ANCIENT MERRY-MAKINGS, FEASTS AND CEREMONIES PECULIAR TO CERTAIN SEASONS, AT WHICH ALE WAS THE PRINCIPAL DRINK. — HARVEST HOME, SHEEP SHEARING, AND OTHER SONGS.

ENGLAND was merry England then, and whatever may be thought of the utility of attempting to revive the ancient sports and amusements of the people, it is undeniable that when the old customs and games went out of vogue, they left behind them a void which seems without any immediate prospect of being filled. We have no doubt gained in many ways by changed habits of life and modes of thought, but it must not be forgotten that at the same time life has lost much of its old picturesqueness and variety. These simple, hearty festivals of old, in which our ancestors so much delighted, served to light up the dull round of the recurring seasons, and to mark with a red letter the day in the calendar appropriate to their celebration. It was these that gained for our country in mediæval times the name of “Merrie England.” The purpose of this chapter, however, is not to compose a dirge on the departed {233} glories of our English merry-makings, but rather to give in short limits some account of the principal feasts and ceremonies in which the national beverage, personified by the familiar name of John Barleycorn, figured as a constant and well-tried friend, a provocative to mirth and good feeling, to jollity and hearty enjoyment. The principal merry-makings of old England were associated with certain special days of the year, or with various events, important in the life of the people, which though not fixed to any particular day in the calendar, were from their nature connected with certain seasons. May Day and Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and Twelfth Night, the Harvest Home, the Sheep-shearing Supper, and many another minor festival, all served to make the labourer’s lot seem an easier one, and to vary the monotonous round of toil. Herrick thus alludes to the number and variety of the sports and pastimes incidental to the country life in his day:—

In many a village at the present day the only representative, if so it may be called, of all these rustic jollifications, is the annual dinner of the members of the sick club, if funds will permit, or perhaps tea and a magic lantern.

Where can we begin better than with New Year’s Day and the ancient custom of the wassail? New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were anciently, and still are to some extent, celebrated with various observances; presents and good wishes for the coming year were freely exchanged, and sometimes the lasses and lads would pay their neighbours the compliment of singing a carol to bury the old and usher in the glad new year. But more generally the practice was observed of a {234} crowd of youths and maidens entering their friends’ houses in the first hours of New Year’s Day, bearing with them the wassail-bowl of spiced ale, and singing verses appropriate to the occasion. The origin of the name wassail and of the ceremonies connected with it, is well known and better authenticated than that of most of our ancient customs. Rowena, the daughter of Hengist, on being presented to Vortigern at a feast which her father had prepared for him, kneeled before him and offered him a bowl with the words “Louerd king wœs hœil,” that is, “Lord King, your health.” Vortigern is represented in Layamon’s Brut as not understanding the phrase—

Old Geoffrey of Monmouth, after relating the legend, remarks that from that time down to his own day it had been the custom in Britain for one who drinks to another to say, “Wacht heil!” and for that other who pledges him in return, to answer, “Drink heil!” The word wassail, from being used to signify a pledge or greeting, in time came to denote feasting in general, and in the phrase, “wassail-bowl,” to con-note the particular liquor, spiced ale, with which the bowl was filled.

Milner, in a dissertation on an ancient cup, supposed to be a wassail-cup, inserted in the eleventh volume of the Archæologia, states that the introduction of Christianity amongst our ancestors did not at all interfere with the practice of wassailing. On the contrary, the custom began to assume a sort of religious aspect; and the wassail-bowl itself, which in great monasteries was placed on the Abbot’s table, at the upper end of the refectory, to be circulated amongst the community at his discretion, received the honourable appellation of Poculum Caritatis. The wassail-bowl is probably the original of the Grace Cup and Loving Cup. {235}

It was also customary in some places for the poor of a village at Christmas time or on New Year’s Eve, to go round to the doors of their richer neighbours, bearing a wassail-bowl, decked with ribbons and a golden apple, and singing a carol appropriate to the occasion. This interesting custom is still carried out to the letter at Chippenham, in Wiltshire. On Christmas Eve five or six burly labourers, carrying a bowl gaily decorated with ribbons, go round from house to house and sing a peculiarly quaint rhyme, of much the same character as that given below, which was once common in Gloucestershire, particularly in the neighbourhood of “Stow on the Wold where the wind blows cold.”

From this wassail-song it may be gathered that the persons visited were expected to contribute to the wassail-bowl. Another example of a wassailing song begins thus:—

In Devonshire the eve of the Epiphany was devoted to this custom, and in that apple-bearing country, cider was the wassail used on the occasion, and the apple tree the chief recipient of the country folks’ good wishes. The wassailers, with good supply of their favourite beverage, would proceed to some gnarled and crooked, but productive apple tree, and there, forming a circle about his ancient trunk, would drink his health with some such incantation as this:—

A variety of the New Year’s Wassail-Bowl custom was, until a few years ago, practised in Scotland. What is called a hot pint (i.e., a great kettle full of hot sweetened ale), was prepared, and when the clock had sounded out the knell of the old year, each member of the family drank “A good health and a Happy New Year to all.” A move was then made by the revellers with what remained of the hot pint, and a store of short-bread and bun to visit their friends and neighbours, and to give them seasonable greeting. If the party were the first to enter a friend’s house since twelve o’clock had struck, they were called the first foot, and must come in with hands full of cakes, of which all the inmates must partake; and so they went from house to house until either their endurance or that long, long hot pint, failed. Even within this century the custom was so religiously observed that the streets of Edinburgh are described as having been more thronged at midnight than at mid-day. This old practice is said to have received its death-blow in 1812, when the descent of gangs of thieves and pickpockets upon the wassailers caused such scenes of rioting and violence that, after languishing for a few years, it came to an untimely end.

It was customary at the beginning of the present century for the inhabitants of the parish of Deerness, in Orkney, to assemble on New Year’s Eve, and pay a round of visits through the district, drinking their neighbours’ healths, and singing various old songs, of which the following may be taken as a specimen:—

The composition of the wassail-bowl has been dealt with elsewhere, and it only remains to be added that though the drinking of its spiced contents was very usual on New Year’s Eve, it was not peculiar to that day, but accompanied most occasions of mediæval festivity, and, indeed, was so common that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the wassail-bowl was frequently referred to by the writers of that Golden Age of English {238} literature as symbolical of feasting and good cheer in general. It is thus that Herrick mentions it in his beautiful little poem, entitled A Thanksgiving for his House:—

Twelfth Night was specially celebrated with wassailing, accompanied with the consumption of spiced cakes, the combination giving rise to the phrase “cakes and ale.”

The twelfth day after Christmas was celebrated in the old days in honour of the three Kings, as the Wise Men were called who came out of the East to worship the Messiah. One of the chief ceremonies connected with the day was the election of the King and Queen of the Bean. A large cake—the Twelfth Cake—had been previously made, in which a bean and a pea were inserted, the cake was cut up and distributed by lot among the company, and whoever got the piece which contained the bean was crowned King of the Bean, while the pea conferred the distinction of Queen upon its happy recipient.

Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Staffordshire (1685), describes a curious custom called the Hobby-horse dance, which he says had been practised at Pagets Bromley within memory of persons living when he wrote. On Twelfth Day a man on a hobby-horse used to dance down the village street, holding in his hand a bow and arrow, and accompanied by six men, carrying deers’ heads on their shoulders. “To this Hobby-horse dance,” says our author, “there also belong’d a pot, which was kept by turnes by 4 or 5 of the chief of the Tow, whom they call’d Reeves, who provided Cakes and Ale to put in this pot; all people who had any kindness for the good intent of the Institution of the sport, giving pence a piece for themselves and families; and so forraigners too, that came to see it: with which mony (the charge of the Cakes and Ale being defrayed) they not only repaired their Church but {240} kept their poore too: which charges are not now perhaps so cheerfully boarn.”

and not the honest juice of barley. Suffice it to note in passing that on the 2nd of February, 1601, John Manningham, a student of the Middle Temple, records in his Diary: “At our feast we had a play called Twelfth Night or What You Will.” This is the earliest recorded mention of that grand Twelfth-night revel, and was, perhaps, its first performance.

A minor festival, Plough Monday, used to be celebrated on the first Monday after Twelfth Night. A plough, dressed up with ribbons by the villagers, was taken round from house to house. Its escort consisted of a number of rustics dressed up in various mummers’ guises, and chanting verses, the text of which was “God speed the Plough.” The principal performers were Bessy and the Clown, Bessy being, in fact, a man dressed up in fantastic female weeds. Bread, cheese, and ale were asked for at the farmhouses and seldom refused, and a variety of curious dances and uncouth antics completed the entertainment of the day. {241}

The season of Lent, of course, was marked by no special festivities, but when Easter Sunday was passed, the reaction from the enforced restraint of the previous period made the enjoyment of the Easter-week festivities all the keener. Easter Monday and Tuesday were in some places noted for the curious custom known as “heaving;” on the Monday the men “heaved” the women (i.e., lifted them off the ground and kissed them), and on the Tuesday the women’s turn came, and they heaved the men. “Many a time have I passed along the streets inhabited by the lower orders of people,” says one who has witnessed the ceremony, “and seen parties of Jolly matrons assembled round tables on which stood a foaming tankard of Ale. Woe to the luckless man that dared to invade their prerogatives! as sure as seen he was pursued, as sure taken, heaved and kissed, and compelled to pay a fine of sixpence for ‘leave and license’ to depart.”

The antiquity of the custom is proved by an entry in one of the Tower Rolls of payments made to certain maids-of-honour for having taken Edward I. in his bed and “lifted him.”

The second Monday and Tuesday after Easter were known in olden days as Hock-tide. The Tuesday was the principal day, and was designated Hock Day. Many derivations have been suggested for the name; the best seems to be that which connects it with the German hoch (high). Hock Day would thus denote a day of high festivity. Be that as it may, the name is of great antiquity. In the Annals of Dunstaple we read that in 1242 “Henry III., King of England, crossed over on Ochedai with a great army against the King of France.” On Hock Day the women of the village would go into the streets with cords in their hands, and every one of the opposite sex whom they could catch, was bound until he purchased his release by a contribution for the purposes of the common feast. On this day the feasting seems to have frequently passed into excess, and sometimes with direful results; the Annalist of Dunstaple tells that on Hokke-day in the year 1252 the village of Esseburne was “burned down miserably.” In 1450 a Bishop of Worcester prohibited the celebrations of Hock-tide, on the ground that they led to dissipation and other evils. There seems to be no connection between this festival and the Hock-cart spoken of by Herrick, and to be mentioned anon, save that the name of each takes its derivation, if our surmise be the correct one, from the word hoch. The Hock Day meaning High Day; and the Hock Cart, the harvest-home wain piled high with the trophies of autumn.

We next come to the May Day festivities, which in many respects {242} may be regarded as the most joyous and picturesque of all the year. Without staying to inquire whether the origin of the festival is to be traced to the old Roman Floralia, or games in honour of the goddess who ushered in the spring and strewed the earth with flowers, let us pause for a while to contemplate the old ceremony of “bringing home the May,” as it was performed some few centuries ago. On May Day morning the inhabitants of every village would go out at an early hour into the fields to gather garlands of hawthorn blossom and other flowers, with which they decorated the May-pole and every door and window of the village. These floral trophies were brought home to the tune of pipe and drum; the fairest maid in all the hamlet was crowned with flowers as Queen of the May, and, embowered in hawthorn branches, presided over the mirth and feasting of the day. Stubbe, in his Anatomy of Abuses (1585), describes the ceremony of raising the May-pole, in language which gives some notion of the pretty scene, and which is all the more likely not to be overdrawn, from the evident abhorrence of the writer to what he regarded as the impiety of the whole affair. “They have twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen,” he writes, “every one having a sweet nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maie pole (this stinckyng Idoll rather) which is couered all ouer with flowers and hearbes bounde rounde aboute with stringes, from the top to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred women and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up with handkerchiefs and flagges streaming on the toppe they strowe the grounde aboute, binde green boughes aboute it, sett up sommer houses, Bowers and Arbours hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their Idolles, whereof this is a perfect pattern or rather the thing itself.”

In olden days even the King and Queen condescended to mingle with their lieges, and to assist in commemorating the time-honoured custom. Chaucer, in his Court of Love, describes how on May Day, “Forth goeth all the Court both most and least, to fetch the flowers fresh.”

When this May-pole was not required for festive purposes, it lay suspended on great iron hooks above the doors of the neighbouring houses. In the reign of Edward VI., after a sermon preached at the cross of St. Paul’s against the iniquity of May games, the inhabitants of these houses in a fit of pious enthusiasm, desiring, doubtless, to replenish their wood-cellars and to destroy an “idoll” at the same time, cut the pole in pieces, each man retaining that portion of it which had been before his house. The May-pole in the Strand was another celebrated {244} shaft. It was erected at the Restoration, when there was a revival of the popular sports which the sour-faced Puritans had so unsparingly condemned. It was 134 ft. high, and was raised with great ceremony and public rejoicings.

At Helston, in Cornwall, on the 8th of May, called “Furry Day,” may still be witnessed a survival of the old May Day festivities. Very early in the morning the young men and maidens of the place go off into the country to breakfast. About seven o’clock they return bearing green branches, and decked with flowers, they dance through the streets to the tune of the “Furry Dance.” At eight o’clock the “Hal-an-Tow” (Heel and Toe?) song is sung, and dancing and merriment fill the remainder of the day.

The custom is popularly attributed to the escape of the town from the threatened attack of a fiery dragon, who, in days when dragons were more common than they are now, hung in mid-air over the place, driving the inhabitants to the greenwood tree for shelter. On his disappearance the people returned with great rejoicings and to this day commemorate their fortunate escape. The true explanation is probably that the festival is simply a survival of the old celebration in honour of Flora.

In some few country villages a May-pole still survives. One such is to be seen in the little village of Welford, in Gloucestershire, painted in stripes of red, white, and blue. It was decked with flowers on May Day not many years ago, owing to the exertions of some of the local lovers of things ancient; but the genuine spirit of the festival seems to have entirely disappeared, and the ceremony has not been repeated.

In the early days of May occur what used to be known as the Gange Days, on which the ceremony of beating the parish bounds was, and still {246} is in some places, undertaken, the work of the day being wound up by a more or less liberal distribution of buns and ale. Sums of money were occasionally left to provide the refreshments for these parish perambulations. At Edgcott, in Buckinghamshire, there was an acre of land called “Gang Monday Land,” the income of which was devoted to the provision of cakes and ale for those who took part in the business of the day; and in Clifton Reynes, in the same county, a devise of land for a like purpose provides that one small loaf, a piece of cheese, and a pint of ale, should be given to every married person, and half a pint of ale to every unmarried person, resident in Clifton, when they walked the parish boundaries in Rogation week.

When Whitsuntide came round, the time arrived for those quaint festivals to which Ale gave not only his support, but also his name, and which were known as Whitsun Ales. The Whitsun Ale was a special form of the Church Ale, to be mentioned anon. It is thus described by an old writer:—“Two young men of the Parish are yerely chosen by their last foregoers to be wardens, who, dividing the task, make collection among the parishioners of whatsoever provision it pleaseth them voluntarily to bestow. This they employ in brewing, baking, and other acates55 against Whitsuntide; upon which holy days the neighbours meet at the Church-house, and there merrily feed on their owne victuals contributing some petty portion to the stock, which by many smalls, groweth to a meetly greatness: for there is entertayned a kind of emulation between these wardens, who, by his graciousness in gathering, and good husbandry in expending, can best advance the churche’s profit. Besides, the neighbour parishes at those times lovingly visit each one another, and this way frankly spend their money together. The afternoones are consumed in such exercises as olde and yong folke (having leisure) doe accustomably weare out the time withall. When the feast is ended, the wardens yield in their account to the parishioners: and such money as exceedeth the disbursement is layd up in store, to defray any extraordinary charges arising in the parish, or imposed on them for the good of the country, or the prince’s service: neither of which commonly so gripe but that somewhat still remayneth to cover the purse’s bottom.”

The Morris Dancers regarded Whitsuntide as their chief festival. Introduced into this country from Spain, the Morisco or Moorish {247} Dance had, in the reign of Henry VIII., attained a great popularity. There seems to have been at that time two principal performers, Robin Hood and Maid Marian; then there was a friar, a piper, a fool, and the rank and file of the dancers. In the parish accounts of Kingston-on-Thames for the year 1537 the Morris Dancers’ wardrobe, then in the charge of the churchwardens, consisted of “A fryers cote of russet and a kyrtele weltyd with red cloth, a Mowren’s (Moor’s) cote of buckram, and four morres daunsars cotes of white fustian spangelid and two gryne saten cotes, and disardde’s (fool’s) cote of cotton, and six payre of garters with belles.”

In Elizabethan times the Morris Dance, and indeed every other kind of picturesque country festivity, may be said to have reached the zenith of popularity, soon, alas! to be followed by the chilling austerity of the Puritans, of whom it was so truly said that they “like nothing; no state, no sex; music, dancing, etc., unlawful even in kings; no kind of recreation, no kind of entertainment,—no, not so much as hawking; all are damned.”

Whitsuntide, with its length­en­ing days, was spe­cial­ly set apart for sports and old-fash­ioned games, and amongst the many meet­ings for such purposes, none at­tained a wider pop­u­lar­ity than the Cots­wold or Dover’s Games. Those who are familiar with the country made classic by its as­soc­ia­tions with the great Master of English poetry, know well the green hill, still called Dover’s Hill, which forms an outpost of the main body of the Cotswolds, and overlooks the smiling vale of Evesham. On this spot, time out of mind, rural sports and festivities had been held under the name of the Cotswold Games. “How does your fallow greyhound, sir?” says Slender to Page, “I heard say he was outrun at Cotsale.” This was the site chosen by Robert Dover, an attorney of Barton-on-the-Heath, for the enlargement and perpetuation of those national sports in which he took so keen an interest, and which he {248} hoped would counteract the narrow spirit of bigotry which was beginning in his day to curtail the innocent amusements of the people. Armed with a formal authority from King James, Dover was so successful in his organization of the Games that, with a short interregnum during the Commonwealth days, their popularity continued until well into the present century. A curious old volume of poems, called Annalia Dubrensia, published in 1636, contains many quaint descriptions of the Games and their object. Drayton, Ben Jonson, Thomas Randall and others of lesser note, contributed each a poem to this collection. One of the contributors thus eulogises the sports and their patron:—

The nature of the sports may be gathered from an inspection of the curious old cut taken from the frontispiece of the above-named work. Dancing, tumbling, wrestling, sword-play, quarter-staff, cudgel play, casting the hammer, dog-racing, horse-racing, coursing—must have made up a highly varied programme, while the table in the midst of the field of view shows, both by its conspicuous position and by the

size of the cups and tankards in use, that the good creatures, meat and ale, were by no means neglected. The wonderful structure at the top of the picture represents the wooden castle erected every year, and called Dover Castle in honour of the founder of the sports. The artist does not appear to have quite done justice to his subject if we may credit the account of the Castle given by one of the versifiers:— {250}

The figure of the founder occupies a prominent place in the foreground. He used to appear in clothes that had belonged to King James, and it is said wore them with much greater dignity than did the King. Dover seems to have been a remarkable person in more ways than one, as may be gathered from the following quaint note, to be found in one of the editions of the Annalia:—“He was bred an Attorney, who never try’d but two causes, always made up the Difference.”

The next in order of the country celebrations in which ale formed the principal drink, were the sheep-shearing feasts, formerly so common, but now in most places things of the past. Many songs have been preserved which record these old merry-makings when the day’s work was done, and the farm labourers were gathered round their master’s hospitable board. One of these, taken from the Sussex Archæological Collections, is given below. It is a sample of many.