[732] On the name Pickle Herring, see W. Creizenach, Die Schauspiele der englischen Komödianten, xciii. It does not occur in old English comedy, but was introduced into Anglo-German and German farce as a name for the ‘fool’ or ‘clown’ by Robert Reynolds, the ‘comic lead’ of a company of English actors who crossed to Germany in 1618. Probably it was Reynolds’ invention, and suggested by the sobriquet ‘Stockfish’ taken by an earlier Anglo-German actor, John Spencer. The ‘spicy’ names of the other Revesby clowns are probably imitations of Pickle Herring.
[733] The lines (197-8)
suggest the vaunt of the champions in the St. George plays.
[734] Is ‘Anthony’ a reminiscence of the Seven Champions? The Fool says (ll. 247-9), like Beelzebub in the St. George plays,
He also jests (l. 229) on his ‘tool’; cf. p. 196 n.
[735] Brand, i. 278; Dyer, 37; Ditchfield, 47; Drake, 65; Mrs. Chaworth Musters, A Cavalier Stronghold, 387. Plough Monday is the Monday after Twelfth night, when the field work begins. A plough is dragged round the village and a quête made. The survivals of the custom are mainly in the north, east and east midlands. In the city, a banquet marks the day. A Norfolk name is ‘Plowlick Monday,’ and a Hunts one ‘Plough-Witching.’ The plough is called the ‘Fool Plough,’ ‘Fond Plough,’ ‘Stot Plough’ or ‘White Plough’; the latter name probably from the white shirts worn (cf. p. 200). At Cropwell, Notts, horses cut out in black or red adorn these. In Lincolnshire, bunches of corn were worn in the hats. Those who draw the plough are called ‘Plough Bullocks,’ ‘Boggons’ or ‘Stots.’ They sometimes dance a morris-or sword-dance, or act a play. At Haxey, they take a leading part in the Twelfth day ‘Hood-game’ (p. 150). In Northants their faces are blackened or reddled. The plough is generally accompanied by the now familiar grotesques, ‘Bessy’ and the Fool or ‘Captain Cauf-Tail.’ In Northants there are two of each; the Fools have humps, and are known as ‘Red Jacks’; there is also a ‘Master.’ In Lincolnshire, reapers, threshers, and carters joined the procession. A contribution to the quête is greeted with the cry of ‘Largess!’ and a churl is liable to have the ground before his door ploughed up. Of old the profits of the quête or ‘plow-gadrin’ went into the parish chest, or as in Norfolk kept a ‘plow-light’ burning in the church. A sixteenth century pamphlet speaks of the ‘sensing the Ploughess’ on Plough Monday. Jevons, 247, calls the rite a ‘worship of the plough’; probably it rather represents an early spring perambulation of the fields in which the divinity rode upon a plough, as elsewhere upon a ship. A ploughing custom of putting a loaf in the furrow has been noted. Plough Monday has also its water rite. The returning ploughman was liable to be soused by the women, like the bearer of the ‘neck’ at harvest. Elsewhere, the women must get the kettle on before the ploughman can reach the hearth, or pay forfeit.
[736] Printed by Mrs. Chaworth Musters in A Cavalier Stronghold (1890), 388, and in a French translation by Mrs. H. G. M. Murray-Aynsley, in R. d. T. P. iv. 605.
[737] ‘Hopper Joe’ also calls himself ‘old Sanky-Benny,’ which invites interpretation. Is it ‘Saint Bennet’ or ‘Benedict’?
Cf. the St. George play (p. 214).
[739] ‘Dame Jane’ says,
In the Lincolnshire play Beelzebub has this vaunt. Cf. the St. George play (p. 220).
[740] The Doctor can cure ‘the hipsy-pipsy, palsy, and the gout’; cf. the St. George play (p. 213).
[741] Printed in French by Mrs. Murray Aynsley in R. d. T. P. iv. 609.
[742] The farce recorded as occasionally introduced at Whitby (cf. p. 192, n. 1) but not described, probably belonged to the ‘popular’ type.
[743] Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 169, prints a Peebles version. Instead of George, a hero called Galatian fights the Black Knight. Judas, with his bag, replaces Beelzebub. But it is the same play. Versions or fragments of it are found all over the Lowlands. The performers are invariably called ‘guizards.’ In a Falkirk version the hero is Prince George of Ville. Hone, E. D. B., says that the hero is sometimes Galacheus or St. Lawrence. But in another Falkirk version, part of which he prints, the name is Galgacus, and of this both Galacheus and Galatian are probably corruptions, for Galgacus or Calgacus was the leader of the Picts in their battle with Agricola at the Mons Graupius (A. D. 84; Tacitus, Agricola, 29).
[744] Appendix K. Other versions may be conveniently compared in Manly, i. 289; Ditchfield, 310. The best discussions of the St. George plays in general, besides Mr. Ordish’s, are J. S. Udall, Christmas Mummers in Dorsetshire (F. L. R. iii. 1. 87); Jackson and Burne, 482; G. L. Gomme, Christmas Mummers (Nature, Dec. 23, 1897). The notes and introductions to the versions tabulated above give many useful data.
[745] In F. L. x. 351, Miss Florence Grove describes some Christmas mummers seen at Mullion, Cornwall, in 1890-1. ‘Every one naturally knows who the actors are, since there are not more than a few hundred persons within several miles; but no one is supposed to know who they are or where they come from, nor must any one speak to them, nor they to those in the houses they visit. As far as I can remember the performance is silent and dramatic; I have no recollection of reciting.’ The dumb show is rare and probably a sign of decadence, but the bit of rural etiquette is archaic and recurs in savage drama.
[746] In Berkshire and at Eccleshall, Slasher is ‘come from Turkish land.’ On the other hand, the two often appear in the same version, and even, as at Leigh, fight together.
[747] Burne-Jackson, 483.
[748] Ibid. 483. He appears in the MSS. written by the actors as ‘Singuy’ or ‘Singhiles.’ Professor Skeat points out that, as he ‘sprang from English ground,’ St. Guy (of Warwick) was probably the original form, and St. Giles a corruption.
[749] Here may be traced the influence of the Napoleonic wars. In Berkshire, Slasher is a ‘French officer.’
[750] F. L. v. 88.
[751] Ditchfield, 12.
[752] Sandys, 153.
[753] P. Tennant, Village Notes, 179.
[754] Beelzebub appears also in the Cropwell Plough Monday play; cf. p. 209. Doubtless he once wore a calf-skin, like other rural ‘Fools,’ but, as far as I know, this feature has dropped out. Sandys, 154, however, quotes ‘Captain Calf-tail’ as the name of the ‘Fool’ in an eighteenth-century Scotch version, and Mr. Gomme (Nature, Dec. 23, 1897), says ‘some of the mummers, or maskers as the name implies, formerly disguised themselves as animals—goats, oxen, deer, foxes and horses being represented at different places where details of the mumming play have been recorded.’ Nowadays, Beelzebub generally carries a club and a ladle or frying-pan, with which he makes the quête. At Newport and Eccleshall he has a bell fastened on his back; at Newbold he has a black face. The ‘Fool’ figured in the Manchester chap-book resembles Punch.
[755] See notes to Steyning play in F. L. J. ii. 1.
[756] Mr. Gomme, in Nature for Dec. 23, 1897, finds in this broom ‘the magic weapon of the witch’ discussed by Pearson, ii. 29. Probably, however, it was introduced into the plays for the purposes of the quête; cf. p. 217. It is used also to make a circle for the players, but here it may have merely taken the place of a sword.
[757] Parish, Dict. of Sussex Dialect, 136. The mummers are called ‘John Jacks.’
[758] Cf. p. 268, n. 4.
[759] Sandys, 301.
[760] Cf. Capulet, in Romeo and Juliet, i. 5. 28 ‘A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls’; and Puck who precedes the dance of fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, v. 1. 396
[761] Ditchfield, 315. ‘The play in this village is performed in most approved fashion, as the Rector has taken the matter in hand, coached the actors in their parts, and taught them some elocution.’ This sort of thing, of course, is soon fatal to folk-drama.
[762] Burne-Jackson, 484; Manly, i. 289.
[763] Burne-Jackson, 402, 410; F. L. iv. 162; Dyer, 504. The broom is used in Christmas and New Year quêtes in Scotland and Yorkshire, even when there is no drama. Northall 205, gives a Lancashire Christmas song, sung by ‘Little David Doubt’ with black face, skin coat and broom. At Bradford they ‘sweep out the Old Year’; at Wakefield they sweep up dirty hearths. In these cases the notion of threatening to do the unlucky thing has gone.
[764] Ditchfield, 12. An ‘Old Bet’ is mentioned in 5 N. Q. iv. 511, as belonging to a Belper version. The woman is worked in with various ingenuity, but several versions have lost her. The prologue to the Newcastle chap-book promises a ‘Dives’ who never appears. Was this the woman? In the Linton in Craven sword-dance, she has the similar name of ‘Miser.’
[765] I hardly like to trace a reminiscence of the connexion with the renouveau in the ‘General Valentine’ and ‘Colonel Spring’ who fight and are slain in the Dorset (A) version; but there the names are. Mr. Gomme (Nature for Dec. 23, 1897) finds in certain mumming costumes preserved in the Anthropological Museum at Cambridge and made of paper scales, a representation of leaves of trees. Mr. Ordish, I believe, finds in them the scales of the dragon (F. L. iv. 163). Some scepticism may be permitted as to these conjectures. In most places the dress represents little but rustic notions of the ornamental. Cf. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, bk. ii. ch. 3: ‘The girls could never be brought to respect tradition in designing and decorating the armour: they insisted on attaching loops and bows of silk and velvet in any situation pleasing to their taste. Gorget, gusset, bassinet, cuirass, gauntlet, sleeve, all alike in the view of these feminine eyes were practicable spaces whereon to sew scraps of fluttering colour.’ The usual costume of the sword-dancers, as we have seen (p. 200), was a clean white smock, and probably that of the mummers is based upon this.
[766] T. F. Ordish, in F. L. iv. 158.
[767] Printed in The Old English Drama (1830), vol. iii. Burne-Jackson, 490, think that ‘the masque owes something to the play,’ but the resemblances they trace are infinitesimal. A play of St. George for England, by William or Wentworth Smith, was amongst the manuscripts destroyed by Warburton’s cook, and a Bartholomew Fair ‘droll’ of St. George and the Dragon is alluded to in the Theatre of Compliments, 1688 (Fleay, C. H. ii. 251; Hazlitt, Manual, 201).
[768] In the Dorset (A) version, the king of Egypt is ‘Anthony’ and the doctor ‘Mr. Martin Dennis.’ Conceivably these are reminiscences of St. Anthony of Padua and St. Denys of France. The Revesby Plough Monday play (cf. p. 208) has also an ‘Anthony.’ The ‘Seven Champions’ do not appear in the English sword-dances described in ch. ix, but the morris-dancers at Edgemond wake used to take that name (Burne-Jackson, 491). Mrs. Nina Sharp writes in F. L. R. iii. 1. 113: ‘I was staying at Minety, near Malmesbury, in Wilts (my cousin is the vicar), when the mummers came round (1876). They went through a dancing fight in two lines opposed to each other—performed by the Seven Champions of Christendom. There was no St. George, and they did not appear to have heard of the Dragon. When I inquired for him, they went through the performance of drawing a tooth—the tooth produced, after great agony, being a horse’s. The mummers then carried into the hall a bush gaily decorated with coloured ribbons.... [They] were all in white smock frocks and masks. At Acomb, near York, I saw very similar mummers a few years ago, but they distinguished St. George, and the Dragon was a prominent person. There was the same tooth-drawing, and I think the Dragon was the patient, and was brought back to life by the operation.’ I wonder whether the ‘Seven Champions’ were named or whether Mrs. Sharp inferred them. Anyhow, there could not have been seven at Minety, without St. George. The ‘bush’ is an interesting feature. According to C. R. Smith, Isle of Wight Words (Eng. Dial. Soc. xxxii. 63) the mummers are known in Kent as the ‘Seven Champions.’
[769] Entered on the Stationers’ Registers in 1596. The first extant edition is dated 1597. Johnson first introduced Sabra, princess of Egypt, into the story; in the mediaeval versions, the heroine is an unnamed princess of Silena in Libya. The mummers’ play follows Johnson, and makes it Egypt. On Johnson was based Heylin’s History of St. George (1631 and 1633), and on one or both of these Kirke’s play.
[770] Jackson and Burne, 489: ‘Miss L. Toulmin Smith ... considers that the diction and composition of the [Shropshire] piece, as we now have it, date mainly from the seventeenth century.’
[771] Dyer, 193; Anstis, Register of the Garter (1724), ii. 38; E. Ashmole, Hist. of the Garter (ed. 1672), 188, 467; (ed. 1715), 130, 410.
[772] F. Blomefield, Hist. of Norfolk (1805), iv. 6, 347; Mackerell, MS. Hist. of Norfolk (1737), quoted in Norfolk Archaeology, iii. 315; Notices Illustrative of Municipal Pageants and Processions (with plates, publ. C. Muskett, Norwich, 1850); Toulmin Smith, English Gilds (E. E. T. S.), 17, 443; Kelly, 48. Hudson and Tingey, Cal. of Records of Norwich (1898), calendar many documents of the guild.
[773] Hartland, iii. 58, citing Jacobus à Voragine, Legenda Aurea, xciii, gives the story of St. Margaret, and the appearance of the devil to her in the shape of a dragon. She was in his mouth, but made the sign of the cross, and he burst asunder.
[774] Cf. p. 177.
[775] Kelly, 37. The ‘dressyng of the dragon’ appears in the town accounts for 1536. The guild had dropped the riding, even before the Reformation.
[776] Harris, 97, 190, 277; Kelly, 41. The guild was formed by journeymen in 1424. Probably there was a riding. In any case, at the visit of Prince Edward in 1474, there was a pageant or mystère mimé ‘upon the Conddite in the Crosse Chepyng’ of ‘seint George armed and Kynges doughtr knelyng afore hym wt a lambe and the fader and the moder beyng in a toure a boven beholdyng seint George savyng their doughtr from the dragon.’ There was a similar pageant at the visit of Prince Arthur in 1498.
[777] Kelly, 42.
[778] Morris, 139, 168; Fenwick, Hist. of Chester, 372; Dyer, 195. The Fraternity of St. George was founded for the encouragement of shooting in 1537. They had a chapel with a George in the choir of St. Peter’s. St. George’s was the great day for races on the Rooddee. In 1610 was a famous show, wherein St. George was attended by Fame, Mercury, and various allegorical figures.
[779] Cf. Representations, s. v. York, Dublin.
[780] Dyer, 194, gives from Coates, Hist. of Reading, 221, the account for setting-up a ‘George’ in 1536. Dugdale, Hist. of Warwickshire, 928, has a notice of a legacy in 1526 by John Arden to Aston church of his ‘white harneis ... for a George to were it, and to stand on his pewe, a place made for it.’
[781] R. W. Goulding, Louth Records, quotes from the churchwardens’ accounts for 1538 payments for taking down the image of St. George and his horse.
[782] Representations, s. v. Windsor, Lydd, New Romney, Bassingbourne.
[783] For the legend, see Acta Sanctorum, April, iii. 101; Jacobus à Voragine, Legenda Aurea (1280), lviii; E. A. W. Budge, The Martyrdom and Miracles of St. George of Cappadocia: the Coptic Texts (Oriental Text Series, 1888). In Rudder, Hist. of Gloucestershire, 461, and Gloucester F. L. 47, is printed an English version of the legend, apparently used for reading in church on the Sunday preceding St. George’s day, April 23. Cf. also Gibbon (ed. Bury), ii. 472, 568; Hartland, Perseus, iii. 38; Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 266; Zöckler, s. v. St. Georg, in Herzog and Plitt’s Encyclopedia; F. Görres, Ritter St. Georg in Geschichte, Legende und Kunst, in Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie, xxx (1887), 54; F. Vetter, Introduction to Reimbot von Durne’s Der heilige Georg (1896). Gibbon identified St. George with the Arian bishop George of Cappadocia, and the dragon with Athanasius. This view has been recently revived with much learning by J. Friedrich in Sitzb. Akad. Wiss. München (phil.-hist. Kl.), 1899, ii. 2. Pope Gelasius (†495) condemned the Passio as apocryphal and heretical, but he admits the historical existence of the saint, whose cult indeed was well established both in East and West in the fifth century. Budge tries to find an historical basis for him in a young man at Nicomedia who tore down an edict during the persecution of Diocletian (†303), and identifies his torturer Dadianus with the co-emperor Galerius.
[784] Du Méril, La Com. 98. He quotes Novidius, Sacri Fasti (ed. 1559), bk. vi. f. 48vo:
A fifteenth-century Augsburg miracle-play of St. George is printed by Keller, Fastnachtsspiele, No. 125; for other Continental data cf. Creizenach, i. 231, 246; Julleville, Les Myst. ii. 10, 644; D’Ancona, i. 104.
[785] Rabelais, Gargantua, iv. 59. The dragon was called Graoully, and snapped its jaws, like the Norwich ‘snap-dragons’ and the English hobby-horse.
[786] Cf. p. 138. The myth has attached itself to other undoubtedly historical persons besides St. George (Bury, Gibbon, ii. 569). In his case it is possibly due to a misunderstood bit of rhetoric. In the Coptic version of the legend edited by Budge (p. 223), Dadianus is called ‘the dragon of the abyss.’ There is no literal dragon in this version: the princess is perhaps represented by Alexandra, the wife of Dadianus, whom George converts. Cf. Hartland, Perseus, iii. 44.
[787] Cf. ch. xxiv, as to these plays.
[788] I ought perhaps to say that in one of the Coptic versions of the legend St. George is periodically slain and brought back to life by a miracle during the space of seven years. But I do not think that this episode occurs in any of the European versions of the legend.
[789] ‘Sant George and the dragon’ are introduced into a London May-game in 1559 (ch. viii).
[790] See the Manchester Peace Egg chap-book. At Manchester, Langdale, and, I believe, Coniston, the play is performed at Easter: cf. Halliwell, Popular Rhymes, 231. The Steyning play is believed to have been given at May-day as well as Christmas. Of course, so far as this goes, the transference might have been from Christmas, not to Christmas, but the German analogies point the other way. The Cheshire performance on All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2), mentioned by Child, v. 291, is, so far as I know, exceptional.
[791] Cf. ch. xvii: In the Isle of Wight the performers are called the ‘Christmas Boys’ (C. R. Smith, Isle of Wight Words, in E. D. S. xxxii. 63). The terms ‘Seven Champions’ (Kent) and ‘John Jacks’ (Salisbury) have already been explained. The Steyning ‘Tipteers’ or ‘Tipteerers’ may be named from the ‘tips’ collected in the quête. The ‘Guisers’ of Staffordshire become on the Shropshire border ‘Morris-dancers,’ ‘Murry-dancers,’ or ‘Merry-dancers’—a further proof of the essential identity of the morris-or sword-dance with the play.
[792] Tille, Y. and C. 78, 107; Rhys, C. H. 519; cf. ch. v.
[793] Tille, Y. and C. 18; D. W. 6. Bede, D. T. R. 15, gives Blot-monath as the Anglo-Saxon name for November, and explains it as ‘mensis immolationum, quia in ea pecora quae occisuri erant, Diis suis voverent.’
[794] Burton, 15, notes a tradition at Disley, in Cheshire, that the local wake was formerly held after the first fall of snow.
[795] Tille, Y. and C. 18.
[796] Mogk, iii. 391; Tille, Y. and C. 24, find the winter feast in the festival of Tanfana which the Marsi were celebrating when Germanicus attacked them in A. D. 14 (Tacitus, Ann. i. 51). Winter, though imminent, had not yet actually set in, but this might be the case in any year after the festival had come to be determined by a fixed calendar.
[797] Tille, Y. and C. 57.
[798] Rhys, C. H. 513, says that the Samhain fell on Nov. 1. The preceding night was known as Nos Galan-geaf, the ‘night of winter calends,’ and that following as Dy’ gwyl y Meirw, ‘the feast of the Dead.’ In F. L. ii. 308 he gives the date of the Manx Samhain as Nov. 12, and explains this as being Nov. 1, O. S. But is it not really the original date of the feast which has been shifted elsewhere to the beginning of the month?
[799] Tille, Y. and C. 12, citing M. Heyne, Ulfilas, 226: ‘In a Gothic calendarium of the sixth century November, or Naubaímbaír, is called fruma Iiuleis, which presupposes that December was called *aftuma Iiuleis.’
[800] Bede, de temp. rat. c. 15. Tille, Y. and C. 20, points out that the application of the old tide-name to fit November and December by the Goths and December and January by the Anglo-Saxons is fair evidence for the belief that the tide itself corresponded to a period from mid-November to mid-January.
[801] Tille, Y. and C. 147. The terms gehhol, geóhel, geól, giúl, iûl, &c. signify the Christmas festival season from the ninth century onwards, and from the eleventh also Christmas Day itself. The fifteenth-century forms are Yule, Ywle, Yole, Yowle. In the A.-S. Chronicle the terms used for Christmas are ‘midewinter,’ ‘Cristes mæssa,’ ‘Cristes tyde,’ ‘Natiuitedh.’ As a single word ‘Cristesmesse’ appears first in 1131 (Tille, Y. and C. 159). The German ‘Weihnacht’ (M.H.G. wich, ‘holy’) appears †1000 (Tille, D. W. 22).
[802] Pfannenschmidt, 238, 512.
[803] The notion is of a circular course of the sun, passing through the four turning-or wheeling-points of the solstices and equinoxes. Cf. ch. vi for the use of the wheel as a solar symbol.
[804] Mogk, iii. 391, quoting Kluge, Englische Studien, ix. 311, and Bugge, Ark. f. nord. Filolog. iv. 135. Tille, Y. and C. 8, 148, desirous to establish an Oriental origin for the Three Score Day tides, doubts the equation *jehwela = ioculus, and suggests a connexion between the Teutonic terms and the old Cypriote names ἰλαῖος, ἰουλαῖος, ἰουλίηος, ἰούλιος for the period Dec. 22 to Jan. 23 (K. F. Hermann, Über griech. Monatskunde, 64), and, more hesitatingly, with the Greek Ἴουλος or hymn to Ceres. Weinhold, Deutsche Monatsnamen, 4; Deutsche Jahrteilung, 15, thinks that both the Teutonic and Cypriote names are the Roman Julius transferred from mid-summer to mid-winter. Northall, 208, makes yule = ol, oel, a feast or ‘ale,’ for which I suppose there is nothing to be said. Skeat, Etym. Dict. s. v., makes it ‘a time of revelry,’ and connects with M.E. youlen, yollen, to ‘yawl’ or ‘yell,’ and with A.-S. gýlan, Dutch joelen, to make merry, G. jolen, jodeln, to sing out. He thus gets in a different way much the sense given in the text.
[805] At a Cotswold Whitsun ale a lord and lady ‘of yule’ were chosen (Gloucester F. L. 56). Rhys, C. H. 412, 421, 515, and in F. L. ii. 305, gives Gwyl as a Welsh term for ‘feast’ in general, and in particular mentions, besides the Gwyl y Meirw at the Samhain, the Gwyl Aust (Aug. 1, Lammas or Lugnassad Day). This also appears in Latin as the Gula Augusti (Ducange, s. v. temp. Edw. III), and in English as ‘the Gule of August’ (Hearne, Robert of Gloucester’s Chron. 679). Tille, Y. and C. 56, declares that Gula here is only a mutilation of Vincula, Aug. 1 being in the ecclesiastical calendar the feast of St. Peter ad Vincula.
[806] Kluge and Lutz, English Etymology, s. v. Yule.
[807] Bede, D. T. R. c. 15 ‘ipsam noctem nobis sacrosanctam, tunc gentili vocabulo Modranicht [v.l. Modraneht], id est, matrum noctem appellabant; ob causam ut suspicamur ceremoniarum, quas in ea pervigiles agebant.’
[808] Mogk, iii. 391. Tille, Y. and C. 152, gives some earlier explanations, criticizes that of Mogk, and offers as his own a reference to a custom of baking a cake (placenta) to represent the physical motherhood of the Virgin. The practice doubtless existed and was condemned by Pope Hormisdas (514-23), by the Lateran Council of 649, the Council of Hatfield (680), and the Trullan Council (692). But Bede must have known this as a Christian abuse, and he is quite plainly speaking of a pre-Christian custom. J. M. Neale, Essays in Liturgiology (1867), 511, says, ‘In most Celtic languages Christmas eve is called the night of Mary,’ the Virgin, here as elsewhere, taking over the cult of the mother-goddesses.
[809] Tille, Y. and C. 65. In his earlier book D. W. 7, 29, Dr. Tille held the view that there had always been a second winter feast about three weeks after the first, when the males held over for breeding were slain.
[810] According to Bede, D. T. R. c. 15, the Anglo-Saxons had adopted the system of intercalary months which belongs to the pre-Julian and not the Julian Roman calendar. But Bede’s chapter is full of confusions: cf. Tille, Y. and C. 145.
[811] All Saints’ day or Hallowmas (November 1) and All Souls’ day (November 2) have largely, though not wholly, absorbed the November feast of the Dead.
[812] Pfannenschmidt, 203; Jahn, 229; Tille, Y. and C. 21, 28, 36, 42, 57; D. W. 23.
[813] Tille, D. W. 29; Müller, 239, 248. According to Tille, D. W. 63, Christmas only replaced the days of St. Martin and St. Nicholas as a German children’s festival in the sixteenth century.
[814] Tille, Y. and C. 34, 65; Pfannenschmidt, 206; Dyer, 418; N. Drake, Shakespeare and his Times (1838), 93. Martinmas was a favourite Anglo-Saxon and mediaeval legal term. It survived also as a traditional ‘tyme of slauchter’ for cattle. ‘Martlemas beef’ was a common term for salt beef. In Scotland a Mart is a fat cow or bullock, but the derivation of this appears to be from a Celtic word Mart = cow.
[815] Rhys, in F. L. ii. 308.
[816] Mommsen, C. I. L. i2. 287; Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. s. v. Bruma; Tomaschek, in Sitzb. Akad. Wiss. Wien, lx (1869), 358.
[817] Ovid, Fasti, i. 163 ‘bruma novi prima est veterisque novissima solis.’
[818] Cf. p. 112.
[819] Preller, ii. 408; P. Allard, Julien l’Apostat, i. 16; J. Réville, La Religion à Rome sous les Sévères (1885); Wissowa, 306. An earlier cult of the same type introduced by Elagabalus did not survive its founder.
[820] The earliest reference is probably that in the calendar of the Greek astronomer, of uncertain date, Antiochus, Ἡλίου γενέθλιον· αὔξει φῶς (Cumont, i. 342, from Cod. Monac. gr. 287, f. 132). The Fasti of Furius Dionysius Philocalus (A.D. 354) have ‘VIII. KAL. IAN. N[atalis] INVICTI C[ircenses] M[issus] XXX’ (C. I. L. i2. 278, 338). Cf. Julian, Orat. 4 (p. 156 ed. Spanheim) εὐθέως μετὰ τὸν τελευταῖον τοῦ Κρόνου μῆνα ποιοῦμεν ἡλίῳ τὸν περιφανέστατον ἀγῶνα, τὴν ἑορτὴν Ἡλίῳ καταφημίσαντες Ἀνικήτῳ; Corippus, de laud. Iust. min. i. 314 ‘Solis honore novi grati spectacula circi’; cf. the Christian references on p. 242. Mommsen’s Scriptor Syrus quoted C. I. L. i2. 338 tells us that lights were used; ‘accenderunt lumina festivitatis causa.’