Chapter IX: Part 9

The claims of dustmen to be remembered upon "Boxing-day" were formerly urged, without literary pretensions; but now "the march of intellect" has rendered it necessary for them to issue their addresses in print. One of these, which lies before us, represents that "the United Association of Dustmen and Scavengers, of the Parish of ------ have the honor to pay their humble duty and respects to the good [_Master_ or _Mistress_] of this house, and to solicit a Christmas mark of approbation of their unwearied exertions, which they flatter themselves conduce so eminently to the comfort and salubrity of the greatest metropolitan city of civilized Europe." Here, however, is another, in which the spirit of St. Stephen's Day is embittered by the rivalries of business; and the harmony of those two respectable bodies, the scavengers and dustmen, appears to have been disturbed. The dustmen, it will be seen, repudiate the scavengers, and appeal to Saint Stephen on a separate interest.

"_To the Worthy Inhabitants of the Southampton Estate._

"Ladies and Gentlemen,--At this season, when you are pleased to give to laboring men, employed in collecting your dust, a donation called Christmas-box, advantage of which is often taken by persons assuming the name of Dustmen, obtaining under false pretences your bounty, we humbly submit to your consideration, to prevent such imposition, to bestow no gift on any not producing a brass figure of the following description,--A Scotch Fifer, French horn, etc., between his legs; James Dee and Jerry Cane; Southampton Paving Act, on the bell; Contractor, Thomas Salisbury.

"No connection with scavengers. Please not to return this bill to any one."

The principal Wait also leaves a notice of a more imposing description, stating a regular appointment to the office by warrant and admission, with all the ancient forms of the City and Liberty of Westminster; and bears a silver badge and chain, with the arms of that city.

We cannot dismiss the various modes of collecting Christmas-boxes, without a few words upon the pieces of writing carried about by parish boys, and which once presented the only evidence that the schoolmaster was abroad. It appears formerly to have been the practice at this season to hang up in our churches the work of the most skilful pen-man in the parish, after it had been generally exhibited; the subject of which was the life of some saint, or other religious legend. Pepys thus mentions the custom:--"26 December, 1665. Saw some fine writing work and flourishing of Mr. Hore, with one that I knew long ago, an acquaintance of Mr. Tomson's at Westminster, that is this man's clerk. It is the story of the several Archbishops of Canterbury, engrossed on vellum, to hang up in Canterbury cathedral in tables in lieu of the old ones, which are almost worn out."

To this usage, which was no doubt of monkish origin, we are inclined to refer the specimens of caligraphy upon gaudily ornamented sheets of paper, brought round on St. Stephen's Day by parish boys and charity-school children, and displayed for admiration and reward. The walls of school-rooms, and the houses of the children's parents are afterwards decorated with these "Christmas pieces," in the same manner as were anciently the walls of churches.

There are in the different Christian countries of Europe a variety of popular practices connected with St. Stephen's Day; such as that of bleeding horses, which is mentioned by old Tusser in his "December's Abstract:"--

"At Christmas is good
To let thy horse blood;"

and more particularly in his "December's Husbandry:"--

"Ere Christmas be passed, let horse be let blood,
For many a purpose, it doth them much good,
The _day of St. Stephen_ old fathers did use."

These various popular observances, however, are generally of that local and peculiar kind which we are compelled to omit in our enumeration, for reasons already given. But there is one of so striking a character, that we must pause to give some account of it.

This custom, which is called "hunting the wren," is generally practised by the peasantry of the south of Ireland on St. Stephen's Day. It bears a close resemblance to the Manx proceedings described by Waldron,--as taking place however on a different day. "On the 24th of December," says that writer, in his account of the Isle of Man, "towards evening the servants in general have a holiday; they go not to bed all night, but ramble about till the bells ring in all the churches, which is at twelve o'clock. Prayers being over, they go to hunt the wren; and after having found one of these poor birds, they kill her and lay her on a bier with the utmost solemnity, bringing her to the parish church and burying her with a whimsical kind of solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manx language, which they call her knell; after which Christmas begins."

The Wren-boys in Ireland, who are also called Droleens, go from house to house for the purpose of levying contributions, carrying one or more of these birds in the midst of a bush of holly, gaily decorated with colored ribbons; which birds they have, like the Manx mummers, employed their morning in killing. The following is their song; of which they deliver themselves in most monotonous music:--

"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's-day was caught in the furze,
Although he is little, his family's great,
I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat.

"My box would speak, if it had but a tongue,
And two or three shillings would do it no wrong;
Sing holly, sing ivy--sing ivy, sing holly,
A drop just to drink, it would drown melancholy.

"And if you draw it of the best,
I hope, in heaven your soul will rest;
But if you draw it of the small,
It won't agree with these Wren-boys at all."

If an immediate acknowledgment, either in money or drink, is not made in return for the civility of their visit, some such nonsensical verses as the following are added:--

"Last Christmas-day, I turned the spit,
I burned my fingers (I feel it yet),
A cock sparrow flew over the table,
The dish began to fight with the ladle.

"The spit got up like a naked man,
And swore he'd fight with the dripping pan;
The pan got up and cocked his tail,
And swore he'd send them all to jail."

The story told to account for the title of "king of all birds," here given to the wren, is a curious sample of Irish ingenuity, and is thus stated in the clever "Tales of the Munster Festivals," by an Irish servant in answer to his master's inquiry:--

"Saint Stephen! why what the mischief, I ask you again, have I to do with Saint Stephen?"

"Nothen, sure, sir, only this being his day, when all the boys o' the place go about that way with the wran, the king of all birds, sir, as they say (bekays wanst when all the birds wanted to choose a king, and they said they'd have the bird that would fly highest, the aigle flew higher than any of 'em, till at last when he couldn't fly an inch higher, a little rogue of a wran that was a-hide under his wing took a fly above him a piece, and was crowned king, of the aigle an' all, sir), tied in the middle o' the holly that way you see, sir, by the leg, that is. An old custom, sir."

Vainly have we endeavored to arrive at the probable origin of hunting and killing these little birds upon this day. The tradition commonly related is by no means satisfactory. It is said that a Danish army would have been surprised and destroyed by some Irish troops, had not a wren given the alarm by pecking at some crumbs upon a drum-head,--the remains of the sleeping drummer's supper; which roused him, when he instantly beat to arms. And that from this circumstance the wren became an object of hatred to the Irish.

Songs similar in spirit to that of the Irish Droleen boys were popularly sung by the Greeks. In D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," may be found translations of "the crow song," and "the swallow song;" between which and the Irish wren song the resemblance is very striking. "Swallow-singing or chelidonising, as the Greek term is," was, it appears, a method of collecting eleemosynary gifts in the month of Boedromion or August. We think D'Israeli is right in his opinion that there is probably a closer connection between the custom which produced the songs of the crow and the swallow and that of our northern mummeries, than may be at first sight suspected. The subject of mumming we have elsewhere treated at some length; but this curious variety of the practice, and the manner in which it seems to connect the subject with the ceremonies of the Greeks, we could not allow ourselves wholly to omit.

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

31ST DECEMBER.

THIS is the last day of the year, and the feelings which belong to it are of a tangled yarn. Regrets for the past are mingled with hopes of the future; and the heart of man, between the meeting years, stands like the head of Janus looking two ways.

The day and eve which precede the New Year are marked, in England, by few outward observances, save such as are common to the season; and it is in the peculiar trains of thought to which they give rise that they have a character of their own.

In Scotland, on the other hand, the festival of this season is, since the Reformation, nearly limited to these two days; and the last day of the year is distinguished both by omens and by customs peculiar to itself. In Mr. Stewart's "Popular Superstitions of the Highlands," there is an account of some of these omens, as they were gathered, at no distant period, in that land of mist and mystery; and a singular example may be mentioned in the auguries drawn from what was called the Candlemas bull. The term Candlemas, which has been given to this season, in Scotland and elsewhere, is supposed to have had its origin in some old religious ceremonies which were performed by candle light; and the bull was a passing cloud, which in Highland imagination assumed the form of that animal, and from whose rise or fall, or motions generally on this night, the seer prognosticated good or bad weather. Something of the same kind is mentioned in Sir John Sinclair's "Statistical Account of Scotland," who explains more particularly the auguries gathered from the state of the atmosphere on New Year's Eve. The superstition in question, however, is not peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland, but shared with the northern European nations in general, most of whom assigned portentous qualities to the winds of New Year's Eve.

It is on this night that those Scottish mummers, the Guisars, to whom we have already more than once alluded, still go about the streets, habited in antic dresses, having their faces covered with vizards and carrying cudgels in their hands. The doggerel lines repeated by these masquers, as given by Mr. Callender, in a paper contributed by him to the Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, are as follows:--

"Hogmanay,
Trollolay,
Gie me o' your white bread,
I'll hae nane o' your grey;"

and much learning has been exhausted, and ingenuity exercised in their explanation. The admirable paper of Mr. Repp, in the same Transactions (to which we have already alluded, and which we recommend to the notice of our antiquarian readers), connects them, as we have before hinted, with another superstition common to many of the northern nations; and which may be compared with one of the articles of popular belief before described, as prevailing in England, on Christmas Eve; that, viz., which seems to imply that the spirits of evil are at this time in peculiar activity, unless kept down by holier and more powerful influences. According to this able investigator, the moment of midnight, on New Year's Eve, was considered to be a general removing term for the races of genii, whether good or bad; and the first two lines of the cry in question, which as he explains them, after the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic dialects, were words of appeal to the good genii (the hoghmen or hillmen), and of execration against the evil ones (the trolles), were so used, in consequence of such belief (that these different spirits were, at that hour, in motion), and of the further one that the words of men had power to determine that motion to their own advantage. It is well known that, in some countries, and we may mention Germany, great importance is attached to words involuntarily uttered at certain seasons, and under certain circumstances, and they are supposed to be either words of betrayal, leaving the speaker open to the machinations of evil spirits, who may apply them in a strained and fatal sense, if at all ambiguous; or words of power, controlling the designs of demons, and compelling them to work out the good of the utterer, against their will. Now a superstition of this kind, Mr. Repp says, attaches _generally_ to the doctrines of demonology; and he states that he could prove his position by many instances from Arabic and Persian fairy lore. We may observe that some of the Highland superstitions mentioned by Mr. Stewart, such as that of sprinkling the household with water drawn from _the dead and living ford_, and that of fumigating the apartments and half smothering their tenants with the smoke from burning piles of the juniper-bush (both considered to operate as charms against the spells of witchcraft and the malignity of evil eyes), have, evidently, their origin in that same belief, that the powers of evil are on the wing at this mysterious and solemn time of natural transition.

Some ancient superstitions are likewise alluded to in the old dialogue of Dives and Pauper, as being in force at the beginning of the year, and which appear to have had a like origin with the Highland ones above described. As an example, mention may be made of the practice of "setting of mete or drynke by nighte on the benche, to fede Alholde or Gobelyn."

We must not forget to observe that Brand speaks of an ancient custom, which he says is still retained in some parts of England, in which young women go about on this eve carrying a wassail-bowl, and singing certain verses from door to door, which custom has certainly some analogy with the hogmanay practice in Scotland. And we may further state, while we are in the way of tracing resemblances, that the _het pint_, which, in Scotland, was formerly carried about the streets at the midnight of the New Year's coming in, and which was composed of ale, spirits, sugar, and nutmeg or cinnamon, is neither more nor less, though it was borne about in a kettle, than a Scottish version of the wassail-bowl.

In Ritson's collection of ancient songs, there is a very spirited carol given at length, which appears to have been sung by these English wassail mummers, in honor of their bowl; but which some of its verses prove to be a Twelfth-night song, and show, therefore, that a similar practice marked the night of the Epiphany. It begins right heartily:--

"A jolly wassel-bowl,
A wassel of good ale,
Well fare the butler's soul
That setteth this to sale;
Our jolly wassel;"

but is too long for insertion in our pages. We should mention here, however, that ale in all its forms, whether in that of wassail composition or in its own simple dignity, "prince of liquors, old or new!" was ever the most cherished beverage of our ancestors, and many and enthusiastic are the songs in its praise. Our readers may take the following verse from a very pleasant example of these carols:--

"I love no rost, but a nut brown toste,
And a crab layde in the fyre,
A little bread shall do me stead,
Much breade I not desyre:
No froste nor snow, no winde, I trowe,
Can hurt mee if I wolde;
I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt
Of jolly good ale and olde.
Back and syde go bare, go bare,
Both foote and hand, go colde;
But belly God send thee good ale inoughe,
Whether it be new or olde."

We believe that most of the customs which, up to a recent period, filled the streets of Edinburgh with mirth and bustle, on the eve of the New Year, have met with discouragement, and of late fallen into disuse, in consequence of some outrages which were committed under their shelter, in the year 1811. We presume, however, that there are still many places of the northern kingdom, in which the youth waits impatiently for the striking of the midnight hour, that he may be the earliest to cross the threshold of his mistress, and the lassie listens eagerly, from the moment when its chiming has ceased, to catch the sound of the _first-foot_ on the floor:--

"The _first foot's_ entering step,
That sudden on the floor is welcome heard,
Ere blushing maids have braided up their hair;
The laugh, the _hearty kiss_, the good New Year,
Pronounced with honest warmth."

Considerable importance was formerly, and probably is still, attached to this custom. The welfare of a family, particularly of the fairer portion of its members, was supposed to depend much on the character of the person who might first cross the threshold, after the mid-hour of this night had sounded. Great care was therefore taken to exclude all improper persons; and when the privilege of the season is taken into consideration (that viz., of the hearty kiss above mentioned), it is probable that the maidens themselves might consider it desirable to interfere after their own fashion in the previous arrangements which were to secure the priority of admission to an unobjectionable guest.

But our space does not permit us to inquire at length in the present volume into any other customs than those which belong to an _English_ Christmas season. We have only been able occasionally to advert to others, even amongst our own sister nations, when they helped to throw light upon those which on this occasion are our immediate subject. We must therefore return at once to the only general and conspicuous observance of this eve in England, viz., that which is commonly called "seeing the New Year in."

It is almost impossible for man on this day to be insensible to the "still small voices" that call upon him for a gathering up of his thoughts. In the very midst of the house of mirth, a shadow passes through the heart and summons it to a solemn conference. The skeleton who sits at all feasts, though overlooked at most from long habit, gets power on this day to wave his hand, and points emphatically, with his "slow-moving finger," to the long record whose burthen is "passing away!" The handwriting of Time comes visibly out upon the wall; and the spirit pauses to read its lessons, and take an account of the wrecks which it registers and the changes which it announces. Properly speaking, every day is the commencement of a new year, and the termination of an old one; but it is only, as we have said at the beginning of this book, by these emphatic markings that man is attracted to a consideration of a fact, whose daily recurrence at once makes its weighty importance and causes it to be forgotten, as if it were of none!

But on this particular day, no man fails to remember that--

"Again the silent wheels of time
Their annual round have driven;"

and how solemn are the reflections which suggest themselves to him who casts his eye over the space of a year, in a spirit which can look beyond his own personal share in its doings, and embrace the wide human interests that such a retrospect includes! "What a mighty sum of events," says that excellent writer, William Howitt, "has been consummated; what a tide of passions and affections has flowed; what lives and deaths have alternately arrived; what destinies have been fixed forever! . . . Once more our planet has completed one of those journeys in the heavens which perfect all the fruitful changes of its peopled surface, and mete out the few stages of our existence; and every day, every hour of that progress has in all her wide lands, in all her million hearts, left traces that eternity shall behold." Oh! blessed they and rich, beyond all other blessedness and all other wealth which "Time's effacing fingers" may have left them, who, on the last night of the year, can turn from reviews like these to sleep upon the pillow of a good conscience, though that pillow should be moistened, aye, steeped in their tears!

No doubt it is in the name of his own private affections that man is first summoned to that review, which the wise will end by thus extending; and the first reckoning which each will naturally take is that of the treasures which may have been lost or gained to himself in the year which is about to close. Through many, many a heart, that summons rings in the low, sweet, mournful voice of some beloved one, whom in that bereaving space we have laid in the "narrow house;" and then it will happen (for man is covetous of his griefs, when his attention is once called to them) that the ghost which took him out into the churchyard to visit its own tomb, will end by carrying him round its dreary precincts and showing him all the graves that he has planted from his childhood. There _will_ be hours on a day like this to many, and in some year or another to most, when the cheerful hopes which are also of the natural spirit of the season would contend in vain with the memories which it conjures up, but for that furthest and brightest hope which lies beyond the rest, and which is at this moment typified and shadowed forth by the returning sun and the renewing year.

We cannot refrain from pausing here, to quote for our readers a few exquisite and affecting lines written in the seventeenth century by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, to one such beloved remembrancer, and in the cheering spirit of that same precious hope. We fancy they are very little known.

"Sleep on, my love! in thy cold bed,
Never to be disquieted!
My last 'good night!'--thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake;
Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves,--and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there!--I will not faile
To meet thee in that hollow vale:--
And think not much of my delay,
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And every houre a step tow'rds thee:--
At night, when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my West
Of life, almost by eight houres' sail,
Than when sleep breathed his drowsy gale!"

There are in the last volume of poems published by Mr. Tennyson, some beautiful verses, in which the natural thoughts that inevitably haunt this season of change are touchingly expressed, as they arise even in the young breast of one for whom "seasons and their change" are immediately about to be no more. We are in a mood which tempts us to extract them.

If you're waking, call me early, call me early, mother dear,
For I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year--
It is the last New-year that I shall ever see,
Then ye may lay me low i' the mould, and think no more of me.

To-night I saw the sun set: he set and left behind
The good old year, the dear old time, and all my peace of mind;
And the New-year's coming up, mother, but I shall never see
The may upon the blackthorn, the leaf upon the tree.

Last May we made a crown of flowers: we had a merry day:
Beneath the hawthorn on the green they made me Queen of May;
And we danced about the maypole, and in the hazel-copse,
Till Charles's wain came out above the tall white chimney-tops.

There's not a flower on all the hills: the frost is on the pane:
I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again:
I wish the snow would melt and the sun come out on high--
I long to see a flower so before the day I die.

The building rook 'll caw from the windy tall elm-tree,
And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea,
And the swallow 'll come back again with summer o'er the wave,
But I shall lie alone, mother, within the mouldering grave.

Upon the chancel casement, and upon that grave of mine,
In the early, early morning the summer sun 'll shine,
Before the red cock crows from the farm upon the hill,
When you are warm asleep, mother, and all the world is still.

When the flowers come again, mother, beneath the waning light,
Ye 'll never see me more in the long gray fields at night;
When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow cool,
On the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and the bulrush in the pool.

Ye 'll bury me, my mother, just beneath the hawthorn shade,
And ye 'll come sometimes and see me where I am lowly laid,
I shall not forget ye, mother, I shall hear ye when ye pass,
With your feet above my head in the long and pleasant grass.

I have been wild and wayward, but ye 'll forgive me now:
Ye 'll kiss me, my own mother, upon my cheek and brow;
Nay,--nay, ye must not weep, nor let your grief be wild,
Ye should not fret for me, mother, ye have another child.

If I can, I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place
Tho' ye 'll not see me, mother, I shall look upon your face;
Tho' I cannot speak a word, I shall hearken what ye say,
And be often--often with ye when ye think I'm far away.

Good night! good night! when I have said good night for evermore,
And ye see me carried out from the threshold of the door,
Don't let Effie come to see me till my grave be growing green;
She'll be a better child to you than ever I have been.

She'll find my garden tools upon the granary floor;
Let her take 'em,--they are hers,--I shall never garden more:
But tell her, when I'm gone, to train the rosebush that I set,
About the parlor window, and the box of mignonette.

Good night, sweet mother! call me when it begins to dawn:
All night I lie awake, but I fall asleep at morn:
But I would see the sun rise upon the glad New year,
So, if you're waking, call me, call me early, mother dear!

And it is wholesome that the mournful reflections which the period suggests _should_ be indulged, but not to the neglect of its more cheerful influences. The New Year's Eve is in all quarters looked upon as a time of rejoicing; and perhaps no night of this merry season is more universally dedicated to festivity. Men are for the most part met in groups to hail the coming year with propitiatory honors; and copious libations are poured to its honor, as if to determine it to look upon us with a benignant aspect. We generally spend _our_ New Year's Eve in some such group; but, we confess, it is not every class of wassailers that will suit us for the occasion. The fact is, after all our resolves to work up our minds to the pitch of gladness, aye, and notwithstanding our _success_, too, there are _other_ feelings that _will_ intrude in spite of us; and we like to find ourselves in a party where their presence is not looked upon as a marrer of the revels. When fitly associated for such a night, we find the very feelings in question for the most part to harmonize very delightfully with the predominant spirit of the time, producing a sort of mixed sensation which is full of luxury and tenderness. Bye the by, we have no great wish to have for our companions at any time those precisians who insist greatly on the _external_ solemnities. "Ye are sae grave, nae doubt ye're wise," says Burns. But for ourselves, gentlemen, our sympathies lie with those who can be made to understand that the garb of even folly may by possibility be at times worn by those who conceal beneath it more sickness of the heart, as well as more wisdom, than shall ever be dreamt of in _your_ philosophy,--who know, in fact, that that same folly is sometimes the very saddest thing in the world; that the jingle of the cap and bells is too often but a vain device, like that of the ancient Corybantes, to drown the "still small" sounds whose wailing is yet heard over all.

And on the night before us, of all nights in the year, the smile and the laugh go freely round, but ever and anon there is, as it were, the echo of a far sigh. A birth in which we have a mighty interest is about to take place, but every now and then comes to the heart the impression of low whispering and soft treading in the back-ground, as of those who wait about a death-bed. We are in a state of divided feelings, somewhat resembling his whose joy at the falling of a rich inheritance is dashed by tender recollections of the friend by whose departure it came. Let Mr. Tennyson explain for us why this is so:--

"Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year, you must not die.
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year, you shall not die.

"He lieth still: he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
He gave me a friend, and a true true-love,
And the New-year will take 'em away.
Old year, you must not go.
So long as you have been with us,
Such joy as you have seen with us,
Old year, you shall not go!

"He frothed his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But tho' his eyes are waxing dim,
And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me!
Old year, you shall not die.
We did so laugh and cry with you,
I've half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you _must_ die.

"He was full of joke and jest,
But all his merry quips are o'er,
To see him die, across the waste
His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
But he'll be dead before!
Every one for his own!
The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the New-year, blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.

"How hard he breathes!--over the snow,
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro;
The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
'Tis nearly one[4] o'clock.
Shake hands before you die.
Old year, we'll dearly rue for you.
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die!

"His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack! our friend is gone!
Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
Step from the corpse, and let _him_ in
That standeth there alone,
And waiteth at the door.
There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door!"

Occasionally, too, there will come a thought across us, in these hours, which _cannot_ be made to harmonize with the feelings we are seeking to encourage, and has the unpleasing effect of a discord. It is felt at times, for instance, to be a sort of indecency that we should be looking out merrily for the New Year, when the old one is perishing by our side, and, for an instant, the heart's joyous issues are thrown back upon it. And then, again, the looker forward to hail the "coming guest" will suddenly fix his eyes upon the veil which shrouds that face; and the chill of a moment will creep over his heart, as he speculates on what it may conceal, or, gazing on the sealed book which the New Year carries in his hand, asks himself how many of those who sit with him on this night about the social table, may have their names written in its last page! Thoughts like these, however, are instantly treated like informers, and ducked, as they deserve to be, in the wassail-bowl.

But, in any case, we have never failed to observe that, as the midnight hour draws near, a hush falls upon these assemblies; and when men rise to usher in the new comer, it is for the most part in silence. We do not believe _that_ moment is ever a merry one. The blithe spirits of the night stand still. The glasses are full,--but so is the heart, and the eye is strained upon the finger of the dial whose notes are to sound the arrival, as if held there by a spell. We do not think that any man, of all that group whom our artist has represented, could turn his face away from the dial, even by an effort; and he who could, would be out of place in any assembly of which we made one, unless we were out of place ourselves. The instant the solemn sounds of the midnight chime have ceased, the bells from a thousand steeples lift up their merry voices, but they never, at that moment, found a true echo in _our_ hearts; and the shout which rises from the wassail table, in answer, has ever seemed to us to want much of the mirth to which it makes such boisterous pretension.

But this oppressive sensation soon passes away; and the glad bells of the spirit, like those of the steeples, ring freely out. When the old year is fairly withdrawn, when we have ceased to hear the sound of the falling earth upon its coffin-lid, when the heir stands absolutely in our presence, and the curtain which hides his features has begun slowly to rise (while the gazer on that curtain can discover, as yet, nothing of the dark things that lie behind, and the hopes which the New Year brings are seen through it, by their own light),--then does the heart shake off all that interfered with its hearty enjoyment, and then "comes in the sweet o' the night!" We are, ourselves, of that party in the plate; and it will be late, we promise you, before we separate. One song to the past! and then, "shall we set about some revels?"--as our old friend, Sir Andrew, hath it.

"Here's to the year that's awa!
We'll drink it, in strong and in sma';
And to each bonny lassie that we dearly loo'd,
In the days o' the year that's awa!

"Here's to the soldier who bled!
To the sailor who bravely did fa'!
Oh, their fame shall remain, though their spirits are fled,
On the wings o' the year that's awa!

"Here's to the friend we can trust,
When the storms of adversity blaw;
Who can join in our song, and be nearest our heart,
Nor depart,--like the year that's awa!"

And now are we in the humor, this New Year's morning, for keeping such vigils as they did in Illyria; for "were we" too "not born under Taurus?" No advocates do we mean to be for those whose zeal in symposiac matters, like that of Bardolph, "burns in their noses;" but occasions there are, and this is one, when we hold it lawful to sound the wassail-bowl to some considerable depth. Like honest Isaak Walton, we love to keep within the bounds of "such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look on one another, next morning;" but we feel that we may venture to be a little intemperate, in the present instance, and yet hold our heads up, even if we should chance to meet one of those gentry whom Burns presumes to be wise, because they "are sae grave." What says Innocentius?--and he was a Father of the Church; "_Fecundi calices, quem non fecere disertum?_" "Carry Master Silence to bed!" therefore, for we are about to be talkative, and expect to be answered. No man need sit with us longer than he likes: but it is the opening of another year, and _we_ must see more of it. We find much virtue in Sir Toby's excellent reasoning, that "not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes;" and have no sympathy for those who would insist, to-day, with the stolid Sir Andrew, that "to be up late is to be up late." "A false conclusion!" says Sir Toby; and so say we. So fill the glasses, once more, from the wassail-bowl, and let us "rouse the night-owl" in another "catch!"

But alas! it is later than we thought, and the owl is gone to bed; for we hear the cry of that other bird whom Herrick calls "the Bellman of the night:"--

"Hark! the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us the day himself's not far;
And see! where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the eastern hills with light!"

Honest Master Cotton had evidently been sitting up all night, himself, when he wrote these lines; and being therefore a boon companion, and a true observer of Christmas proprieties, we will take his warning, and to bed ourselves. So "a good New Year to you, my masters! and many of them!" as the bellman (not Herrick's) says, on this morning.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] (Twelve?)

NEW YEAR'S DAY.

1ST JANUARY.

THE first of January, forming the accomplishment of the eight days after the birth of Christ, has been sometimes called the octave of Christmas; and is celebrated in our church services as the day of the Circumcision.

Of this day we have little left to say; almost all that belongs to it having been of necessity anticipated in the progress of those remarks which have brought us up to it. It is a day of universal congratulation; and one on which, so far as we may judge from external signs, a general expansion of the heart takes place. Even they who have no hearts to open, or hearts which are not opened by such ordinary occasions, adopt the phraseology of those whom _all_ genial hints call into sympathy with their fellow-creatures; and the gracious compliments of the season may be heard falling from lips on which they must surely wither in the very act of passing. To have your morning's salutation from a worthy like our friend with the umbrella in the plate, must be much the same thing as riding out into the highway, and getting your New Year's greeting from a raven by the roadside. Mathews's undertaker, who used to sing the song of "Merry I have been, and merry could I be," at his club, to a tune considerably below a dirge in point of liveliness, was a brother of the same family.

Of New Year's gifts, which are the distinguishing feature of this day, we have already said enough, in pointing out the distinction betwixt them and Christmas-boxes. They still pass generally from friend to friend, and between the different members of a family; and are in such cases, very pleasant remembrancers; but the practice in ancient times had some very objectionable features. It was formerly customary for the nobles and those about the court to make presents on this day to the sovereign; who, if he were a prince with anything like a princely mind, took care that the returns which he made in kind should at least balance the cost to the subject. The custom, however, became a serious tax when the nobles had to do with a sovereign of another character; and in Elizabeth's day it was an affair of no trifling expense to maintain ground as a courtier. The lists of the _kind_ of gifts which she exacted from all who approached her (for the necessity of giving, the consequences of not giving, amounted to an exaction), and the accounts of the childish eagerness with which she turned over the wardrobe finery, furnished in great abundance as the sort of gift most suited to her capacity of appreciation, furnish admirable illustrations of her mind. She is said to have taken good care that her returns should leave a very substantial balance in her own favor. The practice is stated to have been extinguished in the reign of George III.

A worse custom still, however, was that of presenting gifts to the Chancellor by suitors in his court, for the purpose of influencing his judgments. The abuses of the New-Year's-gift practice have, however, been cleared away, and have left it what it now is,--a beautiful form for the interchanges of affection and the expression of friendship.

In Paris, where this day is called the "Jour d'Etrennes," the practice is of still more universal observance than with us, and the streets are brilliant with the displays made in every window of the articles which are to furnish these tokens of kindness, and with the gay equipages and well-dressed pedestrians passing in all directions, to be the bearers of them, and offer the compliments which are appropriate to the season. The thousand bells of the city are pealing from its hundred belfries, filling the air with an indescribable sense of festival, and would alone set the whole capital in motion if they were a people that ever sat still. This singing of a thousand bells is likewise a striking feature of the day in London; and no one who has not heard the mingling voices of these high choristers in a metropolis, can form any notion of the wild and stirring effects produced by the racing and crossing and mingling of their myriad notes. It is as if the glad voices of the earth had a chorus of echoes in the sky; as if the spirit of its rejoicing were caught up by "airy tongues," and flung in a cloud of incense-like music to the gates of heaven.

We need scarcely mention that most of the other forms in which the mirth of the season exhibits itself, are in demand for this occasion; and that among the merry evenings of the Christmas-tide, not the least merry is that which closes New Year's Day. To the youngsters of society, that day and eve have probably been the most trying of all; and the strong excitements of a happy spirit drive the weary head to an earlier pillow than the young heart of this season at all approves. But his is the weariness that the sweet sleep of youth so surely recruits; and to-morrow shall see him early afoot, once more engaged in those winter amusements which are to form his resource till the novelties of Twelfth-day arrive.

"There will come an eve to a longer day,
That will find thee tired--but not of play;
And thou wilt lean as thou leanest now,
With drooping limbs and an aching brow;
And wish the shadows would faster creep,
And long to go to thy quiet sleep!--
Well were it then if thine aching brow
Were as free from sin and shame as now!"

Let not a man be seen here,
Who unurged will not drink
To the base from the brink,
A health to the King!
_Herrick._
]

TWELFTH DAY AND TWELFTH NIGHT.

6TH JANUARY.

TWELFTH-DAY (so called from its being the twelfth after Christmas Day) is that on which the festival of the Epiphany is held. This feast of the Christian Church was instituted, according to Picart, in the fourth century, to commemorate the manifestation of our Saviour to the Gentiles; and the name Epiphany (Επιφανεια), which signifies an appearance from above, was given to it in allusion to the star described in Holy writ, as the guide of the Magi or Wise Men to the cradle of the Blessed Infant. "In Italy," says Mr. Leigh Hunt, "the word has been corrupted into Beffania or Beffana, as in England it used to be called Piffany; and Beffana in some parts of that country has come to mean an old fairy or Mother Bunch, whose figure is carried about the streets, and who rewards or punishes children at night, by putting sweetmeats or stones and dirt into a stocking hung up for the purpose, near the bed's head. The word 'Beffa,' taken from this, familiarly means a trick or mockery put upon any one; to such base uses may come the most splendid terms!" But what is quite as extraordinary as that the primitive signification of a word not familiarly understood should, amid the revolutions of centuries, be lost in a different or distorted into an inferior meaning, is the preservation in popular rites of trivial details, which, as we have before stated, conclusively identify many of the practices of our modern Christian festivals as echoes of ancient pagan observances. Of this, Twelfth-day presents a remarkable instance.

The more we examine the Saturnalia of the Romans and compare those revels with the proceedings of our Twelfth-night, the more satisfied do we feel of the correctness of Selden's view. "Christmas," he says, in his "Table Talk," "succeeds the Saturnalia; the same time, the same number of holy-days. Then the master waited upon the servants, like the Lord of Misrule." There is here a general likeness to the season of which we treat; but, as Mr. Brand further states, the Greeks and Romans at this period also "drew lots for kingdoms, and like kings exercised their temporary authority;" and Mr. Fosbroke mentions that "the king of Saturnalia was elected by beans," which identifies our Twelfth-night characters, as well as our mode of selecting them, with those of the ancients. Through so many centuries has chance decided who should wear a crown! By the French Twelfth-day was distinguished as "La Fête des Rois," a name of course obnoxious to the revolutionary fraternity of 1792, who caused such feast to be declared anti-civic, and replaced it by "La Fête des Sans-Culottes."

However, before entering upon the important discussion of the "absolute monarchy" of "the king of cakes and characters," in which, without any reference to profane ceremonies, there was sufficient found to offend puritanical ideas, we must be allowed to mention some customs observed on the vigil or eve of the feast of the Epiphany. Amongst these was the practice of wassailing the trees to ensure their future fruitfulness, mentioned by Herrick:--

"Wassail the trees, that they may beare
You many a plum, and many a peare;
For more or lesse fruits they will bring,
As you do give them wassailing."

The merry bowl which, notwithstanding that it had been so often drained, was still kept brimming throughout all the Christmas holidays, was now when they were drawing to a close actually flowing over; and the warm heart and jovial spirit of the season, not content with pledging all those who could drink in return, proceeded to an excess of boon-companionship, and after quaffing a wassail-draft to the health and abundant bearing of some favorite fruit-tree, poured what remained in the cup upon the root, as a libation to its strength and vitality. Here, also, we cannot fail to recognize the rites of classical times lurking in the superstitions used in the cider districts of England. A pleasant custom of this kind is mentioned in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1791, as existing in certain parts of Devonshire. It is there stated that "the farmer, attended by his workmen with a large pitcher of cider, goes to the orchard on this evening; and there, encircling one of the best bearing trees, they drink the following toast three times:--

"Here's to thee, old apple-tree!
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow!
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats full! caps full!
Bushel, bushel-sacks full!
And my pockets full too!--Huzza!"

This done they return to the house, the doors of which they are sure to find bolted by the females, who, be the weather what it may, are inexorable to all entreatries to open them till some one has guessed at what is on the spit, which is generally some nice little thing difficult to be hit on, and is the reward of him who first names it. The doors are then thrown open; and the lucky clodpole receives the titbit as a recompense. Some, it is added, "are so superstitious as to believe that if they neglect this custom the trees will bear no apples that year."

"Health to thee, good apple-tree!
Well to bear, pockets full, hats full,
Pecks full, bushel-bags full,"--

is another version of the address used on these occasions, preserved by Brand. We find recorded in one quarter or another a variety of analogous and other customs observed in different parts of England on this vigil; but our diminishing space will not permit us to enter upon a description of them.

To illustrate "Twelfth-night," our artist has made two studies of the scenes it presents in London,--abroad and at home; and these involve our consideration of the subject, accordingly.

During the entire twelve months there is no such illumination of pastry-cooks' shops, as on Twelfth-night. Each sends forth a blaze of light; and is filled with glorious cakes, "decorated," to use the words of Mr. Hone, "with all imaginable images of thing animate and inanimate. Stars, castles, kings, cottages, dragons, trees, fish, palaces, cats, dogs, churches, lions, milkmaids, knights, serpents, and innumerable other forms, in snow-white confectionery, painted with variegated colors." "This 'paradise of dainty devices,'" he continues, "is crowded by successive, and successful, desirers of the seasonable delicacies; while alternate tappings of hammers and peals of laughter, from the throng surrounding the house, excite smiles from the inmates." This last observation requires explanation, for our country readers.

Let all idle gazers, then, in the streets of London beware of Twelfth-night! There is then that spirit of mischievous fun abroad, which, carried on without the superintending power of a Lord of Misrule, exhibits itself in transfixing the coat-skirts of the unconscious stranger to the frame of the door or window, at which he may have paused to stare and wonder. Once fairly caught, lucky is the wight who can disengage himself, without finding that, in the interim, his other skirt has been pinned to the pelisse or gown of some alarmed damsel, whose dress is perhaps dragged, at the same moment, in opposite directions, so that he can neither stand still nor move, without aiding the work of destruction. These practical facetiæ are the performances of that class of nondescript lads, "perplexers of Lord Mayors and irritators of the police," whose character Mr. Leigh Hunt has as truly drawn as our artist has depicted their persons: "those equivocal animal-spirits of the streets, who come whistling along, you know not whether thief or errand-boy, sometimes with a bundle and sometimes not, in corduroys, a jacket, and a cap or bit of hat, with hair sticking through a hole in it. His vivacity gets him into scrapes in the street; and he is not ultra-studious of civility in his answers. If the man he runs against is not very big, he gives him abuse for abuse, at once; if otherwise, he gets at a convenient distance, and then halloos out, 'Eh, stupid!' or 'Can't you see before you?' or 'Go and get your face washed!' This last is a favorite saying of his, out of an instinct referable to his own visage. He sings 'Hokee-Pokee,' and 'A shiny Night,' varied, occasionally, with an uproarious 'Rise, gentle Moon,' or 'Coming through the Rye.' On winter evenings, you may hear him indulging himself, as he goes along, in a singular undulation of yowl, a sort of gargle, as if a wolf was practising the rudiments of a shake. This he delights to do, more particularly in a crowded thoroughfare, as though determined that his noise should triumph over every other and show how jolly he is, and how independent of the ties to good behavior. If the street is a quiet one, and he has a stick in his hand (perhaps a hoop-stick), he accompanies the howl with a run upon the gamut of the iron rails. He is the nightingale of mud and cold. If he gets on in life, he will be a pot-boy. At present, as we said before, we hardly know what he is; but his mother thinks herself lucky if he is not transported."