CHAPTER XII

NEW YEAR CUSTOMS

[_Bibliographical Note._--The two works of Dr. Tille remain of importance. The compilations specially devoted to the usages of the Christmas season are chiefly of a popular character; W. Sandys, _Christmas Tide_ (n. d.), J. Ashton, _A Righte Merrie Christmasse!!!_ (n. d.), and, for French data, E. Müller, _Le Jour de l’An_ (n. d.), may be mentioned; H. Usener, _Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen_, vol. ii (1889), prints various documents, including the _Largum Sero_ of a Bohemian priest named Alsso, on early fifteenth-century Christmas eve customs. Most of the books named in the bibliographical note to chap. v also cover the subject. A _Bibliography of Christmas_ runs through _Notes and Queries_, 6th series, vi. 506, viii. 491, x. 492, xii. 489; 7th series, ii. 502, iii. 152, iv. 502, vi. 483, x. 502, xii. 483; 8th series, ii. 505, iv. 502, vi. 483, viii. 483, x. 512, xii. 502; 9th series, ii. 505, iv. 515, vi. 485.]

It is the outcome of the last chapter that all the folk-customs of the winter half of the year, from Michaelmas to Plough Monday, must be regarded as the flotsam and jetsam of a single original feast. This was a New Year’s feast, held by the Germano-Keltic tribes at the beginning of the central European winter when the first snows fell about the middle of November, and subsequently dislocated and dispersed by the successive clash of Germano-Keltic civilization with the rival schemes of Rome and of Christianity. A brief summary of the customs in question will show clearly their common character. For purposes of classification they may be divided into several groups. There are such customs belonging to the agricultural side of the old winter feast as have not been transferred with the growing importance of tillage to the feast of harvest. There are the customs of its domestic side, as a feast of the family hearth and of the dead ancestors. There are the distinctively New Year customs of omen and prognostication for the approaching twelve months. There are the customs of play, common more or less to all the village festivals. And, finally, there are a small number of customs, or perhaps it would be truer to say legends, which appear to owe their origin not merely to heathenism transformed by Christianity, but to Christianity itself. Each of these groups may well claim a more thoroughgoing consideration than can here be given to any one of them.

The agricultural customs are just those of the summer feasts over again. Once more the fertilization spirit is abroad in the land. The embodiment of it in vegetation takes several forms. Obviously the last foliage and burgeoning flowers of spring and summer are no longer available. But there is, to begin with, the sheaf of corn or ‘harvest-May’ in which the spirit appeared at harvest, and which is called upon once more to play its part in the winter rites. This, however, is not a very marked part. A Yorkshire custom of hanging a sheaf on the church door at Christmas is of dubious origin[865]. But Swedish and Danish peasants use the grain of the ‘last sheaf’ to bake the Christmas cake, and both in Scandinavia and Germany the ‘Yule straw’ serves various superstitious purposes. It is scattered on barren fields to make them productive. It is strewed, instead of rushes, upon the house floor and the church floor. It is laid in the mangers of the cattle. Fruit-trees are tied together with straw ropes, that they may bear well and are said to be ‘married[866].’

More naturally the fertilization spirit may be discerned at the approach of winter in such exceptional forms of vegetation as endure the season. In November the apples and the nuts still hang upon their boughs, and these are traditional features in the winter celebrations. Then there are the evergreens. Libanius, Tertullian, and Chrysostom tell how on the Kalends the doors of houses throughout the Roman empire were crowned with bay. Martin of Braga forbade the ‘pagan observance’ in a degree which found its way into the canon law. The original _strena_ which men gave one another on the same day for luck was nothing but a twig plucked from a sacred grove; and still in the fifth century men returned from their new year auguries laden with _ramusculi_ that they might thereafter be laden with wealth[867]. It is not necessary to dwell upon the surviving use of evergreens in the decoration at Christmas of houses and churches[868]. The sacredness of these is reflected in the taboo which enjoins that they shall not be cast out upon the dust-heap, but shall, when some appropriate day, such as Candlemas, arrives, be solemnly committed to the flames[869]. Obviously amongst other evergreens the holly and the ivy, with their clustering pseudo-blossoms of coral and of jet, are the more adequate representatives of the fertilization spirit[870]; most of all the mistletoe, perched an alien visitant, faintly green and white, amongst the bared branches of apple or of oak. The mistletoe has its especial place in Scandinavian myth[871]: Pliny records the ritual use of it by the Druids[872]; it is essential to the winter revels in their amorous aspect; and its vanished dignities still serve, here to bar it from, there to make it imperative in, the edifices of Christian worship[873]. A more artificial embodiment of the fertilization spirit is the ‘Christmas tree’ _par excellence_, adorned with lights and apples, and often with a doll or image upon the topmost sprig. The first recorded Christmas tree is at Strassburg in 1604. The custom is familiar enough in modern England, but there can be little doubt that here it is of recent introduction, and came in, in fact, with the Hanoverians[874].

Finally, there can be little wonder that the popular imagination found a special manifestation of the fertilization spirit in the unusual blossoming of particular trees or species of trees in the depths of winter. In mild seasons a crab or cherry might well adorn the old winter feast in November. A favourable climate permits such a thing even at mid-winter. Legend, at any rate, has no doubt of the matter, and connects the event definitely with Christmas. A tenth-century Arabian geographer relates how all the trees of the forest stand in full bloom on the holy night. In the thirteenth-century _Vita_ of St. Hadwigis the story is told of a cherry-tree. A fifteenth-century bishop of Bamberg tells it of two apple-trees, and to apple-trees the miracle belongs, in German folk-belief, to this day[875]. In England the stories of Christmas-flowering hawthorns or blackthorns are specific and probably not altogether baseless[876]. The belief found a special location at Glastonbury, where the famous thorn is said by William of Malmesbury and other writers to have budded from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, who there ended his wanderings with the Holy Grail. Where winter-flowering trees are not found, a custom sometimes exists of putting a branch of cherry or of hawthorn in water some weeks before Christmas in order that it may blossom and serve as a substitute[877].

It may fairly be conjectured that at the winter, as at the summer feast, the fertilization spirit, in the form of bush or idol, was borne about the fields. The fifteenth-century writer, Alsso, records the _calendisationes_ of the god Bel in Bohemia, suppressed by St. Adalbert[878]. In modern England, a ‘holly-bough’ or ‘wesley-bob,’ with or without an image or doll, occasionally goes its rounds[879]. But a definite lustration of the bounds is rare[880], and, for the most part, the winter procession either is merely riotous or else, like too many of the summer processions themselves, has been converted, under the successive influence of the _strenae_ and the cash nexus, into little more than a _quête_. Thus children and the poor go ‘souling’ for apples and ‘soul-cakes’ on All Souls’ day; on November 5 they collect for the ‘guy’; on November 11 in Germany, if not in England, for St. Martin; on St. Clement’s day (November 23) they go ‘clemencing’; on St. Catherine’s (November 25) ‘catherning.’ Wheat is the coveted boon on St. Thomas’s day (December 21) or ‘doling day,’ and the _quête_ is variously known as ‘thomasing,’ ‘mumping,’ ‘corning,’ ‘gooding,’ ‘hodening,’ or ‘hooding[881].’ Christmas brings ‘wassailing’ with its bowl of lamb’s-wool and its bobbing apple, and this is repeated on New Year’s day or eve[882]. The New Year _quête_ is probably the most widespread and popular of all. Ducange records it at Rome[883]. In France it is known as _l’Aguilaneuf_[884], in Scotland and the north of England as Hogmanay, terms in which the philologists meet problems still unsolved[885]. Other forms of the winter _quête_ will crop up presently, and the visits of the guisers with their play or song, the carol singers and the waits may be expected at any time during the Christmas season. As at the summer _quêtes_, some reminiscence of the primitive character of the processions is to be found in the songs sung, with their wish of prosperity to the liberal household and their ill-will to the churl[886].

In the summer festivals both water-rites and fire-rites frequently occur. In those of winter, water-rites are comparatively rare, as might naturally be expected at a season when snow and ice prevail. There is some trace, however, of a custom of drawing ‘new’ water, as of making ‘new’ fire, for the new year[887]. Festival fires, on the other hand, are widely distributed, and agree in general features with those of summer. Their relation to the fertility of crop and herd is often plainly enough marked. They are perhaps most familiar to-day in the comparatively modern form of the Guy Fawkes celebration on November 5[888], but they are known also on St. Crispin’s day (October 25)[889], Hallow e’en[890], St. Martin’s day[891], St. Thomas’s day[892], Christmas eve[893], New Year[894], and Twelfth night[895]. An elaborate and typical example is the ‘burning of the clavie’ at the little fishing village of Burghead on the Moray Firth[896]. This takes place on New Year’s eve, or, according to another account[897], Christmas eve (O.S.). Strangers to the village are excluded from any share in the ritual. The ‘clavie’ is a blazing tar-barrel hoisted on a pole. In making it, a stone must be used instead of a hammer, and must then be thrown away. Similarly, the barrel must be lit with a blazing peat, and not with lucifer matches. The bearers are honoured, and the bridegroom of the year gets the ‘first lift.’ Should a bearer stumble, it portends death to himself during the year and ill-luck to the town. The procession passes round the boundaries of Burghead, and formerly visited every boat in the harbour. Then it is carried to the top of a hillock called the ‘Doorie,’ down the sides of which it is finally rolled. Blazing brands are used to kindle the house fires, and the embers are preserved as charms.

The central heathen rite of sacrifice has also left its abundant traces upon winter custom. Bede records the significant name of _blôt-monath_, given to November by the still unconverted Anglo-Saxons[898]. The tradition of solemn slaughter hangs around both Martinmas and Christmas. ‘Martlemas beef’ in England, St. Martin’s swine, hens, and geese in Germany, mark the former day[899]. At Christmas the outstanding victim seems to be the boar. _Caput apri defero: reddens laudem Domino_, sings the taberdar at Queen’s College, Oxford, as the manciple bears in the boar’s head to the Christmas banquet. So it was sung in many another mediaeval and Elizabethan hall[900], while the gentlemen of the Inner Temple broke their Christmas fast on ‘brawn, mustard, and malmsey[901],’ and in the far-off Orkneys each householder of Sandwick must slay his sow on St. Ignace’s or ‘Sow’ day, December 17[902]. The older mythologists, with the fear of solstices before their eyes, are accustomed to connect the Christmas boar with the light-god, Freyr[903]. If the cult of any one divinity is alone concerned, the analogous use of the pig in the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter would make the earth-goddess a more probable guess[904]. A few more recondite customs associated with particular winter anniversaries may be briefly named. St. Thomas’s day is at Wokingham the day for bull-baiting[905]. On St. Stephen’s day, both in England and Germany, horses are let blood[906]. On or about Christmas, boys are accustomed to set on foot a hunt of victims not ordinarily destined to such a fate[907]; owls and squirrels, and especially wrens, the last, be it noted, creatures which at other times of the year a taboo protects. The wren-hunt is found on various dates in France, England, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, and is carried out with various curious rituals. Often the body is borne in a _quête_, and in the Isle of Man the _quêteurs_ give a feather as an amulet in return for hospitality. There are other examples of winter _quêtes_, in which the representation of a sacrificial victim is carried round[908]. ‘Hoodening’ in Kent and other parts of England is accompanied by a horse’s head or hobby-horse[909]. The Welsh ‘Mari Lwyd’ is a similar feature[910], while at Kingscote, in Gloucestershire, the wassailers drink to a bull’s head called ‘the Broad[911].’

The hobby-horse is an example of an apparently grotesque element which is found widespread in folk-processions, and which a previous chapter has traced to its ritual origin. The man clad in a beast-skin is the worshipper putting himself by personal contact under the influence and protection of the sacrificed god. The rite is not a very salient one in modern winter processions, although it has its examples, but its historical importance is great. A glance at the ecclesiastical denunciations of the Kalends collected in an appendix will disclose numerous references to it. These are co-extensive with the western area of the Kalends celebrations. In Italy, in Gaul, in southern Germany, apparently also in Spain and in England, men decked themselves for riot in the heads and skins of cattle and the beasts of the chase, blackened their faces or bedaubed them with filth, or wore masks fit to terrify the demons themselves. The accounts of these proceedings are naturally allusive rather than descriptive; the fullest are given by a certain Severian, whose locality and date are unknown, but who may be conjectured to speak for Italy, by Maximus of Turin and Chrysologus of Ravenna in the fifth century, and by Caesarius of Arles in the beginning of the sixth. Amongst the _portenta_ denounced is a certain _cervulus_, which lingers in the _Penitentials_ right up to the tenth century, and with which are sometimes associated a _vitula_ or _iuvenca_. Caesarius adds a _hinnicula_, and St. Eadhelm, who is my only authority for the presence of the _cervulus_ in England, an _ermulus_. These seem to be precisely of the nature of ‘hobby-horses.’ Men are said _cervulum ambulare_, _cervulum facere_, _in cervulo vadere_, and Christians are forbidden to allow these _portenta_ to come before their houses. The _Penitential_ of the Pseudo-Theodore tells us that the performers were those who wore the skins and heads of beasts. Maximus of Turin, and several writers after him, put the objection to the beast-mimicry of the Kalends largely on the ground that man made in the image of God must not transform himself into the image of a beast. But it is clear that the real reason for condemning it was its unforgettable connexion with heathen cult. Caesarius warns the culprit that he is making himself into a _sacrificium daemonum_, and the disguised reveller is more than once spoken of as a living image of the heathen god or demon itself. There is some confusion of thought here, and it must be remembered that the initial significance of the skin-wearing rite was probably buried in oblivion, both for those who practised it and for those who reprobated. But it is obvious that the worshipper wearing a sacrificial skin would bear a close resemblance to the theriomorphic or semi-theriomorphic image developed out of the sacrificial skin nailed on a tree-trunk; and it is impossible not to connect the fact that in the prohibitions a _cervulus_ or ‘hobby-buck’ rather than a ‘hobby-horse’ is prominent with the widespread worship throughout the districts whence many of these notices come of the mysterious stag-horned deity, the _Cernunnos_ of the Gaulish altars[912]. On the whole I incline to think that at least amongst the Germano-Keltic peoples the agricultural gods were not mimed in procession by human representatives. It is true that in the mediaeval German processions which sprang out of those of the Kalends St. Nicholas plays a part, and that the presence of St. Nicholas may be thought to imply that of some heathen precursor. It will, however, be seen shortly that St. Nicholas may have got into these processions through a different train of ideas, equally connected with the Kalends, but not with the strictly agricultural aspect of that festival. But of the continuity of the beast-masks and other horrors of these Christmas processions with those condemned in the prohibitions, there can be no doubt[913]. A few other survivals of the _cervulus_ and its revel can be traced in various parts of Europe[914].

The sacrifices of cereals and of the juice of the vine or the barley are exemplified, the one by the traditional furmenty, plum-porridge, mince-pie, souling-cake, Yule-dough, Twelfth night cake, _pain de calende_, and other forms of ‘feasten’ cake[915]; the other by the wassail-bowl with its bobbing apple[916]. The summer ‘youling’ or ‘tree-wassailing’ is repeated in the orchard[917], and a curious Herefordshire custom represents an extension of the same principle to the ox-byre[918]. A German hen-yard custom requires mixed corn, for the familiar reason that every kind of crop must be included in the sacrifice[919].

Human sacrifice has been preserved in the whipping of boys on Innocents’ day, because it could be turned into the symbol of a Christian myth[920]. It is preserved also, as throughout the summer, in the custom, Roman as well as Germano-Keltic, of electing a mock or temporary king. Of such the Epiphany king or ‘king of the bean’ is, especially in France, the best known[921]. Here again, the association with the three kings or _Magi_ has doubtless prolonged his sway. But he is not unparalleled. The _rex autumnalis_ of Bath is perhaps a harvest rather than a beginning of winter king[922]. But the shoemakers choose their King Crispin on October 25, the day of their patron saints, Crispin and Crispinian; on St. Clement’s (November 23) the Woolwich blacksmiths have their King Clem, and the maidens of Peterborough and elsewhere a queen on St. Catherine’s (November 25). Tenby, again, elects its Christmas mock mayor[923]. At York, the proclaiming of Yule by ‘Yule’ and ‘Yule’s wife’ on St. Thomas’s day was once a notable pageant[924]. At Norwich, the riding of a ‘kyng of Crestemesse’ was the occasion of a serious riot in 1443[925]. These may be regarded as ‘folk’ versions of the mock king. Others, in which the folk were less concerned, will be the subject of chapters to follow.

Before passing to a fresh group of Christmas customs, I must note the presence of one more bit of ritual closely related to sacrificial survivals. That is, the man masquerading in woman’s clothes, in whom we have found a last faint reminiscence of the once exclusive supremacy of women in the conduct of agricultural worship. At Rome, musicians dressed as women paraded the city, not on the Kalends, but on the Ides of January[926]. The Fathers, however, know such disguising as a Kalends custom, and a condemnation of it often accompanies that of beast-mimicry, from the fourth to the eighth century[927].

The winter festival is thus, like the summer festivals, a moment in the cycle of agricultural ritual, and is therefore shared in by the whole village in common. It is also, and from the time of the institution of harvest perhaps preeminently, a festival of the family and the homestead. This side of it finds various manifestations. There is the solemn renewal of the undying fire upon the hearth, the central symbol and almost condition of the existence of the family as such. This survives in the institution of the ‘Yule-log,’ which throughout the Germano-Keltic area is lighted on Christmas or more rarely New Year’s eve, and must burn, as local custom may exact, either until midnight, or for three days, or during the whole of the Twelve-night period, from Christmas to Epiphany[928]. Dr. Tille, intent on magnifying the Roman element in western winter customs, denies any Germano-Keltic origin to the Christmas blaze, and traces it to the Roman practice of hanging lamps upon the house-doors during the _Saturnalia_ and the Kalends[929]. It is true that the Yule-log is sometimes supplemented or even replaced by the Christmas candle[930], but I do not think that there can be any doubt which is the primitive form of rite. And the Yule-log enters closely into the Germano-Keltic scheme of festival ideas. The preservation of its brands or ashes to be placed in the mangers or mingled with the seed-corn suggests many and familiar analogies. Moreover, it is essentially connected with the festival fire of the village, from which it is still sometimes, and once no doubt was invariably, lit, affording thus an exact parallel to the Germano-Keltic practice on the occasion of summer festival fires, or of those built to stay an epidemic.

Another aspect of the domestic character of the winter festival is to be found in the prominent part which children take in it. As _quêteurs_, they have no doubt gradually replaced the elder folk, during the process through which, even within the historical purview, ritual has been transformed into play. But St. Nicholas, the chief mythical figure of the festival, is their patron saint; for their benefit especially, the _strenae_ or Christmas and New Year’s gifts are maintained; and in one or two places it is their privilege, on some fixed day during the season, to ‘bar out’ their parents or masters[931].

Thirdly, the winter festival included a commemoration of ancestors. It was a feast, not only of riotous life, but of the dead. For, to the thinking of the Germano-Keltic peoples, the dead kinsmen were not altogether outside the range of human fellowship. They shared with the living in banquets upon the tomb. They could even at times return to the visible world and hover round the familiar precincts of their own domestic hearth. The Germans, at least, heard them in the gusts of the storm, and imagined for them a leader who became Odin. From another point of view they were naturally regarded as under the keeping of earth, and the earth-mother, in one aspect a goddess of fertility, was in another the goddess of the dead. As such she was worshipped under various names and forms, amongst others in the triad of the _Matres_ or _Matronae_. In mediaeval superstition she is represented by Frau Perchte, Frau Holda and similar personages, by Diana, by Herodias, by St. Gertrude, just as the functions of Odin are transferred to St. Martin, St. Nicholas, St. John, Hellequin. It was not unnatural that the return of the spirits, in the ‘wild hunt’ or otherwise, to earth should be held to take place especially at the two primitive festivals which respectively began the winter and the summer. Of the summer or spring commemoration but scant traces are to be recovered[932]; that of winter survives, in a dislocated form, in more than one important anniversary. Its observances have been transferred with those of the agricultural side of the feast to the _Gemeinwoche_ of harvest[933]; but they are also retained, at or about their original date, on All Saints’ and All Souls’ days[934]; and, as I proceed to show, they form a marked and interesting part of the Christmas and New Year ritual. I do not, indeed, agree with Dr. Mogk, who thinks that the Germans held their primitive feast of the dead in the blackest time of winter, for it seems to me more economical to suppose that the observances in question have been shifted like others from November to the Kalends. But I still less share the view of Dr. Tille, who denies that any relics of a feast of the dead can be traced in the Christmas season at all[935].

Bede makes the statement that the heathen Anglo-Saxons gave to the eve of the Nativity the name of _Modranicht_ or ‘night of mothers,’ and in it practised certain ceremonies[936]. It is a difficult passage, but the most plausible of various explanations seems to be that which identifies these ceremonies with the cult of those _Matres_ or _Matronae_, corresponding with the Scandinavian _disar_, whom we seem justified in regarding as guardians and representatives of the dead. Nor is there any particular difficulty in guessing at the nature of the ceremonies referred to. Amongst all peoples the cult of the dead consists in feeding them; and there is a long catena of evidence for the persistent survival in the Germano-Keltic area of a Christmas and New Year custom closely parallel to the _alfablót_ and _disablót_ of the northern _jul_. When the household went to bed after the New Year revel, a portion of the banquet was left spread upon the table in the firm belief that during the night the ancestral spirits and their leaders would come and partake thereof. The practice, which was also known on the Mediterranean, does not escape the animadversion of the ecclesiastical prohibitions. The earlier writers who speak of it, Jerome, Caesarius, Eligius, Boniface, Zacharias, the author of the _Homilia de Sacrilegiis_, if they give any explanation at all, treat it as a kind of charm[937]. The laden table, like the human over-eating and over-drinking, is to prognosticate or cause a year of plentiful fare. The preachers were more anxious to eradicate heathenism than to study its antiquities. Burchardus, however, had a touch of the anthropologist, and Burchardus says definitely that food, drink, and three knives were laid on the Kalends table for the three _Parcae_, figures of Roman mythology with whom the western _Matres_ or ‘weird sisters’ were identified[938]. Mediaeval notices confirm the statement of Burchardus. Martin of Amberg[939], the _Thesaurus Pauperum_[940] and the Kloster Scheyern manuscript[941] make the recipient of the bounty Frau Perchte. In Alsso’s _Largum Sero_ it is for the heathen gods or demons[942]; in _Dives and Pauper_ for ‘Atholde or Gobelyn[943].’ In modern survivals it is still often Frau Perchte or the Perchten or Persteln for whom fragments of food are left; in other cases the custom has taken on a Christian colouring, and the ancestors’ bit becomes the portion of _le bon Dieu_ or the Virgin or Christ or the _Magi_, and is actually given to _quêteurs_ or the poor[944].

It is the ancestors, perhaps, who are really had in mind when libations are made upon the Yule-log, an observance known to Martin of Braga in the sixth century[945], and still in use in France[946]. Nor can it be doubted that the healths drunk to them, and to the first of them, Odin, lived on in the St. John’s _minnes_, no less than in the St. Martin’s _minnes_, of Germany[947]. Apart from eating and drinking, numerous folk-beliefs testify to the presence of the spirits of the dead on earth in the Twelve nights of Christmas. During these days, or some one of them, Frau Holle and Frau Perchte are abroad[948]. So is the ‘wild hunt[949].’ Dreams then dreamt come true[950], and children then born see ghosts[951]. The werwolf, possessed by a human spirit, is to be dreaded[952]. The devil and his company dance in the Isle of Man[953]: in Brittany the _korrigans_ are unloosed, and the dolmens and menhirs disclose their hidden treasures[954]. Marcellus in _Hamlet_ declares:

‘Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is the time[955].’

The folk-lorist can only reply, ‘So have I heard, and do not in the least believe it.’

The wanderings of Odin in the winter nights must be at the bottom of the nursery myth that the Christian representatives of this divinity, Saints Martin and Nicholas (the Santa Claus of modern legend), are the nocturnal givers of _strenae_ to children. In Italy, the fairy Befana (Epiphania), an equivalent of Diana, has a similar function[956]. It was but a step to the actual representation of such personages for the greater delight of the children. In Anspach the skin-clad _Pelzmarten_, in Holland St. Martin in bishop’s robes, make their rounds on St. Martin’s day with nuts, apples, and such-like[957]. St. Nicholas does the same on St. Nicholas’ day in Holland and Alsace-Lorraine, at Christmas in Germany[958]. The beneficent saints were incorporated into the Kalends processions already described, which in the sixteenth-century Germany included two distinct groups, a dark one of devils and beast-masks, terrible to children, and a white or kindly one, in which sometimes appeared the _Jesus-Kind_ himself[959]. It is perhaps a relic of the same merging which gives the German and Flemish St. Nicholas a black Moor as companion in his nightly peregrinations[960].

Besides the customs which form part of the agricultural or the domestic observances of the winter feasts, there are others which belong to these in their quality as feasts of the New Year. To the primitive mind the first night and day of the year are full of omen for the nights and days that follow. Their events must be observed as foretelling, nay more, they must as far as possible be regulated as determining, those of the larger period. The eves and days of All Saints, Christmas, and the New Year itself, as well as in some degree the minor feasts, preserve in modern folk-lore this prophetic character. It is but an extension and systematization of the same notion that ascribes to each of the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany a special influence upon one of the twelve months of the year[961]. This group of customs I can only touch most cursorily. The most interesting are those which, as I have just said, attempt to go beyond foretelling and to determine the arrival of good fortune. Their method is symbolic. In order that the house may be prosperous during the year, wealth during the critical day must flow in and not flow out. Hence the taboos which forbid the carrying out in particular of those two central elements of early civilization, fire[962] and iron[963]. Hence too the belief that a job of work begun on the feast day will succeed, which conflicts rather curiously in practice with the universal rustic sentiment that to work or make others work on holidays is the act of a churl[964]. Nothing, again, is more important to the welfare of the household during the coming year than the character of the first visitor who may enter the house on New Year’s day. The precise requirements of a ‘first foot’ vary in different localities; but as a rule he must be a boy or man, and not a girl or woman, and he must be dark-haired and not splay-footed[965]. An ingenious conjecture has connected the latter requirements with the racial antagonism of the high-instepped dark pre-Aryan to the flat-footed blonde or red-haired invading Kelt[966]. A Bohemian parallel enables me to explain that of masculinity by the belief in the influence of the sex of the ‘first foot’ upon that of the cattle to be born during the year[967]. I regret to add that there are traces also of a requirement that the ‘first foot’ should not be a priest, possibly because in that event the shadow of celibacy would make any births at all improbable[968].

Some of the New Year observances are but prophetic by second intention, having been originally elements of cult. An example is afforded by the all-night table for the leaders of the dead, which, as has been pointed out, was regarded by the Fathers who condemned it as merely a device, with the festal banquet itself, to ensure carnal well-being. Another is the habit of giving presents. This, though widespread, is apparently of Italian and not Germano-Keltic origin[969]. It has gone through three phases. The original _strena_ played a part in the cult of the wood-goddess. It was a twig from a sacred tree and the channel of the divine influence upon the personality of him who held or wore it. The later _strena_ had clearly become an omen, as is shown by the tradition which required it to be honeyed or light-bearing or golden[970]. To-day even this notion may be said to have disappeared, and the Christmas-box or _étrenne_ is merely a token of goodwill, an amusement for children, or a blackmail levied by satellites.

The number of minor omens by which the curiosity, chiefly of women, strives on the winter nights to get a peep into futurity is legion[971]. Many of them arise out of the ordinary incidents of the festivities, the baking of the Christmas cakes[972], the roasting of the nuts in the Hallow-e’en fire[973]. Some of them preserve ideas of extreme antiquity, as when a girl takes off her shift and sits naked in the belief that the vision of her future husband will restore it to her. Others are based upon the most naïve symbolism, as when the same girl pulls a stick out of the wood-pile to see if her husband will be straight or crooked[974]. But however diversified the methods, the objects of the omens are few and unvarying. What will be the weather and what his crops? How shall he fare in love and the begetting of children? What are his chances of escaping for yet another year the summons of the lord of shadows? Such are the simple questions to which the rustic claims from his gods an answer.

Finally, the instinct of play proved no less enduring in the Germano-Keltic winter feasts than in those of summer. The priestly protests against the invasion of the churches by folk-dance and folk-song apply just as much to Christmas as to any other festal period. It is, indeed, to Christmas that the monitory legend of the dancers of Kölbigk attaches itself. A similar pious narrative is that in the thirteenth-century _Bonum Universale de Apibus_ of Thomas of Cantimpré, which tells how a devil made a famous song of St. Martin, and spread it abroad over France and Germany[975]. Yet a third is solemnly retailed by a fifteenth-century English theologian, who professes to have known a man who once heard an indecent song at Christmas, and not long after died of a melancholy[976]. During the seventeenth century folk still danced and cried ‘Yole’ in Yorkshire churches after the Christmas services[977]. Hopeless of abolishing such customs, the clergy tried to capture them. The Christmas crib was rocked to the rhythms of a dance, and such great Latin hymns as the _Hic iacet in cunabulis_ and the _Resonat in laudibus_ became the parents of a long series of festival songs, half sacred, half profane[978]. In Germany these were known as _Wiegenlieder_, in France as _noëls_, in England as carols; and the latter name makes it clear that they are but a specialized development of those _caroles_ or _rondes_ which of all mediaeval _chansons_ came nearest to the type of Germano-Keltic folk-song. A single passage in a Byzantine writer gives a tantalizing glimpse of such a folk-revel or _laiks_ at a much earlier stage. Constantine Porphyrogennetos describes amongst the New Year sports and ceremonies of the court of Byzantium in the tenth century one known as τὸ Γοτθικόν. In this the courtiers were led by two ‘Goths’ wearing skins and masks, and carrying staves and shields which they clashed together. An intricate dance took place about the hall, which naturally recalls the sword-dance of western Europe. A song followed, of which the words are preserved. They are only partly intelligible, and seem to contain allusions to the sacrificial boar and to the Gothic names of certain deities. From the fact that they are in Latin, the scholars who have studied them infer that the Γοτθικόν drifted to Byzantium from the court of the great sixth-century Ostrogoth, Theodoric[979].

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