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--Wassailing Fruit-trees--Herefordshire 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.

[Illustration: 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 |338| 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}

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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.

|339| The method of choosing the Epiphany king is thus described by the sixteenth-century writer, Étienne Pasquier:--

"When the cake has been cut into as many portions as there are guests, a small child is put under the table, and is interrogated by the master under the name of Phebé [Phoebus], as if he were a child who in the innocence of his age represented a kind of Apollo's oracle. To this questioning the child answers with a Latin word: _Domine_. Thereupon the master calls on him to say to whom he shall give the piece of cake which he has in his hand: the child names whoever comes into his head, without respect of persons, until the portion where the bean is given out. He who gets it is reckoned king of the company, although he may be a person of the least importance. This done, everyone eats, drinks, and dances heartily."{5}

In Berry at the end of the festive repast a cake is brought before the head of the household, and divided into as many portions as there are guests, plus one. The youngest member of the family distributes them. The portion remaining is called _la part du bon Dieu_ and is given to the first person who asks for it. A band of children generally come to claim it, with a leader who sings a little song.{6} There was formerly a custom of dressing up a king in full robes. He had a fool to amuse him during the feast, and shots were fired when he drank.{7}

Here is a nineteenth-century account from Lorraine:--

"On the Vigil of the Epiphany all the family and the guests assemble round the table, which is illuminated by a lamp hanging above its centre. Lots are cast for the king of the feast, and if the head of anyone present casts no shadow on the wall it is a sign that he will die during the year. Then the king chooses freely his queen: they have the place of honour, and each time they raise their glasses to their mouths cries of 'The king drinks, the queen drinks!' burst forth on all sides.... The next day an enormous cake, divided into equal portions, is distributed to the company by the youngest boy. The first portion is always for _le bon Dieu_, the second for the Blessed Virgin (these two portions are always given to the first poor person who presents himself); then come those of relations, servants, and visitors. He who finds a bean in his portion is proclaimed king; if it is a lady she chooses her |340| king, and he invites the company to a banquet on the Sunday following, at which black kings are made by rubbing the face with a burnt cork."{8}

The use of the _gâteau des Rois_ goes pretty far back. At the monastery of Mont-St.-Michel in the thirteenth century the Epiphany king was chosen from among the monks by means of a number of cakes in one of which a bean was placed. At Matins, High Mass, and Vespers he sat upon a special throne.{9}

It may be added that there is a quaint old story of a curate "who having taken his preparations over evening, when all men cry (as the manner is) _the king drinketh_, chanting his Masse the next morning, fell asleep in his Memento: and, when he awoke, added with a loud voice, _The king drinketh_."{10}

One more French "king" custom may be mentioned, though it relates to Christmas Day, not Epiphany. At Salers in the centre of France there were formerly a king and queen whose function was to preside over the festival, sit in a place of honour in church, and go first in the procession. The kingship was not elective, but was sold by auction at the church door, and it is said to have been so much coveted that worthy citizens would sell their heritage in order to purchase it.{11}

It may be remarked that Epiphany kings and cakes similar to the French can be traced in Holland and Germany,{12} and that the "King of the Bean" is known in modern Italy, though there he may be an importation from the north.{13}

How is this merry monarch to be accounted for? His resemblance to the king of the _Saturnalia_, who presided over the fun of the feast in the days of imperial Rome, is certainly striking, but it is impossible to say whether he derives directly from that personage. No doubt his association with the feast of the Three Kings has helped to maintain his rule. As for the bean, it appears to have been a sacred vegetable in ancient times. There is a story about the philosopher Pythagoras, how, when flying before a host of rebels, he came upon a field of beans and refused to pass through it for fear of crushing the plants, thus enabling his pursuers to overtake him. Moreover, the _flamen dialis_ in Rome was forbidden to eat or even name the vegetable, and the |341| name of the Fabii, a Roman _gens_, suggests a totem tribe of the bean.{14}

In eastern Europe, though I know of no election of a king, there are New Year customs with cakes, closely resembling some of the French practices described a page or two back. "St. Basil's Cake" on New Year's Eve in Macedonia is a kind of shortbread with a silver coin and a cross of green twigs in it. When all are seated round the table the father and mother take the cake, "and break it into two pieces, which are again subdivided by the head of the family into shares. The first portion is destined for St. Basil, the Holy Virgin, or the patron saint whose icon is in the house. The second stands for the house itself. The third for the cattle and domestic animals belonging thereto. The fourth for the inanimate property, and the rest for each member of the household according to age. Each portion is successively dipped in a cup of wine." He who finds the cross or the coin in his share of the cake will prosper during the year. The money is considered sacred and is used to buy a votive taper.{15}

In Macedonia when the New Year's supper is over, the table, with the remnants of the feast upon it, is removed to a corner of the room in order that St. Basil may come and partake of the food.{16} He appears to have been substituted by the Church for the spirits of the departed, for whom, as we have seen, food is left in the West on All Souls' and Christmas Eves. Probably the Macedonian practice of setting aside a portion of the cake for a saint, and the pieces cut in France for _le bon Dieu_ and the Virgin or the three Magi, have a like origin. One may compare them with the Serbian breaking of the _kolatch_ cake in honour of Christ "the Patron Namegiver." Is it irrelevant, also, to mention here the Greek Church custom, at the preparation of the elements for the Eucharist, of breaking portions of the bread in memory of the Virgin and other saints?

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In many countries the Epiphany is a special time for the expulsion of evils. At Brunnen in Switzerland boys go about in procession on Twelfth Night, with torches and lanterns, and make a great noise with horns, bells, whips, &c., in order to |342| frighten away two wood-spirits. In Labruguière in southern France on the Eve of Twelfth Day the inhabitants rush through the streets, making discordant noises and a huge uproar, with the object of scaring away ghosts and devils.{17}

In parts of the eastern Alps there takes place what is called _Berchtenlaufen_. Lads, formerly to the number of two or three hundred, rush about in the strangest masks, with cowbells, whips, and all sorts of weapons, and shout wildly.{18} In Nuremberg up to the year 1616 on _Bergnacht_ or Epiphany Eve boys and girls used to run about the streets and knock loudly at the doors.{19} Such knocking, as we have seen, may well have been intended to drive away spirits from the houses.

At Eschenloh near Partenkirchen in Upper Bavaria three women used to _berchten_ on that evening. They all had linen bags over their heads, with holes for the mouth and eyes. One carried a chain, another a rake, and the third a broom. Going round to the houses, they knocked on the door with the chain, scraped the ground with the rake, and made a noise of sweeping with the broom.{20} The suggestion of a clearing away of evils is here very strong.

In connection with the _Kallikantzaroi_ mention has already been made of the purification of houses with holy water, performed by Greek priests on the Epiphany. In Roumania, where a similar sprinkling is performed, a curious piece of imitative magic is added--the priest is invited to sit upon the bed, in order that the brooding hen may sit upon her eggs. Moreover there should be maize grains under the mattress; then the hen will lay eggs in abundance.{21}

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We noted in an earlier chapter the name _Berchtentag_ applied in southern Germany and in Austria to the Epiphany, and we saw also how the mysterious Frau Berchta was specially connected with the day. On the Epiphany and its Eve in the Möllthal in Carinthia a female figure, "the Berchtel," goes the round of the houses. She is generally dressed in a hide, wears a hideous wooden mask, and hops wildly about, inquiring as to the behaviour of children, and demanding gifts.{22}

|343| Something of the terrible, as well as the beneficent, belongs to the "Befana," the Epiphany visitor who to Italian children is the great gift-bringer of the year, the Santa Klaus of the South. "Delightful," say Countess Martinengo, "as are the treasures she puts in their shoes when satisfied with their behaviour, she is credited with an unpleasantly sharp eye for youthful transgressions."{23} Mothers will sometimes warn their children that if they are naughty the Befana will fetch and eat them. To Italian youngsters she is a very real being, and her coming on Epiphany Eve is looked forward to with the greatest anxiety. Though she puts playthings and sweets in the stockings of good children, she has nothing but a birch and coal for those who misbehave themselves.{24}

Formerly at Florence images of the Befana were put up in the windows of houses, and there were processions through the streets, guys being borne about, with a great blowing of trumpets.{25} Toy trumpets are still the delight of little boys at the Epiphany in Italy.

The Befana's name is obviously derived from _Epiphania_. In Naples the little old woman who fills children's stockings is called "Pasqua Epiphania,"[117] the northern contraction not having been acclimatized there.{26}

In Spain as well as Italy the Epiphany is associated with presents for children, but the gift-bringers for little Spaniards are the Three Holy Kings themselves. There is an old Spanish tradition that the Magi go every year to Bethlehem to adore the infant Jesus, and on their way visit children, leaving sweets and toys for them if they have behaved well. On Epiphany Eve the youngsters go early to bed, put out their shoes on the window-sill or balcony to be filled with presents by the Wise Men, and provide a little straw for their horses.{27}

It is, or was, a custom in Madrid to look out for the Kings on Epiphany Eve. Companies of men go out with bells and pots and pans, and make a great noise. There is loud shouting, and torches cast a fantastic light upon the scene. One of the men carries a large ladder, and mounts it to see if the Kings are |344| coming. Here, perhaps, some devil-scaring rite, resembling those described above, has been half-Christianized.{28}

In Provence, too, there was a custom of going to meet the Magi. In a charming chapter of his Memoirs Mistral tells us how on Epiphany Eve all the children of his countryside used to go out to meet the Kings, bearing cakes for the Magi, dried figs for their pages, and handfuls of hay for their horses. In the glory and colour of the sunset young Mistral thought he saw the splendid train; but soon the gorgeous vision died away, and the children stood gaping alone on the darkening highway--the Kings had passed behind the mountain. After supper the little ones hurried to church, and there in the Chapel of the Nativity beheld the Kings in adoration before the Crib.{29}

At Trest not only did the young people carry baskets or dried fruit, but there were three men dressed as Magi to receive the offerings and accept compliments addressed to them by an orator. In return they presented him with a purse full of counters, upon which he rushed off with the treasure and was pursued by the others in a sort of dance.{30} Here again the Magi are evidently mixed up with something that has no relation to Christianity.

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We noted in