Voici le mois,
Le joli mois de Mai,
Étrennez notre épousée
En bonne étrenne.
Voici le mois,
Le joli mois de Mai,
Qu’on vous amène.’
If the _quêteurs_ come on a churl, they have an ill-wishing variant.
The following is characteristic of the French peasantry:
‘J’vous souhaitons autant d’enfants,
Qu’y a des pierrettes dans les champs.’
Often more practical tokens of revenge are shown. The Plough Monday
‘bullocks’ in some places consider themselves licensed to plough up the
ground before a house where they have been rebuffed.’
[554] Mrs. Gomme, ii. 1, 399; Haddon, 343; Du Méril, _La Com._ 81.
Amongst the _jeux_ of the young Gargantua (Rabelais, i. 22) was one ‘à
semer l’avoyne et au laboureur.’ This probably resembled the games of
_Oats and Beans and Barley_, and _Would you know how doth the Peasant?_
which exist in English, French, Catalonian, and Italian versions. On
the mimetic character of these games, cf. ch. viii.
[555] Text from _Harl. MS._ 978 in H. E. Wooldridge, _Oxford Hist.
of Music_, i. 326, with full account. The music, to which religious
as well as the secular words are attached, is technically known as a
_rota_ or _rondel_. It is of the nature of polyphonic part-song, and of
course more advanced than the typical mediaeval _rondet_ can have been.
[556] On these songs in general, see Northall, 233;
Martinengo-Cesaresco, 249; Cortet, 153; Tiersot, 191; Jeanroy, 88;
Paris, _J. des Savants_ (1891), 685, (1892), 155, 407.
[557] H. A. Wilson, _Hist. of Magd. Coll._ (1899), 50. Mr. Wilson
discredits the tradition that the performance began as a mass for the
obit of Henry VII. The hymn is printed in Dyer, 259; Ditchfield, 96.
It has no relation to the summer festival, having been written in
the seventeenth century by Thomas Smith and set by Benjamin Rogers
as a grace. In other cases hymns have been attached to the village
festivals. At Tissington the well-dressing,’ on Ascension Day includes
a clerical procession in which ‘Rock of Ages’ and ‘A Living Stream’ are
sung (Ditchfield, 187). A special ‘Rushbearers’ Hymn’ was written for
the Grasmere Rushbearing in 1835, and a hymn for St. Oswald has been
recently added (E. G. Fletcher, _The Rushbearing_, 13, 74).
[558] Dyer, 240, from Hertfordshire. There are many other versions; cf.
Northall, 240.
[559] Kögel, i. 1. 32.
[560] Pertz, _Leges_, i. 68 ‘nullatenus ibi uuinileodos scribere vel
mittere praesumat.’ Kögel, i. 1. 61: Goedeke, i. 11, quote other uses
of the term from eighth-century glosses, e.g. ‘_uuiniliod_, cantilenas
saeculares, psalmos vulgares, seculares, plebeios psalmos, cantica
rustica et inepta.’ _Winiliod_ is literally ‘love-song,’ from root
_wini_ (conn. with _Venus_). Kögel traces an earlier term O. H. G.
_winileih_, A.-S. _winelâc_ = _hîleih_. On the erotic motive in savage
dances, cf. Grosse, 165, 172; Hirn, 229.
[561] _Romania_, vii. 61; _Trad. Pop._ i. 98. Mr. Swinburne has adapted
the idea of this poem in _A Match_ (_Poems and Ballads_, 1st Series,
116).
[562] _Romania_, ix. 568.
[563] K. Bartsch, _Chrest. Prov._ 111. A similar _chanson_ is in G.
Raynaud, _Motets_, i. 151, and another is described in the _roman_ of
_Flamenca_ (ed. P. Meyer), 3244. It ends
‘E, si parla, qu’il li responda:
Nom sones mot, faitz vos en lai,
Qu’entre mos bracs mos amics j’ai.
Kalenda maia. E vai s’ en.’
[564] _Trimousette_, from _trî mâ câ_, an unexplained burden in some of
the French _maierolles_.
[565] Guy, 503.
[566] Tiersot, _Robin et Marion_; Guy, 506. See the refrain in Bartsch,
197, 295; Raynaud, _Rec. de Motets_, i. 227.
[567] Langlois, _Robin et Marion: Romania_, xxiv. 437; H. Guy, _Adan
de la Hale_, 177; J. Tiersot, _Sur le Jeu de Robin et Marion_ (1897);
Petit de Julleville, _La Comédie_, 27; _Rep. Com._ 21, 324. A _jeu_ of
_Robin et Marion_ is recorded also as played at Angers in 1392, but
there is no proof that this was Adan de la Hale’s play, or a drama at
all. There were folk going ‘desguiziez, à un jeu que l’en dit Robin et
Marion, ainsi qu’il est accoutumé de fere, chacun an, en les foiries
de Penthecouste’ (Guy, 197). The best editions of _Robin et Marion_
are those by E. Langlois (1896), and by Bartsch in _La Langue et la
Littérature françaises_ (1887), col. 523. E. de Coussemaker, _Œuvres
de Adam de la Halle_ (1872), 347, gives the music, and A. Rambeau,
_Die dem Trouvère Adam de la Halle zugeschriebenen Dramen_ (1886),
facsimiles the text. On Adan de la Hale’s earlier _sottie_ of _La
Feuillée_, see ch. xvi.
[568] Thomas Wright, _Lyrical Poems of the Reign of Edward I_ (Percy
Soc.).
[569] Cf. ch. xvii.
[570] The May-game is probably intended by the ‘Whitsun pastorals’
of _Winter’s Tale_, iv. 4. 134, and the ‘pageants of delight’ at
Pentecost, where a boy ‘trimmed in Madam Julias gown’ played ‘the
woman’s part’ (i. e. Maid Marian) of _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, iv. 4.
163. Cf. also W. Warner, _Albion’s England_, v. 25:
‘At Paske began our Morrise, and ere Penticost our May.’
[571] _Flores Historiarum_ (R. S.), iii. 130 ‘aestimo quod rex
aestivalis sis; forsitan hyemalis non eris.’
[572] Cf. Appendix E.
[573] ‘King-play’ at Reading (_Reading St. Giles Accounts_ in
Brand-Hazlitt, i. 157; Kerry, _Hist. of St. Lawrence, Reading_, 226).
[574] ‘King’s revel’ at Croscombe, Somerset (_Churchwardens’ Accounts_
in Hobhouse, 3).
[575] ‘King’s game’ at Leicester (Kelly, 68) and ‘King-game’ at
Kingston (Lysons, _Environs of London_, i. 225). On the other hand
the King-game in church at Hascombe in 1578 (_Representations_, s. v.
Hascombe), was probably a miracle-play of the Magi or Three Kings of
Cologne. This belongs to Twelfth night (cf. ch. xix), but curiously the
accounts of St. Lawrence, Reading, contain a payment for the ‘Kyngs of
Colen’ on _May day_, 1498 (Kerry, _loc. cit._).
[576] Cf. ch. xvii. Local ‘lords of misrule’ in the _summer_ occur
at Montacute in 1447-8 (Hobhouse, 183 ‘in expensis Regis de Montagu
apud Tyntenhull existentis tempore aestivali’), at Meriden in 1565
(Sharpe, 209), at Melton Mowbray in 1558 (Kelly, 65), at Tombland, near
Norwich (_Norfolk Archaeology_, iii. 7; xi. 345), at Broseley, near
Much Wenlock, as late as 1652 (Burne-Jackson, 480). See the attack on
them in Stubbes, i. 146. The term ‘lord of misrule’ seems to have been
borrowed from Christmas (ch. xvii). It does not appear whether the
lords of misrule of Old Romney in 1525 (_Archaeologia Cantiana_, xiii.
216) and Braintree in 1531 (Pearson, ii. 413) were in winter or summer.
[577] Owen and Blakeway, i. 331; Jackson and Burne, 480 (cf. Appendix
E). Miss Burne suggests several possible derivations of the name; from
_mar_ ‘make mischief,’ from Mardoll or Marwell (St. Mary’s Well),
streets in Shrewsbury, or from Muryvale or Meryvalle, a local hamlet.
But the form ‘Mayvoll’ seems to point to ‘Maypole.’
[578] _Representations_, s. v. Aberdeen. Here the lord of the summer
feast seems to have acted also as presenter of the Corpus Christi plays.
[579] Cf. ch. xvii.
[580] Batman, _Golden Books of the Leaden Gods_ (1577), f. 30. The Pope
is said to be carried on the backs of four deacons, ‘after the maner of
carying whytepot queenes in Western May games.’ A ‘whitepot’ is a kind
of custard.
[581] Such phrases occur as ‘the May-play called Robyn Hod’ (Kerry,
_Hist. of St. Lawrence, Reading_, 226, s. a. 1502), ‘Robin Hood and
May game’ and Kynggam and Robyn Hode’ (_Kingston Accounts_, 1505-36,
in Lysons, _Environs of London_, i. 225). The accounts of St. Helen’s,
Abingdon, in 1566, have an entry ‘for setting up Robin Hood’s bower’
(Brand-Hazlitt, i. 144). It is noticeable that from 1553 Robin Hood
succeeds the Abbot of Mayvole in the May-game at Shrewsbury (Appendix
E). Similarly, in an Aberdeen order of 1508 we find ‘Robert Huyid
and Litile Johne, quhilk was callit, in yers bipast, Abbat and Prior
of Bonacord’ (_Representations_, s. v. Aberdeen). Robin Hood seems,
therefore, to have come rather late into the May-games, but to have
enjoyed a widening popularity.
[582] The material for the study of the Robin Hood legend is gathered
together by S. Lee in _D. N. B._ s. v. Hood; Child, _Popular Ballads_,
v. 39; Ritson, _Robin Hood_ (1832); J. M. Gutch, _Robin Hood_ (1847).
Prof. Child gives a critical edition of all the ballads.
[583] _Piers Plowman_, B-text, passus v. 401.
[584] Fabian, _Chronicle_, 687, records in 1502 the capture of ‘a
felowe whych hadde renewed many of Robin Hode’s pagentes, which named
himselfe Greneleef.’
[585] Cf. p. 177.
[586] Kühn, in Haupt’s _Zeitschrift_, v. 481.
[587] Ramsay, _F. E._ i. 168.
[588] In the Nottingham _Hall-books (Hist. MSS._ i. 105), the same
locality seems to be described in 1548 as ‘Robyn Wood’s Well,’ and in
1597 as ‘Robyn Hood’s Well.’ Robin Hood is traditionally clad in green.
If he is mythological at all, may he not be a form of the ‘wild-man’
or ‘wood-woz’ of certain spring dramatic ceremonies, and the ‘Green
Knight’ of romance? Cf. ch. ix.
[589] The earliest mention of her is (†1500) in A. Barclay, _Eclogue_,
5, ‘some may fit of Maide Marian or else of Robin Hood.’
[590] _Hist. MSS._ i. 107, from _Convocation Book_, ‘pecuniae ecclesiae
ac communitatis Welliae ... videlicet, provenientes ante hoc tempus
de Robynhode, puellis tripudiantibus, communi cervisia ecclesiae, et
huiusmodi.’
[591] The accounts of Croscombe, Somerset, contain yearly entries of
receipts from ‘Roben Hod’s recones’ from 1476 to 1510, and again in
1525 (Hobhouse, 1 sqq.). At Melton Mowbray the amount raised by the
‘lord’ was set aside for mending the highways (Kelly, 65).
[592] Lysons, _Environs_, i. 225. Mention is made of ‘Robin Hood,’ ‘the
Lady,’ ‘Maid Marion,’ ‘Little John,’ ‘the Frere,’ ‘the Fool,’ ‘the
Dysard,’ ‘the Morris-dance.’
[593] _Archaeologia Cantiana_, xiii. 216.
[594] C. Kerry, _History of St. Lawrence, Reading_, 226. ‘Made Maryon,’
‘the tree’ and ‘the morris-dance,’ are mentioned.
[595] _L. H. T. Accounts_, ii. 377.
[596] Stowe, _Survey_ (1598), 38. He is speaking mainly of the period
before 1517, when there was a riot on ‘Black’ May-day, and afterwards
the May-games were not ‘so freely used as before.’
[597] Appendix E (vi).
[598] Cf. _Representations_.
[599] Bower (†1437), _Scotichronicon_ (ed. Hearne), iii. 774 ‘ille
famosissimus sicarius Robertus Hode et Litill-Iohanne cum eorum
complicibus, de quibus stolidum vulgus hianter in comoediis et
tragoediis prurienter festum faciunt, et, prae ceteris romanciis, mimos
et bardanos cantitare delectantur.’ On the ambiguity of ‘comoediae’ and
‘tragoediae’ in the fifteenth century, cf. ch. xxv.
[600] Gairdner, _Paston Letters_, iii. 89; Child, v. 90; ‘W. Woode,
whyche promysed ... he wold never goo ffro me, and ther uppon I have
kepyd hym thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the
Shryff off Nottyngham, and now, when I wolde have good horse, he is
goon into Bernysdale, and I withowt a keeper.’ The _Northumberland
Household Book_, 60, makes provision for ‘liveries for Robin Hood’ in
the Earl’s household.
[601] Printed by Child, v. 90; Manly, i. 279. The MS. of the fragment
probably dates before 1475.
[602] Printed by Child, v. 114, 127; Manly, i. 281, 285. They were
originally printed as one play by Copland (†1550).
[603] Printed in Dodsley-Hazlitt, vol. viii. These plays were written
for Henslowe about February 1598. In November Chettle ‘mended Roben
hood for the corte’ (_Henslowe’s Diary_, 118-20, 139). At Christmas
1600, Henslowe had another play of ‘Roben hoodes penerths’ by William
Haughton (_Diary_, 174-5). An earlier ‘pastoral pleasant comedie of
Robin Hood and Little John’ was entered on the Stationers’ Registers
on May 18, 1594. These two are lost, as is _The May Lord_ which Jonson
wrote (_Conversations with Drummond_, 27). Robin Hood also appears in
Peele’s _Edward I_ (†1590), and the anonymous _Look About You_ (1600),
and is the hero of Greene’s _George a Greene the Pinner of Wakefield_
(†1593). Anthony Munday introduced him again into his pageant of
_Metropolis Coronata_ (1615), and a comedy of _Robin Hood and his
Crew of Soldiers_, acted at Nottingham on the day of the coronation
of Charles II, was published in 1661. On all these plays, cf. F. E.
Schelling, _The English Chronicle Play_, 156.
[604] Furnivall, _Robert Laneham’s Letter_, clxiii. Chaucer, _Rom. of
Rose_, 7455, has ‘the daunce Joly Robin,’ but this is from his French
original ‘li biaus Robins.’
[605] Cf. p. 176.
[606] Dyer, 278; Drake, 86; Brand-Ellis, i. 157; Cutts, _Parish
Priests_, 317; _Archaeologia_, xii. 11; Stubbes, i. 150; _F. L._ x.
350. At an ‘ale’ a cask of home-brewed was broached for sale in the
church or church-house, and the profits went to some public object; at
a church-ale to the parish, at a clerk-ale to the clerk, at a bride-ale
or bridal to the bride, at a bid-ale to some poor man in trouble. A
love-ale was probably merely social.
[607] At Reading in 1557 (C. Kerry, _Hist. of St. Lawrence, Reading_,
226).
[608] At Tintinhull in 1513 (Hobhouse, 200, ‘Robine Hood’s All’).
[609] Brand-Ellis, i. 157; Dyer, 278. A carving on the church of St.
John’s, Chichester, represents a Whitsun-ale, with a ‘lord’ and ‘lady.’
[610] Cf. p. 141.
[611] At Ashton-under-Lyne, from 1422 to a recent date (Dyer, 181).
‘Gyst’ appears to be either ‘gist’ (_gîte_) ‘right of pasturage’ or a
corruption of ‘guising’; cf. ch. xvii.
[612] Cf. p. 91. On _Scot-ale_, cf. Ducange, s. v. Scotallum;
_Archaeologia_, xii. 11; H. T. Riley, _Munimenta Gildhallae Londin_.
(R. S.), ii. 760. The term first appears as the name of a tax, as
in a Northampton charter of 1189 (Markham-Cox, _Northampton Borough
Records_, i. 26) ‘concessimus quod sint quieti de ... Brudtol et
de Childwite et de hieresgiue et de Scottale, ita quod Prepositus
Northamptonie ut aliquis alius Ballivus scottale non faciat’; cf. the
thirteenth-century examples quoted by Ducange. The _Council of Lambeth_
(1206), c. 2, clearly defines the term as ‘communes potationes,’ and
the primary sense is therefore probably that of an _ale_ at which a
_scot_ or tax is raised.
[613] Malory, _Morte d’ Arthur_, xix. 1. 2.
[614] Hall, 515, 520, 582; Brewer, _Letters and Papers of Henry VIII_,
ii. 1504. In 1510, Henry and his courtiers visited the queen’s chamber
in the guise of Robin Hood and his men on the inappropriate date of
January 18. In Scotland, about the same time, Dunbar wrote a ‘cry’ for
a maying with Robin Hood; cf. _Texts_, s. v. Dunbar.
[615] Latimer, _Sermon vi before Edw. VI_ (1549, ed. Arber, 173).
Perhaps the town was Melton Mowbray, where Robin Hood was very popular,
and where Latimer is shown by the churchwardens’ accounts to have
preached several years later in 1553 (Kelly, 67).
[616] Machyn, 20.
[617] Ibid. 89, 137, 196, 201, 283, 373. In 1559, e.g. ‘the xxiiij of
June ther was a May-game ... and Sant John Sacerys, with a gyant, and
drumes and gunes [and the] ix wordes (worthies), with spechys, and a
goodly pagant with a quen ... and dyvers odur, with spechys; and then
Sant Gorge and the dragon, the mores dansse, and after Robyn Hode and
lytyll John, and M[aid Marian] and frere Tuke, and they had spechys
round a-bout London.’
[618] ‘Mr. Tomkys publicke prechar’ in Shrewsbury induced the bailiffs
to ‘reform’ May-poles in 1588, and in 1591 some apprentices were
committed for disobeying the order. A judicial decision was, however,
given in favour of the ‘tree’ (Burne-Jackson, 358; Hibbert, _English
Craft-Gilds_, 121). In London the Cornhill May-pole, which gave its
name to St. Andrew Undershaft, was destroyed by persuasion of a
preacher as early as 1549 (Dyer, 248); cf. also Stubbes, i. 306, and
Morrison’s advice to Henry VIII quoted in ch. xxv.
[619] Archbishop Grindal’s _Visitation Articles_ of 1576 (_Remains_,
Parker Soc. 175), ‘whether the minister and churchwardens have
suffered any lords of misrule or summer lords or ladies, or any
disguised persons, or others, in Christmas or at May-games, or any
morris-dancers, or at any other times, to come unreverently into the
church or churchyard, and there to dance, or play any unseemly parts,
with scoffs, jests, wanton gestures, or ribald talk, namely in the
time of Common Prayer.’ Similarly worded _Injunctions_ for Norwich
(1569), York (1571), Lichfield (1584), London (1601) and Oxford (1619)
are quoted in the _Second Report_ of the Ritual Commission; cf.
the eighty-eighth _Canon_ of 1604. It is true that the _Visitation
Articles_ for St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury, in 1584 inquire more generally
‘whether there have been any lords of mysrule, or somer lords or
ladies, or any disguised persons, as morice dancers, maskers, or
mum’ers, or such lyke, within the parishe, ether in the nativititide
or in som’er, or at any other tyme, and what be their names’; but this
church was a ‘peculiar’ and its ‘official’ the Puritan Tomkys mentioned
in the last note (Owen and Blakeway, i. 333; Burne-Jackson, 481).
[620] Stafford, 16.
[621] Stubbes, i. 146; cf. the further quotations and references there
given in the notes.
[622] 6 _Mary_, cap. 61.
[623] Child, v. 45; cf. _Representations_, s.v. Aberdeen, on the
breaches of the statute there in 1562 and 1565.
[624] Dyer, 228; Drake, 85. At Cerne Abbas, Dorset, the May-pole was
cut down in 1635 and made into a town ladder (_F. L._ x. 481).
[625] Grimm, ii. 784; _Kleinere Schriften_, v. 281; Pearson, ii. 281.
[626] Frazer, ii. 82; Grant Allen, 293, 315; Grimm, ii. 764; Pearson,
ii. 283.
[627] Frazer, ii. 86; Martinengo-Cesaresco, 267. Cf. the use of
the bladder of blood in the St. Thomas procession at Canterbury
(_Representations_, s. v.).
[628] Frazer, iii. 70. Amongst such customs are the expulsion of
Satan on New Year’s day by the Finns, the expulsion of Kore at Easter
in Albania, the expulsion of witches on March 1 in Calabria, and on
May 1 in the Tyrol, the frightening of the wood-sprites Strudeli and
Strätteli on Twelfth night at Brunnen in Switzerland. Such ceremonies
are often accompanied with a horrible noise of horns, cleavers and
the like. Horns are also used at Oxford (Dyer, 261) and elsewhere on
May 1, and I have heard it said that the object of the Oxford custom
is to drive away evil spirits. Similar discords are _de rigueur_ at
Skimmington Ridings. I very much doubt whether they are anything but a
degenerate survival of a barbaric type of music.
[629] Frazer, iii. 121.
[630] Tylor, _Anthropology_, 382.
[631] Caspari, 10 ‘qui in mense februario hibernum credit
expellere ... non christianus, sed gentilis est.’
[632] Frazer, ii. 91.
[633] Frazer, ii. 60.
[634] Sometimes the _Pfingstl_ is called a ‘wild man.’ Two ‘myghty
woordwossys [cf. p. 392] or wyld men’ appeared in a revel at the court
of Henry VIII in 1513 (_Revels Account_ in Brewer, ii. 1499), and
similar figures are not uncommon in the sixteenth-century masques and
entertainments.
[635] Frazer, ii. 62.
[636] Ibid. ii. 61, 82; E. Meier, _Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche
aus Schwaben_, 374, 409.
[637] _Syr Gawayne and the Grene Knyghte_ (ed. Madden, Bannatyne Club,
1839); cf. J. L. Weston, _The Legend of Sir Gawain_, 85. Arthur was
keeping New Year’s Day, when a knight dressed in green, with a green
beard, riding a green horse, and bearing a holly bough, and an axe of
green steel, entered the hall. He challenged any man of the Round Table
to deal him a buffet with the axe on condition of receiving one in
return after the lapse of a year. Sir Gawain accepts. The stranger’s
head is cut off, but he picks it up and rides away with it. This is a
close parallel to the resurrection of the slain ‘wild man.’
[638] Frazer, ii. 105, 115, 163, 219; _Pausanias_, iii. 53; v. 259;
Gardner, _New Chapters in Greek History_, 395, give Russian, Greek, and
Asiatic parallels.
[639] Frazer, ii. 71; Pfannenschmidt, 302. The victim is sometimes
known as the Carnival or Shrovetide ‘Fool’ or ‘Bear.’
[640] Dyer, 93. The Jack o’ Lent apparently stood as a cock-shy from
Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, and was then burnt. Portuguese sailors
in English docks thrash and duck an effigy of Judas Iscariot on Good
Friday (Dyer, 155).
[641] Alleluia was not sung during Lent. Fosbrooke, _British
Monachism_, 56, describes the Funeral of Alleluia by the choristers
of an English cathedral on the Saturday before Septuagesima. A turf
was carried in procession with howling to the cloisters. Probably this
cathedral was Lincoln, whence Wordsworth, 105, quotes payments ‘pro
excludend’ Alleluya’ from 1452 to 1617. Leber, ix. 338; Barthélemy,
iii. 481, give French examples of the custom; cf. the Alleluia top, p.
128.
[642] Dyer, 158. Reeds were woven on Good Friday into the shape of a
crucifix and left in some hidden part of a field or garden.
[643] Dyer, 333. The village feast was on St. Peter’s day, June 29.
On the Saturday before an effigy was dug up from under a sycamore on
May-pole hill; a week later it was buried again. In this case the order
of events seems to have been inverted.
[644] Frazer, i. 221. The French May-queen is often called _la mariée_
or _l’épouse_.
[645] Frazer, i. 225; Jevons, _Plutarch R. Q._ lxxxiii. 56.
[646] Waldron, _Hist. of Isle of Man_, 95; Dyer, 246.
[647] Olaus Magnus, _History of Swedes and Goths_, xv. 4, 8, 9; Grimm,
ii. 774.
[648] Grimm, ii. 765; Paul, _Grundriss_ (ed. 1), i. 836.
[649] Frazer, _Pausanias_, iii. 267.
[650] Cf. ch. iv.
[651] Grimm, ii. 675, 763; Swainson, _Folk-lore of British Birds_ (F.
L. S.), 109; Hardy, _Popular History of the Cuckoo_, in _F. L. Record_,
ii; Mannhardt, in _Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie_, iii. 209. Cf.
ch. v.
[652] Aristotle, _Poetics_, i. 5 αὐτῷ δέ τῷ ῥυθμῷ [ποιεῖται τὴν
μίμησιν] χωρὶς ἁρμονίας ἡ [τέχνη] τῶν ὀρχηστῶν, καὶ γὰρ οὗτοι διά
τῶν σχηματιζομένων ῥυθμῶν μιμοῦνται καὶ ἤθη καὶ πάθη καὶ πράξεις.
Cf. Lucian, _de Saltatione_, xv. 277. Du Méril, 65, puts the thing
well: ‘La danse n’a été l’invention de personne: elle s’est produite
d’elle-même le jour que le corps a subi et dû refléter un état de
l’âme.... On ne tarda pas cependant à la séparer de sa cause première
et à la reproduire pour elle-même ... en simulant la gaieté on
parvenait réellement à la sentir.’
[653] Wallaschek, 216; Grosse, 165, 201; Hirn, 157, 182, 229, 259,
261; Du Méril, _Com._ 72; Haddon, 346; Grove, 52, 81; Mrs. Gomme, ii.
518; G. Catlin, _On Manners ... of N. Amer. Indians_ (1841), i. 128,
244. Lang, _M. R. R._ i. 272, dwells on the representation of myths in
savage mystery-dances, and points out that Lucian (_loc. cit._) says
that the Greeks used to ‘dance out’ (ἐξορχεῖσθαι) their mysteries.
[654] The _chanson_ of _Transformations_ (cf. p. 170) is sung by
peasant-girls as a semi-dramatic duet (_Romania_, vii. 62); and that
of _Marion_ was performed ‘à deux personnages’ on Shrove Tuesday in
Lorraine (_Romania_, ix. 568).
[655] Giraldus Cambrensis, _Itinerarium Cambriae_, i. 2 (_Opera_,
R.S. vi. 32) ‘Videas enim hic homines seu puellas, nunc in ecclesia,
nunc in coemiterio, nunc in chorea, quae circa coemiterium cum
cantilena circumfertur, subito in terram corruere, et primo tanquam
in extasim ductos et quietos; deinde statim tanquam in phrenesim
raptos exsilientes, opera quaecunque festis diebus illicite perpetrare
consueverant, tam manibus quam pedibus, coram populo repraesentantes.
videas hunc aratro manus aptare, illum quasi stimulo boves excitare; et
utrumque quasi laborem mitigando solitas barbarae modulationis voces
efferre. videas hunc artem sutoriam, illum pellipariam imitari. item
videas hanc quasi colum baiulando, nunc filum manibus et brachiis in
longum extrahere, nunc extractum occandum tanquam in fusum revocare;
istam deambulando productis filis quasi telam ordiri: illam sedendo
quasi iam orditam oppositis lanceolae iactibus et alternis calamistrae
cominus ictibus texere mireris. Demum vero intra ecclesiam cum
oblationibus ad altare perductos tanquam experrectos et ad se redeuntes
obstupescas.’
[656] Cf. p. 151 with Mrs. Gomme’s _Memoir_ (ii. 458) _passim_, and
Haddon, 328. Parallel savage examples are in Wallaschek, 216; Hirn,
157, 259.
[657] Mrs. Gomme, ii. 399, 494 and s. vv.; Haddon, 340. Similar games
are widespread on the continent; cf. the Rabelais quotation on p. 167.
Haddon quotes a French formula, ending
‘Aveine, aveine, aveine,
Que le Bon Dieu t’amène.’
[658] Wallaschek, 273; Hirn, 285.
[659] The German data here used are chiefly collected by Müllenhoff and
F. A. Mayer; cf. also Creizenach, i. 408; Michels, 84; J. J. Ammann,
_Nachträge zum Schwerttanz_, in _Z. f. d. Alterthum_ xxxiv (1890), 178;
A. Hartmann, _Volksschauspiele_ (1880), 130; F. M. Böhme, _Geschichte
des Tanzes in Deutschland_ (1886); Sepp, _Die Religion der alten
Deutschen, und ihr Fortbestand in Volkssagen, Aufzügen und Festbräuchen
bis zur Gegenwart_ (1890), 91; O. Wittstock, _Ueber den Schwerttanz der
Siebenbürger Sachsen_, in _Philologische Studien: Festgabe für Eduard
Sievers_ (1896), 349.
[660] Tacitus, _Germania_, 24 ‘genus spectaculorum unum atque in omni
coetu idem. nudi iuvenes, quibus id ludicrum est, inter gladios se
atque infestas frameas saltu iaciunt. exercitatio artem paravit, ars
decorem, non in quaestum tamen aut mercedem; quamvis audacis lasciviae
pretium est voluptas spectantium.’
[661] _Beowulf_, 1042. It is in the hall of Hrothgar at Heorot,
‘þæt wæs hilde-setl: heah-cyninges,
þonne sweorda-gelác: sunu Healfdenes
efnan wolde: nǽfre on óre lǽg
wíd-cúþes wíg: þonne walu féollon.’
[662] Appendix N, no. xxxix; ‘arma in campo ostendit.’
[663] Strutt, 215. The tenth-century τὸ γοτθικόν at Byzantium seems to
have been a kind of sword-dance (cf. ch. xii _ad fin._).
[664] Strutt, 260; Du Méril, _La Com._ 84.
[665] Mayer, 259.
[666] Müllenhoff, 145, quoting _Don Quixote_, ii. 20; _Z. f. d. A._
xviii. 11; Du Méril, _La Com._ 86.
[667] Webster, _The White Devil_, v. 6, ‘a matachin, it seems by your
drawn swords’; the ‘buffons’ is included in the list of dances in the
_Complaynt of Scotland_ (†1548); cf. Furnivall, _Laneham’s Letter_,
clxii.
[668] Tabourot, _Orchésographie_, 97, _Les Bouffons ou Mattachins_. The
dancers held bucklers and swords which they clashed together. They also
wore bells on their legs.
[669] Cf. Appendix J.
[670] Henderson, 67. The sword-dance is also mentioned by W.
Hutchinson, _A View of Northumberland_ (1778), ii _ad fin._ 18; by J.
Wallis, _Hist. of Northumberland_ (1779), ii. 28, who describes the
leader as having ‘a fox’s skin, generally serving him for a covering
and ornament to his head, the tail hanging down his back’; and as
practised in the north Riding of Yorks, by a writer in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ (1811), lxxxi. 1. 423. Here it took place from St. Stephen’s
to New Year’s Day. There were six lads, a fiddler, Bessy and a Doctor.
At Whitby, six dancers went with the ‘Plough Stots’ on Plough Monday.
The figures included the placing of a hexagon or rose of swords on
the head of one of the performers. The dance was accompanied with
‘_Toms_ or _clowns_’ masked or painted, and ‘_Madgies_ or Madgy-Pegs’
in women’s clothes. Sometimes a farce, with a king, miller, clown and
doctor was added (G. Young, _Hist. of Whitby_ (1817), ii. 880).
[671] Cf. Appendix J.
[672] R. Bell, _Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of
England_, 175.
[673] Cf. Appendix J.
[674] Mayer, 230, 417.
[675] Henderson, 67. The clown introduces each dancer in turn; then
there is a dance with raised swords which are tied in a ‘knot.’
Henderson speaks of a later set of verses also in use, which he does
not print.
[676] R. Bell, _Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of
England_, 175 (from Sir C. Sharpe’s _Bishoprick Garland_). A Christmas
dance. The captain began the performance by drawing a circle with his
sword. Then the Bessy introduced the captain, who called on the rest in
turn, each walking round the circle to music. Then came an elaborate
dance with careful formations, which degenerated into a fight. Bell
mentions a similar set of verses from Devonshire.
[677] Bell, 172. A Christmas dance. The clown makes the preliminary
circle with his sword, and calls on the other dancers.
[678] Bell, 181. The clown calls for ‘a room,’ after which one of the
party introduces the rest. This also is a Christmas dance, but as the
words ‘we’ve come a pace-egging’ occur, it must have been transferred
from Easter. Bell says that a somewhat similar performance is given
at Easter in Coniston, and Halliwell, _Popular Rhymes and Nursery
Tales_, 244, describes a similar set of rhymes as used near York for
pace-egging.
[679] Described by Müllenhoff, 138, from _Ausland_ (1857), No. 4, f.
81. The clown gives the prologue, and introduces the rest.
[680] Cf. p. 221.
[681] Mayer prints and compares all three texts.
[682] Cf. p. 185. The original names seem to be best preserved in the
Styrian verses: they are Obersteiner (the _Vortänzer_) or Hans Kanix,
Fasching (the _Narr_), Obermayer, Jungesgsell, Grünwald, Edlesblut,
Springesklee, Schellerfriedl, Wilder Waldmann, Handssupp, Rubendunst,
Leberdarm, Rotwein, Höfenstreit.
[683] H. Pröhle, _Weltliche und geistliche Volkslieder und
Volksschauspiele_ (1855), 245.
[684] Müllenhoff, _Z. f. d. A._ xx. 10.
[685] Brand-Ellis, i. 142; Douce, 576; Burton, 95; Gutch, _Robin Hood_,
i. 301; Drake, 76.
[686] Burton, 117; Warner, _Albion’s England_, v. 25 ‘At Paske begun
our Morrise, and ere Penticost our May.’ The morris was familiar in
the revels of Christmas. Laneham, 23, describes at the Bride-ale shown
before Elizabeth at Kenilworth ‘a lively morrisdauns, according too the
auncient manner: six daunserz, Mawdmarion, and the fool.’
[687] A good engraving of the window is in _Variorum Shakespeare_, xvi.
419, and small reproductions in Brand, i. 145; Burton, 103; Gutch, i.
349; Mr. Tollet’s own account of the window, printed in the _Variorum_,
_loc. cit._, is interesting, but too ingenious. He dates the window in
the reign of Henry VIII; Douce, 585, a better authority, ascribes it to
that of Edward IV.
[688] Ben Jonson, _The Gipsies Metamorphosed_ (ed. Cunningham, iii.
151):
‘_Clod._ They should be morris-dancers by their gingle, but they have
no napkins.
‘_Cockrel._ No, nor a hobby-horse.
‘_Clod._ Oh, he’s often forgotten, that’s no rule; but there is no Maid
Marian nor Friar amongst them, which is the surer mark.
‘_Cockrel._ Nor a fool that I see.’
[689] The lady, the fool, the hobby-horse are all in Tollet’s window,
and in a seventeenth-century printing by Vinkenboom from Richmond
palace, engraved by Douce, 598; Burton, 105. Cf. the last note and
other passages quoted by Douce, Brand, and Burton. In _Two Noble
Kinsmen_, iii. 5, 125, a morris of six men and six women is thus
presented by Gerrold, the schoolmaster:
‘I first appear ...
The next, the Lord of May and Lady bright,
The Chambermaid and Serving-man, by night
That seek out silent hanging: then mine Host
And his fat Spouse, that welcomes to their cost
The galled traveller, and with a beck’ning
Informs the tapster to inflame the reck’ning:
Then the beast-eating Clown, and next the Fool,
The Bavian, with long tail and eke long tool;
_Cum multis aliis_, that make a dance.’
Evidently some of these _dramatis personae_ are not traditional; the
ingenuity of the presenter has been at work on them. ‘Bavian’ as a
name for the fool, is the Dutch _baviaan_, ‘baboon.’ His ‘tail’ is to
be noted; for the phallic shape sometimes given to the bladder which
he carries, cf. Rigollot, 164. In the Betley window the fool has a
bauble; in the Vinkenboom picture a staff with a bladder at one end,
and a ladle (to gather money in) at the other. In the window the ladle
is carried by the hobby-horse. ‘The hobby-horse is forgot’ is a phrase
occurring in _L. L. L._ iii. 1. 30; _Hamlet_, iii. 2. 144, and alluded
to by Beaumont and Fletcher, _Women Pleased_, iv. 1, and Ben Jonson,
in the masque quoted above, and in _The Satyr_ (Cunningham, ii. 577).
Apparently it is a line from a lost ballad.
[690] Stubbes, i. 147, of the ‘devil’s daunce’ in the train of the lord
of misrule, evidently a morris, ‘then haue they their Hobby-horses,
dragons & other Antiques.’ In W. Sampson’s _Vow-breaker_ (1636), one
morris-dancer says ‘I’ll be a fiery dragon’; another, ‘I’ll be a
thund’ring Saint George as ever rode on horseback.’
[691] Burton, 40, 43, 48, 49, 56, 59, 61, 65, 69, 75, 115, 117, 121,
123, cites many notices throughout the century, and gives several
figures. The morris is in request at wakes and rushbearings. Both
men and women dance, sometimes to the number of twenty or thirty.
Gay dresses are worn, with white skirts, knee-breeches and ribbons.
Handkerchiefs are carried or hung on the arm or wrist, or replaced
by dangling streamers, cords, or skeins of cotton. Bells are not
worn on the legs, but jingling horse-collars are sometimes carried
on the body. There is generally a fool, described in one account as
wearing ‘a horrid mask.’ He is, however, generally black, and is known
as ‘King Coffee’ (Gorton), ‘owd sooty-face,’ ‘dirty Bet,’ and ‘owd
molly-coddle.’ This last name, like the ‘molly-dancers’ of Gorton,
seems to be due to a linguistic corruption. In 1829 a writer describes
the fool as ‘a nondescript, made up of the ancient fool and Maid
Marian.’ At Heaton, in 1830, were two figures, said to represent Adam
and Eve, as well as the fool. The masked fool, mentioned above, had as
companion a shepherdess with lamb and crook.
[692] Burton, 115, from _Journal of Archaeol. Assoc._ vii. 201. The
dancers went on Twelfth-night, without bells, but with a fool, a
‘fool’s wife’ and sometimes a hobby-horse.
[693] Jackson and Burne, 402, 410, 477. The morris-dance proper is
mainly in south Shropshire and at Christmas. At Shrewsbury, in 1885,
were ten dancers, with a fool. Five carried trowels and five short
staves which they clashed. The fool had a black face, and a bell on
his coat. No other bells are mentioned. Staves or wooden swords are
used at other places in Shropshire, and at Brosely all the faces are
black. The traditional music is a tabor and pipe. A 1652 account of the
Brosely dance with six sword-bearers, a ‘leader or lord of misrule’ and
a ‘vice’ (cf. ch. xxv) called the ‘lord’s son’ is quoted. In north-east
Shropshire, the Christmas ‘guisers’ are often called ‘morris-dancers,’
‘murry-dancers,’ or ‘merry-dancers.’ In Shetland the name ‘merry
dancers’ is given to the _aurora borealis_ (J. Spence, _Shetland
Folk-Lore_, 116).
[694] _Leicester F. L._ 93. The dance was on Plough Monday with paper
masks, a plough, the bullocks, men in women’s dresses, one called Maid
Marian, Curly the fool, and Beelzebub. This is, I think, the only
survival of the name Maid Marian, and it may be doubted if even this is
really popular and not literary.
[695] P. Manning, _Oxfordshire Seasonal Festivals_, in _F. L._
viii. 317, summarizes accounts from fourteen villages, and gives
illustrations. There are always six dancers. A broad garter of
bells is worn below the knee. There are two sets of figures: in one
handkerchiefs are carried, in the other short staves are swung and
clashed. Sometimes the dancers sing to the air, which is that of an
old country-dance. There is always a fool, who carries a stick with a
bladder and cow’s tail, and is called in two places ‘Rodney,’ elsewhere
the ‘squire.’ The music is that of a pipe and tabor (‘whittle’ and
‘dub’) played by one man; a fiddle is now often used. At Bampton there
was a solo dance between crossed tobacco-pipes. At Spelsbury and at
Chipping Warden the dance used to be on the church-tower. At the
Bampton Whit-feast and the Ducklington Whit-hunt, the dancers were
accompanied by a sword-bearer, who impaled a cake. A sword-bearer also
appears in a list of Finstock dancers, given me by Mr. T. J. Carter,
of Oxford. He also told me that the dance on Spelsbury church-tower,
seventy years ago, was by women.
[696] Norfolk, Monmouthshire, Berkshire (Douce, 606); Worcestershire,
Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, Wiltshire,
Warwickshire, and around London (Burton, 114).
[697] _L. H. T. Accounts_, ii. 414; iii. 359, 381.
[698] Pfannenschmidt, 582; Michels, 84; Creizenach, i. 411. Burton,
102, reproduces, from _Art Journal_ (1885), 121, cuts of ten
morris-dancers carved in wood at Munich by Erasmus Schnitzer in 1480.
[699] Douce, 585, and Burton, 97, reproduce Israel von Mecheln’s
engraving (†1470) of a morris with a fool and a lady.
[700] Coquillart, _Œuvres_ (†1470), 127.
[701] _Mémoires de Pétrarque_, ii. app. 3, 9; Petrarch danced ‘en
pourpoint une belle et vigoureuse moresque’ to please the Roman ladies
on the night of his coronation.
[702] _Somers Tracts_, ii. 81, 87. The Earl of Nottingham, when on
an embassy from James I, saw morrice-dancers in a Corpus Christi
procession.
[703] Douce, 480; Favine, _Theater of Honor_, 345: at a feast given by
Gaston de Foix at Vendôme, in 1458, ‘foure young laddes and a damosell,
attired like savages, daunced (by good direction) an excellent
_Morisco_, before the assembly.’
[704] Tabourot, _Orchésographie_, 94: in his youth a lad used to come
after supper, with his face blackened, his forehead bound with white or
yellow taffeta, and bells on his legs, and dance the morris up and down
the hall.
[705] Douce, 577; Burton, 95.
[706] A dance certainly of Moorish origin is the fandango, in which
castanets were used; cf. the comedy of _Variety_ (1649) ‘like a
Bacchanalian, dancing the Spanish Morisco, with knackers at his
fingers’ (Strutt, 223). This, however, seems to show that the fandango
was considered a variety of morisco. Douce, 602; Burton, 124, figure an
African woman from Fez dancing with bells on her ankles. This is taken
from Hans Weigel’s book of national costumes published at Nuremberg in
1577.
[707] Tabourot’s morris-dancing boy had his face blackened, and Junius
(F. Du Jon), _Etymologicum Anglicanum_ (1743), says of England ‘faciem
plerumque inficiunt fuligine, et peregrinum vestium cultum assumunt,
qui ludicris talibus indulgent, ut Mauri esse videantur, aut e longius
remota patria credantur advolasse, atque insolens recreationis genus
ad vexisse.’ In _Spousalls of Princess Mary_ (1508) ‘morisks’ is
rendered ‘ludi Maurei quas morescas dicunt.’ In the modern morris the
black element is represented, except at Brosely, chiefly by ‘owd sooty
face,’ the fool: in Leicestershire it gives rise to a distinct figure,
Beelzebub.
[708] Du Méril, _La Com._ 89, quotes a sixteenth-century French
sword-dance of ‘Mores, Sauvages, et Satyres.’ In parts of Yorkshire the
sword-dancers had black faces or masks (Henderson, 70).
[709] Cotgrave, ‘_Dancer les Buffons_, To daunce a morris.’ The term
‘the madman’s morris’ appears as the name of the dance in _The Figure
of Nine_ (temp. Charles II); cf. Furnivall, _Laneham’s Letter_, clxii.
The _buffon_ is presumably the ‘fool’; cf. Cotgrave, ‘_Buffon_: m. A
buffoon, jeaster, sycophant, merrie fool, sportfull companion: one that
lives by making others merrie.’
[710] Henderson, 70. In Yorkshire the sword-dancers carried the image
of a white horse; in Cheshire a horse’s head and skin.
[711] Cf. ch. x; also Wise, _Enquiries concerning the
Inhabitants, ... of Europe_, 51 ‘the common people in many parts of
England still practise what they call a Morisco dance, in a wild
manner, and as it were in armour, at proper intervals striking upon one
another’s staves,’ &c. Johnson’s _Dictionary_ (1755) calls the morris
‘a dance in which bells are gingled, or staves or swords clashed.’
[712] Müllenhoff, 124; cf. Mayer, 236.
[713] Douce, 602; Burton, 123. The bells were usually fastened upon
broad garters, as they are still worn in Oxfordshire. But they also
appear as anklets or are hung on various parts of the dress. In a
cut from Randle Holme’s _Academie of Armorie_, iii. 109 (Douce, 603;
Burton, 127), a morris-dancer holds a pair of bells in his hands.
Sometimes the bells were harmonized. In _Pasquil and Marforius_ (1589)
Penry is described as ‘the fore gallant of the Morrice with the treble
bells’; cf. Rowley, _Witch of Edmonton_, i. 2.
[714] Müllenhoff, 123; Mayer, 235.
[715] Tabourot, _Orchésographie_, 97.
[716] Cf. Appendix J. A figure with a bow and arrow occurs in the
Abbots Bromley horn-dance (p. 166).
[717] W. Kempe’s _Nine Days Wonder_ (ed. Dyce, Camden Soc.) describes
his dancing of the morris in bell-shangles from London to Norwich in
1599.
[718] Müllenhoff, 114.
[719] The ‘Squire’s Son’ of the Durham dances is probably the clown’s
son of the Wharfdale version; for the term ‘squire’ is not an uncommon
one for the rustic fool. Cf. also the Revesby play described in the
next chapter. Why the fool should have a son, I do not know.
[720] The ‘Nine Worthies’ of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, v. 2, are a
pageant not a dance, and the two sets of speeches quoted from Bodl.
Tanner MS. 407, by Ritson, _Remarks on Shakespeare_, 38, one of which
is called by Ashton, 127, the earliest mummers’ play that he can find,
also probably belong to pageants. The following, also quoted by Ritson
_loc. cit._ from _Harl. MS._ 1197, f. 101* (sixteenth century), looks
more like a dance or play:
‘I ame a knighte
And menes to fight
And armet well ame I
Lo here I stand
With swerd ine hand
My manhoud for to try.
Thou marciall wite
That menes to fight
And sete vppon me so
Lo heare J stand
With swrd in hand
To dubbelle eurey blow.’
[721] Mayer, 230, 425, finds in the dance a symbolical drama of the
death of winter; but he does not seem to see the actual relic of a
sacrificial rite.
[722] Müllenhoff, 114; Du Méril, _La Com._ 82; Plato, _Leges_, 815;
Dion Cassius, lx. 23; Suetonius, _Julius_, 39, _Nero_, 12; Servius
_ad Aen._ v. 602; cf. p. 7. A Thracian sword-dance, ending in a mimic
death, and therefore closely parallel to the west European examples
mentioned in the next chapter, is described by Xenophon, _Anabasis_, v.
9.
[723] Müllenhoff, 115; Frazer, iii. 122; W. W. Fowler, _The Roman
Festivals_, 38, 44. The song of the _Salii_ mentioned Saeturnus,
god of sowing. It appears also to have been their function to expel
the Mamurius Veturius in spring. Servius _ad Aen._ viii. 285, says
that the _Salii_ were founded by Morrius, king of Veii. According to
Frazer, Morrius is etymologically equivalent to Mamurius--Mars. He even
suggests that Morris may possibly belong to the same group of words.
[724] Cf. Appendix J. In other dances a performer stands on a similar
‘knot’ or _Stern_ of swords. Mayer, 230, suggests that this may
represent the triumph of summer, which seems a little far-fetched.
[725] Mayer, 243; O. Wittstock, in _Sievers-Festgabe_, 349.
[726] Grimm, i. 304, gives the following as communicated to him by J.
M. Kemble, from the mouth of an old Yorkshireman: ‘In some parts of
northern England, in Yorkshire, especially Hallamshire, popular customs
show remnants of the worship of Fricg. In the neighbourhood of Dent, at
certain seasons of the year, especially autumn, the country folk hold
a procession and perform old dances, one called the giant’s dance: the
leading giant they name _Woden_, and his wife _Frigga_, the principal
action of the play consisting in two swords being swung and clashed
together about the neck of a boy without hurting him.’ There is nothing
about this in the account of Teutonic mythology in J. M. Kemble’s own
_Saxons in England_. I do not believe that the names of Woden and
Frigga were preserved in connexion with this custom continuously from
heathen times. Probably some antiquary had introduced them; and in
error, for there is no reason to suppose that the ‘clown’ and ‘woman’
of the sword-dance were ever thought to represent gods. But the
description of the business with the swords is interesting.
[727] Müllenhoff, _Z. f. d. A._ xviii. 11, quoting Covarubias, _Tesoro
della lengua castellana_ (1611), s.v. _Danza de Espadas_: ‘una mudanza
que llaman la degollada, porque cercan el cuello del que los guia con
las espadas.’ With these sword manœuvres should be compared the use
of scythes and flails in the mock sacrifices of the harvest-field and
threshing-floor (p. 158), the ‘Chop off his head’ of the ‘Oranges and
Lemons’ game (p. 151), and the ancient tale of Wodan and the Mowers.
[728] Mayer, 229.
[729] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, lxxxi (1811), 1. 423. The dance was given
in the north Riding from St. Stephen’s day to the New Year. Besides the
Bessy and the Doctor there were six lads, one of whom acted king ‘in a
kind of farce which consists of singing and dancing.’
[730] Bell, 178; cf. p. 193. I do not feel sure whether the actual
parish clergyman took part, or whether a mere personage in the play
is intended; but see what Olaus Magnus (App. J (i)) says about the
propriety of the sword-dances for _clerici_. It will be curious if the
Christian priest has succeeded to the part of the heathen priest slain,
first literally, and then in mimicry, at the festivals.
[731] Printed by Mr. T. F. Ordish in _F. L. J._ vii. 338, and again by
Manly, i. 296. The MS. used appears to be headed ‘October Ye 20, 1779’;
but the performers are called ‘The Plow Boys or Morris Dancers’ and the
prologue says that they ‘takes delight in Christmas toys.’ I do not
doubt that the play belonged to Plough Monday, which only falls just
outside the Christmas season.
[732] On the name Pickle Herring, see W. Creizenach, _Die Schauspiele
der englischen Komödianten_, xciii. It does not occur in old English
comedy, but was introduced into Anglo-German and German farce as a name
for the ‘fool’ or ‘clown’ by Robert Reynolds, the ‘comic lead’ of a
company of English actors who crossed to Germany in 1618. Probably it
was Reynolds’ invention, and suggested by the _sobriquet_ ‘Stockfish’
taken by an earlier Anglo-German actor, John Spencer. The ‘spicy’ names
of the other Revesby clowns are probably imitations of Pickle Herring.
[733] The lines (197-8)
‘Our old Fool’s bracelet is not made of gold
But it is made of iron and good steel’
suggest the vaunt of the champions in the St. George plays.
[734] Is ‘Anthony’ a reminiscence of the Seven Champions? The Fool says
(ll. 247-9), like Beelzebub in the St. George plays,
‘Here comes I that never come yet, ...
I have a great head but little wit.’
He also jests (l. 229) on his ‘tool’; cf. p. 196 n.
[735] Brand, i. 278; Dyer, 37; Ditchfield, 47; Drake, 65; Mrs. Chaworth
Musters, _A Cavalier Stronghold_, 387. Plough Monday is the Monday
after Twelfth night, when the field work begins. A plough is dragged
round the village and a _quête_ made. The survivals of the custom are
mainly in the north, east and east midlands. In the city, a banquet
marks the day. A Norfolk name is ‘Plowlick Monday,’ and a Hunts one
‘Plough-Witching.’ The plough is called the ‘Fool Plough,’ ‘Fond
Plough,’ ‘Stot Plough’ or ‘White Plough’; the latter name probably from
the white shirts worn (cf. p. 200). At Cropwell, Notts, horses cut out
in black or red adorn these. In Lincolnshire, bunches of corn were worn
in the hats. Those who draw the plough are called ‘Plough Bullocks,’
‘Boggons’ or ‘Stots.’ They sometimes dance a morris-or sword-dance,
or act a play. At Haxey, they take a leading part in the Twelfth
day ‘Hood-game’ (p. 150). In Northants their faces are blackened or
reddled. The plough is generally accompanied by the now familiar
grotesques, ‘Bessy’ and the Fool or ‘Captain Cauf-Tail.’ In Northants
there are two of each; the Fools have humps, and are known as ‘Red
Jacks’; there is also a ‘Master.’ In Lincolnshire, reapers, threshers,
and carters joined the procession. A contribution to the _quête_ is
greeted with the cry of ‘Largess!’ and a churl is liable to have the
ground before his door ploughed up. Of old the profits of the _quête_
or ‘plow-gadrin’ went into the parish chest, or as in Norfolk kept a
‘plow-light’ burning in the church. A sixteenth century pamphlet speaks
of the ‘sensing the Ploughess’ on Plough Monday. Jevons, 247, calls the
rite a ‘worship of the plough’; probably it rather represents an early
spring perambulation of the fields in which the divinity rode upon a
plough, as elsewhere upon a ship. A ploughing custom of putting a loaf
in the furrow has been noted. Plough Monday has also its water rite.
The returning ploughman was liable to be soused by the women, like the
bearer of the ‘neck’ at harvest. Elsewhere, the women must get the
kettle on before the ploughman can reach the hearth, or pay forfeit.
[736] Printed by Mrs. Chaworth Musters in _A Cavalier Stronghold_
(1890), 388, and in a French translation by Mrs. H. G. M.
Murray-Aynsley, in _R. d. T. P._ iv. 605.
[737] ‘Hopper Joe’ also calls himself ‘old Sanky-Benny,’ which invites
interpretation. Is it ‘Saint Bennet’ or ‘Benedict’?
[738]
‘In comes I, Beelzebub,
On my shoulder I carry my club,
In my hand a wet leather frying-pan;
Don’t you think I’m a funny old man?’
Cf. the St. George play (p. 214).
[739] ‘Dame Jane’ says,
‘My head is made of iron,
My body made of steel,
My hands and feet of knuckle-bone,
I think nobody can make me feel.’
In the Lincolnshire play Beelzebub has this vaunt. Cf. the St. George
play (p. 220).
[740] The Doctor can cure ‘the hipsy-pipsy, palsy, and the gout’; cf.
the St. George play (p. 213).
[741] Printed in French by Mrs. Murray Aynsley in _R. d. T. P._ iv. 609.
[742] The farce recorded as occasionally introduced at Whitby (cf. p.
192, n. 1) but not described, probably belonged to the ‘popular’ type.
[743] Chambers, _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, 169, prints a Peebles
version. Instead of George, a hero called Galatian fights the Black
Knight. Judas, with his bag, replaces Beelzebub. But it is the same
play. Versions or fragments of it are found all over the Lowlands.
The performers are invariably called ‘guizards.’ In a Falkirk version
the hero is Prince George of Ville. Hone, _E. D. B._, says that the
hero is sometimes Galacheus or St. Lawrence. But in another Falkirk
version, part of which he prints, the name is Galgacus, and of this
both Galacheus and Galatian are probably corruptions, for Galgacus or
Calgacus was the leader of the Picts in their battle with Agricola at
the Mons Graupius (A. D. 84; Tacitus, _Agricola_, 29).
[744] Appendix K. Other versions may be conveniently compared in Manly,
i. 289; Ditchfield, 310. The best discussions of the St. George plays
in general, besides Mr. Ordish’s, are J. S. Udall, _Christmas Mummers
in Dorsetshire_ (_F. L. R._ iii. 1. 87); Jackson and Burne, 482; G. L.
Gomme, _Christmas Mummers_ (_Nature_, Dec. 23, 1897). The notes and
introductions to the versions tabulated above give many useful data.
[745] In _F. L._ x. 351, Miss Florence Grove describes some Christmas
mummers seen at Mullion, Cornwall, in 1890-1. ‘Every one naturally
knows who the actors are, since there are not more than a few hundred
persons within several miles; but no one is supposed to know who
they are or where they come from, nor must any one speak to them,
nor they to those in the houses they visit. As far as I can remember
the performance is silent and dramatic; I have no recollection of
reciting.’ The dumb show is rare and probably a sign of decadence, but
the bit of rural etiquette is archaic and recurs in savage drama.
[746] In Berkshire and at Eccleshall, Slasher is ‘come from Turkish
land.’ On the other hand, the two often appear in the same version, and
even, as at Leigh, fight together.
[747] Burne-Jackson, 483.
[748] Ibid. 483. He appears in the MSS. written by the actors as
‘Singuy’ or ‘Singhiles.’ Professor Skeat points out that, as he ‘sprang
from English ground,’ St. Guy (of Warwick) was probably the original
form, and St. Giles a corruption.
[749] Here may be traced the influence of the Napoleonic wars. In
Berkshire, Slasher is a ‘French officer.’
[750] _F. L._ v. 88.
[751] Ditchfield, 12.
[752] Sandys, 153.
[753] P. Tennant, _Village Notes_, 179.
[754] Beelzebub appears also in the Cropwell Plough Monday play; cf.
p. 209. Doubtless he once wore a calf-skin, like other rural ‘Fools,’
but, as far as I know, this feature has dropped out. Sandys, 154,
however, quotes ‘Captain Calf-tail’ as the name of the ‘Fool’ in an
eighteenth-century Scotch version, and Mr. Gomme (_Nature_, Dec. 23,
1897), says ‘some of the mummers, or maskers as the name implies,
formerly disguised themselves as animals--goats, oxen, deer, foxes
and horses being represented at different places where details of the
mumming play have been recorded.’ Nowadays, Beelzebub generally carries
a club and a ladle or frying-pan, with which he makes the _quête_. At
Newport and Eccleshall he has a bell fastened on his back; at Newbold
he has a black face. The ‘Fool’ figured in the Manchester chap-book
resembles Punch.
[755] See notes to Steyning play in _F. L. J._ ii. 1.
[756] Mr. Gomme, in _Nature_ for Dec. 23, 1897, finds in this broom
‘the magic weapon of the witch’ discussed by Pearson, ii. 29. Probably,
however, it was introduced into the plays for the purposes of the
_quête_; cf. p. 217. It is used also to make a circle for the players,
but here it may have merely taken the place of a sword.
[757] Parish, _Dict. of Sussex Dialect_, 136. The mummers are called
‘John Jacks.’
[758] Cf. p. 268, n. 4.
[759] Sandys, 301.
[760] Cf. Capulet, in _Romeo and Juliet_, i. 5. 28 ‘A hall, a hall!
give room! and foot it, girls’; and Puck who precedes the dance of
fairies in _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, v. 1. 396
‘I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.’
[761] Ditchfield, 315. ‘The play in this village is performed in most
approved fashion, as the Rector has taken the matter in hand, coached
the actors in their parts, and taught them some elocution.’ This sort
of thing, of course, is soon fatal to folk-drama.
[762] Burne-Jackson, 484; Manly, i. 289.
[763] Burne-Jackson, 402, 410; _F. L._ iv. 162; Dyer, 504. The broom
is used in Christmas and New Year _quêtes_ in Scotland and Yorkshire,
even when there is no drama. Northall 205, gives a Lancashire Christmas
song, sung by ‘Little David Doubt’ with black face, skin coat and
broom. At Bradford they ‘sweep out the Old Year’; at Wakefield they
sweep up dirty hearths. In these cases the notion of threatening to do
the unlucky thing has gone.
[764] Ditchfield, 12. An ‘Old Bet’ is mentioned in 5 _N. Q._ iv. 511,
as belonging to a Belper version. The woman is worked in with various
ingenuity, but several versions have lost her. The prologue to the
Newcastle chap-book promises a ‘Dives’ who never appears. Was this the
woman? In the Linton in Craven sword-dance, she has the similar name of
‘Miser.’
[765] I hardly like to trace a reminiscence of the connexion with
the _renouveau_ in the ‘General Valentine’ and ‘Colonel Spring’ who
fight and are slain in the Dorset (A) version; but there the names
are. Mr. Gomme (_Nature_ for Dec. 23, 1897) finds in certain mumming
costumes preserved in the Anthropological Museum at Cambridge and made
of paper scales, a representation of leaves of trees. Mr. Ordish, I
believe, finds in them the scales of the dragon (_F. L._ iv. 163). Some
scepticism may be permitted as to these conjectures. In most places
the dress represents little but rustic notions of the ornamental.
Cf. Thomas Hardy, _The Return of the Native_, bk. ii. ch. 3: ‘The
girls could never be brought to respect tradition in designing and
decorating the armour: they insisted on attaching loops and bows of
silk and velvet in any situation pleasing to their taste. Gorget,
gusset, bassinet, cuirass, gauntlet, sleeve, all alike in the view
of these feminine eyes were practicable spaces whereon to sew scraps
of fluttering colour.’ The usual costume of the sword-dancers, as we
have seen (p. 200), was a clean white smock, and probably that of the
mummers is based upon this.
[766] T. F. Ordish, in _F. L._ iv. 158.
[767] Printed in _The Old English Drama_ (1830), vol. iii.
Burne-Jackson, 490, think that ‘the masque owes something to the
play,’ but the resemblances they trace are infinitesimal. A play of
_St. George for England_, by William or Wentworth Smith, was amongst
the manuscripts destroyed by Warburton’s cook, and a Bartholomew Fair
‘droll’ of _St. George and the Dragon_ is alluded to in the _Theatre of
Compliments_, 1688 (Fleay, _C. H._ ii. 251; Hazlitt, _Manual_, 201).
[768] In the Dorset (A) version, the king of Egypt is ‘Anthony’ and
the doctor ‘Mr. Martin Dennis.’ Conceivably these are reminiscences
of St. Anthony of Padua and St. Denys of France. The Revesby Plough
Monday play (cf. p. 208) has also an ‘Anthony.’ The ‘Seven Champions’
do not appear in the English sword-dances described in ch. ix, but the
morris-dancers at Edgemond wake used to take that name (Burne-Jackson,
491). Mrs. Nina Sharp writes in _F. L. R._ iii. 1. 113: ‘I was staying
at Minety, near Malmesbury, in Wilts (my cousin is the vicar), when
the mummers came round (1876). They went through a dancing fight in
two lines opposed to each other--performed by the Seven Champions of
Christendom. There was no St. George, and they did not appear to have
heard of the Dragon. When I inquired for him, they went through the
performance of drawing a tooth--the tooth produced, after great agony,
being a horse’s. The mummers then carried into the hall a bush gaily
decorated with coloured ribbons.... [They] were all in white smock
frocks and masks. At Acomb, near York, I saw very similar mummers a
few years ago, but they distinguished St. George, and the Dragon was
a prominent person. There was the same tooth-drawing, and I think the
Dragon was the patient, and was brought back to life by the operation.’
I wonder whether the ‘Seven Champions’ were _named_ or whether Mrs.
Sharp _inferred them_. Anyhow, there could not have been _seven_ at
Minety, without St. George. The ‘bush’ is an interesting feature.
According to C. R. Smith, _Isle of Wight Words_ (_Eng. Dial. Soc._
xxxii. 63) the mummers are known in Kent as the ‘Seven Champions.’
[769] Entered on the _Stationers’ Registers_ in 1596. The first extant
edition is dated 1597. Johnson first introduced Sabra, princess of
Egypt, into the story; in the mediaeval versions, the heroine is an
unnamed princess of Silena in Libya. The mummers’ play follows Johnson,
and makes it Egypt. On Johnson was based Heylin’s _History of St.
George_ (1631 and 1633), and on one or both of these Kirke’s play.
[770] Jackson and Burne, 489: ‘Miss L. Toulmin Smith ... considers that
the diction and composition of the [Shropshire] piece, as we now have
it, date mainly from the seventeenth century.’
[771] Dyer, 193; Anstis, _Register of the Garter_ (1724), ii. 38; E.
Ashmole, _Hist. of the Garter_ (ed. 1672), 188, 467; (ed. 1715), 130,
410.
[772] F. Blomefield, _Hist. of Norfolk_ (1805), iv. 6, 347; Mackerell,
MS. _Hist. of Norfolk_ (1737), quoted in _Norfolk Archaeology_, iii.
315; _Notices Illustrative of Municipal Pageants and Processions_ (with
plates, publ. C. Muskett, Norwich, 1850); Toulmin Smith, _English
Gilds_ (E. E. T. S.), 17, 443; Kelly, 48. Hudson and Tingey, _Cal. of
Records of Norwich_ (1898), calendar many documents of the guild.
[773] Hartland, iii. 58, citing Jacobus à Voragine, _Legenda Aurea_,
xciii, gives the story of St. Margaret, and the appearance of the devil
to her in the shape of a dragon. She was in his mouth, but made the
sign of the cross, and he burst asunder.
[774] Cf. p. 177.
[775] Kelly, 37. The ‘dressyng of the dragon’ appears in the town
accounts for 1536. The guild had dropped the riding, even before the
Reformation.
[776] Harris, 97, 190, 277; Kelly, 41. The guild was formed by
journeymen in 1424. Probably there was a riding. In any case, at the
visit of Prince Edward in 1474, there was a pageant or _mystère mimé_
‘upon the Conddite in the Crosse Chepyng’ of ‘seint George armed and
Kynges dought^r knelyng afore hym w^t a lambe and the fader and the
moder beyng in a toure a boven beholdyng seint George savyng their
dought^r from the dragon.’ There was a similar pageant at the visit of
Prince Arthur in 1498.
[777] Kelly, 42.
[778] Morris, 139, 168; Fenwick, _Hist. of Chester_, 372; Dyer, 195.
The Fraternity of St. George was founded for the encouragement of
shooting in 1537. They had a chapel with a George in the choir of St.
Peter’s. St. George’s was the great day for races on the Rooddee.
In 1610 was a famous show, wherein St. George was attended by Fame,
Mercury, and various allegorical figures.
[779] Cf. _Representations_, s. v. York, Dublin.
[780] Dyer, 194, gives from Coates, _Hist. of Reading_, 221, the
account for setting-up a ‘George’ in 1536. Dugdale, _Hist. of
Warwickshire_, 928, has a notice of a legacy in 1526 by John Arden to
Aston church of his ‘white harneis ... for a George to were it, and to
stand on his pewe, a place made for it.’
[781] R. W. Goulding, _Louth Records_, quotes from the churchwardens’
accounts for 1538 payments for taking down the image of St. George and
his horse.
[782] _Representations_, s. v. Windsor, Lydd, New Romney, Bassingbourne.
[783] For the legend, see _Acta Sanctorum_, _April_, iii. 101; Jacobus
à Voragine, _Legenda Aurea_ (1280), lviii; E. A. W. Budge, _The
Martyrdom and Miracles of St. George of Cappadocia: the Coptic Texts_
(Oriental Text Series, 1888). In Rudder, _Hist. of Gloucestershire_,
461, and _Gloucester F. L._ 47, is printed an English version of the
legend, apparently used for reading in church on the Sunday preceding
St. George’s day, April 23. Cf. also Gibbon (ed. Bury), ii. 472, 568;
Hartland, _Perseus_, iii. 38; Baring-Gould, _Curious Myths of the
Middle Ages_, 266; Zöckler, s. v. St. Georg, in Herzog and Plitt’s
_Encyclopedia_; F. Görres, _Ritter St. Georg in Geschichte, Legende und
Kunst, in Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie_, xxx (1887),
54; F. Vetter, _Introduction_ to Reimbot von Durne’s _Der heilige
Georg_ (1896). Gibbon identified St. George with the Arian bishop
George of Cappadocia, and the dragon with Athanasius. This view has
been recently revived with much learning by J. Friedrich in _Sitzb.
Akad. Wiss. München_ (_phil.-hist. Kl._), 1899, ii. 2. Pope Gelasius
(†495) condemned the _Passio_ as apocryphal and heretical, but he
admits the historical existence of the saint, whose cult indeed was
well established both in East and West in the fifth century. Budge
tries to find an historical basis for him in a young man at Nicomedia
who tore down an edict during the persecution of Diocletian (†303), and
identifies his torturer Dadianus with the co-emperor Galerius.
[784] Du Méril, _La Com._ 98. He quotes Novidius, _Sacri Fasti_ (ed.
1559), bk. vi. f. 48^{vo}:
‘perque annos duci monet [rex] in spectacula casum
unde datur multis annua scena locis.’
A fifteenth-century Augsburg miracle-play of St. George is printed by
Keller, _Fastnachtsspiele_, No. 125; for other Continental data cf.
Creizenach, i. 231, 246; Julleville, _Les Myst._ ii. 10, 644; D’Ancona,
i. 104.
[785] Rabelais, _Gargantua_, iv. 59. The dragon was called Graoully,
and snapped its jaws, like the Norwich ‘snap-dragons’ and the English
hobby-horse.
[786] Cf. p. 138. The myth has attached itself to other undoubtedly
historical persons besides St. George (Bury, _Gibbon_, ii. 569). In
his case it is possibly due to a misunderstood bit of rhetoric. In the
Coptic version of the legend edited by Budge (p. 223), Dadianus is
called ‘the dragon of the abyss.’ There is no literal dragon in this
version: the princess is perhaps represented by Alexandra, the wife of
Dadianus, whom George converts. Cf. Hartland, _Perseus_, iii. 44.
[787] Cf. ch. xxiv, as to these plays.
[788] I ought perhaps to say that in one of the Coptic versions of the
legend St. George is periodically slain and brought back to life by a
miracle during the space of seven years. But I do not think that this
episode occurs in any of the European versions of the legend.
[789] ‘Sant George and the dragon’ are introduced into a London
May-game in 1559 (ch. viii).
[790] See the Manchester _Peace Egg_ chap-book. At Manchester,
Langdale, and, I believe, Coniston, the play is performed at Easter:
cf. Halliwell, _Popular Rhymes_, 231. The Steyning play is believed
to have been given at May-day as well as Christmas. Of course, so far
as this goes, the transference might have been from Christmas, not to
Christmas, but the German analogies point the other way. The Cheshire
performance on All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2), mentioned by Child, v. 291, is,
so far as I know, exceptional.
[791] Cf. ch. xvii: In the Isle of Wight the performers are called
the ‘Christmas Boys’ (C. R. Smith, _Isle of Wight Words_, in _E. D.
S._ xxxii. 63). The terms ‘Seven Champions’ (Kent) and ‘John Jacks’
(Salisbury) have already been explained. The Steyning ‘Tipteers’ or
‘Tipteerers’ may be named from the ‘tips’ collected in the _quête_.
The ‘Guisers’ of Staffordshire become on the Shropshire border
‘Morris-dancers,’ ‘Murry-dancers,’ or ‘Merry-dancers’--a further proof
of the essential identity of the morris- or sword-dance with the play.
[792] Tille, _Y. and C._ 78, 107; Rhys, _C. H._ 519; cf. ch. v.
[793] Tille, _Y. and C._ 18; _D. W._ 6. Bede, _D. T. R._ 15, gives
Blot-monath as the Anglo-Saxon name for November, and explains it as
‘mensis immolationum, quia in ea pecora quae occisuri erant, Diis suis
voverent.’
[794] Burton, 15, notes a tradition at Disley, in Cheshire, that the
local wake was formerly held after the first fall of snow.
[795] Tille, _Y. and C._ 18.
[796] Mogk, iii. 391; Tille, _Y. and C._ 24, find the winter feast
in the festival of Tanfana which the Marsi were celebrating when
Germanicus attacked them in A. D. 14 (Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 51). Winter,
though imminent, had not yet actually set in, but this might be the
case in any year after the festival had come to be determined by a
fixed calendar.
[797] Tille, _Y. and C._ 57.
[798] Rhys, _C. H._ 513, says that the _Samhain_ fell on Nov. 1. The
preceding night was known as _Nos Galan-geaf_, the ‘night of winter
calends,’ and that following as _Dy’ gwyl y Meirw_, ‘the feast of the
Dead.’ In _F. L._ ii. 308 he gives the date of the Manx _Samhain_ as
Nov. 12, and explains this as being Nov. 1, O. S. But is it not really
the original date of the feast which has been shifted elsewhere to the
beginning of the month?
[799] Tille, _Y. and C._ 12, citing M. Heyne, _Ulfilas_, 226: ‘In a
Gothic _calendarium_ of the sixth century November, or _Naubaímbaír_,
is called _fruma Iiuleis_, which presupposes that December was called
*_aftuma Iiuleis_.’
[800] Bede, _de temp. rat._ c. 15. Tille, _Y. and C._ 20, points out
that the application of the old tide-name to fit November and December
by the Goths and December and January by the Anglo-Saxons is fair
evidence for the belief that the tide itself corresponded to a period
from mid-November to mid-January.
[801] Tille, _Y. and C._ 147. The terms _gehhol_, _geóhel_, _geól_,
_giúl_, _iûl_, &c. signify the Christmas festival season from the ninth
century onwards, and from the eleventh also Christmas Day itself. The
fifteenth-century forms are _Yule_, _Ywle_, _Yole_, _Yowle_. In the
A.-S. Chronicle the terms used for Christmas are ‘midewinter,’ ‘Cristes
mæssa,’ ‘Cristes tyde,’ ‘Natiuitedh.’ As a single word ‘Cristesmesse’
appears first in 1131 (Tille, _Y. and C._ 159). The German ‘Weihnacht’
(M.H.G. _wich_, ‘holy’) appears †1000 (Tille, _D. W._ 22).
[802] Pfannenschmidt, 238, 512.
[803] The notion is of a circular course of the sun, passing through
the four turning- or wheeling-points of the solstices and equinoxes. Cf.
ch. vi for the use of the wheel as a solar symbol.
[804] Mogk, iii. 391, quoting Kluge, _Englische Studien_, ix. 311, and
Bugge, _Ark. f. nord. Filolog._ iv. 135. Tille, _Y. and C._ 8, 148,
desirous to establish an Oriental origin for the Three Score Day tides,
doubts the equation *_jehwela_ = _ioculus_, and suggests a connexion
between the Teutonic terms and the old Cypriote names ἰλαῖος, ἰουλαῖος,
ἰουλίηος, ἰούλιος for the period Dec. 22 to Jan. 23 (K. F. Hermann,
_Über griech. Monatskunde_, 64), and, more hesitatingly, with the Greek
Ἴουλος or hymn to Ceres. Weinhold, _Deutsche Monatsnamen_, 4; _Deutsche
Jahrteilung_, 15, thinks that both the Teutonic and Cypriote names are
the Roman _Julius_ transferred from mid-summer to mid-winter. Northall,
208, makes _yule_ = _ol_, _oel_, a feast or ‘ale,’ for which I suppose
there is nothing to be said. Skeat, _Etym. Dict._ s. v., makes it ‘a
time of revelry,’ and connects with M.E. _youlen_, _yollen_, to ‘yawl’
or ‘yell,’ and with A.-S. _gýlan_, Dutch _joelen_, to make merry, G.
_jolen_, _jodeln_, to sing out. He thus gets in a different way much
the sense given in the text.
[805] At a Cotswold Whitsun ale a lord and lady ‘of yule’ were chosen
(_Gloucester F. L._ 56). Rhys, _C. H._ 412, 421, 515, and in _F. L._
ii. 305, gives _Gwyl_ as a Welsh term for ‘feast’ in general, and in
particular mentions, besides the _Gwyl y Meirw_ at the _Samhain_,
the _Gwyl Aust_ (Aug. 1, Lammas or Lugnassad Day). This also appears
in Latin as the _Gula Augusti_ (Ducange, s. v. temp. Edw. III), and
in English as ‘the Gule of August’ (Hearne, _Robert of Gloucester’s
Chron._ 679). Tille, _Y. and C._ 56, declares that _Gula_ here is only
a mutilation of _Vincula_, Aug. 1 being in the ecclesiastical calendar
the feast of St. Peter _ad Vincula_.
[806] Kluge and Lutz, _English Etymology_, s. v. Yule.
[807] Bede, _D. T. R._ c. 15 ‘ipsam noctem nobis sacrosanctam, tunc
gentili vocabulo _Modranicht_ [v.l. _Modraneht_], id est, matrum
noctem appellabant; ob causam ut suspicamur ceremoniarum, quas in ea
pervigiles agebant.’
[808] Mogk, iii. 391. Tille, _Y. and C._ 152, gives some earlier
explanations, criticizes that of Mogk, and offers as his own a
reference to a custom of baking a cake (_placenta_) to represent the
physical motherhood of the Virgin. The practice doubtless existed and
was condemned by Pope Hormisdas (514-23), by the Lateran Council of
649, the Council of Hatfield (680), and the Trullan Council (692).
But Bede must have known this as a Christian abuse, and he is quite
plainly speaking of a pre-Christian custom. J. M. Neale, _Essays in
Liturgiology_ (1867), 511, says, ‘In most Celtic languages Christmas
eve is called the night of Mary,’ the Virgin, here as elsewhere, taking
over the cult of the mother-goddesses.
[809] Tille, _Y. and C._ 65. In his earlier book _D. W._ 7, 29, Dr.
Tille held the view that there had always been a second winter feast
about three weeks after the first, when the males held over for
breeding were slain.
[810] According to Bede, _D. T. R._ c. 15, the Anglo-Saxons had adopted
the system of intercalary months which belongs to the pre-Julian
and not the Julian Roman calendar. But Bede’s chapter is full of
confusions: cf. Tille, _Y. and C._ 145.
[811] All Saints’ day or Hallowmas (November 1) and All Souls’ day
(November 2) have largely, though not wholly, absorbed the November
feast of the Dead.
[812] Pfannenschmidt, 203; Jahn, 229; Tille, _Y. and C._ 21, 28, 36,
42, 57; _D. W._ 23.
[813] Tille, _D. W._ 29; Müller, 239, 248. According to Tille, _D. W._
63, Christmas only replaced the days of St. Martin and St. Nicholas as
a German children’s festival in the sixteenth century.
[814] Tille, _Y. and C._ 34, 65; Pfannenschmidt, 206; Dyer, 418;
N. Drake, _Shakespeare and his Times_ (1838), 93. Martinmas was a
favourite Anglo-Saxon and mediaeval legal term. It survived also as
a traditional ‘tyme of slauchter’ for cattle. ‘Martlemas beef’ was a
common term for salt beef. In Scotland a Mart is a fat cow or bullock,
but the derivation of this appears to be from a Celtic word _Mart_ =
cow.
[815] Rhys, in _F. L._ ii. 308.
[816] Mommsen, _C. I. L._ i^2. 287; Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ s. v.
_Bruma_; Tomaschek, in _Sitzb. Akad. Wiss. Wien_, lx (1869), 358.
[817] Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 163 ‘bruma novi prima est veterisque novissima
solis.’
[818] Cf. p. 112.
[819] Preller, ii. 408; P. Allard, _Julien l’Apostat_, i. 16; J.
Réville, _La Religion à Rome sous les Sévères_ (1885); Wissowa, 306. An
earlier cult of the same type introduced by Elagabalus did not survive
its founder.
[820] The earliest reference is probably that in the calendar of the
Greek astronomer, of uncertain date, Antiochus, Ἡλίου γενέθλιον·
αὔξει φῶς (Cumont, i. 342, from _Cod. Monac._ gr. 287, f. 132). The
_Fasti_ of Furius Dionysius Philocalus (A.D. 354) have ‘VIII. KAL. IAN.
N[atalis] INVICTI C[ircenses] M[issus] XXX’ (_C. I. L._ i^2. 278, 338).
Cf. Julian, _Orat._ 4 (p. 156 ed. Spanheim) εὐθέως μετὰ τὸν τελευταῖον
τοῦ Κρόνου μῆνα ποιοῦμεν ἡλίῳ τὸν περιφανέστατον ἀγῶνα, τὴν ἑορτὴν Ἡλίῳ
καταφημίσαντες Ἀνικήτῳ; Corippus, _de laud. Iust. min._ i. 314 ‘Solis
honore novi grati spectacula circi’; cf. the Christian references on
p. 242. Mommsen’s _Scriptor Syrus_ quoted _C. I. L._ i^2. 338 tells us
that lights were used; ‘accenderunt lumina festivitatis causa.’
[821] Preller, ii. 410; Gibbon, ii. 446.
[822] On Mithraicism, cf. F. Cumont, _Textes et Monuments relatifs
aux Mystères de Mithra_ (1896-9); also the art. by the same writer in
Roscher’s _Lexicon_, ii. 3028, and A. Gasquet, _Le Culte de Mithra_
(_Revue des Deux Mondes_ for April 1, 1899); J. Réville, _La Religion à
Rome sous les Sévères_, 77; Wissowa, 307; Preller, ii. 410; A. Gardner,
_Julian the Apostate_, 175; P. Allard, _Julien l’Apostat_, i. 18; ii.
232; G. Zippel, _Le Taurobolium_, in _Festschrift f. L. Friedländer_
(1895), 498. Mithra was originally a form of the Aryan Sun-god, who
though subordinated in the Mazdean system to Ahoura Mazda continued to
be worshipped by the Persian folk. His cult made its appearance in Rome
about 70 B.C., and was developed during the third and fourth centuries
A.D. under philosophic influences. Mithra was regarded as the fount
of all life, and the yearly obscuration of the sun’s forces in winter
became a hint and promise of immortality to his worshippers: cf. _Carm.
adv. paganos_, 47 ‘qui hibernum docuit sub terra quaerere solem.’
Mithraic votive stones have been found in all parts of the empire,
Britain included. They are inscribed ‘Soli Invicto,’ ‘Deo Soli Invicto
Mithrae,’ ‘Numini Invicto Soli Mithrae,’ and the like.
[823] Cumont, _Textes et Mon._ i. 325; ii. 66, and in Roscher’s
_Lexicon_, ii. 3065; Lichtenberger, _Encycl. des Sciences religieuses_,
s. v. Mithra.
[824] Preller, _R. M._ ii. 15; Mommsen, in _C. I. L._ i^2. 337;
Marquardt and Mommsen, _Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer_, vi. 562;
_Dict. of Cl. A._ s. v. Saturnalia; Tille, _Y. and C._ 85; Frazer, iii.
138; W. W. Fowler, 268; C. Dezobry, _Rome au Siècle d’Auguste_ (ed. 4,
1875), iii. 140.
[825] Horace, _Satires_, ii. 7. 4:
‘age, libertate Decembri,
quando ita maiores voluerunt, utere; narra.’
[826] The democratic character of the feast is brought out in the νόμοι
put by Lucian (Luc. _Opp._ ed. Jacobitz, iii. 307; _Saturnalia_, p.
393) in the mouth of the divinely instructed νομοθέτης, Chronosolon,
and in the ‘Letters of Saturn’ that follow.
[827] According to Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 15, Nero was king of the
Saturnalia at the time of the murder of Britannicus. On the nature of
this sovereignty, cf. Arrian, _Epictetus_, i. 25; Martial, xi. 6:
‘unctis falciferi senis diebus,
regnator quibus imperat fritillus.’
Lucian, _Saturnalia_, p. 385, introduces a dialogue between Saturn
and his priests. Saturn says ἑπτὰ μὲν ἡμερῶν ἡ πᾶσα βασιλεία, καὶ
ἢν ἐκπρόθεσμος τούτων γένωμαι, ἰδιώτης εὐθύς εἰμι, καὶ τοῦ πολλοῦ
δήμου εἷσ· ἐν αὐταῖς δέ ταῖς ἑπτὰ σπουδαῖον μὲν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ ἀγοραῖον
διοικήσασθαί μοι συγκεχώρηται, πίνειν δὲ καὶ μεθύειν καὶ βοᾶν καὶ
παίζειν καὶ κυβεύειν καὶ ἄρχοντας καθίσταναι καὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας εὐωχεῖν
καὶ γυμνὸν ἄδειν καὶ κροτεῖν ὑποτρέμοντα, ἐνίοτε δὲ καὶ ἐς ὕδωρ
ψυχρὸν ἐπὶ κεφαλὴν ὠθεῖσθαι ἀσβόλῳ κεχρισμένον τὸ πρόσωπον, ταῦτα
ἐφεῖταί μοι ποιεῖν; and again: εὐωχώμεθα δὲ ἤδη καὶ κροτῶμεν καὶ ἐπὶ
τῆ ἑορτῆ ἐλευθεριάζωμεν, εἲτα πεττεύωμεν ἐς τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἐπὶ καρύων καὶ
βασιλέας χειροτονῶμεν καὶ πειθαρχῶμεν αὐτοῖσ· οὕτω γὰρ ἂν τὴν παροιμίαν
ἐπαληθεύσαιμι, ἥ φησι, παλίμπαιδας τοὺς γέροντας γίγνεσθαι. The ducking
is curiously suggestive of western festival customs, but I do not feel
sure whether it was the image of Saturn that was ducked or the _rex_
with whom he appears to half, and only half, identify himself. Frazer,
iii. 140, lays stress on the primitive sacrificial character of the
‘rex,’ who is said still to have been annually slain in Lower Moesia
at the beginning of the fourth century A.D.; cf. _Acta S. Dasii_, in
_Acta Bollandiana_, xvi. (1897), 5; Parmentier et Cumont, _Le Roi des
Saturnales_, in _R. de Philologie_, xxi (1897), 143.
[828] Frazer, iii. 144, suggests that the _Saturnalia_ may once have
been in February, and have left a trace of themselves in the similar
festival of the female slaves, the _Matronalia_, on March 1, which,
like the winter feasts, came in for Christian censure; cf. Appendix N.
No. (i).
[829] Preller, _R. M._ i. 64, 178; ii. 13; C. Dezobry, _Rome au Siècle
d’Auguste_ (ed. 4, 1875), ii. 169; Mommsen and Marquardt, vi. 545; vii.
245; Roscher, _Lexicon_, ii. 37; W. W. Fowler, 278; Tille, _Y. and C._
84; M. Lipenius, _Strenarum Historia_ in J. G. Graevius, _Thesaurus
Antiq. Rom._ (1699), xii. 409. The last-named treatise contains a
quantity of information set out with some obsolete learning. The most
important contemporary account is that of Libanius (314-†95) in his
είς τὰς καλάνδας and his καλανδῶν ἔκφρασις (ed. Reiske, i. 256; iv.
1053; cf. Sievers, _Das Leben der Libanius_, 170, 204). In the former
speech he says ταύτην τὴν ἑορτὴν εὔροι τ’ ἂν τεταμένην ἐφ’ ἅπαν, ὅσον ἡ
Ῥωμαίων ἀρχὴ τέταται, in the latter, μίαν δὲ οἶδα κοινὴν ἁπάντων ὁπόσοι
ζῶσιν ὑπὸ τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἀρχήν. Under the emperors, who made much of the
_strenae_ and _vota_, the importance of the Kalends grew, probably at
the expense of the Saturnalia; cf. Macrobius, _Saturnalia_, i. 2. 1
‘adsunt feriae quas indulget magna pars mensis Iano dicati.’
[830] Preller, i. 180; Mommsen and Marquardt, vi. 14; vii. 245; W. W.
Fowler, 278; Tille, _Y. and C._ 84, 104. _Strenia_ was interpreted in
the sense of ‘strenuous’; cf. Symmachus, _Epist._ x. 15 ‘ab exortu
paene urbis Martiae strenarum usus adolevit auctore Tatio rege, qui
verbenas felicis arboris ex luco Streniae anni novi auspices primus
accepit.... Nomen indicio est viris strenuis haec convenire virtute.’
Preller calls Strenia a Sabine _Segensgöttin_.
[831] Mommsen and Marquardt, vii. 245; Lipenius, 489. The gifts were
often inscribed ‘anno novo faustum felix tibi.’ It is probable that
the sweet cakes and the lamps like the _verbenae_ had originally a
closer connexion with the rites of the feast than that of mere omens.
The emperors expected liberal _strenae_, and from them the custom
passed into mediaeval and Renaissance courts. Queen Elizabeth received
sumptuous new year gifts from her subjects. For a money payment the
later empire used the term καλανδικόν or _kalendaticum_. _Strenae_
survives in the French _étrennes_ (Müller, 150, 504).
[832] Appendix N, Nos. (i), (ii).
[833] The most recent authorities are Tille, _Y. and C._ 119;
H. Usener, _Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen_, i, _Das
Weihnachtsfest_ (1889); L. Duchesne, _Origines du Culte chrétien_ (ed.
2, 1898), 247, and in _Bulletin critique_ (1890), 41; F. C. Conybeare,
_The History of Christmas_, in _American Journal of Theology_ (1899),
iii. 1, and _Introduction_ to _The Key of Truth_ (1898); F. Cumont,
_Textes et Monuments mithraïques_, i (1899), 342, 355. I have not been
able to see an article praised by Mr. Conybeare, in P. de Lagarde,
_Mittheilungen_ (1890), iv. 241.
[834] Conybeare, _Am. J. Th._ iii. 7, cites, without giving exact
references, two ‘north Italian homilies’ of the fourth century, which
seem to show this.
[835] _Sermo_ ccii (_P. L._ xxxviii. 1033).
[836] The _depositio martyrum_, attached to the _Fasti_ of Philocalus
drawn up in 354, opens with the entry ‘viii kl. ianu. natus Christus
in Bethleem Iudeae.’ December 25 was therefore kept as the birthday
at least as early as 353. Usener, i. 267, argued that the change must
have taken place in this very year, because Liberius, while veiling
Marcellina, the sister of St. Ambrose, on the Epiphany, spoke of the
day as ‘natalem Sponsi tui’ (_de Virginibus_, iii. 1, in _P. L._ xvi.
219). But it is not proved either that this event took place in 363,
or that it was on Epiphany rather than Christmas day. Liberius refers
to the Marriage at Cana and the Feeding of the Five Thousand. But the
first allusion is directly led up to by the _sponsalia_ of Marcellina,
and both events, although at a later date commemorated at Epiphany, may
have belonged to Christmas at Rome, before Epiphany made its appearance
(Duchesne, _Bulletin critique_ (1890), 41). Usener adds that Liberius
built the _Basilica Liberii_, also known as _Sta. Maria ad Praesepe_ or
_Sta. Maria Maggiore_, which is still a great station for the Christmas
ceremonies, in honour of the new feast. But Duchesne shows that the
dedication to St. Mary only dates from a rebuilding in the fifth
century, that the _praesepe_ cannot be traced there before the seventh,
and that the original Christmas _statio_ was at St. Peter’s.
[837] Duchesne, _Bulletin critique_ (1890), 44. This document also
belongs to the collection of Philocalus.
[838] Conybeare, _Key of Truth_, clii-clvii, quoting an Armenian bishop
Hippolytus in _Bodl. Armen. Marsh_ 467, f. 338^a, ‘as many as were
disobedient have divided the two feasts.’ According to the _Catechism
of the Syrian Doctors_ in the same MS., Sahak asked Afrem why the
churches feast Dec. 25: the teacher replied, ‘The Roman world does so
from idolatry, because of the worship of the Sun. And on the 25th of
Dec., which is the first of Qanûn; when the day made a beginning out
of the darkness they feasted the Sun with great joy, and declared that
day to be the nuptials [? ‘natals,’ but cf. p. 241, n. 1] of the Sun.
However, when the Son of God was born of the Virgin, they celebrated
the same feast, although they had turned from their idols to God. And
when their bishops (_or_ primates) saw this, they proceeded to take the
Feast of the Birth of Christ, which was on the sixth of January, and
placed it there (viz. on Dec. 25). And they abrogated the feast of the
Sun, because it (the Sun) was nothing, as we said before.’ Mommsen, _C.
I. L._ i^2. 338, quotes to the same effect another _Scriptor Syrus_ (in
Assemanus, _Bibl. Orient._ ii. 164): cf. p. 235. The early apologists
(Tertullian, _Apol._ 16; _ad Nationes_, i. 13; Origen, _contra Celsum_,
viii. 67) defend Christianity against pagan charges of Sun-worship.
[839] Conybeare, _J. Am. Th._ iii. 8.
[840] Most of these dates were in the spring (Duchesne, 247). As
late as †243 the Pseudo-Cyprianic _de Pascha computus_ gives March
28. On the other hand, December 25 is given early in the third
century by Hippolytus, _Comm. super Danielem_, iv. 23 (p. 243, ed.
Bonwetsch, 1897), although the text has been suspected of interpolation
(Hilgenfeld, in _Berlin. phil. Wochenschrift_, 1897, p. 1324, s.).
Ananias of Shirak (†600-50), _Hom. de Nat._ (transl. in _Expositor_,
Nov. 1890), says that the followers of Cerinthus first separated the
birth and baptism: cf. Conybeare, _Key of Truth_, cliv. This is further
explained by Paul of Taron (ob. 1123), _adv. Theopistum_, 222 (quoted
Conybeare, clvi), who says that Artemon calculated the dates of the
Annunciation as March 25 and the Birth as December 25, ‘the birth,
not however of the Divine Being, but only of the mere man.’ Both
Cerinthus (end of 1st cent.) and Artemon (†202-17) appear to have held
Adoptionist tenets: cf. Schaff, iv. 465, 574. Paul adds that Artemon
calculated the dates from those for the conception and nativity of John
the Baptist. This implies that St. John Baptist’s day was already June
24 by †200. It was traditional on that day by St. Augustine’s time,
‘Hoc maiorum traditione suscepimus’ (_Sermo_ ccxcii. 1, in Migne, _P.
L._ xxxviii. 1320). The six months’ interval between the two nativities
may be inferred from _St. Luke_ i. 26. St. Augustine refers to the
symbolism of their relation to each other, and quotes with regard to
their position on the solstices the words ascribed to the Baptist in
_St. John_ iii. 30 ‘illum oportet crescere, me autem minui’ (_Sermo_
cxciv. 2; cclxxxvii. 3; cclxxxviii. 5; Migne, _P. L._ xxxviii. 1016,
1302, 1306). Duchesne, 250, conjectures that the varying dates of West
(Dec. 25) and East (Jan. 6) depended on a similar variation in the date
assigned to the Passion, it being assumed in each case that the life
of Christ must have been a complete circle, and that therefore he must
have died on the anniversary of his conception in the womb. Thus St.
Augustine (_in Heptat._ ii. 90) upbraids the Jews, ‘non coques agnum in
lacte matris suae.’ March 25 was widely accepted for the Passion from
Tertullian onwards, and certain Montanists held to the date of April
6. Astronomy makes it impossible that March 25 can be historically
correct, and therefore the whole calculation, if Duchesne is right,
probably started from an arbitrary identification of a Christian date
with the spring equinox, just as, if Ananias of Shirak is right, it
started from a similar identification of another such date with the
summer solstice. But it seems just as likely that the birth was fixed
first, and the Annunciation and St. John Baptist’s day calculated
back from that. If the Passion had been the starting-point, would not
the feast of Christmas, as distinct from the traditional date for the
event, have become a movable one?
[841] The Armenian criticism just quoted only re-echoes that put by St.
Augustine in the mouth of the Manichaeans in _Contra Faustum_, xx. 4
(_Corp. Script. Eccl._ xxv) ‘Faustus dixit ... solemnes gentium dies
cum ipsis celebratis ut Kalendas et solstitia.’ Augustine answers other
criticisms of the same order in the course of the book, but he does not
take up this one.
[842] Augustine, in his sermons, uses a solar symbolism in two ways,
besides drawing the parallel with St. John already quoted. Christ is
_lux e tenebris_: ‘quoniam ipsa infidelitas quae totum mundum vice
noctis obtexerat, minuenda fuerat fide crescente; ideo die Natalis
Domini nostri Iesu Christi, et nox incipit perpeti detrimenta, et dies
sumere augmenta’ (_Sermo_ cxc. 1 in _P. L._ xxxviii. 1007). He is
also _sponsus procedens de thalamo suo_ (_Sermo_ cxcii. 3; cxcv. 3,
in _P. L._ xxxviii. 1013, 1018). Following this Caesarius or another
calls Christmas the _dies nuptialis Christi_, on which ‘sponsae suae
Ecclesiae adiunctus est’ (_Serm. Pseudo-Aug._ cxvi. 2, in _P. L._
xxxix. 1975). Cumont, i. 355, gives other examples of _Le Soleil
Symbole du Christ_ from an early date, and especially of the use of the
phrase _Sol Iustitiae_ from _Malachi_, iv. 2.
[843] Pseudo-Chrysostom (Italian, 4th cent.), _de solstitiis et
aequinoctiis_ (_Op._ Chrys. ed. 1588, ii. 118) ‘Sed et dominus nascitur
mense Decembri, hiemis tempore, viii kal. Ianuarias.... Sed et invicti
natalem appellant. Quis utique tam invictus nisi dominus noster qui
Mortem subactam devicit? vel quod dicant Solis esse natalem, ipse est
Sol iustitiae de quo Malachias propheta dixit’; St. Augustine, _Sermo_
cxc. 1 (_P. L._ xxxviii. 1007) ‘habeamus, igitur, fratres, solemnem
istum diem; non sicut infideles propter hunc solem, sed propter eum qui
fecit hunc solem’; _Tract. in Iohann._ xxxiv. 2 (_P. L._ xxxv. 1652)
‘numquid forte Dominus Christus est Sol iste qui ortu et occasu peragit
diem? Non enim defuerunt heretici qui ita senserunt ... (c. 4) ne quis
carnaliter sapiens solem istum intelligendum putaret’; Pseudo-Ambrose
(perhaps Maximus of Turin, †412-65), _Sermo_ vi. (_P. L._ xvii. 614)
‘bene quodammodo sanctum hunc diem natalis Domini solem novum vulgus
appellat ... quod libenter nobis amplectendum est; quia oriente
Salvatore non solum humani generis salus, sed etiam solis ipsius
claritas innovatur’; Leo Magnus, _Sermo_ xxii, _in Nativ. Dom._ (_P.
L._ liv. 198) ‘Ne idem ille tentator, cuius iam a vobis dominationem
Christus exclusit, aliquibus vos iterum seducat insidiis, et haec
ipsa praesentis diei gaudia suae fallaciae arte corrumpat, illudens
simplicioribus animis de quorumdam persuasione pestifera, quibus haec
dies solemnitatis nostrae non tam de nativitate Christi quam de novi,
ut dicunt, solis ortu honorabilis videatur’; _Sermo_ xxvii, _in Nat.
Dom._ (_P. L._ liv. 218) ‘De talibus institutis etiam illa generatur
impietas ut sol in inchoatione diurnae lucis exsurgens a quibusdam
insipientioribus de locis eminentioribus adoretur; quod nonnulli etiam
Christiani adeo se religiose facere putant, ut priusquam ad B. Petri
apostoli basilicam, quae uni Deo vivo et vero est dedicata, perveniant,
superatis gradibus quibus ad suggestum areae superioris ascenditur,
converso corpore ad nascentem se solem reflectant, et curvatis
cervicibus, in honorem se splendidi orbis inclinent. Quod fieri partim
ignorantiae vitio, partim paganitatis spiritu, multum tabescimus et
dolemus.’ Eusebius, _Sermo_ xxii. περὶ ἀστρονόμων (_P. G._ lxxxvi.
453), also refers to the adoration of the sun by professing Christians.
The ‘tentator’ of Leo and the ‘heretici’ of Augustine are probably
Manichaeus and his followers, against whose sun-worship Augustine
argues at length in _Contra Faustum_, xx (_Corp. Script. Eccl._ xxv).
[844] Duchesne, 248.
[845] Cf. p. 14.
[846] _C. Agathense_, c. 21 (Mansi, viii. 328) ‘Pascha vero, natale
domini, epiphania, ascensionem domini, pentecostem, et natalem S.
Ioannis Baptistae, vel si qui maximi dies in festivitatibus habentur,
non nisi in civitatibus aut in parochiis teneant.’
[847] _Conc. Bracarense_ (†560), Prop. 4 (Mansi, ix. 775) ‘Si quis
natalem Christi secundum carnem non bene honorat, sed honorare se
simulat, ieiunans in eodem die, et in dominico; quia Christum in
vera hominis natura natum esse non credit, sicut Cerdon, Marcion,
Manichaeus, et Priscillianus, anathema sit.’ A similar prohibition
is given by Gregory II (†725), _Capitulare_, c. 10 (_P. L._ lxxxix.
534). To failings in the opposite direction the Church was more
tender: cf. _Penitentiale Theodori_ (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 177),
_de Crapula et Ebrietate_ ‘Si vero pro infirmitate aut quia longo
tempore se abstinuerit, et in consuetudine non erit ei multum bibere
vel manducare, aut pro gaudio in Natale Domini aut in Pascha aut pro
alicuius Sanctorum commemoratione faciebat, et tunc plus non accipit
quam decretum est a senioribus, nihil nocet. Si episcopus iuberit, non
nocet illi, nisi ipse similiter faciat.’
[848] Tille, _Y. and C._ 122.
[849] Cf. Appendix N, No. xxii.
[850] _Epist. Gregorii ad Eulogium_ (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 12).
[851] _Epist. Bedae ad Egbertum_ (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 323).
[852] _Leges Ethelredi_ (Thorpe, _Ancient Laws_, i. 309) ‘Ordâl
and âdhar sindon tocweden ... fram Adventum Domini odh octavas
Epiphanie.... And beo tham hâlgum tîdan eal swa hit riht is, eallum
cristenum mannum sib and sôm gemæne, and ælc sacu getwæmed.’ Cf. _Leges
Edwardi_ (Thorpe, i. 443).
[853] _C. Moguntiacum_, c. 36 (Mansi, xiv. 73) ‘In natali Domini dies
quatuor, octavas Domini, epiphaniam Domini.’
[854] Tille, _Y. and C._ 203.
[855] Cf. the collection of prohibitions in Appendix N.
[856] _C. of Tours_, c. 18 (Appendix N, No. xxii).
[857] R. Sinker, in _D. C. A._ s. v. Circumcision.
[858] On this difficult subject see Tille, _Y. and C._ 134; H.
Grotefend, _Taschenbuch der Zeitrechnung_ (1898), 11; F. Ruhl,
_Chronologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit_ (1897), 23; C. Plummer,
_Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, ii. cxxix; R. L. Poole, in _Eng. Hist. Review_
(1901), 719.
[859] The position of Christmas would have made it natural that it
should attract observances from the spring festivals also, and, in
fact, it did attract the Mummers’ play: cf. p. 226. It cannot of course
be positively said whether the Epiphany fires and some of the other
agricultural rites to be presently mentioned (ch. xii) came from the
November or the ploughing festival.
[860] _C. of Auxerre_ (573-603), c. 11 (Appendix N. No. xxv).
[861] In the south of France Christmas is _Chalendes_, in Provence
_Calendas_ or _Calenos_. The log is _calignau_, _chalendau_,
_chalendal_, _calignaon_, or _culenos_, and the peasants sang round it
‘Calène vient’ (Tille, _D. W._ 286; Müller, 475, 478). Thiers, i. 264,
speaks of ‘le pain de Calende.’ Christmas songs used to be known in
Silesia as _Kolendelieder_ (Tille, _D. W._ 287). The Lithuanian term
for Christmas is _Kalledos_ and the Czechic _Koleda_ (Polish _Kolenda_,
Russian _Koljada_). A verb _colendisare_ appears as a Bohemian law term
(Tille, _Y. and C._ 84); while in the fourteenth century the Christmas
_quête_ at Prague was known as the _Koledasammeln_ (Tille, _D. W._
112). The Bohemian Christmas procession described by Alsso (cf. ch.
xii) was called _Calendizatio_, and according to tradition St. Adalbert
(tenth century) transferred it from the Kalends to Christmas, and
called it _colendizatio_ ‘_a colendo_.’
[862] _C. of Auxerre_ (573-603), c. 5 (Appendix N, No. xxv).
Pfannenschmidt, 498, has collected a number of notices of _Martinalia_
from the tenth century onwards.
[863] Pfannenschmidt, 279; Dyer, 386, describe the ‘Horn Fair’ at
Charlton, Kent, on St. Luke’s Day, Oct. 18. A king and queen were
chosen, who went in procession to the church, wearing horns. The
visitors wore masks or women’s clothes, and played practical jokes with
water. Rams’ horns were sold at the fair, which lasted three days, and
the gilt on the gingerbread took the same shape. It will be remembered
that the symbol of St. Luke in Christian art is a horned ox.
[864] Cf. p. 114. According to Spence, 196, the Shetland Christmas
begins on St. Thomas’s Day and ends on Jan. 18, known as ‘Four and
Twenty Day.’ Candlemas (Feb. 2) is also often regarded as the end of
the Christmas season. The Anglo-Saxon Christmas feast lasted to the
Octave of Epiphany (Tille, _Y. and C._ 165).
[865] Dyer, 451; Ashton, 118, where the custom is said to have
been ‘started by the Rev. J. Kenworthy, Rector of Ackworth, in
Yorkshire, ... for the special benefit of the birds.’
[866] Frazer, i. 177, ii. 172, 286; Grimm, iv. 1783; Tille, _D. W._ 50,
178; Alsso, in Usener, ii. 61, 65.
[867] Lipenius, 423; cf. Appendix N, Nos. i, vi, xiii, xxiv.
[868] Tille, _Y. and C._ 103, 174; Philpot, 164; Jackson and Burne,
397; Dyer, 457; Stow, _Survey of London_ (ed. 1618), 149 ‘Against the
feast of Christmas, euery mans house, as also their parish Churches,
were decked with Holm, Iuy, Bayes, and whatsoever the season of the
yeere aforded to be greene. The Conduits and Standards in the streetes
were, likewise, garnished.’ He gives an example from 1444.
[869] Burne-Jackson, 245, 397, 411; Ashton, 95. Customs vary: here
the evergreens must be burnt; there given to the cattle. They should
not touch the ground (Grimm, iii. 1207). With this taboo compare that
described by ancient writers, probably on the authority of Posidonius,
as existing in a cult of a god identified with Dionysus amongst the
Namnites on the west coast of Gaul. A temple on an island was unroofed
and reroofed by the priestesses annually. Did one of them drop her
materials on the ground, she was torn to pieces by her companions
(Rhys, _C. H._ 196). They are replaced on Candlemas by snowdrops, or,
according to Herrick, ‘the greener box.’ In Shropshire a garland made
of blackthorn is left hanging from New Year to New Year, and then burnt
in a festival fire (_F. L._ x. 489; xii. 349).
[870] The Christmas, rivalry between holly and ivy is the subject
of carols, some dating from the fifteenth century; cf. Ashton, 92;
Burne-Jackson, 245.
[871] Grimm, iii. 1205.
[872] Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxi. 95.
[873] Ashton, 81, 92; Ditchfield, 18; Brand, i. 285; Dyer, 458;
Philpot, 164. Mistletoe is the chief ingredient of the ‘kissing-bunch,’
sometimes a very elaborate affair, with apples and dolls hung in it.
The ecclesiastical taboo is not universal; in York Minster, e.g.,
mistletoe was laid on the altar.
[874] Tille, _Y. and C._ 174; _D. W._ 256, and in _F. L._ iii. 166;
Philpot, 164; Ashton, 189; Kempe, _Loseley MSS._ 75. The earliest
English mention is in 1789.
[875] Tille, _Y. and C._ 170.
[876] Ibid. 172; Ashton, 105, quoting Aubrey, _Natural Hist. of Wilts_,
‘Mr. Anthony Hinton, one of the officers of the Earle of Pembroke,
did inoculate, not long before the late civill warres (ten yeares or
more), a bud of Glastonbury Thorne, on a thorne, at his farm house, at
Wilton, which blossoms at Christmas, as the other did. My mother has
had branches of them for a flower-pott, several Christmasses, which I
have seen. Elias Ashmole, Esq., in his notes upon _Theatrum Chymicum_,
saies that in the churchyard at Glastonbury grew a walnutt tree, that
did putt out young leaves at Christmas, as doth the King’s Oake in the
New Forest. In Parham Park, in Suffolk (Mr. Boutele’s), is a pretty
ancient thorne, that blossomes like that at Glastonbury; the people
flock hither to see it on Christmas day. But in the rode that leades
from Worcester to Droitwiche is a black thorne hedge at Clayes, half
a mile long or more, that blossoms about Christmas-day for a week or
more together. Dr. Ezerel Tong sayd that about Rumly-Marsh in Kent,
are thornes naturally like that near Glastonbury. The Soldiers did
cutt downe that near Glastonbury: the stump remaines.’ Specimens are
still found about Glastonbury of _Crataegus oxyacantha praecox_, a
winter-flowering variety of hawthorn: some of the alleged slips from
the Glastonbury thorn appear, however, to be _Prunus communis_, or
blackthorn. A writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1753 reports
that the opponents of the ‘New Style’ introduced in 1752 were
encouraged by the refusal of the thorns at Glastonbury and Quainton in
Buckinghamshire to flower before Old Christmas day. A Somerset woman
told a writer in 3 _N. Q._ ix. 33 that the buds of the thorns burst
into flower at midnight on Christmas Eve, ‘As they comed out, you could
hear ‘um haffer.’
[877] Tille, _Y. and C._ 175.
[878] Usener, ii. 61. Alsso says that St. Adalbert substituted a
crucifix for the idol, and the cry of ‘Vele, Vele,’ for that of ‘Bely,
Bely.’
[879] Ashton, 244; Dyer, 483; Ditchfield, 15. The dolls sometimes
represent the Virgin and Child. ‘Wesley-bob’ and the alternative
‘vessel-cup’ appear to be corruptions of ‘wassail.’
[880] Cf., however, the Burghead ceremony (p. 256).
[881] Brand, i. 217; Burne-Jackson, 381; Dyer, 405; Ditchfield, 25,
161; Northall, 216; Henderson, 66; Haddon, 476; Pfannenschmidt, 206.
The _N. E. D._ plausibly explains ‘gooding,’ which seems to be used
of any of these _quêtes_ as ‘wishing good,’ and ‘hooding’ may be a
corruption of this.
[882] Brand, i. 1; Dyer, 501; Ditchfield, 42; Northall, 183. Skeat
derives _wassail_, M.E. _wasseyl_, ‘a health-drinking,’ from N.E. _wæs
hǽl_, A.-S. _wes hál_, ‘be whole.’
[883] Ducange, _Gloss_, s. v. Kalendae Ianuarii, quoting _Cerem. Rom.
ad calcem Cod. MS. eccl. Camerac._ ‘Hii sunt ludi Romani communes in
Kalendis Ianuarii. In vigilia Kalendarum in sero surgunt pueri, et
portant scutum. Quidam eorum est larvatus cum maza in collo; sibilando
sonant timpanum, eunt per domos, circumdant scutum, timpanum sonat,
larva sibilat. Quo ludo finito, accipiunt munus a domino domus,
secundum quod placet ei. Sic faciunt per unamquamque domum. Eo die de
omnibus leguminibus comedunt. Mane autem surgunt duo pueri ex illis,
accipiunt ramos olivae et sal, et intrant per domos, salutant domum:
Gaudium et laetitia sit in hac domo; tot filii, tot porcelli, tot agni,
et de omnibus bonis optant, et antequam sol oriatur, comedunt vel favum
mellis, vel aliquid dulce, ut totus annus procedat eis dulcis, sine
lite et labore magno.’
[884] Du Tilliot, 67, quoting J. B. Thiers, _Traité des jeux et des
divertissemens_, 452; Müller, 103. There are some Guillaneu songs in
Bujeaud, ii. 153. The _quête_ was prohibited by two synods of Angers in
1595 and 1668.
[885] Brand, i. 247; Dyer, 505; Ditchfield, 44; Ashton, 217; Northall,
181; Henderson, 76; Tille, _Y. and C._ 204; Nicholson, _Golspie_, 100;
Rhys, in _F. L._ ii. 308. Properly speaking, ‘Hogmanay’ is the gift
of an oaten farl asked for in the _quête_. It is also applied to the
day on which the _quête_ takes place, which is in Scotland generally
New Year’s Eve. Besides the _quête_, Hogmanay night, like Halloween
elsewhere, is the night for horse-play and practical joking. The name
appears in many forms, ‘Hogmana,’ ‘Hogomanay,’ ‘Nog-money’ (Scotland),
‘Hogmina’ (Cumberland), ‘Hagmena’ (Northumberland), ‘Hagman heigh!’
‘Hagman ha!’ (Yorkshire), ‘Agganow’ (Lancashire), ‘Hob dy naa,’ ‘Hob
ju naa’ (Isle of Man). It is generally accepted as equivalent to the
French _aguilanneuf_, _aguilanleu_, _guillaneu_, _hagui men lo_,
_hoquinano_, &c., ad infin., the earliest form being _auguilanleu_
(1353). With the Scotch
‘Hogmanay,
Trollolay,
Give us of your white bread and none of your grey’!
may be compared the French,
‘Tire lire,
Maint de blanc, et point du bis.’
On no word has amateur philology been more riotous. It has been
derived from ‘au gui menez,’ ‘à gui l’an neuf,’ ‘au gueux menez,’
‘Hálig monath,’ ἁγία μήνη, ‘Homme est né,’ and the like. Tille thinks
that the whole of December was formerly Hogmanay, and derives from
_monâth_ and either *_hoggva_, ‘hew,’ _hag_, ‘witch,’ or _hog_, ‘pig.’
Nicholson tries the other end, and traces _auguilanleu_ to the Spanish
_aguinaldo_ or _aguilando_, ‘a New Year’s gift.’ This in turn he
makes the gerund of *_aguilar_, an assumed corruption of _alquilar_,
‘to hire oneself out.’ Hogmanay will thus mean properly ‘handsel’ or
hiring-money,’ and the first Monday in the New Year is actually called
in Scotland ‘Handsel Monday.’ This is plausible, but, although no
philologist, I think a case might be made out for regarding the terms
as corruptions of the Celtic _Nos Galan-gaeaf_, ‘the night of the
winter Calends’ (Rhys, 514). This is All Saints’ eve, while the Manx
‘Hob dy naa’ _quête_ is on Hollantide (November 12; cf. p. 230).
[886] A Gloucestershire wassail song in Dixon, _Ancient Poems_, 199,
ends,
‘Come, butler, come bring us a bowl of the best:
I hope your soul in heaven will rest;
But if you do bring us a bowl of the small,
Then down fall butler, bowl and all.’
[887] In Herefordshire and the south of Scotland it is lucky to draw
‘the cream of the well’ or ‘the flower of the well,’ i. e. the first
pail of water after midnight on New Year’s eve (Dyer, 7, 17). In
Germany _Heilwag_ similarly drawn at Christmas is medicinal (Grimm, iv.
1810). Pembroke folk sprinkle each other on New Year’s Day (_F. L._
iii. 263). St. Martin of Braga condemns amongst Kalends customs ‘panem
in fontem mittere (Appendix N, No. xxiii), and this form of well-cult
survives at Christmas in the Tyrol (Jahn, 283) and in France (Müller,
500). Tertullian chaffs the custom of early bathing at the _Saturnalia_
(Appendix N, No. ii). Gervase of Tilbury (ed. Liebrecht, ii. 12)
mentions an English belief (†1200) in a wonder-working Christmas dew.
This Tille (_Y. and C._ 168) thinks an outgrowth from the Advent chant
_Rorate coeli_, but it seems closely parallel to the folk belief in
May-dew.