Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1881-01-08 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

NEW YEAR ORGIES. At the beginning of the week a number of paragraphs appeared in the newspapers which served to indicate the deplorable manner in which the advent of the New Year was celebrated in sundry households In Glasgow and in Gateshead murders were committed on the morning of New Year's Pay. There was something inexpressibly shocking in the murder reported to have taken place in Glasgow. In the house where the tragedy occurred, there was, as in many others at the same season, a family gathering. For hours things may have gone on pleasantly enough, but too  free indulgence in drink led to a quarrel j which had a fatal termination, and two sons are in custody on the dreadful charge of having murdered their mother It was drink that also brought about the bloodshed and violent death at Gateshead in the north of England. Of fire it is said that it makes a good servant but abed master, and coins may feel inclined to apply the same remark to spirituous liquors, though teetotalers of course will stoutly deny that good of any kind is to be found in intoxicants at all.  Seeing what terrible deeds alcohol incites to when it gets the mastery, it would certhinly be a thousand times better for those who cannot drink each other's health without imbibing too much to obstain altogether from intoxicants than to run the dreadful risk of losing control of themselves and committing orimeq, when in that state, which may lead them too the gallows. The practice of indulging too freely in strong liquors at Christmas and New Year times has been handed down to the northern nations of Europe from the days that go back to the shadowy era of the Druids. The old Norseman, who scoured the seas in summer in their beaked long ships, wintered in Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula and they never failed to hold high revelry at the season which is still consecrated to good fellowship. Whatever else they might forget, they never forgot to lay in a good stock of malt for their Yule-time ale which they drank, with a long pull and a strong pull, out of gold or silver-mounted horns If Odin and the other gods of the Scandinavian mythology drank, deeply in Valhalla should not their warrrior worshippers follow the example of the immortals? In Scotland the custom of first footing on New Year's Day morning, which still prevails has comedown, like drinking, from the days of old, and it is only an excuse in foot for indulgence in drink, It is considered an unlucky thing if the “first foot"—that is the first visitor—should enter any dwellinghouse empty-handed after the New Year is just ushered in, and this accounts for the circumstance of the first-footer always taking care to be provided with a bottle from which" drams "all round can be administered. If the drinking were confined to the first-footer bottle, which is not inexhaustible as a rule, no great harm might be done, but the mischief is that the" gude wife" in turn produces her bottle, and pro-081218 is witnessed of drinking dram from dram. The wary first footer, who knows what's what may restrict his visit to one house, and thus succeed in keeping his head clear throughout the remainder of the day. but there are others who make a point of going their rounds, calling upon.' auld acquaintance" in the small hours of the morning, and they mast be well seasoned drinkers indeed if they are not helplessly intoxicated before breakfast-time. In the streets of Scottishtowns, before and after dawn on often  :WILE,  New Year's Day, the police have to take charge of first—footers who are (goat—