CHAPTER VIII

ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS

St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions--St. Catherine's Day as Spinsters' Festival--St. Andrew's Eve Auguries--The _Klöpfelnächte_--St. Nicholas's Day, the Saint as Gift-bringer, and his Attendants--Election of the Boy Bishop--St. Nicholas's Day at Bari--St. Lucia's Day in Sweden, Sicily, and Central Europe--St. Thomas's Day as School Festival--Its Uncanny Eve--"Going a-Thomassin'."

ST. CLEMENT'S DAY.

The next folk-feast after Martinmas is St. Clement's Day, November 23, once reckoned the first day of winter in England.{1} It marks apparently one of the stages in the progress of the winter feast towards its present solstitial date. In England some interesting popular customs existed on this day. In Staffordshire children used to go round to the village houses begging for gifts, with rhymes resembling in many ways the "souling" verses I have already quoted. Here is one of the Staffordshire "clemencing" songs:--

"Clemany! Clemany! Clemany mine! A good red apple and a pint of wine, Some of your mutton and some of your veal, If it is good, pray give me a deal; If it is not, pray give me some salt. Butler, butler, fill your bowl; If thou fill'st it of the best, The Lord'll send your soul to rest; If thou fill'st it of the small, Down goes butler, bowl and all. |212|

Pray, good mistress, send to me One for Peter, one for Paul, One for Him who made us all; Apple, pear, plum, or cherry, Any good thing to make us merry; A bouncing buck and a velvet chair, Clement comes but once a year; Off with the pot and on with the pan, A good red apple and I'll be gone."{2}

In Worcestershire on St. Clement's Day the boys chanted similar rhymes, and at the close of their collection they would roast the apples received and throw them into ale or cider.{3} In the north of England men used to go about begging drink, and at Ripon Minster the choristers went round the church offering everyone a rosy apple with a sprig of box on it.{4} The Cambridge bakers held their annual supper on this day,{5} at Tenby the fishermen were given a supper,{6} while the blacksmiths' apprentices at Woolwich had a remarkable ceremony, akin perhaps to the Boy Bishop customs. One of their number was chosen to play the part of "Old Clem," was attired in a great coat, and wore a mask, a long white beard, and an oakum wig. Seated in a large wooden chair, and surrounded by attendants bearing banners, torches, and weapons, he was borne about the town on the shoulders of six men, visiting numerous public-houses and the blacksmiths and officers of the dockyard. Before him he had a wooden anvil, and in his hands a pair of tongs and a wooden hammer, the insignia of the blacksmith's trade.{7}

ST. CATHERINE'S DAY.

November 25 is St. Catherine's Day, and at Woolwich Arsenal a similar ceremony was then performed: a man was dressed in female attire, with a large wheel by his side to represent the saint, and was taken round the town{8} in a wooden chair. At Chatham there was a torchlight procession on St. Catherine's Day, and a woman in white muslin with a gilt crown was carried about in a chair. She was said to represent not the saint, but Queen Catherine.{9}

|213| St. Catherine's Day was formerly a festival for the lacemakers of Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire. She was the patroness of spinsters in the literal as well as the modern sense of the word, and at Peterborough the workhouse girls used to go in procession round the city on her day, dressed in white with coloured ribbons; the tallest was chosen as Queen and bore a crown and sceptre. As they went to beg money of the chief inhabitants they sang a quaint ballad which begins thus:--

"Here comes Queen Catherine, as fine as any queen, With a coach and six horses a-coming to be seen, And a-spinning we will go, will go, will go, And a-spinning we will go."{10}

We may perhaps see in this Saint or Queen Catherine a female counterpart of the Boy Bishop, who began his career on St. Nicholas's Day. Catherine, it must be remembered, is the patron saint of girls as Nicholas is of boys. In Belgium her day is still a festival for the "young person" both in schools and in families.{11} Even in modern Paris the dressmaker-girls celebrate it, and in a very charming way, too.

"At midday the girls of every workroom present little mob-caps trimmed with yellow ribbons to those of their number who are over twenty-five and still unmarried. Then they themselves put on becoming little caps with yellow flowers and yellow ribbons and a sprig of orange blossom on them, and out they go arm-in-arm to parade the streets and collect a tribute of flowers from every man they meet.... Instead of working all the afternoon, the midinettes entertain all their friends (no men admitted, though, for it is the day of St. Catherine) to concerts and even to dramatic performances in the workrooms, where the work-tables are turned into stages, and the employers provide supper."{12}

ST. ANDREW'S DAY.

The last day of November is the feast of St. Andrew. Of English customs on this day the most interesting perhaps are those connected with the "Tander" or "Tandrew" merrymakings |214| of the Northamptonshire lacemakers. A day of general licence used to end in masquerading. Women went about in male attire and men and boys in female dress.{13} In Kent and Sussex squirrel-hunting was practised on this day{14}--a survival apparently of some old sacrificial custom comparable with the hunting of the wren at Christmas (see