NEW YEAR CUSTOMS
[_Bibliographical Note._--The two works of Dr. Tille remain of
importance. The compilations specially devoted to the usages
of the Christmas season are chiefly of a popular character;
W. Sandys, _Christmas Tide_ (n. d.), J. Ashton, _A Righte
Merrie Christmasse!!!_ (n. d.), and, for French data, E.
Müller, _Le Jour de l’An_ (n. d.), may be mentioned; H. Usener,
_Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen_, vol. ii (1889), prints
various documents, including the _Largum Sero_ of a Bohemian
priest named Alsso, on early fifteenth-century Christmas eve
customs. Most of the books named in the bibliographical note to
chap. v also cover the subject. A _Bibliography of Christmas_
runs through _Notes and Queries_, 6th series, vi. 506, viii. 491,
x. 492, xii. 489; 7th series, ii. 502, iii. 152, iv. 502, vi.
483, x. 502, xii. 483; 8th series, ii. 505, iv. 502, vi. 483,
viii. 483, x. 512, xii. 502; 9th series, ii. 505, iv. 515, vi.
485.]
It is the outcome of the last chapter that all the folk-customs of
the winter half of the year, from Michaelmas to Plough Monday, must
be regarded as the flotsam and jetsam of a single original feast.
This was a New Year’s feast, held by the Germano-Keltic tribes at the
beginning of the central European winter when the first snows fell
about the middle of November, and subsequently dislocated and dispersed
by the successive clash of Germano-Keltic civilization with the rival
schemes of Rome and of Christianity. A brief summary of the customs
in question will show clearly their common character. For purposes of
classification they may be divided into several groups. There are such
customs belonging to the agricultural side of the old winter feast as
have not been transferred with the growing importance of tillage to
the feast of harvest. There are the customs of its domestic side, as
a feast of the family hearth and of the dead ancestors. There are the
distinctively New Year customs of omen and prognostication for the
approaching twelve months. There are the customs of play, common more
or less to all the village festivals. And, finally, there are a small
number of customs, or perhaps it would be truer to say legends, which
appear to owe their origin not merely to heathenism transformed by
Christianity, but to Christianity itself. Each of these groups may well
claim a more thoroughgoing consideration than can here be given to any
one of them.
The agricultural customs are just those of the summer feasts over
again. Once more the fertilization spirit is abroad in the land.
The embodiment of it in vegetation takes several forms. Obviously
the last foliage and burgeoning flowers of spring and summer are no
longer available. But there is, to begin with, the sheaf of corn or
‘harvest-May’ in which the spirit appeared at harvest, and which is
called upon once more to play its part in the winter rites. This,
however, is not a very marked part. A Yorkshire custom of hanging a
sheaf on the church door at Christmas is of dubious origin[865]. But
Swedish and Danish peasants use the grain of the ‘last sheaf’ to bake
the Christmas cake, and both in Scandinavia and Germany the ‘Yule
straw’ serves various superstitious purposes. It is scattered on barren
fields to make them productive. It is strewed, instead of rushes, upon
the house floor and the church floor. It is laid in the mangers of the
cattle. Fruit-trees are tied together with straw ropes, that they may
bear well and are said to be ‘married[866].’
More naturally the fertilization spirit may be discerned at the
approach of winter in such exceptional forms of vegetation as endure
the season. In November the apples and the nuts still hang upon their
boughs, and these are traditional features in the winter celebrations.
Then there are the evergreens. Libanius, Tertullian, and Chrysostom
tell how on the Kalends the doors of houses throughout the Roman
empire were crowned with bay. Martin of Braga forbade the ‘pagan
observance’ in a degree which found its way into the canon law. The
original _strena_ which men gave one another on the same day for luck
was nothing but a twig plucked from a sacred grove; and still in the
fifth century men returned from their new year auguries laden with
_ramusculi_ that they might thereafter be laden with wealth[867]. It
is not necessary to dwell upon the surviving use of evergreens in the
decoration at Christmas of houses and churches[868]. The sacredness
of these is reflected in the taboo which enjoins that they shall not
be cast out upon the dust-heap, but shall, when some appropriate day,
such as Candlemas, arrives, be solemnly committed to the flames[869].
Obviously amongst other evergreens the holly and the ivy, with their
clustering pseudo-blossoms of coral and of jet, are the more adequate
representatives of the fertilization spirit[870]; most of all the
mistletoe, perched an alien visitant, faintly green and white, amongst
the bared branches of apple or of oak. The mistletoe has its especial
place in Scandinavian myth[871]: Pliny records the ritual use of it by
the Druids[872]; it is essential to the winter revels in their amorous
aspect; and its vanished dignities still serve, here to bar it from,
there to make it imperative in, the edifices of Christian worship[873].
A more artificial embodiment of the fertilization spirit is the
‘Christmas tree’ _par excellence_, adorned with lights and apples, and
often with a doll or image upon the topmost sprig. The first recorded
Christmas tree is at Strassburg in 1604. The custom is familiar enough
in modern England, but there can be little doubt that here it is of
recent introduction, and came in, in fact, with the Hanoverians[874].
Finally, there can be little wonder that the popular imagination found
a special manifestation of the fertilization spirit in the unusual
blossoming of particular trees or species of trees in the depths of
winter. In mild seasons a crab or cherry might well adorn the old
winter feast in November. A favourable climate permits such a thing
even at mid-winter. Legend, at any rate, has no doubt of the matter,
and connects the event definitely with Christmas. A tenth-century
Arabian geographer relates how all the trees of the forest stand in
full bloom on the holy night. In the thirteenth-century _Vita_ of St.
Hadwigis the story is told of a cherry-tree. A fifteenth-century bishop
of Bamberg tells it of two apple-trees, and to apple-trees the miracle
belongs, in German folk-belief, to this day[875]. In England the
stories of Christmas-flowering hawthorns or blackthorns are specific
and probably not altogether baseless[876]. The belief found a special
location at Glastonbury, where the famous thorn is said by William of
Malmesbury and other writers to have budded from the staff of Joseph of
Arimathea, who there ended his wanderings with the Holy Grail. Where
winter-flowering trees are not found, a custom sometimes exists of
putting a branch of cherry or of hawthorn in water some weeks before
Christmas in order that it may blossom and serve as a substitute[877].
It may fairly be conjectured that at the winter, as at the summer
feast, the fertilization spirit, in the form of bush or idol, was
borne about the fields. The fifteenth-century writer, Alsso, records
the _calendisationes_ of the god Bel in Bohemia, suppressed by St.
Adalbert[878]. In modern England, a ‘holly-bough’ or ‘wesley-bob,’ with
or without an image or doll, occasionally goes its rounds[879]. But
a definite lustration of the bounds is rare[880], and, for the most
part, the winter procession either is merely riotous or else, like too
many of the summer processions themselves, has been converted, under
the successive influence of the _strenae_ and the cash nexus, into
little more than a _quête_. Thus children and the poor go ‘souling’ for
apples and ‘soul-cakes’ on All Souls’ day; on November 5 they collect
for the ‘guy’; on November 11 in Germany, if not in England, for St.
Martin; on St. Clement’s day (November 23) they go ‘clemencing’; on
St. Catherine’s (November 25) ‘catherning.’ Wheat is the coveted boon
on St. Thomas’s day (December 21) or ‘doling day,’ and the _quête_
is variously known as ‘thomasing,’ ‘mumping,’ ‘corning,’ ‘gooding,’
‘hodening,’ or ‘hooding[881].’ Christmas brings ‘wassailing’ with its
bowl of lamb’s-wool and its bobbing apple, and this is repeated on
New Year’s day or eve[882]. The New Year _quête_ is probably the most
widespread and popular of all. Ducange records it at Rome[883]. In
France it is known as _l’Aguilaneuf_[884], in Scotland and the north
of England as Hogmanay, terms in which the philologists meet problems
still unsolved[885]. Other forms of the winter _quête_ will crop up
presently, and the visits of the guisers with their play or song, the
carol singers and the waits may be expected at any time during the
Christmas season. As at the summer _quêtes_, some reminiscence of the
primitive character of the processions is to be found in the songs
sung, with their wish of prosperity to the liberal household and their
ill-will to the churl[886].
In the summer festivals both water-rites and fire-rites frequently
occur. In those of winter, water-rites are comparatively rare, as
might naturally be expected at a season when snow and ice prevail.
There is some trace, however, of a custom of drawing ‘new’ water, as
of making ‘new’ fire, for the new year[887]. Festival fires, on the
other hand, are widely distributed, and agree in general features with
those of summer. Their relation to the fertility of crop and herd is
often plainly enough marked. They are perhaps most familiar to-day
in the comparatively modern form of the Guy Fawkes celebration on
November 5[888], but they are known also on St. Crispin’s day (October
25)[889], Hallow e’en[890], St. Martin’s day[891], St. Thomas’s
day[892], Christmas eve[893], New Year[894], and Twelfth night[895].
An elaborate and typical example is the ‘burning of the clavie’ at
the little fishing village of Burghead on the Moray Firth[896]. This
takes place on New Year’s eve, or, according to another account[897],
Christmas eve (O.S.). Strangers to the village are excluded from any
share in the ritual. The ‘clavie’ is a blazing tar-barrel hoisted on a
pole. In making it, a stone must be used instead of a hammer, and must
then be thrown away. Similarly, the barrel must be lit with a blazing
peat, and not with lucifer matches. The bearers are honoured, and the
bridegroom of the year gets the ‘first lift.’ Should a bearer stumble,
it portends death to himself during the year and ill-luck to the town.
The procession passes round the boundaries of Burghead, and formerly
visited every boat in the harbour. Then it is carried to the top of
a hillock called the ‘Doorie,’ down the sides of which it is finally
rolled. Blazing brands are used to kindle the house fires, and the
embers are preserved as charms.
The central heathen rite of sacrifice has also left its abundant traces
upon winter custom. Bede records the significant name of _blôt-monath_,
given to November by the still unconverted Anglo-Saxons[898]. The
tradition of solemn slaughter hangs around both Martinmas and
Christmas. ‘Martlemas beef’ in England, St. Martin’s swine, hens,
and geese in Germany, mark the former day[899]. At Christmas the
outstanding victim seems to be the boar. _Caput apri defero: reddens
laudem Domino_, sings the taberdar at Queen’s College, Oxford, as
the manciple bears in the boar’s head to the Christmas banquet. So
it was sung in many another mediaeval and Elizabethan hall[900],
while the gentlemen of the Inner Temple broke their Christmas fast on
‘brawn, mustard, and malmsey[901],’ and in the far-off Orkneys each
householder of Sandwick must slay his sow on St. Ignace’s or ‘Sow’ day,
December 17[902]. The older mythologists, with the fear of solstices
before their eyes, are accustomed to connect the Christmas boar with
the light-god, Freyr[903]. If the cult of any one divinity is alone
concerned, the analogous use of the pig in the Eleusinian mysteries of
Demeter would make the earth-goddess a more probable guess[904]. A few
more recondite customs associated with particular winter anniversaries
may be briefly named. St. Thomas’s day is at Wokingham the day for
bull-baiting[905]. On St. Stephen’s day, both in England and Germany,
horses are let blood[906]. On or about Christmas, boys are accustomed
to set on foot a hunt of victims not ordinarily destined to such a
fate[907]; owls and squirrels, and especially wrens, the last, be it
noted, creatures which at other times of the year a taboo protects. The
wren-hunt is found on various dates in France, England, Ireland, and
the Isle of Man, and is carried out with various curious rituals. Often
the body is borne in a _quête_, and in the Isle of Man the _quêteurs_
give a feather as an amulet in return for hospitality. There are
other examples of winter _quêtes_, in which the representation of a
sacrificial victim is carried round[908]. ‘Hoodening’ in Kent and other
parts of England is accompanied by a horse’s head or hobby-horse[909].
The Welsh ‘Mari Lwyd’ is a similar feature[910], while at Kingscote,
in Gloucestershire, the wassailers drink to a bull’s head called ‘the
Broad[911].’
The hobby-horse is an example of an apparently grotesque element which
is found widespread in folk-processions, and which a previous chapter
has traced to its ritual origin. The man clad in a beast-skin is the
worshipper putting himself by personal contact under the influence
and protection of the sacrificed god. The rite is not a very salient
one in modern winter processions, although it has its examples, but
its historical importance is great. A glance at the ecclesiastical
denunciations of the Kalends collected in an appendix will disclose
numerous references to it. These are co-extensive with the western area
of the Kalends celebrations. In Italy, in Gaul, in southern Germany,
apparently also in Spain and in England, men decked themselves for
riot in the heads and skins of cattle and the beasts of the chase,
blackened their faces or bedaubed them with filth, or wore masks fit
to terrify the demons themselves. The accounts of these proceedings
are naturally allusive rather than descriptive; the fullest are given
by a certain Severian, whose locality and date are unknown, but
who may be conjectured to speak for Italy, by Maximus of Turin and
Chrysologus of Ravenna in the fifth century, and by Caesarius of Arles
in the beginning of the sixth. Amongst the _portenta_ denounced is a
certain _cervulus_, which lingers in the _Penitentials_ right up to
the tenth century, and with which are sometimes associated a _vitula_
or _iuvenca_. Caesarius adds a _hinnicula_, and St. Eadhelm, who is
my only authority for the presence of the _cervulus_ in England, an
_ermulus_. These seem to be precisely of the nature of ‘hobby-horses.’
Men are said _cervulum ambulare_, _cervulum facere_, _in cervulo
vadere_, and Christians are forbidden to allow these _portenta_ to
come before their houses. The _Penitential_ of the Pseudo-Theodore
tells us that the performers were those who wore the skins and heads
of beasts. Maximus of Turin, and several writers after him, put the
objection to the beast-mimicry of the Kalends largely on the ground
that man made in the image of God must not transform himself into the
image of a beast. But it is clear that the real reason for condemning
it was its unforgettable connexion with heathen cult. Caesarius warns
the culprit that he is making himself into a _sacrificium daemonum_,
and the disguised reveller is more than once spoken of as a living
image of the heathen god or demon itself. There is some confusion of
thought here, and it must be remembered that the initial significance
of the skin-wearing rite was probably buried in oblivion, both for
those who practised it and for those who reprobated. But it is
obvious that the worshipper wearing a sacrificial skin would bear a
close resemblance to the theriomorphic or semi-theriomorphic image
developed out of the sacrificial skin nailed on a tree-trunk; and
it is impossible not to connect the fact that in the prohibitions a
_cervulus_ or ‘hobby-buck’ rather than a ‘hobby-horse’ is prominent
with the widespread worship throughout the districts whence many of
these notices come of the mysterious stag-horned deity, the _Cernunnos_
of the Gaulish altars[912]. On the whole I incline to think that at
least amongst the Germano-Keltic peoples the agricultural gods were not
mimed in procession by human representatives. It is true that in the
mediaeval German processions which sprang out of those of the Kalends
St. Nicholas plays a part, and that the presence of St. Nicholas may
be thought to imply that of some heathen precursor. It will, however,
be seen shortly that St. Nicholas may have got into these processions
through a different train of ideas, equally connected with the Kalends,
but not with the strictly agricultural aspect of that festival. But of
the continuity of the beast-masks and other horrors of these Christmas
processions with those condemned in the prohibitions, there can be no
doubt[913]. A few other survivals of the _cervulus_ and its revel can
be traced in various parts of Europe[914].
The sacrifices of cereals and of the juice of the vine or the barley
are exemplified, the one by the traditional furmenty, plum-porridge,
mince-pie, souling-cake, Yule-dough, Twelfth night cake, _pain de
calende_, and other forms of ‘feasten’ cake[915]; the other by the
wassail-bowl with its bobbing apple[916]. The summer ‘youling’ or
‘tree-wassailing’ is repeated in the orchard[917], and a curious
Herefordshire custom represents an extension of the same principle to
the ox-byre[918]. A German hen-yard custom requires mixed corn, for
the familiar reason that every kind of crop must be included in the
sacrifice[919].
Human sacrifice has been preserved in the whipping of boys on
Innocents’ day, because it could be turned into the symbol of a
Christian myth[920]. It is preserved also, as throughout the summer,
in the custom, Roman as well as Germano-Keltic, of electing a mock
or temporary king. Of such the Epiphany king or ‘king of the bean’
is, especially in France, the best known[921]. Here again, the
association with the three kings or _Magi_ has doubtless prolonged
his sway. But he is not unparalleled. The _rex autumnalis_ of Bath is
perhaps a harvest rather than a beginning of winter king[922]. But the
shoemakers choose their King Crispin on October 25, the day of their
patron saints, Crispin and Crispinian; on St. Clement’s (November
23) the Woolwich blacksmiths have their King Clem, and the maidens
of Peterborough and elsewhere a queen on St. Catherine’s (November
25). Tenby, again, elects its Christmas mock mayor[923]. At York, the
proclaiming of Yule by ‘Yule’ and ‘Yule’s wife’ on St. Thomas’s day
was once a notable pageant[924]. At Norwich, the riding of a ‘kyng of
Crestemesse’ was the occasion of a serious riot in 1443[925]. These may
be regarded as ‘folk’ versions of the mock king. Others, in which the
folk were less concerned, will be the subject of chapters to follow.
Before passing to a fresh group of Christmas customs, I must note the
presence of one more bit of ritual closely related to sacrificial
survivals. That is, the man masquerading in woman’s clothes, in whom we
have found a last faint reminiscence of the once exclusive supremacy
of women in the conduct of agricultural worship. At Rome, musicians
dressed as women paraded the city, not on the Kalends, but on the
Ides of January[926]. The Fathers, however, know such disguising as
a Kalends custom, and a condemnation of it often accompanies that of
beast-mimicry, from the fourth to the eighth century[927].
The winter festival is thus, like the summer festivals, a moment in the
cycle of agricultural ritual, and is therefore shared in by the whole
village in common. It is also, and from the time of the institution
of harvest perhaps preeminently, a festival of the family and the
homestead. This side of it finds various manifestations. There is the
solemn renewal of the undying fire upon the hearth, the central symbol
and almost condition of the existence of the family as such. This
survives in the institution of the ‘Yule-log,’ which throughout the
Germano-Keltic area is lighted on Christmas or more rarely New Year’s
eve, and must burn, as local custom may exact, either until midnight,
or for three days, or during the whole of the Twelve-night period,
from Christmas to Epiphany[928]. Dr. Tille, intent on magnifying the
Roman element in western winter customs, denies any Germano-Keltic
origin to the Christmas blaze, and traces it to the Roman practice of
hanging lamps upon the house-doors during the _Saturnalia_ and the
Kalends[929]. It is true that the Yule-log is sometimes supplemented
or even replaced by the Christmas candle[930], but I do not think that
there can be any doubt which is the primitive form of rite. And the
Yule-log enters closely into the Germano-Keltic scheme of festival
ideas. The preservation of its brands or ashes to be placed in the
mangers or mingled with the seed-corn suggests many and familiar
analogies. Moreover, it is essentially connected with the festival fire
of the village, from which it is still sometimes, and once no doubt was
invariably, lit, affording thus an exact parallel to the Germano-Keltic
practice on the occasion of summer festival fires, or of those built to
stay an epidemic.
Another aspect of the domestic character of the winter festival is
to be found in the prominent part which children take in it. As
_quêteurs_, they have no doubt gradually replaced the elder folk,
during the process through which, even within the historical purview,
ritual has been transformed into play. But St. Nicholas, the chief
mythical figure of the festival, is their patron saint; for their
benefit especially, the _strenae_ or Christmas and New Year’s gifts are
maintained; and in one or two places it is their privilege, on some
fixed day during the season, to ‘bar out’ their parents or masters[931].
Thirdly, the winter festival included a commemoration of ancestors.
It was a feast, not only of riotous life, but of the dead. For, to
the thinking of the Germano-Keltic peoples, the dead kinsmen were not
altogether outside the range of human fellowship. They shared with the
living in banquets upon the tomb. They could even at times return to
the visible world and hover round the familiar precincts of their own
domestic hearth. The Germans, at least, heard them in the gusts of the
storm, and imagined for them a leader who became Odin. From another
point of view they were naturally regarded as under the keeping of
earth, and the earth-mother, in one aspect a goddess of fertility, was
in another the goddess of the dead. As such she was worshipped under
various names and forms, amongst others in the triad of the _Matres_
or _Matronae_. In mediaeval superstition she is represented by Frau
Perchte, Frau Holda and similar personages, by Diana, by Herodias, by
St. Gertrude, just as the functions of Odin are transferred to St.
Martin, St. Nicholas, St. John, Hellequin. It was not unnatural that
the return of the spirits, in the ‘wild hunt’ or otherwise, to earth
should be held to take place especially at the two primitive festivals
which respectively began the winter and the summer. Of the summer or
spring commemoration but scant traces are to be recovered[932]; that
of winter survives, in a dislocated form, in more than one important
anniversary. Its observances have been transferred with those of the
agricultural side of the feast to the _Gemeinwoche_ of harvest[933];
but they are also retained, at or about their original date, on All
Saints’ and All Souls’ days[934]; and, as I proceed to show, they form
a marked and interesting part of the Christmas and New Year ritual.
I do not, indeed, agree with Dr. Mogk, who thinks that the Germans
held their primitive feast of the dead in the blackest time of winter,
for it seems to me more economical to suppose that the observances in
question have been shifted like others from November to the Kalends.
But I still less share the view of Dr. Tille, who denies that any
relics of a feast of the dead can be traced in the Christmas season at
all[935].
Bede makes the statement that the heathen Anglo-Saxons gave to the eve
of the Nativity the name of _Modranicht_ or ‘night of mothers,’ and
in it practised certain ceremonies[936]. It is a difficult passage,
but the most plausible of various explanations seems to be that
which identifies these ceremonies with the cult of those _Matres_ or
_Matronae_, corresponding with the Scandinavian _disar_, whom we seem
justified in regarding as guardians and representatives of the dead.
Nor is there any particular difficulty in guessing at the nature of
the ceremonies referred to. Amongst all peoples the cult of the dead
consists in feeding them; and there is a long catena of evidence for
the persistent survival in the Germano-Keltic area of a Christmas and
New Year custom closely parallel to the _alfablót_ and _disablót_
of the northern _jul_. When the household went to bed after the New
Year revel, a portion of the banquet was left spread upon the table
in the firm belief that during the night the ancestral spirits and
their leaders would come and partake thereof. The practice, which was
also known on the Mediterranean, does not escape the animadversion
of the ecclesiastical prohibitions. The earlier writers who speak of
it, Jerome, Caesarius, Eligius, Boniface, Zacharias, the author of the
_Homilia de Sacrilegiis_, if they give any explanation at all, treat it
as a kind of charm[937]. The laden table, like the human over-eating
and over-drinking, is to prognosticate or cause a year of plentiful
fare. The preachers were more anxious to eradicate heathenism than
to study its antiquities. Burchardus, however, had a touch of the
anthropologist, and Burchardus says definitely that food, drink, and
three knives were laid on the Kalends table for the three _Parcae_,
figures of Roman mythology with whom the western _Matres_ or ‘weird
sisters’ were identified[938]. Mediaeval notices confirm the statement
of Burchardus. Martin of Amberg[939], the _Thesaurus Pauperum_[940] and
the Kloster Scheyern manuscript[941] make the recipient of the bounty
Frau Perchte. In Alsso’s _Largum Sero_ it is for the heathen gods or
demons[942]; in _Dives and Pauper_ for ‘Atholde or Gobelyn[943].’ In
modern survivals it is still often Frau Perchte or the Perchten or
Persteln for whom fragments of food are left; in other cases the custom
has taken on a Christian colouring, and the ancestors’ bit becomes the
portion of _le bon Dieu_ or the Virgin or Christ or the _Magi_, and is
actually given to _quêteurs_ or the poor[944].
It is the ancestors, perhaps, who are really had in mind when libations
are made upon the Yule-log, an observance known to Martin of Braga in
the sixth century[945], and still in use in France[946]. Nor can it be
doubted that the healths drunk to them, and to the first of them, Odin,
lived on in the St. John’s _minnes_, no less than in the St. Martin’s
_minnes_, of Germany[947]. Apart from eating and drinking, numerous
folk-beliefs testify to the presence of the spirits of the dead on
earth in the Twelve nights of Christmas. During these days, or some one
of them, Frau Holle and Frau Perchte are abroad[948]. So is the ‘wild
hunt[949].’ Dreams then dreamt come true[950], and children then born
see ghosts[951]. The werwolf, possessed by a human spirit, is to be
dreaded[952]. The devil and his company dance in the Isle of Man[953]:
in Brittany the _korrigans_ are unloosed, and the dolmens and menhirs
disclose their hidden treasures[954]. Marcellus in _Hamlet_ declares:
‘Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time[955].’
The folk-lorist can only reply, ‘So have I heard, and do not in the
least believe it.’
The wanderings of Odin in the winter nights must be at the bottom of
the nursery myth that the Christian representatives of this divinity,
Saints Martin and Nicholas (the Santa Claus of modern legend), are the
nocturnal givers of _strenae_ to children. In Italy, the fairy Befana
(Epiphania), an equivalent of Diana, has a similar function[956].
It was but a step to the actual representation of such personages
for the greater delight of the children. In Anspach the skin-clad
_Pelzmarten_, in Holland St. Martin in bishop’s robes, make their
rounds on St. Martin’s day with nuts, apples, and such-like[957].
St. Nicholas does the same on St. Nicholas’ day in Holland and
Alsace-Lorraine, at Christmas in Germany[958]. The beneficent saints
were incorporated into the Kalends processions already described, which
in the sixteenth-century Germany included two distinct groups, a dark
one of devils and beast-masks, terrible to children, and a white or
kindly one, in which sometimes appeared the _Jesus-Kind_ himself[959].
It is perhaps a relic of the same merging which gives the German
and Flemish St. Nicholas a black Moor as companion in his nightly
peregrinations[960].
Besides the customs which form part of the agricultural or the domestic
observances of the winter feasts, there are others which belong to
these in their quality as feasts of the New Year. To the primitive mind
the first night and day of the year are full of omen for the nights
and days that follow. Their events must be observed as foretelling,
nay more, they must as far as possible be regulated as determining,
those of the larger period. The eves and days of All Saints, Christmas,
and the New Year itself, as well as in some degree the minor feasts,
preserve in modern folk-lore this prophetic character. It is but an
extension and systematization of the same notion that ascribes to each
of the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany a special influence
upon one of the twelve months of the year[961]. This group of customs
I can only touch most cursorily. The most interesting are those which,
as I have just said, attempt to go beyond foretelling and to determine
the arrival of good fortune. Their method is symbolic. In order that
the house may be prosperous during the year, wealth during the critical
day must flow in and not flow out. Hence the taboos which forbid the
carrying out in particular of those two central elements of early
civilization, fire[962] and iron[963]. Hence too the belief that a job
of work begun on the feast day will succeed, which conflicts rather
curiously in practice with the universal rustic sentiment that to work
or make others work on holidays is the act of a churl[964]. Nothing,
again, is more important to the welfare of the household during the
coming year than the character of the first visitor who may enter
the house on New Year’s day. The precise requirements of a ‘first
foot’ vary in different localities; but as a rule he must be a boy
or man, and not a girl or woman, and he must be dark-haired and not
splay-footed[965]. An ingenious conjecture has connected the latter
requirements with the racial antagonism of the high-instepped dark
pre-Aryan to the flat-footed blonde or red-haired invading Kelt[966].
A Bohemian parallel enables me to explain that of masculinity by the
belief in the influence of the sex of the ‘first foot’ upon that of
the cattle to be born during the year[967]. I regret to add that there
are traces also of a requirement that the ‘first foot’ should not be
a priest, possibly because in that event the shadow of celibacy would
make any births at all improbable[968].
Some of the New Year observances are but prophetic by second intention,
having been originally elements of cult. An example is afforded by the
all-night table for the leaders of the dead, which, as has been pointed
out, was regarded by the Fathers who condemned it as merely a device,
with the festal banquet itself, to ensure carnal well-being. Another is
the habit of giving presents. This, though widespread, is apparently
of Italian and not Germano-Keltic origin[969]. It has gone through
three phases. The original _strena_ played a part in the cult of the
wood-goddess. It was a twig from a sacred tree and the channel of the
divine influence upon the personality of him who held or wore it. The
later _strena_ had clearly become an omen, as is shown by the tradition
which required it to be honeyed or light-bearing or golden[970]. To-day
even this notion may be said to have disappeared, and the Christmas-box
or _étrenne_ is merely a token of goodwill, an amusement for children,
or a blackmail levied by satellites.
The number of minor omens by which the curiosity, chiefly of
women, strives on the winter nights to get a peep into futurity is
legion[971]. Many of them arise out of the ordinary incidents of the
festivities, the baking of the Christmas cakes[972], the roasting of
the nuts in the Hallow-e’en fire[973]. Some of them preserve ideas of
extreme antiquity, as when a girl takes off her shift and sits naked
in the belief that the vision of her future husband will restore it to
her. Others are based upon the most naïve symbolism, as when the same
girl pulls a stick out of the wood-pile to see if her husband will be
straight or crooked[974]. But however diversified the methods, the
objects of the omens are few and unvarying. What will be the weather
and what his crops? How shall he fare in love and the begetting of
children? What are his chances of escaping for yet another year the
summons of the lord of shadows? Such are the simple questions to which
the rustic claims from his gods an answer.
Finally, the instinct of play proved no less enduring in the
Germano-Keltic winter feasts than in those of summer. The priestly
protests against the invasion of the churches by folk-dance and
folk-song apply just as much to Christmas as to any other festal
period. It is, indeed, to Christmas that the monitory legend of the
dancers of Kölbigk attaches itself. A similar pious narrative is that
in the thirteenth-century _Bonum Universale de Apibus_ of Thomas of
Cantimpré, which tells how a devil made a famous song of St. Martin,
and spread it abroad over France and Germany[975]. Yet a third is
solemnly retailed by a fifteenth-century English theologian, who
professes to have known a man who once heard an indecent song at
Christmas, and not long after died of a melancholy[976]. During the
seventeenth century folk still danced and cried ‘Yole’ in Yorkshire
churches after the Christmas services[977]. Hopeless of abolishing
such customs, the clergy tried to capture them. The Christmas crib
was rocked to the rhythms of a dance, and such great Latin hymns as
the _Hic iacet in cunabulis_ and the _Resonat in laudibus_ became
the parents of a long series of festival songs, half sacred, half
profane[978]. In Germany these were known as _Wiegenlieder_, in France
as _noëls_, in England as carols; and the latter name makes it clear
that they are but a specialized development of those _caroles_ or
_rondes_ which of all mediaeval _chansons_ came nearest to the type of
Germano-Keltic folk-song. A single passage in a Byzantine writer gives
a tantalizing glimpse of such a folk-revel or _laiks_ at a much earlier
stage. Constantine Porphyrogennetos describes amongst the New Year
sports and ceremonies of the court of Byzantium in the tenth century
one known as τὸ Γοτθικόν. In this the courtiers were led by two ‘Goths’
wearing skins and masks, and carrying staves and shields which they
clashed together. An intricate dance took place about the hall, which
naturally recalls the sword-dance of western Europe. A song followed,
of which the words are preserved. They are only partly intelligible,
and seem to contain allusions to the sacrificial boar and to the
Gothic names of certain deities. From the fact that they are in Latin,
the scholars who have studied them infer that the Γοτθικόν drifted
to Byzantium from the court of the great sixth-century Ostrogoth,
Theodoric[979].