Part 30 (1/2)

In Macedonia St. Basil's Eve (December 31) is a common time for divination: a favourite method is to lay on the hot cinders a pair of wild-olive-leaves to represent a youth and a maid. If the leaves crumple up and draw near each other, it is concluded that the young people love one another dearly, but if they recoil apart the opposite is the case. If they flare up and burn, it is a sign of excessive pa.s.sion.{46}

In Lithuania on New Year's Eve nine sorts of things--money, cradle, bread, ring, death's head, old man, old woman, ladder, and key--are baked of dough, and laid under nine plates, and every one has three grabs at them. What he gets will fall to his lot during the year.{47}

Lastly, in Brittany it is supposed that the wind which prevails on the first twelve days of the year will blow during each of the twelve months, the first day corresponding to January, the second to February, and so on.{48} Similar ideas of the prophetic character of Christmastide weather are common in our own and other countries.

Practically all the customs discussed in this chapter have been of the nature of charms; one or two more, practised on New Year's Day or Eve, may be mentioned in conclusion.

There are curious superst.i.tions about New Year water. At Bromyard in Herefords.h.i.+re it was the custom, at midnight on New Year's Eve, to rush to the nearest spring to s.n.a.t.c.h the ”cream of the well”--the first pitcherful of water--and with it the prospect of the best luck.{49} A Highland practice was to send

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some one on the last night of the year to draw a pitcherful of water in silence, and without the vessel touching the ground. The water was drunk on New Year's morning as a charm against witchcraft and the evil eye.{50} A similar belief about the luckiness of ”new water” exists at Canzano Peligno in the Abruzzi. ”On New Year's Eve, the fountain is decked with leaves and bits of coloured stuff, and fires are kindled round it. As soon as it is light, the girls come as usual with their copper pots on their head; but the youths are on this morning guardians of the well, and sell the 'new water' for nuts and fruits--and other sweet things.”{51}

In some of the Aegean islands when the family return from church on New Year's Day, the father picks up a stone and leaves it in the yard, with the wish that the New Year may bring with it ”as much gold as is the weight of the stone.”{52} Finally, in Little Russia ”corn sheaves are piled upon a table, and in the midst of them is set a large pie. The father of the family takes his seat behind them, and asks his children if they can see him. 'We cannot see you,' they reply. On which he proceeds to express what seems to be a hope that the corn will grow so high in his fields that he may be invisible to his children when he walks there at harvest-time.”{53}

With a curious and beautiful old carol from South Wales I must bring this chapter to a close. It was formerly sung before dawn on New Year's Day by poor children who carried about a jug of water drawn that morning from the well. With a sprig of box or other evergreen they would sprinkle those they met, wis.h.i.+ng them the compliments of the season. To pay their respects to those not abroad at so early an hour, they would serenade them with the following lines, which, while connected with the ”new water” tradition, contain much that is of doubtful interpretation, and are a fascinating puzzle for folk-lorists:--

”Here we bring new water From the well so clear, For to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d with, This happy New Year.

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Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew, The water and the wine; The seven bright gold wires And the bugles they do s.h.i.+ne.

Sing reign of Fair Maid, With gold upon her toe,-- Open you the West Door, And turn the Old Year go: Sing reign of Fair Maid, With gold upon her chin,-- Open you the East Door, And let the New Year in.”{54}

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CHAPTER XVI

EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS

The Twelfth Cake and the ”King of the Bean”--French Twelfth Night Customs--St. Basil's Cake in Macedonia--Epiphany and the Expulsion of Evils--The Befana in Italy--The Magi as Present-bringers--Greek Epiphany Customs--Wa.s.sailing Fruit-trees--Herefords.h.i.+re and Irish Twelfth Night Practices--The ”Haxey Hood” and Christmas Football--St.

Knut's Day in Sweden--Rock Day--Plough Monday--Candlemas, its Ecclesiastical and Folk Ceremonies--Farewells to Christmas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE.]

THE EPIPHANY.

Though the Epiphany has ceased to be a popular festival in England, it was once a very high day indeed, and in many parts of Europe it is still attended by folk-customs of great interest.[116] For the peasant of Tyrol, indeed, it is New Year's Day, the first of January being kept only by the townsfolk and modernized people.{1}

To Englishmen perhaps the best known feature of the secular festival is the Twelfth Cake. Some words of Leigh Hunt's will show what an important place this held in the mid-nineteenth century:--

”Christmas goes out in fine style,--with Twelfth Night. It is a finish worthy of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the season; New Year's Day the middle of it, or noon; Twelfth Night is the night, brilliant with innumerable planets of Twelfth-cakes. The whole island keeps court; nay, all Christendom. All the world are

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kings and queens. Everybody is somebody else, and learns at once to laugh at, and to tolerate, characters different from his own, by enacting them. Cakes, characters, forfeits, lights, theatres, merry rooms, little holiday-faces, and, last not least, the painted sugar on the cakes, so bad to eat but so fine to look at, useful because it is perfectly useless except for a sight and a moral--all conspire to throw a giddy splendour over the last night of the season, and to send it to bed in pomp and colours, like a Prince.”{2}

For seventeenth-century banqueting customs and the connection of the cake with the ”King of the Bean” Herrick may be quoted:--

”Now, now the mirth comes With the cake full of plums, Where bean's the king of the sport here; Besides we must know, The pea also Must revel as queen in the court here.

Begin then to choose This night as ye use, Who shall for the present delight here Be a king by the lot, And who shall not Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here

Which known, let us make Joy-sops with the cake; And let not a man then be seen here, Who unurg'd will not drink, To the base from the brink, A health to the king and the queen here.”{3}

There are many English references to the custom of electing a Twelfth Day monarch by means of a bean or pea, and this ”king” is mentioned in royal accounts as early as the reign of Edward II.{4} He appears, however, to have been even more popular in France than in England.