Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan Part 31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We noted in Chapter IV. the elaborate ceremonies connected in Greece with the Blessing of the Waters at the Epiphany, and the custom of diving for a cross. It would seem, as was pointed out, that the latter is an ecclesiastically sanctioned form of a folk-ceremony. This is found in a purer state in Macedonia, where, after Matins on the Epiphany, it is the custom to thrust some one into water, be it sea or river, pond or well.

On emerging he has to sprinkle the bystanders.{31} The rite may be compared with the drenchings of human beings in order to produce rain described by Dr. Frazer in "The Magic Art."{32}

Another Greek custom combines the purifying powers of Epiphany water with the fertilizing influences of the Christmas log--round Mount Olympos ashes are taken from the hearth where a cedar log has been burning since Christmas, and are baptized in the blessed water of the river. They are then borne 345 to the vineyards, and thrown at their four corners, and also at the foot of apple- and fig-trees.{33}

This may remind us that in England fruit-trees used to come in for special treatment on the Vigil of the Epiphany. In Devonshire the farmer and his men would go to the orchard with a large jug of cider, and drink the following toast at the foot of one of the best-bearing apple-trees, firing guns in conclusion:--

"Here's to thee, old apple-tree, Whence thou may'st bud, and whence thou may'st blow!

And whence thou may'st bear apples enow!

Hats full! caps full!

Bushel!--bushel--sacks full, And my pockets full too! Huzza!"{34}

In seventeenth-century Somersetshire, according to Aubrey, a piece of toast was put upon the roots.{35} According to another account each person in the company used to take a cupful of cider, with roasted apples pressed into it, drink part of the contents, and throw the rest at the tree.{36} The custom is described by Herrick as a Christmas Eve ceremony:--

"Wa.s.sail the trees, that they may bear You many a plum and many a pear; For more or less fruits they will bring, As you do give them wa.s.sailing."{37}

In Suss.e.x the wa.s.sailing (or "worsling") of fruit-trees took place on Christmas Eve, and was accompanied by a trumpeter blowing on a cow's horn.{38}

The wa.s.sailing of the trees may be regarded as either originally an offering to their spirits or--and this seems more probable--as a sacramental act intended to bring fertilizing influences to bear upon them. Customs of a similar character are found in Continental countries during the Christmas season. In Tyrol, for instance, when the Christmas pies are a-making on St. Thomas's Eve, the maids are told to go out-of-doors and put their arms, sticky with paste, round the fruit-trees, in order that they 346 may bear well next year.{39} The uses of the ashes of the Christmas log have already been noticed.

Sometimes, as in the Thurgau, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and Tyrol, the trees are beaten to make them bear. On New Year's Eve at Hildesheim people dance and sing around them,{40} while the Tyrolese peasant on Christmas Eve will go out to his trees, and, knocking with bent fingers upon them, will bid them wake up and bear.{41} There is a Slavonic custom, on the same night, of threatening apple-trees with a hatchet if they do not produce fruit during the year.{42}

Another remarkable agricultural rite was practised on Epiphany Eve in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. The farmer and his servants would meet in a field sown with wheat, and there light thirteen fires, with one larger than the rest. Round this a circle was formed by the company, and all would drink a gla.s.s of cider to the success of the harvest.[118] This done, they returned to the farm, to feast--in Gloucestershire--on cakes made with caraways, and soaked in cider. The Herefordshire accounts give particulars of a further ceremony. A large cake was provided, with a hole in the middle, and after supper everyone went to the wain-house. The master filled a cup with strong ale, and standing opposite the finest ox, pledged him in a curious toast; the company followed his example with the other oxen, addressing each by name. Afterwards the large cake was put on the horn of the first ox.{43}

It is extremely remarkable, and can scarcely be a mere coincidence, that far away among the southern Slavs, as we saw in Chapter XII., a Christmas cake with a hole in its centre is likewise put upon the horn of the chief ox. The wa.s.sailing of the animals is found there also. On Christmas Day, Sir Arthur 347 Evans relates, the house-mother "entered the stall set apart for the goats, and having first sprinkled them with corn, took the wine-cup in her hand and said, 'Good morning, little mother! The Peace of G.o.d be on thee! Christ is born; of a truth He is born. May'st thou be healthy. I drink to thee in wine; I give thee a pomegranate; may'st thou meet with all good luck!' She then lifted the cup to her lips, took a sup, tossed the pomegranate among the herd, and throwing her arms round the she-goat, whose health she had already drunk, gave it the 'Peace of G.o.d'--kissed it, that is, over and over again." The same ceremony was then performed for the benefit of the sheep and cows, and all the animals were beaten with a leafy olive-branch.{44}

As for the fires, an Irish custom to some extent supplies a parallel. On Epiphany Eve a sieve of oats was set up, "and in it a dozen of candles set round, and in the centre one larger, all lighted." This was said to be in memory of the Saviour and His apostles, lights of the world.{45} Here is an account of a similar custom practised in Co. Leitrim:--

"A piece of board is covered with cow-dung, and twelve rushlights are stuck therein. These are sprinkled with ash at the top, to make them light easily, and then set alight, each being named by some one present, and as each dies so will the life of its owner. A ball is then made of the dung, and it is placed over the door of the cowhouse for an increase of cattle. Sometimes mud is used, and the ball placed over the door of the dwelling-house."{46}

There remains to be considered under Epiphany usages an ancient and very remarkable game played annually on January 6 at Haxey in Lincolnshire. It is known traditionally as "Haxey Hood," and its centre is a struggle between the men of two villages for the possession of a roll of sacking or leather called the "hood." Over it preside the "boggans" or "bullocks"

of Plough Monday (see p. 352), headed by a figure known as "My Lord," who is attended by a fool. The proceedings are opened on the village green by a mysterious speech from the fool:--

"Now, good folks, this is Haxa' Hood. We've killed two 348 bullocks and a half, but the other half we had to leave running about field: we can fetch it if it's wanted. Remember it's--

'Hoose agin hoose, toon agin toon, And if you meet a man knock him doon.'"

Then, in an open field, the hoods--there are six of them, one apparently for each of the chief hamlets round--are thrown up and struggled for.

"The object is to carry them off the field away from the boggans. If any of these can get hold of them, or even touch them, they have to be given up, and carried back to My Lord. For every one carried off the field the boggans forfeit half-a-crown, which is spent in beer, doubtless by the men of the particular hamlet who have carried off the hood." The great event of the day is the struggle for the last hood--made of leather--between the men of Haxey and the men of Westwoodside--"that is to say really between the customers of the public-houses there--each party trying to get it to his favourite 'house.' The publican at the successful house stands beer."{47}

Mr. Chambers regards the fool's strange speech as preserving the tradition that the hood is the half of a bullock--the head of a sacrificial victim, and he explains both the Haxey game and also the familiar games of hockey and football as originating in a struggle between the people of two villages to get such a head, with all its fertilizing properties, over their own boundary.{48} At Hornchurch in Ess.e.x, if we may trust a note given by Hone, an actual boar's head was wrestled for on Christmas Day, and afterwards feasted upon at one of the public-houses by the victor and his friends.{49}

One more feature of the Haxey celebration must be mentioned (it points apparently to a human sacrifice): the fool, the morning after the game, used to be "smoked" over a straw fire. "He was suspended above the fire and swung backwards and forwards over it until almost suffocated; then allowed to drop into the smouldering straw, which was well wetted, and to scramble out as he could."{50}

Returning to the subject of football, I may here condense an 349 account of a Welsh Christmas custom quoted by Sir Laurence Gomme, in his book "The Village Community," from the _Oswestry Observer_ of March 2, 1887:--"In South Cardiganshire it seems that about eighty years ago the population, rich and poor, male and female, of opposing parishes, turned out on Christmas Day and indulged in the game of football with such vigour that it became little short of a serious fight." Both in north and south Wales the custom was found. At one place, Llanwenog near Lampeter, there was a struggle between two parties with different traditions of race. The Bros, supposed to be descendants from Irish people, occupied the high ground of the parish; the Blaenaus, presumably pure-bred Brythons, occupied the lowlands. After morning service on Christmas Day, "the whole of the Bros and Blaenaus, rich and poor, male and female, a.s.sembled on the turnpike road which divided the highlands from the lowlands." The ball was thrown high in the air, "and when it fell Bros and Blaenaus scrambled for its possession.... If the Bros, by hook or by crook, could succeed in taking the ball up the mountain to their hamlet of Rhyddlan they won the day, while the Blaenaus were successful if they got the ball to their end of the parish at New Court." Many severe kicks were given, and the whole thing was taken so keenly "that a Bro or a Blaenau would as soon lose a cow from his cowhouse as the football from his portion of the parish." There is plainly more than a mere pastime here; the thing appears to have been originally a struggle between two clans.{51}

Anciently the Carnival, with its merrymaking before the austerities of Lent, was held to begin at the Epiphany. This was the case in Tyrol even in the nineteenth century.{52} As a rule, however, the Carnival in Roman Catholic countries is restricted to the last three days before Ash Wednesday. The pagan origin of its mummeries and licence is evident, but it is a spring rather than a winter festival, and hardly calls for treatment here.

The Epiphany is in many places the end of Christmas. In Calvados, Normandy, it is marked by bonfires; red flames mount 350 skywards, and the peasants join hands, dance, and leap through blinding smoke and cinders, shouting these rude lines:--

"adieu les Rois Jusqu'a douze mois, Douze mois pa.s.ses Les bougelees."{53}

Another French Epiphany _chanson_, translated by the Rev. R. L. Gales, is a charming farewell to Christmas:--

"Noel is leaving us, Sad 'tis to tell, But he will come again, Adieu, Noel.

His wife and his children Weep as they go: On a grey horse They ride thro' the snow.

The Kings ride away In the snow and the rain, After twelve months We shall see them again."{54}

POST-EPIPHANY FESTIVALS.

Though with Twelfth Day the high festival of Christmas generally ends, later dates have sometimes been a.s.signed as the close of the season. At the old English court, for instance, the merrymaking was sometimes carried on until Candlemas, while in some English country places it was customary, even in the late nineteenth century, to leave Christmas decorations up, in houses and churches, till that day.{55} The whole time between Christmas and the Presentation in the Temple was thus treated as sacred to the Babyhood of Christ; the withered evergreens would keep alive memories of Christmas joys, even, sometimes, after Septuagesima had struck the note of penitence.

Before we pa.s.s on to a short notice of Candlemas, we may 351 glance at a few last sparks, so to speak, of the Christmas blaze, and then at the English festivals which marked the resumption of work after the holidays.

In Sweden Yule is considered to close with the Octave of the Epiphany, January 13, "St. Knut's Day," the twentieth after Christmas.

"Twentieth day Knut Driveth Yule out"

sing the old folks as the young people dance in a ring round the festive Yule board, which is afterwards robbed of the viands that remain on it, including the Yule boar. On this day a sort of mimic fight used to take place, the master and servants of the house pretending to drive away the guests with axe, broom, knife, spoon, and other implements.{56} The name, "St. Knut's Day," is apparently due to the fact that in the laws of Canute the Great (1017-36) it is commanded that there is to be no fasting from Christmas to the Octave of the Epiphany.{57}

In England the day after the Epiphany was called St. Distaff's or Rock Day (the word Rock is evidently the same as the German _Rocken_ = distaff). It was the day when the women resumed their spinning after the rest and gaiety of Christmas. From a poem of Herrick's it appears that the men in jest tried to burn the women's flax, and the women in return poured water on the men:--

"Partly work, and partly play You must on St. Distaff's day: From the plough soon free your team, Then come home and fother them; If the maids a-spinning go, Burn the flax and fire the tow.

Bring in pails of water then, Let the maids bewash the men; Give St. Distaff all the right, Then bid Christmas sport good night; And next morrow, every one To his own vocation."{58}