presence, had advanced to his mother's side, and Silas, seeming to
notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly's signs of
good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake. Aaron shrank back a
little, and rubbed his head against his mother's shoulder, but still
thought the piece of cake worth the risk of putting his hand out for it.
"Oh, for shame, Aaron," said his mother, taking him on her lap,
however; "why, you don't want cake again yet awhile. He's wonderful
hearty," she went on, with a little sigh--"that he is, God knows. He's
my youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must
allays hev him in our sight--that we must."
She stroked Aaron's brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner
good to see such a "pictur of a child." But Marner, on the other side
of the hearth, saw the neat-featured rosy face as a mere dim round,
with two dark spots in it.
"And he's got a voice like a bird--you wouldn't think," Dolly went on;
"he can sing a Christmas carril as his father's taught him; and I take
it for a token as he'll come to good, as he can learn the good tunes
so quick. Come, Aaron, stan' up and sing the carril to Master Marner,
come."
Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother's shoulder.
"Oh, that's naughty," said Dolly, gently. "Stan' up, when mother tells
you, and let me hold the cake till you've done."
Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre,
under protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of coyness,
consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes,
and then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if he looked
anxious for the "carril," he at length allowed his head to be duly
adjusted, and standing behind the table, which let him appear above it
only as far as his broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head
untroubled with a body, he began with a clear chirp, and in a melody
that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer,--
"God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas-Day."
Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some
confidence that this strain would help to allure him to church.
"That's Christmas music," she said, when Aaron had ended, and had
secured his piece of cake again. "There's no other music equil to
the Christmas music--'Hark the erol angils sing.' And you may judge
what it is at church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the voices,
as you can't help thinking you've got to a better place a'ready--for
I wouldn't speak ill o' this world, seeing as Them put us in it as
knows best; but what wi' the drink, and the quarrelling, and the bad
illnesses, and the hard dying, as I've seen times and times, one's
thankful to hear of a better. The boy sings pretty, don't he, Master
Marner?"
"Yes," said Silas, absently, "very pretty."
The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had fallen on his
ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and could have none of
the effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to show her that he was
grateful, and the only mode that occurred to him was to offer Aaron a
bit more cake.
GEORGE ELIOT.
Yule in the Old Town
A whole fortnight we kept it. Real Christmas was from Little Christmas
Eve, which was the night before the Holy Eve proper, till New
Year's. Then there was a week of supplementary festivities before
things slipped back into their wonted groove. That was the time of
parties and balls. The great ball of the year was on the day after
Christmas,--Second Christmas Day we called it,--when all the quality
attended at the club-house, where the amtman and the burgomaster, the
bishop and the rector of the Latin School, did the honors and received
the people. That was the grandest of the town functions. The school
ball, late in autumn, was the jolliest, for then the boys invited each
the girl he liked best, and the older people were guests and outsiders,
so to speak. The Latin School--the Cathedral School, as it was still
called--was the oldest institution there next to the church and the
bishop, and when it took the stage it was easily first while it lasted.
The Yule ball, though it was a rather more formal affair, for all that
was neither stiff nor tiresome. Nothing was, in the Old Town; there
was too much genuine kindness for that. And then it was the recognized
occasion when matches were made by enterprising mammas, or by the
young themselves, and when engagements were declared and discussed as
the great news of the day. We heard all of those things afterward and
thought a great fuss was being made over nothing much. For when a young
couple were declared engaged, that meant that there was no more fun to
be got out of them. They were given, after that, to mooning about by
themselves and to chasing us children away when we ran across them;
until they happily returned to their senses, got married, and became
reasonable human beings once more.
When we had been sent to bed, father and mother used to go away in
their Sunday very best, and we knew they would not return until two
o'clock in the morning, a fact which alone invested the occasion with
unwonted gravity, for the Old Town kept early hours. At ten o'clock,
when the watchman droned his sleepy lay, absurdly warning the people to
"Be quick and bright,
Watch fire and light,
Our clock it has struck ten,"
it was ordinarily tucked in and asleep. But that night we lay awake
a long time listening to the muffled sound of heavy wheels in the
snow, rolling unceasingly past, and trying to picture to ourselves the
grandeur they conveyed. Every carriage in the town was then in use and
doing overtime. I think there were as many as four.
When we were not dancing or playing games, we literally ate our way
through the two holiday weeks. Pastry by the mile did we eat, and
general indigestion brooded over the town when it emerged into the
white light of the new year. At any rate, it ought to have done so. It
is a prime article of faith with the Danes to this day that for any one
to go out of a friend's house, or of anybody's house, in the Christmas
season without partaking of its cheer, is to "bear away their Yule,"
which no one must do on any account. Every house was a bakery from the
middle of December until Christmas Eve, and, oh! the quantities of
cakes we ate, and such cakes! We were sixteen normally in our home,
and mother mixed the dough for her cakes in a veritable horse trough
kept for that exclusive purpose. As much as a sack of flour went in, I
guess, and gallons of molasses, and whatever else went to the mixing.
For weeks there had been long and anxious speculations as to "what
father would do," and gloomy conferences between him and mother over
the state of the family pocketbook, which was never plethoric; but at
last the joyful message ran through the house from attic to kitchen
that the appropriation had been made, "even for citron," which meant
throwing all care to the winds. The thrill of it, when we children
stood by and saw the generous avalanche going into the trough! What
would not come out of it! The whole family turned to and helped make
the cakes and cut the "pepper nuts," which were little squares of cake
dough we played cards for and stuffed our pockets with, gnashing them
incessantly. Talk about eating between meals: ours was a continuous
performance for two solid weeks.
The pepper nuts were the real staple of Christmas to us children. We
rolled the dough in long strings like slender eels and then cut it a
little on the bias. They were good, those nuts, when baked brown. I
wish I had some now.
Christmas Eve was, of course, the great and blessed time. That was the
one night in the year when in the gray old Domkirke services were held
by candle-light.
A myriad wax candles twinkled in the gloom, but did not dispel it.
It lingered under the great arches where the voice of the venerable
minister, the responses of the congregation, and above it all the
boyish treble of the choir, billowed and strove, now dreamingly with
the memories of ages past, now sharply, tossed from angle to corner
in the stone walls, and again in long thunderous echoes sweeping all
before it on the triumphant strains of the organ, like a victorious
army with banners crowding through the halls of time. So it sounded to
me as sleep gently tugged at my eyelids. The air grew heavy with the
smell of evergreens and of burning wax, and as the thunder of war drew
farther and farther away, in the shadow of the great pillars stirred
the phantoms of mailed knights whose names were hewn in the gravestones
there. We youngsters clung to the skirts of mother as we went out and
the great doors fell to behind us. And yet those Christmas eves, with
mother's gentle eyes forever inseparable from them, and with the glad
cries of "Merry Christmas!" ringing all about, have left a touch of
sweet peace in my heart which all the years have not effaced, nor ever
will....
When Ansgarius preached the White Christ to the vikings of the North,
so runs the legend of the Christmas-tree, the Lord sent his three
messengers, Faith, Hope, and Love, to help light the first tree.
Seeking one that should be high as hope, wide as love, and that bore
the sign of the cross on every bough, they chose the balsam fir,
which best of all the trees in the forest met the requirements....
Wax candles are the only real thing for a Christmas-tree, candles of
wax that mingle their perfume with that of the burning fir, not the
by-product of some coal-oil or other abomination. What if the boughs
do catch fire? They can be watched, and too many candles are tawdry,
anyhow. Also, red apples, oranges, and old-fashioned cornucopias made
of colored paper, and made at home, look a hundred times better and
fitter in the green; and so do drums and toy trumpets and wald-horns,
and a rocking-horse reined up in front that need not have cost forty
dollars, or anything like it.
I am thinking of one, or rather two, a little piebald team with a
wooden seat between, for which mother certainly did not give over
seventy-five cents at the store, that as "Belcher and Mamie"--the name
was bestowed on the beasts at sight by Kate, aged three, who bossed the
play-room--gave a generation of romping children more happiness than
all the expensive railroads and trolley-cars and steam engines that
are considered indispensable to keeping Christmas nowadays. And the
Noah's Ark with Noah and his wife and all the animals that went two by
two--ah, well, I haven't set out to preach a sermon on extravagance
that makes no one happier, but I wish--The legend makes me think of
the holly that grew in our Danish woods. We called it "Christ-thorn,"
for to us it was of that the crown of thorns was made with which the
cruel soldiers mocked our Saviour, and the red berries were the drops
of blood that fell from his anguished brow. Therefore the holly was a
sacred tree, and to this day the woods in which I find it seem to me
like the forest where the Christmas roses bloomed in the night when the
Lord was born, different from all other woods, and better.
JACOB RIIS in _The Old Town_
The Mahogany Tree
Christmas is here;
Winds whistle shrill,
Icy and chill,
Little care we:
Little we fear
Weather without,
Sheltered about
The mahogany tree.
Once on the boughs,
Birds of rare plume
Sang, in its bloom;
Night-birds are we:
Here we carouse
Singing, like them,
Perched round the stem
Of the jolly old tree.
Here let us sport,
Boys, as we sit;
Laughter and wit
Flashing so free.
Life is but short--
When we are gone,
Let them sing on,
Round the old tree.
Evenings we knew,
Happy as this;
Faces we miss,
Pleasant to see.
Kind hearts and true,
Gentle and just,
Peace to your dust!
We sing round the tree.
Care, like a dun,
Lurks at the gate:
Let the dog wait:
Happy we'll be!
Drink every one;
Pile up the coals,
Fill the red bowls,
Round the old tree!
Drain we the cup.--
Friend, art afraid?
Spirits are laid
In the Red Sea.
Mantle it up;
Empty it yet;
Let us forget,
Round the old tree.
Sorrows, begone!
Life and its ills,
Duns and their bills,
Bid we to flee.
Come with the dawn,
Blue-devil sprite,
Leave us to-night,
Round the old tree.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Holly and the Ivy
The Holly and the Ivy,
Now both are full well grown;
Of all the trees that spring in wood,
The Holly bears the crown.
The Holly bears a blossom,
As white as lily flow'r;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
To be our sweet Saviour,
_To be our sweet Saviour_.
The Holly bears a berry,
As red as any blood;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
To do poor sinners good.
The Holly bears a prickle,
As sharp as any thorn;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
On Christmas day in the morn,
_On Christmas day in the morn_.
The Holly bears a bark,
As bitter as any gall;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
For to redeem us all.
The Holly and the Ivy,
Now both are full well grown;
Of all the trees that spring in wood,
The Holly bears the crown,
_The Holly bears the crown_.
_Old English Song_
Ballade of Christmas Ghosts
Between the moonlight and the fire,
In winter twilights long ago,
What ghosts we raised for your desire,
To make your merry blood run slow;
How old, how grave, how wise we grow,
No Christmas ghost can make us chill,
Save those that troop in mournful row,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!
The beasts can talk in barn and byre,
On Christmas Eve, old legends know,
As year by year the years retire;
We men fall silent then, I trow;
Such sights hath memory to show,
Such voices from the silence thrill,
Such shapes return with Christmas snow--
The ghosts we all can raise at will.
Oh, children of the village choir,
Your carols on the midnight throw;
Oh, bright across the mist and mire,
Ye ruddy hearths of Christmas, glow!
Beat back the dread, beat down the woe,
Let's cheerily descend the hill;
Be welcome all, to come or go,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!
ENVOY
Friend, sursum corda, soon and slow
We part like guests, who've joyed their fill;
Forget them not, nor mourn them so,
The ghosts we all can raise at will.
ANDREW LANG
_By permission of Longmans, Green, & Co., London, and Charles
Scribner's Sons, New York._
Christmas Treasures
I count my treasures o'er with care,--
The little toy my darling knew,
A little sock of faded hue,
A little lock of golden hair.
Long years ago this holy time,
My little one--my all to me--
Sat robed in white upon my knee
And heard the merry Christmas chime.
"Tell me, my little golden-head,
If Santa Claus should come to-night,
What shall he bring my baby bright,--
What treasure for my boy?" I said.
And then he named this little toy,
While in his round and mournful eyes
There came a look of sweet surprise,
That spake his quiet, trustful joy.
And as he lisped his evening prayer
He asked the boon with childish grace,
Then, toddling to the chimney place,
He hung this little stocking there.
That night, while lengthening shadows crept,
I saw the white-winged angels come
With singing to our lowly home
And kiss my darling as he slept.
They must have heard his little prayer,
For in the morn, with rapturous face,
He toddled to the chimney-place,
And found this little treasure there.
They came again one Christmas-tide,--
That angel host, so fair and white!
And singing all that glorious night,
They lured my darling from my side.
A little sock, a little toy,
A little lock of golden hair,
The Christmas music on the air,
A watching for my baby boy!
But if again that angel train
And golden-head come back for me,
To bear me to Eternity,
My watching will not be in vain!
From _A Little Book of Western Verse_; copyright, 1889, by Eugene
Field; published by Charles Scribner's Sons
Wassailer's Song
Wassail! wassail! all over the town,
Our toast it is white, and our ale it is brown;
Our bowl is made of a maplin tree;
We be good fellows all;--I drink to thee.
Here's to our horse, and to his right ear,
God send master a happy new year;
A happy new year as e'er he did see,--
With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.
Here's to our mare, and to her right eye,
God send our mistress a good Christmas pie;
A good Christmas pie as e'er I did see,--
With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.
Here's to our cow, and to her long tail,
God send our master us never may fail
Of a cup of good beer: I pray you draw near,
And our jolly wassail it's then you shall hear.
Be here any maids? I suppose here be some;
Sure they will not let young men stand on the cold stone!
Sing hey O, maids! come trole back the pin,
And the fairest maid in the house let us all in.
Come, butler, come, bring us a bowl of the best;
I hope your sould in heaven will rest;
But if you do bring us a bowl of the small,
Then down fall butler, and bowl and all.
ROBERT SOUTHWELL
VI
CHRISTMAS HYMNS
[Illustration: CHRISTMAS HYMNS]
A Hymn on the Nativity
While Shepherds Watched
O, Little Town of Bethlehem
The First, Best Christmas Night
It Came upon the Midnight Clear
A Christmas Hymn
The Song of the Shepherds
A Christmas Hymn
A Christmas Hymn for Children
Slumber-Songs of the Madonna
[Illustration]
Hark! the herald angels sing,
"Glory to the new-born King!
Peace on earth, and mercy mild;
God and sinners reconciled."
CHARLES WESLEY
A Hymn on the Nativity
I sing the birth was born to-night,
The author both of life and light;
The angels so did sound it.
And like the ravished shepherds said,
Who saw the light, and were afraid,
Yet searched, and true they found it.
The Son of God, th' Eternal King,
That did us all salvation bring,
And freed the soul from danger;
He whom the whole world could not take,
The Word, which heaven and earth did make,
Was now laid in a manger.
The Father's wisdom willed it so,
The Son's obedience knew no No,
Both wills were in one stature;
And as that wisdom had decreed,
The Word was now made Flesh indeed,
And took on Him our nature.
What comfort by Him do we win,
Who made Himself the price of sin,
To make us heirs of Glory!
To see this babe, all innocence,
A martyr born in our defence:
Can man forget this story?
BEN JONSON
While Shepherds Watched
While shepherds watch'd their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
The Angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around.
"Fear not," said he (for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind);
"Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind.
"To you in David's town this day
Is born of David's line
The Saviour, who is Christ the Lord;
And this shall be the sign:
"The heavenly Babe you there shall find
To human view display'd,
All meanly wrapt in swathing-bands,
And in a manger laid."
Thus spake the seraph; and forthwith
Appear'd a shining throng
Of angels praising God, and thus
Address'd their joyful song:
"All glory be to God on high,
And to the earth be peace;
Good-will henceforth from heaven to men
Begin, and never cease!"
NAHUM TATE
O, Little Town of Bethlehem
O, little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.
For Christ is born of Mary;
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love!
O, morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth!
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.
How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.
O, holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray!
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born to us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great, glad tidings tell;
O, come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.
PHILLIPS BROOKS
The First, Best Christmas Night
Like small curled feathers, white and soft,
The little clouds went by,
Across the moon, and past the stars,
And down the western sky:
In upland pastures, where the grass
With frosted dew was white,
Like snowy clouds the young sheep lay,
That first, best Christmas night.
The shepherds slept; and, glimmering faint,
With twist of thin, blue smoke,
Only their fire's cracking flames
The tender silence broke--
Save when a young lamb raised his head,
Or, when the night wind blew,
A nesting bird would softly stir,
Where dusky olives grew--
With finger on her solemn lip,
Night hushed the shadowy earth,
And only stars and angels saw
The little Saviour's birth;
Then came such flash of silver light
Across the bending skies,
The wondering shepherds woke, and hid
Their frightened, dazzled eyes!
And all their gentle sleepy flock
Looked up, then slept again,
Nor knew the light that dimmed the stars
Brought endless peace to men--
Nor even heard the gracious words
That down the ages ring--
"The Christ is born! the Lord has come,
Good-will on earth to bring!"
Then o'er the moonlit, misty fields,
Dumb with the world's great joy,
The shepherds sought the white-walled town,
Where lay the baby boy--
And oh, the gladness of the world,
The glory of the skies,
Because the longed-for Christ looked up
In Mary's happy eyes!
MARGARET DELAND in _The Old Garden and Other Verses_
_By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company_
It Came upon the Midnight Clear
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold:
Peace to the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven's all gracious King.
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.
Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world:
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel-sounds
The blessed angels sing.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long.
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man at war with man hears not
The love-song that they bring;
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
O ye beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way,
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing:
Oh, rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing.
For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendours fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.
EDMUND HAMILTON SEARS
A Christmas Hymn
Sing, Christmas bells!
Say to the earth this is the morn
Whereon our Saviour-King is born;
Sing to all men,--the bond, the free,
The rich, the poor, the high, the low,
The little child that sports in glee,
The aged folk that tottering go,--
Proclaim the morn
That Christ is born,
That saveth them and saveth me!
Sing, angel host!
Sing of the star that God has placed
Above the manger in the east;
Sing of the glories of the night,
The Virgin's sweet humility,
The Babe with kingly robes bedight,--
Sing to all men where'er they be
This Christmas morn;
For Christ is born,
That saveth them and saveth me.
Sing, sons of earth!
O ransomed seed of Adam, sing!
God liveth, and we have a king!
The curse is gone, the bond are free,--
By Bethlehem's star that brightly beamed,
By all the heavenly signs that be,
We know that Israel is redeemed;
That on this morn
The Christ is born
That saveth you and saveth me!
Sing, O my heart!
Sing thou in rapture this dear morn
Whereon the blessed Prince is born!
And as thy songs shall be of love,
So let my deeds be charity,--
By the dear Lord that reigns above,
By Him that died upon the tree,
By this fair morn
Whereon is born
The Christ that saveth all and me!
From _A Little Book of Western Verse_; copyright, 1889, by Eugene
Field; published by Charles Scribner's Sons
The Song of the Shepherds
It was near the first cock-crowing,
And Orion's wheel was going,
When an angel stood before us and our hearts were sore afraid.
Lo! his face was like the lightning,
When the walls of heaven are whitening,
And he brought us wondrous tidings of a joy that should not fade.
Then a Splendor shone around us,
In a still field where he found us,
A-watch upon the Shepherd Tower and waiting for the light;
There where David, as a stripling,
Saw the ewes and lambs go rippling
Down the little hills and hollows at the falling of the night.