Page images
PDF
EPUB

"Observe how the chimneys
Do smoak all about,
The cooks are providing

For dinner, no doubt;
But those on whose tables

No victuals appear,
O may they keep Lent

All the rest of the year!"

The same author quotes from a manuscript in the British Museum, an Anglo-Norman carol of the early date of the thirteenth century; and appends to it a translation by the late Mr. Douce, -the following verse of which translation informs us (what, at any rate, might well be supposed, viz.) that so much good eating on the part of the ancient gentleman Christmas, would naturally suggest the propriety of good drinking, too.—

[blocks in formation]

In a "Christmas Carroll," printed at the end of Wither's “Juvenilia," a graphic account is given of some of the humors of Christmas ;-amongst which the labors of the kitchen are introduced in the first verse, with a due regard to their right of precedency, and in words which, if few, are full of suggestion.

"Lo! now is come our joyful'st feast!

Let every man be jolly.

Each roome with yvie leaves is drest,

And every post with holly.

Now, all our neighbors' chimneys smoke,

And Christmas Blocks are burning;

Their ovens they with bak't-meats choke,

And all their spits are turning."

We must present our readers with another quotation from an old ballad, entitled, "Time's Alteration; or, The Old Man's Rehearsal, what brave dayes he knew a great while

agone,

when

his old cap was new," and which appears to have been written after the times of the Commonwealth. And this extract we are induced to add to those which have gone before, because, though it deals with precisely the same subjects, it speaks of them as of things gone by,-and is written in a tone of lamentation, in which it is one of the purposes of this chapter to call upon our readers to join. We are sorry we cannot give them directions as to the tune to which it should be sung,-further than that it is obviously unsuited to that of the "Delights of the Bottle," prescribed for the joyous ballad from which we first quoted on this subject; and that, whatever may be the tune, we are clear that the direction as to time should be the same as that which Mr. Hood prefixes to his song of the Guildhall Giants, viz.,—“ Dinnertime and mournful.—”

"A man might, then, behold,

At Christmas, in each hall,

Good fires to curb the cold,

And meat for great and small;

The neighbors were friendly bidden,
And all had welcome true,

The poor from the gates were not chidden,
When this old cap was new.

"Black jacks to every man

Were fill'd with wine and beer;

No pewter pot nor can

In those days did appear:

Good cheer in a nobleman's house
Was counted a seemly show;
We wanted no brawn nor souse,
When this old cap was new."

Can our readers bear, after this sad ditty, to listen to the enumeration of good things described by Whistlecraft to have been served up at King Arthur's table, on Christmas day?—If the list be authentic, there is the less reason to wonder at the feats of courage and strength performed by the Knights of the Round Table.

66

They served up salmon, venison, and wild boars,
By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores.

Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard,
Muttons, and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;
Herons and bitterns, peacocks, swan, and bustard,
Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeons, and in fine,
Plum-puddings, pancakes, apple-pies, and custard.
And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine,
With mead, and ale, and cider of our own;

For porter, punch, and negus were not known."

But we cannot pursue this matter further. It is not to be treated with any degree of calmness, before dinner, and we have not dined. We must proceed to less trying parts of our subject.

Of the earnest manner in which our ancestors set about the celebration of this festival, the mock ceremonial with which they illustrated it, the quaint humors which they let loose under its inspiration, and the spirit of fellowship which brought all classes of men within the range of its beneficent provisions, we have a large body of scattered evidence, to be gleaned out of almost every species of existing record, from the early days of the Norman dynasty, down to the times of the commonwealth. The tales of chroniclers, the olden ballads, the rolls of courts, and the statute-book of the land, all contribute to furnish the materials from which a revival of the old pageantry must be derived, if men should ever again find time to be as merry as their fathers were.

The numberless local customs, of which the still remaining tradition is almost the sole record,—and which added each its small contingent to the aggregate of commemoration,—would certainly render it a somewhat difficult matter to restore the festival in its integrity: and, to be very candid with our readers, we believe we may as well confess, at the onset,-what will be very apparent to them before we have done,—that many of the Christmas observances (whether general or local) are to be recommended to their notice rather as curious pictures of ancient manners, than as being at all worthy of imitation by us who "are wiser in our generation." Sooth to say, we dare not let our zeal for our subject lead us into an unqualified approbation of all the doings, which it will be our business to record in these pages; though they seem to have made all ranks of people very happy, in other days, and that is no mean test of the value of any institution. Really earnest as we are in the wish that the sentiment of the

season could be restored in its amplitude, we fear that many of the fooleries by which it exhibited itself could not be gravely proposed as worthy amusements for a nation of philosophers.

Still these very absurdities furnish the strongest evidences of the right good-will with which men—ay, grave and learned men -surrendered themselves to the merry spirit of the time ;—of that entire abandonment which forgot to make a reservation of their outward dignities, and gave them courage to "play the fool." Our readers need scarcely be told that it must be a man of a very strong mind (or a man who could not help it), who should dare to make a jack-pudding of himself, in these days,-when all his fellows are walking about the world, with telescopes in their hands and quadrants in their pockets. No doubt it would have a somewhat ridiculous effect to-day, to see the members of the bar dancing a galliard or a coranto, in full costume, before the Benchers,—notwithstanding that certain ancient forms are still retained in their halls, which have all the absurdity of the exploded ones, without any of their fun :—and, unquestionably, we should think it rather strange to see a respectable gentleman capering through the streets on a paste-board hobby-horse (in lieu of the figurative hobby-horses on which most men still exhibit),— although even that we think would offer an object less ungracious than a child, with an anxious brow and "spectacles on nose." The great wisdom of the world is, we presume, one of the natural consequences of its advancing age-and though we are quite conscious that some of its former pranks would be very unbecoming, now that it is getting into years, and "knows so much as it does," yet we are by no means sure that we should not have been well content to have our lot cast in the days when it was somewhat younger. They must have been very pleasant times! Certain it is that the laugh of the humbler classes, and of the younger classes, would be all the heartier, that it was echoed by the powerful and the aged,-the mirth of the ignorant more free and genial, that the learned thought no scorn of it. For all that appears, too, the dignities of those days suffered no detriment by their surrender to the spirit of the times; but seem to have resumed all their functions and privileges, when it had exhausted itself, with unimpaired effect. Philosophers had due reverence,

without erecting themselves always on stilts for the purpose of attracting it; and names have come down to us which are esteemed the names of grave, and learned, and wise men,—even in this grave, and learned, and wise age,-who, nevertheless, appear, in their own, to have conducted themselves, at times, very like children.

From the royal Household-Books which exist, and from the Household-Books of noble families (some of which have been printed for better preservation), as also from the other sources to which we have alluded, Mr. Sandys, in the very valuable introduction to his collection of Christmas carols, already mentioned, has brought together a body of valuable information,—both as to the stately ceremonies, and popular observances, by which the season continued to be illustrated, from an early period, up to the time of its decline, amid the austerities of the civil war. To this careful compilation we shall be occasionally indebted, for some curious particulars which had escaped ourselves, amid the multiplied and unconnected sources from which our notes for this volume had to be made. To those who would go deeper into the the antiquarian part of the subject than suits the purpose of a popular volume, we can recommend that work, as containing the most copious and elaborate synopsis of the existing information connected therewith, which we have found in the course of our own researches. It would be impossible, however, in a paper of that length, or indeed in a volume of any moderate size, to give an account of all the numerous superstitions and observances of which traces are found, in an extended inquiry, to exist,-throwing light upon each other, and contributing to the complete history of the festival. We have therefore gleaned, from all quarters, those which appear to be the most picturesque, and whose relation is the most obvious,-with a view, as much as possible, of generalizing the subject, and presenting its parts in relation to an intelligible whole.

As we shall have occasion, in our second part, to speak of those peculiar feelings and customs by which each of the several days of the Christmas festival is specially illustrated, we shall not at present pause to go into any of the details of the subject,—although continually tempted to do so, by their connexion with the observa

« PreviousContinue »