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 the 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 ques tion, 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 Newyear'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 doggrel 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, 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 two first 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 instances from Arabic and Persian fairy lore. We may many 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 wassailbowl. 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 Epiphany. It begins right heartily: "A jolly wassel-bowl, A wassel of good ale, 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, I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt Back and syde go bare, go bare, Both foote and hand, go colde: But belly God send thee good ale inoughe, 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 ; Considerable importance was formerly (and probably is still) attached to this custom. The welfare of a family-particularly of the fairer portions 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 speak |