# Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
DAYS AND SEASONS.
F we pass on to days and seasons we shall find them marked in the North by time-honoured customs, unobserved for the most part elsewhere. Of course we must not look in Scotland for any distinctive note of Christmas, though I am informed that the observance of this festival is much increasing there. The shops of Edinburgh and Glasgow are now decorated with evergreens as gaily as those of any English town. Christmas-trees are common there, too, and mince-pies may be found on the tables even of strict Presbyterians. In the English Border-counties there is much to mark this blessed season. Yule-cakes are spread on our tables at Christmas tide, and the yule-log lights up our hearths as duly as does the ashen faggot in Devonshire. In the city of Durham, and in many other northern towns, an old woman carries from house to house, on Christmas Eve, figures of the Virgin and Child, and shows them to the young people while she sings the old carol:
God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmay Day, To save our souls from Satan’s fold, which long had gone astray. And ’tis tidings of comfort and joy!
​We do not come to your house to beg nor to borrow, But we do come to your house to sing away all sorrow; The merry time of Christmas is drawing very near, And ’tis tidings of comfort and joy!
We do not come to your house to beg for bread and cheese, But we do come to your house to give us what you please; The merry time of Christmas is drawing very near, And ’tis tidings of comfort and joy!
God bless the master of this house, the mistress also, And all the little children that round the table go, And all their kith and kindred, that travel far and near; And we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Children carry about these figures through the West Riding of Yorkshire in what they call milly-boxes, a corruption of “My Lady.” The boxes are lined with spice, oranges, and sugar. They call this “going a-wassailing.” The wassail-cup hymn there in use runs thus:
Here we come a-wassailing Among the leaves so green, Here we come a-wandering So fair to be seen.
Chorus.
For it is Christmas time, Strangers travel far and near. So God bless you and send you A happy New Year.
We are not daily beggars That beg from door to door, But we are neighbours’ children, Whom you have seen before.
Call up the butler of this house, Put on his golden ring, Let him bring us a glass of beer, And the better we shall sing.
We have got a little purse, Made of stretching leather skin, We want a little o’ your money To line it well within.
​Bring us out a table, And spread it with a cloth. Bring out a mouldy cheese, Also your Christmas loaf.
Good master and mistress, While you’re sitting by the fire, Pray think of us poor children, Who are wandering in the mire.
Later in the evening, the streets of many a Northumbrian town (I use the word in its fullest meaning) echo the same carol, or the yet finer one “Christians awake, salute the happy morn!”, In the West Riding the singers are dressed in the most fanciful attire, and are called “mummers.” Throughout the district of Cleveland they carry about with them a “bessel cup,” more properly a wassail cup, together with figures of the Virgin and Child, placed in a box and surrounded with such ornaments as they can collect. To send these singers away unrequited is to forfeit good luck for the year. No meat is eaten there on Christmas Eve, doubtless because it is a fast of the Church; the supper there consists of frumety, or wheat boiled in milk with spice and sugar, and of fruit tarts. At its close the yule-cake and cheese are cut and partaken of, while the master taps a fresh cask of ale. This cake and cheese are offered through the season to every visitor who calls. At Horbury, near Wakefield, and at Dewsbury, on Christmas Eve is rung the “devil’s knell:” a hundred strokes, then a pause, then three strokes, three strokes, and three strokes again.
But to return to Cleveland. The yule-log (or clog) and yule candles are duly burned there on Christmas Eve, the carpenter supplying his customers with the former, the grocer with the latter. It would be most unlucky to light log or candle before the proper time. The whole season has a festive character, and visiting and card-playing are kept up throughout it. Christmas-boxes, however, are not common in Cleveland. New Year’s Day is the time there for making presents, as in the eastern counties is St. Thomas’s Day. The poor, and especially poor widows, go from house to house on this last day, asking for Christmas gifts. This custom prevails also in the West Hiding of Yorkshire, ​where the widows ask and commonly receive at the farmers’ houses a small measure of wheat, and they call it “going a Thomasing.”
St. Stephen’s Day in Cleveland, as indeed all England over, is devoted to hunting and shooting, it being held that the game-laws are not in force on that day; but I am not aware that the apple-trees are deliberately aimed at, as is the case in Devonshire, with the view of insuring a good crop of apples. A friend reminds me of the nursery rhyme which connects field-sports with this day:
Three Welchmen went a-hunting
All on St. Stephen’s Day,
the point of the tale being that none of the three can quite make out what the moon is.
The old custom of hanging up a stocking to receive Christmas presents, a custom which the Pilgrim Fathers carried to America, and bequeathed, curiously enough, to their descendants, has not yet died out in the North of England. If any of my readers are Folk-Lore collectors they will divine my feelings on discovering in one of our northern capitals, among my own personal friends, a family in which, without the excuse of a child to be surprised and pleased, each member duly and deliberately hangs out her stocking on Christmas Eve to receive the kindly gifts of mother and sisters.
I may add, that throughout the parish of Whitbeck, in Cumberland, the country people breakfast early on Christmas Day on black pudding, a mess made of sheep’s heart chopped with suet and sweet fruits.
But a Christmas in the North would be quite incomplete without a visit from the sword-dancers, and this may yet be looked for in most of our towns from the Humber to the Cheviot Hills. There are some trifling local variations both in dance and song: the latter has altered with the times; the former is plainly a relic of the war-dances of our Danish and Saxon ancestors. I had an opportunity, A.D. 1866, of making inquiries into the mysteries of ​sword-dancing from a pitman of Houghton Colliery, Houghton-le- Spring, Joseph Brown by name, and will simply relate what I heard from him on the subject. He was well qualified to speak, having acted as sword dancer during the past twelve years, in company with eight other men, nine being the number always employed. Five are dancers, one a clothes-carrier, two clowns, and one a fiddler.
There are two sets of verses used near Durham, termed the old and new styles. The old verses are certainly of the date of a hundred years back; they were always used till about ten years ago, and are still sung in turn with the modern ones. They are as follows:
First Clown: It’s a ramblin’ here I’ve ta’en The country for to see, Five actors I have brought, Yet better cannot be.
Now, my actors they are young, And they’ve ne’er been out before, But they’ll do the best they can, And the best can do no more.
Now the first that I call on Is George, our noble king; Long time he’s been at wars, Good tidings back he’ll bring.
One of the sword-dancers here steps from the ring, in which all had been standing, and follows the first clown, holding his sword upright as he walks round the outside of the ring; and the first clown then sings:
The next that I call on, He is a squire’s son, He’s like to lose his love, Because he is too young.
The squire’s son steps forward and follows King George, and the first clown sings:
Little Foxey is the next, With the orange and the blue, And the debts he has paid off, Both French and Spaniards too.
​Little Foxey steps forward and follows the squire’s son, and the clown sings:
Now the next that I call on Is the King of Sicily; My daughter he shall have, And married they shall be.
The King of Sicily steps forward and follows Little Foxey, and the clown sings:
Now the next that I call on, He is a pitman bold; He works all underground, To keep him from the cold.
The pitman follows the rest, and the clown sings again:
It’s now you ’ve seen them all, Think o’ them what ye will, Though we’ll stand back awhile Till they do try their skill.
Now fiddler then, take up thy fiddle, Play the lads their hearts’ desire, Or else we ’ll break thy fiddle, And fling thee a’ back o’ the fire.
The five men then commence dancing round, with their swords all raised to the centre of the ring, till the first clown orders them to tie the points of their swords in “the knot.” When this is done, and the five swords are knotted, the knot is held upright by one of the dancers, whom they call Alexander, or Alick. Alick then takes the sword from the knot, and, retaining it, gives the second dancer his sword; then the second dancer gives the third dancer his sword, the third dancer gives it to the fourth, and the fourth to the fifth.
The first clown, called the Tommy, is dressed in a chintz dress with a belt, a fox’s head for a cap, and the skin hanging below his shoulders.
The second clown, called the Bessy, wears a woman’s gown, which of late years has been well crinolined, and a beaver hat.
​The five dancers have black breeches, with red stripes at the sides, white shirts decked with gay ribbons, and hats surmounted with streamers.
The verses given by Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, in the Bishoprick Garland, differ widely from both the old and new style of Durham verses. Probably his may be in use in Newcastle or Sunderland, for two of his characters are a sailor and a skipper.
The dance corresponds most remarkably with the account given by Olaus Magnus of the sword dance of the ancient Goths and Swedes. Some such dance is still kept up in Gothland, with an allusion to the sacrifice to Odin, which formerly accompanied it. One of the company is clad in skin, and holds a wisp of straw in his mouth, cut sharp at the ends, to resemble a swine’s bristles, and thus he personates the hog formerly sacrificed at Yule. Throughout Yorkshire, and formerly, indeed, all England over, the Christmas visitants are mummers disguised in finery of different sorts, with blackened faces or masks, and carrying with them an image of a white horse. This white horse appears at Christmas throughout the North of Germany with the “Hale Christ,” “Knecht Rupert,” or “San Claus,” who brings the good children presents, but punishes the naughty ones.
In the Midland counties, people asking for Christmas-boxes on Christmas Eve drag about with them a horse’s head and skin. I have seen this myself in the Forest of Dean. Mr. Baring Gould writes on the subject: “At Wakefield and Stanby the mummers enter a house, and if it be in a foul state they proceed to sweep the hearth, and clean the kitchen-range, humming all the time ‘mum-m-m.’ At Horbury they do no sweeping now, though I believe in old times they used to practise it. As far as I can judge there is generally one man in sailor’s dress, the rest being women, or rather men in women’s dress, but this is not universal. The Christmas-tup is another amusement. It is distinct from the white horse. I believe that the Christmas mummers represent the yule host, or wild hunt, and that the man of the party ​is Wodin or Odin. The horse is evidently the white steed, Gleipmir, of the ancient god.”
From Mr. Joseph Crawhall, of Newcastle, I have received the following song. It was given to him by a friend who called it a carol, and said that in his early days he used to sing it every Christmas with his sisters:
The first day of Christmas my true love sent to me A partridge upon a pear tree.
The second day of Christmas my true love sent to me Two turtle doves and a partridge upon a pear tree.
The third day of Christmas my true love sent to me Three French hens, two turtle doves, &c. &c.
The fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Four curley birds, three French hens, &c. &c.
The fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Five gold rings, four curley birds, &c. &c.
The sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Six geese laying, five golden rings, &c. &c.
The seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me Seven swans swimming, six geese laying, &c. &c.
The eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Eight maids milking, seven swans swimming, &c. &c.
The ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Nine drummers drumming, eight maids milking, &c. &c.
The tenth day of Christmay my true love sent to me Ten pipers piping, nine drummers drumming, eight maids milking, seven swans swimming, six geese laying, five gold rings, four curley birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge upon a pear tree.
Another version of this carol may be found in Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes, and one which recognises all the “twelve good days” of the Christmas feast. In its complete form it runs thus:
The twelfth day of Christmas my mother sent to me
Twelve bells a-ringing, eleven ladies spinning, ten ships a-sailing, nine lords a-lcaping, eight ladies dancing, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five gold rings, four canary birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge upon a pear tree.
​Holy Innocents Day is still called Childermas Day in and near Preston, and is considered an appropriate day for children’s treats and parties.
New Year’s Eve is one of the nights on which it is deemed highly unlucky in the Borders to let the fire out, the others being All Hallowe’en, Beltane or Midsummer Eve, and Christmas Eve. It is not easy to repair the mischief if once committed, for no one is willing on the following morning to give his neighbour a light, lest he should thus give away all his good luck for the season. And he who should steal fire unseen from his neighbour’s hearth would fare no better for it, since fire thus taken is not counted holy.
It is curious to compare this statement of Mr. Wilkie with that given by Mr. Kelly respecting the “holy fires of the Germanic race,” in his Indo-European Traditions and Folk-Lore (page 46). Mr. Kelly enumerates the Easter fires with those on St. John’s Day, Michaelmas, Martinmas, and Christmas. It will be observed that in Scotland the Easter, Michaelmas, and Martinmas fires disappear, while that of All Hallowe’en takes their place. And, while in Scotland all care is taken to preserve the house-fire alight at these hallowed seasons, it has been the usage in Germany, and earlier still throughout all Christendom, to extinguish it and re-light it with holy fire, kindled by the priest with flint and steel in the churchyard.
Empty pockets or an empty cupboard on New Year’s Eve portend a year of poverty. The poet Burns makes mention of this in an epistle to Colonel de Payster, from whom he borrowed a small sum at this season:
To make the old year go out groaning And keep the new year from coming in moaning.
Indeed, on the Borders care is taken that no one enters a house empty-handed on New Year’s Day. A visitor must bring in his hand some eatable; he will be doubly welcome if he carries in a hot stoup or “plotie.” Everybody should wear a new dress on New Year’s Day, and if its pockets contain money of every description they will be certain not to be empty throughout the ​year. The last glass of wine or spirits drained from the last bottle on New Year’s Eve or Day is called the “lucky glass.” It brings good fortune to whoever comes in for it, and if an unmarried person drinks it he will be the first to marry among the company. You must take note what is the Christian name of the first person you see of the opposite sex on New Year’s Day: it will be that of the future husband or wife.
On New Year’s Day much importance is attached to the first foot which crosses the threshold. That of a fair man is luckier than of a dark one, but (alas for the chivalry of the North!) should it be a woman’s, some misfortune may certainly be looked for. The servant-girls are desirous that their “first foot” should be a lover, and sometimes they insure it by admitting him as soon as the New Year is rung in. They arrange, too, that he should bring something with him into the house, for, as the Lincolnshire rhyme runs:—
Take out, and then take in, Bad luck will begin; Take in, then take out, Good luck comes about.
A friend tells me, that in the western part of the county of Durham he has known a man to be specially retained as “first-foot,” or “Lucky-bird,” as they call him in Yorkshire; his guerdon being a glass of spirits; but it was not necessary that he should be a bachelor. The man took care to be at the house by 5 o’clock in the morning, which insured his being the earliest visitor. This custom prevails through all our northern counties.
At Stamfordham, in Northumberland, the first-foot must be a bachelor. He generally brings in a shovelful of coals, but, unfortunately, whisky is coming into fashion as his offering. One inhabitant of the village, I scarcely know why, was considered a lucky “first-foot,” and he always went in that capacity to the blacksmith’s house hard by. One year some one else was, by accident, first-foot. This was considered an ill omen, and accordingly, during the following hay harvest, the house was ​broken open and half-a-sovereign stolen. In some districts, however, special weight is attached to the “first-foot” being that of a person with a high-arched instep, a foot that “water runs under.” A flat-footed person would bring great ill-luck for the coming year. The possessor of the lucky, i.e., arched foot, whether male or female, will then be asked to come first to the home or to the room to awaken the sleepers.
It is recorded by Hospinian that formerly, in Rome, no one would suffer another to take fire out of his house on New Year’s Day, or anything made of iron, or indeed would lend anything. But I can bear witness that this idea has been more thoroughly worked out in the farmhouses of the county of Durham. It happened that, when a boy, I spent Christmas in one of those primitive secluded spots, which now, alas! have disappeared before the collieries which crowd and darken the land. I remember accompanying the mistress of the house to her kitchen on New Year’s Eve, when she called together all her servants, and warned them, under pain of dismissal, not to allow anything to be carried out of the house on the following day, though they might bring in as much as they pleased. Acting on this order, all ashes, dish-washings, or potato-parings, and so forth, were retained in the house till the next day; while coals, potatoes, firewood, and bread were brought in as usual, the mistress keeping a sharp look-out on the fulfilment of her orders.
Now, we may see in this practice on the first day of the year a shadow of anxiety that the incomings of the ensuing twelvemonth should exceed the outgoings, or in other words that the year might be prosperous. Much of our Folk-Lore points to this craving for material prosperity: e.g., the keeping the tip of a dried tongue in the pocket, that it may never be empty; or turning the money in it on the first sight of the new moon, or ​on first hearing the note of the cuckoo, to insure there being always plenty there—practices still common among us.
The Cleveland New Year’s greeting is very definite on this matter:—
I wish you a merry Christmas, And a happy New Year, A pantry full of roast beef, And a barrel full of beer.
You may constantly hear the lads of that district calling it through their neighbour’s keyholes early on New Year’s morning. It is also recited by the children of the West Riding when they make their rounds soliciting New Year’s gifts. There is much visiting at this season throughout the North of England, and much hospitality in the matter of rich cake and wine, but the name applied to this practice in Northumberland is singular. They call it “fadging,” or “eating fadge.”
Old people are careful to note how the wind blows on New Year’s Eve, as they think it significant of the weather during the following season, according to the old rhymes:—
If New Year’s eve night wind blow south, It betokeneth warmth and growth; If west, much milk, and fish in the sea; If north, much cold and storms there will be; If east, the trees will bear much fruit; If north-east, flee it, man and brute.
Perhaps I may mention here two other weather prophecies. It is well known that “a green yule makes a fat kirk-yard,” but the following couplet is of narrower circulation. It was communicated to me by a friend, who assures me that it is current in Buckinghamshire:
If the calends of January be smiling and gay, You’ll have wintry weather till the calends of May.
It is curious to find that the word “calends” still lives on the ​lips of the English peasantry. What idea it conveys to their minds I will not inquire. There is an old rhyme yet current which avers:
If the sun shine out of Candlemas Day, of all days in the year, The shepherd had rather see his wife on the bier.
Or, according to another version—
If the sun shines bright on Candlemas Day, The half of the winter’s not yet away;
which corresponds with the Latin proverb—
Si sol splendescat Maria purificante, Major erit glacies post festum quam fuit ante.
The oak and ash, both sacred trees, and the ash in particular, the cloud-tree of the Norsemen, with sacred fountains springing from every root, still supply us with a weather prophecy. If the oak comes into leaf before the ash, expect a fine summer; if the ash is first, a wet one; or, as it runs in verse:
If the oak’s before the ash, You will only get a splash; If the ash precede the oak, You will surely have a soak.
It is customary in Scotland for children to go to the neighbouring houses on New Year’s Eve, singing this verse:
Rise, good wives, and shake your feathers, And dinna think that we are beggars; We’re but bairns come out to play, Rise up and gie’s your hogmaney.
Oat-cakes are given to them, on which they sing:
We joyful wish you a good day, And thank ye for your hogmaney.
Now here we come upon a custom of great antiquity, and very widely spread, if, as Mr. Ingledew informs us in his Ballads and Songs of Yorkshire, Hagmena songs were formerly sung ​out England, Scotland, and France. He gives a fragment of that in use at Richmond, in Yorkshire:
To-night it is the New Year’s night, to-morrow is the day,
And we are come for our right and for our ray, As we used to do in old King Henry’s day. Sing, fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
If you go to the bacon-flitch, cut me a good bit, Cut, cut and low, beware of your man; Cut, and cut round, beware of your thumb, That I and my merry men may haye some. Sing, fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
If you go to the black ark, bring me ten mark, Ten mark, ten pound, throw it down upon the ground,
That I and my merry men may have some. Sing, fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
In Perth, and I believe in most towns in Scotland, Hogmenay songs are still in common use, the children beginning on St. Sylvester’s night at six o’clock, and never ceasing till after ten, ringing at every bell and singing their songs as soon as the door is opened.
The dole of cakes causes New Year’s Day to be called “cake day” on the Scottish borders, and the following Monday is known as Hansel Monday, because of the presents of money made on that day, and placed in the receiver’s hands. It is named in the old formula of good wishes, “A happy New Year and a merry Hansel Monday.” Scholars commonly give a hansel to their master or mistress on this day. The boy who gives the largest sum is called the king, and the girl the queen, and the king claims the right of demanding at least that day as a holiday.
Shrove Tuesday, though not observed in Scotland in its religious aspect, was marked up to a recent time by some curious customs. Foot-ball and cock-fighting were the great diversions on what was called Fastens Eve. A lady, to whom I am much indebted, writes thus on the subject: “My father-in law used often to speak of the cock-fights which regularly took place in all schools on that day. The master found the cocks, but the boys paid for them. There was a regular subscription for the ​purpose, each boy giving what was called a ‘cock-penny.’ The masters made a good profit out of the transaction, as they were entitled besides to claim all the runaway birds, which were called ‘Fugees.’ ” This custom is mentioned by Brand, and he brings forward in proof of its extreme antiquity a petition of the date of 1355 from the scholars of the school of Ramera to their schoolmaster for a cock he owed them upon Shrove Tuesday to throw sticks at, according to the usual custom, for their sport and entertainment. I learn from a clergyman, formerly a scholar at the grammar-school of Sedbergh, in Yorkshire, that the master used to be entitled to 4½d. yearly from every boy on Shrove Tuesday to buy a fighting-cock. At Heversham, a village one mile from Milnthorpe, the cock-pit was in existence close to the school a few years ago.
The historian of Cumberland gives a detailed account of the manner in which Shrove Tuesday was formerly observed in a grammar-school of that county:—Till within the last twenty or thirty years it had been a custom, time out of mind, for the scholars of the free-school of Bromfield, about the beginning of Lent, or in the more expressive phraseology of the country, at Fastings Even, to bar out the master, i.e. to depose and exclude him from his school, and keep him out for three days. During the period of this expulsion, the doors of the citadel, the school, were strongly barricaded within; and the boys, who defended it like a besieged city, were armed in general with bur-tree or elder pop-guns. The master meanwhile made various efforts, both by force and stratagem, to regain his lost authority: if he succeeded heavy tasks were imposed, and the business of the school was resumed and submitted to; but it more commonly happened that he was repulsed and defeated. After three days’ siege, terms of capitulation were proposed by the master and accepted by the boys. These terms were summed up in an old formula of Latin Leonine verses, stipulating what hours and times should, for the year ensuing, be allotted to study and what to relaxation and play. Securities were provided by each side for the due performance of these stipulations, and the paper was then solemnly signed by both master and scholars. The whole ​was concluded by a festivity, and a treat of cakes and ale, furnished by the scholars.
One of the articles always stipulated for and granted was the privilege of immediately celebrating certain games of long standing, viz. a foot-ball match and a cock-fight. Captains, as they were called, were then chosen to manage and preside over these games, one from that part of the parish which lay to the westward of the school, the other from the east. Cock and foot-ball players were sought for with great diligence. The party whose cocks won the most battles, was as victorious in the cock-pit; and the prize, a small silver bell, suspended to the button of the victor’s hat, and worn for three successive Sundays. After the cock-fight was over, the football was thrown down in the churchyard: and the point then to be contested was, which party could carry it to the house of his respective captain; to Dundraw, perhaps, or to West Newton, a distance of two or three miles, every inch of which ground was disputed keenly. All the honour accruing to the conqueror at foot-ball was that of possessing the ball, Details of these matches were the general topics of conversation among the villagers, and were dwelt on with hardly less satisfaction than their ancestors enjoyed in relating their feats in the Border wars. These Bromfield sports were celebrated in indigenous songs, one verse only of one of them the writer happens to remember:—
At Scales great Tom Barwise gat the ba’ in his hand, And t’ wives av ran out, and shouted, and bann’d: Tom Cowan then pulch’d, and flang him ’mang t’ whins, And he bledder’d, od-white te’, tous broken my shins.
Other customs obtained in the neighbourhood of Blencogo. On the common, to the east of that village, not far from Ware-Brig (i.e. Waver Bridge), near a pretty large rock of granite, called St. Cuthbert’s Stane, is a fine copious spring of remarkably pure and sweet water, which (probably from its having been anciently dedicated to the same St. Cuthbert) is called Helly-Well, i.e. Haly or Holy Well. It formerly was the custom for the youth of all the neighbouring villages to assemble at this well early in the afternoon of the second Sunday in May, and ​there to join in a variety of rural sports. It was the village wake, and took place here, it is possible, when the keeping of wakes and fairs in the churchyard was discontinued.—Hutchinson’s Hist. of Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 322-3.
In the villages of the West Riding the streets may be seen on this day full of grown-up men and women playing “battledore and shuttle feathers.”
Passion Sunday, the fifth in Lent, is called in the North Care, Carle, or Carling Sunday, the proper fare for that day being grey-peas steeped a night in water and then fried in butter. Formerly doles of these carlings were made to the poor; at present they are chiefly a treat to children. Boys have their pockets full of peas at this time, shooting them and nipping them about in frolic.
The use of palms on Palm Sunday has, for the most part I fear, passed away, except among Roman Catholics. The late Mr. Denham, however, in one of his tracts, printed in 1858, speaks of palm-crosses as relics still often to be seen in the hands of north-country children on Palm Sunday, and on cottage-walls through the rest of the year. And he quotes the proverb as still current, “He that hath not a palm in his hand on Palm Sunday must have his hand cut off.” The Rev. G. Ornsby also relates that when he was a child palm-crosses were always made for Palm Sunday by the people in the Vale of Lanchester. The substitute for palm was the willow with its early catkins, which formed the extremities of the arms of the cross; they were tied together with blue or pink ribbon, disposed with bows here and there, and were often very tasteful and pretty. And I can myself bear witness to their constant use in the city of Durham about forty years ago. Many a time have I when a boy walked with my comrades to the riverbank, near Kepier Hospital, to gather palms; and many a cross have I made of them for Palm Sunday. We formed them like a St. Andrew’s cross, with a tuft of catkins at each point, and bound them up with knots and bows of ribbon. In Yorkshire children mark the day differently; they get “pawne bottles,” i. e. bottles containing a little sugar, and betake themselves to ​the springs and wells to fill their bottles, and suck at them all the afternoon.
To pass on to Good Friday. The Incumbent of Fishlake, a village in the south-east of Yorkshire, tells me that in that place, on Good Friday morning, at eight o’clock, instead of the usual bell being rung as on Sundays and other holydays, to give notice of Morning Service, the great bell of the church is solemnly tolled as for a death or funeral. This custom is very beautiful and suggestive, but I do not remember to have heard of it elsewhere. A friend, who passed his boyhood in the north of Durham, informs me that no blacksmith throughout that district would then drive a nail on that day; a remembrance of the awful purpose for which hammer and nails were used on the first Good Friday doubtless held them back.
I learn from a clergyman familiar with the North Riding of Yorkshire that great care is there taken not to disturb the earth in anyway; it were impious to use spade, plough, or harrow. He remembers, when a boy, hearing of a villager, Charlie Marston by name, who shocked his neighbours by planting potatoes on Good Friday, but they never came up.
The popular feeling in Devonshire is very different. The poor there like to plant crops on Good Friday, especially to sow peas, saying they are sure to grow “goody,” and it is thought a very lucky day for grafting, while in some part of the South of England (of the exact locality I am uninformed) they sow annuals on this day before the dawn, to make them come up double. A distinctive observance of Good Friday seems, however, to have once prevailed in that county, and so singular a one, that I trust its mention may not be deemed irrelevant. The rector of a country parish about fourteen miles from Exeter was startled one day by this inquiry, from a Sunday scholar, “Please, Sir, why do people break clomb (i.e. crockery) on Good Friday?” The question was rather puzzling to the rector, but he was a good deal struck by hearing afterwards that it is the custom in the island of Corfu for the inhabitants on that day to fling potsherds down a steep rock, uttering imprecations on the traitor Judas.
​An old woman of the North Riding once asked a friend of mine whether it was wrong to wash on Good Friday. “I used to do so,” she said, “and thought no harm of it, till once, when I was hanging out my clothes, a young woman passed by (a dressmaker she was, and a Methodist); and she reproved me, and told me this story. While our Lord Jesus was being led to Calvary they took Him past a woman who was washing, and the woman ‘blirted’ the thing she was washing in His face; on which He said, ‘Cursed be every one who hereafter shall wash on this day!’ And never again,” added the old woman, “have I washed on Good Friday.”
Now it is said in Cleveland that clothes washed and hung out to dry on Good Friday will become spotted with blood; but the Methodist girl’s wild legend reminds me more of one which a relation of mine elicited from a poor Devonshire shoemaker. She was remonstrating with him for his indolence and want of spirit, when he astonished her by replying, “Dont’ee be hard on me. We shoemakers are a poor slobbering race, and so have been ever since the curse that Jesus Christ laid on us.” “And what was that?” she asked. “Why,” said he, “when they were carrying Him to the cross they passed a shoemaker’s bench, and the man looked up and spat at Him; and the Lord turned and said, ‘A poor slobbering fellow shalt thou be, and all shoemakers after thee, for what thou hast done to Me.’ ”
In the Midland counties, bread and cakes made on Good Friday are thought to be preserved through the holiness of the day from becoming mouldy. I have heard of a cross-bun being kept for a year, and then soaked, warmed, and eaten with a relish, not being in the least mouldy. And throughout the whole of England we here and there find it maintained that such bread has great virtue either of healing or preserving life. The Sunderland wives see that their husbands take some to sea with them to avert shipwrecks. In Sussex it is, or has been, ​hung up in the cottages, and, when any illness breaks out in the family, a fragment is cut off, pounded, and given as medicine. Indeed, the superstition extends to America. In Florida it is held that three loaves baked on Good Friday and put into a heap of corn will prevent rats, mice, weevils, or worms from devouring it, In Suffolk, eggs laid on Good Friday are also kept with the greatest care by the farmers’ wives, who maintain that they will never go bad, and that a piece of such an egg gives immediate relief to a person suffering from colic.
The question has often been asked why the large black beetle is called “clock” in the North of England. An answer has reached me from Ireland, which, as it bears upon this day, I will note here—“Sure it told Judas the time.” On this account the Catholic peasantry in Ireland always crush beetles. I believe in Kent the creatures are called “the devil’s coach-horses,” and elsewhere “the devil’s footmen.”
All England over it is commonly said that one must put on something new on Easter Sunday, else the birds will spoil one’s clothes, or, as it stands in verse,
At Easter let your clothes be new, Or else, be sure, you will it rue.
The belief that the sun dances at its rising on Easter morning peeps out in many parts of Yorkshire, as well as in Durham and Northumberland. Here, again, there is a singular correspondence between the Folk-Lore of the North and the West. Devonshire maidens get up to see the sun rise on Easter morning, as duly as do their northern sisters, though what they look for is the Lamb and flag in the centre of the sun’s disc. Poor women in the neighbourhood of Dartmoor have told me that they used, as girls, to go out in parties at sunrise to see the Lamb in the sun, and look at it through a darkened glass, and always some declared they saw it.
As to Easter eggs, they are as duly painted and gilded, and rolled on the greensward, throughout the North of England, as they are in Russia or Germany. They are also given as little offerings of goodwill by one person to another. I believe their ​use chiefly prevails throughout countries in communion with the Eastern church. The egg is an obvious symbol of the resurrection of life in apparent death. Throughout Yorkshire it is customary to hide the coloured eggs in little nests out of doors, and set the children to hunt after them, and see what eggs the “hares” have been laying. Another Eastern custom, and one, perhaps, better honoured in the breach than the observance, still lingers in Durham. In a Sunday-school there, a scanty attendance of girls on Easter Day was recently accounted for by their being “terrified” lest the boys should pull off their shoes. “To-morrow,” it was added, “they may pull off the boys’ caps.” This frolic, whatever be its origin, seems to have extended into Yorkshire. At least, a friend tells me that she remembers, when a little girl, having her shoes pulled off one Easter on the sands at Redcar; and I have heard of a stout-hearted Yorkshire curate who used to go round his parish on Easter Sunday afternoon to collect the girls, and pioneer them safely to church and school. That was the time of danger, for the young men had no right to take their shoes till after Morning Service. I may add that in the West Riding “luking” (playing at knor and spell) begins at Easter, and that near York tansy pudding used to be eaten on this festival in allusion to the bitter herbs at the Passover.
​Before passing on from Easter observances, let me mention one old custom still kept up at University College, Oxford, the most ancient college, I believe, in the University. A block, in the form of a long wooden pole decorated with flowers and evergreens, is placed outside the door of the hall, leaning against the wall of the buttery which is opposite. After dinner on Easter Day, the cook and his attendant, dressed in white paper caps and white jackets, take their stand on either side of the block, each bearing a pewter dish, one supporting a blunt chopping-axe from the kitchen, the other in readiness for the fees expected on the occasion. As the members of the college come out of the hall first the master, then the fellows, and so on each takes the axe, strikes the block with it, and then places in the proper dish the usual fee to the cook. This rite is called “chipping the block;” its origin is unexplained. The tradition among the undergraduates is that anyone who can chip the block in two (under the circumstances a physical impossibility) can lay claim to all the college estates, but the master and fellows dispute this.
The ancient observances on May Day, the Maypole and garlands, the May Queen, and the chimney-sweeper’s pageant, have, I fear, passed away throughout the North as well as the South, except in some remote localities, or where special pains have been taken by the upper classes to keep up or to revive them. In Devonshire, the local custom, now almost extinct, is for the children to carry about dolls, as richly dressed as may be, in baskets of flowers, doubtless with reference originally to the Blessed Virgin, patroness of the month of May. On May Day morning in Edinburgh, not many years ago, everyone went up to the top of Arthur’s Seat before sunrise to “meet the dew.” In Perth they climbed Kinnoul Hill for the same purpose, with a lingering belief in the old saying—that those who wash their faces in May ​dew will be beautiful all the year. A relic of the old observance seems to survive at Warboys, in Huntingdonshire, where certain poor of the parish are allowed to go into Warboys Wood on May Day morning to gather and bring away bundles of sticks.
Ascension Day appears unmarked in the North by any peculiar observances. I only learn that near York it was the custom, twenty years ago, for children to lay rushes or “seggs” on their doorsteps to mark the festival. The Rev. G. Ornsby suggests that this has probably arisen from the streets having been thus strewn before the procession on this festival in pre-Reformation times. He was once at Cologne on Ascension Day, and witnessed a most imposing procession, the streets having been strewn previously with fir branches and other green things.
On Whit-Sunday cheesecakes were formerly eaten in the county of Durham. At Whitby it is the custom on Midsummer Day to eat white cake and “kidgelled” (query whipped or cudgelled) cream, for which repast presents of cream are sent by the milkman to his customers. This custom is said to be as old as the time of the Danes.
In by-gone days the festival of Corpus Christi was the occasion in Durham of a “goodly procession” of the trades companies to the Abbey Church. “The Baley of the towne did call the occupations that was inhabitens within the towne, every occupation in his degree, to bring forth ther Banners, with all the lightes apperteyninge to these several Banners, and to repaire to the Abbey Church doure, every Banner to stand a rowe, according to his degree; on the west syde of the waye did all the Banners stand, and on the east syde did all the Torges stand.” Then the Prior and convent came forth to meet them in their best copes with “S. Cuthbert’s Banner and two goodly fair crosses. All entered the Abbey Church together, and Te Deum was solemnly sung and plaide of the orgaynes.” Nay, this Durham procession of the trades companies on Corpus Christi Day did, in a mutilated form, survive the Reformation, and linger on till about eighty years ago. The companies still repaired to the Cathedral and attended Divine Service. The ​banners of their respective trades were still to be seen; there was a band of music, and boys carried pieces of burning rope instead of torches. As the Prior of old, so the Dean of later days, accompanied the procession to the door of the Cathedral, but, whereas the Prior there dismissed them with his blessing, the Dean presented each warden with a pair of gloves.
But our most characteristic festive rejoicings accompany the harvest—the mell-supper and the kern-baby, usages which are by no means extinct among us. In the northern part of Northumberland the festival takes place at the end of the reaping, not of the ingathering; and an essay written about the year 1750, by the unhappy Eugene Aram, states that such was also the case in Yorkshire. When the sickle is laid down, and the last sheaf of golden corn set on end, it is said that they have “got the kern.” The reapers announce the fact by loud shouting, and an image is at once hoisted on a pole, and given into the charge of the tallest and strongest man of the party. The image is crowned with wheat-ears and dressed up in gay finery, a white frock and coloured ribbons being its conventional attire. The whole group circle round this harvest-queen, or kern-baby, curtseying to her, and dancing and singing; and thus they proceed to the farmer’s barn, where they set the image up on high, as the presiding goddess of their revels, and proceed to do justice to the harvest-supper.
Nor is this all. Each cottage must at harvest-time have its own household divinity, and, oaten cakes having formerly been the staple food of the North, these figures are commonly formed of oats. Such have I repeatedly seen in cottages on the Tweed side, elaborately decorated and enshrined at the top of the bink or dresser, with the family stock of big dishes ranged on either side. These, too, are kern-babies. There has been some controversy as to the derivation of the word “kern.” To me it clearly seems to mean corn. I may mention, in support of this opinion, that in Cornwall an ill-saved harvest is said to be “ill kerned,” and that throughout Devonshire the forming of the grain in the ear is called the “kerning” or “corning.” I must add that throughout Northumberland, when the last cart of corn ​arrives at the stackyard gate, the driver leaves it standing there while he carries his whip to the mistress of the house, who must either drive in the load herself or give the man a glass of whisky to do it for her.
The mell-supper takes its name from the Norse “mele,” corn. In Icelandic, “melr” is the Psamma-arenario, the wild corn of the sand-flats: melr also signifies sandy land. Both are derived from the same root, which means to grind to dust. It has come to be applied to corn because it can be made into meal—to sand, because it is pounded stone. As kept up till lately in my own county, the mell-supper is closely akin to the Northumbrian kern-feast. I am not too old to have taken part in more than one of them, and most thoroughly did I enjoy them. My recollection of a mell-doll is of a corn-sheaf stuck with flowers, and wrapped in such of the reapers’ garments as could be spared. This, too, was carried to the scene of the harvest-supper amid music and dancing, and then master and servants sat down together to feast, on terms of perfect equality.
This feature of harvest festivities is common to all the northern districts, and springs from a grateful sense of the reapers’ services at a peculiarly anxious time. As far south as Hertfordshire some of these observances have held their ground, and the last cart of wheat leaves the field decorated with oak boughs; but one part of the entertainment I connect especially with my own county. I well remember, not far from its cathedral town, helping to dress some young men who were to play the part of “guisers,” and force their entrance into a mell-supper. Disguised they most effectually were—covered with masks, or blackened with burned cork past all recognition, and their dress the gayest motley imaginable. In apprehension of such invaders, the doors and windows of the barn or dancing-room were barricaded, and the whole building placed in a state of defence; but, whether through treachery within-doors or their own unassisted valour, the guisers did at last effect an entrance and claimed the privilege of conquerors.
Such scenes I often witnessed in my young days, and such I believe still to be enacted in many north-country farmhouses; ​but who among the groups that dance before the kern-baby deem that they are treading in the steps of their old British ancestors, as, taught by their Roman conquerors, they danced and bowed before the goddess Ceres? Or, again, of those who at a later period in history paid the same votive honours to the Virgin Mary? Or, who, as they sit at the mell-supper, master and servant on equal terms, imagine that their festival had its origin, it may be, in the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles—it may be, in the Roman Saturnalia? “Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine: and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates.”
A friend from Yorkshire tells me that the mell-doll is now unknown in the north of that county, but with mell-suppers and guisers he is quite familiar. The Yorkshire custom is, that, when in any farm the harvest is won, one of the reapers should mount a wall or bank, and proclaim as follows:
Blest be the day when Christ was born, We’ve getten mell of (——’s) corn, Weel bun and better shorn. Huzza! huzza! huzza!
—every one then joining in the general cheer.
In Cleveland, the mell-supper is still kept up, though with less ceremony than formerly. “Guising” was practised there thirty years ago, but is now discontinued. On forking the last sheaf in the harvest-field they shout in chorus:
Weel bun and better shorn, Is master (——’s) corn; We hev her, we hev her, As fast as a feather. Hip, hip, hurrah!
Among minor festivals, St. Agnes’ Day is marked in our northern counties by a superstitious observance of its own, called ​St. Agnes’ Fast, the same which has furnished Keats with a subject for his little poem, The Eve of St. Agnes. He recounts, in his own glowing yet chastened style, how all the wintry day Madeline’s heart had brooded
On love, and winged St. Agnes’ saintly care, As she had heard old dames full many times declare.
They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve, Young virgins might have visions of delight, And soft advisings from their loves receive, Upon the honeyed middle of the night, If ceremonies due they did aright; As supperless to bed they must retire, And couch supine their beauties, lily white; Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require Of Heaven, with upward eyes, for all that they desire.
St. Agnes’ Fast is thus practised throughout Durham and Yorkshire. Two young girls, each desirous to dream about their future husbands, must abstain through the whole of St. Agnes’ Eve from eating, drinking, or speaking, and must avoid even touching their lips with their fingers. At night they are to make together their “dumb cake,” so called from the rigid silence which attends its manufacture. Its ingredients (flour, salt, water, &c.) must be supplied in equal proportions by the friends, who must also take equal shares in the baking and ​turning of the cake, and in drawing it out of the oven. The mystic viand must next be divided into two equal portions, and each girl, taking her share, is to carry it upstairs, walking backwards all the time, and finally eat it and jump into bed. A damsel who duly fulfils all these conditions, and has also kept her thoughts all the day fixed on her ideal of a husband, may confidently expect to see her future partner in her dreams.
“Dumb cake” is, or has been, made as far south as Norfolk. A friend tells me that his mother when a girl with another young companion duly made their dumb cake in perfect silence, walked to their bed backwards, laid their stockings and garters crosswise, and their shoes “going and coming,” and then sitting up in bed began to eat the cakes, which were small enough, having been made in thimbles. Still the lady in question could not get through it, owing to its excessive saltness, and with her mouth full of the compound she exclaimed, “I can’t eat it!” This of course broke the spell, and her friend was much annoyed.
The prescribed formula is somewhat different in Northumberland. There a number of girls, after a day’s silence and fasting, will boil eggs, one apiece, extract the yolk, fill the cavity with salt, and eat the egg, shell and all, and then walk backwards, uttering this invocation to the saint:
Sweet St. Agnes, work thy fast, If ever I be to marry man, Or man be to marry me, I hope him this night to see.
Or,
Fair St. Agnes, play thy part, And send to me my own sweetheart, Not in his best or worst array, But in the clothes of every day, That to-morrow I may him ken, From among all other men.
A raw red herring, swallowed bones and all, is said to be equally efficacious, and doubtless is very provocative of dreams and visions. Northumbrian swains sometimes adopt this plan to get a glimpse of their future wives. ​A Yorkshire friend mentions another way in which St. Agnes’ Fast might be broken, and the success of the charm utterly ruined—that is, by a kiss; and it was a constant trick of the young wags to come unawares upon a girl who was believed to be keeping St. Agnes’ Fast, and break her fast by a salute.
We learn from the Wilkie MS. that the second of April shares on the Borders the character which the first bears all England over. There are two April-fool days there, or, as they call them, “gowk days.” Unsuspecting people are then sent on bootless errands, and ridiculed for their pains. One such day has, I believe, usually sufficed us in England. To the full observance of this day in my native city, at the time of my boyhood, I can bear witness; having been duly sent, with many another urchin, to the chemist for a pennyworth of oil of hazel, and received it in another way than I looked for, from the stout hazel stick hidden behind the shopman’s counter. Sometimes the victim is instructed to ask for “strap oil.” This custom extends to Germany: in Berlin “crab’s blood” or “gnat’s fat” are the articles sent for.
But “hunting the gowk” is more fully carried out by sending the victim from place to place with a letter, in which the following couplet was written:
The first and second of Aprile, Hound the gowk another mile.
I need hardly add that gowk is a local name for the cuckoo, of which bird our ancestors said:
In April He opes his bill.
The cuckoo is a merry bird, sings as she flies. She brings us good tidings and tells us no lies. She picks up the dirt in the spring of the year, And sucks little birds’ eggs to make her voice clear.
The piece of slander in the last line is firmly believed by the Sussex peasant, who also maintains that the cuckoo is finally metamorphosed into a hawk,—an ancient fable refuted by Aristotle more than two thousand years ago. I have been accustomed in the North to the first half alone of this verse, in the following form:
The cuckoo is a bonnie bird, She whistles as she flees, She brings us all good tidings, And never tells no lees.
But in truth rhymes about this bird abound through our whole island, and many portents are drawn from it. In some places children say:
Cuckoo, cherry tree, Good bird, tell me How many years before I dee?
and listen for an answer in the repetitions of the bird’s cry. In Sweden the question is, “In how many years shall I be married?” It is considered lucky in Scotland to be walking when one first hears the cuckoo:
Gang and hear the gowk yell, Sit and see the swallow flee, See the foal before its mother’s ’ee, ’T will a thriving year wi’ thee.
But it is unlucky to have no money in your pocket, and you must without fail turn the money when you hear the bird for the first time in the season.
Sussex cottagers tell their children of a scolding old woman who has charge of all the cuckoos. In the early spring she fills her apron with them, and, if she is in a good humour, allows several to take flight, but if cross, only one or two. A poor ​woman complained not long ago to my informant of the ill-temper of the cuckoo keeper, who had only let one bird fly out of her apron, “and that ’ere bird is nothing to call a singer.”
The Yorkshire farmers are not above taking a practical hint from the early or late arrival of the cuckoo, Their adage on the subject runs thus:
When cuckoo calls on the bare thorn, Sell your cow and buy your corn.
St. Valentine’s Eve has an observance of its own in the South of Scotland. The young people assemble and write the names of their acquaintances on slips of paper, placing those of the lads and lasses in separate bags apart. The maidens draw from the former, the young men from the latter, three times in succession, returning the names after the first and second times of drawing. If one person takes out the same name three times consecutively, it is without fail that of the future husband or wife. Thus, in Burns’s song of Tam Glen the maiden sings:
Yestreen at the Valentine dealing, My heart to my mon gi’ed a sten, For thrice I drew ane without failing, An’ thrice it was written, Tam Glen.
In a Buckinghamshire village, to the present day, the boys go round for halfpence to every house, singing:
Good morrow to you, Valentine, First ’tis yours and then ’tis mine, I’ll thank you for a Valentine.
Old people presage the weather of the coming season by that of the last three days of March, which they call the “borrowing days,” and thus rhyme about:
March borrowed from April Three days and they were ill; The first o’ them war wind an’ weet, The next o’ them war snaw an’ sleet, The last o’ them war wind an’ rain, Which gaed the silly puir ewes come toddling hame.
March said to Aperill, I see thi-ee hogs upon a hill; But lend your first three days to me, And I’ll be bound to gar them dee. The first it sail be wind an’ weet, The next it sail be snaw an’ sleet, The third it sail be sic a freeze, Sail gar the birds stick to the trees. But when the borrowed days were gane, The three silly hogs came hirplin’ hame.
A third variation, common in my native county, runs thus:
March borrowed of April Three days, and they were ill: The first was sleet, the second was snow, The third was the worst day that ever did blow.
It is curious that in the country parts of Devonshire the same three days are called “blind days,” and considered unlucky for sowing any kind of seed. And it is yet more remarkable that the Highlanders have their borrowed or borrowing days, but with them February borrows from January, and bribes him with three young sheep. These first three days of February, or Faiolteach, by Highland reckoning (that is, old style), occur between February 11 and 15. And it is accounted a most favourable prognostic for the ensuing year that they should be stormy and cold.
Of the next month we have the following rhyme in Durham:
Aperill, With his hack and his bill, Sets a flower on every hill;
or, as it runs in Yorkshire,
April comes in with his hack and his bill, And sets a flower on every hill.
​The 29th of May is marked in Fishlake and its neigbourhood as the close of the birds’-nesting season. The boys think it unlucky to take nests later, and religiously abstain from doing so.
There is an old saying in the North about St. Michael’s Day: “So many days old the moon is on Michaelmas Day, so many floods after.” I am not aware that the Irish custom of abstaining from blackberries after this day extends to the North of England, but I have come across it in Devonshire. The saying in Ireland is this: “At Michaelmas the devil puts his foot on the blackberries.” On the Tweed side, although no mention is made of St. Michael’s Day, yet it is held that late in the autumn the devil throws his club over the blackberries and renders them poisonous or at least unwholesome. The Rev. R. O. Bromfield informs me that a boy once related to him circumstantially that he had seen this done, and that the club had come thundering over an old dyke and among the brambles just beside him, effectually putting an end to his feast off their berries. In Sussex the 10th of October is fixed as the limit of blackberrying, and they say that the devil then goes round the country and spits on the bramble-bushes! Note that the 10th of October is “Old Michaelmas Day.” It is also held in that county a dangerous thing to go out nutting on Sunday for fear of encountering the evil one, though he often comes to the nutters in friendly guise and holds down the branches for them to strip. The devil in his character of nut-gatherer has plainly taken hold of the popular imagination in Sussex, for a proverb is current there, “As black as the de’il‘s nutting-bag.” In Yorkshire this festival is called “hipping day,” from its connection with a confection of hips, the red berries of the wild rose.
How All-Hallowe’en is kept in Scotland, English readers well know from Burns’s poem on the subject. It is an evening of mirth and hilarity, and many divinations into futurity take place during its mystic hours. The Wilkie MS. mentions some of these which are not named by Burns, but as they may also be practised on the eves of Christmas, New Year’s Day, and Midsummer Day, they will be more properly ranged under the head of “Divinations into Futurity.” Ordeal by fire and water are, ​however, peculiarly Hallowe’en sports. The latter consists in ducking for an apple in a tub of water with the mouth, the hands being clasped behind the back. In the former, a small rod of wood is suspended from the ceiling, with a lighted candle fixed at one end and an apple at the other. The stick is twirled round, and the company in turn try to catch the apple in their teeth, at the moment it passes before them. These sports are still practised in the neighbourhood of Durham. At Whitbeck, in Cumberland, it is said, that to whatever quarter a bull faces as he lies on All-Hallow Even, from thence the wind will blow during the greater part of the winter following.
Another fiery ordeal consists in whirling before the face a lighted brand, singing the old verse,—
Dingle, dingle, dowsie, the cat’s in the well; The dog’s awa’ to Berwick, to buy a new bell.
One then observes the last sparks of fire, and augurs from them: many round spots mean money, a quick extinction loss of property, and so on.
St. Clement’s Day was formerly observed, in the North of England, by men going about to ask for drink, that they might make merry in the evening. In Staffordshire the boys now go from house to house on that day, but they only ask for apples, which are generally given them. Compare with this the custom formerly prevalent at Ripon Minster on or about St. Clement’s Day. The choristers went round the church offering a rosy-cheeked apple with a sprig of box stuck into it to every one present, for which a small gratuity was expected and of course commonly given.
At the risk of being deemed discursive I cannot refrain from mentioning a Buckinghamshire custom, communicated to me by a friend. It was once universal among the lacemakers of that ​county, but is fast becoming obsolete. St. Andrew is there considered the patron saint of lacemaking, possibly because the intersecting threads in their delicate fabric so frequently form his cross; at any rate, his day is kept as a festival by all who practise that handicraft. The cakes that are made in honour of it are called “T’andry cakes,” a curious corruption of St. Andrew. Though this saint be the patron of Scotland, his day is now little heeded there. It was formerly kept by repasts of sheeps’ heads, the old national dish, and the day was called Andermas.
The days of the week are distinguished in the North by certain epithets, taken in part from Church feasts or festivals, in part from some local circumstance. According to my memory they run thus—
Collop Monday, Pancake Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Bloody Thursday, Long Friday, Hey for Saturday afternoon; Hey for Sunday at twelve o’clock, When all the plum-puddings jump out of the pot.
Another version is as follows—
Black Monday, Bloody Tuesday, Sorrowful Wednesday, Joyful Thursday, Lang Friday ’ll ne’er be done, Hey for Saturday afternoon, Hey for Sunday at two o’clock, When all the spice puddings come out of the pot.
* ↑ A Devonshire friend informs me of the legend connected with this west-country observance. It is said that the Divine Infant at Bethlehem was first washed and dressed by a fire of ashwood.
* ↑ Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 555.
* ↑ Brand’s Pop. Ant. vol. i. p. 612.
* ↑ This holds good of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Doors are there chained up to prevent females from entering. A man in the town comes early to —— Parsonage, and bids the maids unbar and let him in, as he brings the new year to them.—S. B. G.
* ↑ Brand’s Pop. Ant. vol. i. p. 13.
* ↑ In Sweden, if a grain of corn be found under the table when sweeping on a New Year’s morn, there will be an abundant crop that year.
* ↑ This curse is suggested, I presume, by the legend of the Wandering Jew; Cartaphilus or Ahasuerus, whichever was his name, having been a shoemaker, and cursed, it is said, by Our Lord, for refusing to allow Him to rest on the doorstep of his shop.—S. B. G.
* ↑ In Lancashire it is customary for the lasses on Easter Monday to “heave” the lads, i. e. to lift them up from the ground in their arms. On Tuesday the lads heave the lasses. A friend of mine, a native of Warrington, tells me that her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools took it into his head to visit Warrington on Monday in Easter week. The lasses, seeing a timorous spectacled parson walking down the street, with one accord heaved him, and carried him in their arms through the town. My informant declares that the terror and agony of the poor inspector were something awful. The more he struggled the closer he was hugged, while an occasional smack from the lips of a vigorous mill-girl blanched his cheek, and made his rumpled hair stand on end. He firmly believed that his character and position were irretrievably ruined. On another Easter Monday one of my friends was lifted and kissed till he was black in the face by a party of leather-breeched coalpit women at, I think, Wednesbury. The same custom prevails in the Pyrenees, where I have been lifted by a party of stout Basque damsels. Another instance of this observance has been related to me. A number of convict women on their way to Australia were allowed one Easter Monday to come on deck for a little fresh air and change. The decks had previously been cleared, and the chaplain was the only man within their reach. Making the most of their opportunity, they rushed upon him, and lifted him, bestowing the usual salutations all the time. His screams and cries for help were alarming, and at last they brought the captain to the spot, but unfortunately he was too much amused to interfere, and the play was played out in spite of the poor victim’s intense alarm and disgust.—S. B. G.
* ↑ Rites and Monuments. Surtees Society Publication.
* ↑ Deut. xvi. 13, 14.
* ↑ Through Devonshire the reapers leave a bunch of corn, which they call a neck, to be afterwards tied up with ribbons and flowers, and hung in the barn. And they approach it, saying, as they cut each line of corn, “Wee day, wee day!” When the neck is cut there is shouting and halloing, and the reapers call out We have ploughed, we have sowed, We have reaped, we have mowed, We have brought home every load, With a Hip, hip, hurrah! Compare with these harvest customs those of Schaumberg-Lippe. When barley was cut there a tuft was left called “Waul roggen.” In this was placed a stick adorned with flowers, called the “Waul staff;” and then the reapers bowed to it with hats off, shouting together thrice, “Waul, waul, waul!” Waul is a corruption of waud-wod, that is to say, Wustan or Woden. In like manner is d changed into l in the two German dialects as, for instance, melecin for medecin. The Greek δάκρυ = lacrima, the Sanskrit madhu in Latin is mel. Wee-day is also a corruption of Wustan or Woden.—S. B. G.
* ↑ Pop. Ant. vol. ii. p. 42.
* ↑ See Mrs. Grant’s Superstitions of the Highlanders, vol. ii. p. 217.
* ↑ Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 555.
* ↑ On the 5th of November parkin, a sort of pepper-cake, made with treacle and ginger, is found in every house in the West Riding. As, however, the cake is eaten several days before the 5th, I have no doubt it originally formed part of the All-Hallows’ feast. The Sunday within the octave of All Saints is called Parkin Sunday.—S. B. G.