And after eight verses in praise of the beast, with some mention of his connection with Bethlehem and the Wise Men, it closes thus:—

An ass, it would seem, was actually brought into church, at Beauvais at all events, during the singing of this song on the feast of the Circumcision. On January 14 an extraordinary ceremony took place there. A girl with a child in her arms rode upon an ass into St. Stephen's church, to represent the Flight into Egypt. The Introit, “Kyrie,” “Gloria,” and “Credo” at Mass ended in a bray, and at the close of the service the priest instead of saying “Ite, missa est,” had to bray three times, and the people to respond in like manner. Mr. Chambers's theory is that the ass was a descendant of the cervulus or hobby-buck who figures so largely in ecclesiastical condemnations of Kalends customs.

The country par excellence of the Feast of the Fools was France. It can also be traced in Germany and Bohemia, while in England too there are notices of it, though far fewer than in France. Its abuses were the subject of frequent denunciations by Church reformers from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. The feast was prohibited at various times, and notably by the Council of Basle in 1435, but it was too popular to be quickly suppressed, and it took a century and a half to die out after this condemnation by a general council of the Church. In one cathedral, Amiens, it even lingered until 1721.

When in the fifteenth century and later the Feast of Fools was expelled from the churches of France, associations of laymen sprang up to carry on its traditions outside. It was indeed a form of entertainment which the townsfolk as well as the lower clergy thoroughly appreciated, and they were by no means willing to let it die. A Prince des Sots took the place of the “bishop,” and was chosen by sociétés joyeuses organized by the youth of the cities for New Year merrymaking. Gradually their activities grew, and their celebrations came to take place at other festive times beside the Christmas season. The sots had a distinctive dress, its 306most characteristic feature being a hood with asses’ ears, probably a relic of the primitive days when the heads of sacrificed animals were worn by festal worshippers.{21}

The Boy Bishop.

Of older standing than the Feast of Fools were the Christmas revels of the deacons, the priests, and the choir-boys. They can be traced back to the early tenth century, and may have originated at the great song-school of St. Gall near Constance. The most important of the three feasts was that of the boys on Holy Innocents’ Day, a theoretically appropriate date. Corresponding to the “lord” of the Feast of Fools was the famous “Boy Bishop,” a choir-boy chosen by the lads themselves, who was vested in cope and mitre, held a pastoral staff, and gave the benediction. Other boys too usurped the dignities of their elders, and were attired as dean, archdeacons, and canons. Offices for the festival, in which the Boy Bishop figures largely, are to be found in English, French, and German service-books, the best known in this country being those in the Sarum Processional and Breviary. In England these ceremonies were far more popular and lasting than the Feast of Fools, and, unlike it, they were recognized and approved by authority, probably because boys were more amenable to discipline than men, and objectionable features could be pruned away with comparative ease. The festivities must have formed a delightful break in the year of the mediaeval schoolboy, for whom holidays, as distinguished from holy-days for church-going, scarcely existed. The feast, as we shall see, was by no means confined within the church walls; there was plenty of merrymaking and money-making outside.

Minute details have been preserved of the Boy Bishop customs at St. Paul's Cathedral in the thirteenth century. It had apparently been usual for the “bishop” to make the cathedral dignitaries act as taper- and incense-bearers, thus reversing matters so that the great performed the functions of the lowly. In 1263 this was forbidden, and only clerks of lower rank might be chosen for these offices. But the “bishop” had the right to demand 307after Compline on the Eve of the Innocents a supper for himself and his train from the Dean or one of his canons. The number of his following must, however, be limited; if he went to the Dean's he might take with him a train of fifteen: two chaplains, two taper-bearers, five clerks, two vergers, and four residentiary canons; if to a lesser dignitary his attendants were to be fewer.

On Innocents’ Day he was given a dinner, after which came a cavalcade through the city, that the “bishop” might bless the people. He had also to preach a sermon—no doubt written for him.

Examples of such discourses are still extant,{22} and are not without quaint touches. For instance the bidding prayer before one of them alludes to “the ryghte reverende fader and worshypfull lorde my broder Bysshopp of London, your dyoceasan,” and “my worshypfull broder [the] Deane of this cathedrall chirche,”{23} while in another the preacher remarks, speaking of the choristers and children of the song-school, “Yt is not so long sens I was one of them myself.”{24}

In some places it appears, though this is by no means certain, that the boy actually sang Mass. The “bishop's” office was a very desirable one not merely because of the feasting, but because he had usually the right to levy contributions on the faithful, and the amounts collected were often very large. At York, for instance, in 1396 the “bishop” pocketed about £77, all expenses paid.

The general parallelism of the Boy Bishop customs and the Feast of Fools is obvious, and no doubt they had much the same folk-origin. One point, already mentioned, should specially be noticed: the election of the Boy Bishop generally took place on December 5, the Eve of St. Nicholas, patron of children; he was often called “Nicholas bishop”; and sometimes, as at Eton and Mayence, he exercised episcopal functions at divine service on the eve and the feast itself. It is possible, as Mr. Chambers suggests, that St. Nicholas's Day was an older date for the boys’ festival than Holy Innocents’, and that from the connection with St. Nicholas, the bishop saint par excellence (he was said to have been consecrated by divine command when still a mere layman), sprang 308the custom of giving the title “bishop” to the “lord” first of the boys’ feast and later of the Feast of Fools.

In the late Middle Ages the Boy Bishop was found not merely in cathedral, monastic, and collegiate churches but in many parish churches throughout England and Scotland. Various inventories of the vestments and ornaments provided for him still exist. With the beginnings of the Reformation came his suppression: a proclamation of Henry VIII., dated July 22, 1541, commands “that from henceforth all suche superstitions be loste and clyerlye extinguisshed throughowte all this his realmes and dominions, forasmoche as the same doo resemble rather the unlawfull superstition of gentilitie [paganism], than the pure and sincere religion of Christe.”{25} In Mary's reign the Boy Bishop reappeared, along with other “Popish” usages, but after Elizabeth's accession he naturally fell into oblivion. A few traces of him lingered in the seventeenth century. “The Schoole-boies in the west,” says Aubrey, “still religiously observe St. Nicholas day (Decemb. 6th), he was the Patron of the Schoole-boies. At Curry-Yeovill in Somersetshire, where there is a Howschole (or schole) in the Church, they have annually at that time a Barrell of good Ale brought into the church; and that night they have the priviledge to breake open their Masters Cellar-dore.”{26}

In France he seems to have gradually vanished, as, after the Reformation, the Catholic Church grew more and more “respectable,” but traces of him are to be found in the eighteenth century at Lyons and Rheims; and at Sens, even in the nineteenth, the choir-boys used to play at being bishops on Innocents’ Day and call their “archbishop” âne—a memory this of the old asinaria festa.{27} In Denmark a vague trace of him was retained in the nineteenth century in a children's game. A boy was dressed up in a white shirt, and seated on a chair, and the children sang a verse beginning, “Here we consecrate a Yule-bishop,” and offered him nuts and apples.{28}

309310311

CHAPTER XIV

In Tyrolese churches early in the morning of St. Stephen's Day there takes place a consecration of water and of salt brought by the people. The water is used by the peasants to sprinkle food, barns, and fields in order to avert the influence of witches and evil spirits, and bread soaked in it is given to the cattle when they are driven out to pasture on Whit Monday. The salt, too, is given to the beasts, and the peasants themselves partake of it before any important journey like a pilgrimage. Moreover when a storm is threatening some is thrown into the fire as a protection against hail.{1}

The most striking thing about St. Stephen's Day, however, is its connection with horses. St. Stephen is their patron; in England in former times they were bled on his festival in the belief that it would benefit them,{2} and the custom is still continued in some parts of Austria.{3} In Tyrol it is the custom not only to 312bleed horses on St. Stephen's Day, but also to give them consecrated salt and bread or oats and barley.{4}

In some of the Carinthian valleys where horse-breeding is specially carried on, the young men ride into the village on their unsaddled steeds, and a race is run four or five times round the church, while the priest blesses the animals, sprinkling them with holy water and exorcizing them.{5}

Similar customs are or were found in various parts of Germany. In Munich, formerly, during the services on St. Stephen's Day more than two hundred men on horseback used to ride three times round the interior of a church. The horses were decorated with many-coloured ribbons, and the practice was not abolished till 1876.{6} At Backnang in Swabia horses were ridden out, as fast as possible, to protect them from the influence of witches, and in the Hohenlohe region men-servants were permitted by their masters to ride in companies to neighbouring places, where much drinking went on.{7} In Holstein the lads on Stephen's Eve used to visit their neighbours in a company, groom the horses, and ride about in the farmyards, making a great noise until the people woke up and treated them to beer and spirits.{8} At the village of Wallsbüll near Flensburg the peasant youths in the early morning held a race, and the winner was called Steffen and entertained at the inn. At Viöl near Bredstadt the child who got up last on December 26 received the name of Steffen and had to ride to a neighbour's house on a hay-fork. In other German districts the festival was called “the great horse-day,” consecrated food was given to the animals, they were driven round and round the fields until they sweated violently, and at last were ridden to the blacksmith's and bled, to keep them healthy through the year. The blood was preserved as a remedy for various illnesses.{9}

It is, however, in Sweden that the “horsy” aspect of the festival is most obvious.{10} Formerly there was a custom, at one o'clock on St. Stephen's morning, for horses to be ridden to water that flowed northward; they would then drink “the cream of the water” and flourish during the year. There was a violent race to the water, and the servant who got there first was rewarded by a drink of something stronger. Again, early that morning one 313peasant would clean out another's stable, often at some distance from his home, feed, water, and rub down the horses, and then be entertained to breakfast. In olden times after service on St. Stephen's Day there was a race home on horseback, and it was supposed that he who arrived first would be the first to get his harvest in. But the most remarkable custom is the early morning jaunt of the so-called “Stephen's men,” companies of peasant youths, who long before daybreak ride in a kind of race from village to village and awaken the inhabitants with a folk-song called Staffansvisa, expecting to be treated to ale or spirits in return.

The cavalcade is supposed to represent St. Stephen and his followers, yet the saint is not, as might be expected, the first martyr of the New Testament, but a dauntless missionary who, according to old legends, was one of the first preachers of the Gospel in Sweden, and was murdered by the heathen in a dark forest. A special trait, his love of horses, connects him with the customs just described. He had, the legends tell, five steeds: two red, two white, one dappled; when one was weary he mounted another, making every week a great round to preach the Word. After his death his body was fastened to the back of an unbroken colt, which halted not till it came near Norrala, his home. There he was buried, and a church built over his grave became a place of pilgrimage to which sick animals, especially horses, were brought for healing.

Mannhardt and Feilberg hold that this Swedish St. Stephen is not a historical personage but a mythical figure, like many other saints, and that his legend, so bound up with horses, was an attempt to account for the folk-customs practised on the day dedicated to St. Stephen the first martyr. It is interesting to note that legendary tradition has played about a good deal with the New Testament Stephen; for instance an old English carol makes him a servant in King Herod's hall at the time of Christ's birth:—

314Thereupon he forsook King Herod for the Child Jesus, and was stoned to death.{11}

To return, however, to the horse customs of the day after Christmas, it is pretty plain that they are of non-Christian origin. Mannhardt has suggested that the race which is their most prominent feature once formed the prelude to a ceremony of lustration of houses and fields with a sacred tree. Somewhat similar “ridings” are found in various parts of Europe in spring, and are connected with a procession that appears to be an ecclesiastical adaptation of a pre-Christian lustration-rite.{12} The great name of Mannhardt lends weight to this theory, but it seems a somewhat roundabout way of accounting for the facts. Perhaps an explanation of the “horsiness” of the day might be sought in some pre-Christian sacrifice of steeds.

We have already noted that St. Stephen's Day is often the date for the “hunting of the wren” in the British Isles; it was also in England generally devoted to hunting and shooting, it being held that the game laws were not in force on that day.{13} This may be only an instance of Christmas licence, but it is just possible that there is here a survival of some tradition of sacrificial slaughter.

St. John's Day.

An ecclesiastical adaptation of a pagan practice may be seen in the Johannissegen customary on St. John's Day in many parts of Catholic Germany and Austria. A quantity of wine is brought to church to be blessed by the priest after Mass, and is taken away by the people to be drunk at home. There are many popular beliefs about the magical powers of this wine, beliefs which can be traced back through at least four centuries. In Tyrol and Bavaria it is supposed to protect its drinker from being struck by lightning, in the Rhenish Palatinate it is drunk in order that the other wine a man possesses may be kept from injury, or that next year's harvest may be good. In Nassau, Carinthia, and other regions some is poured into the wine-casks to preserve the precious drink from harm, while in Bavaria some is kept for use as medicine in sickness. 315In Syria St. John's wine is said to keep the body sound and healthy, and on his day even babes in the cradle are made to join in the family drinking.{14}

It appears that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a great drinking on St. John's Day of ordinary, as well as consecrated, wine, often to excess, and scholars of that time seriously believed that Weihnacht, the German name for Christmas, should properly be spelt Weinnacht.{15} The Johannissegen, or Johannisminne as it was sometimes called, seems, all things considered, to be a survival of an old wine sacrifice like the Martinsminne. That it does not owe its origin to the legend about the cup of poison drunk by St. John is shown by the fact that a similar custom was in old times practised in Germany and Sweden on St. Stephen's Day.{16}

Holy Innocents’ Day.

Holy Innocents’ Day or Childermas, whether or not because of Herod's massacre, was formerly peculiarly unlucky; it was a day upon which no one, if he could possibly avoid it, should begin any piece of work. It is said of that superstitious monarch, Louis XI. of France, that he would never do any business on that day, and of our own Edward IV. that his coronation was postponed, because the date originally fixed was Childermas. In Cornwall no housewife would scour or scrub on Childermas, and in Northamptonshire it was considered very unlucky to begin any undertaking or even to do washing throughout the year on the day of the week on which the feast fell. Childermas was there called Dyzemas and a saying ran: “What is begun on Dyzemas Day will never be finished.” In Ireland it was called “the cross day of the year,” and it was said that anything then begun must have an unlucky ending.{17}

In folk-ritual the day is remarkable for its association with whipping customs. The seventeenth-century writer Gregorie mentions a custom of whipping up children on Innocents’ Day in the morning, and explains its purpose as being that the memory of Herod's “murther might stick the closer; and, in a moderate proportion, to act over the crueltie again in kind.”{18}

316This explanation will hardly hold water; the many and various examples of the practice of whipping at Christmas collected by Mannhardt{19} show that it is not confined either to Innocents’ Day or to children. Moreover it is often regarded not as a cruel infliction, but as a service for which return must be made in good things to eat.

In central and southern Germany the custom is called “peppering” (pfeffern) and also by other names. In the Orlagau the girls on St. Stephen's, and the boys on St. John's Day beat their parents and godparents with green fir-branches, while the menservants beat their masters with rosemary sticks, saying:

They are entertained with plum-loaf or gingerbreads and brandy. In the Saxon Erzgebirge the young fellows whip the women and girls on St. Stephen's Day, if possible while they are still in bed, with birch-rods, singing the while:

and on St. John's Day the women pay the men back. At several places in the Thuringian Forest children on Innocents’ Day beat passers-by with birch-boughs, and get in return apples, nuts, and other dainties. Various other German examples of the same class of practice are given by Mannhardt.{20}

In France children who let themselves be caught in bed on the morning of Holy Innocents’ came in for a whipping from their parents; while in one province, Normandy, the early risers among the young people themselves gave the sluggards a beating. The practice even gave birth to a verb—innocenter.{21}

There can be little doubt that the Innocents’ Day beating is a survival of a pre-Christian custom. Similar ritual scourging is found in many countries at various seasons of the year, and is by no means confined to Europe.{22} As now practised, it has 317often a harsh appearance, or has become a kind of teasing, as when in Bohemia at Easter young men whip girls until they give them something. Its original purpose, however, as we have seen in connection with St. Martin's rod, seems to have been altogether kindly. The whipping was not meant as a punishment or expiation or to harden people to pain, but either to expel harmful influences and drive out evil spirits or to convey by contact the virtues of some sacred tree.

318319320321

CHAPTER XV

Coming to January 1, the modern and the Roman New Year's Day, we shall find that most of its customs have been anticipated at earlier festivals; the Roman Kalends practices have often been shifted to Christmas, while old Celtic and Teutonic New Year practices have frequently been transferred to the Roman date.[113]

The observances of New Year's Day mainly rest, as was said in Chapter VI., on the principle that “a good beginning makes a good ending,” that as the first day is so will the rest be. If you would have plenty to eat during the year, dine lavishly on New Year's Day, if you would be rich see that your pockets are not empty at this critical season, if you would be lucky avoid like poison at this of all times everything of ill omen.

“On the Borders,” says Mr. W. Henderson, “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 322should 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.”{2}

The laying of stress on what happens on New Year's Day is by no means peculiarly European. Hindus, for instance, as Mr. Edgar Thurston tells us, “are very particular about catching sight of some auspicious object on the morning of New Year's Day, as the effects of omens seen on that occasion are believed to last throughout the year.” It is thought that a man's whole prosperity depends upon the things that he then happens to fix his eyes upon.{3}

Charms, omens, and good wishes are naturally the most prominent customs of January 1 and its Eve. The New Year in England can hardly be called a popular festival; there is no public holiday and the occasion is more associated with penitential Watch Night services and good resolutions than with rejoicing. But let the reader, if he be in London, pay a visit to Soho at this time, and he will get some idea of what the New Year means to the foreigner. The little restaurants are decorated with gay festoons of all colours and thronged with merrymakers, the shop-windows are crowded with all manner of recherché delicacies; it is the gala season of the year.

In France January 1 is a far more festal day than Christmas; it is then that presents are given, family gatherings held, and calls paid. In the morning children find their stockings filled with gifts, and then rush off to offer good wishes to their parents. In the afternoon the younger people call upon their older relations, and in the evening all meet for dinner at the home of the head of the family.{4}

In Germany the New Year is a time of great importance. Cards are far more numerous than at Christmas, and “New Year boxes” are given to the tradespeople, while on the Eve (Sylvesterabend) there are dances or parties, the custom of forecasting the future by lead-pouring is practised, and at the stroke of midnight there is a general cry of “Prosit Neu Jahr!”, a drinking of healths, and a shaking of hands.{5}

New Year wishes and “compliments of the season” are 323familiar to us all, but in England we have not that custom of paying formal calls which in France is so characteristic of January 1, when not only relations and personal friends, but people whose connection is purely official are expected to visit one another. In devout Brittany the wish exchanged takes a beautiful religious form—“I wish you a good year and Paradise at the end of your days.”{6}

New Year calling is by no means confined to France. In the United States it is one of the few traces left by the early Dutch settlers on American manners. The custom is now rapidly falling into disuse,{7} but in New York up to the middle of the nineteenth century “New Year's Day was devoted to the universal interchange of visits. Every door was thrown wide open. It was a breach of etiquette to omit any acquaintance in these annual calls, when old friendships were renewed and family differences amicably settled. A hearty welcome was extended even to strangers of presentable appearance.” At that time the day was marked by tremendous eating and drinking, and its visiting customs sometimes developed into wild riot. Young men in barouches would rattle from one house to another all day long. “The ceremony of calling was a burlesque. There was a noisy and hilarious greeting, a glass of wine was swallowed hurriedly, everybody shook hands all round, and the callers dashed out and rushed into the carriage and were driven rapidly to the next house.”{8}

The New Year calling to offer good wishes resembles in some respects the widespread custom of “first-footing,” based on the belief that the character of the first visitor on New Year's Day affects the welfare of the household during the year. We have already met with a “first-foot” in the polaznik of the southern Slavs on Christmas Day. It is to be borne in mind that for them, or at all events for the Crivoscian highlanders whose customs are described by Sir Arthur Evans, Christmas is essentially the festival of the New Year: New Year's Day is not spoken of at all, its name and ceremonies being completely absorbed by the feasts of “Great” and “Little” Christmas.{9}

The “first-foot” superstition is found in countries as far apart as 324Scotland and Macedonia. Let us begin with some English examples of it. In Shropshire the most important principle is that if luck is to rest on a house the “first-foot” must not be a woman. To provide against such an unlucky accident as that a woman should call first, people often engage a friendly man or boy to pay them an early visit. It is particularly interesting to find a Shropshire parallel to the polaznik's action in going straight to the hearth and striking sparks from the Christmas log,[114] when Miss Burne tells us that one old man who used to “let the New Year in” “always entered without knocking or speaking, and silently stirred the fire before he offered any greeting to the family.”{10}

In the villages of the Teme valley, Worcestershire and Herefordshire, “in the old climbing-boy days, chimneys used to be swept on New Year's morning, that one of the right sex should be the first to enter; and the young urchins of the neighbourhood went the round of the houses before daylight singing songs, when one of their number would be admitted into the kitchen ‘for good luck all the year.’” In 1875 this custom was still practised; and at some of the farmhouses, if washing-day chanced to fall on the first day of the year, it was either put off, or to make sure, before the women could come, the waggoner's lad was called up early that he might be let out and let in again.{11}

The idea of the unluckiness of a woman's being the “first-foot” is extraordinarily widespread; the present writer has met with it in an ordinary London restaurant, where great stress was laid upon a man's opening the place on New Year's morning before the waitresses arrived. A similar belief is found even in far-away China: it is there unlucky on New Year's Day to meet a woman on first going out.{12} Can the belief be connected with such ideas about dangerous influences proceeding from women as have been described by Dr. Frazer in Vol. III. of “The Golden Bough,”{13} or does it rest merely on a view of woman as the inferior sex? The unluckiness of first meeting a woman is, we may note, not confined to, but merely intensified on New Year's Day; in Shropshire{14} and in Germany{15} it belongs to any ordinary day.

325As to the general attitude towards woman suggested by these superstitions I may quote a striking passage from Miss Jane Harrison's “Themis.” “Woman to primitive man is a thing at once weak and magical, to be oppressed, yet feared. She is charged with powers of child-bearing denied to man, powers only half understood, forces of attraction, but also of danger and repulsion, forces that all over the world seem to fill him with dim terror. The attitude of man to woman, and, though perhaps in a less degree, of woman to man, is still to-day essentially magical.”{16}

“First-foot” superstitions flourish in the north of England and in Scotland. In the northern counties a man is often specially retained as “first-foot” or “lucky bird”; in some parts he must be a bachelor, and he is often expected to bring a present with him—a shovelful of coals, or some eatable, or whisky.{17} In the East Riding of Yorkshire a boy called the “lucky bird” used to come at dawn on Christmas morning as well as on New Year's Day, and bring a sprig of evergreens{18} —an offering by now thoroughly familiar to us. In Scotland, especially in Edinburgh, it is customary for domestic servants to invite their sweethearts to be their “first-foots.” The old Scotch families who preserve ancient customs encourage their servants to “first-foot” them, and grandparents like their grandchildren to perform for them the same service.{19} In Aberdeenshire it is considered most important that the “first-foot” should not come empty-handed. Formerly he carried spiced ale; now he brings a whisky-bottle. Shortbread, oat-cakes, “sweeties,” or sowens, were also sometimes brought by the “first-foot,” and occasionally the sowens were sprinkled on the doors and windows of the houses visited—a custom strongly suggesting a sacramental significance of some sort.{20}

Before we leave the subject of British “first-footing” we may notice one or two things that have possibly a racial significance. Not only must the “first-foot” be a man or boy, he is often required to be dark-haired; it is unlucky for a fair- or red-haired person to “let in” the New Year.{21} It has been suggested by Sir John Rhys that this idea rested in the first instance upon 326racial antipathy—the natural antagonism of an indigenous dark-haired people to a race of blonde invaders.{22} Another curious requirement—in the Isle of Man and Northumberland—is that the “first-foot” shall not be flat-footed: he should be a person with a high-arched instep, a foot that “water runs under.” Sir John Rhys is inclined to connect this also with some racial contrast. He remarks, by way of illustration, that English shoes do not as a rule fit Welsh feet, being made too low in the instep.{23}

Some reference has already been made to Scottish New Year customs. In Scotland, the most Protestant region of Europe, the country in which Puritanism abolished altogether the celebration of Christmas, New Year's Day is a great occasion, and is marked by various interesting usages, its importance being no doubt largely due to the fact that it has not to compete with the Church feast of the Nativity. Nowadays, indeed, the example of Anglicanism is affecting the country to a considerable extent, and Christmas Day is becoming observed in the churches. The New Year, however, is still the national holiday, and January 1 a great day for visiting and feasting, the chief, in fact, of all festivals.{24} New Year's Day and its Eve are often called the “Daft Days”; cakes and pastry of all kinds are eaten, healths are drunk, and calls are paid.{25}

In Edinburgh there are striking scenes on New Year's Eve. “Towards evening,” writes an observer, “the thoroughfares become thronged with the youth of the city.... As the midnight hour approaches, drinking of healths becomes frequent, and some are already intoxicated.... The eyes of the immense crowd are ever being turned towards the lighted clock-face of ‘Auld and Faithful’’ Tron [Church], the hour approaches, the hands seem to stand still, but in one second more the hurrahing, the cheering, the hand-shaking, the health-drinking, is all kept up as long as the clock continues to ring out the much-longed-for midnight hour.... The crowds slowly disperse, the much-intoxicated and helpless ones being hustled about a good deal, the police urging them on out of harm's way. The first-footers are off and away, flying in every direction through the city, singing, cheering, and shaking hands with all and sundry.”{26}

327One need hardly allude to the gathering of London Scots around St. Paul's to hear the midnight chime and welcome the New Year with the strains of “Auld Lang Syne,” except to say that times have changed and Scotsmen are now lost in the swelling multitude of roysterers of all nationalities.

Drinking is and was a great feature of the Scottish New Year's Eve. “On the approach of twelve o'clock, a hot pint was prepared—that is, a kettle or flagon full of warm, spiced, and sweetened ale, with an infusion of spirits. When the clock had struck the knell of the departed year, each member of the family drank of this mixture ‘A good health and a happy New Year and many of them’ to all the rest, with a general hand-shaking.” The elders of the family would then sally out to visit their neighbours, and exchange greetings.{27}

At Biggar in Lanarkshire it was customary to “burn out the old year” with bonfires, while at Burghead in Morayshire a tar-barrel called the “Clavie” was set on fire and carried about the village and the fishing boats. Its embers were scrambled for by the people and carefully kept as charms against witchcraft.{28} These fire-customs may be compared with those on Hallowe'en, which, as we have seen, is probably an old New Year's Eve.

Stewart in his “Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland” tells how on the last night of the year the Strathdown Highlanders used to bring home great loads of juniper, which on New Year's Day was kindled in the different rooms, all apertures being closed so that the smoke might produce a thorough fumigation. Not only human beings had to stand this, but horses and other animals were treated in the same way to preserve them from harm throughout the year. Moreover, first thing on New Year's morning, everybody, while still in bed, was asperged with a large brush.{29} There is a great resemblance here to the Catholic use of incense and holy water in southern Germany and Austria on the Rauchnächte (see also Chapter VIII.). In Tyrol these nights are Christmas, New Year's, and Epiphany Eves. When night falls the Tyrolese peasant goes with all his household through each room and outhouse, his wife bearing the holy water vessel and the censer. Every corner of the buildings, every animal, 328every human being is purified with the sacred smoke and the holy sprinkling, and even the Christmas pie must be hallowed in this way. In Orthodox Greek countries something of the same kind takes place, as we shall see, at the Epiphany. To drive away evil spirits is no doubt the object of all these rites.{30}

The most interesting of Scottish New Year customs, considered as religious survivals, is a practice found in the Highlands on New Year's Eve, and evidently of sacrificial origin. It has been described by several writers, and has various forms. According to one account the hide of the mart or winter cow was wrapped round the head of one of a company of men, who all made off belabouring the hide with switches. The disorderly procession went three times deiseal (according to the course of the sun) round each house in the village, striking the walls and shouting on coming to a door a rhyme demanding admission. On entering, each member of the party was offered refreshments, and their leader gave to the goodman of the house the “breast-stripe” of a sheep, deer, or goat, wrapped round the point of a shinty stick.{31}

We have here another survival of that oft-noted custom of skin-wearing, which, as has been seen, originated apparently in a desire for contact with the sanctity of the sacrificed victim. Further, the “breast-stripe” given to the goodman of each house is evidently meant to convey the hallowed influences to each family. It is an oval strip, and no knife may be used in removing it from the flesh. The head of the house sets fire to it, and it is given to each person in turn to smell. The inhaling of its fumes is a talisman against fairies, witches, and demons. In the island of South Uist, according to a quite recent account, each person seizes hold of it as it burns, making the sign of the cross, if he be a Catholic, in the name of the Trinity, and it is put thrice sun-wise about the heads of those present. If it should be extinguished it is a bad omen for the New Year.{32}

The writer of the last account speaks of the “breast-strip” as the “Hogmanay,” and it is just possible that the well-known Hogmanay processions of children on New Year's Eve (in Scotland and elsewhere) may have some connection with the ritual above described. It is customary for the poorer children to 329swaddle themselves in a great sheet, doubled up in front so as to form a vast pocket, and then go along the streets in little bands, calling out “Hogmanay” at the doors of the wealthier classes, and expecting a dole of oaten bread. Each child gets a quadrant of oat-cake (sometimes with cheese), and this is called the “Hogmanay.” Here is one of the rhymes they sing:—