration, as dating from a time when such implements +were unknown.<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.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_99" id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99">[99]</a><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.<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 Noël</i> is common in the less modernized +places, particularly in the south. In Dauphiné 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>tréfoir</i>, in +Orne <i>tréfouet</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.<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 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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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>‘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.’</p> + +<p>In chorus we responded:</p> + +<p>‘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.”<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>tréfoir</i> or <i>tison de Noël</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 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.<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.<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—the +Piedmontese call it <i>suc</i>—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.<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.<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>.<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.<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,<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“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’ 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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_100" id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100">[100]</a><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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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.<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, “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.<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 +“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.<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 +“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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_11-26" id="Nanchor_11-26" href="#Note_11-26">{26}</a> + Hampson, writing in 1841, +says:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_101" id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101">[101]</a><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.<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.<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—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 +<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.<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—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 <i>Strenae</i> and +St. Nicholas—Present-giving in Various Countries—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>. “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.”<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>—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 +<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 “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 +<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.”<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—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. “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.”<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, “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.”<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—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.<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.<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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-8" id="Nanchor_12-8" href="#Note_12-8">{8}</a> + +“It is more in vogue on the whole,” wrote Dr. Tille in 1893, +“in the Protestant north than in the Catholic south,”<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 “pyramid,” 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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-11" id="Nanchor_12-11" href="#Note_12-11">{11}</a> + Tieck refers to it in his story, +“Weihnacht-Abend” (1805).<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.<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.<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,<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.<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).<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-17" id="Nanchor_12-17" href="#Note_12-17">{17}</a> + In Bohemia it is +mentioned in 1862.<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,<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 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.<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.<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.<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—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.<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 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.<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.<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 24, but on January 5, the right day +according to the Old Style, the thorn blossomed as usual.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_102" id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102">[102]</a><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. “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.”<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 +“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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-28" id="Nanchor_12-28" href="#Note_12-28">{28}</a> + 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”;<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.<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 “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.<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.<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.<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—perhaps of +two quarters of a town that were once separate villages—for the +possession of a sacred object.<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—here we are on Greek ground—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; “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.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_104" id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104">[104]</a><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.<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—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.<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 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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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.<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.<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.<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—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<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-40" id="Nanchor_12-40" href="#Note_12-40">{40}</a> +—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 +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_273" id="Page_273" href="#Page_273">273</a>standards in the streets were likewise garnished.”<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—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.<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—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 “all-healer” and was believed +to be a remedy against poison and to make barren animals fruitful.<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—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.<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 “all-healer” is still given +to the mistletoe in Celtic speech,<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_106" id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106">[106]</a><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.<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 +“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.<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 “kissing +bunch.” Here is an account from Derbyshire:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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 “Sylvester,” 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.<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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-52" id="Nanchor_12-52" href="#Note_12-52">{52}</a> + +Holly is hated by witches,<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—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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Holly and Ivy made a great party,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Who should have the mastery,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">In landës where they go.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Then spoke Holly, ‘I am free and jolly,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">I will have the mastery,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">In landës where we go.’</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Then spake Ivy, ‘I am lov'd and prov'd,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And I will have the mastery,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">In landës where we go.’</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Then spake Holly, and set him down on his knee,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">‘I pray thee, gentle Ivy,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Say me no villainy,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">In landës where we go.’”<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.<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.<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<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-58" id="Nanchor_12-58" href="#Note_12-58">{58}</a> + and in Crivoscia.<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.<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.<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.<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, “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.”<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 1 is even now the +great day for presents, and they are actually called <i>étrennes</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—a survival perhaps of +the “honeyed things” 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<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.<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 +“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., <i>and the</i> ‘<i>Christ-rod</i>.’”<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,<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 Jésus</i> who bears the +welcome gifts.<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.<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’ Eve; sometimes it is <i>la Vecchia +di Natali</i>—the Christmas old woman—who comes with them +on Christmas Eve; sometimes they are brought by the old +woman Strina—note the derivation from <i>strenae</i>—at the New +Year; sometimes by the Befana at the Epiphany.<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—perhaps +borrowed—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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-71" id="Nanchor_12-71" href="#Note_12-71">{71}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<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’, 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.<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 +“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.<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 Waldmûller (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—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.</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. “Ha più da fare che i +forni di Natale in Inghilterra,”<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.<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 “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 +<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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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> ”<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 “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.<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 “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.<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 “frumenty” or +“furmety” (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, &c.<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 “sup,” as +also a piece of a large apple-pie.<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.<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, “made of flour, barm, large cooking raisins, +currants, lemon-peel, and nutmeg,” and about as large as a +dinner-plate.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-8" id="Nanchor_13-8" href="#Note_13-8">{8}</a> + In Shropshire “wigs” or caraway buns dipped +in ale were eaten on Christmas Eve.<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.<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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-12" id="Nanchor_13-12" href="#Note_13-12">{12}</a> +</p> + +<p>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”). <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 hál</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.<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,<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 “the Vessel [Wassail] Cup.”<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.<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.<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>,<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-18" id="Nanchor_13-18" href="#Note_13-18">{18}</a> + in Russia pigs’ trotters +are a favourite dish at the New Year,<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.<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.<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—he who bakes it will have money +all the year—and in many parts of Germany and also in Styria +carp is then consumed.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-22" id="Nanchor_13-22" href="#Note_13-22">{22}</a> + Round Ercé in Brittany the family +dish is cod.<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>Noël</i>. In Berry on Christmas morning loaves called +<i>cornabœux</i>, made in the shape of horns or a crescent, are distributed +to the poor. In Lorraine people give one another <i>cognés</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>cornabœux</i> are known +as <i>hôlais</i>, and ploughmen give to the poor as many of these +loaves as they possess oxen and horses.<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—such were the thin unleavened cakes +sold in the early nineteenth century at La Châtre (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.<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.<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 +“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.<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 “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.<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>—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, <i>lebkuchen</i>, <i>pfeffernüsse</i>, <i>printen</i>, +<i>spekulatius</i> 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.<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 “Rorate, coeli, +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_289" id="Page_289" href="#Page_289">289</a>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.<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, “all creation should rejoice at Christmas, and the dumb +creatures had no other manner of doing so.”<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, +“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.”<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.<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.<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.<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,<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-36" id="Nanchor_13-36" href="#Note_13-36">{36}</a> + as also in Sweden,<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 à nos gâteaux.</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 “eldest ox,” and if he throws it off it is a good +sign.<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 “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.”<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>.<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<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.<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—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.<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’ quarters to divide the wafer +there.<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.<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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_110" id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110">[110]</a><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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-48" id="Nanchor_13-48" href="#Note_13-48">{48}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<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.<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<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_13-51" id="Nanchor_13-51" href="#Note_13-51">{51}</a> + +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.</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 “Haxey hood.”</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>, “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.”<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,<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—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>)—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.<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.<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 “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.<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’ PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE BOY BISHOP</h2> + + +<blockquote> + +<p>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.</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, “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.<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 “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.</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 “disguises” +regular dramatic performances. A notable example is Ben Jonson's +“Masque of Christmas.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-2" id="Nanchor_14-2" href="#Note_14-2">{2}</a> + Shakespeare, however, gives us +in “Henry VIII.”<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—the “Lord of Misrule.”<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 “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.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Mummers’ 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: “mummers” and “guisers” are the +commonest; in Sussex they are “tipteerers,” perhaps because of +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_299" id="Page_299" href="#Page_299">299</a>the perquisites they collect, in Cornwall “geese-dancers” +(“geese” no doubt comes from “disguise”), in Shropshire +“morris”—or “merry”—“dancers.”<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.<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.<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<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—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>quête</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 “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.”<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—the slaying—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—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.<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’ 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,<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_112" id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112">[112]</a> 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 <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, +“Pace-eggers’” or “Pasque-eggers’” play.<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—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.<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 “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.<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 “fool” 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. +“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.’”<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. +“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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_14-17" id="Nanchor_14-17" href="#Note_14-17">{17}</a> + Readers of Tolstoy's “War and Peace” +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 “The Mediaeval Stage.”<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:—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 +<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 “Deposuit +potentes de sede: et exaltavit humiles” was being sung at the +“Magnificat,” it would appear that the precentor's <i>baculus</i> 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.</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. “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.</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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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 “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 +<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 “Prose of the Ass.” It begins as +follows:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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 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 <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 “bishop,” and +was chosen by <i>sociétés 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’ ears, probably +a relic of the primitive days when the heads of sacrificed animals +were worn by festal worshippers.<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’ 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.</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 “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 +<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’ 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.</p> + +<p>Examples of such discourses are still extant,<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 “the ryghte reverende fader and worshypfull +lorde my broder Bysshopp of London, your dyoceasan,” and +“my worshypfull broder [the] Deane of this cathedrall +chirche,”<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, “Yt is not so +long sens I was one of them myself.”<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 “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.</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 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 <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 “bishop” to the “lord” first of +the boys’ 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 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.”<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 “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.”<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 +“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” <i>âne</i>—a memory this +of the old <i>asinaria festa</i>.<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, “Here we consecrate a Yule-bishop,” +and offered him nuts and apples.<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’ DAYS</h2> + +<blockquote> + +<p>Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day—The Swedish St. Stephen—St. John's +Wine—Childermas and its Beatings.</p> + +</blockquote> + + +<p>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.</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.<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,<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.<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.<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.<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.<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.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-8" id="Nanchor_15-8" href="#Note_15-8">{8}</a> + 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.<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 “horsy” aspect of the festival +is most obvious.<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 “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 +<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 “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 +<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Stephen out of kitchen came,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">With boarës head on hand,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">He saw a star was fair and bright</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Over Bethlehem stand.”</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.<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 +“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.<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 “horsiness” 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 “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.<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.<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>.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_15-16" id="Nanchor_15-16" href="#Note_15-16">{16}</a> +</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Holy Innocents’ Day.</span></h3> + +<p>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.<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’ 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.”<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<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’ +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 +“peppering” (<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">“Fresh green! Long life!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Give me a bright <i>thaler</i> [or nuts, &c.].”</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">“Fresh green, fair and fine,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Gingerbread and brandy-wine”;</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’ 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.<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’ 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—<i>innocenter</i>.<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’ 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.<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—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.</p> + +</blockquote> + + +<p>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.<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 “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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<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.”<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, “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.<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 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>recherché</i> +delicacies; it is the gala season of the year.</p> + +<p>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.<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 “New +Year boxes” 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 “Prosit Neu Jahr!”, a +drinking of healths, and a shaking of hands.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-5" id="Nanchor_16-5" href="#Note_16-5">{5}</a> +</p> + +<p>New Year wishes and “compliments of the season” 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 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.”<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,<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 “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.”<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 “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 <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 “Great” and “Little” Christmas.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-9" id="Nanchor_16-9" href="#Note_16-9">{9}</a> +</p> + +<p>The “first-foot” 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 “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 <i>polaznik's</i> action in going straight to the hearth and striking +sparks from the Christmas log,<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 “let the New Year in” “always entered +without knocking or speaking, and silently stirred the fire before +he offered any greeting to the family.”<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, +“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.<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 “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.<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 +“The Golden Bough,”<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<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-14" id="Nanchor_16-14" href="#Note_16-14">{14}</a> + and in Germany<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 “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.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-16" id="Nanchor_16-16" href="#Note_16-16">{16}</a> +</p> + +<p>“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.<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 “lucky bird” used to +come at dawn on Christmas morning as well as on New Year's +Day, and bring a sprig of evergreens<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-18" id="Nanchor_16-18" href="#Note_16-18">{18}</a> +—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.<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 “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.<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 “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.<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—the natural antagonism of an indigenous dark-haired +people to a race of blonde invaders.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-22" id="Nanchor_16-22" href="#Note_16-22">{22}</a> + 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.<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 1 a +great day for visiting and feasting, the chief, in fact, of all +festivals.<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 +“Daft Days”; cakes and pastry of all kinds are eaten, healths +are drunk, and calls are paid.<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. +“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.”<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 “Auld Lang Syne,” 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. “On the approach of twelve o'clock, a <i>hot pint</i> 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.<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 “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.<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 “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.<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>Rauchnächte</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.<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 “breast-stripe” of a +sheep, deer, or goat, wrapped round the point of a shinty stick.<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 “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.<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 “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 +<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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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!”<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>—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 +<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>hoguinané</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>.<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>quêteurs</i>:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Si vous veniez à la dépense,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">À la dépense 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 à payer.</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Hoguinano.”<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, +“Who's there?” they would answer, “The <i>hoguihanneu</i>,” 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>.<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 “<i>au guyané</i>,” and were given pieces +of lard or salt beef, which they stuck on a long spit.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Oguinâni! Oguinâno!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Ouvre ta pouque, et pis la recclios.”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_115" id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115">[115]</a><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.<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 “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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”</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.<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. “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.<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,<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.<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>quête</i> 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.”<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>. “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.”<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 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.<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—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.<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.<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 +“cream of the well”—the first pitcherful of water—and with it +the prospect of the best luck.<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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-50" id="Nanchor_16-50" href="#Note_16-50">{50}</a> + 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.”<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 “as much gold as is the weight of the stone.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_16-52" id="Nanchor_16-52" href="#Note_16-52">{52}</a> + 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.”<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 “new water” tradition, contain much that is of doubtful +interpretation, and are a fascinating puzzle for folk-lorists:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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,—</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,—</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Open you the East Door,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">And let the New Year in.”<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 “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.</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.<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.<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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 +<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—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.”<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 “King of the Bean” Herrick may be +quoted:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“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.”<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 “king” +is mentioned in royal accounts as early as the reign of Edward II.<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, Étienne Pasquier:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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: <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.”<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.<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.<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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 <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.”<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>gâteau 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.<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 +“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>.”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-10" id="Nanchor_17-10" href="#Note_17-10">{10}</a> +</p> + +<p>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.<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,<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-12" id="Nanchor_17-12" href="#Note_17-12">{12}</a> + and that the +“King of the Bean” is known in modern Italy, though there he +may be an importation from the north.<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.<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. “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.<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.<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’ 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 “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?</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, &c., in order to +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_342" id="Page_342" href="#Page_342">342</a>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.<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.<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.<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.<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—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.<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 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.<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 “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.”<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.<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.<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 “Pasqua Epiphania,”<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_117" id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117">[117]</a> the northern contraction not having +been acclimatized there.<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.<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.<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—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.<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.<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.<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 “The Magic Art.”<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—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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">“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!—bushel—sacks full,</span><br /> +<span class="i6">And my pockets full too! Huzza!”<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.<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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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 “worsling”) of fruit-trees took +place on Christmas Eve, and was accompanied by a trumpeter +blowing on a cow's horn.<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—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 +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_346" id="Page_346" href="#Page_346">346</a>may bear well next year.<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,<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.<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.<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.<a class="fnanchor" name="FNanchor_118" id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118">[118]</a> 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.<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 “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.<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, “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.<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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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 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. <a href="#Page_352">352</a>), 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:—</p> + +<p>“Now, good folks, this is Haxa’ 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—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">‘Hoose agin hoose, toon agin toon,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And if you meet a man knock him doon.’”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>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.”<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—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.<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.<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 “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.”<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 “The Village Community,” from the +<i>Oswestry Observer</i> 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.<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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Àdieu les Rois</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Jusqu’à douze mois,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Douze mois passés</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Les bougelées.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Noël is leaving us,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Sad ‘tis to tell,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">But he will come again,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Adieu, Noël.</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’ the snow.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">* * * * *</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.”<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.<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 13, “St. Knut's Day,” the twentieth after +Christmas.</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“Twentieth day Knut</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Driveth Yule out”</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.<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_17-56" id="Nanchor_17-56" href="#Note_17-56">{56}</a> + 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.<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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">* * * * *</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.”<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.<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’ 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:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“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.”<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.<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 2; though connected with Christmas by its ecclesiastical +meaning, it is something of a vernal festival.<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 “Nunc dimittis” is chanted, +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_353" id="Page_353" href="#Page_353">353</a>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 <i>Amburbale</i>, +which took place at the same season and consisted of a procession +round the city with lighted candles.<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">“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.”<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-Comté, and elsewhere, they are preserved +and lighted in time of storm or sickness.<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<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.<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; “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.”<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.<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.<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, “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.”<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.<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 +“brand” preserved from the Christmas log. Herrick's Candlemas +lines may be recalled:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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 ‘tis safely kept, the Fiend</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Can do no mischiefe there.”<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:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“End now the White Loafe and the Pye,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And let all sports with Christmas dye,”</span><br /> +</div> + +</div> + +<p>and</p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">“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.”<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.<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 +“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”<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_18-1" id="Nanchor_18-1" href="#Note_18-1">{1}</a> +; 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.</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 “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 <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—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 “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 +<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’ 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.—INTRODUCTION</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-1" id="Note_1-1" href="#Nanchor_1-1"> +1 .</a> <b>G. K. Chesterton</b> in <b>“The Daily News,”</b> Dec. 26, 1903. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-2" id="Note_1-2" href="#Nanchor_1-2"> +2 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> Dec. 23, 1911. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-3" id="Note_1-3" href="#Nanchor_1-3"> +3 .</a> Cf. <b>J. E. Harrison, “Themis: a Study of the Social Origins of Greek +Religion”</b> (Cambridge, 1912), 139, 184. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-4" id="Note_1-4" href="#Nanchor_1-4"> +4 .</a> 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, “Das germanische Julfest”</b> (Stuttgart, 1901), 39. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-5" id="Note_1-5" href="#Nanchor_1-5"> +5 .</a> <b>A. Tille, “Die Geschichte der deutschen Weihnacht”</b> (Leipsic, 1893), 22. +[Referred to as “D. W.”] +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-6" id="Note_1-6" href="#Nanchor_1-6"> +6 .</a> <b>H. Usener, “Das Weihnachtsfest”</b> (Kap. i., bis. iii. 2nd Edition, Bonn, 1911), +273 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-7" id="Note_1-7" href="#Nanchor_1-7"> +7 .</a> <b>L. Duchesne, “Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution”</b> (Eng. Trans., +Revised Edition, London, 1912), 257 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-8" id="Note_1-8" href="#Nanchor_1-8"> +8 .</a> <b>J. Hastings, “Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics”</b> (Edinburgh, 1910), +iii. 601 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-9" id="Note_1-9" href="#Nanchor_1-9"> +9 .</a> <b>E. K. Chambers, “The Mediaeval Stage”</b> (Oxford, 1903), i. 244. [Referred +to as “M. S.”] +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-10" id="Note_1-10" href="#Nanchor_1-10"> +10.</a> <b>A. Tille, “Yule and Christmas: their Place in the Germanic Year”</b> +(London, 1899), 122. [Referred to as “Y. & C.”] +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-11" id="Note_1-11" href="#Nanchor_1-11"> +11.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 164. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-12" id="Note_1-12" href="#Nanchor_1-12"> +12.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 21. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-13" id="Note_1-13" href="#Nanchor_1-13"> +13.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 203. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-14" id="Note_1-14" href="#Nanchor_1-14"> +14.</a> <b>K. Lake</b> in Hastings's “Encyclopædia” and in <b>“The Guardian,”</b> Dec. 29, +1911; <b>F. C. Conybeare</b>, Preface to <b>“The Key of Truth, a Manual of the Paulician +Church of Armenia”</b> (Oxford, 1898), clii. f.; Usener, 18 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-15" id="Note_1-15" href="#Nanchor_1-15"> +15.</a> Usener, 27 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-16" id="Note_1-16" href="#Nanchor_1-16"> +16.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 31; <b>J. E. Harrison, “Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion”</b> +(Cambridge, 1903), 550. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-17" id="Note_1-17" href="#Nanchor_1-17"> +17.</a> Harrison, “Prolegomena,” 402 f., 524 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> <b>Lake</b>, and <b>G. Rietschel, “Weihnachten in Kirche, Kunst and Volksleben”</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> Conybeare, lxxviii. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-20" id="Note_1-20" href="#Nanchor_1-20"> +20.</a> <b>A. Lupi, “Dissertazioni, lettere ed altre operette”</b> (Faenza, 1785), i. 219 f., +mentioned in article “Nativity” in <b>T. K. Cheyne's “Encyclopædia Biblica”</b> (London, +1902), iii. 3346. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-21" id="Note_1-21" href="#Nanchor_1-21"> +21.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 234. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-22" id="Note_1-22" href="#Nanchor_1-22"> +22.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 235; <b>F. Cumont, “The Monuments of Mithra”</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> <b>G. Negri, “Julian the Apostate”</b> (Eng. Trans., London, 1905), i. 240 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-24" id="Note_1-24" href="#Nanchor_1-24"> +24.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 235. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-25" id="Note_1-25" href="#Nanchor_1-25"> +25.</a> Duchesne, “Christian Worship,” 265. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_1-26" id="Note_1-26" href="#Nanchor_1-26"> +26.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 146. +</p> + + + + + +<h3>PART I.—THE CHRISTIAN FEAST</h3> + +<h3>CHAPTER II.—CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-1" id="Note_2-1" href="#Nanchor_2-1"> +1 .</a> See especially for Latin, German, and English hymnody <b>J. Julian, “A Dictionary +of Hymnology”</b> (New Edition, London, 1907), and the <b>Historical Edition of +“Hymns Ancient and Modern”</b> (London, 1909). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-2" id="Note_2-2" href="#Nanchor_2-2"> +2 .</a> <b>H. C. Beeching, “A Book of Christmas Verse”</b> (London, 1895), 3. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-3" id="Note_2-3" href="#Nanchor_2-3"> +3 .</a> Beeching, 8. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-4" id="Note_2-4" href="#Nanchor_2-4"> +4 .</a> <b>A. Gastoué, “Noël”</b> (Paris, 1907), 38. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-5" id="Note_2-5" href="#Nanchor_2-5"> +5 .</a> <b>R. W. Church, “St. Anselm”</b> (London, 1870), 6. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-6" id="Note_2-6" href="#Nanchor_2-6"> +6 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 3 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-7" id="Note_2-7" href="#Nanchor_2-7"> +7 .</a> <b>W. R. W. Stephens, “The English Church from the Norman Conquest to +the Accession of Edward I.”</b> (London, 1901), 309. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-8" id="Note_2-8" href="#Nanchor_2-8"> +8 .</a> <b>W. Sandys, “Christmastide: its History, Festivities, and Carols”</b> +(London, n.d.), 216; <b>E. Rickert, “Ancient English Carols. MCCCC-MDCC”</b> +(London, 1910), 133. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-9" id="Note_2-9" href="#Nanchor_2-9"> +9 .</a> For the Franciscan influence on poetry and art see: <b>Vernon Lee, “Renaissance +Fancies and Studies”</b> (London, 1895); <b>H. Thode, “Franz von Assisi und die +Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien”</b> (Berlin, 1885); <b>A. Macdonell, +“Sons of Francis”</b> (London, 1902); <b>J. A. Symonds, “The Renaissance in Italy. +Italian Literature,”</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> <b>Thomas of Celano, “Lives of St. Francis”</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> <b>P. Robinson, “Writings of St. Francis”</b> (London, 1906), 175. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-12" id="Note_2-12" href="#Nanchor_2-12"> +12.</a> <b>“Le poesie spirituali del B. Jacopone da Todi,”</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> <i>Ibid.</i> 275. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-14" id="Note_2-14" href="#Nanchor_2-14"> +14.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 867. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-15" id="Note_2-15" href="#Nanchor_2-15"> +15.</a> <b>“Stabat Mater speciosa,”</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> For German Christmas poetry see, besides Julian: <b>Hoffmann von Fallersleben, +“Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes bis auf Luthers Zeit”</b> (2nd Edition, +Hanover, 1854); <b>P. Wackernagel, “Das deutsche Kirchenlied”</b> (Leipsic, 1867); +and <b>C. Winkworth, “Christian Singers of Germany”</b> (London, n.d.). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-17" id="Note_2-17" href="#Nanchor_2-17"> +17.</a> <b>R. M. Jones, “Studies in Mystical Religion”</b> (London, 1909), 235, 237. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-18" id="Note_2-18" href="#Nanchor_2-18"> +18.</a> <b>“Meister Eckharts Schriften und Predigten,”</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> Translation by C. Winkworth, “Christian Singers,” 84. German text in +Wackernagel, ii. 302 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-20" id="Note_2-20" href="#Nanchor_2-20"> +20.</a> <b>“Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch”</b> (Hamburg-Grossborstel, 1907), 125. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-21" id="Note_2-21" href="#Nanchor_2-21"> +21.</a> <b>“A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs,”</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, “In Dulci Jubilo”</b> +(Hanover, 1854), 46. For the music see <b>G. R. Woodward, “The Cowley Carol +Book”</b> (New Edition, London, 1909), 20 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> <b>K. Weinhold, “Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus Süddeutschland und +Schlesien”</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> <i>Ibid.</i> 396. [For help in the translation of German dialect I am indebted to +Dr. M. A. Mügge.] +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-24" id="Note_2-24" href="#Nanchor_2-24"> +24.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 400. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-25" id="Note_2-25" href="#Nanchor_2-25"> +25.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 417. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-26" id="Note_2-26" href="#Nanchor_2-26"> +26.</a> E. K. Chambers, essay on “Some Aspects of Mediæval Lyric” in <b>“Early +English Lyrics,”</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>“The Modern Language Review”</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> <i>Ibid.</i> 293. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-28" id="Note_2-28" href="#Nanchor_2-28"> +28.</a> Quoted by <b>J. J. Jusserand, “A Literary History of the English People”</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> Rickert, 6; Beeching, 13. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-30" id="Note_2-30" href="#Nanchor_2-30"> +30.</a> No. lv. in Chambers and Sidgwick, “Early English Lyrics.” +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-31" id="Note_2-31" href="#Nanchor_2-31"> +31.</a> No. lix., <i>ibid.</i> +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-32" id="Note_2-32" href="#Nanchor_2-32"> +32.</a> No. lxi., <i>ibid.</i> +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-33" id="Note_2-33" href="#Nanchor_2-33"> +33.</a> No. lxx., <i>ibid.</i> +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-34" id="Note_2-34" href="#Nanchor_2-34"> +34.</a> No. lxvii., <i>ibid.</i> +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-35" id="Note_2-35" href="#Nanchor_2-35"> +35.</a> No. lxiii., <i>ibid.</i> +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_2-36" id="Note_2-36" href="#Nanchor_2-36"> +36.</a> Rickert, 67. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER III.—CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-1" id="Note_3-1" href="#Nanchor_3-1"> +1 .</a> <b>Noël Hervé, “Les Noëls français”</b> (Niort, 1905), Gastoué, 57 f.; <b>G. Gregory +Smith, “The Transition Period”</b> (Edinburgh and London, 1900), 217. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-2" id="Note_3-2" href="#Nanchor_3-2"> +2 .</a> Gregory Smith, 217. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-3" id="Note_3-3" href="#Nanchor_3-3"> +3 .</a> <b>H. Lemeignen, “Vieux Noëls composés en l'honneur de la Naissance de +Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ”</b> (Nantes, 1876), iii. 2 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-4" id="Note_3-4" href="#Nanchor_3-4"> +4 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 10, 11. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-5" id="Note_3-5" href="#Nanchor_3-5"> +5 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 93, 95. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-6" id="Note_3-6" href="#Nanchor_3-6"> +6 .</a> Hervé, 46. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-7" id="Note_3-7" href="#Nanchor_3-7"> +7 .</a> 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 .</a> Lemeignen, i. 29. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-9" id="Note_3-9" href="#Nanchor_3-9"> +9 .</a> <b>“Les Vieux Noëls,”</b> in <b>“Nouvelle Bibliothèque Populaire”</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> Lemeignen, i. 93. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-11" id="Note_3-11" href="#Nanchor_3-11"> +11.</a> <b>H. J. L. J. Massé, “A Book Of Old Carols”</b> (London, 1910), i. 21. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-12" id="Note_3-12" href="#Nanchor_3-12"> +12.</a> Hervé, 86. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-13" id="Note_3-13" href="#Nanchor_3-13"> +13.</a> Lemeignen, i. 71. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-14" id="Note_3-14" href="#Nanchor_3-14"> +14.</a> “Hymns Ancient and Modern” (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> Hervé, 132. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-16" id="Note_3-16" href="#Nanchor_3-16"> +16.</a> A great number of these <i>villancicos</i> and <i>romances</i> may be found in <b>Justo de +Sancha, “Romancero y Cancionero Sagrados”</b> (Madrid, 1855, vol. 35 of Rivadeneyra's +Library of Spanish Authors), and there are some good examples in <b>J. N. Böhl +de Faber, “Rimas Antiguas Castellanas”</b> (Hamburg, 1823). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-17" id="Note_3-17" href="#Nanchor_3-17"> +17.</a> Böhl de Faber, ii. 36. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-18" id="Note_3-18" href="#Nanchor_3-18"> +18.</a> <b>F. Caballero, “Elia y La Noche de Navidad”</b> (Leipsic, 1864), 210. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-19" id="Note_3-19" href="#Nanchor_3-19"> +19.</a> <b>A. de Gubernatis, “Storia Comparata degli Usi Natalizi”</b> (Milan, 1878), 90. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-20" id="Note_3-20" href="#Nanchor_3-20"> +20.</a> These three verses are taken from <b>Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco's</b> charming +translation of the poem, in her <b>“Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs”</b> (London, +1886), 304 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-21" id="Note_3-21" href="#Nanchor_3-21"> +21.</a> Martinengo, “Folk-Songs,” 302 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-22" id="Note_3-22" href="#Nanchor_3-22"> +22.</a> Latin text in Tille, “D. W.,” 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> Hervé, 115 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-24" id="Note_3-24" href="#Nanchor_3-24"> +24.</a> <b>W. Hone, “The Ancient Mysteries Described”</b> (London, 1823), 103. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-25" id="Note_3-25" href="#Nanchor_3-25"> +25.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 103. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-26" id="Note_3-26" href="#Nanchor_3-26"> +26.</a> See Note 11. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-27" id="Note_3-27" href="#Nanchor_3-27"> +27.</a> <b>D. Hyde, “Religious Songs of Connacht”</b> (London, 1906), ii. 225 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-28" id="Note_3-28" href="#Nanchor_3-28"> +28.</a> <b>“The Vineyard”</b> (London), Dec., 1910, 144. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-29" id="Note_3-29" href="#Nanchor_3-29"> +29.</a> “Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch,” 120 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-30" id="Note_3-30" href="#Nanchor_3-30"> +30.</a> “A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs,” 49 f. (spelling here +modernized); Rickert, 82 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-31" id="Note_3-31" href="#Nanchor_3-31"> +31.</a> “Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch,” 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> Translation by Miles Coverdale, in Rickert, 192 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-33" id="Note_3-33" href="#Nanchor_3-33"> +33.</a> No. 5 in <b>Paulus Gerhardt, “Geistliche Lieder,”</b> ed. by P. Wackernagel and +W. Tümpel (9th Edition, Gütersloh, 1907). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-34" id="Note_3-34" href="#Nanchor_3-34"> +34.</a> Translation by <b>C. Winkworth</b> in <b>“Lyra Germanica”</b> (New Edition, London, +1869), ii. 13 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-35" id="Note_3-35" href="#Nanchor_3-35"> +35.</a> “Deutsches Weihnachtsbuch,” 128 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-36" id="Note_3-36" href="#Nanchor_3-36"> +36.</a> Translation (last verse altered) in <b>“The British Herald”</b> (London), Sept., 1866, +329. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-37" id="Note_3-37" href="#Nanchor_3-37"> +37.</a> <b>“Christmas Carols New and Old,”</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> Beeching, 27 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-39" id="Note_3-39" href="#Nanchor_3-39"> +39.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 67. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-40" id="Note_3-40" href="#Nanchor_3-40"> +40.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 49. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-41" id="Note_3-41" href="#Nanchor_3-41"> +41.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 76. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-42" id="Note_3-42" href="#Nanchor_3-42"> +42.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 48. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-43" id="Note_3-43" href="#Nanchor_3-43"> +43.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 45. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-44" id="Note_3-44" href="#Nanchor_3-44"> +44.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 42 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> Beeching, 85 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-46" id="Note_3-46" href="#Nanchor_3-46"> +46.</a> <b>Selwyn Image, “Poems and Carols”</b> (London, 1894), 25. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_3-47" id="Note_3-47" href="#Nanchor_3-47"> +47.</a> <b>G. K. Chesterton</b> in <b>“The Commonwealth”</b> (London), Dec., 1902, 353. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER IV.—CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-1" id="Note_4-1" href="#Nanchor_4-1"> +1 .</a> Translation, “Creator of the starry height,” in “Hymns A. and M.” (Ordinary +Edition), No. 45. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-2" id="Note_4-2" href="#Nanchor_4-2"> +2 .</a> <b>J. Dowden, “The Church Year and Kalendar”</b> (Cambridge, 1910), 76 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-3" id="Note_4-3" href="#Nanchor_4-3"> +3 .</a> <b>“Rational ou Manuel des divins Offices de Guillaume Durand, Évèque de +Mende au treizième siècle,”</b> traduit par <b>M. C. Barthélemy</b> (Paris, 1854), iii. 155 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-4" id="Note_4-4" href="#Nanchor_4-4"> +4 .</a> See translation of the Great O's in “The English Hymnal,” No. 734. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-5" id="Note_4-5" href="#Nanchor_4-5"> +5 .</a> Barthélemy, iii. 220 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-6" id="Note_4-6" href="#Nanchor_4-6"> +6 .</a> <b>D. Rock, “The Church of Our Fathers”</b> (London, 1853), vol. iii. pt. ii. 214. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-7" id="Note_4-7" href="#Nanchor_4-7"> +7 .</a> <b>J. K. Huysmans, “L'Oblat”</b> (Paris, 1903), 194. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-8" id="Note_4-8" href="#Nanchor_4-8"> +8 .</a> Gastoué, 44 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-9" id="Note_4-9" href="#Nanchor_4-9"> +9 .</a> <b>E. G. C. F. Atchley, “Ordo Romanus Primus”</b> (London, 1905), 71. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-10" id="Note_4-10" href="#Nanchor_4-10"> +10.</a> <b>“The Pilgrimage of S. Silvia of Aquitaine”</b> (Eng. Trans. by J. H. Bernard, +London, 1891), 50 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-11" id="Note_4-11" href="#Nanchor_4-11"> +11.</a> <b>S. D. Ferriman</b> in <b>“The Daily News,”</b> Dec. 25, 1911. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-12" id="Note_4-12" href="#Nanchor_4-12"> +12.</a> <b>G. Bonaccorsi, “Il Natale: appunti d'esegesi e di storia”</b> (Rome, 1903), 73. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-13" id="Note_4-13" href="#Nanchor_4-13"> +13.</a> Gastoué, 41 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-14" id="Note_4-14" href="#Nanchor_4-14"> +14.</a> Bonaccorsi, 75. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-15" id="Note_4-15" href="#Nanchor_4-15"> +15.</a> <b>H. Malleson and M. A. R. Tuker, “Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical +Rome”</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> <b>Th. Bentzon, “Christmas In France”</b> in <b>“The Century Magazine”</b> (New +York), Dec., 1901, 170 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-17" id="Note_4-17" href="#Nanchor_4-17"> +17.</a> <b>L. von Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben”</b> (Stuttgart, 1909), 232. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-18" id="Note_4-18" href="#Nanchor_4-18"> +18.</a> <b>M. J. Quin, “A Visit to Spain”</b> (2nd Edition, London, 1824), 126 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-19" id="Note_4-19" href="#Nanchor_4-19"> +19.</a> <b>“Madrid in 1835,”</b> by a <b>Resident Officer</b> (London, 1836), i. 395 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-20" id="Note_4-20" href="#Nanchor_4-20"> +20.</a> <b>W. S. Walsh, “Curiosities of Popular Customs”</b> (London, 1898), 237. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-21" id="Note_4-21" href="#Nanchor_4-21"> +21.</a> <b>G. Pitrè, “Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane”</b> (Palermo, 1880), 444. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-22" id="Note_4-22" href="#Nanchor_4-22"> +22.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 70 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-23" id="Note_4-23" href="#Nanchor_4-23"> +23.</a> <b>F. H. Woods, “Sweden and Norway”</b> (London, 1882), 209; <b>L. Lloyd, +“Peasant Life in Sweden”</b> (London, 1870), 201 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-24" id="Note_4-24" href="#Nanchor_4-24"> +24.</a> <b>J. E. Vaux, “Church Folklore”</b> (London, 1894), 222 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-25" id="Note_4-25" href="#Nanchor_4-25"> +25.</a> <b>M. Trevelyan, “Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales”</b> (London, 1909), 28. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-26" id="Note_4-26" href="#Nanchor_4-26"> +26.</a> Vaux, 262 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-27" id="Note_4-27" href="#Nanchor_4-27"> +27.</a> <b>R. F. Littledale, “Offices from the Service-Books of the Holy Eastern +Church”</b> (London, 1863), 174 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-28" id="Note_4-28" href="#Nanchor_4-28"> +28.</a> <b>[Sir] A. J. Evans, “Christmas and Ancestor Worship in the Black Mountain,”</b> +in <b>“Macmillan's Magazine”</b> (London), vol. xliii., 1881, 228. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-29" id="Note_4-29" href="#Nanchor_4-29"> +29.</a> Duchesne, 273. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-30" id="Note_4-30" href="#Nanchor_4-30"> +30.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 245. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-31" id="Note_4-31" href="#Nanchor_4-31"> +31.</a> <b>“The Roman Breviary,”</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> See announcement in <b>“The Roman Mail”</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> <b>Mary Hamilton, “Greek Saints and their Festivals”</b> (London, 1910), 113 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-34" id="Note_4-34" href="#Nanchor_4-34"> +34.</a> <b>H. Holloway, “An Eastern Epiphany Service”</b> in <b>“Pax”</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> Hamilton, 119 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-36" id="Note_4-36" href="#Nanchor_4-36"> +36.</a> Holloway, as above. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-37" id="Note_4-37" href="#Nanchor_4-37"> +37.</a> <b>F. H. E. Palmer, “Russian Life in Town and Country”</b> (London, 1901), +176 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-38" id="Note_4-38" href="#Nanchor_4-38"> +38.</a> Thomas of Celano, trans. by Howell, 82 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-39" id="Note_4-39" href="#Nanchor_4-39"> +39.</a> <b>Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, “Puer Parvulus”</b> in <b>“The Outdoor Life +in the Greek and Roman Poets”</b> (London, 1911), 248. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-40" id="Note_4-40" href="#Nanchor_4-40"> +40.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 41. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-41" id="Note_4-41" href="#Nanchor_4-41"> +41.</a> Bonaccorsi, 85; Usener, 298. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-42" id="Note_4-42" href="#Nanchor_4-42"> +42.</a> Usener, 290. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-43" id="Note_4-43" href="#Nanchor_4-43"> +43.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 295, 299. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-44" id="Note_4-44" href="#Nanchor_4-44"> +44.</a> Rietschel, 55. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-45" id="Note_4-45" href="#Nanchor_4-45"> +45.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 56 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-46" id="Note_4-46" href="#Nanchor_4-46"> +46.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 60. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-47" id="Note_4-47" href="#Nanchor_4-47"> +47.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 69 f.; Tille, “D. W.,” 59 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-48" id="Note_4-48" href="#Nanchor_4-48"> +48.</a> Music from <b>Trier “Gesangbuch”</b> (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. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-49" id="Note_4-49" href="#Nanchor_4-49"> +49.</a> Text and music in Massé, i. 6. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-50" id="Note_4-50" href="#Nanchor_4-50"> +50.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 60. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-51" id="Note_4-51" href="#Nanchor_4-51"> +51.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 61 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-52" id="Note_4-52" href="#Nanchor_4-52"> +52.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 63. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-53" id="Note_4-53" href="#Nanchor_4-53"> +53.</a> <b>Thomas Naogeorgus, “The Popish Kingdome,”</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> Tille, “D. W.,” 68. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-55" id="Note_4-55" href="#Nanchor_4-55"> +55.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 68. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-56" id="Note_4-56" href="#Nanchor_4-56"> +56.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 235. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-57" id="Note_4-57" href="#Nanchor_4-57"> +57.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 235. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-58" id="Note_4-58" href="#Nanchor_4-58"> +58.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 64. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-59" id="Note_4-59" href="#Nanchor_4-59"> +59.</a> Rietschel, 75. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-60" id="Note_4-60" href="#Nanchor_4-60"> +60.</a> Martinengo, “Outdoor Life,” 249. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-61" id="Note_4-61" href="#Nanchor_4-61"> +61.</a> <b>Lady Morgan, “Italy”</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> <b>Matilde Serao, “La Madonna e i Santi”</b> (Naples, 1902), 223 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-63" id="Note_4-63" href="#Nanchor_4-63"> +63.</a> <b>L. Caico, “Sicilian Ways and Days”</b> (London, 1910), 192 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-64" id="Note_4-64" href="#Nanchor_4-64"> +64.</a> 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> 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> 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> <b>W. H. D. Rouse, “Religious Tableaux in Italian Churches,”</b> in <b>“Folk-Lore”</b> +(London), vol. v., 1894, 6 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-68" id="Note_4-68" href="#Nanchor_4-68"> +68.</a> Morgan, iii. 76 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-69" id="Note_4-69" href="#Nanchor_4-69"> +69.</a> Bonaccorsi, 45 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-70" id="Note_4-70" href="#Nanchor_4-70"> +70.</a> <b>A. J. C. Hare, “Walks in Rome”</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> Martinengo, “Outdoor Life,” 253; Bonaccorsi, 110 f.; <b>R. Ellis Roberts, “A +Roman Pilgrimage”</b> (London, 1911), 185 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-72" id="Note_4-72" href="#Nanchor_4-72"> +72.</a> <b>H. J. Rose, “Untrodden Spain”</b> (London, 1875), 276. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-73" id="Note_4-73" href="#Nanchor_4-73"> +73.</a> 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> <b>T. F. Thiselton Dyer, “British Popular Customs”</b> (London, 1876), 464. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-75" id="Note_4-75" href="#Nanchor_4-75"> +75.</a> Vaux, 216. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-76" id="Note_4-76" href="#Nanchor_4-76"> +76.</a> Dyer, 464. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_4-77" id="Note_4-77" href="#Nanchor_4-77"> +77.</a> Cf. Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 120. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER V.—CHRISTMAS DRAMA</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-1" id="Note_5-1" href="#Nanchor_5-1"> +1 .</a> This account of the mediaeval Christmas drama owes much to Chambers, “The +Mediaeval Stage,” especially chaps. xviii. to xx., and to <b>W. Creizenach, “Geschichte +des neueren Dramas”</b> (Halle a/S., 1893), vol. i., bks. ii.-iv. See also: <b>Karl Pearson</b>, +essay on <b>“The German Passion Play”</b> in <b>“The Chances of Death, and other +Studies in Evolution”</b> (London, 1897), ii. 246 f.; <b>E. Du Méril, “Origines latines +du théâtre moderne”</b> (Paris, 1849); <b>L. Petit de Julleville, “Histoire du théâtre +en France au moyen âge. I. Les Mystères”</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 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 8 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-3" id="Note_5-3" href="#Nanchor_5-3"> +3 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 11. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-4" id="Note_5-4" href="#Nanchor_5-4"> +4 .</a> Du Méril, 147. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-5" id="Note_5-5" href="#Nanchor_5-5"> +5 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 52. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-6" id="Note_5-6" href="#Nanchor_5-6"> +6 .</a> Text in Du Méril, 153 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-7" id="Note_5-7" href="#Nanchor_5-7"> +7 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 44. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-8" id="Note_5-8" href="#Nanchor_5-8"> +8 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 52 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-9" id="Note_5-9" href="#Nanchor_5-9"> +9 .</a> On the English plays see: Chambers, “M. S.,” chaps. xx. and xxi.; <b>A. W. Ward, +“A History of English Dramatic Literature”</b> (London, 1875), vol. i. chap. i.; +Creizenach, vol. i.; <b>K. L. Bates, “The English Religious Drama”</b> (London, 1893). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-10" id="Note_5-10" href="#Nanchor_5-10"> +10.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 129, 131, 139. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-11" id="Note_5-11" href="#Nanchor_5-11"> +11.</a> <b>“Ludus Coventriae,”</b> ed. by J. O. Halliwell (London, 1841), 146 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-12" id="Note_5-12" href="#Nanchor_5-12"> +12.</a> <b>“York Plays,”</b> ed. by L. Toulmin Smith (Oxford, 1885), 114 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-13" id="Note_5-13" href="#Nanchor_5-13"> +13.</a> <b>“The Chester Plays,”</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> <i>Ibid.</i> 138. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-15" id="Note_5-15" href="#Nanchor_5-15"> +15.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 143. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-16" id="Note_5-16" href="#Nanchor_5-16"> +16.</a> <b>“The Towneley Plays,”</b> 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. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-17" id="Note_5-17" href="#Nanchor_5-17"> +17.</a> Text from Chambers and Sidgwick, “Early English Lyrics,” 124 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-18" id="Note_5-18" href="#Nanchor_5-18"> +18.</a> Text in <b>T. Sharp, “A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries +anciently performed at Coventry”</b> (Coventry, 1825). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-19" id="Note_5-19" href="#Nanchor_5-19"> +19.</a> Petit de Julleville, ii. 36 f and 431 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-20" id="Note_5-20" href="#Nanchor_5-20"> +20.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 620 f.; <b>“Les marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses,”</b> ed. +from the edition of 1547 by F. Frank (Paris, 1873), ii. 1 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-21" id="Note_5-21" href="#Nanchor_5-21"> +21.</a> Petit de Julleville, i. 441. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-22" id="Note_5-22" href="#Nanchor_5-22"> +22.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 455. Text in Lemeignen, ii. 1 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-23" id="Note_5-23" href="#Nanchor_5-23"> +23.</a> Petit de Julleville, i. 79 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-24" id="Note_5-24" href="#Nanchor_5-24"> +24.</a> <b>P. Sébillot, “Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne”</b> (Paris, 1886), +177. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-25" id="Note_5-25" href="#Nanchor_5-25"> +25.</a> 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. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-26" id="Note_5-26" href="#Nanchor_5-26"> +26.</a> Barthélemy, iii. 411 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> Rietschel, 88 f.; <b>O. von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, “Das festliche Jahr”</b> +(2nd Edition, Leipsic, 1898), 439 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-28" id="Note_5-28" href="#Nanchor_5-28"> +28.</a> Rietschel, 92 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-29" id="Note_5-29" href="#Nanchor_5-29"> +29.</a> An interesting book on popular Christmas plays is <b>F. Vogt, “Die schlesischen +Weihnachtspiele”</b> (Leipsic, 1901). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-30" id="Note_5-30" href="#Nanchor_5-30"> +30.</a> Weinhold, 94. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-31" id="Note_5-31" href="#Nanchor_5-31"> +31.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 95 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-32" id="Note_5-32" href="#Nanchor_5-32"> +32.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 100 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-33" id="Note_5-33" href="#Nanchor_5-33"> +33.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 96 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-34" id="Note_5-34" href="#Nanchor_5-34"> +34.</a> See Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 91 f.; Symonds, “Renaissance,” iv. 242, 272 f.; +<b>A. d'Ancona, “Origini del Teatro italiano”</b> (Florence, 1877), i. 87 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-35" id="Note_5-35" href="#Nanchor_5-35"> +35.</a> D'Ancona, “Origini,” i. 126 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-36" id="Note_5-36" href="#Nanchor_5-36"> +36.</a> <b>A. d'Ancona, “Sacre Rappresentazioni dei secoli xiv, xv e xvi”</b> (Florence, +1872), i. 191 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-37" id="Note_5-37" href="#Nanchor_5-37"> +37.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 192. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-38" id="Note_5-38" href="#Nanchor_5-38"> +38.</a> Latin original quoted by D'Ancona, “Origini,” i. 91, and Chambers, “M. S.,” +ii. 93. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-39" id="Note_5-39" href="#Nanchor_5-39"> +39.</a> Creizenach, i. 347. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-40" id="Note_5-40" href="#Nanchor_5-40"> +40.</a> <b>J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, “A History of Spanish Literature”</b> (London, 1898), 113. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-41" id="Note_5-41" href="#Nanchor_5-41"> +41.</a> <b>Juan del Encina, “Teatro Completo”</b> (Madrid, 1893), 3 f., 137 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-42" id="Note_5-42" href="#Nanchor_5-42"> +42.</a> See <b>G. Ticknor, “History of Spanish Literature”</b> (6th American Edition, +Boston, 1888), ii. 283 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-43" id="Note_5-43" href="#Nanchor_5-43"> +43.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 208. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-44" id="Note_5-44" href="#Nanchor_5-44"> +44.</a> <b>“Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari”</b> (Palermo and Turin), vol. xxi., 1902, 381. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-45" id="Note_5-45" href="#Nanchor_5-45"> +45.</a> Pitrè, 448. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-46" id="Note_5-46" href="#Nanchor_5-46"> +46.</a> Fernan Caballero, “Elia y La Noche de Navidad,” 222 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-47" id="Note_5-47" href="#Nanchor_5-47"> +47.</a> Lloyd, 213 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-48" id="Note_5-48" href="#Nanchor_5-48"> +48.</a> <b>H. F. Feilberg, “Jul”</b> (Copenhagen, 1904), ii. 242 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-49" id="Note_5-49" href="#Nanchor_5-49"> +49.</a> <b>E. Cortet, “Essai sur les fêtes religieuses”</b> (Paris, 1867), 38. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-50" id="Note_5-50" href="#Nanchor_5-50"> +50.</a> Sébillot, 215. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-51" id="Note_5-51" href="#Nanchor_5-51"> +51.</a> Feilberg, ii. 250; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 31 f.; <b>T. Stratilesco, “From Carpathian +to Pindus: Pictures of Roumanian Country Life”</b> (London, 1906), 195 f.; +<b>E. van Norman, “Poland: the Knight among Nations”</b> (London and New York, +3rd Edition, n.d.), 302; <b>S. Graham, “A Vagabond in the Caucasus. With some +Notes of his Experiences among the Russians”</b> (London, 1910), 28. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-52" id="Note_5-52" href="#Nanchor_5-52"> +52.</a> Translation in <b>Karl Hase, “Miracle Plays and Sacred Dramas”</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> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 247 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-54" id="Note_5-54" href="#Nanchor_5-54"> +54.</a> Graham, 28. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-55" id="Note_5-55" href="#Nanchor_5-55"> +55.</a> Stratilesco, 195 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-56" id="Note_5-56" href="#Nanchor_5-56"> +56.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 355 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-57" id="Note_5-57" href="#Nanchor_5-57"> +57.</a> Van Norman, 302. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-58" id="Note_5-58" href="#Nanchor_5-58"> +58.</a> Cortet, 42. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-59" id="Note_5-59" href="#Nanchor_5-59"> +59.</a> Barthélemy, iii. 411 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_5-60" id="Note_5-60" href="#Nanchor_5-60"> +60.</a> <b>Madame Calderon de la Barca, “Life in Mexico”</b> (London, 1843), 237 f. +</p> + + + + + +<h3>POSTSCRIPT</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_6-1" id="Note_6-1" href="#Nanchor_6-1"> +1 .</a> <b>E. Underhill, “Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of +Man's Spiritual Consciousness”</b> (London, 1911), 305.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_371" id="Page_371" href="#Page_371">371</a> +</p> + + + + + +<h3>PART II.—PAGAN SURVIVALS</h3> + +<h3>CHAPTER VI.—PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-1" id="Note_7-1" href="#Nanchor_7-1"> +1 .</a> <b>Karl Pearson</b>, essay on <b>“Woman as Witch”</b> in <b>“The Chances of Death and +other Studies in Evolution”</b> (London, 1897), ii. 16. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-2" id="Note_7-2" href="#Nanchor_7-2"> +2 .</a> Cf. <b>J. G. Frazer, “The Dying God”</b> (London, 1911), 269. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-3" id="Note_7-3" href="#Nanchor_7-3"> +3 .</a> <b>J. A. MacCulloch, “The Religion of the Ancient Celts”</b> (Edinburgh, 1911), +278. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-4" id="Note_7-4" href="#Nanchor_7-4"> +4 .</a> Frazer, “Dying God,” 266. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-5" id="Note_7-5" href="#Nanchor_7-5"> +5 .</a> <b>E. Anwyl, “Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times”</b> (London, 1906), 1 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-6" id="Note_7-6" href="#Nanchor_7-6"> +6 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 20; cf. <b>E. K. Chambers, “The Mediaeval Stage”</b> (Oxford, 1903), i. 100 f. +[Referred to as “M. S.”] +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-7" id="Note_7-7" href="#Nanchor_7-7"> +7 .</a> <b>W. Robertson Smith, “Lectures on the Religion of the Semites”</b> (New +Edition, London, 1894), 16. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-8" id="Note_7-8" href="#Nanchor_7-8"> +8 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 236; <b>W. W. Fowler, “The Roman Festivals of the +Period of the Republic”</b> (London, 1899), 272. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-9" id="Note_7-9" href="#Nanchor_7-9"> +9 .</a> <b>“The Works of Lucian of Samosata”</b> (Eng. Trans. by H. W. and F. G. +Fowler, Oxford, 1905), iv. 108 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-10" id="Note_7-10" href="#Nanchor_7-10"> +10.</a> <b>John Brand, “Observations on Popular Antiquities”</b> (New Edition, with +the Additions of Sir Henry Ellis, London, Chatto & Windus, 1900), 283. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-11" id="Note_7-11" href="#Nanchor_7-11"> +11.</a> “Works of Lucian,” iv. 114 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-12" id="Note_7-12" href="#Nanchor_7-12"> +12.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> iv. 109. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-13" id="Note_7-13" href="#Nanchor_7-13"> +13.</a> <b>J. G. Frazer, “The Golden Bough”</b> (2nd Edition, London, 1900), iii. 138 f., +and <b>“The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kingship”</b> (London, 1911), ii. 310 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-14" id="Note_7-14" href="#Nanchor_7-14"> +14.</a> <b>W. W. Fowler, “The Religious Experience of the Roman People”</b> (London, +1911), 107, 112. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-15" id="Note_7-15" href="#Nanchor_7-15"> +15.</a> Fowler, “Roman Festivals,” 268, and “Religious Experience,” 107; <b>C. Bailey, +“The Religion of Ancient Rome”</b> (London, 1907), 70. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-16" id="Note_7-16" href="#Nanchor_7-16"> +16.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 237 f.; Fowler, “Roman Festivals,” 278. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-17" id="Note_7-17" href="#Nanchor_7-17"> +17.</a> Quoted from <b>“Libanii Opera,”</b> ed. by Reiske, i. 256 f., by <b>G. Bilfinger, “Das +germanische Julfest”</b> (vol. ii. of “Untersuchungen über die Zeitrechnung der alten +Germanen,” Stuttgart, 1901), 41 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-18" id="Note_7-18" href="#Nanchor_7-18"> +18.</a> “Libanii Opera,” iv. 1053 f., quoted by Bilfinger, 43 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-19" id="Note_7-19" href="#Nanchor_7-19"> +19.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 237 f., 258. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-20" id="Note_7-20" href="#Nanchor_7-20"> +20.</a> <b>A. Tille, “Yule and Christmas”</b> (London, 1899), 96. [Referred to as +“Y. & C.”] +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-21" id="Note_7-21" href="#Nanchor_7-21"> +21.</a> <b>J. C. Lawson, “Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion”</b> +(Cambridge, 1910), 221 f. Cf. <b>M. Hamilton, “Greek Saints and their Festivals”</b> +(London, 1910), 98. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-22" id="Note_7-22" href="#Nanchor_7-22"> +22.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 290 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-23" id="Note_7-23" href="#Nanchor_7-23"> +23.</a> Latin text in Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 297 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-24" id="Note_7-24" href="#Nanchor_7-24"> +24.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 245. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-25" id="Note_7-25" href="#Nanchor_7-25"> +25.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 88 f.; Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 303 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> Tille, “Y. & C.,” throughout; Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 288 f.; <b>Chantepie de la +Saussaye, “The Religion of the Ancient Teutons”</b> (Boston, 1902), 382. Cf. <b>O. +Schrader</b>, in <b>Hastings's “Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics”</b> (Edinburgh, 1909), +ii. 47 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-27" id="Note_7-27" href="#Nanchor_7-27"> +27.</a> MacCulloch, “Religion of the Ancient Celts,” 258 f. Cf. Chambers, “M. S.,” +i. 228, 234. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-28" id="Note_7-28" href="#Nanchor_7-28"> +28.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 203. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-29" id="Note_7-29" href="#Nanchor_7-29"> +29.</a> <b>[Sir] A. J. Evans, “Christmas and Ancestor Worship in the Black Mountain,”</b> +in <b>“Macmillan's Magazine”</b> (London), vol. xliii., 1881, 363. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-30" id="Note_7-30" href="#Nanchor_7-30"> +30.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 247. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-31" id="Note_7-31" href="#Nanchor_7-31"> +31.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 64. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-32" id="Note_7-32" href="#Nanchor_7-32"> +32.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 232. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-33" id="Note_7-33" href="#Nanchor_7-33"> +33.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 130; W. Robertson Smith, 213 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-34" id="Note_7-34" href="#Nanchor_7-34"> +34.</a> Frazer, “Dying God,” 129 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-35" id="Note_7-35" href="#Nanchor_7-35"> +35.</a> See <b>N. W. Thomas</b> in <b>“Folk-Lore”</b> (London), vol. xi., 1900, 227 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-36" id="Note_7-36" href="#Nanchor_7-36"> +36.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 132 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-37" id="Note_7-37" href="#Nanchor_7-37"> +37.</a> W. Robertson Smith, 437 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-38" id="Note_7-38" href="#Nanchor_7-38"> +38.</a> <b>J. E. Harrison, “Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion”</b> +(Cambridge, 1912), 67. Cf. <b>E. F. Ames, “The Psychology of Religious Experience”</b> +(London and Boston, 1910), 95 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-39" id="Note_7-39" href="#Nanchor_7-39"> +39.</a> Harrison, “Themis,” 137. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-40" id="Note_7-40" href="#Nanchor_7-40"> +40.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 110. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-41" id="Note_7-41" href="#Nanchor_7-41"> +41.</a> <b>S. Reinach, “Cultes, mythes, et religions”</b> (Paris, 1905), i. 93. For the +theory that totems were originally food-objects, see Ames, 118 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-42" id="Note_7-42" href="#Nanchor_7-42"> +42.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 133. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-43" id="Note_7-43" href="#Nanchor_7-43"> +43.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 105 f., 144. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-44" id="Note_7-44" href="#Nanchor_7-44"> +44.</a> Harrison, “Themis,” 507. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-45" id="Note_7-45" href="#Nanchor_7-45"> +45.</a> W. Robertson Smith, 255. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-46" id="Note_7-46" href="#Nanchor_7-46"> +46.</a> <b>Bede, “Historia Ecclesiastica,”</b> lib. i. cap. 30. Latin text in Bede's Works, +edited by J. A. Giles (London, 1843), vol. ii. p. 142. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-47" id="Note_7-47" href="#Nanchor_7-47"> +47.</a> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 143. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-48" id="Note_7-48" href="#Nanchor_7-48"> +48.</a> <b>Jerome, “Comm. in Isaiam,”</b> lxv. 11. Latin text in Chambers, “M. S.,” +ii. 294. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-49" id="Note_7-49" href="#Nanchor_7-49"> +49.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 266. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-50" id="Note_7-50" href="#Nanchor_7-50"> +50.</a> Latin text in Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 306. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-51" id="Note_7-51" href="#Nanchor_7-51"> +51.</a> <b>Bede, “De Temporum Ratione,”</b> cap. 15, quoted by Chambers, i. 231. See also +Tille, “Y. & C.,” 152 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> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 70 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-53" id="Note_7-53" href="#Nanchor_7-53"> +53.</a> See Frazer, “Magic Art,” i. 52. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-54" id="Note_7-54" href="#Nanchor_7-54"> +54.</a> Cf. Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 300 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-55" id="Note_7-55" href="#Nanchor_7-55"> +55.</a> Latin text in <b>H. Usener, “Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen,”</b> +part ii. (Bonn, 1889), 43 f. See also <b>A. Tille, “Die Geschichte der deutschen +Weihnacht”</b> (Leipsic, 1893), 44 f. [Referred to as “D. W.”] +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-56" id="Note_7-56" href="#Nanchor_7-56"> +56.</a> <b>Philip Stubbs, “Anatomie Of Abuses”</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> Quoted by <b>J. Ashton, “A righte Merrie Christmasse!!”</b> (London, n.d.), 26 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_7-58" id="Note_7-58" href="#Nanchor_7-58"> +58.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 27 f.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_373" id="Page_373" href="#Page_373">373</a> +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER VII.—ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-1" id="Note_8-1" href="#Nanchor_8-1"> +1 .</a> <b>R. Chambers, “The Book Of Days”</b> (London, n.d.), ii. 538 [referred to as +“B. D.”]; <b>T. F. Thiselton Dyer, “British Popular Customs”</b> (London, 1876), +396 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-2" id="Note_8-2" href="#Nanchor_8-2"> +2 .</a> <b>[Sir] J. Rhys, “Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated +by Celtic Heathendom”</b> (London, 1888), 514, <b>“Celtic Folklore: Welsh +and Manx”</b> (Oxford, 1901), i. 321. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-3" id="Note_8-3" href="#Nanchor_8-3"> +3 .</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 57 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-4" id="Note_8-4" href="#Nanchor_8-4"> +4 .</a> Rhys, “Celtic Folklore,” i. 315 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-5" id="Note_8-5" href="#Nanchor_8-5"> +5 .</a> <b>J. Dowden, “The Church Year and Kalendar”</b> (Cambridge, 1910), 23 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-6" id="Note_8-6" href="#Nanchor_8-6"> +6 .</a> Cf. <b>J. G. Frazer, “Adonis, Attis, Osiris”</b> (2nd Edition, London, 1907), 315 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-7" id="Note_8-7" href="#Nanchor_8-7"> +7 .</a> <b>E. B. Tylor, “Primitive Culture”</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 .</a> Frazer, “Adonis,” 310. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-9" id="Note_8-9" href="#Nanchor_8-9"> +9 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 312 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-10" id="Note_8-10" href="#Nanchor_8-10"> +10.</a> <b>P. Sébillot, “Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne”</b> (Paris, 1886), +206. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-11" id="Note_8-11" href="#Nanchor_8-11"> +11.</a> <b>L. von Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben”</b> (Stuttgart, 1909), 193. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-12" id="Note_8-12" href="#Nanchor_8-12"> +12.</a> Frazer, “Adonis,” 315. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-13" id="Note_8-13" href="#Nanchor_8-13"> +13.</a> <b>G. Pitrè, “Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane”</b> (Palermo, 1880), 393 f. +Cf. <b>H. F. Feilberg, “Jul”</b> (Copenhagen, 1904), i. 67. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-14" id="Note_8-14" href="#Nanchor_8-14"> +14.</a> <b>“Notes and Queries”</b> (London), 3rd Series, vol. i. 446; Dyer, 408. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-15" id="Note_8-15" href="#Nanchor_8-15"> +15.</a> Frazer, “Adonis,” 250. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-16" id="Note_8-16" href="#Nanchor_8-16"> +16.</a> Dyer, 405 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-17" id="Note_8-17" href="#Nanchor_8-17"> +17.</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series, vol. iv. 381; Dyer, 407. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-18" id="Note_8-18" href="#Nanchor_8-18"> +18.</a> <b>C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, “Shropshire Folk-Lore”</b> (London, 1883), 383. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-19" id="Note_8-19" href="#Nanchor_8-19"> +19.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 381 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-20" id="Note_8-20" href="#Nanchor_8-20"> +20.</a> Quoted by Dyer, 410. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-21" id="Note_8-21" href="#Nanchor_8-21"> +21.</a> <b>O. von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, “Das festliche Jahr der germanischen +Völker”</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> <b>“Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari”</b> (Palermo), vol. viii. 574. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-23" id="Note_8-23" href="#Nanchor_8-23"> +23.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 189 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-24" id="Note_8-24" href="#Nanchor_8-24"> +24.</a> Frazer, “Adonis,” 303 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-25" id="Note_8-25" href="#Nanchor_8-25"> +25.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 306 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-26" id="Note_8-26" href="#Nanchor_8-26"> +26.</a> Evans, 363 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-27" id="Note_8-27" href="#Nanchor_8-27"> +27.</a> Dyer, 394. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-28" id="Note_8-28" href="#Nanchor_8-28"> +28.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 398. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-29" id="Note_8-29" href="#Nanchor_8-29"> +29.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 394. Cf. Chambers, “B. D.,” ii. 519 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-30" id="Note_8-30" href="#Nanchor_8-30"> +30.</a> Dyer, 395. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-31" id="Note_8-31" href="#Nanchor_8-31"> +31.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 399. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-32" id="Note_8-32" href="#Nanchor_8-32"> +32.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 397 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-33" id="Note_8-33" href="#Nanchor_8-33"> +33.</a> <b>S. O. Addy, “Household Tales, with other Traditional Remains. Collected +in the Counties of Lincoln, Derby, and Nottingham”</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> <i>Ibid.</i> 85. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-35" id="Note_8-35" href="#Nanchor_8-35"> +35.</a> <b>W. Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the +Borders”</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> Dyer, 399. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-37" id="Note_8-37" href="#Nanchor_8-37"> +37.</a> <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> Rhys, “Celtic Folklore,” i. 321, “Celtic Heathendom,” 514. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-39" id="Note_8-39" href="#Nanchor_8-39"> +39.</a> Rhys, “Celtic Folklore,” i. 328. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-40" id="Note_8-40" href="#Nanchor_8-40"> +40.</a> MacCulloch, “Religion of the Ancient Celts,” 259, 261. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-41" id="Note_8-41" href="#Nanchor_8-41"> +41.</a> Rhys, “Celtic Heathendom,” 515. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-42" id="Note_8-42" href="#Nanchor_8-42"> +42.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 515. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-43" id="Note_8-43" href="#Nanchor_8-43"> +43.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 515, “Celtic Folklore,” i. 225. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-44" id="Note_8-44" href="#Nanchor_8-44"> +44.</a> MacCulloch, “Religion of the Ancient Celts,” 262. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-45" id="Note_8-45" href="#Nanchor_8-45"> +45.</a> Brand, 211. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-46" id="Note_8-46" href="#Nanchor_8-46"> +46.</a> Dyer, 402. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-47" id="Note_8-47" href="#Nanchor_8-47"> +47.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 394 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-48" id="Note_8-48" href="#Nanchor_8-48"> +48.</a> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 299 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-49" id="Note_8-49" href="#Nanchor_8-49"> +49.</a> Burne and Jackson, 389. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-50" id="Note_8-50" href="#Nanchor_8-50"> +50.</a> Dyer, 409. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-51" id="Note_8-51" href="#Nanchor_8-51"> +51.</a> <b>J. Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology”</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> <b>K. Weinhold, “Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus Süddeutschland und +Schlesien”</b> (Vienna, 1875), 6. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-53" id="Note_8-53" href="#Nanchor_8-53"> +53.</a> <b>U. Jahn, “Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht”</b> +(Breslau, 1884), 262. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-54" id="Note_8-54" href="#Nanchor_8-54"> +54.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 262. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-55" id="Note_8-55" href="#Nanchor_8-55"> +55.</a> Weinhold, 6. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-56" id="Note_8-56" href="#Nanchor_8-56"> +56.</a> Dyer, 472. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-57" id="Note_8-57" href="#Nanchor_8-57"> +57.</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series, vol. i. 173; Dyer, 486. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-58" id="Note_8-58" href="#Nanchor_8-58"> +58.</a> Weinhold, 7. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-59" id="Note_8-59" href="#Nanchor_8-59"> +59.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 10. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-60" id="Note_8-60" href="#Nanchor_8-60"> +60.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 449. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-61" id="Note_8-61" href="#Nanchor_8-61"> +61.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 166. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-62" id="Note_8-62" href="#Nanchor_8-62"> +62.</a> Dyer, 480. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-63" id="Note_8-63" href="#Nanchor_8-63"> +63.</a> Feilberg, ii. 228 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-64" id="Note_8-64" href="#Nanchor_8-64"> +64.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 393. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-65" id="Note_8-65" href="#Nanchor_8-65"> +65.</a> <b>Tacitus, “Annales,”</b> lib. i. cap. 50, quoted by Tille, “Y. & C.,” 25. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-66" id="Note_8-66" href="#Nanchor_8-66"> +66.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 26. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-67" id="Note_8-67" href="#Nanchor_8-67"> +67.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 52. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-68" id="Note_8-68" href="#Nanchor_8-68"> +68.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 27. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-69" id="Note_8-69" href="#Nanchor_8-69"> +69.</a> Brand, 216 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-70" id="Note_8-70" href="#Nanchor_8-70"> +70.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 401 f. For German Martinmas feasting, see also Jahn, +229 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-71" id="Note_8-71" href="#Nanchor_8-71"> +71.</a> Grimm, iv. 1838, for Danish custom; Jahn, 235 f., for German. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-72" id="Note_8-72" href="#Nanchor_8-72"> +72.</a> <b>“The Folk-Lore Record”</b> (London), vol. iv., 1881, 107; Dyer, 420. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-73" id="Note_8-73" href="#Nanchor_8-73"> +73.</a> MacCulloch, “Religion of the Ancient Celts,” 260. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-74" id="Note_8-74" href="#Nanchor_8-74"> +74.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 403. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-75" id="Note_8-75" href="#Nanchor_8-75"> +75.</a> Jahn, 246 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-76" id="Note_8-76" href="#Nanchor_8-76"> +76.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 246; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 403. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-77" id="Note_8-77" href="#Nanchor_8-77"> +77.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 34 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-78" id="Note_8-78" href="#Nanchor_8-78"> +78.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 404; Jahn, 250. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-79" id="Note_8-79" href="#Nanchor_8-79"> +79.</a> Jahn, 247. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-80" id="Note_8-80" href="#Nanchor_8-80"> +80.</a> Angela Nardo-Cibele in <i>Archivio trad. pop.</i>, vol. v. 238 f., for Venetia; Pitrè, +411 f., for Sicily. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-81" id="Note_8-81" href="#Nanchor_8-81"> +81.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 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> Jahn, 240. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-83" id="Note_8-83" href="#Nanchor_8-83"> +83.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 241 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-84" id="Note_8-84" href="#Nanchor_8-84"> +84.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 241. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-85" id="Note_8-85" href="#Nanchor_8-85"> +85.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 404. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-86" id="Note_8-86" href="#Nanchor_8-86"> +86.</a> Weinhold, 7. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-87" id="Note_8-87" href="#Nanchor_8-87"> +87.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 268; Weinhold, 7; Tille, “D. W.,” 25. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-88" id="Note_8-88" href="#Nanchor_8-88"> +88.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, illustration facing p. 406. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-89" id="Note_8-89" href="#Nanchor_8-89"> +89.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 405. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-90" id="Note_8-90" href="#Nanchor_8-90"> +90.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 404. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-91" id="Note_8-91" href="#Nanchor_8-91"> +91.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 410; Tille, “D. W.,” 26 f.; <b>W. Mannhardt, “Der Baumkultus der +Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme”</b> (Berlin, 1875. Vol. i. of “Wald- und +Feldkulte”), 273. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-92" id="Note_8-92" href="#Nanchor_8-92"> +92.</a> Cf. Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 303, and Reinach, i. 180. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-93" id="Note_8-93" href="#Nanchor_8-93"> +93.</a> <i>Archivio trad. pop.</i>, vol. v. 238 f., 358 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_8-94" id="Note_8-94" href="#Nanchor_8-94"> +94.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 274. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER VIII.—ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-1" id="Note_9-1" href="#Nanchor_9-1"> +1 .</a> Dyer, 423. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-2" id="Note_9-2" href="#Nanchor_9-2"> +2 .</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series, vol. viii. 618; Dyer, 425. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-3" id="Note_9-3" href="#Nanchor_9-3"> +3 .</a> Brand, 222 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-4" id="Note_9-4" href="#Nanchor_9-4"> +4 .</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 97. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-5" id="Note_9-5" href="#Nanchor_9-5"> +5 .</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 3rd Series, vol. iv. 492; Dyer, 423. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-6" id="Note_9-6" href="#Nanchor_9-6"> +6 .</a> Dyer, 425. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-7" id="Note_9-7" href="#Nanchor_9-7"> +7 .</a> Brand, 222. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-8" id="Note_9-8" href="#Nanchor_9-8"> +8 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 223. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-9" id="Note_9-9" href="#Nanchor_9-9"> +9 .</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 2nd Series, vol. v. 47; Dyer, 427. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-10" id="Note_9-10" href="#Nanchor_9-10"> +10.</a> Dyer, 426 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-11" id="Note_9-11" href="#Nanchor_9-11"> +11.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 415. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-12" id="Note_9-12" href="#Nanchor_9-12"> +12.</a> <b>J. N. Raphael</b> in <b>“The Daily Express,”</b> Nov. 28, 1911. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-13" id="Note_9-13" href="#Nanchor_9-13"> +13.</a> Dyer, 430. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-14" id="Note_9-14" href="#Nanchor_9-14"> +14.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 429. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-15" id="Note_9-15" href="#Nanchor_9-15"> +15.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 148. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-16" id="Note_9-16" href="#Nanchor_9-16"> +16.</a> <b>B. Thorpe, “Northern Mythology”</b> (London, 1852), iii. 143. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-17" id="Note_9-17" href="#Nanchor_9-17"> +17.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> iii. 144. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-18" id="Note_9-18" href="#Nanchor_9-18"> +18.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 416 f. Cf. Grimm, iv. 1800. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-19" id="Note_9-19" href="#Nanchor_9-19"> +19.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 417. Cf. Thorpe, iii. 145. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-20" id="Note_9-20" href="#Nanchor_9-20"> +20.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 418. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-21" id="Note_9-21" href="#Nanchor_9-21"> +21.</a> Thorpe, iii. 145. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-22" id="Note_9-22" href="#Nanchor_9-22"> +22.</a> <b>F. S. Krauss, “Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven”</b> (Vienna, 1885), 179. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-23" id="Note_9-23" href="#Nanchor_9-23"> +23.</a> <b>T. Stratilesco, “From Carpathian to Pindus: Pictures of Roumanian +Country Life”</b> (London, 1906), 189. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-24" id="Note_9-24" href="#Nanchor_9-24"> +24.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 188 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-25" id="Note_9-25" href="#Nanchor_9-25"> +25.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 416. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-26" id="Note_9-26" href="#Nanchor_9-26"> +26.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 420 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-27" id="Note_9-27" href="#Nanchor_9-27"> +27.</a> <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> <b>Thomas Naogeorgus, “The Popish Kingdome,”</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> <b>G. F. Abbott, “Macedonian Folklore”</b> (Cambridge, 1903), 76. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-30" id="Note_9-30" href="#Nanchor_9-30"> +30.</a> <b>P. M. Hough, “Dutch Life in Town and Country”</b> (London, 1901), 96. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-31" id="Note_9-31" href="#Nanchor_9-31"> +31.</a> Cf. Frazer, “Golden Bough,” 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> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 426. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-33" id="Note_9-33" href="#Nanchor_9-33"> +33.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 218 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-34" id="Note_9-34" href="#Nanchor_9-34"> +34.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 30. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-35" id="Note_9-35" href="#Nanchor_9-35"> +35.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 370. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-36" id="Note_9-36" href="#Nanchor_9-36"> +36.</a> Hamilton, 30. Cf. article on St. Nicholas by Professor Anichkof in <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. v., 1894, 108 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-37" id="Note_9-37" href="#Nanchor_9-37"> +37.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 428 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-38" id="Note_9-38" href="#Nanchor_9-38"> +38.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 35 f.; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 430. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-39" id="Note_9-39" href="#Nanchor_9-39"> +39.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 209 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-40" id="Note_9-40" href="#Nanchor_9-40"> +40.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 430. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-41" id="Note_9-41" href="#Nanchor_9-41"> +41.</a> Weinhold, 9. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-42" id="Note_9-42" href="#Nanchor_9-42"> +42.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 326. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-43" id="Note_9-43" href="#Nanchor_9-43"> +43.</a> Weinhold, 9. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-44" id="Note_9-44" href="#Nanchor_9-44"> +44.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 431 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-45" id="Note_9-45" href="#Nanchor_9-45"> +45.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 212 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-46" id="Note_9-46" href="#Nanchor_9-46"> +46.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 433. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-47" id="Note_9-47" href="#Nanchor_9-47"> +47.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 433. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-48" id="Note_9-48" href="#Nanchor_9-48"> +48.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 369. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-49" id="Note_9-49" href="#Nanchor_9-49"> +49.</a> <b>W. S. Walsh, “Curiosities of Popular Customs”</b> (London, 1898), 753 f. +Cf. Chambers, “B. D.,” ii. 664. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-50" id="Note_9-50" href="#Nanchor_9-50"> +50.</a> Feilberg, i. 165, 170. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-51" id="Note_9-51" href="#Nanchor_9-51"> +51.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 169 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-52" id="Note_9-52" href="#Nanchor_9-52"> +52.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 171. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-53" id="Note_9-53" href="#Nanchor_9-53"> +53.</a> <b>L. Caico, “Sicilian Ways and Days”</b> (London, 1910), 188 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-54" id="Note_9-54" href="#Nanchor_9-54"> +54.</a> Feilberg, i. 168. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-55" id="Note_9-55" href="#Nanchor_9-55"> +55.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 434. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-56" id="Note_9-56" href="#Nanchor_9-56"> +56.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 434 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-57" id="Note_9-57" href="#Nanchor_9-57"> +57.</a> Grimm, iv. 1867. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-58" id="Note_9-58" href="#Nanchor_9-58"> +58.</a> Feilberg, i. 108 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-59" id="Note_9-59" href="#Nanchor_9-59"> +59.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 111. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-60" id="Note_9-60" href="#Nanchor_9-60"> +60.</a> N. W. Thomas in <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. xi., 1900, 252. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-61" id="Note_9-61" href="#Nanchor_9-61"> +61.</a> Ashton, 52. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-62" id="Note_9-62" href="#Nanchor_9-62"> +62.</a> Dyer, 72 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-63" id="Note_9-63" href="#Nanchor_9-63"> +63.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 436 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-64" id="Note_9-64" href="#Nanchor_9-64"> +64.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 437. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-65" id="Note_9-65" href="#Nanchor_9-65"> +65.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 438. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-66" id="Note_9-66" href="#Nanchor_9-66"> +66.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 439. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-67" id="Note_9-67" href="#Nanchor_9-67"> +67.</a> Dyer, 439. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-68" id="Note_9-68" href="#Nanchor_9-68"> +68.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 438 f.; Chambers, “B. D.,” ii. 724. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-69" id="Note_9-69" href="#Nanchor_9-69"> +69.</a> Abbott, 81. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_9-70" id="Note_9-70" href="#Nanchor_9-70"> +70.</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 2nd Series, vol. v. 35; Dyer, 439.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_377" id="Page_377" href="#Page_377">377</a> +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER IX.—CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-1" id="Note_10-1" href="#Nanchor_10-1"> +1 .</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 32 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-2" id="Note_10-2" href="#Nanchor_10-2"> +2 .</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 446. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-3" id="Note_10-3" href="#Nanchor_10-3"> +3 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 448. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-4" id="Note_10-4" href="#Nanchor_10-4"> +4 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 449. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-5" id="Note_10-5" href="#Nanchor_10-5"> +5 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 448; Weinhold, 8 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-6" id="Note_10-6" href="#Nanchor_10-6"> +6 .</a> Evans, 229. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-7" id="Note_10-7" href="#Nanchor_10-7"> +7 .</a> Weinhold, 8. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-8" id="Note_10-8" href="#Nanchor_10-8"> +8 .</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 116. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-9" id="Note_10-9" href="#Nanchor_10-9"> +9 .</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 444 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-10" id="Note_10-10" href="#Nanchor_10-10"> +10.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 442 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-11" id="Note_10-11" href="#Nanchor_10-11"> +11.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 444. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-12" id="Note_10-12" href="#Nanchor_10-12"> +12.</a> <b>W. R. S. Ralston, “Songs of the Russian People”</b> (1st Edition, London, +1872), 186 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-13" id="Note_10-13" href="#Nanchor_10-13"> +13.</a> Sébillot, 216. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-14" id="Note_10-14" href="#Nanchor_10-14"> +14.</a> Walsh, 232. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-15" id="Note_10-15" href="#Nanchor_10-15"> +15.</a> Burne and Jackson, 406; Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” +311; <b>Sir Edgar MacCulloch, “Guernsey Folk Lore”</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> Walsh, 232. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-17" id="Note_10-17" href="#Nanchor_10-17"> +17.</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 311. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-18" id="Note_10-18" href="#Nanchor_10-18"> +18.</a> MacCulloch, “Guernsey Folk Lore,” 34 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> Grimm, iv. 1840. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-20" id="Note_10-20" href="#Nanchor_10-20"> +20.</a> Ralston, 201. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-21" id="Note_10-21" href="#Nanchor_10-21"> +21.</a> <b>A. Le Braz, “La Légende de la Mort chez les Bretons armoricains”</b> (Paris, +1902), i. 114 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-22" id="Note_10-22" href="#Nanchor_10-22"> +22.</a> Thorpe, ii. 89. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-23" id="Note_10-23" href="#Nanchor_10-23"> +23.</a> Lloyd, 171. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-24" id="Note_10-24" href="#Nanchor_10-24"> +24.</a> Feilberg, ii. 7 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-25" id="Note_10-25" href="#Nanchor_10-25"> +25.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 14. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-26" id="Note_10-26" href="#Nanchor_10-26"> +26.</a> Bilfinger, 52. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-27" id="Note_10-27" href="#Nanchor_10-27"> +27.</a> Feilberg, ii. 3 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-28" id="Note_10-28" href="#Nanchor_10-28"> +28.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 20 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-29" id="Note_10-29" href="#Nanchor_10-29"> +29.</a> <b>A. F. M. Ferryman, “In the Northman's Land”</b> (London, 1896), 112. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-30" id="Note_10-30" href="#Nanchor_10-30"> +30.</a> Feilberg, ii. 64. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-31" id="Note_10-31" href="#Nanchor_10-31"> +31.</a> 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> Krauss, 181. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-33" id="Note_10-33" href="#Nanchor_10-33"> +33.</a> 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. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-34" id="Note_10-34" href="#Nanchor_10-34"> +34.</a> Ralston, 193. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-35" id="Note_10-35" href="#Nanchor_10-35"> +35.</a> Stratilesco, 192. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-36" id="Note_10-36" href="#Nanchor_10-36"> +36.</a> Ralston, 197. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-37" id="Note_10-37" href="#Nanchor_10-37"> +37.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 244. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-38" id="Note_10-38" href="#Nanchor_10-38"> +38.</a> <b>Shakespeare, “Hamlet,” Act I. Sc. 1.</b> +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-39" id="Note_10-39" href="#Nanchor_10-39"> +39.</a> Bilfinger, 37 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-40" id="Note_10-40" href="#Nanchor_10-40"> +40.</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 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> Tylor, i. 362. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-42" id="Note_10-42" href="#Nanchor_10-42"> +42.</a> <b>W. Golther, “Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie”</b> (Leipsic, 1895), +283 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-43" id="Note_10-43" href="#Nanchor_10-43"> +43.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 173. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-44" id="Note_10-44" href="#Nanchor_10-44"> +44.</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 132. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-45" id="Note_10-45" href="#Nanchor_10-45"> +45.</a> MacCulloch, “Guernsey Folk Lore,” 33 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-46" id="Note_10-46" href="#Nanchor_10-46"> +46.</a> Burne and Jackson, 396 f., 403. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-47" id="Note_10-47" href="#Nanchor_10-47"> +47.</a> <b>R. T. Hampson, “Medii Aevi Kalendarium”</b> (London, 1841), i. 90. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-48" id="Note_10-48" href="#Nanchor_10-48"> +48.</a> 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> Burne and Jackson, 405. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-50" id="Note_10-50" href="#Nanchor_10-50"> +50.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 405; MacCulloch, “Religion of the Ancient Celts,” 166. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-51" id="Note_10-51" href="#Nanchor_10-51"> +51.</a> <b>E. H. Meyer, “Mythologie der Germanen”</b> (Strassburg, 1903), 424; Golther, +491; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 22 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-52" id="Note_10-52" href="#Nanchor_10-52"> +52.</a> Golther, 493. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-53" id="Note_10-53" href="#Nanchor_10-53"> +53.</a> Meyer, 425 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-54" id="Note_10-54" href="#Nanchor_10-54"> +54.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 425 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-55" id="Note_10-55" href="#Nanchor_10-55"> +55.</a> Grimm, iii. 925 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-56" id="Note_10-56" href="#Nanchor_10-56"> +56.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 268, 275 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-57" id="Note_10-57" href="#Nanchor_10-57"> +57.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 22. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-58" id="Note_10-58" href="#Nanchor_10-58"> +58.</a> Grimm, i. 275; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 23. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-59" id="Note_10-59" href="#Nanchor_10-59"> +59.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 23. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-60" id="Note_10-60" href="#Nanchor_10-60"> +60.</a> Meyer, 425; Grimm, i. 281. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-61" id="Note_10-61" href="#Nanchor_10-61"> +61.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 21. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-62" id="Note_10-62" href="#Nanchor_10-62"> +62.</a> Golther, 493. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-63" id="Note_10-63" href="#Nanchor_10-63"> +63.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 24. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-64" id="Note_10-64" href="#Nanchor_10-64"> +64.</a> Grimm, i. 274. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-65" id="Note_10-65" href="#Nanchor_10-65"> +65.</a> Meyer, 428. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-66" id="Note_10-66" href="#Nanchor_10-66"> +66.</a> <b>R. H. Busk, “The Valleys of Tirol”</b> (London, 1874), 116. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-67" id="Note_10-67" href="#Nanchor_10-67"> +67.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 118. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-68" id="Note_10-68" href="#Nanchor_10-68"> +68.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 417. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-69" id="Note_10-69" href="#Nanchor_10-69"> +69.</a> The details given about the <i>Kallikantzaroi</i> are taken, unless otherwise stated, +from Lawson, 190 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-70" id="Note_10-70" href="#Nanchor_10-70"> +70.</a> Abbott, 74. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-71" id="Note_10-71" href="#Nanchor_10-71"> +71.</a> Hamilton, 108 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-72" id="Note_10-72" href="#Nanchor_10-72"> +72.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 109. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-73" id="Note_10-73" href="#Nanchor_10-73"> +73.</a> Abbott, 218. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-74" id="Note_10-74" href="#Nanchor_10-74"> +74.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 73 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-75" id="Note_10-75" href="#Nanchor_10-75"> +75.</a> Meyer, 85 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-76" id="Note_10-76" href="#Nanchor_10-76"> +76.</a> <b>G. Henderson, “Survivals of Belief among the Celts”</b> (Glasgow, 1911), 178. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-77" id="Note_10-77" href="#Nanchor_10-77"> +77.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 177. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_10-78" id="Note_10-78" href="#Nanchor_10-78"> +78.</a> <b>F. H. E. Palmer, “Russian Life In Town and Country”</b> (London, 1901), 178. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER X.—THE YULE LOG</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-1" id="Note_11-1" href="#Nanchor_11-1"> +1 .</a> Evans, 221 f.; Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 224 f. Cf. the account of the +Servian Christmas in <b>Chedo Mijatovitch, “Servia and the Servians”</b> (London, +1908), 98 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-2" id="Note_11-2" href="#Nanchor_11-2"> +2 .</a> 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 .</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 236. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-4" id="Note_11-4" href="#Nanchor_11-4"> +4 .</a> Frazer, “Magic Art,” ii. 208. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-5" id="Note_11-5" href="#Nanchor_11-5"> +5 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 232. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-6" id="Note_11-6" href="#Nanchor_11-6"> +6 .</a> Evans, 219, 295, and 357. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-7" id="Note_11-7" href="#Nanchor_11-7"> +7 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 222. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-8" id="Note_11-8" href="#Nanchor_11-8"> +8 .</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 237. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-9" id="Note_11-9" href="#Nanchor_11-9"> +9 .</a> Cf. Frazer, “Magic Art,” ii. 233. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-10" id="Note_11-10" href="#Nanchor_11-10"> +10.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 365 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-11" id="Note_11-11" href="#Nanchor_11-11"> +11.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 226 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-12" id="Note_11-12" href="#Nanchor_11-12"> +12.</a> <b>“Memoirs of Mistral”</b> (Eng. Trans. by C. E. Maud, London, 1907), 29 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-13" id="Note_11-13" href="#Nanchor_11-13"> +13.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 226 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-14" id="Note_11-14" href="#Nanchor_11-14"> +14.</a> Sébillot, 218. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-15" id="Note_11-15" href="#Nanchor_11-15"> +15.</a> <b>A. de Gubernatis, “Storia Comparata degli Usi Natalizi”</b> (Milan, 1878), +112. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-16" id="Note_11-16" href="#Nanchor_11-16"> +16.</a> C. Casati in <i>Archivio trad. pop.</i>, vol. vi. 168 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-17" id="Note_11-17" href="#Nanchor_11-17"> +17.</a> Jahn, 253. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-18" id="Note_11-18" href="#Nanchor_11-18"> +18.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 254. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-19" id="Note_11-19" href="#Nanchor_11-19"> +19.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 257. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-20" id="Note_11-20" href="#Nanchor_11-20"> +20.</a> Brand, 245; Dyer, 466. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-21" id="Note_11-21" href="#Nanchor_11-21"> +21.</a> <b>[Sir] G. L. Gomme, “Folk Lore Relics of Early Village Life”</b> (London +1883), 99. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-22" id="Note_11-22" href="#Nanchor_11-22"> +22.</a> Ashton, 111. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-23" id="Note_11-23" href="#Nanchor_11-23"> +23.</a> Burne and Jackson, 402. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-24" id="Note_11-24" href="#Nanchor_11-24"> +24.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 398 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-25" id="Note_11-25" href="#Nanchor_11-25"> +25.</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series, vol. iv. 309; Dyer, 446 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-26" id="Note_11-26" href="#Nanchor_11-26"> +26.</a> <b>“The Gentleman's Magazine,”</b> 1790, 719. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-27" id="Note_11-27" href="#Nanchor_11-27"> +27.</a> Hampson, i. 109. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-28" id="Note_11-28" href="#Nanchor_11-28"> +28.</a> Feilberg, i. 118 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-29" id="Note_11-29" href="#Nanchor_11-29"> +29.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 146. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_11-30" id="Note_11-30" href="#Nanchor_11-30"> +30.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 66 f. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER XI.—THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-1" id="Note_12-1" href="#Nanchor_12-1"> +1 .</a> <b>I. A. R. Wylie, “My German Year”</b> (London, 1910), 68. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-2" id="Note_12-2" href="#Nanchor_12-2"> +2 .</a> <b>Mrs. A. Sidgwick, “Home Life in Germany”</b> (London, 1908), 176. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-3" id="Note_12-3" href="#Nanchor_12-3"> +3 .</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 258. For the history and associations of the Christmas-tree see +also <b>E. M. Kronfeld, “Der Weihnachtsbaum”</b> (Oldenburg, 1906). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-4" id="Note_12-4" href="#Nanchor_12-4"> +4 .</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 259. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-5" id="Note_12-5" href="#Nanchor_12-5"> +5 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 261. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-6" id="Note_12-6" href="#Nanchor_12-6"> +6 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 261 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-7" id="Note_12-7" href="#Nanchor_12-7"> +7 .</a> <b>G. Rietschel, “Weihnachten in Kirche, Kunst und Volksleben”</b> (Bielefeld +and Leipsic, 1902), 153. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-8" id="Note_12-8" href="#Nanchor_12-8"> +8 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, 153. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-9" id="Note_12-9" href="#Nanchor_12-9"> +9 .</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 270. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-10" id="Note_12-10" href="#Nanchor_12-10"> +10.</a> Rietschel, 151. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-11" id="Note_12-11" href="#Nanchor_12-11"> +11.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 151. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-12" id="Note_12-12" href="#Nanchor_12-12"> +12.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 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> Dyer, 442; E. M. Leather, <b>“The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire”</b> (London, +1912), 90. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-14" id="Note_12-14" href="#Nanchor_12-14"> +14.</a> Rietschel, 154. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-15" id="Note_12-15" href="#Nanchor_12-15"> +15.</a> Ashton, 189. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-16" id="Note_12-16" href="#Nanchor_12-16"> +16.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 190. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-17" id="Note_12-17" href="#Nanchor_12-17"> +17.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 271. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-18" id="Note_12-18" href="#Nanchor_12-18"> +18.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 272. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-19" id="Note_12-19" href="#Nanchor_12-19"> +19.</a> <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> Information supplied by the Rev. E. W. Lummis, who a few years ago was a +pastor in the Münsterthal. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-21" id="Note_12-21" href="#Nanchor_12-21"> +21.</a> <b>L. Macdonald</b> in <b>“The Pall Mall Gazette”</b> (London), Dec. 28, 1911. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-22" id="Note_12-22" href="#Nanchor_12-22"> +22.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 174. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-23" id="Note_12-23" href="#Nanchor_12-23"> +23.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 175 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-24" id="Note_12-24" href="#Nanchor_12-24"> +24.</a> Rietschel, 141. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-25" id="Note_12-25" href="#Nanchor_12-25"> +25.</a> Tille, “Y. & C.,” 175. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-26" id="Note_12-26" href="#Nanchor_12-26"> +26.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 172 f.; Chambers, “B. D.,” ii. 759. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-27" id="Note_12-27" href="#Nanchor_12-27"> +27.</a> Latin text in Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 290. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-28" id="Note_12-28" href="#Nanchor_12-28"> +28.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 244. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-29" id="Note_12-29" href="#Nanchor_12-29"> +29.</a> Frazer, “Magic Art,” ii. 65. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-30" id="Note_12-30" href="#Nanchor_12-30"> +30.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 244. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-31" id="Note_12-31" href="#Nanchor_12-31"> +31.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 241; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 18. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-32" id="Note_12-32" href="#Nanchor_12-32"> +32.</a> Lloyd, 168. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-33" id="Note_12-33" href="#Nanchor_12-33"> +33.</a> Dyer, 35. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-34" id="Note_12-34" href="#Nanchor_12-34"> +34.</a> <b>W. F. Dawson, “Christmas: its Origin and Associations”</b> (London, 1902), +325. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-35" id="Note_12-35" href="#Nanchor_12-35"> +35.</a> Harrison, “Themis,” 321. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-36" id="Note_12-36" href="#Nanchor_12-36"> +36.</a> Frazer, “Magic Art,” ii. 55 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-37" id="Note_12-37" href="#Nanchor_12-37"> +37.</a> Frazer, “Magic Art,” ii. 48. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-38" id="Note_12-38" href="#Nanchor_12-38"> +38.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 242 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-39" id="Note_12-39" href="#Nanchor_12-39"> +39.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 251. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-40" id="Note_12-40" href="#Nanchor_12-40"> +40.</a> 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> <b>J. Stow, “A Survay of London,”</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> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 251. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-43" id="Note_12-43" href="#Nanchor_12-43"> +43.</a> Grimm, iii. 1206; Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 327; MacCulloch, “Religion +of the Ancient Celts,” 162, 205. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-44" id="Note_12-44" href="#Nanchor_12-44"> +44.</a> MacCulloch, “Religion of the Ancient Celts,” 162 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-45" id="Note_12-45" href="#Nanchor_12-45"> +45.</a> Grimm, iii. 1206. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-46" id="Note_12-46" href="#Nanchor_12-46"> +46.</a> Burne and Jackson, 246; <b>Laisnel de la Salle, “Croyances et légendes du +centre de la France”</b> (Paris, 1875), i. 58. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-47" id="Note_12-47" href="#Nanchor_12-47"> +47.</a> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 451 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-48" id="Note_12-48" href="#Nanchor_12-48"> +48.</a> <b>Washington Irving, “The Sketch-Book”</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> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 5th Series, vol. viii. 481. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-50" id="Note_12-50" href="#Nanchor_12-50"> +50.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 472. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-51" id="Note_12-51" href="#Nanchor_12-51"> +51.</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 100. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-52" id="Note_12-52" href="#Nanchor_12-52"> +52.</a> Burne and Jackson, 245. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-53" id="Note_12-53" href="#Nanchor_12-53"> +53.</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 226. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-54" id="Note_12-54" href="#Nanchor_12-54"> +54.</a> <b>E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, “Early English Lyrics”</b> (London, 1907), +293; <b>E. Rickert, “Ancient English Carols”</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> Rickert, 262. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-56" id="Note_12-56" href="#Nanchor_12-56"> +56.</a> Burne and Jackson, 245 f., 397, 411. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-57" id="Note_12-57" href="#Nanchor_12-57"> +57.</a> Lloyd, 169. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-58" id="Note_12-58" href="#Nanchor_12-58"> +58.</a> Van Norman, 300. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-59" id="Note_12-59" href="#Nanchor_12-59"> +59.</a> Evans, 222. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-60" id="Note_12-60" href="#Nanchor_12-60"> +60.</a> Van Norman, 300 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-61" id="Note_12-61" href="#Nanchor_12-61"> +61.</a> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” ii. 286 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-62" id="Note_12-62" href="#Nanchor_12-62"> +62.</a> Grimm, iv. 1831. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-63" id="Note_12-63" href="#Nanchor_12-63"> +63.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 238. Cf. Tille, “Y. & C.,” 104. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-64" id="Note_12-64" href="#Nanchor_12-64"> +64.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 420. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-65" id="Note_12-65" href="#Nanchor_12-65"> +65.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 195. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-66" id="Note_12-66" href="#Nanchor_12-66"> +66.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 197. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-67" id="Note_12-67" href="#Nanchor_12-67"> +67.</a> Bilfinger, 48. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-68" id="Note_12-68" href="#Nanchor_12-68"> +68.</a> <b>Th. Bentzon, “Christmas in France”</b> in <b>“The Century Magazine”</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> Feilberg, ii. 179 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-70" id="Note_12-70" href="#Nanchor_12-70"> +70.</a> Pitrè, 167, 404. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-71" id="Note_12-71" href="#Nanchor_12-71"> +71.</a> Feilberg, i. 196; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 453 f.; Wylie, 77 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-72" id="Note_12-72" href="#Nanchor_12-72"> +72.</a> Lloyd, 172. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-73" id="Note_12-73" href="#Nanchor_12-73"> +73.</a> <b>W. Sandys, “Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern”</b> (London, 1833), xcv. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_12-74" id="Note_12-74" href="#Nanchor_12-74"> +74.</a> Walsh, 240 f.; Ashton, 194 f. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER XII.—CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-1" id="Note_13-1" href="#Nanchor_13-1"> +1 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 257. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-2" id="Note_13-2" href="#Nanchor_13-2"> +2 .</a> Rickert, 259. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-3" id="Note_13-3" href="#Nanchor_13-3"> +3 .</a> <b>W. Sandys, “Christmastide: its History, Festivities, and Carols”</b> (London, +n.d.), 112. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-4" id="Note_13-4" href="#Nanchor_13-4"> +4 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 133. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-5" id="Note_13-5" href="#Nanchor_13-5"> +5 .</a> <b>J. A. H. Murray, “A New English Dictionary”</b> (Oxford, 1888, &c.) iv. (1) 577. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-6" id="Note_13-6" href="#Nanchor_13-6"> +6 .</a> Addy, 103. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-7" id="Note_13-7" href="#Nanchor_13-7"> +7 .</a> Dawson, 254. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-8" id="Note_13-8" href="#Nanchor_13-8"> +8 .</a> Addy, 104. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-9" id="Note_13-9" href="#Nanchor_13-9"> +9 .</a> Burne and Jackson, 407. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-10" id="Note_13-10" href="#Nanchor_13-10"> +10.</a> Brand, 283. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-11" id="Note_13-11" href="#Nanchor_13-11"> +11.</a> Cf. <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. xi., 1900, 260. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-12" id="Note_13-12" href="#Nanchor_13-12"> +12.</a> Addy, 103. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-13" id="Note_13-13" href="#Nanchor_13-13"> +13.</a> Cf. carols in Brand, 3, and Rickert, 243 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-14" id="Note_13-14" href="#Nanchor_13-14"> +14.</a> Brand, 3. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-15" id="Note_13-15" href="#Nanchor_13-15"> +15.</a> Dyer, 464. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-16" id="Note_13-16" href="#Nanchor_13-16"> +16.</a> 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> Jahn, 265. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-18" id="Note_13-18" href="#Nanchor_13-18"> +18.</a> Stratilesco, 190. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-19" id="Note_13-19" href="#Nanchor_13-19"> +19.</a> Ralston, 193, 203. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-20" id="Note_13-20" href="#Nanchor_13-20"> +20.</a> Mijatovich, 98. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-21" id="Note_13-21" href="#Nanchor_13-21"> +21.</a> Jahn, 261. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-22" id="Note_13-22" href="#Nanchor_13-22"> +22.</a> Rietschel, 106. Cf. Weinhold, 25, and Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 463. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-23" id="Note_13-23" href="#Nanchor_13-23"> +23.</a> Sébillot, 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> Laisnel, i. 7 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-25" id="Note_13-25" href="#Nanchor_13-25"> +25.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 12 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-26" id="Note_13-26" href="#Nanchor_13-26"> +26.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 11. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-27" id="Note_13-27" href="#Nanchor_13-27"> +27.</a> <b>E. Cortet, “Essai sur les Fêtes religieuses”</b> (Paris, 1867), 265. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-28" id="Note_13-28" href="#Nanchor_13-28"> +28.</a> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” ii. 286 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-29" id="Note_13-29" href="#Nanchor_13-29"> +29.</a> <b>M. Höfler, “Weihnachtsgebäcke. Eine vergleichende Studie der germanischen +Gebildbrote zur Weihnachtszeit”</b> in <b>“Zeitschrift für österreichische +Volkskunde,”</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> Jahn, 280 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-31" id="Note_13-31" href="#Nanchor_13-31"> +31.</a> Burne and Jackson, 406 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-32" id="Note_13-32" href="#Nanchor_13-32"> +32.</a> <b>“The Mirror of Perfection,”</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> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 233 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-34" id="Note_13-34" href="#Nanchor_13-34"> +34.</a> Lloyd, 170 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-35" id="Note_13-35" href="#Nanchor_13-35"> +35.</a> Jahn, 276. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-36" id="Note_13-36" href="#Nanchor_13-36"> +36.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 276. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-37" id="Note_13-37" href="#Nanchor_13-37"> +37.</a> Lloyd, 168. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-38" id="Note_13-38" href="#Nanchor_13-38"> +38.</a> Evans, 231 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> Abbott, 76. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-40" id="Note_13-40" href="#Nanchor_13-40"> +40.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 244 f., 238, 245. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-41" id="Note_13-41" href="#Nanchor_13-41"> +41.</a> Dawson, 339. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-42" id="Note_13-42" href="#Nanchor_13-42"> +42.</a> <b>S. Graham, “A Vagabond in the Caucasus. With some Notes of his +Experiences among the Russians”</b> (London, 1910), 25 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-43" id="Note_13-43" href="#Nanchor_13-43"> +43.</a> Stratilesco, 190. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-44" id="Note_13-44" href="#Nanchor_13-44"> +44.</a> Van Norman, 299 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-45" id="Note_13-45" href="#Nanchor_13-45"> +45.</a> Jahn, 267. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-46" id="Note_13-46" href="#Nanchor_13-46"> +46.</a> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” ii. 442 f., where other examples, British and Continental, +of the wren-hunt are given. Cf. Dyer, 494 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-47" id="Note_13-47" href="#Nanchor_13-47"> +47.</a> <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. xviii., 1907, 439 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-48" id="Note_13-48" href="#Nanchor_13-48"> +48.</a> MacCulloch, “Religion of the Ancient Celts,” 221. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-49" id="Note_13-49" href="#Nanchor_13-49"> +49.</a> See Frazer, “Golden Bough,” 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> <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. xi., 1900, 259. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-51" id="Note_13-51" href="#Nanchor_13-51"> +51.</a> Brand, 272. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-52" id="Note_13-52" href="#Nanchor_13-52"> +52.</a> <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. xi., 1900, 262. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-53" id="Note_13-53" href="#Nanchor_13-53"> +53.</a> Lloyd, 181 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-54" id="Note_13-54" href="#Nanchor_13-54"> +54.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 181. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-55" id="Note_13-55" href="#Nanchor_13-55"> +55.</a> Thorpe, ii. 49 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_13-56" id="Note_13-56" href="#Nanchor_13-56"> +56.</a> Ralston, 200. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER XIII.—MASKING, THE MUMMERS’ 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 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 390 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-2" id="Note_14-2" href="#Nanchor_14-2"> +2 .</a> <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 .</a> <b>Shakespeare, “Henry VIII.,”</b> Act I. Sc. IV. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-4" id="Note_14-4" href="#Nanchor_14-4"> +4 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 403 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-5" id="Note_14-5" href="#Nanchor_14-5"> +5 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 227, 402. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-6" id="Note_14-6" href="#Nanchor_14-6"> +6 .</a> <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 .</a> For a bibliography of texts of the mummers’ plays see Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 205 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 .</a> This account of the plays and dances is based upon Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 182 f. +(chapters ix. and x.). +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-9" id="Note_14-9" href="#Nanchor_14-9"> +9 .</a> <b>Tacitus, “Germania,”</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> Cf. Harrison, “Themis,” 43 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-11" id="Note_14-11" href="#Nanchor_14-11"> +11.</a> Professor Gilbert Murray in “Themis,” 341 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-12" id="Note_14-12" href="#Nanchor_14-12"> +12.</a> Harrison, “Themis,” 232. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-13" id="Note_14-13" href="#Nanchor_14-13"> +13.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 226. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-14" id="Note_14-14" href="#Nanchor_14-14"> +14.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 192, 213 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-15" id="Note_14-15" href="#Nanchor_14-15"> +15.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 220 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-16" id="Note_14-16" href="#Nanchor_14-16"> +16.</a> Lawson, 223 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-17" id="Note_14-17" href="#Nanchor_14-17"> +17.</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 5th Series, vol. x. 482. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-18" id="Note_14-18" href="#Nanchor_14-18"> +18.</a> This account of the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop is mainly derived from +Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 274-371, and from <b>Mr. A. F. Leach's</b> article, <b>“The Schoolboys’ +Feast,”</b> in <b>“The Fortnightly Review”</b> (London), vol. lix., 1896, 128 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-19" id="Note_14-19" href="#Nanchor_14-19"> +19.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 294. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-20" id="Note_14-20" href="#Nanchor_14-20"> +20.</a> Full text in Chambers, “M. S.,” ii. 280 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-21" id="Note_14-21" href="#Nanchor_14-21"> +21.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 372 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-22" id="Note_14-22" href="#Nanchor_14-22"> +22.</a> <b>“Two Sermons preached by the Boy Bishop at St. Paul's,”</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> <i>Ibid.</i> 3. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-24" id="Note_14-24" href="#Nanchor_14-24"> +24.</a> Quoted by <b>F. J. Snell, “The Customs Of Old England”</b> (London, 1911), 44. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-25" id="Note_14-25" href="#Nanchor_14-25"> +25.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 366. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-26" id="Note_14-26" href="#Nanchor_14-26"> +26.</a> <b>J. Aubrey, “Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme”</b> (1686-7), ed. by J. +Britten (London, 1881), 40 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-27" id="Note_14-27" href="#Nanchor_14-27"> +27.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 350. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_14-28" id="Note_14-28" href="#Nanchor_14-28"> +28.</a> Feilberg, ii. 254. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER XIV.—ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS’ DAYS</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-1" id="Note_15-1" href="#Nanchor_15-1"> +1 .</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 237 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-2" id="Note_15-2" href="#Nanchor_15-2"> +2 .</a> Dyer, 492. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-3" id="Note_15-3" href="#Nanchor_15-3"> +3 .</a> <b>L. von Hörmann, “Das Tiroler Bauernjahr”</b> (Innsbruck, 1899), 204. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-4" id="Note_15-4" href="#Nanchor_15-4"> +4 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 204. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-5" id="Note_15-5" href="#Nanchor_15-5"> +5 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 204 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-6" id="Note_15-6" href="#Nanchor_15-6"> +6 .</a> Feilberg, i. 212. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-7" id="Note_15-7" href="#Nanchor_15-7"> +7 .</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 402. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-8" id="Note_15-8" href="#Nanchor_15-8"> +8 .</a> Feilberg, i. 211. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-9" id="Note_15-9" href="#Nanchor_15-9"> +9 .</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 402 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-10" id="Note_15-10" href="#Nanchor_15-10"> +10.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 402 f.; Feilberg, i. 204 f.; Lloyd, 203 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-11" id="Note_15-11" href="#Nanchor_15-11"> +11.</a> <b>H. C. Beeching, “A Book of Christmas Verse”</b> (London, 1895), 21 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-12" id="Note_15-12" href="#Nanchor_15-12"> +12.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 406. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-13" id="Note_15-13" href="#Nanchor_15-13"> +13.</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 67. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-14" id="Note_15-14" href="#Nanchor_15-14"> +14.</a> Jahn, 269 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-15" id="Note_15-15" href="#Nanchor_15-15"> +15.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 270 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-16" id="Note_15-16" href="#Nanchor_15-16"> +16.</a> <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> Dyer, 497 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-18" id="Note_15-18" href="#Nanchor_15-18"> +18.</a> <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> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 264 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-20" id="Note_15-20" href="#Nanchor_15-20"> +20.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 265 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-21" id="Note_15-21" href="#Nanchor_15-21"> +21.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 268. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_15-22" id="Note_15-22" href="#Nanchor_15-22"> +22.</a> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 129 f. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER XV.—NEW YEAR'S DAY</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-1" id="Note_16-1" href="#Nanchor_16-1"> +1 .</a> Rhys, “Celtic Folklore,” i. 320 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-2" id="Note_16-2" href="#Nanchor_16-2"> +2 .</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 72. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-3" id="Note_16-3" href="#Nanchor_16-3"> +3 .</a> <b>E. Thurston, “Omens and Superstitions of Southern India”</b> (London, 1912), +17 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-4" id="Note_16-4" href="#Nanchor_16-4"> +4 .</a> Walsh, 742. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-5" id="Note_16-5" href="#Nanchor_16-5"> +5 .</a> Wylie, 81. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-6" id="Note_16-6" href="#Nanchor_16-6"> +6 .</a> Sébillot, 176. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-7" id="Note_16-7" href="#Nanchor_16-7"> +7 .</a> <b>A. Maurice Low, “The American People”</b> (London, 1911), ii. 6. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-8" id="Note_16-8" href="#Nanchor_16-8"> +8 .</a> Walsh, 739 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-9" id="Note_16-9" href="#Nanchor_16-9"> +9 .</a> Evans, 229. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-10" id="Note_16-10" href="#Nanchor_16-10"> +10.</a> Burne and Jackson, 315 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-11" id="Note_16-11" href="#Nanchor_16-11"> +11.</a> <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 5th Series, vol. iii. 6. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-12" id="Note_16-12" href="#Nanchor_16-12"> +12.</a> 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> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 204 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-14" id="Note_16-14" href="#Nanchor_16-14"> +14.</a> Burne and Jackson, 265. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-15" id="Note_16-15" href="#Nanchor_16-15"> +15.</a> Grimm, iv. 1784. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-16" id="Note_16-16" href="#Nanchor_16-16"> +16.</a> Harrison, “Themis,” 36. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-17" id="Note_16-17" href="#Nanchor_16-17"> +17.</a> Henderson, “Folk Lore of the Northern Counties,” 72 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-18" id="Note_16-18" href="#Nanchor_16-18"> +18.</a> Addy, 205. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-19" id="Note_16-19" href="#Nanchor_16-19"> +19.</a> G. Hastie in <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. iv., 1893, 309 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-20" id="Note_16-20" href="#Nanchor_16-20"> +20.</a> J. E. Crombie in same volume, 316 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-21" id="Note_16-21" href="#Nanchor_16-21"> +21.</a> Addy, 106; Burne and Jackson, 314; Rhys, “Celtic Folklore,” i. 337. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-22" id="Note_16-22" href="#Nanchor_16-22"> +22.</a> Rhys, “Celtic Folklore,” i. 339. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-23" id="Note_16-23" href="#Nanchor_16-23"> +23.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 339 f.; W. Henderson, 74. Cf. <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. iii., 1892, 253 f.; vol. iv., +1893, 309 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-24" id="Note_16-24" href="#Nanchor_16-24"> +24.</a> Hastie (see Note 19), 311. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-25" id="Note_16-25" href="#Nanchor_16-25"> +25.</a> Walsh, 738. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-26" id="Note_16-26" href="#Nanchor_16-26"> +26.</a> Hastie, 312. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-27" id="Note_16-27" href="#Nanchor_16-27"> +27.</a> Chambers, “B. D.,” i. 28. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-28" id="Note_16-28" href="#Nanchor_16-28"> +28.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 789 f.; <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 2nd Series, vol. ix., 322; Dyer, 506. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-29" id="Note_16-29" href="#Nanchor_16-29"> +29.</a> Ashton, 228. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-30" id="Note_16-30" href="#Nanchor_16-30"> +30.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 230 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-31" id="Note_16-31" href="#Nanchor_16-31"> +31.</a> <b>J. G. Campbell, “Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and +Islands of Scotland”</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> Henderson, “Survivals of Belief among the Celts,” 263 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-33" id="Note_16-33" href="#Nanchor_16-33"> +33.</a> <b>R. Chambers, “Popular Rhymes of Scotland”</b> (Edinburgh, 1847), 296, and +“B. D.,” 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> “New English Dictionary,” v. (1) 327. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-35" id="Note_16-35" href="#Nanchor_16-35"> +35.</a> Cortet, 18. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-36" id="Note_16-36" href="#Nanchor_16-36"> +36.</a> Sébillot, 213. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-37" id="Note_16-37" href="#Nanchor_16-37"> +37.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 213. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-38" id="Note_16-38" href="#Nanchor_16-38"> +38.</a> MacCulloch, “Guernsey Folk Lore,” 37. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-39" id="Note_16-39" href="#Nanchor_16-39"> +39.</a> Abbott, 80 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-40" id="Note_16-40" href="#Nanchor_16-40"> +40.</a> Stratilesco, 197 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-41" id="Note_16-41" href="#Nanchor_16-41"> +41.</a> Hamilton, 103. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-42" id="Note_16-42" href="#Nanchor_16-42"> +42.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 104. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-43" id="Note_16-43" href="#Nanchor_16-43"> +43.</a> Mannhardt, “Baumkultus,” 593 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-44" id="Note_16-44" href="#Nanchor_16-44"> +44.</a> Latin text from Ducange in Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 254. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-45" id="Note_16-45" href="#Nanchor_16-45"> +45.</a> Wylie, 81. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-46" id="Note_16-46" href="#Nanchor_16-46"> +46.</a> Abbott, 78. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-47" id="Note_16-47" href="#Nanchor_16-47"> +47.</a> Grimm, iv. 1847. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-48" id="Note_16-48" href="#Nanchor_16-48"> +48.</a> Sébillot, 171. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-49" id="Note_16-49" href="#Nanchor_16-49"> +49.</a> Dyer, 7. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-50" id="Note_16-50" href="#Nanchor_16-50"> +50.</a> Ashton, 228. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-51" id="Note_16-51" href="#Nanchor_16-51"> +51.</a> <b>A. Macdonell, “In the Abruzzi”</b> (London, 1908), 102. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-52" id="Note_16-52" href="#Nanchor_16-52"> +52.</a> Abbott, 77. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-53" id="Note_16-53" href="#Nanchor_16-53"> +53.</a> Ralston, 205. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_16-54" id="Note_16-54" href="#Nanchor_16-54"> +54.</a> <b>“The Athenæum”</b> (London), Feb. 5, 1848; <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 1st Series, vol. v., 5. +</p> + + + + + + +<h3>CHAPTER XVI.—EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS</h3> + + + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-1" id="Note_17-1" href="#Nanchor_17-1"> +1 .</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 240 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-2" id="Note_17-2" href="#Nanchor_17-2"> +2 .</a> <b>Leigh Hunt, “The Seer; or, Common-Places Refreshed”</b> (London, 1850), +part ii. 31. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-3" id="Note_17-3" href="#Nanchor_17-3"> +3 .</a> Beeching, 148 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-4" id="Note_17-4" href="#Nanchor_17-4"> +4 .</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 261. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-5" id="Note_17-5" href="#Nanchor_17-5"> +5 .</a> <b>E. Pasquier, “Les Recherches de la France”</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 .</a> Cortet, 33. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-7" id="Note_17-7" href="#Nanchor_17-7"> +7 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 34. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-8" id="Note_17-8" href="#Nanchor_17-8"> +8 .</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 43. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-9" id="Note_17-9" href="#Nanchor_17-9"> +9 .</a> <b>E. Du Méril, “Origines latines du théâtre moderne”</b> (Paris, 1849), 26 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-10" id="Note_17-10" href="#Nanchor_17-10"> +10.</a> Brand, 13. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-11" id="Note_17-11" href="#Nanchor_17-11"> +11.</a> <b>A. de Nore, “Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de France”</b> +(Paris, 1846), 173. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-12" id="Note_17-12" href="#Nanchor_17-12"> +12.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 29 f.; Brand, 13. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-13" id="Note_17-13" href="#Nanchor_17-13"> +13.</a> <b>Matilde Serao, “La Madonna e i Santi”</b> (Naples, 1902), 128. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-14" id="Note_17-14" href="#Nanchor_17-14"> +14.</a> Reinach, i. 45 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-15" id="Note_17-15" href="#Nanchor_17-15"> +15.</a> Abbott, 77. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-16" id="Note_17-16" href="#Nanchor_17-16"> +16.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 78. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-17" id="Note_17-17" href="#Nanchor_17-17"> +17.</a> Frazer, “Golden Bough,” iii. 93. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-18" id="Note_17-18" href="#Nanchor_17-18"> +18.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 246; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 21. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-19" id="Note_17-19" href="#Nanchor_17-19"> +19.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 21. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-20" id="Note_17-20" href="#Nanchor_17-20"> +20.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 21 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> Stratilesco, 198. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-22" id="Note_17-22" href="#Nanchor_17-22"> +22.</a> Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, 21. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-23" id="Note_17-23" href="#Nanchor_17-23"> +23.</a> <b>Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, “Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs”</b> +(London, 1886), 334. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-24" id="Note_17-24" href="#Nanchor_17-24"> +24.</a> <b>D. N. Lees, “Tuscan Feasts and Tuscan Friends”</b> (London, 1907), 87. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-25" id="Note_17-25" href="#Nanchor_17-25"> +25.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 83. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-26" id="Note_17-26" href="#Nanchor_17-26"> +26.</a> Serao, 127 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-27" id="Note_17-27" href="#Nanchor_17-27"> +27.</a> <b>E. de Olavarría y Huarte, “El Folk-Lore de Madrid,”</b> 90. [Vol. ii. of +“Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Españolas” (Seville, 1884).] +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-28" id="Note_17-28" href="#Nanchor_17-28"> +28.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 92. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-29" id="Note_17-29" href="#Nanchor_17-29"> +29.</a> “Memoirs of Mistral,” 32 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-30" id="Note_17-30" href="#Nanchor_17-30"> +30.</a> Nore, 17. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-31" id="Note_17-31" href="#Nanchor_17-31"> +31.</a> Abbott, 87. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-32" id="Note_17-32" href="#Nanchor_17-32"> +32.</a> Frazer, “Magic Art,” i. 275 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-33" id="Note_17-33" href="#Nanchor_17-33"> +33.</a> Hamilton, 118. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-34" id="Note_17-34" href="#Nanchor_17-34"> +34.</a> Brand, 16; Chambers, “B. D.,” i. 56; Dyer, 21. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-35" id="Note_17-35" href="#Nanchor_17-35"> +35.</a> Aubrey, 40. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-36" id="Note_17-36" href="#Nanchor_17-36"> +36.</a> Brand, 16. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-37" id="Note_17-37" href="#Nanchor_17-37"> +37.</a> Beeching, 147. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-38" id="Note_17-38" href="#Nanchor_17-38"> +38.</a> Ashton, 87 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-39" id="Note_17-39" href="#Nanchor_17-39"> +39.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 225. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-40" id="Note_17-40" href="#Nanchor_17-40"> +40.</a> Tille, “D. W.,” 254. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-41" id="Note_17-41" href="#Nanchor_17-41"> +41.</a> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 230. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-42" id="Note_17-42" href="#Nanchor_17-42"> +42.</a> <b>W. S. Lach-Szyrma</b> in <b>“The Folk-Lore Record”</b> (London), vol. iv., 1881, 53. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-43" id="Note_17-43" href="#Nanchor_17-43"> +43.</a> 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. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-44" id="Note_17-44" href="#Nanchor_17-44"> +44.</a> Evans, 228. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-45" id="Note_17-45" href="#Nanchor_17-45"> +45.</a> Dyer, 24. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-46" id="Note_17-46" href="#Nanchor_17-46"> +46.</a> <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. v., 1894, 192. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-47" id="Note_17-47" href="#Nanchor_17-47"> +47.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> vol. vii., 1896, 340 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-48" id="Note_17-48" href="#Nanchor_17-48"> +48.</a> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 149 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-49" id="Note_17-49" href="#Nanchor_17-49"> +49.</a> W. Hone, “Every Day Book” (London, 1838), ii. 1649. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-50" id="Note_17-50" href="#Nanchor_17-50"> +50.</a> <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. vii., 1896, 342. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-51" id="Note_17-51" href="#Nanchor_17-51"> +51.</a> <b>[Sir] G. L. Gomme, “The Village Community”</b> (London, 1890), 242 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-52" id="Note_17-52" href="#Nanchor_17-52"> +52.</a> Busk, 99. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-53" id="Note_17-53" href="#Nanchor_17-53"> +53.</a> Dawson, 320. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-54" id="Note_17-54" href="#Nanchor_17-54"> +54.</a> <b>“The Nation”</b> (London), Dec. 10, 1910. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-55" id="Note_17-55" href="#Nanchor_17-55"> +55.</a> Burne and Jackson, 411. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-56" id="Note_17-56" href="#Nanchor_17-56"> +56.</a> Lloyd, 217. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-57" id="Note_17-57" href="#Nanchor_17-57"> +57.</a> Bilfinger, 24. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-58" id="Note_17-58" href="#Nanchor_17-58"> +58.</a> Brand, 18 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-59" id="Note_17-59" href="#Nanchor_17-59"> +59.</a> Dyer, 37. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-60" id="Note_17-60" href="#Nanchor_17-60"> +60.</a> Quoted from <b>“Journal of the Archæological Association,”</b> vol. 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> Chambers, “M. S.,” i. 113. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-62" id="Note_17-62" href="#Nanchor_17-62"> +62.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 114. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-63" id="Note_17-63" href="#Nanchor_17-63"> +63.</a> Usener, 310 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-64" id="Note_17-64" href="#Nanchor_17-64"> +64.</a> Naogeorgus, 48. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-65" id="Note_17-65" href="#Nanchor_17-65"> +65.</a> Sébillot, 179 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> Hörmann, “Tiroler Volksleben,” 7. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-67" id="Note_17-67" href="#Nanchor_17-67"> +67.</a> Usener, 321. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-68" id="Note_17-68" href="#Nanchor_17-68"> +68.</a> Brand, 25. Cf. <b>G. W. Kitchin, “Seven Sages Of Durham”</b> (London, 1911), +113. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-69" id="Note_17-69" href="#Nanchor_17-69"> +69.</a> <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> Dyer, 55 f. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-71" id="Note_17-71" href="#Nanchor_17-71"> +71.</a> Quoted by Dyer, 57, from <b>Martin's “Description of the Western Isles of +Scotland”</b> (1703), 119. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-72" id="Note_17-72" href="#Nanchor_17-72"> +72.</a> Gomme, “Folk-Lore Relics,” 95. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-73" id="Note_17-73" href="#Nanchor_17-73"> +73.</a> Brand, 26. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-74" id="Note_17-74" href="#Nanchor_17-74"> +74.</a> <i>Ibid.</i> 26. +</p> + + + +<p> +<a class="label" name="Note_17-75" id="Note_17-75" href="#Nanchor_17-75"> +75.</a> 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 .</a> E. Clodd in Presidential Address to the Folk-Lore Society, 1894. See <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vol. 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’ Eve in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;<ul class="IX"> + <li>“new water” in, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> +</ul></li> + +<li>“Adam,” 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>“Adeste, fideles,” <a href="#Page_63">63-4</a></li> + +<li>Advent, <a href="#Page_90">90-2</a>;<ul class="IX"> + <li>“Advent images,” <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;</li> + <li><i>Klöpfelnächte</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’ Day, and the cult of the dead, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189-90</a></li> + +<li>All Souls’ 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 “May” in, <a href="#Page_269">269-70</a></li> +</ul></li> + +<li>Alsso of Brĕvnov, <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’ 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’ 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 “star” 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>“Breast-strip” 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’ 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> 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, “Clavie” at, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li>Burns, Robert, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> + +<li>“Bush, burning the,” <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, “feasten,” <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>“Comte d'Alsinoys,” <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, “star-singing” 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, “kissing-bunch” 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, “Yeth hounds” in, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;<ul class="IX"> + <li>“ashton faggot” 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>Düsseldorf, 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>“souling” 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’ 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>“Haxey Hood,” <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’ 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>“First-foots,” <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’ 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 Jésus</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’ 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’ 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, Théophile, <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’ 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>“star-singing” 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’ 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, “Christmas Vase” at, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> + +<li>Glastonbury thorns, <a href="#Page_268">268-9</a></li> + +<li>“Gloria in excelsis,” <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>“Christ's Loaves” 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>“Haxey Hood,” <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>Höfler, 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 “star” 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’ 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, “Yule host” in, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> + +<li>Image, Prof. Selwyn, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li> + +<li>“In dulci jubilo,” <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’ 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>“hunting of the wren” in, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li> + <li>Holy Innocents’ 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’ 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>“Kissing-bunch,” <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>Klöpfelnächte</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>Labruguière, 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>Macée, 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>“hunting of the wren” 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, “pastorals” 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>“Misterio de los Reyes Magos,” <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, Frédéric, <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, “De fructu” at, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li>Mummers’ 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 1 made a fast, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-1</a>;</li> + <li>customs attracted to January 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>Noël</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, “star-singing” in, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;<ul class="IX"> + <li>Innocents’ 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>“star-singing” 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>“O's,” 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>Ocaña, F. de, <a href="#Page_65">65-6</a></li> + +<li>Oesel, “Yule Boar” 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’ 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, Françoise, <a href="#Page_61">61-2</a></li> + +<li>Pasquier, Étienne, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> + +<li>Pearson, Dr. Karl, <a href="#Page_161">161-2</a></li> + +<li>Pellegrin, Abbé, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + +<li>Pelzmärte, <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 “star” 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’ 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>“Prophetae,” <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> 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>“Raging host,” <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>Rauchnächte</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>quête</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 “star” 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 “star” 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’ 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’ 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>“first-foot” 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>“wigs” 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’ 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>“Star-singing,” <a href="#Page_151">151-2</a></li> + +<li>“Stella,” <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 “Survay,” <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, Pelzmärte 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>“star-singing” 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>“St. Knut's Day” 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, “first-footing” 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>“Thomassin’,” <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 “War and Peace,” <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>Tübingen, 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>“star-singing” 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>Klöpfelnächte</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, “breast-strip” 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’ 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 “Mari Llwyd” in, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</li> + <li>“new water” 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>“Wild hunt,” <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>“Wish hounds,” <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>“Yeth hounds,” <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>“lucky bird” 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>“Yule Boar,” <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> +“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.</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 6 is a +matter of controversy; the affirmative view was maintained by Usener in his monograph +on Christmas,<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_1-6" id="Nanchor_1-6" href="#Note_1-6">{6}</a> + the negative by Monsignor Duchesne.<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 “Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics,”<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 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”).</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 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.”<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, “Holy Brimo (the Maiden) hath borne a sacred child, Brimos.”<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 “Prolegomena” of the worship of the child +Dionysus<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, “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 <i>Sol novus</i> exercised no direct or indirect influence on the ecclesiastical +decision arrived at in regard to the matter.”<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 “Encyclopædia,” seeks to account for the selection of December 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. 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.</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 “Hymns Ancient and Modern” (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 “Hymns Ancient and Modern” (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">“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.”</span><br /> +</div> +</div> + +<p>(Translation in “The English Hymnal,” 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">“Lords, by Christmas and the host</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Of this mansion hear my toast—</span><br /> +<span class="i6">Drink it well—</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> ”</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">“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">* * * * *</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.”</span><br /> +</div> +</div> + +<p>(Translation by John Addington Symonds in “The Renaissance in Italy. Italian +Literature” [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> +“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.”</p> +<p>(Translation by Vernon Lee in “Renaissance Fancies and Studies,” 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">“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.”</span><br /> +</div> +</div> + +<p>(Translation by Miss Anne Macdonell, in “Sons of Francis,” 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">“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.”</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">“A spotless Rose is blowing,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Sprung from a tender root,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Of ancient seers’ 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.”</span><br /> +</div> +</div> + +<p>(Translation by C. Winkworth, “Christian Singers,” 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, “Good Christian men, +rejoice.”</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_20"> +[20]</a> +“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.”</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_21"> +[21]</a> +“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.”</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_22"> +[22]</a> +“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.”</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: “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.”<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> +“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.”</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_25"> +[25]</a> +“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.”</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_26"> +[26]</a> +“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.”</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">“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.”<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-Querçy bird-carol of this kind is printed by Mr. H. J. L. J. Massé in his +delightful “Book of Old Carols,”<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—English, Latin, German, Flemish, Basque, Swedish, +Catalan, Provençal, 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">“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.”<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">“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>”<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">“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">‘Christ is born,’ 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">‘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.’</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.”<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">“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">* * * * *</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.”<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 “Watergate Booklets” under the title of “Popular Carols.” 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, “Christmas Eve,” 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 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.<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> +“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.)</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a class="label" href="#FNanchor_38"> +[38]</a> +“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!”</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.<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.<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:—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.<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 “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.<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">“<i>Riepl.</i> What a noise there is. Everything seems so strange to me!</span><br /> +<span class="i2"><i>Jörgl.</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; ‘twould break my neck and legs.”</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">“<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!”</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> +“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.”</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">“<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.”</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 +“Origini del Teatro in Italia.”<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, “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.”</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.<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 25 by the Christian king Hakon the Good of Norway (940-63).<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 “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.</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 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. “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.”</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 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.”<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 “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.”</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 “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.</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> +“Raise the glass at Martinmas, drink wine all through the year.”</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.<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> +“At St. Andrew's Mass winter is certain.”</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.<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.<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. “The Twelve +Nights,” in accordance with the old Teutonic mode of reckoning by nights, is a natural +and correct term.<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 “Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion.” 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.<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. “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).</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 “Haxey hood,” 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>, “a portable May-pole, a +branch hung about with wool, acorns, figs, cakes, fruits of all sorts and sometimes +wine-jars.”<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 “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.<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<a class="noteanchor" name="Nanchor_12-64" id="Nanchor_12-64" href="#Note_12-64">{64}</a> +—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> +“He has more to do than the ovens in England at Christmas.”</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:—</p> + +<pre> s. d. + “Item payd to the preacher vi ii + Item payd to the minstrell xii o + Item payd to the coke xv o”</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.<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.<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.<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—evidently originating in magical ritual intended to promote the fertility of +vegetation.<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.<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> +“Ope thy purse, and shut it then.”</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 “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.)</p></div> + +</div> + + + + + + + + +<hr /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, +Christian and Pagan, by Clement A. 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