of Putney, Chiswick, and other parishes on the west side of London, it
was recorded, that they were "first printed in the year 1735," and our
curiosity induced us to inquire of the printer the number annually
consumed. "We used, sir," said he, "not many years ago, to print ten
thousand copies, and even more, but now I suppose we don't print above
three thousand." Whether the trade of this particular dealer in
bellman's verses has passed into other hands, or whether the
encouragement given to the circulation of these broadsides has declined,
the statement of an individual will not of course enable us to
determine. But we are inclined to think that, like other old Christmas
customs, the popularity of bellman's verses is passing away, and that,
before many years have elapsed, penny magazines and unstamped newspapers
will have completely superseded these relics of the rude, but sincere,
piety of our ancestors.
The claims of dustmen to be remembered upon "Boxing-day" were formerly
urged, without literary pretensions; but now "the march of intellect"
has rendered it necessary for them to issue their addresses in print.
One of these, which lies before us, represents that "the United
Association of Dustmen and Scavengers, of the Parish of ------ have the
honor to pay their humble duty and respects to the good [_Master_ or
_Mistress_] of this house, and to solicit a Christmas mark of
approbation of their unwearied exertions, which they flatter themselves
conduce so eminently to the comfort and salubrity of the greatest
metropolitan city of civilized Europe." Here, however, is another, in
which the spirit of St. Stephen's Day is embittered by the rivalries of
business; and the harmony of those two respectable bodies, the
scavengers and dustmen, appears to have been disturbed. The dustmen, it
will be seen, repudiate the scavengers, and appeal to Saint Stephen on a
separate interest.
"_To the Worthy Inhabitants of the Southampton Estate._
"Ladies and Gentlemen,--At this season, when you are pleased to give to
laboring men, employed in collecting your dust, a donation called
Christmas-box, advantage of which is often taken by persons assuming the
name of Dustmen, obtaining under false pretences your bounty, we humbly
submit to your consideration, to prevent such imposition, to bestow no
gift on any not producing a brass figure of the following
description,--A Scotch Fifer, French horn, etc., between his legs; James
Dee and Jerry Cane; Southampton Paving Act, on the bell; Contractor,
Thomas Salisbury.
"No connection with scavengers. Please not to return this bill to any
one."
The principal Wait also leaves a notice of a more imposing description,
stating a regular appointment to the office by warrant and admission,
with all the ancient forms of the City and Liberty of Westminster; and
bears a silver badge and chain, with the arms of that city.
We cannot dismiss the various modes of collecting Christmas-boxes,
without a few words upon the pieces of writing carried about by parish
boys, and which once presented the only evidence that the schoolmaster
was abroad. It appears formerly to have been the practice at this season
to hang up in our churches the work of the most skilful pen-man in the
parish, after it had been generally exhibited; the subject of which was
the life of some saint, or other religious legend. Pepys thus mentions
the custom:--"26 December, 1665. Saw some fine writing work and
flourishing of Mr. Hore, with one that I knew long ago, an acquaintance
of Mr. Tomson's at Westminster, that is this man's clerk. It is the
story of the several Archbishops of Canterbury, engrossed on vellum, to
hang up in Canterbury cathedral in tables in lieu of the old ones, which
are almost worn out."
To this usage, which was no doubt of monkish origin, we are inclined to
refer the specimens of caligraphy upon gaudily ornamented sheets of
paper, brought round on St. Stephen's Day by parish boys and
charity-school children, and displayed for admiration and reward. The
walls of school-rooms, and the houses of the children's parents are
afterwards decorated with these "Christmas pieces," in the same manner
as were anciently the walls of churches.
There are in the different Christian countries of Europe a variety of
popular practices connected with St. Stephen's Day; such as that of
bleeding horses, which is mentioned by old Tusser in his "December's
Abstract:"--
"At Christmas is good
To let thy horse blood;"
and more particularly in his "December's Husbandry:"--
"Ere Christmas be passed, let horse be let blood,
For many a purpose, it doth them much good,
The _day of St. Stephen_ old fathers did use."
These various popular observances, however, are generally of that local
and peculiar kind which we are compelled to omit in our enumeration, for
reasons already given. But there is one of so striking a character, that
we must pause to give some account of it.
This custom, which is called "hunting the wren," is generally practised
by the peasantry of the south of Ireland on St. Stephen's Day. It bears
a close resemblance to the Manx proceedings described by Waldron,--as
taking place however on a different day. "On the 24th of December," says
that writer, in his account of the Isle of Man, "towards evening the
servants in general have a holiday; they go not to bed all night, but
ramble about till the bells ring in all the churches, which is at twelve
o'clock. Prayers being over, they go to hunt the wren; and after having
found one of these poor birds, they kill her and lay her on a bier with
the utmost solemnity, bringing her to the parish church and burying her
with a whimsical kind of solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manx
language, which they call her knell; after which Christmas begins."
The Wren-boys in Ireland, who are also called Droleens, go from house to
house for the purpose of levying contributions, carrying one or more of
these birds in the midst of a bush of holly, gaily decorated with
colored ribbons; which birds they have, like the Manx mummers, employed
their morning in killing. The following is their song; of which they
deliver themselves in most monotonous music:--
"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's-day was caught in the furze,
Although he is little, his family's great,
I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat.
"My box would speak, if it had but a tongue,
And two or three shillings would do it no wrong;
Sing holly, sing ivy--sing ivy, sing holly,
A drop just to drink, it would drown melancholy.
"And if you draw it of the best,
I hope, in heaven your soul will rest;
But if you draw it of the small,
It won't agree with these Wren-boys at all."
If an immediate acknowledgment, either in money or drink, is not made in
return for the civility of their visit, some such nonsensical verses as
the following are added:--
"Last Christmas-day, I turned the spit,
I burned my fingers (I feel it yet),
A cock sparrow flew over the table,
The dish began to fight with the ladle.
"The spit got up like a naked man,
And swore he'd fight with the dripping pan;
The pan got up and cocked his tail,
And swore he'd send them all to jail."
The story told to account for the title of "king of all birds," here
given to the wren, is a curious sample of Irish ingenuity, and is thus
stated in the clever "Tales of the Munster Festivals," by an Irish
servant in answer to his master's inquiry:--
"Saint Stephen! why what the mischief, I ask you again, have I to do
with Saint Stephen?"
"Nothen, sure, sir, only this being his day, when all the boys o' the
place go about that way with the wran, the king of all birds, sir, as
they say (bekays wanst when all the birds wanted to choose a king, and
they said they'd have the bird that would fly highest, the aigle flew
higher than any of 'em, till at last when he couldn't fly an inch
higher, a little rogue of a wran that was a-hide under his wing took a
fly above him a piece, and was crowned king, of the aigle an' all, sir),
tied in the middle o' the holly that way you see, sir, by the leg, that
is. An old custom, sir."
Vainly have we endeavored to arrive at the probable origin of hunting
and killing these little birds upon this day. The tradition commonly
related is by no means satisfactory. It is said that a Danish army would
have been surprised and destroyed by some Irish troops, had not a wren
given the alarm by pecking at some crumbs upon a drum-head,--the remains
of the sleeping drummer's supper; which roused him, when he instantly
beat to arms. And that from this circumstance the wren became an object
of hatred to the Irish.
Songs similar in spirit to that of the Irish Droleen boys were popularly
sung by the Greeks. In D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," may be
found translations of "the crow song," and "the swallow song;" between
which and the Irish wren song the resemblance is very striking.
"Swallow-singing or chelidonising, as the Greek term is," was, it
appears, a method of collecting eleemosynary gifts in the month of
Boedromion or August. We think D'Israeli is right in his opinion that
there is probably a closer connection between the custom which produced
the songs of the crow and the swallow and that of our northern
mummeries, than may be at first sight suspected. The subject of mumming
we have elsewhere treated at some length; but this curious variety of
the practice, and the manner in which it seems to connect the subject
with the ceremonies of the Greeks, we could not allow ourselves wholly
to omit.
NEW YEAR'S EVE.
31ST DECEMBER.
THIS is the last day of the year, and the feelings which belong to it
are of a tangled yarn. Regrets for the past are mingled with hopes of
the future; and the heart of man, between the meeting years, stands like
the head of Janus looking two ways.
The day and eve which precede the New Year are marked, in England, by
few outward observances, save such as are common to the season; and it
is in the peculiar trains of thought to which they give rise that they
have a character of their own.
In Scotland, on the other hand, the festival of this season is, since
the Reformation, nearly limited to these two days; and the last day of
the year is distinguished both by omens and by customs peculiar to
itself. In Mr. Stewart's "Popular Superstitions of the Highlands," there
is an account of some of these omens, as they were gathered, at no
distant period, in that land of mist and mystery; and a singular example
may be mentioned in the auguries drawn from what was called the
Candlemas bull. The term Candlemas, which has been given to this
season, in Scotland and elsewhere, is supposed to have had its origin in
some old religious ceremonies which were performed by candle light; and
the bull was a passing cloud, which in Highland imagination assumed the
form of that animal, and from whose rise or fall, or motions generally
on this night, the seer prognosticated good or bad weather. Something of
the same kind is mentioned in Sir John Sinclair's "Statistical Account
of Scotland," who explains more particularly the auguries gathered from
the state of the atmosphere on New Year's Eve. The superstition in
question, however, is not peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland, but
shared with the northern European nations in general, most of whom
assigned portentous qualities to the winds of New Year's Eve.
It is on this night that those Scottish mummers, the Guisars, to whom we
have already more than once alluded, still go about the streets, habited
in antic dresses, having their faces covered with vizards and carrying
cudgels in their hands. The doggerel lines repeated by these masquers,
as given by Mr. Callender, in a paper contributed by him to the
Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, are as follows:--
"Hogmanay,
Trollolay,
Gie me o' your white bread,
I'll hae nane o' your grey;"
and much learning has been exhausted, and ingenuity exercised in their
explanation. The admirable paper of Mr. Repp, in the same Transactions
(to which we have already alluded, and which we recommend to the notice
of our antiquarian readers), connects them, as we have before hinted,
with another superstition common to many of the northern nations; and
which may be compared with one of the articles of popular belief before
described, as prevailing in England, on Christmas Eve; that, viz., which
seems to imply that the spirits of evil are at this time in peculiar
activity, unless kept down by holier and more powerful influences.
According to this able investigator, the moment of midnight, on New
Year's Eve, was considered to be a general removing term for the races
of genii, whether good or bad; and the first two lines of the cry in
question, which as he explains them, after the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic
dialects, were words of appeal to the good genii (the hoghmen or
hillmen), and of execration against the evil ones (the trolles), were so
used, in consequence of such belief (that these different spirits were,
at that hour, in motion), and of the further one that the words of men
had power to determine that motion to their own advantage. It is well
known that, in some countries, and we may mention Germany, great
importance is attached to words involuntarily uttered at certain
seasons, and under certain circumstances, and they are supposed to be
either words of betrayal, leaving the speaker open to the machinations
of evil spirits, who may apply them in a strained and fatal sense, if at
all ambiguous; or words of power, controlling the designs of demons, and
compelling them to work out the good of the utterer, against their will.
Now a superstition of this kind, Mr. Repp says, attaches _generally_ to
the doctrines of demonology; and he states that he could prove his
position by many instances from Arabic and Persian fairy lore. We may
observe that some of the Highland superstitions mentioned by Mr.
Stewart, such as that of sprinkling the household with water drawn from
_the dead and living ford_, and that of fumigating the apartments and
half smothering their tenants with the smoke from burning piles of the
juniper-bush (both considered to operate as charms against the spells of
witchcraft and the malignity of evil eyes), have, evidently, their
origin in that same belief, that the powers of evil are on the wing at
this mysterious and solemn time of natural transition.
Some ancient superstitions are likewise alluded to in the old dialogue
of Dives and Pauper, as being in force at the beginning of the year, and
which appear to have had a like origin with the Highland ones above
described. As an example, mention may be made of the practice of
"setting of mete or drynke by nighte on the benche, to fede Alholde or
Gobelyn."
We must not forget to observe that Brand speaks of an ancient custom,
which he says is still retained in some parts of England, in which
young women go about on this eve carrying a wassail-bowl, and singing
certain verses from door to door, which custom has certainly some
analogy with the hogmanay practice in Scotland. And we may further
state, while we are in the way of tracing resemblances, that the _het
pint_, which, in Scotland, was formerly carried about the streets at the
midnight of the New Year's coming in, and which was composed of ale,
spirits, sugar, and nutmeg or cinnamon, is neither more nor less, though
it was borne about in a kettle, than a Scottish version of the
wassail-bowl.
In Ritson's collection of ancient songs, there is a very spirited carol
given at length, which appears to have been sung by these English
wassail mummers, in honor of their bowl; but which some of its verses
prove to be a Twelfth-night song, and show, therefore, that a similar
practice marked the night of the Epiphany. It begins right heartily:--
"A jolly wassel-bowl,
A wassel of good ale,
Well fare the butler's soul
That setteth this to sale;
Our jolly wassel;"
but is too long for insertion in our pages. We should mention here,
however, that ale in all its forms, whether in that of wassail
composition or in its own simple dignity, "prince of liquors, old or
new!" was ever the most cherished beverage of our ancestors, and many
and enthusiastic are the songs in its praise. Our readers may take the
following verse from a very pleasant example of these carols:--
"I love no rost, but a nut brown toste,
And a crab layde in the fyre,
A little bread shall do me stead,
Much breade I not desyre:
No froste nor snow, no winde, I trowe,
Can hurt mee if I wolde;
I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt
Of jolly good ale and olde.
Back and syde go bare, go bare,
Both foote and hand, go colde;
But belly God send thee good ale inoughe,
Whether it be new or olde."
We believe that most of the customs which, up to a recent period, filled
the streets of Edinburgh with mirth and bustle, on the eve of the New
Year, have met with discouragement, and of late fallen into disuse, in
consequence of some outrages which were committed under their shelter,
in the year 1811. We presume, however, that there are still many places
of the northern kingdom, in which the youth waits impatiently for the
striking of the midnight hour, that he may be the earliest to cross the
threshold of his mistress, and the lassie listens eagerly, from the
moment when its chiming has ceased, to catch the sound of the
_first-foot_ on the floor:--
"The _first foot's_ entering step,
That sudden on the floor is welcome heard,
Ere blushing maids have braided up their hair;
The laugh, the _hearty kiss_, the good New Year,
Pronounced with honest warmth."
Considerable importance was formerly, and probably is still, attached to
this custom. The welfare of a family, particularly of the fairer portion
of its members, was supposed to depend much on the character of the
person who might first cross the threshold, after the mid-hour of this
night had sounded. Great care was therefore taken to exclude all
improper persons; and when the privilege of the season is taken into
consideration (that viz., of the hearty kiss above mentioned), it is
probable that the maidens themselves might consider it desirable to
interfere after their own fashion in the previous arrangements which
were to secure the priority of admission to an unobjectionable guest.
But our space does not permit us to inquire at length in the present
volume into any other customs than those which belong to an _English_
Christmas season. We have only been able occasionally to advert to
others, even amongst our own sister nations, when they helped to throw
light upon those which on this occasion are our immediate subject. We
must therefore return at once to the only general and conspicuous
observance of this eve in England, viz., that which is commonly called
"seeing the New Year in."
It is almost impossible for man on this day to be insensible to the
"still small voices" that call upon him for a gathering up of his
thoughts. In the very midst of the house of mirth, a shadow passes
through the heart and summons it to a solemn conference. The skeleton
who sits at all feasts, though overlooked at most from long habit, gets
power on this day to wave his hand, and points emphatically, with his
"slow-moving finger," to the long record whose burthen is "passing
away!" The handwriting of Time comes visibly out upon the wall; and the
spirit pauses to read its lessons, and take an account of the wrecks
which it registers and the changes which it announces. Properly
speaking, every day is the commencement of a new year, and the
termination of an old one; but it is only, as we have said at the
beginning of this book, by these emphatic markings that man is attracted
to a consideration of a fact, whose daily recurrence at once makes its
weighty importance and causes it to be forgotten, as if it were of none!
But on this particular day, no man fails to remember that--
"Again the silent wheels of time
Their annual round have driven;"
and how solemn are the reflections which suggest themselves to him who
casts his eye over the space of a year, in a spirit which can look
beyond his own personal share in its doings, and embrace the wide human
interests that such a retrospect includes! "What a mighty sum of
events," says that excellent writer, William Howitt, "has been
consummated; what a tide of passions and affections has flowed; what
lives and deaths have alternately arrived; what destinies have been
fixed forever! . . . Once more our planet has completed one of those
journeys in the heavens which perfect all the fruitful changes of its
peopled surface, and mete out the few stages of our existence; and every
day, every hour of that progress has in all her wide lands, in all her
million hearts, left traces that eternity shall behold." Oh! blessed
they and rich, beyond all other blessedness and all other wealth which
"Time's effacing fingers" may have left them, who, on the last night of
the year, can turn from reviews like these to sleep upon the pillow of a
good conscience, though that pillow should be moistened, aye, steeped in
their tears!
No doubt it is in the name of his own private affections that man is
first summoned to that review, which the wise will end by thus
extending; and the first reckoning which each will naturally take is
that of the treasures which may have been lost or gained to himself in
the year which is about to close. Through many, many a heart, that
summons rings in the low, sweet, mournful voice of some beloved one,
whom in that bereaving space we have laid in the "narrow house;" and
then it will happen (for man is covetous of his griefs, when his
attention is once called to them) that the ghost which took him out into
the churchyard to visit its own tomb, will end by carrying him round its
dreary precincts and showing him all the graves that he has planted
from his childhood. There _will_ be hours on a day like this to many,
and in some year or another to most, when the cheerful hopes which are
also of the natural spirit of the season would contend in vain with the
memories which it conjures up, but for that furthest and brightest hope
which lies beyond the rest, and which is at this moment typified and
shadowed forth by the returning sun and the renewing year.
We cannot refrain from pausing here, to quote for our readers a few
exquisite and affecting lines written in the seventeenth century by
Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, to one such beloved remembrancer, and
in the cheering spirit of that same precious hope. We fancy they are
very little known.
"Sleep on, my love! in thy cold bed,
Never to be disquieted!
My last 'good night!'--thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake;
Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves,--and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there!--I will not faile
To meet thee in that hollow vale:--
And think not much of my delay,
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And every houre a step tow'rds thee:--
At night, when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my West
Of life, almost by eight houres' sail,
Than when sleep breathed his drowsy gale!"
There are in the last volume of poems published by Mr. Tennyson, some
beautiful verses, in which the natural thoughts that inevitably haunt
this season of change are touchingly expressed, as they arise even in
the young breast of one for whom "seasons and their change" are
immediately about to be no more. We are in a mood which tempts us to
extract them.
If you're waking, call me early, call me early, mother dear,
For I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year--
It is the last New-year that I shall ever see,
Then ye may lay me low i' the mould, and think no more of me.
To-night I saw the sun set: he set and left behind
The good old year, the dear old time, and all my peace of mind;
And the New-year's coming up, mother, but I shall never see
The may upon the blackthorn, the leaf upon the tree.
Last May we made a crown of flowers: we had a merry day:
Beneath the hawthorn on the green they made me Queen of May;
And we danced about the maypole, and in the hazel-copse,
Till Charles's wain came out above the tall white chimney-tops.