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Title: Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan

Author: Clement A. Miles

Release date: August 21, 2006 [eBook #19098]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS IN
RITUAL AND TRADITION, CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN ***

Christmas In Ritual and Tradition,

Christian and Pagan
by Clement A. Miles

Published by
T. Fisher Unwin
1912

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (DETAIL).
GENTILE DA FABRIANO
(Florence: Accademia)

5

PREFACE

In this volume I have tried to show how Christmas is or has been kept in
various lands and ages, and to trace as far as possible the origin of the
pagan elements that have mingled with the Church's feast of the Nativity.

In Part I. I have dealt with the festival on its distinctively Christian side.
The book has, however, been so planned that readers not interested in this
aspect of Christmas may pass over Chapters II.-V., and proceed at once
from the Introduction to Part II., which treats of pagan survivals.

The book has been written primarily for the general reader, but I venture to
hope that, with all its imperfections, it may be of some use to the more
serious student, as a rough outline map of the field of Christmas customs,
and as bringing together materials hitherto scattered through a multitude of
volumes in various languages. There is certainly room for a comprehensive
English book on Christmas, taking account of the results of modern
historical and folk-lore research.

The writer of a work of this kind necessarily owes an immense debt to the
labours of others. In my bibliographical notes I have done my best to
acknowledge the sources from which I have drawn. It is only right that I
should express here my special obligation, both for information and for
suggestions, to Mr. E. K. Chambers's “The Mediaeval Stage,” an invaluable
storehouse of fact, theory, and bibliographical references. I also owe much
to the important monographs of Dr. A. Tille, “Die Geschichte der deutschen
Weihnacht” and “Yule and Christmas”; to Dr. Feilberg's Danish work, “Jul,”
the fullest account of Christmas 6 customs yet written; and of course, like
every student of folk-lore, to Dr. Frazer's “The Golden Bough.”

References to authorities will be found at the end of the volume, and are
indicated by small numerals in the text; notes requiring to be read in close
conjunction with the text are printed at the foot of the pages to which they
relate, and are indicated by asterisks, &c.

[Transcriber's Note: The 'small numerals' are represented in this
ebook by numbers in {curly braces}. The footnotes appear at the
end of the ebook and are indicated by numbers in [square brackets].]

I have to thank Mr. Frank Sidgwick for most kindly reading my proofs and
portions of my MS., and for some valuable suggestions.

C. A. M.
7

CONTENTS

PREFACE5

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION15

The Origin and Purpose of Festivals—Ideas suggested by
Christmas—Pagan and Christian Elements—The Names of the
Festival—Foundation of the Feast of the Nativity—Its Relation
to the Epiphany—December 25 and the Natalis Invicti—The
Kalends of January—Yule and Teutonic Festivals—The
Church and Pagan Survivals—Two Conflicting Types of
Festival—Their Interaction—Plan of the Book.

PART I—THE CHRISTIAN FEAST

CHAPTER II
CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)29

Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological
Character—Humanizing Influence of Franciscanism—
Jacopone da Todi's Vernacular Verse—German Catholic
Poetry—Mediaeval English Carols.

CHAPTER III
CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)53

The French Noël—Latin Hymnody in Eighteenth-century
France—Spanish Christmas Verse—Traditional Carols of
Many Countries—Christmas Poetry in Protestant Germany—
Post-Reformation Verse in England—Modern English Carols. 8

CHAPTER IV
CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR DEVOTION87

Advent and Christmas Offices of the Roman Church—The
Three Masses of Christmas, their Origin and their Celebration
in Rome—The Midnight Mass in Many Lands—Protestant
Survivals of the Night Services—Christmas in the Greek
Church—The Eastern Epiphany and the Blessing of the
Waters—The Presepio or Crib, its Supposed Institution by St.
Francis—Early Traces of the Crib—The Crib in Germany,
Tyrol, &c.—Cradle-rocking in Mediaeval Germany—
Christmas Minstrels in Italy and Sicily—The Presepio in
Italy—Ceremonies with the Culla and the Bambino in Rome—
Christmas in Italian London—The Spanish Christmas—
Possible Survivals of the Crib in England.

CHAPTER V
CHRISTMAS DRAMA119

Origins of the Mediaeval Drama—Dramatic Tendencies in the
Liturgy—Latin Liturgical Plays—The Drama becomes
Laicized—Characteristics of the Popular Drama—The Nativity
in the English Miracle Cycles—Christmas Mysteries in
France—Later French Survivals of Christmas Drama—German
Christmas Plays—Mediaeval Italian Plays and Pageants—
Spanish Nativity Plays—Modern Survivals in Various
Countries—The Star Singers, &c.
POSTSCRIPT155

PART II—PAGAN SURVIVALS

CHAPTER VI
PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS159

The Church and Superstition—Nature of Pagan Survivals—
Racial Origins—Roman Festivals of the Saturnalia and
Kalends—Was there a Teutonic Midwinter Festival?—The
Teutonic, Celtic, and Slav New Year—Customs attracted to
Christmas or January 1—The Winter Cycle of Festivals—
Rationale of Festival Ritual: (a) Sacrifice and Sacrament, (b)
The Cult of the Dead, (c) Omens and Charms for the New
Year—Compromise in the Later Middle Ages—The Puritans
and Christmas—Decay of Old Traditions. 9

CHAPTER VII
ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS187

All Saints' and All Souls' Days, their Relation to a New Year
Festival—All Souls' Eve and Tendance of the Departed—Soul
Cakes in England and on the Continent—Pagan Parallels of All
Souls'—Hallowe'en Charms and Omens—Hallowe'en Fires—
Guy Fawkes Day—“Old Hob,” the Schimmelreiter, and other
Animal Masks—Martinmas and its Slaughter—Martinmas
Drinking—St. Martin's Fires in Germany—Winter Visitors in
the Low Countries and Germany—St. Martin as Gift-bringer—
St. Martin's Rod.

CHAPTER VIII
ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS209

St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions—St. Catherine's
Day as Spinsters' Festival—St. Andrew's Eve Auguries—The
Klöpfelnächte—St. Nicholas's Day, the Saint as Gift-bringer,
and his Attendants—Election of the Boy Bishop—St.
Nicholas's Day at Bari—St. Lucia's Day in Sweden, Sicily, and
Central Europe—St. Thomas's Day as School Festival—Its
Uncanny Eve—“Going a-Thomassin'.”

CHAPTER IX
CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS227

Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht—Talking
Animals and other Wonders of Christmas Eve—Scandinavian
Beliefs about Trolls and the Return of the Dead—Traditional
Christmas Songs in Eastern Europe—The Twelve Days, their
Christian Origin and Pagan Superstitions—The Raging Host—
Hints of Supernatural Visitors in England—The German
Frauen—The Greek Kallikantzaroi.

CHAPTER X
THE YULE LOG249

The Log as Centre of the Domestic Christmas—Customs of the
Southern Slavs—The Polaznik—Origin of the Yule Log—
Probable Connection with Vegetation-cults or Ancestor-
worship—The Souche de Noël in France—Italian and German
Christmas Logs—English Customs—The Yule Candle in
England and Scandinavia. 10

CHAPTER XI
THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS261

The Christmas-tree a German Creation—Charm of the German
Christmas—Early Christmas-trees—The Christmas Pyramid—
Spread of the Tree in Modern Germany and other Countries—
Origin of the Christmas-tree—Beliefs about Flowering Trees at
Christmas—Evergreens at the Kalends—Non-German Parallels
to the Christmas-tree—Christmas Decorations connected with
Ancient Kalends Customs—Sacredness of Holly and
Mistletoe—Floors strewn with Straw—Christmas and New
Year Gifts, their Connection with the Roman Strenae and St.
Nicholas—Present-giving in Various Countries—Christmas
Cards.

CHAPTER XII
CHRISTMAS FEASTING AND SACRIFICIAL SURVIVALS281

Prominence of Eating in the English Christmas—The Boar's
Head, the Goose, and other Christmas Fare—Frumenty,
Sowens, Yule Cakes, and the Wassail Bowl—Continental
Christmas Dishes, their Possible Origins—French and German
Cakes—The Animals' Christmas Feast—Cakes in Eastern
Europe—Relics of Animal Sacrifice—Hunting the Wren—
Various Games of Sacrificial Origin.

CHAPTER XIII
MASKING, THE MUMMERS' PLAY, THE FEAST OF FOOLS, AND THE
BOY BISHOP295

English Court Masking—“The Lord of Misrule”—The
Mummers' Play, the Sword-Dance, and the Morris Dance—
Origin of St. George and other Characters—Mumming in
Eastern Europe—The Feast of Fools, its History and
Suppression—The Boy Bishop, his Functions and Sermons—
Modern Survivals of the Boy Bishop.

CHAPTER XIV
ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS' DAYS309

Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day—The Swedish St.
Stephen—St. John's Wine—Childermas and its Beatings. 11

CHAPTER XV
NEW YEAR'S DAY319

Principle of New Year Customs—The New Year in France,
Germany, the United States, and Eastern Europe—“First-
footing” in Great Britain—Scottish New Year Practices—
Highland Fumigation and “Breast-strip” Customs—Hogmanay

and Aguillanneuf—New Year Processions in Macedonia,
Roumania, Greece, and Rome—Methods of Augury—Sundry
New Year Charms.

CHAPTER XVI
EPIPHANY TO CANDLEMAS335

The Twelfth Cake and the “King of the Bean”—French Twelfth
Night Customs—St. Basil's Cake in Macedonia—Epiphany
and the Expulsion of Evils—The Befana in Italy—The Magi as
Present-bringers—Greek Epiphany Customs—Wassailing
Fruit-trees—Herefordshire and Irish Twelfth Night Practices—
The “Haxey Hood” and Christmas Football—St. Knut's Day in
Sweden—Rock Day—Plough Monday—Candlemas, its
Ecclesiastical and Folk Ceremonies—Farewells to Christmas.
CONCLUSION357
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY361
INDEX389
12

MADONNA AND CHILD.
By Albrecht Dürer.

13

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI (Detail)Frontispiece
Gentile da Fabriano. (Florence: Accademia)
MADONNA AND CHILD13
Albert Dürer
MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS31
Pesellino. (Empoli Gallery)
JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN40
From “Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi” (Florence, 1490)
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS55
By Fouquet. (Musée Condé, Chantilly)
THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY70
Master of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. (Also attributed to
Joachim Patinir.) (Vienna: Imperial Gallery)
SINGING “VOM HIMMEL HOCH” FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT
CHRISTMAS71
By Ludwig Richter
THE NATIVITY89
From Add. MS. 32454 in the British Museum.
(French, 15th Century)
A NEAPOLITAN PRESEPIO108
CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS112
After an Etching by D. Allan. From Hone's “Every-day
Book” (London, 1826)
ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE PRESEPIO AT GRECCIO114
By Giotto. (Upper Church of St. Francis, Assisi) 14
THE BAMBINO OF ARA COELI115
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS121

From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the Society of
Antiquaries at Burlington House
THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM140
From “Le grant Kalendrier & compost des Bergiers”
(N. le Rouge, Troyes, 1529)
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI154
Masaccio. (Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum)
NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA161
An Asiatic example of animal masks
CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE—THE MUMMERS COMING IN229
THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY263
From an engraving by Joseph Kellner
CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA281
By Ferdinand Waldmüller (b. 1793)
YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT WITH ST.
PETER297
From an article by Mr. T. M. Fallow in The Antiquary,
May, 1895
THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE337
15 16 17

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The Origin and Purpose of Festivals—Ideas suggested by
Christmas—Pagan and Christian Elements—The Names of the
Festival—Foundation of the Feast of the Nativity—Its Relation to
the Epiphany—December 25 and the Natalis Invicti—The Kalends
of January—Yule and Teutonic Festivals—The Church and Pagan
Survivals—Two Conflicting Types of Festival—Their Interaction—
Plan of the Book.

It has been an instinct in nearly all peoples, savage or civilized, to set aside
certain days for special ceremonial observances, attended by outward
rejoicing. This tendency to concentrate on special times answers to man's
need to lift himself above the commonplace and the everyday, to escape
from the leaden weight of monotony that oppresses him. “We tend to tire of
the most eternal splendours, and a mark on our calendar, or a crash of bells
at midnight maybe, reminds us that we have only recently been
created.”[1]{ 1} That they wake people up is the great justification of
festivals, and both man's religious sense and his joy in life have generally
tended to rise “into peaks and towers and turrets, into superhuman
exceptions which really prove the rule.”{2} It is difficult to be religious,
impossible to be merry, at every moment of life, and festivals are as sunlit
peaks, testifying, above dark valleys, to the eternal radiance. This is one
view of the purpose and value of festivals, and their function of cheering
people and giving them larger perspectives has no doubt been an important
reason for their maintenance in the past. If we could trace the custom of
festival-keeping back to its origins in primitive society 18 we should find the
same principle of specialization involved, though it is probable that the
practice came into being not for the sake of its moral or emotional effect,
but from man's desire to lay up, so to speak, a stock of sanctity, magical not
ethical, for ordinary days.

The first holy-day-makers were probably more concerned with such
material goods as food than with spiritual ideals, when they marked with
sacred days the rhythm of the seasons.{3} As man's consciousness
developed, the subjective aspect of the matter would come increasingly into
prominence, until in the festivals of the Christian Church the main object is
to quicken the devotion of the believer by contemplation of the mysteries of
the faith. Yet attached, as we shall see, to many Christian festivals, are old
notions of magical sanctity, probably quite as potent in the minds of the
common people as the more spiritual ideas suggested by the Church's
feasts.

In modern England we have almost lost the festival habit, but if there is one
feast that survives among us as a universal tradition it is Christmas. We
have indeed our Bank Holidays, but they are mere days of rest and
amusement, and for the mass of the people Easter and Whitsuntide have
small religious significance—Christmas alone has the character of sanctity
which marks the true festival. The celebration of Christmas has often little
or nothing to do with orthodox dogma, yet somehow the sense of obligation
to keep the feast is very strong, and there are few English people, however
unconventional, who escape altogether the spell of tradition in this matter.

Christmas—how many images the word calls up: we think of carol-singers
and holly-decked churches where people hymn in time-honoured strains the
Birth of the Divine Child; of frost and snow, and, in contrast, of warm
hearths and homes bright with light and colour, very fortresses against the
cold; of feasting and revelry, of greetings and gifts exchanged; and lastly of
vaguely superstitious customs, relics of long ago, performed perhaps out of
respect for use and wont, or merely in jest, or with a deliberate attempt to
throw ourselves back into the past, to re-enter for a moment the mental
childhood of the race. These are a few of 19 the pictures that rise pell-mell in
the minds of English folk at the mention of Christmas; how many other

scenes would come before us if we could realize what the festival means to
men of other nations. Yet even these will suggest what hardly needs saying,
that Christmas is something far more complex than a Church holy-day
alone, that the celebration of the Birth of Jesus, deep and touching as is its
appeal to those who hold the faith of the Incarnation, is but one of many
elements that have entered into the great winter festival.

In the following pages I shall try to present a picture, sketchy and
inadequate though it must be, of what Christmas is and has been to the
peoples of Europe, and to show as far as possible the various elements that
have gone into its make-up. Most people have a vague impression that these
are largely pagan, but comparatively few have any idea of the process by
which the heathen elements have become mingled with that which is
obviously Christian, and equal obscurity prevails as to the nature and
meaning of the non-Christian customs. The subject is vast, and has not been
thoroughly explored as yet, but the labours of historians and folk-lorists
have made certain conclusions probable, and have produced hypotheses of
great interest and fascination.

I have spoken of “Christian”[2] and “pagan” elements. The distinction is
blurred to some extent by the clothing of heathen customs in a superficial
Christianity, but on the whole it is clear enough to justify the division of this
book into two parts, one dealing with the Church's feast of the Holy Birth,
the other with those remains of pagan winter festivals which extend from
November to January, but cluster especially round Christmas and the
Twelve Days.

Before we pass to the various aspects of the Church's Christmas, we must
briefly consider its origins and its relation to certain 20 pagan festivals, the
customs of which will be dealt with in detail in Part II.

The names given to the feast by different European peoples throw a certain
amount of light on its history. Let us take five of them—Christmas,
Weihnacht, Noël, Calendas, and Yule—and see what they suggest.

I. The English Christmas and its Dutch equivalent Kerstmisse, plainly point
to the ecclesiastical side of the festival; the German Weihnacht{4} (sacred
night) is vaguer, and might well be either pagan or Christian; in point of
fact it seems to be Christian, since it does not appear till the year 1000,
when the Faith was well established in Germany.{5} Christmas and
Weihnacht, then, may stand for the distinctively Christian festival, the
history of which we may now briefly study.

When and where did the keeping of Christmas begin? Many details of its
early history remain in uncertainty, but it is fairly clear that the earliest
celebration of the Birth of Christ on December 25 took place at Rome about
the middle of the fourth century, and that the observance of the day spread
from the western to the eastern Church, which had before been wont to
keep January 6 as a joint commemoration of the Nativity and the Baptism
of the Redeemer.[3]

The first mention of a Nativity feast on December 25 is found in a Roman
document known as the Philocalian Calendar, dating from the year 354, but
embodying an older document evidently belonging to the year 336. It is
uncertain to which date the Nativity reference belongs;[4] but further back
than 336 at all events the festival cannot be traced.

From Rome, Christmas spread throughout the West, with the 21 conversion
of the barbarians. Whether it came to England through the Celtic Church is
uncertain, but St. Augustine certainly brought it with him, and Christmas
Day, 598, witnessed a great event, the baptism of more than ten thousand
English converts.{9} In 567 the Council of Tours had declared the Twelve

Days, from Christmas to Epiphany, a festal tide;{10} the laws of Ethelred
(991-1016) ordained it to be a time of peace and concord among Christian
men, when all strife must cease.{11} In Germany Christmas was established
by the Synod of Mainz in 813;{12} in Norway by King Hakon the Good
about the middle of the tenth century.{13}

In the East, as has been seen, the Birth of the Redeemer was at first
celebrated not on December 25, but on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany
or manifestation of Christ's glory. The Epiphany can be traced as far back as
the second century, among the Basilidian heretics, from whom it may have
spread to the Catholic Church. It was with them certainly a feast of the
Baptism, and possibly also of the Nativity, of Christ. The origins of the
Epiphany festival{14} are very obscure, nor can we say with certainty what
was its meaning at first. It may be that it took the place of a heathen rite
celebrating the birth of the World or Æon from the Virgin on January 6.[5]
At all events one of its objects was to commemorate the Baptism, the
appearance of the Holy Dove, and the Voice from heaven, “Thou art my
beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” (or, as other MSS. read, “This day
have I begotten thee”).

22In some circles of early Christianity the Baptism appears to have been
looked upon as the true Birth of Christ, the moment when, filled by the
Spirit, He became Son of God; and the carnal Birth was regarded as of
comparatively little significance. Hence the Baptism festival may have
arisen first, and the celebration of the Birth at Bethlehem may have been
later attached to the same day, partly perhaps because a passage in St.
Luke's Gospel was supposed to imply that Jesus was baptized on His
thirtieth birthday. As however the orthodox belief became more sharply
defined, increasing stress was laid on the Incarnation of God in Christ in the
Virgin's womb, and it may have been felt that the celebration of the Birth
and the Baptism on the same day encouraged heretical views. Hence very

likely the introduction of Christmas on December 25 as a festival of the
Birth alone. In the East the concelebration of the two events continued for
some time after Rome had instituted the separate feast of Christmas.
Gradually, however, the Roman use spread: at Constantinople it was
introduced about 380 by the great theologian, Gregory Nazianzen; at
Antioch it appeared in 388, at Alexandria in 432. The Church of Jerusalem
long stood out, refusing to adopt the new feast till the seventh century, it
would seem.{18} One important Church, the Armenian, knows nothing of
December 25, and still celebrates the Nativity with the Epiphany on
January 6.{19} Epiphany in the eastern Orthodox Church has lost its
connection with the Nativity and is now chiefly a celebration of the
Baptism of Christ, while in the West, as every one knows, it is primarily a
celebration of the Adoration by the Magi, an event commemorated by the
Greeks on Christmas Day. Epiphany is, however, as we shall see, a greater
festival in the Greek Church than Christmas.

Such in bare outline is the story of the spread of Christmas as an
independent festival. Its establishment fitly followed the triumph of the
Catholic doctrine of the perfect Godhead or Christ at the Council of Nicea
in 325.

II. The French Noël is a name concerning whose origin there has been
considerable dispute; there can, however, be little doubt that it is the same
word as the Provençal Nadau or Nadal, 23 the Italian Natale, and the Welsh
Nadolig, all obviously derived from the Latin natalis, and meaning
“birthday.” One naturally takes this as referring to the Birth of Christ, but it
may at any rate remind us of another birthday celebrated on the same date
by the Romans of the Empire, that of the unconquered Sun, who on
December 25, the winter solstice according to the Julian calendar, began to
rise to new vigour after his autumnal decline.

Why, we may ask, did the Church choose December 25 for the celebration
of her Founder's Birth? No one now imagines that the date is supported by a
reliable tradition; it is only one of various guesses of early Christian writers.
As a learned eighteenth-century Jesuit{20} has pointed out, there is not a
single month in the year to which the Nativity has not been assigned by
some writer or other. The real reason for the choice of the day most
probably was, that upon it fell the pagan festival just mentioned.

The Dies Natalis Invicti was probably first celebrated in Rome by order of
the Emperor Aurelian (270-5), an ardent worshipper of the Syrian sun-god
Baal.{21} With the Sol Invictus was identified the figure of Mithra, that
strange eastern god whose cult resembled in so many ways the worship of
Jesus, and who was at one time a serious rival of the Christ in the minds of
thoughtful men.[6]{ 22} It was the sun-god, poetically and philosophically
conceived, whom the Emperor Julian made the centre of his ill-fated revival
of paganism, and there is extant a fine prayer of his to “King Sun.”{23}

What more natural than that the Church should choose this day to celebrate
the rising of her Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings, that she
should strive thus to draw away to His worship some adorers of the god
whose symbol and representative was the earthly sun! There is no direct
evidence of deliberate substitution, but at all events ecclesiastical writers
soon after the foundation of Christmas made good use of the idea 24 that the
birthday of the Saviour had replaced the birthday of the sun.[7]

Little is known of the manner in which the Natalis Invicti was kept; it was
not a folk-festival, and was probably observed by the classes rather than the
masses.{24} Its direct influence on Christmas customs has probably been
little or nothing. It fell, however, just before a Roman festival that had
immense popularity, is of great importance for our subject, and is recalled
by another name for Christmas that must now be considered.

III. The Provençal Calendas or Calenos, the Polish Kolenda, the Russian
Kolyáda, the Czech Koleda and the Lithuanian Kalledos, not to speak of the
Welsh Calenig for Christmas-box, and the Gaelic Calluinn for New Year's
Eve, are all derived from the Latin Kalendae, and suggest the connection of
Christmas with the Roman New Year's Day, the Kalends or the first day of
January, a time celebrated with many festive customs. What these were, and
how they have affected Christmas we shall see in some detail in Part II.;
suffice it to say here that the festival, which lasted for at least three days,
was one of riotous life, of banqueting and games and licence. It was
preceded, moreover, by the Saturnalia (December 17 to 23) which had
many like features, and must have formed practically one festive season
with it. The word Saturnalia has become so familiar in modern usage as to
suggest sufficiently the character of the festival for which it stands.

25Into the midst of this season of revelry and licence the Church introduced
her celebration of the beginning of man's redemption from the bondage of
sin. Who can wonder that Christmas contains incongruous elements, for old
things, loved by the people, cannot easily be uprooted.

IV. One more name yet remains to be considered, Yule (Danish Jul), the
ordinary word for Christmas in the Scandinavian languages, and not extinct
among ourselves. Its derivation has been widely discussed, but so far no
satisfactory explanation of it has been found. Professor Skeat in the last
edition of his Etymological Dictionary (1910) has to admit that its origin is
unknown. Whatever its source may be, it is clearly the name of a Germanic
season—probably a two-month tide covering the second half of November,
the whole of December, and the first half of January.{26} It may well
suggest to us the element added to Christmas by the barbarian peoples who
began to learn Christianity about the time when the festival was founded.
Modern research has tended to disprove the idea that the old Germans held
a Yule feast at the winter solstice, and it is probable, as we shall see, that the

specifically Teutonic Christmas customs come from a New Year and
beginning-of-winter festival kept about the middle of November. These
customs transferred to Christmas are to a great extent religious or magical
rites intended to secure prosperity during the coming year, and there is also
the familiar Christmas feasting, apparently derived in part from the
sacrificial banquets that marked the beginning of winter.

We have now taken a general glance at the elements which have combined
in Christmas. The heathen folk-festivals absorbed by the Nativity feast were
essentially life-affirming, they expressed the mind of men who said “yes” to
this life, who valued earthly good things. On the other hand Christianity, at
all events in its intensest form, the religion of the monks, was at bottom
pessimistic as regards this earth, and valued it only as a place of discipline
for the life to come; it was essentially a religion of renunciation that said
“no” to the world. The 26 Christian had here no continuing city, but sought
one to come. How could the Church make a feast of the secular New Year;
what mattered to her the world of time? her eye was fixed upon the eternal
realities—the great drama of Redemption. Not upon the course of the
temporal sun through the zodiac, but upon the mystical progress of the
eternal Sun of Righteousness must she base her calendar. Christmas and
New Year's Day—the two festivals stood originally for the most opposed of
principles.

Naturally the Church fought bitterly against the observance of the Kalends;
she condemned repeatedly the unseemly doings of Christians in joining in
heathenish customs at that season; she tried to make the first of January a
solemn fast; and from the ascetic point of view she was profoundly right,
for the old festivals were bound up with a lusty attitude towards the world, a
seeking for earthly joy and well-being.

The struggle between the ascetic principle of self-mortification, world-
renunciation, absorption in a transcendent ideal, and the natural human
striving towards earthly joy and well-being, is, perhaps, the most interesting
aspect of the history of Christianity; it is certainly shown in an absorbingly
interesting way in the development of the Christian feast of the Nativity.
The conflict is keen at first; the Church authorities fight tooth and nail
against these relics of heathenism, these devilish rites; but mankind's
instinctive paganism is insuppressible, the practices continue as ritual,
though losing much of their meaning, and the Church, weary of
denouncing, comes to wink at them, while the pagan joy in earthly life
begins to colour her own festival.

The Church's Christmas, as the Middle Ages pass on, becomes increasingly
“merry”—warm and homely, suited to the instincts of ordinary humanity,
filled with a joy that is of this earth, and not only a mystical rapture at a
transcendental Redemption. The Incarnate God becomes a real child to be
fondled and rocked, a child who is the loveliest of infants, whose birthday is
the supreme type of all human birthdays, and may be kept with feasting and
dance and song. Such is the Christmas of popular tradition, the Nativity as it
is reflected in the carols, the cradle-rocking, the mystery plays of the later
Middle Ages. This 27 Christmas, which still lingers, though maimed, in
some Catholic regions, is strongly life-affirming; the value and delight of
earthly, material things is keenly felt; sometimes, even, it passes into
coarseness and riot. Yet a certain mysticism usually penetrates it, with hints
that this dear life, this fair world, are not all, for the soul has immortal
longings in her. Nearly always there is the spirit of reverence, of bowing
down before the Infant God, a visitor from the supernatural world, though
bone of man's bone, flesh of his flesh. Heaven and earth have met together;
the rough stable is become the palace of the Great King.

This we might well call the “Catholic” Christmas, the Christmas of the age
when the Church most nearly answered to the needs of the whole man,
spiritual and sensuous. The Reformation in England and Germany did not
totally destroy it; in England the carol-singers kept up for a while the old
spirit; in Lutheran Germany a highly coloured and surprisingly sensuous
celebration of the Nativity lingered on into the eighteenth century. In the
countries that remained Roman Catholic much of the old Christmas
continued, though the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, faced by the
challenge of Protestantism, made for greater “respectability,” and often
robbed the Catholic Christmas of its humour, its homeliness, its truly
popular stamp, substituting pretentiousness for simplicity, sugary sentiment
for naïve and genuine poetry.

Apart from the transformation of the Church's Christmas from something
austere and metaphysical into something joyous and human, warm and
kindly, we shall note in our Second Part the survival of much that is purely
pagan, continuing alongside of the celebration of the Nativity, and often
little touched by its influence. But first we must consider the side of the
festival suggested by the English and French names: Christmas will stand
for the liturgical rites commemorating the wonder of the Incarnation—God
in man made manifest—Noël or “the Birthday,” for the ways in which men
have striven to realize the human aspect of the great Coming.

How can we reach the inner meaning of the Nativity feast, its significance
for the faithful? Better, perhaps, by the way of 28 poetry than by the way of
ritual, for it is poetry that reveals the emotions at the back of the outward
observances, and we shall understand these better when the singers of
Christmas have laid bare to us their hearts. We may therefore first give
attention to the Christmas poetry of sundry ages and peoples, and then go
on to consider the liturgical and popular ritual in which the Church has
striven to express her joy at the Redeemer's birth. Ceremonial, of course,

has always mimetic tendencies, and in a further chapter we shall see how
these issued in genuine drama; how, in the miracle plays, the Christmas
story was represented by the forms and voices of living men.
29 30 31

Part I—The Christian Feast

CHAPTER II

CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)[8]{ 1}

Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological Character—
Humanizing Influence of Franciscanism—Jacopone da Todi's
Vernacular Verse—German Catholic Poetry—Mediaeval English
Carols.

MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS.
PESELLINO
(Empoli Gallery)

Christmas, as we have seen, had its beginning at the middle of the fourth
century in Rome. The new feast was not long in finding a hymn-writer to
embody in immortal Latin the emotions called forth by the memory of the
Nativity. “Veni, redemptor gentium” is one of the earliest of Latin hymns—
one of the few that have come down to us from the father of Church song,
Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan (d. 397). Great as theologian and statesman,
Ambrose was great also as a poet and systematizer of Church music. “Veni,
redemptor gentium” is above all things stately and severe, in harmony with
the austere character of the zealous foe of the Arian heretics, the champion
of monasticism. It is the theological aspect alone of Christmas, the
redemption of sinful man by the mystery of the Incarnation and the miracle
of the Virgin Birth, that we find in St. Ambrose's terse and pregnant Latin;
there is no feeling for the human pathos and poetry of the scene at
Bethlehem—

“Veni, redemptor gentium,
Ostende partum virginis;
Miretur omne saeculum:
Talis decet partus Deum. 32
Non ex virili semine,
Sed mystico spiramine,
Verbum Dei factum caro,
Fructusque ventris floruit.”[9]{ 2}

Another fine hymn often heard in English churches is of a slightly later
date. “Corde natus ex Parentis” (“Of the Father's love begotten”) is a cento
from a larger hymn by the Spanish poet Prudentius (c. 348-413). Prudentius
did not write for liturgical purposes, and it was several centuries before

“Corde natus” was adopted into the cycle of Latin hymns. Its elaborate
rhetoric is very unlike the severity of “Veni, redemptor gentium,” but again
the note is purely theological; the Incarnation as a world-event is its theme.
It sings the Birth of Him who is

“Corde natus ex Parentis
Ante mundi exordium,
Alpha et O cognominatus,
Ipse fons et clausula
Omnium quae sunt, fuerunt,
Quaeque post futura sunt
Saeculorum saeculis.”[10]{ 3}

Other early hymns are “A solis ortus cardine” (“From east to west, from
shore to shore”), by a certain Coelius Sedulius (d. c. 450), still sung by the
Roman Church at Lauds on Christmas Day, and “Jesu, redemptor omnium”
(sixth century), the office hymn at Christmas Vespers. Like the poems of
Ambrose and Prudentius, they are in classical metres, unrhymed, and based
upon quantity, not accent, and they have the same general character,
doctrinal rather than humanly tender.

In the ninth and tenth centuries arose a new form of hymnody, the Prose or
Sequence sung after the Gradual (the anthem between the Epistle and
Gospel at Mass). The earliest writer of sequences was Notker, a monk of the
abbey of St. Gall, near 33 the Lake of Constance. Among those that are
probably his work is the Christmas “Natus ante saecula Dei filius.” The
most famous Nativity sequence, however, is the “Laetabundus, exsultet
fidelis chorus” of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), once sung all over
Europe, and especially popular in England and France. Here are its opening
verses:—

“Laetabundus,
Exsultet fidelis chorus;

Alleluia!
Regem regum
Intactae profudit thorus;
Res miranda!

Angelus consilii
Natus est de Virgine,
Sol de stella!
Sol occasum nesciens,
Stella semper rutilans,
Semper clara.”[11]{ 4}

The “Laetabundus” is in rhymed stanzas; in this it differs from most early
proses. The writing of rhymed sequences, however, became common
through the example of the Parisian monk, Adam of St. Victor, in the
second half of the twelfth century. He adopted an entirely new style of
versification and music, derived from popular songs; and he and his
successors in 34 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries wrote various proses
for the Christmas festival.

If we consider the Latin Christmas hymns from the fourth century to the
thirteenth, we shall find that however much they differ in form, they have
one common characteristic: they are essentially theological—dwelling on
the Incarnation and the Nativity as part of the process of man's
redemption—rather than realistic. There is little attempt to imagine the
scene in the stable at Bethlehem, little interest in the Child as a child, little
sense of the human pathos of the Nativity. The explanation is, I think, very
simple, and it lights up the whole observance of Christmas as a Church
festival in the centuries we are considering: this poetry is the poetry of
monks, or of men imbued with the monastic spirit.

The two centuries following the institution of Christmas saw the break-up
of the Roman Empire in the west, and the incursions of barbarians

threatening the very existence of the Christian civilization that had
conquered classic paganism. It was by her army of monks that the Church
tamed and Christianized the barbarians, and both religion and culture till the
middle of the twelfth century were predominantly monastic. “In writing of
any eminently religious man of this period” [the eleventh century], says
Dean Church, “it must be taken almost as a matter of course that he was a
monk.”{5} And a monastery was not the place for human feeling about
Christmas; the monk was—at any rate in ideal—cut off from the world; not
for him were the joys of parenthood or tender feelings for a new-born child.
To the monk the world was, at least in theory, the vale of misery; birth and
generation were, one may almost say, tolerated as necessary evils among
lay folk unable to rise to the heights of abstinence and renunciation; one can
hardly imagine a true early Benedictine filled with “joy that a man is born
into the world.” The Nativity was an infinitely important event, to be
celebrated with a chastened, unearthly joy, but not, as it became for the later
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a matter upon which human affection
might lavish itself, which imagination might deck with vivid concrete
detail. In the later Christmas 35 the pagan and the Christian spirit, or delight
in earthly things and joy in the invisible, seem to meet and mingle; to the
true monk of the Dark and Early Middle Ages they were incompatible.

What of the people, the great world outside the monasteries? Can we
imagine that Christmas, on its Christian side, had a deep meaning for them?
For the first ten centuries, to quote Dean Church again, Christianity “can
hardly be said to have leavened society at all.... It acted upon it doubtless
with enormous power; but it was as an extraneous and foreign agent, which
destroys and shapes, but does not mingle or renew.... Society was a long
time unlearning heathenism; it has not done so yet; but it had hardly begun,
at any rate it was only just beginning, to imagine the possibility of such a
thing in the eleventh century.”{6}

“The practical religion of the illiterate,” says another ecclesiastical
historian, Dr. W. R. W. Stephens, “was in many respects merely a survival
of the old paganism thinly disguised. There was a prevalent belief in
witchcraft, magic, sortilegy, spells, charms, talismans, which mixed itself
up in strange ways with Christian ideas and Christian worship.... Fear, the
note of superstition, rather than love, which is the characteristic of a rational
faith, was conspicuous in much of the popular religion. The world was
haunted by demons, hobgoblins, malignant spirits of divers kinds, whose
baneful influence must be averted by charms or offerings.”{7}

The writings of ecclesiastics, the decrees of councils and synods, from the
fourth century to the eleventh, abound in condemnations of pagan practices
at the turn of the year. It is in these customs, and in secular mirth and
revelry, not in Christian poetry, that we must seek for the expression of
early lay feeling about Christmas. It was a feast of material good things, a
time for the fulfilment of traditional heathen usages, rather than a joyous
celebration of the Saviour's birth. No doubt it was observed by due
attendance at church, but the services in a tongue not understanded of the
people cannot have been very full of meaning to them, and we can imagine
36 their Christmas church-going as rather a duty inspired by fear than an

expression of devout rejoicing. It is noteworthy that the earliest of
vernacular Christmas carols known to us, the early thirteenth-century
Anglo-Norman “Seignors, ore entendez à nus,” is a song not of religion but
of revelry. Its last verse is typical:

“Seignors, jo vus di par Noël,
E par li sires de cest hostel,
Car bevez ben;
E jo primes beverai le men,
E pois aprèz chescon le soen,
Par mon conseil;
Si jo vus di trestoz, ‘Wesseyl!’

Dehaiz eit qui ne dirra, ‘Drincheyl!’”[12]{8}

Not till the close of the thirteenth century do we meet with any vernacular
Christmas poetry of importance. The verses of the troubadours and
trouvères of twelfth-century France had little to do with Christianity; their
songs were mostly of earthly and illicit love. The German Minnesingers of
the thirteenth century were indeed pious, but their devout lays were
addressed to the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, the ideal of womanhood,
holding in glory the Divine Child in her arms, rather than to the Babe and
His Mother in the great humility of Bethlehem.

The first real outburst of Christmas joy in a popular tongue is found in Italy,
in the poems of that strange “minstrel of the Lord,” the Franciscan Jacopone
da Todi (b. 1228, d. 1306). Franciscan, in that name we have an indication
of the change in religious feeling that came over the western world, and
37 especially Italy, in the thirteenth century.{9} For the twenty all-too-short

years of St. Francis's apostolate have passed, and a new attitude towards
God and man and the world has become possible. Not that the change was
due solely to St. Francis; he was rather the supreme embodiment of the
ideals and tendencies of his day than their actual creator; but he was the
spark that kindled a mighty flame. In him we reach so important a turning-
point in the history of Christmas that we must linger awhile at his side.

Early Franciscanism meant above all the democratizing, the humanizing of
Christianity; with it begins that “carol spirit” which is the most winning part
of the Christian Christmas, the spirit which, while not forgetting the divine
side of the Nativity, yet delights in its simple humanity, the spirit that links
the Incarnation to the common life of the people, that brings human
tenderness into religion. The faithful no longer contemplate merely a
theological mystery, they are moved by affectionate devotion to the Babe of

Bethlehem, realized as an actual living child, God indeed, yet feeling the
cold of winter, the roughness of the manger bed.

St. Francis, it must be remembered, was not a man of high birth, but the son
of a silk merchant, and his appeal was made chiefly to the traders and
skilled workmen of the cities, who, in his day, were rising to importance,
coming, in modern Socialist terms, to class-consciousness. The monks,
although boys of low birth were sometimes admitted into the cloister, were
in sympathy one with the upper classes, and monastic religion and culture
were essentially aristocratic. The rise of the Franciscans meant the bringing
home of Christianity to masses of town-workers, homely people, who
needed a religion full of vivid humanity, and whom the pathetic story of the
Nativity would peculiarly touch.

Love to man, the sense of human brotherhood—that was the great thing
which St. Francis brought home to his age. The message, certainly, was not
new, but he realized it with infectious intensity. The second great
commandment, “Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself,” had not indeed
been forgotten by 38 mediaeval Christianity; the common life of
monasticism was an attempt to fulfil it; yet for the monk love to man was
often rather a duty than a passion. But to St. Francis love was very life; he
loved not by duty but by an inner compulsion, and his burning love of God
and man found its centre in the God-man, Christ Jesus. For no saint,
perhaps, has the earthly life of Christ been the object of such passionate
devotion as for St. Francis; the Stigmata were the awful, yet, to his
contemporaries, glorious fruit of his meditations on the Passion; and of the
ecstasy with which he kept his Christmas at Greccio we shall read when we
come to consider the Presepio. He had a peculiar affection for the festival
of the Holy Child; “the Child Jesus,” says Thomas of Celano, “had been
given over to forgetfulness in the hearts of many in whom, by the working
of His grace, He was raised up again through His servant Francis.”{10}

To the Early Middle Ages Christ was the awful Judge, the Rex tremendae
majestatis, though also the divine bringer of salvation from sin and eternal
punishment, and, to the mystic, the Bridegroom of the Soul. To Francis He
was the little brother of all mankind as well. It was a new human joy that
came into religion with him. His essentially artistic nature was the first to
realize the full poetry of Christmas—the coming of infinity into extremest
limitation, the Highest made the lowliest, the King of all kings a poor
infant. He had, in a supreme degree, the mingled reverence and tenderness
that inspire the best carols.

Though no Christmas verses by St. Francis have come down to us, there is a
beautiful “psalm” for Christmas Day at Vespers, composed by him partly
from passages of Scripture. A portion of Father Paschal Robinson's
translation may be quoted:—

“Rejoice to God our helper.
Shout unto God, living and true,
With the voice of triumph.
For the Lord is high, terrible:
A great King over all the earth.
For the most holy Father of heaven, 39
Our King, before ages sent His Beloved
Son from on high, and He
was born of the Blessed Virgin,
holy Mary.

* * * * *

This is the day which the Lord
hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.
For the beloved and most holy
Child has been given to us and
born for us by the wayside.
And laid in a manger because He

had no room in the inn.
Glory to God in the highest: and
on earth peace to men of good will.”{11}

It is in the poetry of Jacopone da Todi, born shortly after the death of St.
Francis, that the Franciscan Christmas spirit finds its most intense
expression. A wild, wandering ascetic, an impassioned poet, and a soaring
mystic, Jacopone is one of the greatest of Christian singers, unpolished as
his verses are. Noble by birth, he made himself utterly as the common
people for whom he piped his rustic notes. “Dio fatto piccino” (“God made
a little thing”) is the keynote of his music; the Christ Child is for him “our
sweet little brother”; with tender affection he rejoices in endearing
diminutives—“Bambolino,” “Piccolino,” “Jesulino.” He sings of the
Nativity with extraordinary realism.[13] Here, in words, is a picture of the
Madonna and her Child that might well have inspired an early Tuscan
artist:—

“Veggiamo il suo Bambino
Gammettare nel fieno,
E le braccia scoperte
Porgere ad ella in seno, 40
Ed essa lo ricopre
El meglio che può almeno,
Mettendoli la poppa
Entro la sua bocchina.

* * * * *

A la sua man manca,
Cullava lo Bambino,
E con sante carole
Nenciava il suo amor fino....
Gli Angioletti d’ intorno
Se ne gian danzando,

Facendo dolci versi
E d’ amor favellando.”[14]{ 12}

But there is an intense sense of the divine, as well as the human, in the Holy
Babe; no one has felt more vividly the paradox of the Incarnation:—

JACOPONE IN ECSTASY BEFORE THE VIRGIN.
From “Laude di Frate Jacopone da Todi”
(Florence, 1490).

“Ne la degna stalla del dolce Bambino

Gli Angeli cantano d’ intorno al piccolino;
Cantano e gridano gli Angeli diletti,
Tutti riverenti timidi e subietti, 41
Al Bambolino principe de gli eletti,
Che nudo giace nel pungente spino.

* * * * *

Il Verbo divino, che è sommo sapiente,
In questo dì par che non sappia niente,
Guardal su’ l fieno, che gambetta piangente,
Como elli non fusse huomo divino.”[15]{ 13}

Here, again, are some sweet and homely lines about preparation for the
Infant Saviour:—

“Andiamo a lavare
La casa a nettare,
Che non trovi bruttura.
Poi el menaremo,
Et gli daremo
Ben da ber’ e mangiare.
Un cibo espiato,
Et d’ or li sia dato
Senza alcuna dimura.
Lo cor adempito
Dagiamoli fornito
Senza odio ne rancura.”[16]{ 14}

42There have been few more rapturous poets than Jacopone; men deemed
him mad; but, “if he is mad,” says a modern Italian writer, “he is mad as the
lark”—“Nessun poeta canta a tutta gola come questo frate minore. S’ è
pazzo, è pazzo come l’ allodola.”

To him is attributed that most poignant of Latin hymns, the “Stabat Mater
dolorosa”; he wrote also a joyous Christmas pendant to it:—

“Stabat Mater speciosa,
Juxta foenum gaudiosa,
Dum jacebat parvulus.
Cujus animam gaudentem,
Laetabundam ac ferventem,
Pertransivit jubilus.”[17]{ 15}

In the fourteenth century we find a blossoming forth of Christmas poetry in
another land, Germany.{16} There are indeed Christmas and Epiphany
passages in a poetical Life of Christ by Otfrid of Weissenburg in the ninth
century, and a twelfth-century poem by Spervogel, “Er ist gewaltic unde
starc,” opens with a mention of Christmas, but these are of little importance
for us. The fourteenth century shows the first real outburst, and that is
traceable, in part at least, to the mystical movement in the Rhineland caused
by the preaching of the great Dominican, Eckhart of Strasburg, and his
followers. It was a movement towards inward piety as distinguished from,
though not excluding, external observances, which made its way largely by
sermons listened to by great congregations in the towns. Its impulse came
not from the monasteries proper, but from the convents of Dominican friars,
and it was for Germany in the fourteenth century something like what
Franciscanism had been for Italy in the thirteenth. One of the central
doctrines of the school 43 was that of the Divine Birth in the soul of the
believer; according to Eckhart the soul comes into immediate union with
God by “bringing forth the Son” within itself; the historic Christ is the
symbol of the divine humanity to which the soul should rise: “when the soul
bringeth forth the Son,” he says, “it is happier than Mary.”{17} Several
Christmas sermons by Eckhart have been preserved; one of them ends with
the prayer, “To this Birth may that God, who to-day is new born as man,
bring us, that we, poor children of earth, may be born in Him as God; to this

may He bring us eternally! Amen.”{18} With this profound doctrine of the
Divine Birth, it was natural that the German mystics should enter deeply
into the festival of Christmas, and one of the earliest of German Christmas
carols, “Es komt ein schif geladen,” is the work of Eckhart's disciple, John
Tauler (d. 1361). It is perhaps an adaptation of a secular song:—

“A ship comes sailing onwards
With a precious freight on board;
It bears the only Son of God,
It bears the Eternal Word.”

The doctrine of the mystics, “Die in order to live,” fills the last verses:—

“Whoe'er would hope in gladness
To kiss this Holy Child,
Must suffer many a pain and woe,
Patient like Him and mild;

Must die with Him to evil
And rise to righteousness,
That so with Christ he too may share
Eternal life and bliss.”{19}

To the fourteenth century may perhaps belong an allegorical carol still sung
in both Catholic and Protestant Germany:—

“Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
Aus einer Wurzel zart, 44
Als uns die Alten sungen,
Von Jesse kam die Art,
Und hat ein Blümlein bracht,
Mitten im kalten Winter,
Wohl zu der halben Nacht.
Das Röslein, das ich meine,
Davon Jesajas sagt,

Hat uns gebracht alleine
Marie, die reine Magd.
Aus Gottes ew'gem Rat
Hat sie ein Kind geboren
Wohl zu der halben Nacht.”[18]{20}

In a fourteenth-century Life of the mystic Heinrich Suso it is told how one
day angels came to him to comfort him in his sufferings, how they took him
by the hand and led him to dance, while one began a glad song of the child
Jesus, “In dulci jubilo.” To the fourteenth century, then, dates back that
most delightful of German carols, with its interwoven lines of Latin. I may
quote the fine Scots translation in the “Godlie and Spirituall Sangis” of
1567:—

“In dulci Jubilo, Now lat us sing with myrth and jo
Our hartis consolatioun lyis in praesepio,
And schynis as the Sone, Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O, Alpha es et O.
O Jesu parvule! I thrist sore efter thé, 45
Confort my hart and mynde, O puer optime,
God of all grace sa kynde, et princeps gloriae
Trahe me post te, Trahe me post te.
Ubi sunt gaudia, in ony place bot thair,
Quhair that the Angellis sing Nova cantica,
Bot and the bellis ring in regis curia,
God gif I war thair, God gif I war thair.”{21}

The music of “In dulci jubilo”[19] has, with all its religious feeling,
something of the nature of a dance, and unites in a strange fashion
solemnity, playfulness, and ecstatic delight. No other air, perhaps, shows so
perfectly the reverent gaiety of the carol spirit.

The fifteenth century produced a realistic type of German carol. Here is the
beginning of one such:—

“Da Jesu Krist geboren wart,
do was es kalt;
in ain klaines kripplein
er geleget wart.
Da stunt ain esel und ain rint,
die atmizten über das hailig kint
gar unverborgen.
Der ain raines herze hat, der darf nit sorgen.”[20]{ 22}

It goes on to tell in naïve language the story of the wanderings of the Holy
Family during the Flight into Egypt.

This carol type lasted, and continued to develop, in Austria and the Catholic
parts of Germany through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, and even in the nineteenth. In Carinthia in the early nineteenth
century, almost every parish had its local poet, who added new songs to the
old treasury.{23} Particularly popular were the Hirtenlieder or shepherd
songs, in which the peasant worshippers joined themselves to the shepherds
of Bethlehem, and sought to share their devout 46 emotions. Often these
carols are of the most rustic character and in the broadest dialect. They
breathe forth a great kindliness and homeliness, and one could fill pages
with quotations. Two more short extracts must, however, suffice to show
their quality.

How warm and hearty is their feeling for the Child:—

“Du herzliabste Muater, gib Acht auf dös Kind,
Es is ja gar frostig, thuas einfatschen gschwind.
Und du alter Voda, decks Kindlein schen zua,
Sonst hats von der Kölden und Winden kan Ruah.
Hiazt nemen mir Urlaub, o gettliches Kind,
Thua unser gedenken, verzeich unser Sünd.
Es freut uns von Herzen dass d'ankomen bist;
Es hätt uns ja niemand zu helfen gewist.”[21]{ 24}

And what fatherly affection is here:—

“Das Kind is in der Krippen glögn,
So herzig und so rar!
Mei klâner Hansl war nix dgögn,
Wenn a glei schener war.
Kolschwarz wie d'Kirchen d'Augen sein,
Sunst aber kreidenweiss;
Die Händ so hübsch recht zart und fein,
I hans angrürt mit Fleiss.

Aft hats auf mi an Schmutza gmacht,
An Höscheza darzue;
O warst du mein, hoan i gedacht,
Werst wol a munter Bue.
Dahoam in meiner Kachelstub
Liess i brav hoazen ein,
Do in den Stâl kimt überâl
Der kalte Wind herein.”[22]{ 25}

47We have been following on German ground a mediaeval tradition that has
continued unbroken down to modern days; but we must now take a leap
backward in time, and consider the beginnings of the Christmas carol in
England.

Not till the fifteenth century is there any outburst of Christmas poetry in
English, though other forms of religious lyrics were produced in
considerable numbers in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. When
the carols come at last, they appear in the least likely of all places, at the
end of a versifying of the whole duty of man, by John Awdlay, a blind
chaplain of Haghmon, in Shropshire. In red letters he writes:—

“I pray you, sirus, boothe moore and lase,
Sing these caroles in Cristëmas,”

and then follows a collection of twenty-five songs, some of which are
genuine Christmas carols, as one now understands the word.{26}

A carol, in the modern English sense, may perhaps be defined as a religious
song, less formal and solemn than the ordinary Church hymn—an
expression of popular and often naïve devotional feeling, a thing intended
to be sung outside rather than within church walls. There still linger about
the word some echoes of its original meaning, for “carol” had at first a
secular or even pagan significance: in twelfth-century France it was used to
describe the amorous song-dance which hailed the coming of spring; in
Italian it meant a ring- or song-dance; while by English writers from the
thirteenth to the sixteenth century it was used chiefly of singing joined with
dancing, and had no necessary connection with religion. Much as the
mediaeval Church, with its ascetic tendencies, disliked religious dancing, it
could not always suppress it; and in Germany, as we shall see, there was
choral dancing at Christmas round the cradle of the Christ Child. Whether
Christmas carols were ever danced to in England 48 is doubtful; many of the
old airs and words have, however, a glee and playfulness as of human
nature following its natural instincts of joy even in the celebration of the
most sacred mysteries. It is probable that some of the carols are religious
parodies of love-songs, written for the melodies of the originals, and many
seem by their structure to be indirectly derived from the choral dances of
farm folk, a notable feature being their burden or refrain, a survival of the
common outcry of the dancers as they leaped around.

Awdlay's carols are perhaps meant to be sung by “wassailing neighbours,
who make their rounds at Christmastide to drink a cup and take a gift, and
bring good fortune upon the house”{27} —predecessors of those carol-
singers of rural England in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Hardy depicts
so delightfully in “Under the Greenwood Tree.” Carol-singing by a band of

men who go from house to house is probably a Christianization of such
heathen processions as we shall meet in less altered forms in Part II.

It must not be supposed that the carols Awdlay gives are his own work; and
their exact date it is impossible to determine. Part of his book was
composed in 1426, but one at least of the carols was probably written in the
last half of the fourteenth century. They seem indeed to be the later
blossomings of the great springtime of English literature, the period which
produced Chaucer and Langland, an innumerable company of minstrels and
ballad-makers, and the mystical poet, Richard Rolle of Hampole.[23]

Through the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, the
flowering continued; and something like two hundred carols of this period
are known. It is impossible to attempt here anything like representative
quotation; I can only sketch in 49 roughest outline the main characteristics of
English carol literature, and refer the reader for examples to Miss Edith
Rickert's comprehensive collection, “Ancient English Carols, MCCCC-
MDCC,” or to the smaller but fine selection in Messrs. E. K. Chambers and
F. Sidgwick's “Early English Lyrics.” Many may have been the work of
goliards or wandering scholars, and a common feature is the interweaving
of Latin with English words.

Some, like the exquisite “I sing of a maiden that is makeles,”{29} are rather
songs to or about the Virgin than strictly Christmas carols; the Annunciation
rather than the Nativity is their theme. Others again tell the whole story of
Christ's life. The feudal idea is strong in such lines as these:—

“Mary is quene of allë thinge,
And her sone a lovely kinge.
God graunt us allë good endinge!
Regnat dei gracia.”{30}

On the whole, in spite of some mystical exceptions, the mediaeval English
carol is somewhat external in its religion; there is little deep individual
feeling; the caroller sings as a member of the human race, whose curse is
done away, whose nature is exalted by the Incarnation, rather than as one
whose soul is athirst for God:—

“Now man is brighter than the sonne;
Now man in heven an hie shall wonne;
Blessëd be God this game is begonne
And his moder emperesse of helle.”{31}

Salvation is rather an objective external thing than an inward and spiritual
process. A man has but to pray devoutly to the dear Mother and Child, and
they will bring him to the heavenly court. It is not so much personal sin as
an evil influence in humanity, that is cured by the great event of
Christmas:—

“It was dark, it was dim,
For men that levëd in gret sin;
Lucifer was all within,
Till on the Cristmes day. 50

There was weping, there was wo,
For every man to hell gan go.
It was litel mery tho,
Till on the Cristmes day.”{32}

But now that Christ is born, and man redeemed, one may be blithe
indeed:—

“Jhesus is that childës name,
Maide and moder is his dame,
And so oure sorow is turned to game.
Gloria tibi domine.

* * * * *

Now sitte we downe upon our knee,
And pray that child that is so free;
And with gode hertë now sing we
Gloria tibi domine.”{33}

Sometimes the religious spirit almost vanishes, and the carol becomes little
more than a gay pastoral song:—

“The shepard upon a hill he satt;
He had on him his tabard and his hat,
His tar-box, his pipe, and his flagat;
His name was called Joly Joly Wat,
For he was a gud herdës boy.
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.

* * * * *

Whan Wat to Bedlem cum was,
He swet, he had gone faster than a pace;
He found Jesu in a simpell place,
Betwen an ox and an asse.
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.

‘Jesu, I offer to thee here my pipe,
My skirt, my tar-box, and my scripe;
Home to my felowes now will I skipe,
And also look unto my shepe.’
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.”{34}

51But to others again, especially the lullabies, the hardness of the Nativity,
the shadow of the coming Passion, give a deep note of sorrow and pathos;

there is the thought of the sword that shall pierce Mary's bosom:—

“This endris night I saw a sight,
A maid a cradell kepe,
And ever she song and seid among
‘Lullay, my child, and slepe.’

‘I may not slepe, but I may wepe,
I am so wo begone;
Slepe I wold, but I am colde
And clothës have I none.

* * * * *

‘Adam's gilt this man had spilt;
That sin greveth me sore.
Man, for thee here shall I be
Thirty winter and more.

* * * * *

‘Here shall I be hanged on a tree,
And die as it is skill.
That I have bought lesse will I nought;
It is my fader's will.’”{35}

The lullabies are quite the most delightful, as they are the most human, of
the carols. Here is an exquisitely musical verse from one of 1530:—

“In a dream late as I lay,
Methought I heard a maiden say
And speak these words so mild:
‘My little son, with thee I play,
And come,’ she sang, ‘by, lullaby.’
Thus rockëd she her child.

By-by, lullaby, by-by, lullaby,
Rockëd I my child.
By-by, by-by, by-by, lullaby,
Rockëd I my child. ”{36}
52 53 54 55

CHAPTER III

CHRISTMAS POETRY (II)

The French Noël—Latin Hymnody in Eighteenth-century France—
Spanish Christmas Verse—Traditional Carols of Many Countries—
Christmas Poetry in Protestant Germany—Post-Reformation Verse
in England—Modern English Carols.

THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.
By Fouquet.
(Musée Condé, Chantilly.)

The Reformation marks a change in the character of Christmas poetry in
England and the larger part of Germany, and, instead of following its
development under Protestantism, it will be well to break off and turn
awhile to countries where Catholic tradition remained unbroken. We shall
come back later to Post-Reformation England and Protestant Germany.

In French{1} there is little or no Christmas poetry, religious in character,
before the fifteenth century; the earlier carols that have come down to us are
songs rather of feasting and worldly rejoicing than of sacred things. The
true Noël begins to appear in fifteenth-century manuscripts, but it was not
till the following century that it attained its fullest vogue and was spread all
over the country by the printing presses. Such Noëls seem to have been
written by clerks or recognized poets, either for old airs or for specially
composed music. “To a great extent,” says Mr. Gregory Smith, “they
anticipate the spirit which stimulated the Reformers to turn the popular and
often obscene songs into good and godly ballads.”{2}

Some of the early Noëls are not unlike the English carols of the period, and
are often half in Latin, half in French. Here are a few such “macaronic”
verses:—

“Célébrons la naissance
Nostri Salvatoris, 56
Qui fait la complaisance
Dei sui Patris.
Cet enfant tout aimable,
In nocte mediâ,
Est né dans une étable,
De castâ Mariâ.

* * * * *

Mille esprits angéliques,

Juncti pastoribus,
Chantent dans leur musique,
Puer vobis natus,
Au Dieu par qui nous sommes,
Gloria in excelsis,
Et la paix soit aux hommes
Bonae voluntatis.

* * * * *

Qu'on ne soit insensible!
Adeamus omnes
A Dieu rendu passible,
Propter nos mortales,
Et tous, de compagnie,
Deprecemur eum
Qu’à la fin de la vie,
Det regnum beatum.”{3}

The sixteenth century is the most interesting Noël period; we find then a
conflict of tendencies, a conflict between Gallic realism and broad humour
and the love of refined language due to the study of the ancient classics.
There are many anonymous pieces of this time, but three important
Noëlistes stand out by name: Lucas le Moigne, Curé of Saint Georges, Puy-
la-Garde, near Poitiers; Jean Daniel, called “Maître Mitou,” a priest-
organist at Nantes; and Nicholas Denisot of Le Mans, whose Noëls
appeared posthumously under the pseudonym of “Comte d'Alsinoys.”

Lucas le Moigne represents the esprit gaulois, the spirit that is often called
“Rabelaisian,” though it is only one side of the genius of Rabelais. The
good Curé was a contemporary of 57 the author of “Pantagruel.” His
“Chansons de Noëls nouvaulx” was published in 1520, and contains carols
in very varied styles, some naïve and pious, others hardly quotable at the
present day. One of his best-known pieces is a dialogue between the Virgin

and the singers of the carol: Mary is asked and answers questions about the
wondrous happenings of her life. Here are four verses about the Nativity:—

“Or nous dites, Marie,
Les neuf mois accomplis,
Naquit le fruit de vie,
Comme l'Ange avoit dit?
—Oui, sans nulle peine
Et sans oppression,
Naquit de tout le monde
La vraie Rédemption.

Or nous dites, Marie,
Du lieu impérial,
Fut-ce en chambre parée,
Ou en Palais royal?
—En une pauvre étable
Ouverte à l'environ
Ou n'avait feu, ni flambe
Ni latte, ni chevron.

Or nous dites, Marie,
Qui vous vint visiter;
Les bourgeois de la ville
Vous ont-ils confortée?
—Oncque, homme ni femme
N'en eut compassion,
Non plus que d'un esclave
D’étrange région.

* * * * *

Or nous dites, Marie,
Des pauvres pastoureaux
Qui gardaient ès montagnes
Leurs brebis & aigneaux. 58

 Ceux-là m'ont visitée
—
Par grande affection;
Moult me fut agréable
Leur visitation.”{4}

The influence of the “Pléiade,” with its care for form, its respect for
classical models, its enrichment of the French tongue with new Latin words,
is shown by Jean Daniel, who also owes something to the poets of the late
fifteenth century. Two stanzas may be quoted from him:—

“C'est ung très grant mystère
Qu'ung roy de si hault pris
Vient naistre en lieu austère,
En si meschant pourpris:
Le Roy de tous les bons espritz,
C'est Jésus nostre frère,
Le Roy de tous les bons espritz,
Duquel sommes apris.

Saluons le doulx Jésuchrist,
Notre Dieu, notre frère,
Saluons le doulx Jésuchrist,
Chantons Noel d'esprit!

* * * * *

En luy faisant prière,
Soyons de son party,
Qu'en sa haulte emperière
Ayons lieu de party;
Comme il nous a droict apparty,
Jésus nostre bon frère,
Comme il nous a droict apparty
Au céleste convy.
Saluons, etc.
Amen. Noel.”{5}

As for Denisot, I may give two charming verses from one of his
pastorals:—

“Suz, Bergiez, en campaigne,
Laissez là vos troppeaux, 59
Avant qu'on s'accompaigne,
Enflez vos chalumeaux.

* * * * *

Enflez vos cornemuses,
Dansez ensemblement,
Et vos doucettes muses,
Accollez doucement.”{6}

One result of the Italian influences which came over France in the sixteenth
century was a fondness for diminutives. Introduced into carols, these have
sometimes a very graceful effect:—

“Entre le boeuf & le bouvet,
Noel nouvellet,
Voulust Jésus nostre maistre,
En un petit hostelet,
Noel nouvellet,
En ce pauvre monde naistre,
O Noel nouvellet!

Ne couche, ne bercelet,
Noel nouvellet,
Ne trouvèrent en cette estre,
Fors ung petit drappelet,
Noel nouvellet,
Pour envelopper le maistre,
O Noel nouvellet!”{7}

These diminutives are found again, though fewer, in a particularly
delightful carol:—

“Laissez paître vos bestes
Pastoureaux, par monts et par vaux;
Laissez paître vos bestes,
Et allons chanter Nau.

J'ai ouï chanter le rossignol,
Qui chantoit un chant si nouveau,
Si haut, si beau,
Si résonneau, 60

Il m'y rompoit la tête,
Tant il chantoit et flageoloit:
Adonc pris ma houlette
Pour aller voir Naulet.
Laissez paître, etc.”{8}

The singer goes on to tell how he went with his fellow-shepherds and
shepherdesses to Bethlehem:—

“Nous dîmes tous une chanson
Les autres en vinrent au son,
Chacun prenant
Son compagnon:
Je prendrai Guillemette,
Margot tu prendras gros Guillot;
Qui prendra Péronelle?
Ce sera Talebot.
Laissez paître, etc.

Ne chantons plus, nous tardons trop,
Pensons d'aller courir le trot.
Viens-tu, Margot?—
J'attends Guillot.—

J'ai rompu ma courette,
Il faut ramancher mon sabot.—
Or, tiens cette aiguillette,
Elle y servira trop.
Laissez paître, etc.

* * * * *

Nous courumes de grand’ roideur
Pour voir notre doux Rédempteur
Et Créateur
Et Formateur,
Qui était tendre d'aage
Et sans linceux en grand besoin,
Il gisait en la crêche
Sur un botteau de foin.
Laissez paître, etc. 61

Sa mère avecque lui était:
Et Joseph si lui éclairait,
Point ne semblait
Au beau fillet,
Il n’était point son père;
Je l'aperçus bien au cameau (visage)
Il semblait à sa mère,
Encore est-il plus beau.
Laissez paître, etc.”

This is but one of a large class of French Noëls which make the Nativity
more real, more present, by representing the singer as one of a company of
worshippers going to adore the Child. Often these are shepherds, but
sometimes they are simply the inhabitants of a parish, a town, a
countryside, or a province, bearing presents of their own produce to the
little Jesus and His parents. Barrels of wine, fish, fowls, sucking-pigs,
pastry, milk, fruit, firewood, birds in a cage—such are their homely gifts.

Often there is a strongly satiric note: the peculiarities and weaknesses of
individuals are hit off; the reputation of a place is suggested, a village
whose people are famous for their stinginess offers cider that is half rain-
water; elsewhere the inhabitants are so given to law-suits that they can
hardly find time to go to Bethlehem.

Such Noëls with their vivid local colour, are valuable pictures of the
manners of their time. They are, unfortunately, too long for quotation here,
but any reader who cares to follow up the subject will find some interesting
specimens in a little collection of French carols that can be bought for ten
centimes.{9} They are of various dates; some probably were written as late
as the eighteenth century. In that century, and indeed in the seventeenth, the
best Christmas verses are those of a provincial and rustic character, and
especially those in patois; the more cultivated poets, with their formal
classicism, can ill enter into the spirit of the festival. Of the learned writers
the best is a woman, Françoise Paschal, of Lyons (b. about 1610); in spite of
her Latinity she shows a real feeling for her subjects. Some of her Noëls are
dialogues between the sacred personages; one presents 62 Joseph and Mary
as weary wayfarers seeking shelter at all the inns of Bethlehem and
everywhere refused by host or hostess:—

“Saint Joseph.

Voyons la Rose-Rouge.
Madame de céans,
Auriez-vous quelque bouge
Pour de petites gens?

L'Hôtesse.

Vous n'avez pas la mine
D'avoir de grands trésors;
Voyez chez ma voisine,

Car, quant à moi, je dors.

Saint Joseph.

Monsieur des Trois-Couronnes,
Avez-vous logement,
Chez vous pour trois personnes,
Quelque trou seulement.

L'Hôte.

Vous perdez votre peine,
Vous venez un peu tard,
Ma maison est fort pleine,
Allez quelqu'autre part.”{10}

The most remarkable of the patois Noëlistes of the seventeenth century are
the Provençal Saboly and the Burgundian La Monnoye, the one kindly and
tender, the other witty and sarcastic. Here is one of Saboly's Provençal
Noëls:—

“Quand la mièjonue sounavo,
Ai sautà dóu liech au sòu;
Ai vist un bèl ange que cantavo
Milo fes pu dous qu'un roussignòu.

Lei mastin dóu vesinage
Se soun toutes atroupa; 63
N'avien jamai vist aquéu visage
Se soun tout-d'un-cop mes à japa.

Lei pastre dessus la paio
Dourmien coume de soucas;
Quand an aussi lou bru dei sounaio
Au cresegu qu'ero lou souiras.

S'eron de gent resounable,
Vendrien sèns èstre envita:
Trouvarien dins un petit estable
La lumiero emai la verita.”[24]{ 11}

As for La Monnoye, here is a translation of one of his satirical
verses:—“When in the time of frost Jesus Christ came into the world the ass
and ox warmed Him with their breath in the stable. How many asses and
oxen I know in this kingdom of Gaul! How many asses and oxen I know
who would not have done as much!”{12}

Apart from the rustic Noëls, the eighteenth century produced little French
Christmas poetry of any charm. Some of the carols most sung in French
churches to-day belong, however, to this period, e.g., the “Venez, divin
Messie” of the Abbé Pellegrin.{13}

One cannot leave the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
without some mention of its Latin hymnody. From a date near 1700,
apparently, comes the sweet and solemn “Adeste, fideles”; by its music and
its rhythm, perhaps, rather than by its actual words it has become the best
beloved of Christmas hymns. The present writer has heard it sung with
equal reverence and heartiness in English, German, French, and Italian
churches, and no other hymn seems so full of the spirit of Christmas
devotion—wonder, 64 awe, and tenderness, and the sense of reconciliation
between Heaven and earth. Composed probably in France, “Adeste, fideles”
came to be used in English as well as French Roman Catholic churches
during the eighteenth century. In 1797 it was sung at the chapel of the
Portuguese Embassy in London; hence no doubt its once common name of
“Portuguese hymn.” It was first used in an Anglican church in 1841, when

the Tractarian Oakley translated it for his congregation at Margaret Street
Chapel, London.

Another fine Latin hymn of the eighteenth-century French Church is
Charles Coffin's “Jam desinant suspiria.”{14} It appeared in the Parisian
Breviary in 1736, and is well known in English as “God from on high hath
heard.”

The Revolution and the decay of Catholicism in France seem to have killed
the production of popular carols. The later nineteenth century, however, saw
a revival of interest in the Noël as a literary form. In 1875 the bicentenary
of Saboly's death was celebrated by a competition for a Noël in the
Provençal tongue, and something of the same kind has been done in
Brittany.{15} The Noël has attracted by its aesthetic charm even poets who
are anything but devout; Théophile Gautier, for instance, wrote a graceful
Christmas carol, “Le ciel est noir, la terre est blanche.”

On a general view of the vernacular Christmas poetry of France it must be
admitted that the devotional note is not very strong; there is indeed a formal
reverence, a courtly homage, paid to the Infant Saviour, and the miraculous
in the Gospel story is taken for granted; but there is little sense of awe and
mystery. In harmony with the realistic instincts of the nation, everything is
dramatically, very humanly conceived; at times, indeed, the personages of
the Nativity scenes quite lose their sacred character, and the treatment
degenerates into grossness. At its best, however, the French Noël has a
gaiety and a grace, joined to a genuine, if not very deep, piety, that are
extremely charming. Reading these rustic songs, we are carried in
imagination to French countrysides; we think of the long walk through the
snow to the Midnight Mass, the cheerful réveillon spread on the 65 return,

the family gathered round the hearth, feasting on wine and chestnuts and
boudins, and singing in traditional strains the joys of Noël.

Across the Pyrenees, in Spain, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries saw a great output of Christmas verse. Among the chief writers
were Juan López de Ubeda, Francisco de Ocaña, and José de
Valdivielso.{16} Their villancicos remind one of the paintings of Murillo;
they have the same facility, the same tender and graceful sentiment, without
much depth. They lack the homely flavour, the quaintness that make the
French and German folk-carols so delightful; they have not the rustic tang,
and yet they charm by their simplicity and sweetness.

Here are a few stanzas by Ocaña:—

“Dentro de un pobre pesebre
y cobijado con heno
yace Jesus Nazareno.

En el heno yace echado
el hijo de Dios eterno,
para librar del infierno
al hombre que hubo criado,
y por matar el pecado
el heno tiene por bueno
nuestro Jesus Nazareno.

Está entre dos animales
que le calientan del frio,
quien remedia nuestros males
con su grande poderío:
es su reino y señorío
el mundo y el cielo sereno,
y agora duerme en el heno.

Tiene por bueno sufrir
el frio y tanta fortuna,
sin tener ropa ninguna
con que se abrigar ni cubrir, 66
y por darnos el vivir
padeció frio en el heno,
nuestro Jesus Nazareno.”[25]{ 17}

More of a peasant flavour is found in some snatches of Christmas carols
given by Fernan Caballero in her sketch, “La Noche de Navidad.”

“Ha nacido en un portal,
Llenito de telarañas,
Entre la mula y el buey
El Redentor de las almas.

* * * * *

En el portal de Belen
Hay estrella, sol y luna:
La Virgen y San José
Y el niño que está en la cuna.

En Belen tocan á fuego,
Del portal sale la llama,
Es una estrella del cielo,
Que ha caido entre la paja.

Yo soy un pobre gitano
Que vengo de Egipto aquí,
Y al niño de Dios le traigo
Un gallo quiquiriquí

Yo soy un pobre gallego
Que vengo de la Galicia,
Y al niño de Dios le traigo

Lienzo para una camisa. 67

Al niño recien nacido
Todos le traen un don;
Yo soy chico y nada tengo;
Le traigo mi corazon.”[26]{ 18}

In nearly every western language one finds traditional Christmas carols.
Europe is everywhere alive with them; they spring up like wild flowers.
Some interesting Italian specimens are given by Signor de Gubernatis in his
“Usi Natalizi.” Here are a few stanzas from a Bergamesque cradle-song of
the Blessed Virgin:—

“Dormi, dormi, o bel bambin,
Re divin.
Dormi, dormi, o fantolin.
Fa la nanna, o caro figlio,
Re del Ciel,
Tanto bel, grazioso giglio.

Chiüdi i lümi, o mio tesor,
Dolce amor,
Di quest’ alma, almo Signor;
Fa la nanna, o regio infante,
Sopra il fien,
Caro ben, celeste amante.

Perchè piangi, o bambinell,
Forse il giel
Ti dà noia, o l'asinell?
Fa la nanna, o paradiso
Del mio cor,
Redentor, ti bacio il viso.”[27]{ 19}

68With this lullaby may be compared a singularly lovely and quite
untranslatable Latin cradle-song of unknown origin:—

“Dormi, fili, dormi! mater
Cantat unigenito:
Dormi, puer, dormi! pater,
Nato clamat parvulo:
Millies tibi laudes canimus
Mille, mille, millies.

Lectum stravi tibi soli,
Dormi, nate bellule!
Stravi lectum foeno molli:
Dormi, mi animule.
Millies tibi laudes canimus
Mille, mille, millies.

Ne quid desit, sternam rosis,
Sternam foenum violis,
Pavimentum hyacinthis
Et praesepe liliis.
Millies tibi laudes canimus
Mille, mille, millies. 69

Si vis musicam, pastores
Convocabo protinus;
Illis nulli sunt priores;
Nemo canit castius.
Millies tibi laudes canimus
Mille, mille, millies.”{21}

Curious little poems are found in Latin and other languages, making a
dialogue of the cries of animals at the news of Christ's birth.{22} The
following French example is fairly typical:—

“Comme les bestes autrefois
Parloient mieux latin que françois,
Le coq, de loin voyant le fait,
S’écria: Christus natus est.
Le bœuf, d'un air tout ébaubi,
Demande: Ubi? Ubi? Ubi?
La chèvre, se tordant le groin,
Répond que c'est à Béthléem.
Maistre Baudet, curiosus
De l'aller voir, dit: Eamus;
Et, droit sur ses pattes, le veau
Beugle deux fois: Volo, Volo! ”[28]{ 23}

In Wales, in the early nineteenth century, carol-singing was more popular,
perhaps, than in England; the carols were sung to the harp, in church at the
Plygain or early morning service on Christmas Day, in the homes of the
people, and at the doors of the houses by visitors.{24} In Ireland, too, the
custom of carol-singing then prevailed.{25} Dr. Douglas Hyde, in his
“Religious Songs of Connacht,” gives and translates an interesting
Christmas hymn in Irish, from which two verses may be quoted. They set
forth the great paradox of the Incarnation:—

“Little babe who art so great,
Child so young who art so old, 70
In the manger small his room,
Whom not heaven itself could hold.

Father—not more old than thou?
Mother—younger, can it be?
Older, younger is the Son,
Younger, older, she than he.”{27}

Even in dour Scotland, with its hatred of religious festivals, some kind of
carolling survived here and there among Highland folk, and a remarkable

and very “Celtic” Christmas song has been translated from the Gaelic by
Mr. J. A. Campbell. It begins:—

“Sing hey the Gift, sing ho the Gift,
Sing hey the Gift of the Living,
Son of the Dawn, Son of the Star,
Son of the Planet, Son of the Far [twice],
Sing hey the Gift, sing ho the Gift.”{28}

THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT: THE REST BY THE WAY
MASTER OF THE SEVEN SORROWS OF MARY
(ALSO ATTRIBUTED TO JOACHIM PATINIR)
(Vienna: Imperial Gallery)

SINGING “VOM HIMMEL HOCH” FROM A CHURCH TOWER AT CHRISTMAS.
By Ludwig Richter.

Before I close this study with a survey of Christmas poetry in England after
the Reformation, it may be interesting to follow the developments in
Protestant Germany. The Reformation gave a great impetus to German
religious song, and we owe to it some of the finest of Christmas hymns. It is
no doubt largely due to Luther, that passionate lover of music and folk-
poetry, that hymns have practically become the liturgy of German
Protestantism; yet he did but give typical expression to the natural instincts
of his countrymen for song. Luther, though a rebel, was no Puritan; we can
hardly call him an iconoclast; he had a conservative mind, which only
gradually became loosened from its old attachments. His was an essentially
artistic nature: “I would fain,” he said, “see all arts, especially music, in the
service of Him who has given and created them,” and in the matter of
hymnody he continued, in many respects, the mediaeval German tradition.
Homely, kindly, a lover of children, he had a deep feeling for the festival of
Christmas; and not only did he translate into German “A solis ortus
cardine” and “Veni, redemptor 71 gentium,” but he wrote for his little son
Hans one of the most delightful and touching of all Christmas
hymns—“Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her.”

“Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her,
Ich bring euch gute neue Mär,
Der guten Mär bring ich so viel,
Davon ich singen und sagen will.

Euch ist ein Kindlein heut gebor'n
Von einer Jungfrau auserkor'n,
Ein Kindelein so zart und fein,
Das soll eu'r Freud und Wonne sein.

* * * * *

Merk auf, mein Herz, und sich dort hin:
Was liegt doch in dem Kripplein drin?
Wess ist das schöne Kindelein?
Es ist das liebe Jesulein.

* * * * *

Ach Herr, du Schöpfer aller Ding,
Wie bist du worden so gering,
Dass du da liegst auf dürrem Gras,
Davon ein Rind und Esel ass?

* * * * *

Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein,
Mach dir ein rein sanft Bettelein,
Zu ruhen in mein's Herzens Schrein,
Dass ich nimmer vergesse dein.

* * * * *

Davon ich allzeit fröhlich sei,
Zu springen, singen immer frei
Das rechte Lied dem Gottessohn

Mit Herzenslust, den süssen Ton.”[29]{29}

72 “Vom Himmel hoch” has qualities of simplicity, directness, and warm
human feeling which link it to the less ornate forms of carol literature. Its
first verse is adapted from a secular song; its melody may, perhaps, have
been composed by Luther himself. There is another Christmas hymn of
Luther's, too—“Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schar”—written for use when
“Vom Himmel hoch” was thought too long, and he also composed
additional verses for the mediaeval “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ.”

“Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ,
Dass du Mensch geboren bist
Von einer Jungfrau, das ist wahr,
Des freuet sich der Engel Schar.
Kyrieleis!

Des ew'gen Vaters einig Kind
Jetzt man in der Krippe find't,
In unser armes Fleisch und Blut
Verkleidet sich das ewig Gut.
Kyrieleis! 73

Den aller Weltkreis nie beschloss,
Der lieget in Marie'n Schoss;
Er ist ein Kindlein worden klein,
Der alle Ding’ erhält allein.
Kyrieleis! ”[30]{ 31}

The first stanza alone is mediaeval, the remaining six of the hymn are
Luther's.

The Christmas hymns of Paul Gerhardt, the seventeenth-century Berlin
pastor, stand next to Luther's. They are more subjective, more finished, less
direct and forcible. Lacking the finest qualities of poetry, they are

nevertheless impressive by their dignity and heartiness. Made for music, the
words alone hardly convey the full power of these hymns. They should be
heard sung to the old chorales, massive, yet sweet, by the lusty voices of a
German congregation. To English people they are probably best known
through the verses introduced into the “Christmas Oratorio,” where the old
airs are given new beauty by Bach's marvellous harmonies. The tone of
devotion, one feels, in Gerhardt and Bach is the same, immeasurably
greater as is the genius of the composer; in both there is a profound joy in
the Redemption begun by the Nativity, a robust faith joined to a deep sense
of the mystery of suffering, and a keen sympathy with childhood, a tender
fondness for the Infant King.

74The finest perhaps of Gerhardt's hymns is the Advent “Wie soll ich dich
empfangen?” (“How shall I fitly meet Thee?”), which comes early in the
“Christmas Oratorio.” More closely connected with the Nativity, however,
are the Weihnachtslieder, “Wir singen dir, Emanuel,” “O Jesu Christ, dein
Kripplein ist,” “Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen,” “Ich steh an deiner
Krippen hier,” and others. I give a few verses from the third:—

“Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen
Dieser Zeit,
Da für Freud
Alle Engel singen.
Hört, hört, wie mit vollen Choren
Alle Luft
Laute ruft:
Christus ist geboren.

* * * * *

Nun, er liegt in seiner Krippen,
Ruft zu sich
Mich und dich,

Spricht mit süssen Lippen:
Lasset fahrn, O lieben Brüder
Was euch quält,
Was euch fehlt;
Ich bring alles wieder.

* * * * *

Süsses Heil, lass dich umfangen;
Lass mich dir,
Meine Zier,
Unverrückt anhangen.
Du bist meines Lebens Leben;
Nun kann ich
Mich durch dich
Wohl zufrieden geben.”[31]{33}

75One more German Christmas hymn must be mentioned, Gerhard
Tersteegen's “Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Chöre.”
Tersteegen represents one phase of the mystical and emotional reaction
against the religious formalism and indifference of the eighteenth century.
In the Lutheran Church the Pietists, though they never seceded, somewhat
resembled the English Methodists; the Moravians formed a separate
community, while from the “Reformed” or Calvinistic Church certain
circles of spiritually-minded people, who drew inspiration from the
mediaeval mystics and later writers like Böhme and Madame Guyon,
gathered into more or less independent groups for religious intercourse. Of
these last Tersteegen is a representative singer. Here are three verses from
his best known Christmas hymn:—

“Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Chöre,
Singet dem Herrn, dem Heiland der Menschen, zur Ehre:
Sehet doch da!
Gott will so freundlich und nah

Zu den Verlornen sich kehren. 76

König der Ehren, aus Liebe geworden zum Kinde,
Dem ich auch wieder mein Herz in der Liebe verbinde;
Du sollst es sein,
Den ich erwähle allein,
Ewig entsag’ ich der Sünde.

Treuer Immanuel, werd’ auch in mir neu geboren;
Komm doch, mein Heiland, und lass mich nicht länger
verloren;
Wohne in mir,
Mach mich ganz eines mit dir,
Den du zum Leben erkoren.”[32]{ 35}

The note of personal religion, as distinguished from theological doctrine, is
stronger in German Christmas poetry than in that of any other nation—the
birth of Christ in the individual soul, not merely the redemption of man in
general, is a central idea.

We come back at last to England. The great carol period is, as has already
been said, the fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth, century; after the
Reformation the English domestic Christmas largely loses its religious
colouring, and the best carols of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries are songs of 77 feasting and pagan ceremonies rather than of the
Holy Child and His Mother. There is no lack of fine Christmas verse in the
Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, but for the most part it belongs to the
oratory and the chamber rather than the hall. The Nativity has become a
subject for private contemplation, for individual devotion, instead of, as in
the later Middle Ages, a matter for common jubilation, a wonder-story that
really happened, in which, all alike and all together, the serious and the
frivolous could rejoice, something that, with all its marvel, could be taken

as a matter of course, like the return of the seasons or the rising of the sun
on the just and on the unjust.

English Christmas poetry after the mid-sixteenth century is, then, individual
rather than communal in its spirit; it is also a thing less of the people, more
of the refined and cultivated few. The Puritanism which so deeply affected
English religion was abstract rather than dramatic in its conception of
Christianity, it was concerned less with the events of the Saviour's life than
with Redemption as a transaction between God and man; St. Paul and the
Old Testament rather than the gospels were its inspiration. Moreover, the
material was viewed not as penetrated by and revealing the spiritual, but as
sheer impediment blocking out the vision of spiritual things. Hence the
extremer Puritans were completely out of touch with the sensuous poetry of
Christmas, a festival which, as we shall see, they actually suppressed when
they came into power.

The singing of sacred carols by country people continued, indeed, but the
creative artistic impulse was lost. True carols after the Reformation tend to
be doggerel, and no doubt many of the traditional pieces printed in such
collections as Bramley and Stainer's[33]{ 37} are debased survivals from the
Middle Ages, or perhaps new words written for old tunes. Such carols as
“God rest you merry, gentlemen,” have unspeakably delightful airs, and the
words charm us moderns by their quaintness and rusticity, but they are far
from the exquisite loveliness of the mediaeval 78 things. Gleams of great
beauty are, however, sometimes found amid matter that in the process of
transmission has almost ceased to be poetry. Here, for instance, are five
stanzas from the traditional “Cherry-tree Carol”:—

“As Joseph was a-walking,
He heard an angel sing:
‘This night shall be born
Our heavenly King.

‘He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall.

‘He neither shall be clothed
In purple nor in pall,
But all in fair linen
As wear babies all.

‘He neither shall be rocked
In silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden cradle
That rocks on the mould.

‘He neither shall be christened
In white wine nor red,
But with fair spring water
With which we were christened.’”

The old carols sung by country folk have often not much to do with the
Nativity; they are sometimes rhymed lives of Christ or legends of the Holy
Childhood. Of the latter class the strangest is “The Bitter Withy,”
discovered in Herefordshire by Mr. Frank Sidgwick. It tells how the little
Jesus asked three lads to play with Him at ball. But they refused:—

“’O we are lords’ and ladies’ sons,
Born in bower or in hall;
And you are but a poor maid's child,
Born in an oxen's stall.’ 79

‘If I am but a poor maid's child,
Born in an oxen's stall,
I will let you know at the very latter end
That I am above you all.’

So he built him a bridge with the beams of the sun,
And over the sea went he,
And after followed the three jolly jerdins,
And drowned they were all three.

Then Mary mild called home her child,
And laid him across her knee,
And with a handful of green withy twigs
She gave him slashes three.

‘O the withy, O the withy, O bitter withy
That causes me to smart!
O the withy shall be the very first tree
That perishes at the heart.’”

From these popular ballads, mediaeval memories in the rustic mind, we
must return to the devotional verse of the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries. Two of the greatest poets of the Nativity, the Roman
priests Southwell and Crashaw, are deeply affected by the wave of
mysticism which passed over Europe in their time. Familiar as is
Southwell's “The Burning Babe,” few will be sorry to find it here:—

“As I in hoary winter's night
Stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat,
Which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye
To view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright
Did in the air appear;
Who, scorchèd with excessive heat,
Such floods of tears did shed,
As though His floods should quench His flames
Which with His tears were fed. 80
‘Alas!’ quoth He, ‘but newly born,

In fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts
Or feel my fire, but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is,
The fuel, wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,
The ashes, shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on,
And Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought
Are men's defilèd souls,
For which, as now on fire I am,
To work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath,
To wash them in my blood.’
With this he vanished out of sight,
And swiftly shrunk away:
And straight I callèd unto mind
That it was Christmas Day.”{38}

As for Crashaw,

“That the great angel-blinding light should shrink
His blaze to shine in a poor shepherd's eye,
That the unmeasured God so low should sink
As Pris'ner in a few poor rags to lie,
That from His mother's breast He milk should drink
Who feeds with nectar heaven's fair family,
That a vile manger His low bed should prove
Who in a throne of stars thunders above:

That He, whom the sun serves, should faintly peep
Through clouds of infant flesh; that He the old
Eternal Word should be a Child and weep,
That He who made the fire should fear the cold:
That heaven's high majesty His court should keep

In a clay cottage, by each blast controll'd:
That glory's self should serve our griefs and fears,
And free Eternity submit to years—”{39}

such are the wondrous paradoxes celebrated in his glowing imagery. The
contrast of the winter snow with the burning 81 heat of Incarnate Love, of
the blinding light of Divinity with the night's darkness, indeed the whole
paradox of the Incarnation—Infinity in extremest limitation—is nowhere
realized with such intensity as by him. Yet, magnificent as are his best lines,
his verse sometimes becomes too like the seventeenth-century Jesuit
churches, with walls overladen with decoration, with great languorous
pictures and air heavy with incense; and then we long for the dewy
freshness of the early carols.

The representative Anglican poets of the seventeenth century, Herbert and
Vaughan, scarcely rise to their greatest heights in their treatment of
Christmas, but with them as with the Romanists it is the mystical note that
is dominant. Herbert sings:—

“O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted, light,
Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;
Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,
To man, of all beasts, be not Thou a stranger.

Furnish and deck my soul, that thou may'st have
A better lodging than a rack or grave.”{40}

And Vaughan:—

“I would I had in my best part
Fit rooms for Thee! or that my heart
Were so clean as
Thy manger was!
But I am all filth, and obscene:

Yet, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make clean.

Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more
This leper haunt and soil thy door!
Cure him, ease him,
O release him!
And let once more, by mystic birth,
The Lord of life be born in earth.”{41}

In Herrick—how different a country parson from Herbert!—we find a sort
of pagan piety towards the Divine Infant which, 82 though purely English in
its expression, makes us think of some French Noëliste or some present-day
Italian worshipper of the Bambino:—

“Instead of neat enclosures
Of interwoven osiers,
Instead of fragrant posies
Of daffodils and roses,
Thy cradle, kingly Stranger,
As gospel tells,
Was nothing else
But here a homely manger.

But we with silks not crewels,
With sundry precious jewels,
And lily work will dress Thee;
And, as we dispossess Thee
Of clouts, we'll make a chamber,
Sweet Babe, for Thee,
Of ivory,
And plaster'd round with amber.”{42}

Poems such as Herrick's to the Babe of Bethlehem reveal in their writers a
certain childlikeness, an insouciance without irreverence, the spirit indeed
of a child which turns to its God quite simply and naturally, which makes

Him after its own child-image, and sees Him as a friend who can be pleased
with trifles—almost, in fact, as a glorious playmate. Such a nature has no
intense feeling of sin, but can ask for forgiveness and then forget; religion
for it is rather an outward ritual to be duly and gracefully performed than an
inward transforming power. Herrick is a strange exception among the
Anglican singers of Christmas.

Milton's great Nativity hymn, with its wondrous blending of pastoral
simplicity and classical conceits, is too familiar for quotation here; it may
be suggested, however, that this work of the poet's youth is far more
Anglican than Puritan in its spirit.

Sweet and solemn Spenserian echoes are these verses from Giles Fletcher's
“Christ's Victory in Heaven”:— 83

“Who can forget—never to be forgot—
The time, that all the world in slumber lies,
When, like the stars, the singing angels shot
To earth, and heaven awakèd all his eyes
To see another sun at midnight rise
On earth? Was never sight of pareil fame,
For God before man like Himself did frame,
But God Himself now like a mortal man became.

A Child He was, and had not learnt to speak,
That with His word the world before did make;
His mother's arms Him bore, He was so weak,
That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake,
See how small room my infant Lord doth take,
Whom all the world is not enough to hold!
Who of His years, or of His age hath told?
Never such age so young, never a child so old.”{43}

The old lullaby tradition is continued by Wither, though the infant in the
cradle is an ordinary human child, who is rocked to sleep with the story of
his Lord:—

“A little Infant once was He,
And strength in weakness then was laid
Upon His virgin-mother's knee,
That power to thee might be conveyed.
Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

* * * * *

Within a manger lodged thy Lord,
Where oxen lay and asses fed;
Warm rooms we do to thee afford,
An easy cradle or a bed.
Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.”{44}

When we come to the eighteenth century we find, where we might least
expect it, among the moral verses of Dr. Watts, a charming cradle-song
conceived in just the same way:— 84

“Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed!
Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling on thy head.

* * * * *

Soft and easy is thy cradle;
Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay.
When His birthplace was a stable,
And His softest bed was hay.

* * * * *

Lo He slumbers in His manger
Where the hornèd oxen fed;
—Peace, my darling, here's no danger;
Here's no ox a-near thy bed.”{45}

It is to the eighteenth century that the three most popular of English
Christmas hymns belong. Nahum Tate's “While shepherds watched their
flocks by night”—one of the very few hymns (apart from metrical psalms)
in common use in the Anglican Church before the nineteenth century—is a
bald and apparently artless paraphrase of St. Luke which, by some accident,
has attained dignity, and is aided greatly by the simple and noble tune now
attached to it. Charles Wesley's “Hark, the herald angels sing,” or—as it
should be—“Hark, how all the welkin rings,” is much admired by some, but
to the present writer seems a mere piece of theological rhetoric. Byrom's
“Christians, awake, salute the happy morn,” has the stiffness and formality
or its period, but it is not without a certain quaintness and dignity. One
could hardly expect fine Christmas poetry of an age whose religion was on
the one hand staid, rational, unimaginative, and on the other “Evangelical”
in the narrow sense, finding its centre in the Atonement rather than the
Incarnation.

The revived mediaevalism, religious and aesthetic, of the nineteenth
century, produced a number of Christmas carols. Some, like Swinburne's
“Three damsels in the queen's chamber,” with 85 its exquisite verbal music
and delightful colour, and William Morris's less successful “Masters, in this
hall,” and “Outlanders, whence come ye last?” are the work of unbelievers
and bear witness only to the aesthetic charm of the Christmas story; but
there are others, mostly from Roman or Anglo-Catholic sources, of real
religious inspiration.[34] The most spontaneous are Christina Rossetti's,
whose haunting rhythms and delicate feeling are shown at their best in her

songs of the Christ Child. More studied and self-conscious are the austere
Christmas verses of Lionel Johnson and the graceful carols of Professor
Selwyn Image. In one poem Mr. Image strikes a deeper and stronger note
than elsewhere; its solemn music takes us back to an earlier century:—

“Consider, O my soul, what morn is this!
Whereon the eternal Lord of all things made,
For us, poor mortals, and our endless bliss,
Came down from heaven; and, in a manger laid,
The first, rich, offerings of our ransom paid:
Consider, O my soul, what morn is this!”{46}

Not a few contemporary poets have given us Christmas carols or poems.
Among the freshest and most natural are those of Katharine Tynan, while
Mr. Gilbert Chesterton has written some Christmas lyrics full of colour and
vitality, and with a true mystical quality. Singing of Christmas, Mr.
Chesterton is at his best; he has instinctive sympathy with the spirit of the
festival, its human kindliness, its democracy, its sacramentalism, its
exaltation of the child:—

“The thatch of the roof was as golden
Though dusty the straw was and old;
The wind had a peal as of trumpets,
Though blowing and barren and cold. 86

The mother's hair was a glory,
Though loosened and torn;
For under the eaves in the gloaming
A child was born.”{47}

Thus opens a fine poem on the Nativity as symbolizing miracle of birth, of
childhood with its infinite possibilities, eternal renewal of faith and hope.
87 88 89

CHAPTER IV

CHRISTMAS IN LITURGY AND POPULAR
DEVOTION

DEVOTION

Advent and Christmas Offices of the Roman Church—The Three
Masses of Christmas, their Origin and their Celebration in Rome—
The Midnight Mass in Many Lands—Protestant Survivals of the
Night Services—Christmas in the Greek Church—The Eastern
Epiphany and the Blessing of the Waters—The Presepio or Crib, its
Supposed Institution by St. Francis—Early Traces of the Crib—The
Crib in Germany, Tyrol, &c.—Cradle-rocking in Mediaeval
Germany—Christmas Minstrels in Italy and Sicily—The Presepio
in Italy—Ceremonies with the Culla and the Bambino in Rome—
Christmas in Italian London—The Spanish Christmas—Possible
Survivals of the Crib in England.

THE NATIVITY.
From Add. MS. 32454 in the British Museum
(French, 15th century).

From a study of Christmas as reflected in lyric poetry, we now pass to other
forms of devotion in which the Church has welcomed the Redeemer at His

birth. These are of two kinds—liturgical and popular; and they correspond
in a large degree to the successive ways of apprehending the meaning of
Christmas which we traced in the foregoing chapters. Strictly liturgical
devotions are little understanded of the people: only the clergy can fully
join in them; for the mass of the lay folk they are mysterious rites in an
unknown tongue, to be followed with reverence, as far as may be, but
remote and little penetrated with humanity. Side by side with these,
however, are popular devotions, full of vivid colour, highly
anthropomorphic, bringing the mysteries of religion within the reach of the
simplest minds, and warm with human feeling. The austere Latin hymns of
the earlier centuries belong to liturgy; the vernacular Christmas poetry of
later ages is largely associated with popular devotion.

90Liturgiology is a vast and complicated, and except to the few, an
unattractive, subject. To attempt here a survey of the liturgies in their
relation to Christmas is obviously impossible; we must be content to dwell
mainly upon the present-day Roman offices, which, in spite of various
revisions, give some idea of the mediaeval services of Latin Christianity,
and to cast a few glances at other western rites, and at those of the Greek
Church.

Whatever may be his attitude towards Catholicism, or, indeed, Christianity,
no one sensitive to the music of words, or the suggestions of poetic
imagery, can read the Roman Breviary and Missal without profound
admiration for the amazing skill with which the noblest passages of Hebrew
poetry are chosen and fitted to the expression of Christian devotion, and the
gold of psalmists, prophets, and apostles is welded into coronals for the
Lord and His saints. The office-books of the Roman Church are, in one
aspect, the greatest of anthologies.

Few parts of the Roman Breviary have more beauty than the Advent[35]
offices, where the Church has brought together the majestic imagery of the
Hebrew prophets, the fervent exhortation of the apostles, to prepare the
minds of the faithful for the coming of the Christ, for the celebration of the
Nativity.

Advent begins with a stirring call. If we turn to the opening service of the
Christian Year, the First Vespers of the First Sunday in Advent, we shall
find as the first words in the “Proper of the Season” the trumpet-notes of St.
Paul: “Brethren, it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our
salvation nearer than when we believed.” This, the Little Chapter for the
office, is followed by the ancient hymn, “Creator alme siderum,”{1}
chanting in awful tones the two comings of 91 Christ, for redemption and for
judgment; and then are sung the words that strike the keynote of the Advent
services, and are heard again and again.

“Rorate, coeli, desuper, et nubes pluant Justum
(Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour
down the Righteous One).
Aperiatur terra et germinet Salvatorem
(Let the earth open, and let her bring forth the Saviour).”

Rorate, coeli, desuper—Advent is a time of longing expectancy. It is a
season of waiting patiently for the Lord, whose coming in great humility is
to be commemorated at Christmas, to whose coming again in His glorious
majesty to judge both the quick and the dead the Christian looks forward
with mingled hope and awe. There are four weeks in Advent, and an ancient
symbolical explanation interprets these as typifying four comings of the
Son of God: the first in the flesh, the second in the hearts of the faithful
through the Holy Spirit, the third at the death of every man, and the fourth
at the Judgment Day. The fourth week is never completed (Christmas Eve is

regarded as not part of Advent), because the glory bestowed on the saints at
the Last Coming will never end.

The great Eucharistic hymn, “Gloria in excelsis,” is omitted in Advent, in
order, say the symbolists, that on Christmas night, when it was first sung by
the angels, it may be chanted with the greater eagerness and devotion. The
“Te Deum” at Matins too is left unsaid, because Christ is regarded as not
yet come. But “Alleluia” is not omitted, because Advent is only half a time
of penitence: there is awe at the thought of the Coming for Judgment, but
joy also in the hope of the Incarnation to be celebrated at Christmas, and the
glory in store for the faithful.{3}

Looking forward is above all things the note of Advent; the Church seeks to
share the mood of the Old Testament saints, and she draws more now than
at any other season, perhaps, on the treasures of Hebrew prophecy for her
lessons, antiphons, versicles, and responds. Looking for the glory that shall
be revealed, she awaits, at this darkest time of the year, the rising 92 of the
Sun of Righteousness. Rorate, coeli, desuper—the mood comes at times to
all idealists, and even those moderns who hope not for a supernatural
Redeemer, but for the triumph of social justice on this earth, must be stirred
by the poetry of the Advent offices.

It is at Vespers on the seven days before Christmas Eve that the Church's
longing finds its noblest expression—in the antiphons known as the “Great
O's,” sung before and after the “Magnificat,” one on each day. “O
Sapientia,” runs the first, “O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of the
Most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly
ordering all things: come and teach us the way of prudence.” “O Adonai,”
“O Root of Jesse,” “O Key of David,” “O Day-spring, Brightness of Light
Everlasting,” “O King of the Nations,” thus the Church calls to her Lord,

“O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations, and their
Salvation: come and save us, O Lord our God.”{4}

At last Christmas Eve is here, and at Vespers we feel the nearness of the
great Coming. “Lift up your heads: behold your redemption draweth nigh,”
is the antiphon for the last psalm. “To-morrow shall be done away the
iniquity of the earth,” is the versicle after the Office Hymn. And before and
after the “Magnificat” the Church sings: “When the sun shall have risen, ye
shall see the King of kings coming forth from the Father, as a bridegroom
out of his chamber.”

Yet only with the night office of Matins does the glory of the festival begin.
There is a special fitness at Christmas in the Church's keeping watch by
night, like the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the office is full of the poetry of
the season, full of exultant joy. To the “Venite, exultemus Domino” a
Christmas note is added by the oft-repeated Invitatory, “Unto us the Christ
is born: O come, let us adore Him.” Psalms follow—among them the three
retained by the Anglican Church in her Christmas Matins—and lessons
from the Old and New Testaments and the homilies of the Fathers,
interspersed with Responsories bringing home to the faithful the wonders of
the Holy Night. Some are almost dramatic; this, for instance:— 93

“Whom saw ye, O shepherds? speak; tell us who hath appeared
on the earth.
We saw the new-born Child, and angels singing praise unto the
Lord.
Speak, what saw ye? and tell us of the birth of Christ.
We saw the new-born Child, and angels singing praise unto the
Lord.”

It is the wonder of the Incarnation, the marvel of the spotless Birth, the song
of the Angels, the coming down from heaven of true peace, the daybreak of

redemption and everlasting joy, the glory of the Only-begotten, now beheld
by men—the supernatural side, in fact, of the festival, that the Church sets
forth in her radiant words; there is little thought of the purely human side,
the pathos of Bethlehem.

It was customary at certain places, in mediaeval times, to lay on the altar
three veils, and remove one at each nocturn of Christmas Matins. The first
was black, and symbolised the time of darkness before the Mosaic Law; the
second white, typifying, it would seem, the faith of those who lived under
that Law of partial revelation; the third red, showing the love of Christ's
bride, the Church, in the time of grace flowing from the Incarnation.{5}

A stately ceremony took place in England in the Middle Ages at the end of
Christmas Matins—the chanting of St. Matthew's genealogy of Christ. The
deacon, in his dalmatic, with acolytes carrying tapers, with thurifer and
cross-bearer, all in albs and unicles, went in procession to the pulpit or the
rood-loft, to sing this portion of the Gospel. If the bishop were present, he it
was who chanted it, and a rich candlestick was held to light him.[36] Then
followed the chanting of the “Te Deum.”{6} The ceremony does not appear
in the ordinary Roman books, but it is still performed by the Benedictines,
as one may read in the striking account of the monastic Christmas given by
Huysmans in “L'Oblat.”{7}

94Where, as in religious communities, the offices of the Church are
performed in their full order, there follows on Matins that custom peculiar
to Christmas, the celebration of Midnight Mass. On Christmas morning
every priest is permitted to say three Masses, which should in strictness be
celebrated at midnight, at dawn, and in full daylight. Each has its own
Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, each its own Introit, Gradual, and other
anthems. In many countries the Midnight Mass is the distinctive Christmas
service, a great and unique event in the year, something which by its

strangeness gives to the feast of the Nativity a place by itself. Few Catholic
rites are more impressive than this Midnight Mass, especially in country
places; through the darkness and cold of the winter's night, often for long
distances, the faithful journey to worship the Infant Saviour in the
splendour of the lighted church. It is a re-enactment of the visit of the
shepherds to the cave at Bethlehem, aglow with supernatural light.

Various symbolical explanations of the three Masses were given by
mediaeval writers. The midnight celebration was supposed to represent
mankind's condition before the Law of Moses, when thick darkness covered
the earth; the second, at dawn, the time of the Law and the Prophets with its
growing light; the third, in full daylight, the Christian era of light and grace.
Another interpretation, adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas, is more mystical;
the three Masses stand for the threefold birth of Christ, the first typifying
the dark mystery of the eternal generation of the Son, the second the birth of
Christ the morning-star within the hearts of men, the third the bodily birth
of the Son of Mary.{8}

At the Christmas Masses the “Gloria in excelsis” resounds again. This song
of the angels was at first chanted only at Christmas; it was introduced into
Rome during the fifth century at Midnight Mass in imitation of the custom
of the Church of Jerusalem.{9}

It is, indeed, from imitation of the services at Jerusalem and Bethlehem that
the three Roman Masses of Christmas seem to have sprung. From a late
fourth-century document known as 95 the “Peregrinatio Silviae,” the
narrative of a pilgrimage to the holy places of the east by a great lady from
southern Gaul, it appears that at the feast of the Epiphany—when the Birth
of Christ was commemorated in the Palestinian Church—two successive
“stations” were held, one at Bethlehem, the other at Jerusalem. At
Bethlehem the station was held at night on the eve of the feast, then a

procession was made to the church of the Anastasis or Resurrection—where
was the Holy Sepulchre—arriving “about the hour when one man begins to
recognise another, i.e., near daylight, but before the day has fully broken.”
There a psalm was sung, prayers were said, and the catechumens and
faithful were blessed by the bishop. Later, Mass was celebrated at the Great
Church at Golgotha, and the procession returned to the Anastasis, where
another Mass was said.{10}

At Bethlehem at the present time impressive services are held on the Latin
Christmas Day. The Patriarch comes from Jerusalem, with a troop of
cavalry and Kavasses in gorgeous array. The office lasts from 10 o'clock on
Christmas Eve until long after midnight. “At the reading of the Gospel the
clergy and as many of the congregation as can follow leave the church, and
proceed by a flight of steps and a tortuous rock-hewn passage to the Grotto
of the Nativity, an irregular subterranean chamber, long and narrow. They
carry with them a waxen image of an infant—the bambino—wrap it in
swaddling bands and lay it on the site which is said to be that of the
manger.”{11}

The Midnight Mass appears to have been introduced into Rome in the first
half of the fifth century. It was celebrated by the Pope in the church of Santa
Maria Maggiore, while the second Mass was sung by him at Sant’
Anastasia—perhaps because of the resemblance of the name to the
Anastasis at Jerusalem—and the third at St. Peter's.{12} On Christmas Eve
the Pope held a solemn “station” at Santa Maria Maggiore, and two Vespers
were sung, the first very simple, the second, at which the Pope pontificated,
with elaborate ceremonial. Before the second Vespers, in the twelfth
century, a good meal had to 96 be prepared for the papal household by the
Cardinal-Bishop of Albano. After Matins and Midnight Mass at Santa Maria
Maggiore, the Pope went in procession to Sant’ Anastasia for Lauds and the
Mass of the Dawn. The third Mass, at St. Peter's, was an event of great

solemnity, and at it took place in the year 800 that profoundly significant
event, the coronation of Charlemagne by Leo III.—a turning-point in
European history.{13}

Later it became the custom for the Pope, instead of proceeding to St.
Peter's, to return to Santa Maria Maggiore for the third Mass. On his arrival
he was given a cane with a lighted candle affixed to it; with this he had to
set fire to some tow placed on the capitals of the columns.{14} The
ecclesiastical explanation of this strange ceremony was that it symbolised
the end of the world by fire, but one may conjecture that some pagan
custom lay at its root. Since 1870 the Pope, as “the prisoner of the Vatican,”
has of course ceased to celebrate at Santa Maria Maggiore or Sant’
Anastasia. The Missal, however, still shows a trace of the papal visit to
Sant’ Anastasia in a commemoration of this saint which comes as a curious
parenthesis in the Mass of the Dawn.

On Christmas Day in the Vatican the Pope blesses a hat and a sword, and
these are sent as gifts to some prince. The practice is said to have arisen
from the mediaeval custom for the Holy Roman Emperor or some other
sovereign to read one of the lessons at Christmas Matins, in the papal
chapel, with his sword drawn.{15}

Celebrated in countries as distant from one another, both geographically and
in character, as Ireland and Sicily, Poland and South America, the Midnight
Mass naturally varies greatly in its tone and setting. Sometimes it is little
more than a fashionable function, sometimes the devotion of those who
attend is shown by a tramp over miles of snow through the darkness and the
bitter wind.

In some charming memories of the Christmas of her childhood, Madame
Th. Bentzon thus describes the walk to the Midnight Mass in a French

country place about sixty years ago:— 97

“I can see myself as a little girl, bundled up to the tip of my nose in
furs and knitted shawls, tiny wooden shoes on my feet, a lantern in
my hand, setting out with my parents for the Midnight Mass of
Christmas Eve.... We started off, a number of us, together in a
stream of light.... Our lanterns cast great shadows on the white road,
crisp with frost. As our little group advanced it saw others on their
way, people from the farm and from the mill, who joined us, and
once on the Place de l’Église we found ourselves with all the
parishioners in a body. No one spoke—the icy north wind cut short
our breath; but the voice of the chimes filled the silence.... We
entered, accompanied by a gust of wind that swept into the porch at
the same time we did; and the splendours of the altar, studded with
lights, green with pine and laurel branches, dazzled us from the
threshold.”{16}

In devout Tyrol, the scenes on Christmas Eve before the Midnight Mass are
often extremely impressive, particularly in narrow valleys where the houses
lie scattered on the mountain slopes. Long before midnight the torches
lighting the faithful on their way to Mass begin to twinkle; downward they
move, now hidden in pine-woods and ravines, now reappearing on the open
hill-side. More and more lights show themselves and throw ruddy flashes
on the snow, until at last, the floor of the valley reached, they vanish, and
only the church windows glow through the darkness, while the solemn
strains of the organ and chanting break the silence of the night.{17}

Not everywhere has the great Mass been celebrated amid scenes so still and
devotional. In Madrid, says a writer of the early nineteenth century, “the
evening of the vigil is scarcely dark when numbers of men, women, and
boys are seen traversing the streets with torches, and many of them supplied
with tambourines, which they strike loudly as they move along in a kind of
Bacchanal procession. There is a tradition here that the shepherds who

visited Bethlehem on the day of the Nativity had instruments of this sort
upon which they expressed the sentiment of joy that animated them when
they received the intelligence that a Saviour was born.” At the Midnight
Mass crowds of people who, perhaps, had been traversing the streets the
whole night, came into the church 98 with their tambourines and guitars, and
accompanied the organ. The Mass over, they began to dance in the very
body of the church.{18} A later writer speaks of the Midnight Mass in
Madrid as a fashionable function to which many gay young people went in
order to meet one another.{19} Such is the character of the service in the
Spanish-American cities. In Lima the streets on Christmas Eve are crowded
with gaily dressed and noisy folks, many of them masked, and everybody
goes to the Mass.{20} In Paris the elaborate music attracts enormous and
often not very serious crowds. In Sicily there is sometimes extraordinary
irreverence at the midnight services: people take provisions with them to eat
in church, and from time to time go out to an inn for a drink, and between
the offices they imitate the singing of birds.{21} We may see in such things
the licence of pagan festivals creeping within the very walls of the
sanctuary.

In the Rhineland Midnight Mass has been abolished, because the
conviviality of Christmas Eve led to unseemly behaviour at the solemn
service, but Mass is still celebrated very early—at four or five—and great
crowds of worshippers attend. It is a stirring thing, this first Mass of
Christmas, in some ancient town, when from the piercing cold, the intense
stillness of the early morning, one enters a great church thronged with
people, bright with candles, warm with human fellowship, and hears the
vast congregation break out into a slow solemn chorale, full of devout joy
that

“In Bethlehem geboren
Ist uns ein Kindelein.”

It is interesting to trace survivals of the nocturnal Christmas offices in
Protestant countries. In German “Evangelical” churches, midnight or early
morning services were common in the eighteenth century; but they were
forbidden in some places because of the riot and drunkenness which
accompanied them. The people seem to have regarded them as a part of
their Christmas revellings rather than as sacred functions; one writer
compares the congregation to a crowd of wild drunken sailors in a 99 tavern,
another gives disgusting particulars of disorders in a church where the only
sober man was the preacher.{22}

In Sweden the Christmas service is performed very early in the morning,
the chancel is lighted up with many candles, and the celebrant is vested in a
white chasuble with golden orphreys.{23}

A Midnight Mass is now celebrated in many Anglican churches, but this is
purely a modern revival. The most distinct British survival is to be found in
Wales in the early service known as Plygain (dawn), sometimes a
celebration of the Communion. At Tenby at four o'clock on Christmas
morning it was customary for the young men of the town to escort the
rector with lighted torches from his house to the church. Extinguishing their
torches in the porch, they went in to the early service, and when it was
ended the torches were relighted and the procession returned to the rectory.
At St. Peter's Church, Carmarthen, an early service was held, to the light of
coloured candles brought by the congregation. At St. Asaph, Caerwys, at 4
or 5 a.m., Plygain, consisting of carols sung round the church in procession,
was held.{24} The Plygain continued in Welsh churches until about the
eighteen-fifties, and, curiously enough, when the Established Church
abandoned it, it was celebrated in Nonconformist chapels.{25}

In the Isle of Man on Christmas Eve, or Oiel Verry (Mary's Eve), “a number
of persons used to assemble in each parish church and proceed to shout

carols or ‘Carvals.’ There was no unison or concert about the chanting, but
a single person would stand up with a lighted candle in his or her hand, and
chant in a dismal monotone verse after verse of some old Manx ‘Carval,’
until the candle was burnt out. Then another person would start up and go
through a similar performance. No fresh candles might be lighted after the
clock had chimed midnight.”{26}

One may conjecture that the common English practice of ringing bells until
midnight on Christmas Eve has also some connection with the old-time
Midnight Mass.

For the Greek Church Christmas is a comparatively unimportant festival by
the side of the Epiphany, the celebration of 100 Christ's Baptism; the
Christmas offices are, however, full of fine poetry. There is far less restraint,
far less adherence to the words of Scripture, far greater richness of original
composition, in the Greek than in the Roman service-books, and while there
is less poignancy there is more amplitude and splendour. Christmas Day,
with the Greeks, is a commemoration of the coming of the Magi as well as
of the Nativity and the adoration of the shepherds, and the Wise Men are
very prominent in the services. The following hymn of St. Anatolius (fifth
century), from the First Vespers of the feast, is fairly typical of the character
of the Christmas offices:—

“When Jesus Our Lord was born of Her,
The Holy Virgin, all the universe
Became enlightened.
For as the shepherds watched their flocks,
And as the Magi came to pray,
And as the Angels sang their hymn
Herod was troubled; for God in flesh appeared,
The Saviour of our souls.

Thy kingdom, Christ our God, the kingdom is
Of all the worlds, and Thy dominion
O'er every generation bears the sway,
Incarnate of the Holy Ghost,
Man of the Ever-Virgin Mary,
By Thy presence, Christ our God,
Thou hast shined a Light on us.
Light of Light, the Brightness of the Father,
Thou hast beamed on every creature.
All that hath breath doth praise Thee,
Image of the Father's glory.
Thou who art, and wast before,
God who shinedst from the Maid,
Have mercy upon us.

What gift shall we bring to Thee,
O Christ, since Thou as Man on earth
For us hast shewn Thyself? 101
Since every creature made by Thee
Brings to Thee its thanksgiving.
The Angels bring their song,
The Heavens bring their star,
The Magi bring their gifts,
The Shepherds bring their awe,
Earth gives a cave, the wilderness a manger,
And we the Virgin-Mother bring.
God before all worlds, have mercy upon us!”{27}

A beautiful rite called the “Peace of God” is performed in Slavonic
churches at the end of the “Liturgy” or Mass on Christmas morning—the
people kiss one another on both cheeks, saying, “Christ is born!” To this the
answer is made, “Of a truth He is born!” and the kisses are returned. This is
repeated till everyone has kissed and been kissed by all present.{28}

We must pass rapidly over the feasts of saints within the Octave of the
western Christmas, St. Stephen (December 26), St. John the Evangelist
(December 27), the Holy Innocents (December 28), and St. Sylvester
(December 31). None of these, except the feast of the Holy Innocents, have
any special connection with the Nativity or the Infancy, and the popular
customs connected with them will come up for consideration in our Second
Part.

The commemoration of the Circumcision (“when eight days were
accomplished for the circumcising of the child”) falls naturally on
January 1, the Octave of Christmas. It is not of Roman origin, and was not
observed in Rome until it had long been established in the Byzantine and
Gallican Churches.{29} In Gaul, as is shown by a decree of the Council of
Tours in 567, a solemn fast was held on the Circumcision and the two days
following it, in order to turn away the faithful from the pagan festivities of
the Kalends.{30}

The feast of the Epiphany on January 6, as we have seen, is in the eastern
Church a commemoration of the Baptism of Christ. In the West it has
become primarily the festival of the adoration 102 of the Magi, the
manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Still in the Roman offices many
traces of the baptismal commemoration remain, and the memory of yet
another manifestation of Christ's glory appears in the antiphon at
“Magnificat” at the Second Vespers of the feast:—

“We keep holy a day adorned by three wonders: to-day a star led the
Magi to the manger; to-day at the marriage water was made wine;
to-day for our salvation Christ was pleased to be baptized of John in
Jordan. Alleluia.”

On the Octave of the Epiphany at Matins the Baptism is the central idea,
and the Gospel at Mass bears on the same subject. In Rome itself even the

Blessing of the Waters, the distinctive ceremony of the eastern Epiphany
rite, is performed in certain churches according to a Latin ritual.{31} At
Sant’ Andrea della Valle, Rome, during the Octave of the Epiphany a
Solemn Mass is celebrated every morning in Latin, and afterwards, on each
of the days from January 7-13, there follows a Mass according to one of the
eastern rites: Greco-Slav, Armenian, Chaldean, Coptic, Greco-Ruthenian,
Greco-Melchite, and Greek.{32} It is a week of great opportunities for the
liturgiologist and the lover of strange ceremonial.

The Blessing of the Waters is an important event in all countries where the
Greek Church prevails. In Greece the “Great Blessing,” as it is called, is
performed in various ways according to the locality; sometimes the sea is
blessed, sometimes a river or reservoir, sometimes merely water in a
church. In seaport towns, where the people depend on the water for their
living, the celebration has much pomp and elaborateness. At the Piraeus
enormous and enthusiastic crowds gather, and there is a solemn procession
of the bishop and clergy to the harbour, where the bishop throws a little
wooden cross, held by a long blue ribbon, into the water, withdraws it
dripping wet, and sprinkles the bystanders. This is done three times. At
Nauplia and other places a curious custom prevails: the archbishop throws a
wooden cross into the waters of the harbour, and the fishermen 103 of the
place dive in after it and struggle for its possession; he who wins it has the
right of visiting all the houses of the town and levying a collection, which
often brings in a large sum. In Samos all the women send to the church a
vessel full of water to be blessed by the priest; with this water the fields and
the trees are sprinkled.{33}

The sense attached to the ceremony by the Church is shown in this
prayer:—

“Thou didst sanctify the streams of Jordan by sending from Heaven
Thy Holy Spirit, and by breaking the heads of the dragons lurking
there. Therefore, O King, Lover of men, be Thou Thyself present
also now by the visitation of Thy Holy Spirit, and sanctify this
water. Give also to it the grace of ransom, the blessing of Jordan:
make it a fountain of incorruption; a gift of sanctification; a washing
away of sins; a warding off of diseases; destruction to demons;
repulsion to the hostile powers; filled with angelic strength; that all
who take and receive of it may have it for purification of souls and
bodies, for healing of sicknesses, for sanctification of houses, and
meet for every need.”{34}

Though for the Church the immersion of the cross represents the Baptism of
Christ, and the blessings springing from that event are supposed to be
carried to the people by the sprinkling with the water, it is held by some
students that the whole practice is a Christianization of a primitive rain-
charm—a piece of sympathetic magic intended to produce rain by imitating
the drenching which it gives. An Epiphany song from Imbros connects the
blessing of rain with the Baptism of Christ, and another tells how at the
river Jordan “a dove came down, white and feathery, and with its wings
opened; it sent rain down on the Lord, and again it rained and rained on our
Lady, and again it rained and rained on its wings.”{35}

The Blessing of the Waters is performed in the Greek church of St. Sophia,
Bayswater, London, on the morning of the Epiphany, which, through the
difference between the old and new “styles,” falls on our 19th of January.
All is done within the church; the water to be blessed is placed on a table
under 104 the dome, and is sanctified by the immersion of a small cross;
afterwards it is sprinkled on everyone present, and some is taken home by
the faithful in little vessels.{36}

In Moscow and St. Petersburg the Blessing is a function of great
magnificence, but it is perhaps even more interesting as performed in

Russian country places. Whatever may be the orthodox significance of the
rite, to the country people it is the chasing away of “forest demons, sprites,
and fairies, once the gods the peasants worshipped, but now dethroned from
their high estate,” who in the long dark winter nights bewitch and vex the
sons of men. A vivid and imaginative account of the ceremony and its
meaning to the peasants is given by Mr. F. H. E. Palmer in his “Russian Life
in Town and Country.” The district in which he witnessed it was one of
forests and of lakes frozen in winter. On one of these lakes had been erected
“a huge cross, constructed of blocks of ice, that glittered like diamonds in
the brilliant winter sunlight.... At length, far away could be heard the sound
of human voices, singing a strange, wild melody. Presently there was a
movement in the snow among the trees, and waving banners appeared as a
procession approached, headed by the pope in his vestments, and
surrounded by the village dignitaries, venerable, grey-bearded patriarchs.”
A wide space in the procession was left for “a strange and motley band of
gnomes and sprites, fairies and wood-nymphs,” who, as the peasants
believed, had been caught by the holy singing and the sacred sign on the
waving banner. The chanting still went on as the crowd formed a circle
around the glittering cross, and all looked on with awe while half a dozen
peasants with their axes cut a large hole in the ice. “And now the priest's
voice is heard, deep and sonorous, as he pronounces the words of doom.
Alas for the poor sprites! Into that yawning chasm they must leap, and sink
deep, deep below the surface of that ice-cold water.”{37}

Following these eastern Epiphany rites we have wandered far from the
cycle of ideas generally associated with Christmas. We 105 must now pass to
those popular devotions to the Christ Child which, though they form no part
of the Church's liturgy, she has permitted and encouraged. It is in the West

that we shall find them; the Latin Church, as we have seen, makes far more
of Christmas than the Greek.

Rome is often condemned for using in her liturgy the dead language of
Latin, but it must not be forgotten that in every country she offers to the
faithful a rich store of devotional literature in their own tongue, and that,
supplementary to the liturgical offices, there is much public prayer and
praise in the vernacular. Nor, in that which appeals to the eye, does she limit
herself to the mysterious symbolism of the sacraments and the ritual which
surrounds them; she gives to the people concrete, pictorial images to
quicken their faith. How ritual grew in mediaeval times into full-fledged
drama we shall see in the next chapter; here let us consider that cult of the
Christ Child in which the scene of Bethlehem is represented not by living
actors but in plastic art, often most simple and homely.

The use of the “crib” (French crèche, Italian presepio, German krippe) at
Christmas is now universally diffused in the Roman Church. Most readers
of this book must have seen one of these structures representing the stable
at Bethlehem, with the Child in the manger, His mother and St. Joseph, the
ox and the ass, and perhaps the shepherds, the three kings, or worshipping
angels. They are the delight of children, who through the season of
Christmas and Epiphany wander into the open churches at all times of day
to gaze wide-eyed on the life-like scene and offer a prayer to their Little
Brother. No one with anything of the child-spirit can fail to be touched by
the charm of the Christmas crib. Faults of artistic taste there may often be,
but these are wont to be softened down by the flicker of tapers, the glow of
ruby lights, amidst the shades of some dim aisle or chapel, and the scene of
tender humanity, gently, mysteriously radiant, as though with “bright shoots
of everlastingness,” is full of religious and poetic suggestions.

The institution of the presepio is often ascribed to St. Francis of Assisi, who
in the year 1224 celebrated Christmas at Greccio 106 with a Bethlehem scene
with a real ox and ass. About fifteen days before the Nativity, according to
Thomas of Celano, the blessed Francis sent for a certain nobleman, John by
name, and said to him: “If thou wilt that we celebrate the present festival of
the Lord at Greccio, make haste to go before and diligently prepare what I
tell thee. For I would fain make memorial of that Child who was born in
Bethlehem, and in some sort behold with bodily eyes His infant hardships;
how He lay in a manger on the hay, with the ox and the ass standing by.”
The good man prepared all that the Saint had commanded, and at last the
day of gladness drew nigh. The brethren were called from many convents;
the men and women of the town prepared tapers and torches to illuminate
the night. Finding all things ready, Francis beheld and rejoiced: the manger
had been prepared, the hay was brought, and the ox and ass were led in.
“Thus Simplicity was honoured, Poverty exalted, Humility commended,
and of Greccio there was made as it were a new Bethlehem. The night was
lit up as the day, and was delightsome to men and beasts.... The woodland
rang with voices, the rocks made answer to the jubilant throng.” Francis
stood before the manger, “overcome with tenderness and filled with
wondrous joy”; Mass was celebrated, and he, in deacon's vestments,
chanted the Holy Gospel in an “earnest, sweet, and loud-sounding voice.”
Then he preached to the people of “the birth of the poor King and the little
town of Bethlehem.” “Uttering the word ‘Bethlehem’ in the manner of a
sheep bleating, he filled his mouth with the sound,” and in naming the Child
Jesus “he would, as it were, lick his lips, relishing with happy palate and
swallowing the sweetness of that word.” At length, the solemn vigil ended,
each one returned with joy to his own place.{38}

It has been suggested by Countess Martinengo{39} that this beautiful
ceremony was “the crystallization of haunting memories carried away by

St. Francis from the real Bethlehem”; for he visited the east in 1219-20, and
the Greccio celebration took place in 1224. St. Francis and his followers
may well have helped greatly to popularize the use of the presepio, but it
can be 107 traced back far earlier than their time. In the liturgical drama
known as the “Officium Pastorum,” which probably took shape in the
eleventh century, we find a praesepe behind the altar as the centre of the
action{40} ; but long before this something of the kind seems to have been in
existence in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome—at one time
called “Beata Maria ad praesepe.” Here Pope Gregory III. (731-41) placed
“a golden image of the Mother of God embracing God our Saviour, in
various gems.”{41} According to Usener's views this church was founded by
Pope Liberius (352-66), and was intended to provide a special home for the
new festival of Christmas introduced by him, while an important part of the
early Christmas ritual there was the celebration of Mass over a “manger” in
which the consecrated Host was laid, as once the body of the Holy Child in
the crib at Bethlehem.{42} Further, an eastern homily of the late fourth
century suggests that the preacher had before his eyes a representation of
the Nativity. Such material representations, Usener conjectures, may have
arisen from the devotions of the faithful at the supposed actual birthplace at
Bethlehem, which would naturally be adorned with the sacred figures of the
Holy Night.{43}

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the crib can be traced at Milan,
Parma, and Modena, and an Italian example carved in 1478 still exists.{44}
The Bavarian National Museum at Munich has a fine collection of cribs of
various periods and from various lands—Germany, Tyrol, Italy, and
Sicily—showing what elaborate care has been bestowed upon the
preparation of these models. Among them is a great erection made at
Botzen in the first half of the nineteenth century, and large enough to fill a
fair-sized room. It represents the central square of a town, with imposing

buildings, including a great cathedral not unlike our St. Paul's. Figures of
various sizes were provided to suit the perspective, and the crib itself was
probably set up in the porch of the church, while processions of puppets
were arranged on the wide open square. Another, made in Munich, shows
the adoration of the shepherds in a sort of ruined castle, while others, from
Naples, lay the scene among remains of classical temples. One Tyrolese
crib has a wide landscape background with a 108 village and mountains
typical of the country. The figures are often numerous, and, as their makers
generally dressed them in the costume of their contemporaries, are
sometimes exceedingly quaint. An angel with a wasp-waist, in a powdered
wig, a hat trimmed with big feathers, and a red velvet dress with heavy gold
embroidery, seems comic to us moderns, yet this is how the Ursuline nuns
of Innsbruck conceived the heavenly messenger. Many of the cribs and
figures, however, are of fine artistic quality, especially those from Naples
and Sicily, and to the student of costume the various types of dress are of
great interest.{45}

The use of the Christmas crib is by no means confined to churches; it is
common in the home in many Catholic regions, and in at least one
Protestant district, the Saxon Erzgebirge.{46} In Germany the krippe is often
combined with the Christmas-tree; at Treves, for instance, the present writer
saw a magnificent tree covered with glittering lights and ornaments, and
underneath it the cave of the Nativity with little figures of the holy persons.
Thus have pagan and Christian symbols met together.

There grew up in Germany, about the fourteenth century, the extremely
popular Christmas custom of “cradle-rocking,” a response to the people's
need of a life-like and homely presentation of Christianity. By the
Kindelwiegen the lay-folk were brought into most intimate touch with the

Christ Child; the crib became a cradle (wiege) that could be rocked, and the
worshippers were thus able to express in physical action their devotion to
the new-born Babe. The cradle-rocking seems to have been done at first by
priests, who impersonated the Virgin and St. Joseph, and sang over the
Child a duet:—

“Joseph, lieber neve mîn,
Hilf mir wiegen daz kindelîn.

Gerne, liebe muome mîn,
Hilf ich dir wiegen dîn kindelîn.”[37]

A NEAPOLITAN “PRESEPIO.”
Photo] [Meisenbach, Riffarth & Co., Munich.

109 The choir and people took their part in the singing; and dancing, to the
old Germans a natural accompaniment of festive song, became common
around the cradle, which in time the people were allowed to rock with their
own hands.{47} “In dulci jubilo” has the character of a dance, and the same
is true of another delightful old carol, “Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen,” still
used, in a form modified by later editors, in the churches of the Rhineland.

The present writer has heard it sung, very slowly, in unison, by vast
congregations, and very beautiful is its mingling of solemnity, festive joy,
and tender sentiment:—

“Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen,
Das Herz zum Krippelein biegen!
Lasst uns den Geist erfreuen,
Das Kindlein benedeien:
O Jesulein süss! O Jesulein süss!

* * * * *

Lasst uns sein Händel und Füsse,
Sein feuriges Herzlein grüssen!
Und ihn demütiglich eren
Als unsern Gott und Herren!
O Jesulein süss! O Jesulein süss!”[38]{48}

Two Latin hymns, “Resonet in laudibus” and “Quem pastores
laudavere,”{49} were also sung at the Kindelwiegen, and 110 a charming and
quite untranslatable German lullaby has come down to us:—

“Sausa ninne, gottes minne,
Nu sweig und ru!
Wen du wilt, so wellen wir deinen willen tun,
Hochgelobter edler furst, nu schweig und wein auch nicht,
Tûste das, so wiss wir, dass uns wol geschicht.”{50}

It was by appeals like this Kindelwiegen to the natural, homely instincts of
the folk that the Church gained a real hold over the masses, making
Christianity during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries a
genuinely popular religion in Germany. Dr. Alexander Tille, the best
historian of the German Christmas, has an interesting passage on the
subject: “In the dancing and jubilation around the cradle,” he writes, “the
religion of the Cross, however much it might in its inmost character be
opposed to the nature of the German people and their essential healthiness,
was felt no longer as something alien. It had become naturalized, but had
lost in the process its very core. The preparation for a life after death, which
was its Alpha and Omega, had passed into the background. It was not joy at
the promised ‘Redemption’ that expressed itself in the dance around the
cradle; for the German has never learnt to feel himself utterly vile and
sinful: it was joy at the simple fact that a human being, a particular human
being in peculiar circumstances, was born into the world.... The Middle
Ages showed in the cradle-rocking ‘a true German and most lovable
childlikeness.’ The Christ Child was the ‘universal little brother of all
children of earth,’ and they acted accordingly, they lulled Him to sleep, they
fondled and rocked Him, they danced before Him and leapt around Him in
dulci jubilo.”{51} There is much here that is true of the cult of the Christ
Child in other countries than Germany, though perhaps Dr. Tille
underestimates the religious feeling that is often joined to the human
sentiment.

The fifteenth century was the great period for the Kindelwiegen, the time
when it appears to have been practised in all the churches of Germany; in
the sixteenth it began to seem 111 irreverent to the stricter members of the
clergy, and the figure of the infant Jesus was in many places no longer
rocked in the cradle but enthroned on the altar.{52} This usage is described
by Naogeorgus (1553):—

“A woodden childe in clowtes is on the aultar set,
About the which both boyes and gyrles do daunce and trymly
jet,
And Carrols sing in prayse of Christ, and, for to helpe them
heare,
The organs aunswere every verse with sweete and solemne
cheare.
The priestes do rore aloude; and round about the parentes
stande
To see the sport, and with their voyce do helpe them and their
hande.”{53}

The placing of a “Holy Child” above the altar at Christmas is still
customary in many Roman Catholic churches.

Protestantism opposed the Kindelwiegen, on the grounds both of
superstition and of the disorderly proceedings that accompanied it, but it
was long before it was utterly extinguished even in the Lutheran churches.
In Catholic churches the custom did not altogether die out, though the
unseemly behaviour which often attended it—and the growth of a pseudo-
classical taste—caused its abolition in most places.{54}

At Tübingen as late as 1830 at midnight on Christmas Eve an image of the
Christ Child was rocked on the tower of the chief church in a small cradle
surrounded with lights, while the spectators below sang a cradle-song.{55}
According to a recent writer the “rocking” is still continued in the Upper
Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of Brixen it was once performed
every day between Christmas and Candlemas by the sacristan or boy-
acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be disorderly is shown by
an eighteenth-century instruction to the sacristan: “Be sure to take a stick or
a thong of ox-hide, for the boys are often very ill-behaved.”{57}

There are records of other curious ceremonies in German or Austrian
churches. At St. Peter am Windberge in Mühlkreis in Upper Austria, during
the service on Christmas night a life-sized wooden figure of the Holy Child
was offered in 112 a basket to the congregation; each person reverently
kissed it and passed it on to his neighbour. This was done as late as
1883.{58} At Crimmitschau in Saxony a boy, dressed as an angel, used to be
let down from the roof singing Luther's “Vom Himmel hoch,” and the
custom was only given up when the breaking of the rope which supported
the singer had caused a serious accident.{59}

It is in Italy, probably, that the cult of the Christ Child is most ardently
practised to-day. No people have a greater love of children than the Italians,
none more of that dramatic instinct which such a form of worship demands.
“Easter,” says Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, “is the great popular feast
in the eastern Church, Christmas in the Latin—especially in Italy. One is
the feast of the next world, and the other of this. Italians are fond of this
world.”{60} Christmas is for the poorer Italians a summing up of human
birthdays, an occasion for pouring out on the Bambino parental and
fraternal affection as well as religious worship.

In Rome, Christmas used to be heralded by the arrival, ten days before the
end of Advent, of the Calabrian minstrels or pifferari with their sylvan pipes
(zampogne), resembling the Scottish bagpipe, but less harsh in sound. These
minstrels were to be seen in every street in Rome, playing their wild
plaintive music before the shrines of the Madonna, under the traditional
notion of charming away her labour-pains. Often they would stop at a
carpenter's shop “per politezza al messer San Giuseppe.”{61} Since 1870 the
pifferari have become rare in Rome, but some were seen there by an
English lady quite recently. At Naples, too, there are zampognari before

Christmas, though far fewer than there used to be; for one lira they will
pipe their rustic melodies before any householder's street Madonna through
a whole novena.{62}

CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS.
After an Etching by D. Allan.

From Hone's “Every-day Book” (London, 1826).

In Sicily, too, men come down from the mountains nine days before
Christmas to sing a novena to a plaintive melody accompanied by ‘cello
and violin. “All day long,” writes Signora Caico about Montedoro in
Caltanissetta, “the melancholy dirge 113 was sung round the village, house
after house, always the same minor tune, the words being different every
day, so that in nine days the whole song was sung out.... I often looked out
of the window to see them at a short distance, grouped before a house,
singing their stanzas, well muffled in shawls, for the air is cold in spite of
the bright sunshine.... The flat, white houses all round, the pure sky
overhead, gave an Oriental setting to the scene.”

Another Christmas custom in the same place was the singing of a novena
not outside but within some of the village houses before a kind of altar gaily
decorated and bearing at the top a waxen image of the Child Jesus. “Close
to it the orchestra was grouped—a ’cello, two violins, a guitar, and a
tambourine. The kneeling women huddled in front of the altar. All had on
their heads their black mantelline. They began at once singing the novena
stanzas appointed for that day; the tune was primitive and very odd: the first
half of the stanza was quick and merry, the second half became a wailing
dirge.” A full translation of a long and very interesting and pathetic novena
is given by Signora Caico.[39]{ 63}

The presepio both in Rome and at Naples is the special Christmas symbol
in the home, just as the lighted tree is in Germany. In Rome the Piazza
Navona is the great place for the sale of little clay figures of the holy
persons. (Is there perchance a survival here of the sigillaria, the little clay
dolls sold in Rome at the Saturnalia?) These are bought in the market for
two soldi each, and the presepi or “Bethlehems” are made at home with
cardboard and moss.{64} The home-made presepi at Naples are well

described by Matilde Serao; they are pasteboard models of the landscape of
Bethlehem—a hill with the sacred cave beneath it and two or three paths
leading down to the grotto, a little tavern, a shepherd's hut, a few trees,
sometimes a stream in glittering glass. The ground is made verdant with
moss, and there is 114 straw within the cave for the repose of the infant Jesus;
singing angels are suspended by thin wires, and the star of the Wise Men
hangs by an invisible thread. There is little attempt to realize the scenery of
the East; the Child is born and the Magi adore Him in a Campanian or
Calabrian setting.{66}

Italian churches, as well as Italian homes, have their presepi. “Thither come
the people, bearing humble gifts of chestnuts, apples, tomatoes, and the
like, which they place as offerings in the hands of the figures. These are
very often life-size. Mary is usually robed in blue satin, with crimson scarf
and white head-dress. Joseph stands near her dressed in the ordinary
working-garb. The onlookers are got up like Italian contadini. The Magi are
always very prominent in their grand clothes, with satin trains borne by
black slaves, jewelled turbans, and satin tunics all over jewels.”{67}

ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE “PRESEPIO” AT GRECCIO.
By Giotto.
(Upper Church of St Francis, Assissi)

THE “BAMBINO” OF ARA COELI.

In Rome the two great centres of Christmas devotion are the churches of
Santa Maria Maggiore, where are preserved the relics of the cradle of
Christ, and Ara Coeli, the home of the most famous Bambino in the world.
A vivid picture of the scene at Santa Maria Maggiore in the early nineteenth
century is given by Lady Morgan. She entered the church at midnight on
Christmas Eve to wait for the procession of the culla, or cradle. “Its three
ample naves, separated by rows of Ionic columns of white marble, produced
a splendid vista. Thousands of wax tapers marked their form, and contrasted
their shadows; some blazed from golden candlesticks on the superb altars of
the lateral chapels.... Draperies of gold and crimson decked the columns,
and spread their shadows from the inter-columniations over the marble
pavement. In the midst of this imposing display of church magnificence,
sauntered or reposed a population which displayed the most squalid misery.
The haggard natives of the mountains ... were mixed with the whole
mendicity of Rome.... Some of these terrific groups lay stretched in heaps
on the ground, congregating for warmth; and as their dark eyes scowled
from beneath the mantle which half hid a sheepskin dress, they had the air
of banditti awaiting their prey; others with their wives and children knelt,
half asleep, 115 round the chapel of the Santa Croce.... In the centre of the
nave, multitudes of gay, gaudy, noisy persons, the petty shopkeepers,
laquais, and popolaccio of the city, strolled and laughed, and talked loud.”
About three o'clock the service began, with a choral swell, blazing torches,
and a crowded procession of priests of every rank and order. It lasted for
two hours; then began the procession to the cell where the cradle lay,
enshrined in a blaze of tapers and guarded by groups of devotees. Thence it
was borne with solemn chants to the chapel of Santa Croce. A musical Mass
followed, and the culla being at last deposited on the High Altar, the
wearied spectators issued forth just as the dome of St. Peter's caught the
first light of the morning.{68}

Still to-day the scene in the church at the five o'clock High Mass on
Christmas morning is extraordinarily impressive, with the crowds of poor
people, the countless lights at which the children gaze in open-eyed wonder,
the many low Masses said in the side chapels, the imposing procession and
the setting of the silver casket on the High Altar. The history of the relics of
the culla—five long narrow pieces of wood—is obscure, but it is admitted
even by some orthodox Roman Catholics that there is no sufficient evidence
to connect them with Bethlehem.{69}

The famous Bambino at the Franciscan church of Ara Coeli on the citadel of
Rome is “a flesh-coloured doll, tightly swathed in gold and silver tissue,
crowned, and sparkling with jewels,” no thing of beauty, but believed to
have miraculous powers. An inscription in the sacristy of the church states
that it was made by a devout Minorite of wood from the Mount of Olives,
and given flesh-colour by the interposition of God Himself. It has its own
servants and its own carriage in which it drives out to visit the sick. There is
a strange story of a theft of the wonder-working image by a woman who
feigned sickness, obtained permission to have the Bambino left with her,
and then sent back to the friars another image dressed in its clothes. That
night the Franciscans heard great ringing of bells and knockings at the
church door, and found outside the true Bambino, naked in the wind and
rain. Since then it has never been allowed out alone.{70}

116All through the Christmas and Epiphany season Ara Coeli is crowded
with visitors to the Bambino. Before the presepio, where it lies, is erected a
wooden platform on which small boys and girls of all ranks follow one
another with little speeches—“preaching” it is called—in praise of the
infant Lord. “They say their pieces,” writes Countess Martinengo, “with an
infinite charm that raises half a smile and half a tear.” They have the vivid
dramatic gift, the extraordinary absence of self-consciousness, typical of
Italian children, and their “preaching” is anything but a wooden repetition

of a lesson learned by heart. Nor is there any irksome constraint; indeed to
northerners the scene in the church might seem irreverent, for the children
blow toy trumpets and their parents talk freely on all manner of subjects.
The church is approached by one hundred and twenty-four steps, making an
extraordinarily picturesque spectacle at this season, when they are thronged
by people ascending and descending, and by vendors of all sorts of
Christmas prints and images. On the Octave of the Epiphany there is a great
procession, ending with the blessing of Rome by the Holy Child. The
Bambino is carried out to the space at the top of the giddy flight of marble
steps, and a priest raises it on high and solemnly blesses the Eternal
City.{71}

A glimpse of the southern Christmas may be had in London in the Italian
colony in and around Eyre Street Hill, off the Clerkenwell Road, a little
town of poor Italians set down in the midst of the metropolis. The steep,
narrow Eyre Street Hill, with its shops full of southern wares, is dingy
enough by day, but after dark on Christmas Eve it looks like a bit of Naples.
The windows are gay with lights and coloured festoons, there are lantern-
decked sweetmeat stalls, one old man has a presepio in his room, other
people have little altars or shrines with candles burning, and bright pictures
of saints adorn the walls. It is a strangely pathetic sight, this festa of the
children of the South, this attempt to keep an Italian Christmas amid the
cold damp dreariness of a London slum. The colony has its own church,
San Pietro, copied from some Renaissance basilica at Rome, a building half
tawdry, half magnificent, which transports him who enters it far away to the
South. Like every Italian church, it is 117 at once the Palace of the Great
King and the refuge of the humblest—no other church in London is quite so
intimately the home of the poor. Towards twelve o'clock on Christmas Eve
the deep-toned bell of San Pietro booms out over the colony, and the people
crowd to the Midnight Mass, and pay their devotions at a great presepio set
up for the veneration of the faithful. When on the Octave of the

Epiphany[40] the time comes to close the crib, an impressive and touching
ceremony takes place. The afternoon Benediction over, the priest, with the
acolytes, goes to the presepio and returns to the chancel with the Bambino.
Holding it on his arm, he preaches in Italian on the story of the Christ Child.
The sermon ended, the notes of “Adeste, fideles” are heard, and while the
Latin words are sung the faithful kneel at the altar rails and reverently kiss
the Holy Babe. It is their farewell to the Bambino till next Christmas.

A few details may here be given about the religious customs at Christmas in
Spain. The Midnight Mass is there the great event of the festival. Something
has already been said as to its celebration in Madrid. The scene at the
midnight service in a small Andalusian country town is thus described by an
English traveller:—“The church was full; the service orderly; the people of
all classes. There were muleteers, wrapped in their blue and white checked
rugs; here, Spanish gentlemen, enveloped in their graceful capas, or capes
... here, again, were crowds of the commonest people,—miners, fruitsellers,
servants, and the like,—the women kneeling on the rush matting of the
dimly-lit church, the men standing in dark masses behind, or clustering in
groups round every pillar.... At last, from under the altar, the senior priest ...
took out the image of the Babe New-born, reverently and slowly, and held it
up in his hands for adoration. Instantly every one crossed himself, and fell
on his knees in silent worship.”{72} The crib is very popular in Spanish
homes and is the delight of children, as may be learnt from Fernan
Caballero's interesting sketch of Christmas Eve in Spain, “La Noche de
Navidad.”{73}

In England the Christmas crib is to be found nowadays in most Roman,
118

and a few Anglican, churches. In the latter it is of course an imitation, not a
survival. It is, however, possible that the custom of carrying dolls about in a

box at Advent or Christmas time, common in some parts of England in the
nineteenth century, is a survival, from the Middle Ages, of something like
the crib. The so-called “vessel-cup” was “a box containing two dolls,
dressed up to represent the Virgin and the infant Christ, decorated with
ribbons and surrounded by flowers and apples.” The box had usually a glass
lid, was covered by a white napkin, and was carried from door to door by a
woman.{74} It was esteemed very unlucky for any household not to be
visited by the “Advent images” before Christmas Eve, and the bearers sang
the well-known carol of the “Joys of Mary.”{75} In Yorkshire only one
image was carried about.{76} At Gilmorton, Leicestershire, a friend of the
present writer remembers that the children used to carry round what they
called a “Christmas Vase,” an open box without lid in which lay three dolls
side by side, with oranges and sprigs of evergreen. Some people regarded
these as images of the Virgin, the Christ Child, and Joseph.[41]

In this study of the feast of the Nativity as represented in liturgy and
ceremonial we have already come close to what may strictly be called
drama; in the next chapter we shall cross the border line and consider the
religious plays of the Middle Ages and the relics of or parallels to them
found in later times.
119 120 121

CHAPTER V

CHRISTMAS DRAMA

Origins of the Mediaeval Drama—Dramatic Tendencies in the
Liturgy—Latin Liturgical Plays—The Drama becomes Laicized—
Characteristics of the Popular Drama—The Nativity in the English
Miracle Cycles—Christmas Mysteries in France—Later French
Survivals of Christmas Drama—German Christmas Plays—
Mediaeval Italian Plays and Pageants—Spanish Nativity Plays—
Modern Survivals in Various Countries—The Star-singers, &c.

THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.
From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House (by
permission).
(Photo lent by Mr. F. Sidgwick, who has published the print on a modern Christmas broadside.)

In this chapter the Christian side only of the Christmas drama will be
treated. Much folk-drama of pagan origin has gathered round the festival,
but this we shall study in our Second Part. Our subject here is the dramatic
representation of the story of the Nativity and the events immediately
connected with it. The Christmas drama has passed through the same stages
as the poetry of the Nativity. There is first a monastic and hieratic stage,
when the drama is but an expansion of the liturgy, a piece of ceremonial
performed by clerics with little attempt at verisimilitude and with Latin
words drawn mainly from the Bible or the offices of the Church. Then, as
the laity come to take a more personal interest in Christianity, we find fancy
beginning to play around the subject, bringing out its human pathos and
charm, until, after a transitional stage, the drama leaves the sanctuary,
passes from Latin to the vulgar tongue, is played by lay performers in the
streets and squares of the city, and, while its framework remains religious,
takes into itself episodes of a more or less secular character. The Latin
liturgical plays are to the “miracles” and “mysteries” of the later Middle
Ages as a Romanesque church, solemn, oppressive, hieratic, to 122 a Gothic
cathedral, soaring, audacious, reflecting every phase of the popular life.

The mediaeval religious drama{1} was a natural development from the
Catholic liturgy, not an imitation of classical models. The classical drama
had expired at the break-up of the Roman Empire; its death was due largely,
indeed, to the hostility of Christianity, but also to the rude indifference of
the barbarian invaders. Whatever secular dramatic impulses remained in the
Dark Ages showed themselves not in public and organized performances,
but obscurely in the songs and mimicry of minstrels and in traditional folk-

customs. Both of these classes of practices were strongly opposed by the
Church, because of their connection with heathenism and the licence
towards which they tended. Yet the dramatic instinct could not be
suppressed. The folk-drama in such forms as the Feast of Fools found its
way, as we shall see, even into the sanctuary, and—most remarkable fact of
all—the Church's own services took on more and more a dramatic
character.

While the secular stage decayed, the Church was building up a stately
system of ritual. It is needless to dwell upon the dramatic elements in
Catholic worship. The central act of Christian devotion, the Eucharist, is in
its essence a drama, a representation of the death of the Redeemer and the
participation of the faithful in its benefits, and around this has gathered in
the Mass a multitude of dramatic actions expressing different aspects of the
Redemption. Nor, of course, is there merely symbolic action; the offices of
the Church are in great part dialogues between priest and people, or
between two sets of singers. It was from this antiphonal song, this
alternation of versicle and respond, that the religious drama of the Middle
Ages took its rise. In the ninth century the “Antiphonarium” traditionally
ascribed to Pope Gregory the Great had become insufficient for ambitious
choirs, and the practice grew up of supplementing it by new melodies and
words inserted at the beginning or end or even in the middle of the old
antiphons. The new texts were called “tropes,” and from the ninth to the
thirteenth century many were written. An interesting Christmas 123 example
is the following ninth-century trope ascribed to Tutilo of St. Gall:—

“Hodie cantandus est nobis puer, quem gignebat ineffabiliter ante
tempora pater, et eundem sub tempore generavit inclyta mater. (To-
day must we sing of a Child, whom in unspeakable wise His Father
begat before all times, and whom, within time, a glorious mother
brought forth.)

Int[errogatio].

Quis est iste puer quem tam magnis praeconiis dignum vociferatis?
Dicite nobis ut collaudatores esse possimus. (Who is this Child
whom ye proclaim worthy of so great laudations? Tell us that we
also may praise Him.)

Resp[onsio].

Hic enim est quem praesagus et electus symmista Dei ad terram
venturum praevidens longe ante praenotavit, sicque praedixit. (This
is He whose coming to earth the prophetic and chosen initiate into
the mysteries of God foresaw and pointed out long before, and thus
foretold.)”

Here followed at once the Introit for the third Mass of Christmas Day, “Puer
natus est nobis, et filius datus est nobis, &c. (Unto us a child is born, unto
us a son is given.)” The question and answer were no doubt sung by
different choirs.{2}

One can well imagine that this might develop into a regular little drama. As
a matter of fact, however, it was from an Easter trope in the same
manuscript, the “Quem quaeritis,” a dialogue between the three Maries and
the angel at the sepulchre, that the liturgical drama sprang. The trope
became very popular, and was gradually elaborated into a short symbolic
drama, and its popularity led to the composition of similar pieces for
Christmas and Ascensiontide. Here is the Christmas trope from a St. Gall
manuscript:—

“On the Nativity of the Lord at Mass let there be ready two deacons
having on dalmatics, behind the altar, saying:

Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite? (Whom seek ye in the
manger, say, ye shepherds?) 124

Let two cantors in the choir answer:

Salvatorem Christum Dominum, infantem pannis involutum,
secundum sermonem angelicum. (The Saviour, Christ the Lord, a
child wrapped in swaddling clothes, according to the angelic word.)

And the deacons:

Adest hic parvulus cum Maria, matre sua, de qua, vaticinando,
Isaias Propheta: ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium; et nuntiantes
dicite quia natus est. (Present here is the little one with Mary, His
Mother, of whom Isaiah the prophet foretold: Behold, a virgin shall
conceive, and shall bring forth a son; and do ye say and announce
that He is born.)

Then let the cantor lift up his voice and say:

Alleluia, alleluia, jam vere scimus Christum natum in terris, de quo
canite, omnes, cum Propheta dicentes: Puer natus est! (Alleluia,
alleluia. Now we know indeed that Christ is born on earth, of whom
sing ye all, saying with the Prophet: Unto us a child is born.)”{3}

The dramatic character of this is very marked. A comparison with later
liturgical plays suggests that the two deacons in their broad vestments were
meant to represent the midwives mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel of St.
James, and the cantors the shepherds.

A development from this trope, apparently, was the “Office of the
Shepherds,” which probably took shape in the eleventh century, though it is
first given in a Rouen manuscript of the thirteenth. It must have been an
impressive ceremony as performed in the great cathedral, dimly lit with
candles, and full of mysterious black recesses and hints of infinity. Behind
the high altar a praesepe or “crib” was prepared, with an image of the
Virgin. After the “Te Deum” had been sung five canons or their vicars, clad
in albs and amices, entered by the great door of the choir, and proceeded

towards the apse. These were the shepherds. Suddenly from high above
them came a clear boy's voice: “Fear not, behold I bring you good tidings of
great joy,” and the rest of the angelic message. The “multitude of the
heavenly host” was represented by other boys stationed probably 125 in the
triforium galleries, who broke out into the exultant “Gloria in excelsis.”
Singing a hymn, “Pax in terris nunciatur,” the shepherds advanced towards
the crib where two priests—the midwives—awaited them. These addressed
to the shepherds the question “Whom seek ye in the manger?” and then
came the rest of the “Quem quaeritis” which we already know, a hymn to
the Virgin being sung while the shepherds adored the Infant. Mass followed
immediately, the little drama being merely a prelude.{4}

More important than this Office of the Shepherds is an Epiphany play called
by various names, “Stella,” “Tres Reges,” “Magi,” or “Herodes,” and found
in different forms at Limoges, Rouen, Laon, Compiègne, Strasburg, Le
Mans, Freising in Bavaria, and other places. Mr. E. K. Chambers suggests
that its kernel is a dramatized Offertory. It was a custom for Christian kings
to present gold, frankincense, and myrrh at the Epiphany—the offering is
still made by proxy at the Chapel Royal, St. James's—and Mr. Chambers
takes “the play to have served as a substitute for this ceremony, when no
king actually regnant was present.”{5} Its most essential features were the
appearance of the Star of Bethlehem to the Magi, and their offering of the
mystic gifts. The star, bright with candles, hung from the roof of the church,
and was sometimes made to move.

In the Rouen version of the play it is ordered that on the day of the
Epiphany, Terce having been sung, three clerics, robed as kings, shall come
from the east, north, and south, and meet before the altar, with their servants
bearing the offerings of the Magi. The king from the east, pointing to the
star with his stick, exclaims:—

“Stella fulgore nimio rutilat. (The star glows with exceeding
brightness.)”

The second monarch answers:

“Quae regem regum natum demonstrat. (Which shows the birth of
the King of Kings.)” 126

And the third:

“Quem venturum olim prophetiae signaverant. (To whose coming
the prophecies of old had pointed.)”

Then the Magi kiss one another and together sing:

“Eamus ergo et inquiramus eum, offerentes ei munera: aurum, thus,
et myrrham. (Let us therefore go and seek Him, offering unto Him
gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.)”

Antiphons are sung, a procession is formed, and the Magi go to a certain
altar above which an image of the Virgin has been placed with a lighted star
before it. Two priests in dalmatics—apparently the midwives—standing on
either side of the altar, inquire who the Magi are, and receiving their
answer, draw aside a curtain and bid them approach to worship the Child,
“for He is the redemption of the world.” The three kings do adoration, and
offer their gifts, each with a few pregnant words:—

“Suscipe, rex, aurum. (Receive, O King, gold.)”
“Tolle thus, tu vere Deus. (Accept incense, Thou very God.)”
“Myrrham, signum sepulturae. (Myrrh, the sign of burial.)”

The clergy and people then make their offerings, while the Magi fall asleep
and are warned by an angel to return home another way. This they do
symbolically by proceeding back to the choir by a side aisle.{6}

In its later forms the Epiphany play includes the appearance of Herod, who
is destined to fill a very important place in the mediaeval drama. Hamlet's
saying “he out-Herods Herod” sufficiently suggests the raging tyrant whom
the playwrights of the Middle Ages loved. His appearance marks perhaps
the first introduction into the Christian religious play of the evil principle so
necessary to dramatic effect. At first Herod holds merely a mild
conversation with the Magi, begging them to tell him when they have found
the new-born King; in later versions of the play, however, his wrath is
shown on learning that the Wise Men have 127 departed home by another
way; he breaks out into bloodthirsty tirades, orders the slaying of the
Innocents, and in one form takes a sword and brandishes it in the air. He
becomes in fact the outstanding figure in the drama, and one can understand
why it was sometimes named after him.

In the Laon “Stella” the actual murder of the Innocents was represented, the
symbolical figure of Rachel weeping over her children being introduced.
The plaint and consolation of Rachel, it should be noted, seem at first to
have formed an independent little piece performed probably on Holy
Innocents’ Day.{7} This later coalesced with the “Stella,” as did also the
play of the shepherds, and, at a still later date, another liturgical drama
which we must now consider—the “Prophetae.”

This had its origin in a sermon (wrongly ascribed to St. Augustine) against
Jews, Pagans, and Arians, a portion of which was used in many churches as
a Christmas lesson. It begins with a rhetorical appeal to the Jews who refuse
to accept Jesus as the Messiah in spite of the witness of their own prophets.
Ten prophets are made to give their testimony, and then three Pagans are
called upon, Virgil, Nebuchadnezzar and the Erythraean Sibyl. The sermon
has a strongly dramatic character, and when chanted in church the parts of
the preacher and the prophets were possibly distributed among different
choristers. In time it developed into a regular drama, and more prophets

were brought in. It was, indeed, the germ of the great Old Testament cycles
of the later Middle Ages.{8}

An extension of the “Prophetae” was the Norman or Anglo-Norman play of
“Adam,” which began with the Fall, continued with Cain and Abel, and
ended with the witness of the prophets. In the other direction the
“Prophetae” was extended by the addition of the “Stella.” It so happens that
there is no text of a Latin drama containing both these extensions at the
same time, but such a play probably existed. From the mid-thirteenth to the
mid-fourteenth century, indeed, there was a tendency for the plays to run
together into cycles and become too long and too elaborate for performance
in church. In the eleventh century, even, they had begun to pass out into the
churchyard or 128 the market-place, and to be played not only by the clergy
but by laymen. This change had extremely important effects on their
character. In the first place the vulgar tongue crept in. As early, possibly, as
the twelfth century are the Norman “Adam” and the Spanish “Misterio de
los Reyes Magos,” the former, as we have seen, an extended vernacular
“Prophetae,” the latter, a fragment of a highly developed vernacular
“Stella.” They are the first of the popular as distinguished from the
liturgical plays; they were meant, as their language shows, for the
instruction and delight of the folk; they were not to be listened to, like the
mysterious Latin of the liturgy, in uncomprehending reverence, but were to
be understanded of the people.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw a progressive supplanting of
Latin by the common speech, until, in the great cycles, only a few scraps of
the church language were left to tell of the liturgical origin of the drama.
The process of popularization, the development of the plays from religious
ceremonial to lively drama, was probably greatly helped by the goliards or
vagabond scholars, young, poor, and fond of amusement, who wandered
over Europe from teacher to teacher, from monastery to monastery, in

search of learning. Their influence is shown not merely in the broadening of
the drama, but also in its passing from the Latin of the monasteries to the
language of the common folk.

A consequence of the outdoor performance of the plays was that Christmas,
in the northern countries at all events, was found an unsuitable time for
them. The summer was naturally preferred, and we find comparatively few
mentions of plays at Christmas in the later Middle Ages. Whitsuntide and
Corpus Christi became more popular dates, especially in England, and the
pieces then performed were vast cosmic cycles, like the York, Chester,
Towneley, and “Coventry” plays, in which the Christmas and Epiphany
episodes formed but links in an immense chain extending from the Creation
to the Last Judgment, and representing the whole scheme of salvation. It is
in these Nativity scenes, however, that we have the only English renderings
of the Christmas story in drama,{9} and though they 129 were actually
performed not at the winter festival[42] but in the summer, they give in so
striking a way the feelings, the point of view, of our mediaeval forefathers
in regard to the Nativity that we are justified in dealing with them here at
some length.

As the drama became laicized, it came to reflect that strange medley of
conflicting elements, pagan and Christian, materialistic and spiritual, which
was the actual religion of the folk, as distinguished from the philosophical
theology of the doctors and councils and the mysticism of the ascetics. The
popularizing of Christianity had reached its climax in most countries of
western Europe in the fifteenth century, approximately the period of the
great “mysteries.” However little the ethical teaching of Jesus may have
been acted upon, the Christian religion on its external side had been
thoroughly appropriated by the people and wrought into a many-coloured
polytheism, a true reflection of their minds.

The figures of the drama are contemporaries of the spectators both in garb
and character; they are not Orientals of ancient times, but Europeans of the
end of the Middle Ages. Bethlehem is a “faier borow,” Herod a “mody
king,” like unto some haughty, capricious, and violent monarch of the time,
the shepherds are rustics of England or Germany or France or Italy, the
Magi mighty potentates with gorgeous trains, and the Child Himself is a
little being subject to all the pains and necessities of infancy, but delighted
with sweet and pleasant things like a bob of cherries or a ball. The realism
of the writers is sometimes astounding, and comic elements often appear—
to the people of the Middle Ages religion was so real and natural a thing
that they could laugh at it without ceasing to believe in or to love it.

The English mediaeval playwrights, it may safely be said, are surpassed by
no foreigners in their treatment of Christmas subjects. To illustrate their
way of handling the scenes I may 130 gather from the four great cycles a few
of the most interesting passages.

From the so-called “Ludus Coventriae” I take the arrival of Joseph and
Mary at Bethlehem; they ask a man in the street where they may find an
inn:—

“Joseph. Heyl, wurchepful sere, and good day!
A ceteceyn of this cytë ye seme to be;
Of herborwe[43] ffor spowse and me I yow pray,
ffor trewly this woman is fful werë,
And fayn at reste, sere, wold she be;

We wolde ffulffylle the byddynge of oure emperoure,
ffor to pay tribute, as right is oure,
And to kepe oureselfe ffrom dolowre,
We are come to this cytë.

Cives. Sere, ostage in this towne know I non,

Thin wyff and thou in for to slepe;
This cetë is besett with pepyl every won,
And yett thei ly withowte fful every strete.

Withinne no walle, man, comyst thou nowth,
Be thou onys[44] withinne the cytë gate;
Onethys[45] in the strete a place may be sowth,
Theron to reste, withowte debate.

Joseph. Nay, sere, debate that wyl I nowth;
Alle suche thyngys passyn my powere:
But yitt my care and alle my thought
Is for Mary, my derlynge dere.

A! swete wyff, wat xal we do?
Wher xal we logge this nyght?
Onto the ffadyr of heffne pray we so,
Us to kepe ffrom every wykkyd whyt.

Cives. Good man, o word I wyl the sey,
If thou wylt do by the counsel of me;
Yondyr is an hous of haras[46] that stant be the wey,
Amonge the bestys herboryd may ye be. 131

Maria. Now the fadyr of hefne he mut yow yelde!
His sone in my wombe forsothe he is;
He kepe the and thi good be fryth and ffelde!
Go we hens, husbond, for now tyme it is.”{11}

The scene immediately after the Nativity is delicately and reverently
presented in the York cycle. The Virgin worships the Child, saluting Him
thus:—

“Hayle my lord God! hayle prince of pees!
Hayle my fadir, and hayle my sone!
Hayle souereyne sege all synnes to sesse!

Hayle God and man in erth to wonne![47]
Hayle! thurgh whos myht
All this worlde was first be-gonne,
merkness[48] and light.

Sone, as I am sympill sugett of thyne,
Vowchesaffe, swete sone I pray the,
That I myght the take in the[r] armys of mine,
And in this poure wede to arraie the;
Graunte me thi blisse!
As I am thy modir chosen to be
in sothfastnesse.”

Joseph, who has gone out to get a light, returns, and this dialogue
follows:—

“Joseph. Say, Marie doghtir, what chere with the?
Mary. Right goode, Joseph, as has been ay.
Joseph. O Marie! what swete thyng is that on thy kne?
Mary. It is my sone, the soth to saye, that is so gud
Joseph. Wel is me I bade this day, to se this foode![49]
Me merueles mekill of this light
That thus-gates shynes in this place,
For suth it is a selcouth[50] sight! 132
Mary. This hase he ordand of his grace, my sone so ying,
A starne to be schynyng a space at his bering

* * * * *

Joseph. Nowe welcome, floure fairest of hewe,
I shall the menske[51] with mayne and myght.
Hayle! my maker, hayle Crist Jesu!
Hayle, riall king, roote of all right!
Hayle, saueour.
Hayle, my lorde, lemer[52] of light,
Hayle, blessid floure!

Mary. Nowe lord! that all this worlde schall wynne,
To the my sone is that I saye,
Here is no bedde to laye the inne,
Therfore my dere sone, I the praye sen it is soo,
Here in this cribbe I myght the lay betwene ther bestis
two.
And I sall happe[53] the, myn owne dere childe,
With such clothes as we haue here.

Joseph. O Marie! beholde thes beestis mylde,
They make louyng in ther manere as thei wer men.
For-sothe it semes wele be ther chere thare lord thei ken.

Mary. Ther lorde thai kenne, that wate I wele,

They worshippe hym with myght and mayne;
The wedir is colde, as ye may feele,
To halde hym warme thei are full fayne, with thare warme
breth.”{12}

The playwrights are at their best in the shepherd scenes; indeed these are
the most original parts of the cycles, for here the writers found little to help
them in theological tradition, and were thrown upon their own wit. In
humorous dialogue and naïve sentiment the lusty burgesses of the fifteenth
century were thoroughly at home, and the comedy and pathos of these
scenes must have been as welcome a relief to the spectators, from the
133 long-winded solemnity of many of the plays, as they are to modern

readers. In the York mysteries the shepherds make uncouth exclamations at
the song of the angels and ludicrously try to imitate it. The Chester
shepherds talk in a very natural way of such things as the diseases of sheep,
sit down with much relish to a meal of “ale of Halton,” sour milk, onions,
garlick and leeks, green cheese, a sheep's head soused in ale, and other
items; then they call their lad Trowle, who grumbles because his wages
have not been paid, refuses to eat, wrestles with his masters and throws
them all. They sit down discomfited; then the Star of Bethlehem appears,
filling them with wonder, which grows when they hear the angels’ song of
“Gloria in excelsis.” They discuss what the words were—“glore, glare with
a glee,” or, “glori, glory, glorious,” or, “glory, glory, with a glo.” At length
they go to Bethlehem, and arrived at the stable, the first shepherd
exclaims:—

“Sym, Sym, sickerlye
Heare I see Marye,
And Jesus Christe faste by,
Lapped in haye.”{13}

Joseph is strangely described:—

“Whatever this oulde man that heare is,
Take heede howe his head is whore,
His beirde is like a buske of breyers,
With a pound of heaire about his mouth and more.”{14}

Their gifts to the Infant are a bell, a flask, a spoon to eat pottage with, and a
cape. Trowle the servant has nought to offer but a pair of his wife's old
hose; four boys follow with presents of a bottle, a hood, a pipe, and a nut-
hook. Quaint are the words of the last two givers:—

“The Thirde Boye.

O, noble childe of thee!
Alas! what have I for thee,
Save only my pipe? 134
Elles trewly nothinge,
Were I in the rockes or in,
I coulde make this pippe
That all this woode should ringe,
And quiver, as yt were.

The Fourth Boye.

Nowe, childe, although thou be comon from God,
And be God thy selfe in thy manhoode,
Yet I knowe that in thy childehoode
Thou wylte for sweete meate loke,
To pull downe aples, peares, and plumes,
Oulde Joseph shall not nede to hurte his thombes,
Because thou hast not pleintie of crombes,
I geve thee heare my nutthocke.”{15}

Let no one deem this irreverent; the spirit of this adoration of the shepherds
is intensely devout; they go away longing to tell all the world the wonder
they have seen; one will become a pilgrim; even the rough Trowle exclaims

that he will forsake the shepherd's craft and will betake himself to an
anchorite's hard by, in prayers to “wache and wake.”

More famous than this Chester “Pastores” are the two shepherd plays in the
Towneley cycle.{16} The first begins with racy talk, leading to a wrangle
between two of the shepherds about some imaginary sheep; then a third
arrives and makes fun of them both; a feast follows, with much homely
detail; they go to sleep and are awakened by the angelic message; after
much debate over its meaning and over the foretellings of the prophets—
one of them, strangely enough, quotes a Latin passage from Virgil—they go
to Bethlehem and present to the Child a “lytyll spruse cofer,” a ball, and a
gourd-bottle.

The second play surpasses in humour anything else in the mediaeval drama
of any country. We find the shepherds first complaining of the cold and
their hard lot; they are “al lappyd in sorow.” They talk, almost like modern
Socialists, of the oppressions of the rich:—

“For the tylthe of our landys lyys falow as the floore,
As ye ken. 135
We ar so hamyd,[54]
For-taxed and ramyd,[55]
We ar mayde hand-tamyd,
With thyse gentlery men.

Thus thay refe[56] us our rest, Our Lady theym wary![57]
These men that ar lord-fest,[58] they cause the ploghe tary.”

To these shepherds joins himself Mak, a thieving neighbour. Going to sleep,
they make him lie between them, for they doubt his honesty. But for all
their precautions he manages to steal a sheep, and carries it home to his
wife. She thinks of an ingenious plan for concealing it from the shepherds if
they visit the cottage seeking their lost property: she will pretend that she is

in child-bed and that the sheep is the new-born infant. So it is wrapped up
and laid in a cradle, and Mak sings a lullaby. The shepherds do suspect
Mak, and come to search his house; his wife upbraids them and keeps them
from the cradle. They depart, but suddenly an idea comes to one of them:—

“The First Shepherd. Gaf ye the chyld any thyng?
The Second. I trow not oone farthyng.
The Third. Fast agane will I flyng,
Abyde ye me there. [He goes back.]
Mak, take it to no grefe, if I com to thi barne.”

Mak tries to put him off, but the shepherd will have his way:—

“Gyf me lefe hym to kys, and lyft up the clowtt.
What the devill is this? he has a long snowte.”

So the secret is out. Mak's wife gives a desperate explanation:—

“He was takyn with an elfe,
I saw it myself.
When the clok stroke twelf
Was he forshapyn.”

136Naturally this avails nothing, and her husband is given a good tossing by
the shepherds until they are tired out and lie down to rest. Then comes the
“Gloria in excelsis” and the call of the angel:—

“Ryse, hyrd men heynd! for now is he borne
That shall take fro the feynd that Adam had lorne:
That warloo[59] to sheynd,[60] this nyght is he borne,
God is made youre freynd: now at this morne
He behestys,
At Bedlem go se,
Ther lygys that fre[61]
In a cryb fulle poorely,

Betwyx two bestys.”

The shepherds wonder at the song, and one of them tries to imitate it; then
they go even unto Bethlehem, and there follows the quaintest and most
delightful of Christmas carols:—

“Primus Pastor.

Hail, comly and clene,
Hail, yong child!
Hail, maker, as I meene,
Of a maden so milde!
Thou has warëd,[62] I weene,
The warlo[63] so wilde;
The fals giler of teen,[64]
Now goes he begilde.
Lo! he merys,[65]
Lo! he laghës, my sweting.
A welfare meting!
I have holden my heting.[66]
Have a bob of cherys!

Secundus Pastor.

Hail, sufferan Savioure,
For thou has us soght!
Hail, frely[67] foyde[68] and floure,
That all thing has wroght! 137
Hail, full of favoure,
That made all of noght!
Hail, I kneel and I cowre.
A bird have I broght
To my barne.
Hail, litel tinë mop![69]
Of oure crede thou art crop;[70]

I wold drink on thy cop,
Litel day starne.

Tertius Pastor.

Hail, derling dere,
Full of godhede!
I pray thee be nere
When that I have nede.
Hail! swete is thy chere;[71]
My hart woldë blede
To see thee sitt here
In so poorë wede,
With no pennys.
Hail! Put forth thy dall![72]
I bring thee bot a ball;
Have and play thee with all,
And go to the tenis!”{17}

The charm of this will be felt by every reader; it lies in a curious
incongruity—extreme homeliness joined to awe; the Infinite is contained
within the narrowest human bounds; God Himself, the Creator and
Sustainer of the universe, a weak, helpless child. But a step more, and all
would have been irreverence; as it is we have devotion, human, naïve, and
touching.

It would be interesting to show how other scenes connected with Christmas
are handled in the English miracle-plays: how Octavian (Caesar Augustus)
sent out the decree that all the world should be taxed, and learned from the
Sibyl the birth of Christ; how the Magi were led by the star and offered
their symbolic gifts; how the raging of the boastful tyrant Herod, the
138 Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt are treated; but

these scenes, though full of colour, are on the whole less remarkable than
the shepherd and Nativity pieces, and space forbids us to dwell upon them.

They contain many curious anachronisms, as when Herod invokes
Mahounde, and talks about his princes, prelates, barons, baronets and
burgesses.[73]

The religious play in England did not long survive the Reformation. Under
the influence of Protestantism, with its vigilant dread of profanity and
superstition, the cycles were shorn of many of their scenes, the
performances became irregular, and by the end of the sixteenth century they
had mostly ceased to be. Not sacred story, but the play of human character,
was henceforth the material of the drama. The rich, variegated religion of
the people, communal in its expression, tinged everywhere with human
colour, gave place to a sterner, colder, more individual faith, fearful of
contamination by the use of the outward and visible.

There is little or no trace in the vernacular Christmas plays of direct
translation from one language into another, though there was some
borrowing of motives. Thus the Christmas drama of each nation has its own
special flavour.

If we turn to France, we find a remarkable fifteenth-century cycle that
belongs purely to the winter festival, and shows the strictly Christmas
drama at its fullest development. This great mystery of the “Incarnacion et
nativité de nostre saulveur et redempteur Jesuchrist” was performed out-of-
doors at Rouen in 1474, an exceptional event for a northern city in winter-
time. The twenty-four establies or “mansions” set up for the various scenes
reached across the market-place from the “Axe and Crown” Inn to the
“Angel.”

139After a prologue briefly explaining its purpose, the mystery begins, like
the old liturgical plays, with the witness of the prophets; then follows a

scene in Limbo where Adam is shown lamenting his fate, and another in
Heaven where the Redemption of mankind is discussed and the Incarnation
decided upon. With the Annunciation and the Visitation of the Virgin the
first day closed. The second day opened with the ordering by Octavian of
the world-census. The edict is addressed:—

“A tous roys, marquis, ducs et contes,
Connestables, bailifs, vicomtes
Et tous autres generalment
Qui sont desoubz le firmament.”

Joseph, in order to fulfil the command of Cyrenius, governor of Syria,
leaves Nazareth for Bethlehem. A comic shepherds’ scene follows, with a
rustic song:—

“Joyeusement, la garenlo,
Chantons en venant a la veille,
Puisque nous avons la bouteille
Nous y berons jusques a bo.”

When Joseph and Mary reach the stable where the Nativity is to take place,
there is a charming dialogue. Joseph laments over the meanness of the
stable, Mary accepts it with calm resignation.

Joseph.

“Las! vecy bien povre merrien
Pour edifier un hostel
Et logis a ung seigneur tel.
Il naistra en bien povre place.

Marie.

Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.

* * * * *

Joseph.

Ou sont ces chambres tant fournies
De Sarges, de Tapiceries 140
Batus d'or, ou luyt mainte pierre,
Et nates mises sur la terre,
Affin que le froit ne mefface?

Marie.

Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.

* * * * *

Joseph.

Helas! cy gerra povrement
Le createur du firmament
Celui qui fait le soleil luire,
Qui fait la terre fruis produire,
Qui tient la mer en son espace.

Marie.

Il plait a Dieu qu'ainsy se face.”

At last Christ is born, welcomed by the song of the angels, adored by His
mother. In the heathen temples the idols fall; Hell mouth opens and shows
the rage of the demons, who make a hideous noise; fire issues from the
nostrils and eyes and ears of Hell, which shuts up with the devils within it.
And then the angels in the stable worship the Child Jesus. The adoration of
the shepherds was shown with many naïve details for the delight of the
people, and the performance ended with the offering of a sacrifice in Rome
by the Emperor Octavian to an image of the Blessed Virgin.{19}

The French playwrights, quite as much as the English, love comic shepherd
scenes with plenty of eating and drinking and brawling. A traditional figure
is the shepherd Rifflart, always a laughable type. In the strictly mediaeval
plays the shepherds are true French rustics, but with the progress of the
Renaissance classical elements creep into the pastoral scenes; in a mystery
printed in 1507 Orpheus with the Nymphs and Oreads is introduced. As
might be expected, anachronisms often occur; a peculiarly piquant instance
is found in the S. Geneviève mystery, where Caesar Augustus gets a piece
of Latin translated into French for his convenience.

THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM.
From “Le grant Kalendrier compost des Bergiers” (N. le Rouge, Troyes, 1529).
(Reproduced from a modern broadside published by Mr. F. Sidgwick.)

141Late examples of French Christmas mysteries are the so-called
“comedies” of the Nativity, Adoration of the Kings, Massacre of the
Innocents, and Flight into Egypt contained in the “Marguerites” (published
in 1547) of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, sister of François I. Intermingled
with the traditional figures treated more or less in the traditional way are
personified abstractions like Philosophy, Tribulation, Inspiration, Divine
Intelligence, and Contemplation, which largely rob the plays of dramatic
effect. There is some true poetry in these pieces, but too much theological
learning and too little simplicity, and in one place the ideas of Calvin seem
to show themselves.{20}

The French mystery began to fall into decay about the middle of the
sixteenth century. It was attacked on every side: by the new poets of the
Renaissance, who preferred classical to Christian subjects; by the
Protestants, who deemed the religious drama a trifling with the solemn
truths of Scripture; and even by the Catholic clergy, who, roused to greater
strictness by the challenge of Protestantism, found the comic elements in
the plays offensive and dangerous, and perhaps feared that too great
familiarity with the Bible as represented in the mysteries might lead the
people into heresy.{21} Yet we hear occasionally of Christmas dramas in
France in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In the
neighbourhood of Nantes, for instance, a play of the Nativity by Claude
Macée, hermit, probably written in the seventeenth century, was commonly
performed in the first half of the nineteenth.{22} At Clermont the adoration
of the shepherds was still performed in 1718, and some kind of
representation of the scene continued in the diocese of Cambrai until 1834,
when it was forbidden by the bishop. In the south, especially at Marseilles,
“pastorals” were played towards the end of the nineteenth century; they
had, however, largely lost their sacred character, and had become a kind of
review of the events of the year.{23} At Dinan, in Brittany, some sort of

Herod play was performed, though it was dying out, in 1886. It was acted
by young men on the Epiphany, and there was an “innocent” whose throat
they pretended to cut with a wooden sword.{24}

142An interesting summary of a very full Nativity play performed in the
churches of Upper Gascony on Christmas Eve is given by Countess
Martinengo-Cesaresco.{25} It ranges from the arrival of Joseph and Mary at
Bethlehem to the Flight into Egypt and the Murder of the Innocents, but
perhaps the most interesting parts are the shepherd scenes. After the
message of the angel—a child in a surplice, with wings fastened to his
shoulders, seated on a chair drawn up to the ceiling and supported by
ropes—the shepherds leave the church, the whole of which is now regarded
as the stable of the Divine Birth. They knock for admittance, and Joseph,
regretting that the chamber is “so badly lighted,” lets them in. They fall
down before the manger, and so do the shepherdesses, who “deposit on the
altar steps a banner covered with flowers and greenery, from which hang
strings of small birds, apples, nuts, chestnuts, and other fruits. It is their
Christmas offering to the curé; the shepherds have already placed a whole
sheep before the altar, in a like spirit.” The play is not mere dumb-show, but
has a full libretto.

A rather similar piece of dramatic ceremonial is described by Barthélemy in
his edition of Durandus,{26} as customary in the eighteenth century at La
Villeneuve-en-Chevrie, near Mantes. At the Midnight Mass a crèche with a
wax figure of the Holy Child was placed in the choir, with tapers burning
about it. After the “Te Deum” had been sung, the celebrant, accompanied by
his attendants, censed the crèche, to the sound of violins, double-basses,
and other instruments. A shepherd then prostrated himself before the crib,
holding a sheep with a sort of little saddle bearing sixteen lighted candles.
He was followed by two shepherdesses in white with distaffs and tapers. A
second shepherd, between two shepherdesses, carried a laurel branch, to

which were fastened oranges, lemons, biscuits, and sweetmeats. Two others
brought great pains-bénits and lighted candles; then came four
shepherdesses, who made their adoration, and lastly twenty-six more
shepherds, two by two, bearing in one hand a candle and in the other a
festooned crook. The same ceremonial was practised at the Offertory and
after the close of the Mass. All was done, it is said, with such piety and
edification that 143 St. Luke's words about the Bethlehem shepherds were
true of these French swains—they “returned glorifying and praising God for
all the things they had heard and seen.”

In German there remain very few Christmas plays earlier than the fifteenth
century. Later periods, however, have produced a multitude, and dramatic
performances at Christmas have continued down to quite modern times in
German-speaking parts.

At Oberufer near Pressburg—a German Protestant village in Hungary—
some fifty years ago, a Christmas play was performed under the direction of
an old farmer, whose office as instructor had descended from father to son.
The play took place at intervals of from three to ten years and was acted on
all Sundays and festivals from Advent to the Epiphany. Great care was
taken to ensure the strictest piety and morality in the actors, and no secular
music was allowed in the place during the season for the performances. The
practices began as early as October. On the first Sunday in Advent there
was a solemn procession to the hall hired for the play. First went a man
bearing a gigantic star—he was called the “Master Singer”—and another
carrying a Christmas-tree decked with ribbons and apples; then came all the
actors, singing hymns. There was no scenery and no theatrical apparatus
beyond a straw-seated chair and a wooden stool. When the first was used,
the scene was understood to be Jerusalem, when the second, Bethlehem.

The Christmas drama, immediately preceded by an Adam and Eve play, and
succeeded by a Shrove Tuesday one, followed mediaeval lines, and
included the wanderings of Joseph and Mary round the inns of Bethlehem,
the angelic tidings to the shepherds, their visit to the manger, the adoration
of the Three Kings, and various Herod scenes. Protestant influence was
shown by the introduction of Luther's “Vom Himmel hoch,” but the general
character was very much that of the old mysteries, and the dialogue was full
of quaint naïveté.{27}

At Brixlegg, in Tyrol, as late as 1872 a long Christmas play was acted under
Catholic auspices; some of its dialogue was in 144 the Tyrolese patois and
racy and humorous, other parts, and particularly the speeches of Mary and
Joseph—out of respect for these holy personages—had been rewritten in
the eighteenth century in a very stilted and undramatic style. Some simple
shepherd plays are said to be still presented in the churches of the Saxon
Erzgebirge.{28}

The German language is perhaps richer in real Christmas plays, as
distinguished from Nativity and Epiphany episodes in great cosmic cycles,
than any other. There are some examples in mediaeval manuscripts, but the
most interesting are shorter pieces performed in country places in
comparatively recent times, and probably largely traditional in substance.
Christianity by the fourteenth century had at last gained a real hold upon the
German people, or perhaps one should rather say the German people had
laid a strong hold upon Christianity, moulding it into something very human
and concrete, materialistic often, yet not without spiritual significance. In
cradle-rocking and religious dancing at Christmas the instincts of a lusty,
kindly race expressed themselves, and the same character is shown in the
short popular Christmas dramas collected by Weinhold and others.{29}
Many of the little pieces—some are rather duets than plays—were sung or
acted in church or by the fireside in the nineteenth century, and perhaps

even now may linger in remote places. They are in dialect, and the rusticity
of their language harmonizes well with their naïve, homely sentiment. In
them we behold the scenes of Bethlehem as realized by peasants, and their
mixture of rough humour and tender feeling is thoroughly in keeping with
the subject.

One is made to feel very vividly the amazement of the shepherds at the
wondrous and sudden apparition of the angels:—

“Riepl. Woas is das für a Getümmel,
I versteh mi nit in d'Welt.
Jörgl. Is den heunt eingfalln der Himmel,
Fleugn d'Engeln auf unserm Feld?
R. Thuen Sprüng macha
J. Von oben acha! 145
R. I turft das Ding nit noacha thoan,
that mir brechn Hals und Boan.”[74]{30}

The cold is keenly brought home to us when they come to the manger:—

“J. Mei Kind, kanst kei Herberg finden?
Muest so viel Frost leiden schoan.
R. Ligst du under kalden Windeln!
Lägts ihm doch a Gwandl oan!
J. Machts ihm d'Füess ein,
Hüllts in zue fein!”[75]{ 31}

Very homely are their presents to the Child:—

“Ein drei Eier und ein Butter
Bringen wir auch, nemt es an!
Einen Han zu einer Suppen,
Wanns die Mutter kochen kann.
Giessts ein Schmalz drein, wirds wol guet sein.
Weil wir sonsten gar nix han,

Sind wir selber arme Hirten,
Nemts den guten Willen an.”[76]{ 32}

One of the dialogues ends with a curious piece of ordinary human
kindliness, as if the Divine nature of the Infant were quite forgotten for the
moment:—

“J. Bleib halt fein gsund, mein kloans Liebl,
Wannst woas brauchst, so komm ze mir.

* * * * *

J. Pfüet di Gôt halt! 146
R. Wär fein gross bald!
J. Kannst in mein Dienst stehen ein,
Wann darzu wirst gross gnue sein.”[77]{ 33}

Far more interesting in their realism and naturalness are these little plays of
the common folk than the elaborate Christmas dramas of more learned
German writers, Catholic and Lutheran, who in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries became increasingly stilted and bombastic.

The Italian religious drama{34} evolved somewhat differently from that of
the northern countries. The later thirteenth century saw the outbreak of the
fanaticism of the Flagellants or Battuti, vast crowds of people of all classes
who went in procession from church to church, from city to city, scourging
their naked bodies in terror and repentance till the blood flowed. When the
wild enthusiasm of this movement subsided it left enduring traces in the
foundation of lay communities throughout the land, continuing in a more
sober way the penitential practices of the Flagellants. One of their aids to
devotion was the singing or reciting of vernacular poetry, less formal than
the Latin hymns of the liturgy, and known as laude.[78] These laude

developed a more or less dramatic form, which gained the name of
divozioni.[79] They were, perhaps (though not certainly, for there seems to
have been another tradition derived from the regular liturgical drama), the
source from which sprang the gorgeously produced sacre rappresentazioni
of the fifteenth century.

The sacre rappresentazioni corresponded, though with considerable
differences, to the miracle-plays of England and France. Their great period
was the fifty years from 1470 to 1520, and 147 they were performed, like the
divozioni, by confraternities of religious laymen. The actors were boys
belonging to the brotherhoods, and the plays were intended to be edifying
for youth. They are more refined than the northern religious dramas, but
only too often fall into insipidity.

Among the texts given by D'Ancona in his collection of sacre
rappresentazioni is a Tuscan “Natività,”{36} opening with a pastoral scene
resembling those in the northern mysteries, but far less vigorous. It cannot
compare, for character and humour, with the Towneley plays. Still the
shepherds, whose names are Bobi del Farucchio, Nencio di Pucchio,
Randello, Nencietto, Giordano, and Falconcello, are at least meant to have a
certain rusticity, as they feast on bread and cheese and wine, play to the
Saviour on bagpipe or whistle, and offer humble presents like apples and
cheese. The scenes which follow, the coming of the Magi and the Murder of
the Innocents, are not intrinsically of great interest.

It is possible that this play may have been the spectacle performed in
Florence in 1466, as recorded by Machiavelli, “to give men something to
take away their thoughts from affairs of state.” It “represented the coming
of the three Magi Kings from the East, following the star which showed the
Nativity of Christ, and it was of so great pomp and magnificence that it kept
the whole city busy for several months in arranging and preparing it.”{37}

An earlier record of an Italian pageant of the Magi is this account by the
chronicler Galvano Flamma of what took place at Milan in 1336:—

“There were three kings crowned, on great horses, ... and an
exceeding great train. And there was a golden star running through
the air, which went before these three kings, and they came to the
columns of San Lorenzo, where was King Herod in effigy, with the
scribes and wise men. And they were seen to ask King Herod where
Christ was born, and having turned over many books they answered,
that He should be born in the city of David distant five miles from
Jerusalem. And having heard this, those three kings, crowned with
golden crowns, holding in their hands golden cups with gold,
incense, 148 and myrrh, came to the church of Sant’ Eustorgio, the
star preceding them through the air, ... and a wonderful train, with
resounding trumpets and horns going before them, with apes,
baboons, and diverse kinds of animals, and a marvellous tumult of
people. There at the side of the high altar was a manger with ox and
ass, and in the manger was the little Christ in the arms of the Virgin
Mother. And those kings offered gifts unto Christ; then they were
seen to sleep, and a winged angel said to them that they should not
return by the region of San Lorenzo but by the Porta Romana;
which also was done. There was so great a concourse of the people
and soldiers and ladies and clerics that scarce anything like it was
ever beheld. And it was ordered that every year this festal show
should be performed.”{38}

How suggestive this is of the Magi pictures of the fifteenth century, with
their gorgeous eastern monarchs and retinues of countless servants and
strange animals. No other story in the New Testament gives such
opportunity for pageantry as the Magi scene. All the wonder, richness, and
romance of the East, all the splendour of western Renaissance princes could
lawfully be introduced into the train of the Three Kings. With Gentile da
Fabriano and Benozzo Gozzoli it has become a magnificent procession;
there are trumpeters, pages, jesters, dwarfs, exotic beasts—all the motley,

gorgeous retinue of the monarchs of the time, while the kings themselves
are romantic figures in richest attire, velvet, brocade, wrought gold, and
jewels. It may be that much of this splendour was suggested to the painters
by dramatic spectacles which actually passed before their eyes.

I have already alluded to the Spanish “Mystery of the Magi Kings,” a mere
fragment, but of peculiar interest to the historian of the drama as one of the
two earliest religious plays in a modern European language. Though plays
are known to have been performed in Spain at Christmas and Easter in the
Middle Ages,{39} we have no further texts until the very short
“Representation of the Birth of Our Lord,” by Gómez Manrique, Señor de
Villazopeque (1412-91), acted at the convent at Calabazanos, of which the
author's sister was Superior. The characters 149 introduced are the Virgin, St.
Joseph, St. Gabriel, St. Michael, St. Raphael, another angel, and three
shepherds.{40}

Touched by the spirit of the Renaissance, and particularly by the influence
of Virgil, is Juan del Encina of Salamanca (1469-1534), court poet to the
Duke of Alba, and author of two Christmas eclogues.{41} The first
introduces four shepherds who bear the names of the Evangelists, Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, and are curiously mixed personages, their words
being half what might be expected from the shepherds of Bethlehem and
half sayings proper only to the authors of the Gospels. It ends with a
villancico or carol. The second eclogue is far more realistic, and indeed
resembles the English and French pastoral scenes. The shepherds grumble
about the weather—it has been raining for two months, the floods are
terrible, and no fords or bridges are left; they talk of the death of a sacristan,
a fine singer; and they play a game with chestnuts; then comes the angel—
whom one of them calls a “smartly dressed lad” (garzon repìcado)—to tell

them of the Birth, and they go to adore the Child, taking Him a kid, butter-
cakes, eggs, and other presents.

Infinitely more ambitious is “The Birth of Christ”{42} by the great Lope de
Vega (1562-1635). It opens in Paradise, immediately after the Creation, and
ends with the adoration of the Three Kings. Full of allegorical conceits and
personified qualities, it will hardly please the taste of modern minds.
Another work of Lope's, “The Shepherds of Bethlehem,” a long pastoral in
prose and verse, published in 1612, contains, amid many incongruities,
some of the best of his shorter poems; one lullaby, sung by the Virgin in a
palm-grove while her Child sleeps, has been thus translated by Ticknor:—

“Holy angels and blest,
Through these palms as ye sweep,
Hold their branches at rest,
For my babe is asleep.

And ye Bethlehem palm-trees,
As stormy winds rush 150
In tempest and fury,
Your angry noise hush;
Move gently, move gently,
Restrain your wild sweep;
Hold your branches at rest,
My babe is asleep.

My babe all divine,
With earth's sorrows oppressed,
Seeks in slumber an instant
His grievings to rest;
He slumbers, he slumbers,
O, hush, then, and keep
Your branches all still,
My babe is asleep!”{43}

Apart from such modern revivals of the Christmas drama as Mr. Laurence
Housman's “Bethlehem,” Miss Buckton's “Eager Heart,” Mrs. Percy
Dearmer's “The Soul of the World,” and similar experiments in Germany
and France, a genuine tradition has lingered on in some parts of Europe into
modern times. We have already noticed some French and German instances;
to these may be added a few from other countries.

In Naples there is no Christmas without the “Cantata dei pastori”; it is
looked forward to no less than the Midnight Mass. Two or three theatres
compete for the public favour in the performance of this play in rude verse.
It begins with Adam and Eve and ends with the birth of Jesus and the
adoration of the shepherds. Many devils are brought on the stage, their arms
and legs laden with brass chains that rattle horribly. Awful are their names,
Lucifero, Satanasso, Belfegor, Belzebù, &c. They not only tempt Adam and
Eve, but annoy the Virgin and St. Joseph, until an angel comes and frightens
them away. Two non-Biblical figures are introduced, Razzullo and
Sarchiapone, who are tempted by devils and aided by angels.{44} In Sicily
too the Christmas play still lingers under the name of Pastorale.{45}

151A nineteenth-century Spanish survival of the “Stella” is described in
Fernan Caballero's sketch, “La Noche de Navidad.”{46} At the foot of the
altar of the village church, according to this account, images of the Virgin
and St. Joseph were placed, with the Holy Child between them, lying on
straw. On either side knelt a small boy dressed as an angel. Solemnly there
entered the church a number of men attired as shepherds, bearing their
offerings to the Child; afterwards they danced with slow and dignified
movements before the altar. The shepherds were followed by the richest
men of the village dressed as the Magi Kings, mounted on horseback, and
followed by their train. Before them went a shining star. On reaching the
church they dismounted; the first, representing a majestic old man with

white hair, offered incense to the Babe; the others, Caspar and Melchior,
myrrh and gold respectively. This was done on the feast of the Epiphany.

A remnant possibly of the “Stella” is to be found in a Christmas custom
extremely widespread in Europe and surviving even in some Protestant
lands—the carrying about of a star in memory of the Star of Bethlehem. It
is generally borne by a company of boys, who sing some sort of carol, and
expect a gift in return.

The practice is—or was—found as far north as Sweden. All through the
Christmas season the “star youths” go about from house to house. Three are
dressed up as the Magi Kings, a fourth carries on a stick a paper lantern in
the form of a six-pointed star, made to revolve and lighted by candles.
There are also a Judas, who bears the purse for the collection, and,
occasionally, a King Herod. A doggerel rhyme is sung, telling the story of
the Nativity and offering good wishes.{47} In Norway and Denmark
processions of a like character were formerly known.{48}

In Normandy at Christmas children used to go singing through the village
streets, carrying a lantern of coloured paper on a long osier rod.{49} At
Pleudihen in Brittany three young men representing the Magi sang carols in
the cottages, dressed in their holiday clothes covered with ribbons.{50}

In England there appears to be no trace of the custom, which is however
152

found in Germany, Austria, Holland, Italy, Bohemia, Roumania, Poland,
and Russia.{51}

In Thuringia a curious carol used to be sung, telling how Herod tried to
tempt the Wise Men—

“‘Oh, good Wise Men, come in and dine;
I will give you both beer and wine,

And hay and straw to make your bed,
And nought of payment shall be said.’”

But they answer:—

“‘Oh, no! oh, no! we must away,
We seek a little Child to-day,
A little Child, a mighty King,
Him who created everything.’”{52}

In Tyrol the “star-singing” is very much alive at the present day. In the
Upper Innthal three boys in white robes, with blackened faces and gold
paper crowns, go to every house on Epiphany Eve, one of them carrying a
golden star on a pole. They sing a carol, half religious, half comic—almost
a little drama—and are given money, cake, and drink. In the Ilsethal the
boys come on Christmas Eve, and presents are given them by well-to-do
people. In some parts there is but one singer, an old man with a white beard
and a turban, who twirls a revolving star. A remarkable point about the
Tyrolese star-singers is that before anything is given them they are told to
stamp on the snowy fields outside the houses, in order to promote the
growth of the crops in summer.{53}

In Little Russia the “star” is made of pasteboard and has a transparent
centre with a picture of Christ through which the light of a candle shines.
One boy carries the star and another twirls the points.{54} In Roumania it is
made of wood and adorned with frills and little bells. A representation of
the “manger,” illuminated from behind, forms the centre, and the star also
shows pictures of Adam and Eve and angels.{55}

153A curious traditional drama, in which pagan elements seem to have
mingled with the Herod story, is still performed by the Roumanians during
the Christmas festival. It is called in Wallachia “Vicleim” (from

Bethlehem), in Moldavia and Transylvania “Irozi” (plural from Irod =
Herod). At least ten persons figure in it: “Emperor” Herod, an old
grumbling monarch who speaks in harsh tones to his followers; an officer
and two soldiers in Roman attire; the three Magi, in Oriental garb, a child,
and “two comical figures—the paiaţa (the clown) and the moşul, or old
man, the former in harlequin accoutrement, the latter with a mask on his
face, a long beard, a hunch on his back, and dressed in a sheepskin with the
wool on the outside. The plot of the play is quite simple. The officer brings
the news that three strange men have been caught, going to Bethlehem to
adore the new-born Messiah; Herod orders them to be shown in: they enter
singing in a choir. Long dialogues ensue between them and Herod, who at
last orders them to be taken to prison. But then they address the Heavenly
Father, and shout imprecations on Herod, invoking celestial punishment on
him, at which unaccountable noises are heard, seeming to announce the
fulfilment of the curse. Herod falters, begs the Wise Men's forgiveness,
putting off his anger till more opportune times. The Wise Men retire.... Then
a child is introduced, who goes on his knees before Herod, with his hands
on his breast, asking pity. He gives clever answers to various questions and
foretells the Christ's future career, at which Herod stabs him. The whole
troupe now strikes up a tune of reproach to Herod, who falls on his knees in
deep repentance.” The play is sometimes performed by puppets instead of
living actors.{56}

Christmas plays performed by puppets are found in other countries too. In
Poland “during the week between Christmas and New Year is shown the
Jaselki or manger, a travelling series of scenes from the life of Christ or
even of modern peasants, a small travelling puppet-theatre, gorgeous with
tinsel and candles, and something like our ‘Punch and Judy’ show. The
market-place of Cracow, especially at night, is a very pretty spectacle, its
sidewalks all lined with these glittering Jaselki.”{57} In Madrid 154 at the
Epiphany a puppet-play was common, in which the events of the Nativity

and the Infancy were mimed by wooden figures,{58} and in Provence, in the
mid-nineteenth century, the Christmas scenes were represented in the same
way.{59}

Last may be mentioned a curious Mexican mixture of religion and
amusement, a sort of drama called the “Posadas,” described by Madame
Calderon de la Barca in her “Life in Mexico” (1843).{60} The custom was
based upon the wanderings of the Virgin and St. Joseph in Bethlehem in
search of repose. For eight days these wanderings of the holy pair to the
different posadas were represented. On Christmas Eve, says the narrator, “a
lighted candle was put into the hand of each lady [this was at a sort of
party], and a procession was formed, two by two, which marched all
through the house ... the whole party singing the Litanies.... A group of little
children, dressed as angels, joined the procession.... At last the procession
drew up before a door, and a shower of fireworks was sent flying over our
heads, I suppose to represent the descent of the angels; for a group of ladies
appeared, dressed to represent the shepherds.... Then voices, supposed to be
those of Mary and Joseph, struck up a hymn, in which they begged for
admittance, saying that the night was cold and dark, that the wind blew
hard, and that they prayed for a night's shelter. A chorus of voices from
within refused admittance. Again those without entreated shelter, and at
length declared that she at the door, who thus wandered in the night, and
had not where to lay her head, was the Queen of Heaven! At this name the
doors were thrown wide open, and the Holy Family entered singing. The
scene within was very pretty: a nacimiento.... One of the angels held a
waxen baby in her arms.... A padre took the baby from the angel and placed
it in the cradle, and the posada was completed. We then returned to the
drawing-room—angels, shepherds, and all, and danced till supper-time.”{60}
Here the religious drama has sunk to little more than a “Society” game.

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. MASACCIO
(Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum)

155

POSTSCRIPT

Before we pass on to the pagan aspects of Christmas, let us gather up our
thoughts in an attempt to realize the peculiar appeal of the Feast of the
Nativity, as it has been felt in the past, as it is felt to-day even by moderns
who have no belief in the historical truth of the story it commemorates.

This appeal of Christmas seems to lie in the union of two modes of feeling
which may be called the carol spirit and the mystical spirit. The carol
spirit—by this we may understand the simple, human joyousness, the
tender and graceful imagination, the kindly, intimate affection, which have
gathered round the cradle of the Christ Child. The folk-tune, the secular
song adapted to a sacred theme—such is the carol. What a sense of
kindliness, not of sentimentality, but of genuine human feeling, these old
songs give us, as though the folk who first sang them were more truly
comrades, more closely knit together than we under modern industrialism.

One element in the carol spirit is the rustic note that finds its sanction as
regards Christmas in St. Luke's story of the shepherds keeping watch over
their flocks by night. One thinks of the stillness over the fields, of the hinds
with their rough talk, “simply chatting in a rustic row,” of the keen air, and
the great burst of light and song that dazes their simple wits, of their
journey to Bethlehem where “the heaven-born Child all meanly wrapt in the
rude manger lies,” of the ox and ass linking the beasts of the field to the
Christmas adoration of mankind.[80]

For many people, indeed, the charm of Christmas is inseparably associated
with the country; it is lost in London—the city is too vast, too modern, too
sophisticated. It is bound up with the thought of frosty fields, of bells heard
far away, of bare trees 156 against the starlit sky, of carols sung not by trained

choirs but by rustic folk with rough accent, irregular time, and tunes learnt
by ear and not by book.

Again, without the idea of winter half the charm of Christmas would be
gone. Transplanted in the imagination of western Christendom from an
undefined season in the hot East to Europe at midwinter, the Nativity scenes
have taken on a new pathos with the thought of the bitter cold to which the
great Little One lay exposed in the rough stable, with the contrast between
the cold and darkness of the night and the fire of love veiled beneath that
infant form. Lux in tenebris is one of the strongest notes of Christmas: in
the bleak midwinter a light shines through the darkness; when all is cold
and gloom, the sky bursts into splendour, and in the dark cave is born the
Light of the World.

There is the idea of royalty too, with all it stands for of colour and
magnificence, though not so much in literature as in painting is this side of
the Christmas story represented. The Epiphany is the great opportunity for
imaginative development of the regal idea. Then is seen the union of utter
poverty with highest kingship; the monarchs of the East come to bow
before the humble Infant for whom the world has found no room in the inn.
How suggestive by their long, slow syllables are the Italian names of the
Magi. Gasparre, Baldassarre, Melchiorre—we picture Oriental monarchs in
robes mysteriously gorgeous, wrought with strange patterns, heavy with
gold and precious stones. With slow processional motion they advance,
bearing to the King of Kings their symbolic gifts, gold for His crowning,
incense for His worship, myrrh for His mortality, and with them come the
mystery, colour, and perfume of the East, the occult wisdom which bows
itself before the revelation in the Child.

Above all, as the foregoing pages have shown, it is the childhood of the
Redeemer that has won the heart of Europe for Christmas; it is the appeal to

the parental instinct, the love for the tender, weak, helpless, yet all-potential
babe, that has given the Church's festival its strongest hold. And this side of
Christmas is penetrated often by the mystical spirit—that sense of the
Infinite in the finite without which the highest human life is impossible.

157The feeling for Christmas varies from mere delight in the Christ Child as
a representative symbol on which to lavish affection, as a child delights in a
doll, to the mystical philosophy of Eckhart, in whose Christmas sermons the
Nativity is viewed as a type of the Birth of God in the depths of man's
being. Yet even the least spiritual forms of the cult of the Child are seldom
without some hint of the supersensual, the Infinite, and even in Eckhart
there is a love of concrete symbolism. Christmas stands peculiarly for the
sacramental principle that the outward and visible is a sign and shadow of
the inward and spiritual. It means the seeing of common, earthly things shot
through by the glory of the Infinite. “Its note,” as has been said of a stage of
the mystic consciousness, the Illuminative Way, “is sacramental not ascetic.
It entails ... the discovery of the Perfect One ablaze in the Many, not the
forsaking of the Many in order to find the One ... an ineffable radiance, a
beauty and a reality never before suspected, are perceived by a sort of
clairvoyance shining in the meanest things.”{1} Christmas is the festival of
the Divine Immanence, and it is natural that it should have been beloved by
the saint and mystic whose life was the supreme manifestation of the Via
Illuminativa, Francis of Assisi.

Christmas is the most human and lovable of the Church's feasts. Easter and
Ascensiontide speak of the rising and exaltation of a glorious being, clothed
in a spiritual body refined beyond all comparison with our natural flesh;
Whitsuntide tells of the coming of a mysterious, intangible Power—like the
wind, we cannot tell whence It cometh and whither It goeth; Trinity offers
for contemplation an ineffable paradox of Pure Being. But the God of
Christmas is no ethereal form, no mere spiritual essence, but a very human

child, feeling the cold and the roughness of the straw, needing to be warmed
and fed and cherished. Christmas is the festival of the natural body, of this
world; it means the consecration of the ordinary things of life, affection and
comradeship, eating and drinking and merrymaking; and in some degree the
memory of the Incarnation has been able to blend with the pagan joyance of
the New Year.
158 159

Part II—Pagan Survivals

g

160 161

CHAPTER VI

PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS

The Church and Superstition—Nature of Pagan Survivals—Racial
Origins—Roman Festivals of the Saturnalia and Kalends—Was
there a Teutonic Midwinter Festival?—The Teutonic, Celtic, and
Slav New Year—Customs attracted to Christmas or January 1—The
Winter Cycle of Festivals—Rationale of Festival Ritual: (a)
Sacrifice and Sacrament, (b) the Cult of the Dead, (c) Omens and
Charms for the New Year—Compromise in the Later Middle
Ages—The Puritans and Christmas—Decay of Old Traditions.

NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA.
An Asiatic example of animal masks.

We have now to leave the commemoration of the Nativity of Christ, and to
turn to the other side of Christmas—its many traditional observances which,
though sometimes coloured by Christianity, have nothing to do with the
Birth of the Redeemer. This class of customs has often, especially in the
first millennium of our era, been the object of condemnations by
ecclesiastics, and represents the old paganism which Christianity failed to

extinguish. The Church has played a double part, a part of sheer
antagonism, forcing heathen customs into the shade, into a more or less
surreptitious and unprogressive life, and a part of adaptation, baptizing
them into Christ, giving them a Christian name and interpretation, and often
modifying their form. The general effect of Christianity upon pagan usages
is well suggested by Dr. Karl Pearson:—

“What the missionary could he repressed, the more as his church
grew in strength; what he could not repress he adopted or simply
left unregarded.... What the missionary tried to repress became
mediaeval witchcraft; what he judiciously disregarded survives to
this 162 day in peasant weddings and in the folk-festivals at the great
changes of season.”{1}

We find then many pagan practices concealed beneath a superficial
Christianity—often under the mantle of some saint—but side by side with
these are many usages never Christianized even in appearance, and
obviously identical with heathen customs against which the Church
thundered in the days of her youth. Grown old and tolerant—except of
novelties—she has long since ceased to attack them, and they have
themselves mostly lost all definite religious meaning. As the old pagan faith
decayed, they tended to become in a literal sense “superstition,” something
standing over, like shells from which the living occupant has gone. They are
now often mere “survivals” in the technical folk-lore sense, pieces of
custom separated from the beliefs that once gave them meaning, performed
only because in a vague sort of way they are supposed to bring good luck.
In many cases those who practise them would be quite unable to explain
how or why they work for good.

Mental inertia, the instinct to do and believe what has always been done and
believed, has sometimes preserved the animating faith as well as the
external form of these practices, but often all serious significance has

departed. What was once religious or magical ritual, upon the due
observance of which the welfare of the community was believed to depend,
has become mere pageantry and amusement, often a mere children's
game.{2}

Sometimes the spirit of a later age has worked upon these pagan customs,
revivifying and transforming them, giving them charm. Often, however, one
does not find in them the poetry, the warm humanity, the humour, which
mark the creations of popular Catholicism. They are fossils and their
interest is that of the fossil: they are records of a vanished world and help us
to an imaginative reconstruction of it. But further, just as on a stratum of
rock rich in fossils there may be fair meadows and gardens and groves,
depending for their life on the denudation of the rock beneath, so have these
ancient religious products largely supplied the soil in which more spiritual
and more 163 beautiful things have flourished. Amid these, as has been well
said, “they still emerge, unchanged and unchanging, like the quaint
outcrops of some ancient rock formation amid rich vegetation and fragrant
flowers.”{3}

The survivals of pagan religion at Christian festivals relate not so much to
the worship of definite divinities—against this the missionaries made their
most determined efforts, and the names of the old gods have practically
disappeared—as to cults which preceded the development of
anthropomorphic gods with names and attributes. These cults, paid to less
personally conceived spirits, were of older standing and no doubt had
deeper roots in the popular mind. Fundamentally associated with
agricultural and pastoral life, they have in many cases been preserved by the
most conservative element in the population, the peasantry.

Many of the customs we shall meet with are magical, rather than religious
in the proper sense; they are not directed to the conciliation of spiritual

beings, but spring from primitive man's belief “that in order to produce the
great phenomena of nature on which his life depended he had only to
imitate them.”{4} Even when they have a definitely religious character, and
are connected with some spirit, magical elements are often found in them.

Before we consider these customs in detail it will be necessary to survey the
pagan festivals briefly alluded to in Chapter I., to note the various ideas and
practices that characterized them, and to study the attitude of the Church
towards survivals of such practices while the conversion of Europe was in
progress, and also during the Middle Ages.

The development of religious custom and belief in Europe is a matter of
such vast complexity that I cannot in a book of this kind attempt more than
the roughest outline of the probable origins of the observances, purely
pagan or half-Christianized, clustering round Christmas. It is difficult, in the
present state of knowledge, to discern clearly the contributions of different
peoples to the traditional customs of Europe, and even, in many cases, to
say whether a given custom is “Aryan” or pre-Aryan. The proportion of the
Aryan military aristocracy to the peoples whom they conquered was not
uniform in all countries, and 164 probably was often small. While the
families of the conquerors succeeded in imposing their languages, it by no
means necessarily follows that the folk-practices of countries now Aryan in
speech came entirely or even chiefly from Aryan sources. Religious
tradition has a marvellous power of persistence, and it must be remembered
that the lands conquered by men of Aryan speech had been previously
occupied for immense periods.{5} Similarly, in countries like our own,
which have been successively invaded by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons,
Danes, and Normans, it is often extraordinarily hard to say even to what
national source a given custom should be assigned.

It is but tentatively and with uncertain hands that scholars are trying to
separate the racial strains in the folk-traditions of Europe, and here I can
hardly do more than point out three formative elements in Christian
customs: the ecclesiastical, the classical (Greek and Roman), and the
barbarian, taking the last broadly and without a minute racial analysis. So
far, indeed, as ritual, apart from mythology, is concerned, there seems to be
a broad common ground of tradition among the Aryan-speaking peoples.
How far this is due to a common derivation we need not here attempt to
decide. The folk-lore of the whole world, it is to be noted, “reveals for the
same stages of civilization a wonderful uniformity and homogeneity.... This
uniformity is not, however, due to necessary uniformity of origin, but to a
great extent to the fact that it represents the state of equilibrium arrived at
between minds at a certain level and their environment.”{6}

The scientific study of primitive religion is still almost in its infancy, and a
large amount of conjecture must necessarily enter into any explanations of
popular ritual that can be offered. In attempting to account for Christmas
customs we must be mindful, therefore, of the tentative nature of the
theories put forward. Again, it is important to remember that ritual practices
are far more enduring than the explanations given to them. “The antique
religions,” to quote the words of Robertson Smith, “had for the most part no
creed; they consisted entirely of institutions and practices ... as a rule we
find that while the practice was 165 rigorously fixed, the meaning attached to
it was extremely vague, and the same rite was explained by different people
in different ways.”{7}

Thus if we can arrive at the significance of a rite at a given period, it by no
means follows that those who began it meant the same thing. At the time of
the conflict of the heathen religions with Christianity elaborate structures of
mythology had grown up around their traditional ceremonial, assigning to it
meanings that had often little to do with its original purpose. Often, too,

when the purpose was changed, new ceremonies were added, so that a rite
may look very unlike what it was at first.

With these cautions and reservations we must now try to trace the
connection between present-day or recent goings-on about Christmas-time
and the festival practices of pre-Christian Europe.

Christmas, as we saw in Chapter I., has taken the date of the Natalis Invicti.
We need not linger over this feast, for it was not attended by folk-customs,
and there is nothing to connect it with modern survivals. The Roman
festivals that really count for our present purpose are the Kalends of
January and, probably, the Saturnalia. The influence of the Kalends is
strongest naturally in the Latin countries, but is found also all over Europe.
The influence of the Saturnalia is less certain; the festival is not mentioned
in ecclesiastical condemnations after the institution of Christmas, and
possibly its popularity was not so widespread as that of the Kalends. There
are, however, some curiously interesting Christmas parallels to its usages.

The strictly religious feast of the Saturnalia{8} was held on December 17,
but the festal customs were kept up for seven days, thus lasting until the day
before our Christmas Eve. Among them was a fair called the sigillariorum
celebritas, for the sale of little images of clay or paste which were given
away as presents.[81] Candles seem also to have been given away, perhaps
166 as symbols of, or even charms to ensure, the return of the sun's power

after the solstice. The most remarkable and typical feature, however, of the
Saturnalia was the mingling of all classes in a common jollity. Something
of the character of the celebration (in a Hellenized form) may be gathered
from the “Cronia” or “Saturnalia” of Lucian, a dialogue between Cronus or
Saturn and his priest. We learn from it that the festivities were marked by
“drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings

and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an
occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water,” and that slaves had
licence to revile their lords.{9}

The spirit of the season may be judged from the legislation which Lucian
attributes to Cronosolon, priest and prophet of Cronus, much as a modern
writer might make Father Christmas or Santa Klaus lay down rules for the
due observance of Yule. Here are some of the laws:—

“All business, be it public or private, is forbidden during the feast
days, save such as tends to sport and solace and delight. Let none
follow their avocations saving cooks and bakers.

All men shall be equal, slave and free, rich and poor, one with
another.

Anger, resentment, threats, are contrary to law.

No discourse shall be either composed or delivered, except it be
witty and lusty, conducing to mirth and jollity. ”

There follow directions as to the sending of presents of money, clothing, or
vessels, by rich men to poor friends, and as to poor men's gifts in return. If
the poor man have learning, his return gift is to be “an ancient book, but of
good omen and festive humour, or a writing of his own after his ability....
For the unlearned, let him send a garland or grains of frankincense.” The
“Cronosolon” closes with “Laws of the Board,” of which the following are
a few:—

“Every man shall take place as chance may direct; dignities and
birth and wealth shall give no precedence. 167

All shall be served with the same wine.... Every man's portion of
meat shall be alike.

When the rich man shall feast his slaves, let his friends serve with
him. ”{11}

Over the whole festival brooded the thought of a golden age in the distant
past, when Saturn ruled, a just and kindly monarch, when all men were
good and all men were happy.

A striking feature of the Saturnalia was the choosing by lot of a mock king,
to preside over the revels. His word was law, and he was able to lay
ridiculous commands upon the guests; “one,” says Lucian, “must shout out
a libel on himself, another dance naked, or pick up the flute-girl and carry
her thrice round the house.”{12} This king may have been originally the
representative of the god Saturn himself. In the days of the classical writers
he is a mere “Lord of Misrule,” but Dr. Frazer has propounded the very
interesting theory that this time of privilege and gaiety was once but the
prelude to a grim sacrifice in which he had to die in the character of the
god, giving his life for the world.{13} Dr. Frazer's theory, dependent for its
evidence upon the narrative of the martyrdom of a fourth-century saint,
Dasius by name, has been keenly criticized by Dr. Warde Fowler. He holds
that there is nothing whatever to show that the “Saturn” who in the fourth
century, according to the story, was sacrificed by soldiers on the Danube,
had anything to do with the customs of ancient Rome.{14} Still, in whatever
way the king of the Saturnalia may be explained, it is interesting to note his
existence and compare him with the merry monarchs whom we shall meet
at Christmas and Twelfth Night.

How far the Saturnalian customs in general were of old Latin origin it is
difficult to say; the name Saturnus (connected with the root of serere, to
sow) and the date point to a real Roman festival of the sowing of the crops,
but this was heavily overlaid with Greek ideas and practice.{15} It is
especially important to bear this in mind in considering Lucian's statements.

The same is true of the festival of the January Kalends, a few days after the
Saturnalia. On January 1, the Roman New 168 Year's Day, the new consuls
were inducted into office, and for at least three days high festival was kept.
The houses were decorated with lights and greenery—these, we shall find,
may be partly responsible for the modern Christmas-tree. As at the
Saturnalia masters drank and gambled with slaves. Vota, or solemn wishes
of prosperity for the Emperor during the New Year, were customary, and the
people and the Senate were even expected to present gifts of money to him.
The Emperor Caligula excited much disgust by publishing an edict
requiring these gifts and by standing in the porch of his palace to receive
them in person. Such gifts, not only presented to the Emperor, but
frequently exchanged between private persons, were called strenae, a name
still surviving in the French étrennes (New Year's presents).{16}

An interesting and very full account of the Kalends celebrations is given in
two discourses of Libanius, the famous Greek sophist of the fourth
century:—

“The festival of the Kalends,” he says, “is celebrated everywhere as
far as the limits of the Roman Empire extend.... Everywhere may be
seen carousals and well-laden tables; luxurious abundance is found
in the houses of the rich, but also in the houses of the poor better
food than usual is put upon the table. The impulse to spend seizes
everyone. He who the whole year through has taken pleasure in
saving and piling up his pence, becomes suddenly extravagant. He
who erstwhile was accustomed and preferred to live poorly, now at
this feast enjoys himself as much as his means will allow.... People
are not only generous towards themselves, but also towards their
fellow-men. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides.... The
highroads and footpaths are covered with whole processions of
laden men and beasts.... As the thousand flowers which burst forth
everywhere are the adornment of Spring, so are the thousand
presents poured out on all sides, the decoration of the Kalends feast.

It may justly be said that it is the fairest time of the year.... The
Kalends festival banishes all that is connected with toil, and allows
men to give themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment. From the
minds of young people it removes two kinds of dread: the dread of
the schoolmaster and the dread of the stern pedagogue. The slave
also it allows, so far as possible, to breathe the air of freedom....
169 Another great quality of the festival is that it teaches men not to

hold too fast to their money, but to part with it and let it pass into
other hands.”{17}

The resemblances here to modern Christmas customs are very striking. In
another discourse Libanius speaks of processions on the Eve of the festival.
Few people, he says, go to bed; most go about the streets with singing and
leaping and all sorts of mockery. The severest moralist utters no blame on
this occasion. When morning begins to dawn they decorate their houses
with laurels and other greenery, and at daybreak may go to bed to sleep off
their intoxication, for many deem it necessary at this feast to follow the
flowing bowl. On the 1st of January money is distributed to the populace;
on the 2nd no more presents are given: it is customary to stay at home
playing dice, masters and slaves together. On the 3rd there is racing; on the
4th the festivities begin to decline, but they are not altogether over on the
5th.{18}

Another feature of the Kalends, recorded not in the pages of classical
writers but in ecclesiastical condemnations, was the custom of dressing up
in the hides of animals, in women's clothes, and in masks of various
kinds.{19} Dr. Tille{20} regards this as Italian in origin, but it seems likely
that it was a native custom in Greece, Gaul, Germany, and other countries
conquered by the Romans. In Greece the skin-clad mummers may have
belonged to the winter festivals of Dionysus supplanted by the
Kalendae.{21}

The Church's denunciations of pagan festal practices in the winter season
are mainly directed against the Kalends celebrations, and show into how
many regions the keeping of the feast had spread. Complaints of its
continued observance abound in the writings of churchmen and the decrees
of councils. In the second volume of his “Mediaeval Stage”{22} Mr.
Chambers has made an interesting collection of forty excerpts from such
denunciations, ranging in date from the fourth century to the eleventh, and
coming from Spain, Italy, Antioch, northern Africa, Constantinople,
Germany, England, and various districts of what is now France.

170As a specimen I may translate a passage describing at some length the
practices condemned. It is from a sermon often ascribed to St. Augustine of
Hippo, but probably composed in the sixth century, very likely by Caesarius
of Arles in southern Gaul:—

“On those days,” says the preacher, speaking of the Kalends of
January, “the heathen, reversing the order of all things, dress
themselves up in indecent deformities.... These miserable men, and
what is worse, some who have been baptized, put on counterfeit
forms and monstrous faces, at which one should rather be ashamed
and sad. For what reasonable man would believe that any men in
their senses would by making a stag (cervulum) turn themselves into
the appearance of animals? Some are clothed in the hides of cattle;
others put on the heads of beasts, rejoicing and exulting that they
have so transformed themselves into the shapes of animals that they
no longer appear to be men.... How vile, further, it is that those who
have been born men are clothed in women's dresses, and by the
vilest change effeminate their manly strength by taking on the forms
of girls, blushing not to clothe their warlike arms in women's
garments; they have bearded faces, and yet they wish to appear
women.... There are some who on the Kalends of January practise
auguries, and do not allow fire out of their houses or any other
favour to anyone who asks. Also they both receive and give
diabolical presents (strenas). Some country people, moreover, lay

tables with plenty of things necessary for eating ... thinking that thus
the Kalends of January will be a warranty that all through the year
their feasting will be in like measure abundant. Now as for them
who on those days observe any heathen customs, it is to be feared
that the name of Christian will avail them nought. And therefore our
holy fathers of old, considering that the majority of men on those
days became slaves to gluttony and riotous living and raved in
drunkenness and impious dancing, determined for the whole world
that throughout the Churches a public fast should be proclaimed....
Let us therefore fast, beloved brethren, on those days.... For he who
on the Kalends shows any civility to foolish men who are wantonly
sporting, is undoubtedly a partaker of their sin.”{23}

There are several points to be noted here. First, the zeal of the Church
against the Kalends celebrations as impious relics of 171 heathenism: to root
them out she even made the first three days of the year a solemn fast with
litanies.{24} Next, the particular offences should be observed. These are:
first, the dressing up of men in the hides of animals and the clothes of
women; next, the New Year auguries and the superstition about fire, the
giving of presents, and the laying of tables with good things; and last,
drunkenness and riot in general. All these we shall find fully represented in
modern Christmas customs.

That Roman customs either spread to Germany, or were paralleled there, is
shown by a curious letter written in 742 by St. Boniface to Pope Zacharias.
The saint complained that certain Alamanni, Bavarians, and Franks refused
to give up various heathen practices because they had seen such things done
in the sacred city of Rome, close to St. Peter's, and, as they deemed, with
the sanction of the clergy. On New Year's Eve, it was alleged, processions
went through the streets of Rome, with impious songs and heathen cries;
tables of fortune were set up, and at that time no one would lend fire or iron
or any other article to his neighbour. The Pope replied that these things were

odious to him, and should be so to all Christians; and next year all such
practices at the January Kalends were formally forbidden by the Council of
Rome.{25}

So much for Roman customs; if indeed such practices as beast-masking are
Roman, and not derived from the religion of peoples conquered by the
imperial legions. We must now turn to the winter festivals of the barbarians
with whom the Church began to come into contact soon after the
establishment of Christmas.

Much attention has been bestowed upon a supposed midwinter festival of
the ancient Germans. In the mid-nineteenth century it was customary to
speak of Christmas and the Twelve Nights as a continuation of the holy
season kept by our forefathers at the winter solstice. The festive fires of
Christmas were regarded as symbols of the sun, who then began his upward
journey in the heavens, while the name Yule was traced back to the Anglo-
Saxon word hwéol (wheel), and connected with the circular 172 course of the
sun through the wheeling-points of the solstices and equinoxes. More recent
research, however, has thrown the gravest doubts upon the existence of any
Teutonic festival at the winter solstice.[82] It appears from philology and the
study of surviving customs that the Teutonic peoples had no knowledge of
the solstices and equinoxes, and until the introduction of the Roman
Calendar divided their year not into four parts but into two, three, and six,
holding their New Year's Day with its attendant festivities not at the end of
December or beginning of January, but towards the middle of November. At
that time in Central Europe the first snowfall usually occurred and the
pastures were closed to the flocks. A great slaughter of cattle would then
take place, it being impossible to keep the beasts in stall throughout the

winter, and this time of slaughter would naturally be a season of feasting
and sacrifice and religious observances.[83]{ 26}

The Celtic year, like the Teutonic, appears to have begun in November with
the feast of Samhain—a name that may mean either “summer-end” or
“assembly.” It appears to have been in origin a “pastoral and agricultural
festival, which in time came to be looked upon as affording assistance to the
powers of growth in their conflict with the powers of blight,” and to have
had many features in common with the Teutonic feast at the same season,
for instance animal sacrifice, commemoration of the dead, and omens and
charms for the New Year.{27}

There is some reason also to believe that the New Year 173 festival of the
Slavs took place in the autumn and that its usages have been transferred to
the feast of the Nativity.{29} A description based on contemporary
documents cannot be given of these barbarian festivals; we have, rather, to
reconstruct them from survivals in popular custom. At the close of this
book, when such relics have been studied, we may have gained some idea
of what went on upon these pre-Christian holy-days. It is the Teutonic
customs that have been most fully recorded and discussed by scholars, and
these will loom largest in our review; at the same time Celtic and Slav
practices will be considered, and we shall find that they often closely
resemble those current in Teutonic lands.

The customs of the old New Year feasts have frequently wandered from
their original November date, and to this fact we owe whatever elements of
northern paganism are to be found in Christmas. Some practices seem to
have been put forward to Michaelmas; one side of the festivals, the cult of
the dead, is represented especially by All Saints’ and All Souls’ days
(November 1 and 2). St. Martin's Day (November 11) probably marks as
nearly as possible the old Teutonic date, and is still in Germany an

important folk-feast attended by many customs derived from the beginning-
of-winter festival. Other practices are found strewn over various holy-days
between Martinmas and Epiphany, and concentrated above all on the
Church's feast of the Nativity and the Roman New Year's Day, January 1,
both of which had naturally great power of attraction.{30}

The progress of agriculture, as Dr. Tille points out,{31} tended to destroy the
mid-November celebration. In the Carolingian period an improvement took
place in the cultivation of meadows, and the increased quantity of hay made
it possible to keep the animals fattening in stall, instead of slaughtering
them as soon as the pastures were closed. Thus the killing-time, with its
festivities, became later and later. St. Andrew's Day (November 30) and St.
Nicholas's (December 6) may mark stages in its progress into the winter. In
St. Nicholas's Day, indeed, we find a feast that closely resembles
Martinmas, and seems to be the same folk-festival transferred to a later
date. Again, as regards England we 174 must remember the difference
between its climate and that of Central Europe. Mid-November would here
not be a date beyond which pasturing was impossible, and thus the
slaughter and feast held then by Angles and Saxons in their old German
home would tend to be delayed.{32}

Christmas, as will be gathered from the foregoing, cannot on its pagan side
be separated from the folk-feasts of November and December. The meaning
of the term will therefore here be so extended as to cover the whole period
between All Saints’ Day and Epiphany. That this is not too violent a
proceeding will be seen later on.

For the purposes of this book it seems best to treat the winter festivals
calendarially, so to speak: to start at the beginning of November, and show
them in procession, suggesting, as far as may be, the probable origins of the
customs observed. Thus we may avoid the dismemberment caused by

taking out certain practices from various festivals and grouping them under
their probable origins, a method which would, moreover, be perilous in
view of the very conjectural nature of the theories offered.

Before we pass to our procession of festivals, something must be said about
the general nature and rationale of the customs associated with them. For
convenience these customs may be divided into three groups:—

I. Sacrificial or Sacramental Practices.
II. Customs connected with the Cult of the Dead and the
Family Hearth.
III. Omens and Charms for the New Year.

Though these three classes overlap and it is sometimes difficult to place a
given practice exclusively in one of them, they will form a useful
framework for a brief account of the primitive ritual which survives at the
winter festivals.

I. Sacrificial and Sacramental Practices.

To most people, probably, the word “sacrifice” suggests an offering,
something presented to a divinity in order to obtain his favour. Such seems
to have been the meaning generally given to 175 sacrificial rites in Europe
when Christianity came into conflict with paganism. It is, however, held by
many scholars that the original purpose of sacrifice was sacramental—the
partaking by the worshipper of the divine life, conceived of as present in the
victim, rather than the offering of a gift to a divinity.{33}

The whole subject of sacred animals is obscure, and in regard, especially, to
totemism—defined by Dr. Frazer{34} as “belief in the kinship of certain
families with certain species of animals” and practices based upon that

belief—the most divergent views are held by scholars. The religious
significance which some have seen in totemistic customs is denied by
others, while there is much disagreement as to the probability of their
having been widespread in Europe. Still, whatever may be the truth about
totemism, there is much that points to the sometime existence in Europe of
sacrifices that were not offerings, but solemn feasts of communion in the
flesh and blood of a worshipful animal.{35} That the idea of sacrificial
communion preceded the sacrifice-gift is suggested by the fact that in many
customs which appear to be sacrificial survivals the body of the victim has
some kind of sacramental efficacy; it conveys a blessing to that which is
brought into contact with it. The actual eating and drinking of the flesh and
blood is the most perfect mode of contact, but the same end seems to have
been aimed at in such customs as the sprinkling of worshippers with blood,
the carrying of the victim in procession from house to house, the burying of
flesh in furrows to make the crops grow, and the wearing of hides, heads, or
horns of sacrificed beasts.{36} We shall meet, during the Christmas season,
with various practices that seem to have originated either in a sacrificial
feast or in some such sacramental rites as have just been described. So
peculiarly prominent are animal masks, apparently derived from hide-,
head-, and horn-wearing, that we may dwell upon them a little at this point.

We have already seen how much trouble the Kalends custom of beast-
masking gave the ecclesiastics. Its probable origin is thus suggested by
Robertson Smith:—

“It is ... appropriate that the worshipper should dress himself in
176 the skin of a victim, and so, as it were, envelop himself in its

sanctity. To rude nations dress is not merely a physical comfort, but
a fixed part of social religion, a thing by which a man constantly
bears on his body the token of his religion, and which is itself a
charm and a means of divine protection.... When the dress of
sacrificial skin, which at once declared a man's religion and his

sacred kindred, ceased to be used in ordinary life, it was still
retained in holy and especially in piacular functions; ... examples are
afforded by the Dionysiac mysteries and other Greek rites, and by
almost every rude religion; while in later cults the old rite survives
at least in the religious use of animal masks.”[84]{ 37}

If we accept the animal-worship and sacrificial communion theory, many a
Christmas custom will carry us back in thought to a stage of religion far
earlier than the Greek and Roman classics or the Celtic and Teutonic
mythology of the conversion period: we shall be taken back to a time before
men had come to have anthropomorphic gods, when they were not
conscious of their superiority to the beasts of the field, but regarded these
beings, mysterious in their actions, extraordinary in their powers, as
incarnations of potent spirits. At this stage of thought, it would seem, there
were as yet no definite divinities with personal names and characters, but
the world was full of spirits immanent in animal or plant or chosen human
being, and able to pass from one incarnation to another. Or indeed it may be
that animal sacrifice originated at a stage of religion before the idea of
definite “spirits” had arisen, when man was conscious rather of a vague
force like the Melanesian mana, in himself and in almost everything, and
“constantly trembling on the verge of personality.”{38} “Mana ” better than
“god” or “spirit” may express that with which the partaker in the communal
feast originally sought contact. “When you sacrifice,” to quote some words
of Miss Jane Harrison, “you build as it were a bridge between your mana,
your will, your desire, which is weak and impotent, and 177 that unseen
outside mana which you believe to be strong and efficacious. In the fruits of
the earth which grow by some unseen power there is much mana; you want
that mana. In the loud-roaring bull and the thunder is much mana; you want
that mana. It would be well to get some, to eat a piece of that bull raw, but it
is dangerous, not a thing to do unawares alone; so you consecrate the first-
fruits, you sacrifice the bull and then in safety you—communicate.”{39}

“Sanctity”—the quality of awfulness and mystery—rather than divinity or
personality, may have been what primitive man saw in the beasts and birds
which he venerated in “their silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of their
limited doings.”{40} When we use the word “spirit” in connection with the
pagan sacramental practices of Christmastide, it is well to bear in mind the
possibility that at the origin of these customs there may have been no notion
of communion with strictly personal beings, but rather some such mana
idea as has been suggested above.

It is probable that animal-cults had their origin at a stage of human life
preceding agriculture, when man lived not upon cultivated plants or tamed
beasts, but upon roots and fruits and the products of the chase. Some
scholars, indeed, hold that the domestication of animals for practical use
was an outcome of the sacred, inviolable character of certain creatures: they
may originally have been spared not for reasons of convenience but because
it was deemed a crime to kill them—except upon certain solemn
occasions—and may have become friendly towards man through living by
his side.{41} On the other hand it is possible that totems were originally
staple articles of food, that they were sacred because they were eaten with
satisfaction, and that the very awe and respect attached to them because of
their life-giving powers tended to remove them from common use and limit
their consumption to rare ceremonial occasions.

Closely akin to the worship of animals is that of plants, and especially trees,
and there is much evidence pointing to sacramental cults in connection with
the plant-world.{42} Some cakes and special vegetable dishes eaten on festal
days may be survivals of sacramental feasts parallel to those upon the flesh
and blood of 178 an animal victim. Benediction by external contact, again, is
suggested by the widespread use in various ways of branches or sprigs or
whole trees. The Christmas-tree and evergreen decorations are the most
obvious examples; we shall see others in the course of our survey, and in

connection with plants as well as with animals we shall meet with
processions intended to convey a blessing to every house by carrying about
the sacred elements—to borrow a term from Christian theology. Even the
familiar practice of going carol-singing may be a Christianized form of
some such perambulation.

It is possible that men and women had originally separate cults. The cult of
animals, according to a theory set forth by Mr. Chambers, would at first
belong to the men, who as hunters worshipped the beasts they slew,
apologizing to them, as some primitive people do to-day, for the slaughter
they were obliged to commit. Other animals, apparently, were held too
sacred to be slain, except upon rare and solemn occasions, and hence, as we
have seen, may have arisen domestication and the pastoral life which, with
its religious rites, was the affair of the men. To women, on the other hand,
belonged agriculture; the cult of Mother Earth and the vegetation-spirits
seems to have been originally theirs. Later the two cults would coalesce, but
a hint of the time when certain rites were practised only by women may be
found in that dressing up of men in female garments which appears not
merely in the old Kalends customs but in some modern survivals.[85]{ 43}

Apart from any special theory of the origin of sacrifice, we may note the
association at Christmas of physical feasting with religious rejoicing. In this
the modern European is the heir of an agelong tradition. “Everywhere,”
says Robertson Smith, 179 “we find that a sacrifice ordinarily involves a
feast, and that a feast cannot be provided without a sacrifice. For a feast is
not complete without flesh, and in early times the rule that all slaughter is
sacrifice was not confined to the Semites. The identity of religious
occasions and festal seasons may indeed be taken as the determining
characteristic of the type of ancient religion generally; when men meet their
god they feast and are glad together, and whenever they feast and are glad
they desire that the god should be of the party.”{45} To the paganism that

preceded Christianity we must look for the origin of that Christmas feasting
which has not seldom been a matter of scandal for the severer type of
churchman.

[Transcriber's Note: The marker for note {44} was not present in the
page scan]

A letter addressed in 601 by Pope Gregory the Great to Abbot Mellitus,
giving him instructions to be handed on to Augustine of Canterbury, throws
a vivid light on the process by which heathen sacrificial feasts were turned
into Christian festivals. “Because,” the Pope says of the Anglo-Saxons,
“they are wont to slay many oxen in sacrifices to demons, some solemnity
should be put in the place of this, so that on the day of the dedication of the
churches, or the nativities of the holy martyrs whose relics are placed there,
they may make for themselves tabernacles of branches of trees around those
churches which have been changed from heathen temples, and may
celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting. Nor let them now sacrifice
animals to the Devil, but to the praise of God kill animals for their own
eating, and render thanks to the Giver of all for their abundance; so that
while some outward joys are retained for them, they may more readily
respond to inward joys. For from obdurate minds it is undoubtedly
impossible to cut off everything at once, because he who strives to ascend
to the highest place rises by degrees or steps and not by leaps.”{46}

We see here very plainly the mind of the ecclesiastical compromiser. Direct
sacrifice to heathen gods the Church of course could not dream of
tolerating; it had been the very centre of her attack since the days of St.
Paul, and refusal to take part in it had cost the martyrs their lives. Yet the
festivity and merrymaking to which it gave occasion were to be left to the
180 people, for a time at all events. The policy had its advantages, it made the

Church festivals popular; but it had also its dangers, it encouraged the

intrusion of a pagan fleshly element into their austere and chastened joys. A
certain orgiastic licence crept in, an unbridling of the physical appetites,
which has ever been a source of sorrow and anger to the most earnest
Christians and even led the Puritans of the seventeenth century to condemn
all festivals as diabolical.

Before we leave the subject of sacrificial survivals, it must be added that
certain Christmas customs may come, little as those who practise them
suspect it, from that darkest of religious rites, human sacrifice. Reference
has already been made to Dr. Frazer's view of the Saturnalian king and his
awful origin. We shall meet with various similar figures during the
Christmas season—the “King of the Bean,” for instance, and the “Bishop of
Fools.” If the theories about human sacrifice set forth in “The Golden
Bough” be accepted, we may regard these personages as having once been
mock kings chosen to suffer instead of the real kings, who had at first to
perish by a violent death in order to preserve from the decay of age the
divine life incarnate in them. Such mock monarchs, according to Dr. Frazer,
were exalted for a brief season to the glory and luxury of kingship ere their
doom fell upon them;{47} in the Christmas “kings” the splendour alone has
survived, the dark side is forgotten.

II. The Cult of the Dead and the Family Hearth.

Round the winter festival cluster certain customs apparently connected with
distinctively domestic religion, rather than with such public and communal
cults as we have considered under the heading of Sacrifice and Sacrament.
A festival of the family—that is, perhaps, what Christmas most prominently
is to-day: it is the great season for gatherings “round the old fireside”; it is a
joyous time for the children of the house, and the memory of the departed is
vivid then, if unexpressed. Further, by the Yule log customs and certain
other ceremonies still practised in the remoter corners of Europe, we are

carried back to a stage of thought at which the dead were conceived as
hovering about or 181 visiting the abodes of the living. Ancestral spirits, it
seems, were once believed to be immanent in the fire that burned on the
hearth, and had to be propitiated with libations, while elsewhere the souls of
the dead were thought to return to their old homes at the New Year, and
meat and drink had to be set out for them. The Church's establishment of
All Souls’ Day did much to keep practices of tendance of the departed to
early November, but sometimes these have wandered to later dates and
especially to Christmas. In folk-practices directed towards the dead two
tendencies are to be found: on the one hand affection or at all events
consideration for the departed persists, and efforts are made to make them
comfortable; on the other, they are regarded with dread, and the sight of
them is avoided by the living.

In the passage quoted from Caesarius of Arles there was mention of the
laying of tables with abundance of food at the Kalends. The same practice is
condemned by St. Jerome in the fifth century, and is by him specially
connected with Egypt.{48} He, like Caesarius and others, regards it as a kind
of charm to ensure abundance during the coming year, but it is very
possible that its real purpose was different, that the food was an offering to
supernatural beings, the guardians and representatives of the dead.{49}
Burchardus of Worms in the early eleventh century says definitely that in
his time tables were laid with food and drink and three knives for “those
three Sisters whom the ancients in their folly called Parcae.”{50} The
Parcae were apparently identified with the three “weird” Sisters known in
England and in other Teutonic regions, and seem to have some connection
with the fairies. As we shall see later on, it is still in some places the custom
to lay out tables for supernatural beings, whether, as at All Souls’ tide,
explicitly for the dead, or for Frau Perchta, or for the Virgin or some other

Christian figure. Possibly the name Modranicht (night of mothers), which
Bede gives to Christmas Eve,{51} may be connected with this practice.

Not remote, probably, in origin from a belief in “ghosts” is the driving away
of spirits that sometimes takes place about 182 Christmas-time. Many
peoples, as Dr. Frazer has shown, have an annual expulsion of goblins,
ghosts, devils, witches, and evil influences, commonly at the end of the Old
or beginning of the New Year. Sometimes the beings so driven away are
definitely the spirits of the departed. An appalling racket and a great flare of
torches are common features of these expulsions, and we shall meet with
similar customs during the Christmas season. Such purifications, according
to Dr. Frazer, are often preceded or followed by periods of licence, for when
the burden of evil is about to be, or has just been, removed, it is felt that a
little temporary freedom from moral restraints may be allowed with
impunity.{52} Hence possibly, in part, the licence which has often attended
the Christmas season.

III. Omens and Charms for the New Year.

Customs of augury are to be met with at various dates, which may mark the
gradual shifting of the New Year festival from early November to
January 1, while actual charms to secure prosperity are commonest at
Christmas itself or at the modern New Year. Magical rather than religious in
character, they are attempts to discover or influence the future by a sort of
crude scientific method based on supposed analogies. Beneath the charms
lie the primitive ideas that like produces like and that things which have
once been in contact continue to act upon one another after they are
separated in space.{53} The same ideas obviously underlie many of the
sacramental practices alluded to a few pages back, and these are often of the
nature of charms. Probably, too, among New Year charms should be
included such institutions as the bonfires on Hallowe'en in Celtic countries,

on Guy Fawkes Day in England, and at Martinmas in Germany, for it would
seem that they are intended to secure by imitation a due supply of
sunshine.{54} The principle that “well begun is well ended”—or, as the
Germans have it, “Anfang gut, alles gut ”—is fundamental in New Year
practices: hence the custom of giving presents as auguries of wealth during
the coming year; hence perhaps partly the heavy eating and drinking—a
kind of charm to ensure abundance.

183Enough has already been said about the attitude of the early Church
towards traditional folk-customs. Of the position taken up by the later
mediaeval clergy we get an interesting glimpse in the “Largum Sero” of a
certain monk Alsso of Brĕvnov, an account of Christmas practices in
Bohemia written about the year 1400. It supplies a link between modern
customs and the Kalends prohibitions of the Dark Ages. Alsso tells of a
number of laudable Christmas Eve practices, gives elaborate Christian
interpretations of them, and contrasts them with things done by bad
Catholics with ungodly intention. Here are some of his complaints:—

Presents, instead of being given, as they should be, in memory of
God's great Gift to man, are sent because he who does not give
freely will be unlucky in the coming year. Money, instead of being
given to the poor, as is seemly, is laid on the table to augur wealth,
and people open their purses that luck may enter. Instead of using
fruit as a symbol of Christ the Precious Fruit, men cut it open to
predict the future [probably from the pips]. It is a laudable custom to
make great white loaves at Christmas as symbols of the True Bread,
but evil men set out such loaves that the gods may eat of them.

Alsso's assumption is that the bad Catholics are diabolically perverting
venerable Christmas customs, but there can be little doubt that precisely the
opposite was really the case—the Christian symbolism was merely a gloss
upon pagan practices. In one instance Alsso admits that the Church had

adopted and transformed a heathen usage: the old calendisationes or
processions with an idol Bel had been changed into processions of clergy
and choir-boys with the crucifix. Round the villages on the Eve and during
the Octave of Christmas went these messengers of God, robed in white
raiment as befitted the servants of the Lord of purity; they would chant
joyful anthems of the Nativity, and receive in return some money from the
people—they were, in fact, carol-singers. Moreover with their incense they
would drive out the Devil from every corner.{55}

Alsso's attitude is one of compromise, or at least many of the old heathen
customs are allowed by him, when reinterpreted in a 184 Christian sense.
Such seems to have been the general tendency of the later Catholic Church,
and also of Anglicanism in so far as it continued the Catholic tradition. It
will be seen, however, from what has already been said, that the English
Puritans were but following early Christian precedents when they attacked
the paganism that manifested itself at Christmas.

A strong Puritan onslaught is to be found in the “Anatomie of Abuses” by
the Calvinist, Philip Stubbes, first published in 1583. “Especially,” he says,
“in Christmas tyme there is nothing els vsed but cardes, dice, tables,
maskyng, mumming, bowling, and suche like fooleries; and the reason is,
that they think they haue a commission and prerogatiue that tyme to doe
what they list, and to followe what vanitie they will. But (alas!) doe they
thinke that they are preuiledged at that time to doe euill? The holier the time
is (if one time were holier than an other, as it is not), the holier ought their
exercises to bee. Can any tyme dispence with them, or giue them libertie to
sinne? No, no; the soule which sinneth shall dye, at what tyme soeuer it
offendeth.... Notwithstandyng, who knoweth not that more mischeef is that
tyme committed than in all the yere besides?”{56}

When the Puritans had gained the upper hand they proceeded to the
suppression not only of abuses, but of the festival itself. An excellent
opportunity for turning the feast into a fast—as the early Church had done,
it will be remembered, with the Kalends festival—came in 1644. In that
year Christmas Day happened to fall upon the last Wednesday of the month,
a day appointed by the Lords and Commons for a Fast and Humiliation. In
its zeal against carnal pleasures Parliament published the following
“Ordinance for the better observation of the Feast of the Nativity of
Christ”:—

“Whereas some doubts have been raised whether the next Fast shall
be celebrated, because it falleth on the day which, heretofore, was
usually called the Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour; the lords and
commons do order and ordain that public notice be given, that the
Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every month,
ought to be observed until it be otherwise ordered by both houses;
185 and that this day particularly is to be kept with the more solemn

humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins and the
sins of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the
memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving
liberty to carnal and sensual delights; being contrary to the life
which Christ himself led here upon earth, and to the spiritual life of
Christ in our souls; for the sanctifying and saving whereof Christ
was pleased both to take a human life, and to lay it down again.”{57}

But the English people's love of Christmas could not be destroyed. “These
poor simple creatures are made after superstitious festivals, after unholy
holidays,” said a speaker in the House of Commons. “I have known some
that have preferred Christmas Day before the Lord's Day,” said Calamy in a
sermon to the Lords in Westminster Abbey, “I have known those that would
be sure to receive the Sacrament on Christmas Day though they did not
receive it all the year after. This was the superstition of this day, and the
profaneness was as great. There were some that did not play cards all the

year long, yet they must play at Christmas.” Various protests were made
against the suppression of the festival. Though Parliament sat every
Christmas Day from 1644 to 1656, the shops in London in 1644 were all
shut, and in 1646 the people who opened their shops were so roughly used
that next year they petitioned Parliament to protect them in future. In 1647
the shops were indeed all closed, but evergreen decorations were put up in
the City, and the Lord Mayor and City Marshal had to ride about setting fire
to them. There were even riots in country places, notably at Canterbury.
With the Restoration Christmas naturally came back to full recognition,
though it may be doubted whether it has ever been quite the same thing
since the Puritan Revolution.{58}

Protestantism, in proportion to its thoroughness and the strength of its
Puritan elements, has everywhere tended to destroy old pagan traditions and
the festivals to which they cling. Calvinism has naturally been more
destructive than Lutheranism, which in the Scandinavian countries has left
standing many of the externals of Catholicism and also many Christmas
customs that are purely pagan, while in Germany it has tolerated and even
hallowed the 186 ritual of the Christmas-tree. But more powerful than
religious influences, in rooting out the old customs, have been modern
education and the growth of modern industry, breaking up the old
traditional country life, and putting in its place the mobile, restless life of
the great town. Many of the customs we shall have to consider belong
essentially to the country, and have no relation to the life of the modern city.
When communal in their character, a man could not perform them in
separation from his rustic neighbours. Practices domestic in their purpose
may indeed be transferred to the modern city, but it is the experience of
folk-lorists that they seldom descend to the second generation.

It is in regions like Bavaria, Tyrol, Styria, or the Slav parts of the Austrian
Empire, or Roumania and Servia, that the richest store of festival customs is

to be found nowadays. Here the old agricultural life has been less interfered
with, and at the same time the Church, whether Roman or Greek, has
succeeded in keeping modern ideas away from the people and in
maintaining a popular piety that is largely polytheistic in its worship of the
saints, and embodies a great amount of traditional paganism. In our half-
suburbanized England but little now remains of these vestiges of primitive
religion and magic whose interest and importance were only realized by
students in the later nineteenth century, when the wave of “progress” was
fast sweeping them away.

Old traditions have a way of turning up unexpectedly in remote corners, and
it is hard to say for certain that any custom is altogether extinct; every year,
however, does its work of destruction, and it may well be that some of the
practices here described in the present tense have passed into the Limbo of
discarded things.
187 188 189

CHAPTER VII

ALL HALLOW TIDE TO MARTINMAS

All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, their Relation to a New Year
Festival—All Souls’ Eve and Tendance of the Departed—Soul
Cakes in England and on the Continent—Pagan Parallels of All
Souls’—Hallowe'en Charms and Omens—Hallowe'en Fires—Guy
Fawkes Day—“Old Hob,” the Schimmelreiter, and other Animal
Masks—Martinmas and its Slaughter—Martinmas Drinking—St.
Martin's Fires in Germany—Winter Visitors in the Low Countries
and Germany—St. Martin as Gift-bringer—St. Martin's Rod.

All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days.

In the reign of Charles I. the young gentlemen of the Middle Temple were
accustomed to reckon All Hallow Tide (November 1) the beginning of
Christmas.{1} We may here do likewise and start our survey of winter
festivals with November, in the earlier half of which, apparently, fell the
Celtic and Teutonic New Year's Days. It is impossible to fix precise dates,
but there is reason for thinking that the Celtic year began about
November 1,[86]{ 2} and the Teutonic about November 11.{3}

On November 1 falls one of the greater festivals of the western Church, All
Saints’—or, to give it its old English name, All Hallows’—and on the
morrow is the solemn commemoration of the departed—All Souls’. In these
two anniversaries the Church has 190 preserved at or near the original date
one part of the old beginning-of-winter festival—the part concerned with
the cult of the dead. Some of the practices belonging to this side of the feast
have been transferred to the season of Christmas and the Twelve Days, but
these have often lost their original meaning, and it is to All Souls’ Day that
we must look for the most conscious survivals of that care for the departed
which is so marked a feature of primitive religion. Early November, when

the leaves are falling, and all around speaks of mortality, is a fitting time for
the commemoration of the dead.

The first clear testimony to All Souls’ Day is found at the end of the tenth
century, and in France. All Saints’ Day, however, was certainly observed in
England, France, and Germany in the eighth century,{5} and probably
represents an attempt on the part of the Church to turn the minds of the
faithful away from the pagan belief in and tendance of “ghosts” to the
contemplation of the saints in the glory of Paradise. It would seem that this
attempt failed, that the people needed a way of actually doing something for
their own dead, and that All Souls’ Day with its solemn Mass and prayers
for the departed was intended to supply this need and replace the traditional
practices.{6} Here again the attempt was only partly successful, for side by
side with the Church's rites there survived a number of usages related not to
any Christian doctrine of the after-life, but to the pagan idea, widespread
among many peoples, that on one day or night of the year the souls of the
dead return to their old homes and must be entertained.

All Souls’ Day then appeals to instincts older than Christianity. How strong
is the hold of ancient custom even upon the sceptical and irreligious is
shown very strikingly in Roman Catholic countries: even those who never
go to church visit the graves of their relations on All Souls’ Eve to deck
them with flowers.

The special liturgical features of the Church's celebration are the Vespers,
Matins, and Lauds of the Dead on the evening of November 1, and the
solemn Requiem Mass on November 2, with the majestic “Dies irae” and
the oft-recurrent versicle, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux
perpetua luceat 191 eis,” that most beautiful of prayers. The priest and altar
are vested in black, and a catafalque with burning tapers round it stands in

the body of the church. For the popular customs on the Eve we may quote
Dr. Tylor's general description:—

“In Italy the day is given to feasting and drinking in honour of the
dead, while skulls and skeletons in sugar and paste form appropriate
children's toys. In Tyrol, the poor souls released from purgatory fire
for the night may come and smear their burns with the melted fat of
the ‘soul light’ on the hearth, or cakes are left for them on the table,
and the room is kept warm for their comfort. Even in Paris the souls
of the departed come to partake of the food of the living. In Brittany
the crowd pours into the churchyard at evening, to kneel barefoot at
the grave of dead kinsfolk, to fill the hollow of the tombstone with
holy water, or to pour libations of milk upon it. All night the church
bells clang, and sometimes a solemn procession of the clergy goes
round to bless the graves. In no household that night is the cloth
removed, for the supper must be left for the souls to come and take
their part, nor must the fire be put out, where they will come to
warm themselves. And at last, as the inmates retire to rest, there is
heard at the door a doleful chant—it is the souls, who, borrowing
the voices of the parish poor, have come to ask the prayers of the
living.”{7}

To this may be added some further accounts of All Souls’ Eve as the one
night in the year when the spirits of the departed are thought to revisit their
old homes.

In the Vosges mountains while the bells are ringing in All Souls’ Eve it is a
custom to uncover the beds and open the windows in order that the poor
souls may enter and rest. Prayer is made for the dead until late in the night,
and when the last “De profundis” has been said “the head of the family
gently covers up the beds, sprinkles them with holy water, and shuts the
windows.”{8}

The Esthonians on All Souls’ Day provide a meal for the dead and invite
them by name. The souls arrive at the first cock-crow and depart at the
second, being lighted out of the house by the head of the family, who waves
a white cloth after them and bids them come again next year.{9}

In Brittany, as we have seen, the dead are thought to return at 192 this season.
It is believed that on the night between All Saints’ and All Souls’ the church
is lighted up and the departed attend a nocturnal Mass celebrated by a
phantom priest. All through the week, in one district, people are afraid to go
out after nightfall lest they should see some dead person.{10} In Tyrol it is
believed that the “poor souls” are present in the howling winds that often
blow at this time.{11}

In the Abruzzi on All Souls’ Eve “before people go to sleep they place on
the table a lighted lamp or candle and a frugal meal of bread and water. The
dead issue from their graves and stalk in procession through every street of
the village.... First pass the souls of the good, and then the souls of the
murdered and the damned.”{12}

In Sicily a strange belief is connected with All Souls’ Day (jornu di li
morti): the family dead are supposed, like Santa Klaus in the North, to bring
presents to children; the dead relations have become the good fairies of the
little ones. On the night between November 1 and 2 little Sicilians believe
that the departed leave their dread abode and come to town to steal from
rich shopkeepers sweets and toys and new clothes. These they give to their
child relations who have been “good” and have prayed on their behalf.
Often they are clothed in white and wear silken shoes, to elude the vigilance
of the shopkeepers. They do not always enter the houses; sometimes the
presents are left in the children's shoes put outside doors and windows. In
the morning the pretty gifts are attributed by the children to the morti in
whose coming their parents have taught them to believe.{13}

A very widespread custom at this season is to burn candles, perhaps in order
to lighten the darkness for the poor souls. In Catholic Ireland candles shine
in the windows on the Vigil of All Souls’,{14} in Belgium a holy candle is
burnt all night, or people walk in procession with lighted tapers, while in
many Roman Catholic countries, and even in the Protestant villages of
Baden, the graves are decked with lights as well as flowers.{15}

Another practice on All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, curiously 193 common
formerly in Protestant England, is that of making and giving “soul-cakes.”
These and the quest of them by children were customary in various English
counties and in Scotland.{16} The youngsters would beg not only for the
cakes but also sometimes for such things as “apples and strong beer,”
presumably to make a “wassail-bowl” of “lambswool,” hot spiced ale with
roast apples in it.{17} Here is a curious rhyme which they sang in Shropshire
as they went round to their neighbours, collecting contributions:—

“Soul! soul! for a soul-cake!
I pray, good missis, a soul-cake!
An apple or pear, a plum or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us merry.
One for Peter, two for Paul,
Three for Him who made us all.
Up with the kettle, and down with the pan,
Give us good alms, and we'll be gone.”{18}

Shropshire is a county peculiarly rich in “souling” traditions, and one old
lady had cakes made to give away to the souling-children up to the time of
her death in 1884. At that period the custom of “souling” had greatly
declined in the county, and where it still existed the rewards were usually
apples or money. Grown men, as well as children, sometimes went round,
and the ditties sung often contained verses of good-wishes for the
household practically identical with those sung by wassailers at
Christmas.{19}

The name “soul-cake” of course suggests that the cakes were in some way
associated with the departed, whether given as a reward for prayers for
souls in Purgatory, or as a charity for the benefit of the “poor souls,” or
baked that the dead might feast upon them.[87] It seems most probable that
they were relics of a feast once laid out for the souls. On the other hand it is
just possible that they were originally a sacrament of the corn-spirit. 194 A
North Welsh tradition recorded by Pennant may conceivably have preserved
a vague memory of some agricultural connection: he tells us that on
receiving soul-cakes the poor people used to pray to God to bless the next
crop of wheat.{20}

Not in Great Britain alone are soul-cakes found; they are met with in
Belgium, southern Germany, and Austria. In western Flanders children set

up on All Souls’ Eve little street altars, putting a crucifix or Madonna with
candles on a chair or stool, and begging passers-by for money “for cakes for
the souls in Purgatory.” On All Souls’ morning it is customary, all over the
Flemish part of Belgium, to bake little cakes of finest white flour, called
“soul-bread.” They are eaten hot, and a prayer is said at the same time for
the souls in Purgatory. It is believed that a soul is delivered for every cake
eaten. At Antwerp the cakes are coloured yellow with saffron to suggest the
Purgatorial flames. In southern Germany and Austria little white loaves of a
special kind are baked; they are generally oval in form, and are usually
called by some name into which the word “soul” enters. In Tyrol they are
given to children by their godparents; those for the boys have the shape of
horses or hares, those for the girls, of hens. In Tyrol the cakes left over at
supper remain on the table and are said to “belong to the poor souls.”{21}

In Friuli in the north-east of Italy there is a custom closely corresponding to
our “soul-cakes.” On All Souls’ Day every family gives away a quantity of
bread. This is not regarded as a charity; all the people of the village come to
receive it and before eating it pray for the departed of the donor's family.
The most prosperous people are not ashamed to knock at the door and ask
for this pane dei morti.{22}

In Tyrol All Souls’ is a day of licensed begging, which has become a serious
abuse. A noisy rabble of ragged and disorderly folk, with bags and baskets
to receive gifts, wanders from village to village, claiming as a right the
presents of provisions that were originally a freewill offering for the benefit
of the departed, and angrily abusing those who refuse to give.{23}

The New Year is the time for a festival of the dead in many parts of the
world.{24} I may quote Dr. Frazer's account of what 195 goes on in Tonquin;
it shows a remarkable likeness to some European customs[88]:—

“In Tonquin, as in Sumba, the dead revisit their kinsfolk and their
old homes at the New Year. From the hour of midnight, when the
New Year begins, no one dares to shut the door of his house for fear
of excluding the ghosts, who begin to arrive at that time.
Preparations have been made to welcome and refresh them after
their long journey. Beds and mats are ready for their weary bodies to
repose upon, water to wash their dusty feet, slippers to comfort
them, and canes to support their feeble steps.”{25}

In Lithuania, the last country in Europe to be converted to Christianity,
heathen traditions lingered long, and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
travellers give accounts of a pagan New Year's feast which has great
interest. In October, according to one account, on November 2, according to
another, the whole family met together, strewed the tables with straw and
put sacks on the straw. Bread and two jugs of beer were then placed on the
table, and one of every kind of domestic animal was roasted before the fire
after a prayer to the god Zimiennik (possibly an ancestral spirit), asking for
protection through the year and offering the animals. Portions were thrown
to the corners of the room with the words “Accept our burnt sacrifice, O
Zimiennik, and kindly partake thereof.” Then followed a great feast.
Further, the spirits of the dead were invited to leave their graves and visit
the bath-house, where platters of food were spread out and left for three
days. At the end of this time the remains of the repast were set out over the
graves and libations poured.{26}

The beginning of November is not solely a time of memory of the dead;
customs of other sorts linger, or until lately used to linger, about it,
especially in Scotland, northern England, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, and the
West Midlands. One may conjecture that these are survivals from the Celtic
New Year's Day, for most of them are of the nature of omens or charms.

Apples and nuts are prominent on Hallowe'en, the Eve of All 196 Saints;[89]
they may be regarded either as a kind of sacrament of the vegetation-spirit,
or as simply intended by homoeopathic magic to bring fulness and
fruitfulness to their recipients. A custom once common in the north of
England{27} and in Wales{28} was to catch at apples with the mouth, the
fruit being suspended on a string, or on one end of a large transverse beam
with a lighted candle at the other end. In the north apples and nuts were the
feature of the evening feast, hence the name “Nutcrack night.”{29}

Again, at St. Ives in Cornwall every child is given a big apple on
Allhallows’ Eve—“Allan Day” as it is called.{30} Nuts and apples were also
used as means of forecasting the future. In Scotland for instance nuts were
put into the fire and named after particular lads and lasses. “As they burn
quietly together or start from beside one another, the course and issue of the
courtship will be.”{31} On Hallowe'en in Nottinghamshire if a girl had two
lovers and wanted to know which would be the more constant, she took two
apple-pips, stuck one on each cheek (naming them after her lovers) and
waited for one to fall off. The poet Gay alludes to this custom:—

“See from the core two kernels now I take,
This on my cheek for Lubberkin is worn,
And Booby Clod on t'other side is borne;
But Booby Clod soon falls upon the ground,
A certain token that his love's unsound;
While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last;
Oh! were his lips to mine but joined so fast.”{32}

In Nottinghamshire apples are roasted and the parings thrown over the left
shoulder. “Notice is taken of the shapes which the parings assume when
they fall to the ground. Whatever letter a paring resembles will be the initial
letter of the Christian name of the man or woman whom you will
marry.”{33}

197Hallowe'en is indeed in the British Isles the favourite time for forecasting
the future, and various methods are employed for this purpose.

A girl may cross her shoes upon her bedroom floor in the shape of a T and
say these lines:—

“I cross my shoes in the shape of a T,
Hoping this night my true love to see,
Not in his best or worst array,
But in the clothes of every day.”

Then let her get into bed backwards without speaking any more that night,
and she will see her future husband in her dreams.{34}

“On All Hallowe'en or New Year's Eve,” says Mr. W. Henderson, “a Border
maiden may wash her sark, and hang it over a chair to dry, taking care to
tell no one what she is about. If she lie awake long enough, she will see the
form of her future spouse enter the room and turn the sark. We are told of
one young girl who, after fulfilling this rite, looked out of bed and saw a
coffin behind the sark; it remained visible for some time and then
disappeared. The girl rose up in agony and told her family what had
occurred, and the next morning she heard of her lover's death.”{35}

In Scotland{36} and Ireland{37} other methods of foreseeing the future are
practised on Hallowe'en; we need not consider them here, for we shall have
quite enough of such auguries later on. (Some Scottish customs are
introduced by Burns into his poem “Hallowe'en.”) I may, however, allude to
the custom formerly prevalent in Wales for women to congregate in the
church on this “Night of the Winter Kalends,” in order to discover who of
the parishioners would die during the year.{38} East of the Welsh border, at
Dorstone in Herefordshire, there was a belief that on All Hallows’ Eve at
midnight those who were bold enough to look through the windows would

see the church lighted with an unearthly glow, and Satan in monk's habit
fulminating anathemas from the pulpit and calling out the names of those
who were to render up their souls.{39}

198Again, there are numerous Hallowe'en fire customs, probably sun-charms
for the New Year, a kind of homoeopathic magic intended to assist the sun
in his struggle with the powers of darkness. To this day great bonfires are
kindled in the Highlands, and formerly brands were carried about and the
new fire was lit in each house.{40} It would seem that the Yule log customs
(see Chapter X.) are connected with this new lighting of the house-fire,
transferred to Christmas.

In Ireland fire was lighted at this time at a place called Tlachtga, from
which all the hearths in Ireland are said to have been annually supplied.{41}
In Wales the habit of lighting bonfires on the hills is perhaps not yet
extinct.{42} Within living memory when the flames were out somebody
would raise the cry, “May the tailless black sow seize the hindmost,” and
everyone present would run for his life.{43} This may point to a former
human sacrifice, possibly of a victim laden with the accumulated evils of
the past year.{44}

In North Wales, according to another account, each family used to make a
great bonfire in a conspicuous place near the house. Every person threw
into the ashes a white stone, marked; the stones were searched for in the
morning, and if any one were missing the person who had thrown it in
would die, it was believed, during the year.{45} The same belief and practice
were found at Callander in Perthshire.{46}

Though, probably, the Hallowe'en fire rites had originally some connection
with the sun, the conscious intention of those who practised them in modern
times was often to ward off witchcraft. With this object in one place the

master of the family used to carry a bunch of burning straw about the corn,
in Scotland the red end of a fiery stick was waved in the air, in Lancashire a
lighted candle was borne about the fells, and in the Isle of Man fires were
kindled.{47}

Guy Fawkes Day.

Probably the burning of Guy Fawkes on November 5 is a survival of a New
Year bonfire. There is every reason to think that the commemoration of the
deliverance from “gunpowder 199 treason and plot” is but a modern meaning
attached to an ancient traditional practice, for the burning of the effigy has
many parallels in folk-custom. Dr. Frazer{48} regards such effigies as
representatives of the spirit of vegetation—by burning them in a fire that
represented the sun men thought they secured sunshine for trees and crops.
Later, when the ideas on which the custom was based had faded away,
people came to identify these images with persons whom they regarded
with aversion, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther (in Catholic Tyrol), and,
apparently, Guy Fawkes in England. At Ludlow in Shropshire, it is
interesting to note, if any well-known local man had aroused the enmity of
the populace his effigy was substituted for, or added to, that of Guy Fawkes.
Bonfire Day at Ludlow is marked by a torchlight procession and a huge
conflagration.{49} At Hampstead the Guy Fawkes fire and procession are
still in great force. The thing has become a regular carnival, and on a foggy
November night the procession along the steep curving Heath Street, with
the glare of the torches lighting up the faces of dense crowds, is a strangely
picturesque spectacle.[90]

Animal Masks.

On All Souls’ Day in Cheshire there began to be carried about a curious
construction called “Old Hob,” a horse's head enveloped in a sheet; it was

taken from door to door, and accompanied by the singing of begging
rhymes.{50} Old Hob, who continued to appear until Christmas, is an
English parallel to the German Schimmel or white horse. We have here to
do with one of those strange animal forms which are apparently relics of
sacrificial customs. They come on various days in the winter festival
season, and also at other times, and may as well be considered at this point.
In some cases they are definitely imitations of animals, and may have
replaced real sacrificial beasts taken about in procession, in others they are
simply men wearing the head, horn, hide, or tail of a beast, like the
worshippers at many 200 a heathen sacrifice to-day. (Of the rationale of
masking something has already been said in Chapter VI.)

The mingling of Roman and non-Roman customs makes it very hard to
separate the different elements in the winter festivals. In regard particularly
to animal masks it is difficult to pronounce in favour of one racial origin
rather than another; we may, however, infer with some probability that
when a custom is attached not to Christmas or the January Kalends but to
one of the November or early December feasts, it is not of Roman origin.
For, as the centuries have passed, Christmas and the Kalends—the Roman
festivals ecclesiastical and secular—have increasingly tended to supplant
the old northern festal times, and a transference of, for instance, a Teutonic
custom from Martinmas to Christmas or January 1, is far more conceivable
than the attraction of a Roman practice to one of the earlier and waning
festivals.

Let us take first the horse-forms, seemingly connected with that sacrificial
use of the horse among the Teutons to which Tacitus and other writers
testify.{51} “Old Hob” is doubtless one form of the hobby horse, so familiar
in old English festival customs. His German parallel, the Schimmel, is
mostly formed thus in the north: a sieve with a long pole to whose end a
horse's head is fastened, is tied beneath the chest of a young man, who goes

on all fours, and some white cloths are thrown over the whole. In Silesia the
Schimmel is formed by three or four youths. The rider is generally veiled,
and often wears on his head a pot with glowing coals shining forth through
openings that represent eyes and a mouth.{52} In Pomerania the thing is
called simply Schimmel,{53} in other parts emphasis is laid upon the rider,
and the name Schimmelreiter is given. Some mythologists have seen in this
rider on a white horse an impersonation of Woden on his great charger; but
it is more likely that the practice simply originated in the taking round of a
real sacrificial horse.{54} The Schimmelreiter is often accompanied by a
“bear,” a youth dressed in straw who plays the part of a bear tied to a
pole.{55} He may be connected with some such veneration of the animal as
is suggested by the custom still surviving at Berne, of keeping bears at the
public expense.

To return to Great Britain, here is an account of a so-called 201 “hodening”
ceremony once performed at Christmas-time at Ramsgate: “A party of
young people procure the head of a dead horse, which is affixed to a pole
about four feet in length, a string is tied to the lower jaw, a horse-cloth is
then attached to the whole, under which one of the party gets, and by
frequently pulling the string keeps up a loud snapping noise and is
accompanied by the rest of the party grotesquely habited and ringing hand-
bells. They thus proceed from house to house, sounding their bells and
singing carols and songs.”{56}

Again, in Wales a creature called “the Mari Llwyd” was known at
Christmas. A horse's skull is “dressed up with ribbons, and supported on a
pole by a man who is concealed under a large white cloth. There is a
contrivance for opening and shutting the jaws, and the figure pursues and
bites everybody it can lay hold of, and does not release them except on
payment of a fine.”{57} The movable jaws here give the thing a likeness to
certain Continental figures representing other kinds of animals and probably

witnessing to their former sacrificial use. On the island of Usedom appears
the Klapperbock, a youth who carries a pole with the hide of a buck thrown
over it and a wooden head at the end. The lower jaw moves up and down
and clatters, and he charges at children who do not know their prayers by
heart.{58} In Upper Styria we meet the Habergaiss. Four men hold on to one
another and are covered with white blankets. The foremost one holds up a
wooden goat's head with a movable lower jaw that rattles, and he butts
children.{59} At Ilsenburg in the Harz is found the Habersack, formed by a
person taking a pole ending in a fork, and putting a broom between the
prongs so that the appearance of a head with horns is obtained. The carrier
is concealed by a sheet.{60}

In connection with horns we must not forget the “horn-dance” at Abbots
Bromley in Staffordshire, held now in September, but formerly at
Christmas. Six of the performers wear sets of horns kept from year to year
in the church.{61} Plot, in his “Natural History of Staffordshire” (1686, p.
434) calls it a “Hobby-horse Dance from a person who carried the image of
a horse between his legs, made of thin boards.”{62}

202In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway creatures resembling both the
Schimmelreiter and the Klapperbock are or were to be met with at
Christmas. The name Julebuk (yule buck) is used for various objects:
sometimes for a person dressed up in hide and horns, or with a buck's head,
who “goes for” little boys and girls; sometimes for a straw puppet set up or
tossed about from hand to hand; sometimes for a cake in the form of a buck.
People seem to have had a bad conscience about these things, for there are
stories connecting them with the Devil. A girl, for instance, who danced at
midnight with a straw Julebuk, found that her partner was no puppet but the
Evil One himself. Again, a fellow who had dressed himself in black and put
horns on his head, claws on his hands, and fiery tow in his mouth, was
carried off by the Prince of Darkness whose form he had mimicked.{63} The

association of animal maskings with the infernal powers is doubtless the
work of the Church. To the zealous missionary the old heathen ritual was no
mere foolish superstition but a service of intensely real and awful beings,
the very devils of hell, and one may even conjecture that the traditional
Christian devil-type, half animal half human, was indirectly derived from
skin-clad worshippers at pagan festivals.

Martinmas.

Between All Souls’ Day and Martinmas (November 11) there are no folk-
festivals of great importance, though on St. Hubert's Day, November 3, in
Flemish Belgium special little cakes are made, adorned with the horn of the
saint, the patron of hunting, and are eaten not only by human beings but by
dogs, cats, and other domestic animals.{64} The English Guy Fawkes Day
has already been considered, while November 9, Lord Mayor's Day, the
beginning of the municipal year, may remind us of the old Teutonic New
Year.

Round Martinmas popular customs cluster thickly, as might be expected,
since it marks as nearly as possible the date of the old beginning-of-winter
festival, the feast perhaps at which Germanicus surprised the Marsi in A.D.
14.{65}

The most obvious feature of Martinmas is its physical feasting.
203 Economic causes, as we saw in Chapter VI., must have made the middle

of November a great killing season among the old Germans, for the snow
which then began rendered it impossible longer to pasture the beasts, and
there was not fodder enough to keep the whole herd through the winter.
Thus it was a time of feasting on flesh, and of animal sacrifices, as is
suggested by the Anglo-Saxon name given to November by Bede, Blot-
monath, sacrifice-month.{66}

Christmas does not seem to have quickly superseded the middle of
November as a popular feast in Teutonic countries; rather one finds an
outcome of the conciliatory policy pursued by Gregory the Great (see
Chapter VI.) in the development of Martinmas. Founded in the fifth century,
it was made a great Church festival by Pope Martin I. (649-654),{67} and it
may well have been intended to absorb and Christianize the New Year
festivities of the Teutonic peoples. The veneration of St. Martin spread
rapidly in the churches of northern Europe, and he came to be regarded as
one of the very chief of the saints.{68} His day is no longer a Church feast of
high rank, but its importance as a folk festival is great.

The tradition of slaughter is preserved in the British custom of killing cattle
on St. Martin's Day—“Martlemas beef”{69} —and in the German eating of
St. Martin's geese and swine.{70} The St. Martin's goose, indeed, is in
Germany as much a feature of the festival as the English Michaelmas goose
is of the September feast of the angels.

In Denmark too a goose is eaten at Martinmas, and from its breast-bone the
character of the coming winter can be foreseen. The white in it is a sign of
snow, the brown of very great cold. Similar ideas can be traced in Germany,
though there is not always agreement as to what the white and the brown
betoken.{71}

At St. Peter's, Athlone, Ireland, a very obviously sacrificial custom lasted on
into the nineteenth century. Every household would kill an animal of some
kind, and sprinkle the threshold with its blood. A cow or sheep, a goose or
turkey, or merely a cock or hen, was used according to the means of the
family.{72} It seems that the animal was actually offered to St. Martin,
apparently as 204 the successor of some god, and bad luck came if the
custom were not observed. Probably these rites were transferred to
Martinmas from the old Celtic festival of Samhain. Again, in a strange Irish

legend the saint himself is said to have been cut up and eaten in the form of
an ox.{73}

In the wine-producing regions of Germany Martinmas was the day for the
first drinking of the new wine, and the feasting in general on his day gave
the saint the reputation of a guzzler and a glutton; it even became customary
to speak of a person who had squandered his substance in riotous living as a
Martinsmann.{74} As we have seen survivals of sacrifice in the Martinmas
slaughter, so we may regard the Martinsminne or toast as originating in a
sacrifice of liquor.{75} In the Böhmerwald it is believed that wine taken at
Martinmas brings strength and beauty, and the lads and girls gather in the
inns to drink, while a common German proverb runs:—

“Heb an Martini,
Trink Wein per circulum anni.”[91]{ 76}

Here, by the way, is a faint suggestion that Martinmas is regarded as the
beginning of the year; as such it certainly appears in a number of legal
customs, English, French, and German, which existed in the Middle Ages
and in some cases in quite recent times. It was often at Martinmas that
leases ended, rents had to be paid, and farm-servants changed their
places.{77}

There is a survival, perhaps, of a cereal sacrifice or sacrament in the so-
called “Martin's horns,” horseshoe pastries given at Martinmas in many
parts of Germany.{78} Another kind of sacrifice is suggested by a Dutch
custom of throwing baskets of fruit into Martinmas bonfires, and by a
German custom of casting in empty fruit-baskets.{79} In Venetia the
peasants keep over from the vintage a few grapes to form part of their
Martinmas supper, and as far south as Sicily it is considered essential to
taste the new wine at this festival.{80}

Bonfires appear at Martinmas in Germany, as at All Hallows tide in the
British Isles. On St. Martin's Eve in the Rhine 205 Valley between Cologne
and Coblentz, numbers of little fires burn on the heights and by the river-
bank,{81} the young people leap through the flames and dance about them,
and the ashes are strewn on the fields to make them fertile.{82} Survivals of
fire-customs are found also in other regions. In Belgium, Holland, and
north-west Germany processions of children with paper or turnip lanterns
take place on St. Martin's Eve. In the Eichsfeld district the little river
Geislede glows with the light of candles placed in floating nutshells. Even
the practice of leaping through the fire survives in a modified form, for in
northern Germany it is not uncommon for people on St. Martin's Day or
Eve to jump over lighted candles set on the parlour floor.{83} In the fifteenth
century the Martinmas fires were so many that the festival actually got the
name of Funkentag (Spark Day).{84}

On St. Martin's Eve in Germany and the Low Countries we begin to meet
those winter visitors, bright saints and angels on the one hand, mock-
terrible bogeys and monsters on the other, who add so much to the romance
and mystery of the children's Christmas. Such visitors are to be found in
many countries, but it is in the lands of German speech that they take on the
most vivid and picturesque forms. St. Martin, St. Nicholas, Christkind,
Knecht Ruprecht, and the rest are very real and personal beings to the
children, and are awaited with pleasant expectation or mild dread. Often
they are beheld not merely with the imagination but with the bodily eye,
when father or friend is wondrously transformed into a supernatural figure.

What are the origins of these holy or monstrous beings? It is hard to say
with certainty, for many elements, pagan and Christian, seem here to be
closely blended. It is pretty clear, however, that the grotesque half-animal

shapes are direct relics of heathendom, and it is highly probable that the
forms of saints or angels—even, perhaps, of the Christ Child Himself—
represent attempts of the Church to transform and sanctify alien things
which she could not suppress. What some of these may have been we shall
tentatively guess as we go along. Though no grown-up person would take
the mimic Martin or Nicholas 206 seriously nowadays, there seem to be at
the root of them things once regarded as of vital moment. Just as fairy-tales,
originally serious attempts to explain natural facts, have now become
reading for children, so ritual practices which our ancestors deemed of vast
importance for human welfare have become mere games to amuse the
young.

On St. Martin's Eve, to come back from speculation to the facts of popular
custom, the saint appears in the nurseries of Antwerp and other Flemish
towns. He is a man dressed up as a bishop, with a pastoral staff in his hand.
His business is to ask if the children have been “good,” and if the result of
his inquiries is satisfactory he throws down apples, nuts, and cakes. If not, it
is rods that he leaves behind. At Ypres he does not visibly appear, but
children hang up stockings filled with hay, and next morning find presents
in them, left by the saint in gratitude for the fodder provided for his horse.
He is there imagined as a rider on a white horse, and the same conception
prevails in Austrian Silesia, where he brings the “Martin's horns” already
mentioned.{85} In Silesia when it snows at Martinmas people say that the
saint is coming on his white horse, and there, it may be noted, the
Schimmelreiter appears at the same season.{86} In certain respects, it has
been suggested, St. Martin may have taken the place of Woden.{87} It is
perhaps not without significance that, like the god, he is a military hero, and
conceived as a rider on horseback. At Düsseldorf he used to be represented
in his festival procession by a man riding on another fellow's back.{88}

At Mechlin and other places children go round from house to house, singing
and collecting gifts. Often four boys with paper caps on their heads, dressed
as Turks, carry a sort of litter whereon St. Martin sits. He has a long white
beard of flax and a paper mitre and stole, and holds a large wooden spoon to
receive apples and other eatables that are given to the children, as well as a
leather purse for offerings of money.{89}

In the Ansbach region a different type of being used to appear—Pelzmärten
(Skin Martin) by name; he ran about and frightened the children, before he
threw them their apples and nuts. In several places in Swabia, too,
Pelzmärte was known; 207 he had a black face, a cow-bell hung on his
person, and he distributed blows as well as nuts and apples.{90} In him there
is obviously more of the pagan mummer than the Christian bishop.

In Belgium St. Martin is chiefly known as the bringer of apples and nuts for
children; in Bavaria and Austria he has a different aspect: a gerte or rod,
supposed to promote fruitfulness among cattle and prosperity in general, is
connected with his day. The rods are taken round by the neatherds to the
farmers, and one is given to each—two to rich proprietors; they are to be
used, when spring comes, to drive out the cattle for the first time. In Bavaria
they are formed by a birch-bough with all the leaves and twigs stripped
off—except at the top, to which oak-leaves and juniper-twigs are fastened.
At Etzendorf a curious old rhyme shows that the herdsman with the rod is
regarded as the representative of St. Martin.{91}

Can we connect this custom with the saint who brings presents to
youngsters?[92] There seems to be a point of contact when we note that at
Antwerp St. Martin throws down rods for naughty children as well as nuts
and apples for good ones, and that Pelzmärte in Swabia has blows to bestow
as well as gifts. St. Martin's main functions—and, as we shall see, St.
Nicholas has the same—are to beat the bad children and reward the good

with apples, nuts, and cakes. Can it be that the ethical distinction is of
comparatively recent origin, an invention perhaps for children when the
customs came to be performed solely for their benefit, and that the beating
and the gifts were originally shared by all alike and were of a sacramental
character? We shall meet with more whipping customs later on, they are
common enough in folk-ritual, and are not punishments, but kindly
services; their purpose is to drive away evil influences, and to bring to the
flogged one the life-giving virtues of the tree from which the twigs or
boughs are taken.{92} Both the flogging and the eating of fruit may, indeed,
be means of contact with the vegetation-spirit, the one in 208 an external, the
other in a more internal way. Or possibly the rod and the fruit may once
have been conjoined, the beating being performed with fruit-laden boughs
in order to produce prosperity. It is noteworthy that at Etzendorf so many
head of cattle and loads of hay are augured for the farmer as there are
juniper-berries and twigs on St. Martin's gerte.{94}

Attempts to account for the figures of SS. Martin and Nicholas in northern
folk-customs have been made along various lines. Some scholars regard
them as Christianizations of the pagan god Woden; but they might also be
taken as akin to the “first-foots” whom we shall meet on January 1—
visitors who bring good luck—or as maskers connected with animal
sacrifices (Pelzmärte suggests this), or again as related to the Boy Bishop,
the Lord of Misrule and the Twelfth Night King. May I suggest that some at
least of their aspects could be explained on the supposition that they
represent administrants of primitive vegetation sacraments, and that these
administrants, once ordinary human beings, have taken on the name and
attributes of the saint who under the Christian dispensation presides over
the festival? In any case it is a strange irony of history that around the
festival of Martin of Tours, the zealous soldier of Christ and deadly foe of
heathenism, should have gathered so much that is unmistakably pagan.

209 210 211

CHAPTER VIII

ST. CLEMENT TO ST. THOMAS

St. Clement's Day Quests and Processions—St. Catherine's Day as
Spinsters’ Festival—St. Andrew's Eve Auguries—The
Klöpfelnächte—St. Nicholas's Day, the Saint as Gift-bringer, and his
Attendants—Election of the Boy Bishop—St. Nicholas's Day at
Bari—St. Lucia's Day in Sweden, Sicily, and Central Europe—St.
Thomas's Day as School Festival—Its Uncanny Eve—“Going a-
Thomassin’.”

St. Clement's Day.

The next folk-feast after Martinmas is St. Clement's Day, November 23,
once reckoned the first day of winter in England.{1} It marks apparently one
of the stages in the progress of the winter feast towards its present solstitial
date. In England some interesting popular customs existed on this day. In
Staffordshire children used to go round to the village houses begging for
gifts, with rhymes resembling in many ways the “souling” verses I have
already quoted. Here is one of the Staffordshire “clemencing” songs:—

“Clemany! Clemany! Clemany mine!
A good red apple and a pint of wine,
Some of your mutton and some of your veal,
If it is good, pray give me a deal;
If it is not, pray give me some salt.
Butler, butler, fill your bowl;
If thou fill'st it of the best,
The Lord'll send your soul to rest;
If thou fill'st it of the small,
Down goes butler, bowl and all. 212

Pray, good mistress, send to me
One for Peter, one for Paul,
One for Him who made us all;
Apple, pear, plum, or cherry,

Any good thing to make us merry;
A bouncing buck and a velvet chair,
Clement comes but once a year;
Off with the pot and on with the pan,
A good red apple and I'll be gone.”{2}

In Worcestershire on St. Clement's Day the boys chanted similar rhymes,
and at the close of their collection they would roast the apples received and
throw them into ale or cider.{3} In the north of England men used to go
about begging drink, and at Ripon Minster the choristers went round the
church offering everyone a rosy apple with a sprig of box on it.{4} The
Cambridge bakers held their annual supper on this day,{5} at Tenby the
fishermen were given a supper,{6} while the blacksmiths’ apprentices at
Woolwich had a remarkable ceremony, akin perhaps to the Boy Bishop
customs. One of their number was chosen to play the part of “Old Clem,”
was attired in a great coat, and wore a mask, a long white beard, and an
oakum wig. Seated in a large wooden chair, and surrounded by attendants
bearing banners, torches, and weapons, he was borne about the town on the
shoulders of six men, visiting numerous public-houses and the blacksmiths
and officers of the dockyard. Before him he had a wooden anvil, and in his
hands a pair of tongs and a wooden hammer, the insignia of the blacksmith's
trade.{7}

St. Catherine's Day.

November 25 is St. Catherine's Day, and at Woolwich Arsenal a similar
ceremony was then performed: a man was dressed in female attire, with a
large wheel by his side to represent the saint, and was taken round the
town{8} in a wooden chair. At Chatham there was a torchlight procession on
St. Catherine's Day, and a woman in white muslin with a gilt crown was

carried about in a chair. She was said to represent not the saint, but Queen
Catherine.{9}

213St. Catherine's Day was formerly a festival for the lacemakers of
Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire. She was the
patroness of spinsters in the literal as well as the modern sense of the word,
and at Peterborough the workhouse girls used to go in procession round the
city on her day, dressed in white with coloured ribbons; the tallest was
chosen as Queen and bore a crown and sceptre. As they went to beg money
of the chief inhabitants they sang a quaint ballad which begins thus:—

“Here comes Queen Catherine, as fine as any queen,
With a coach and six horses a-coming to be seen,
And a-spinning we will go, will go, will go,
And a-spinning we will go.”{10}

We may perhaps see in this Saint or Queen Catherine a female counterpart
of the Boy Bishop, who began his career on St. Nicholas's Day. Catherine, it
must be remembered, is the patron saint of girls as Nicholas is of boys. In
Belgium her day is still a festival for the “young person” both in schools
and in families.{11} Even in modern Paris the dressmaker-girls celebrate it,
and in a very charming way, too.

“At midday the girls of every workroom present little mob-caps trimmed
with yellow ribbons to those of their number who are over twenty-five and
still unmarried. Then they themselves put on becoming little caps with
yellow flowers and yellow ribbons and a sprig of orange blossom on them,
and out they go arm-in-arm to parade the streets and collect a tribute of
flowers from every man they meet.... Instead of working all the afternoon,
the midinettes entertain all their friends (no men admitted, though, for it is
the day of St. Catherine) to concerts and even to dramatic performances in

the workrooms, where the work-tables are turned into stages, and the
employers provide supper.”{12}

St. Andrew's Day.

The last day of November is the feast of St. Andrew. Of English customs on
this day the most interesting perhaps are those connected with the “Tander”
or “Tandrew” merrymakings 214 of the Northamptonshire lacemakers. A day
of general licence used to end in masquerading. Women went about in male
attire and men and boys in female dress.{13} In Kent and Sussex squirrel-
hunting was practised on this day{14} —a survival apparently of some old
sacrificial custom comparable with the hunting of the wren at Christmas
(see Chapter XII.).

In Germany St. Andrew's Eve is a great occasion for prognostications of the
future. Indeed, like Hallowe'en in Great Britain, Andreasabend in Germany
seems to have preserved the customs of augury connected with the old
November New Year festival.{15} To a large extent the practices are
performed by girls anxious to know what sort of husband they will get.
Many and various are the methods.

Sometimes it suffices to repeat some such rhyme as the following before
going to sleep, and the future husband will appear in a dream:—

“St. Andrew's Eve is to-day,
Sleep all people,
Sleep all children of men,
Who are between heaven and earth,
Except this only man,
Who may be mine in marriage.”{16}

Again, at nightfall let a girl shut herself up naked in her bedroom, take two
beakers, and into one pour clear water, into the other wine. These let her
place on the table, which is to be covered with white, and let the following
words be said:—

“My dear St. Andrew!
Let now appear before me
My heart's most dearly beloved.
If he shall be rich,
He will pour a cup of wine;
If he is to be poor,
Let him pour a cup of water.”

This done, the form of the future husband will enter and drink 215 of one of
the cups. If he is poor, he will take the water; if rich, the wine.{17}

One of the most common practices is to pour molten lead or tin through a
key into cold water, and to discover the calling of the future husband by the
form it takes, which will represent the tools of his trade. The white of an
egg is sometimes used for the same purpose.{18} Another very widespread
custom is to put nutshells to float on water with little candles burning in
them. There are twice as many shells as there are girls present; each girl has
her shell, and to the others the names of possible suitors are given. The man
and the girl whose shells come together will marry one another. Sometimes
the same method is practised with little cups of silver foil.{19}

On the border of Saxony and Bohemia, a maiden who wishes to know the
bodily build of her future husband goes in the darkness to a stack of wood
and draws out a piece. If the wood is smooth and straight the man will be
slim and well built; if it is crooked, or knotted, he will be ill-developed or
even a hunchback.{20}

These are but a few of the many ways in which girls seek to peer into the
future and learn something about the most important event in their lives. Far
less numerous, but not altogether absent on this night, are other kinds of
prognostication. A person, for instance, who wishes to know whether he
will die in the coming year, must on St. Andrew's Eve before going to bed
make on the table a little pointed heap of flour. If by the morning it has
fallen asunder, the maker will die.{21}

The association of St. Andrew's Eve with the foreseeing of the future is not
confined to the German race; it is found also on Slavonic and Roumanian
ground. In Croatia he who fasts then will behold his future wife in a
dream,{22} and among the Roumanians mothers anxious about their
children's luck break small sprays from fruit-trees, bind them together in
bunches, one for each child, and put them in a glass of water. The branch of
the lucky one will blossom.{23}

In Roumania St. Andrew's Eve is a creepy time, for on it vampires are
supposed to rise from their graves, and with coffins 216 on their heads walk
about the houses in which they once lived. Before nightfall every woman
takes some garlic and anoints with it the door locks and window casements;
this will keep away the vampires. At the cross-roads there is a great fight of
these loathsome beings until the first cock crows; and not only the dead take
part in this, but also some living men who are vampires from their birth.
Sometimes it is only the souls of these living vampires that join in the fight;
the soul comes out through the mouth in the form of a bluish flame, takes
the shape of an animal, and runs to the crossway. If the body meanwhile is
moved from its place the person dies, for the soul cannot find its way
back.{24}

St. Andrew's Day is sometimes the last, sometimes the first important
festival of the western Church's year. It is regarded in parts of Germany as

the beginning of winter, as witness the saying:—

“Sünten-Dres-Misse,
es de Winter gewisse.”[93]{ 25}

The nights are now almost at their longest, and as November passes away,
giving place to the last month of the year, Christmas is felt to be near at
hand.

In northern Bohemia it is customary for peasant girls to keep for themselves
all the yarn they spin on St. Andrew's Eve, and the Hausfrau gives them
also some flax and a little money. With this they buy coffee and other
refreshments for the lads who come to visit the parlours where in the long
winter evenings the women sit spinning. These evenings, when many gather
together in a brightly lighted room and sing songs and tell stories while they
spin, are cheerful enough, and spice is added by the visits of the village
lads, who in some places come to see the girls home.{26}

The Klöpfelnächte.

On the Thursday nights in Advent it is customary in southern Germany for
children or grown-up people to go from house 217 to house, singing hymns
and knocking on the doors with rods or little hammers, or throwing peas,
lentils, and the like against the windows. Hence these evenings have gained
the name of Klöpfel or Knöpflinsnächte (Knocking Nights).{27} The practice
is described by Naogeorgus in the sixteenth century:—

“Three weekes before the day whereon was borne the Lord of
Grace,
And on the Thursdaye Boyes and Girles do runne in every
place,
And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie
snaps,

And crie, the Advent of the Lorde not borne as yet perhaps.
And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell,
A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well:
Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives
willinglee,
For these three nightes are alwayes thought, unfortunate to bee;
Wherein they are afrayde of sprites and cankred witches’
spight,
And dreadfull devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest
might.”{28}

With it may be compared the Macedonian custom for village boys to go in
parties at nightfall on Christmas Eve, knocking at the cottage doors with
sticks, shouting Kolianda! Kolianda! and receiving presents,{29} and also
one in vogue in Holland between Christmas and the Epiphany. There “the
children go out in couples, each boy carrying an earthenware pot, over
which a bladder is stretched, with a piece of stick tied in the middle. When
this stick is twirled about, a not very melodious grumbling sound proceeds
from the contrivance, which is known by the name of ‘Rommelpot.’ By
going about in this manner the children are able to collect some few
pence.”{30}

Can such practices have originated in attempts to drive out evil spirits from
the houses by noise? Similar methods are used for that purpose by various
European and other peoples.{31} Anyhow something mysterious hangs
about the Klöpfelnächte. They are occasions for girls to learn about their
future husbands, and upon them in Swabia goes about Pelzmärte, whom we
already know.{32}

218In Tyrol curious mummeries are then performed. At Pillersee in the
Lower Innthal two youths combine to form a mimic ass, upon which a third
rides, and they are followed by a motley train. The ass falls sick and has to

be cured by a “vet,” and all kinds of satirical jokes are made about things
that have happened in the parish during the year. Elsewhere two men dress
up in straw as husband and wife, and go out with a masked company. The
pair wrangle with one another and carry on a play of wits with the peasants
whose house they are visiting. Sometimes the satire is so cutting that
permanent enmities ensue, and for this reason the practice is gradually
being dropped.{33}

St. Nicholas's Day.

On December 6 we reach the most distinctive children's festival of the
whole year, St. Nicholas's Day. In England it has gone out of mind, and in
the flat north of Germany Protestantism has largely rooted it out, as
savouring too much of saint-worship, and transferred its festivities to the
more Evangelical season of Christmas.{34} In western and southern
Germany, however, and in Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, it
is still a day of joy for children, though in some regions even there its
radiance tends to pale before the greater glory of the Christmas-tree.

It is not easy either to get at the historic facts about St. Nicholas, the fourth-
century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, or to ascertain why he became the
patron saint of boys. The legends of his infant piety and his later wondrous
works for the benefit of young people may either have given rise, or be
themselves due to, his connection with children.{35} In eastern Europe and
southern Italy he is above all things the saint of seafaring men, and among
the Greeks his cult has perhaps replaced that of Artemis as a sea
divinity.{36} This aspect of him does not, however, appear in the German
festival customs with which we are here chiefly concerned.

It has already been hinted that in some respects St. Nicholas is a duplicate
of St. Martin. His feast, indeed, is probably a later beginning-of-winter

festival, dating from the period when 219 improved methods of agriculture
and other causes made early December, rather than mid-November, the time
for the great annual slaughter and its attendant rejoicings. Like St. Martin
he brings sweet things for the good children and rods for the bad.

St. Nicholas's Eve is a time of festive stir in Holland and Belgium; the
shops are full of pleasant little gifts: many-shaped biscuits, gilt
gingerbreads, sometimes representing the saint, sugar images, toys, and
other trifles. In many places, when evening comes on, people dress up as St.
Nicholas, with mitre and pastoral staff, enquire about the behaviour of the
children, and if it has been good pronounce a benediction and promise them
a reward next morning. Before they go to bed the children put out their
shoes, with hay, straw, or a carrot in them for the saint's white horse or ass.
When they wake in the morning, if they have been “good” the fodder is
gone and sweet things or toys are in its place; if they have misbehaved
themselves the provender is untouched and no gift but a rod is there.{37}

In various parts of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria St. Nicholas is
mimed by a man dressed up as a bishop.{38} In Tyrol children pray to the
saint on his Eve and leave out hay for his white horse and a glass of
schnaps for his servant. And he comes in all the splendour of a church-
image, a reverend grey-haired figure with flowing beard, gold-broidered
cope, glittering mitre, and pastoral staff. Children who know their
catechism are rewarded with sweet things out of the basket carried by his
servant; those who cannot answer are reproved, and St. Nicholas points to a
terrible form that stands behind him with a rod—the hideous Klaubauf, a
shaggy monster with horns, black face, fiery eyes, long red tongue, and
chains that clank as he moves.{39}

In Lower Austria the saint is followed by a similar figure called Krampus or
Grampus;{40} in Styria this horrible attendant is named Bartel;{41} all are no

doubt related to such monsters as the Klapperbock (see Chapter VII.). Their
heathen origin is evident though it is difficult to trace their exact pedigree.
Sometimes St. Nicholas himself appears in a non-churchly form like
Pelzmärte, with a bell,{42} or with a sack of ashes which gains him the name
of Aschenklas.{43}

220Not only by hideous figures is St. Nicholas attended. Sometimes, as at
Warnsdorf near Rumburg, there come with him the forms of Christ Himself,
St. Peter, an angel, and the famous Knecht Ruprecht, whom we shall meet
again on Christmas Eve. They are represented by children, and a little
drama is performed, one personage coming in after the other and calling for
the next in the manner of the English mummers’ play. St. Nicholas, St.
Peter, and Ruprecht accuse the children of all kinds of naughtiness, the
“Heiliger Christ” intercedes and at last throws nuts down and receives
money from the parents.{44} In Tyrol there are St. Nicholas plays of a more
comic nature, performed publicly by large companies of players and
introducing a number of humorous characters and much rude popular
wit.{45}

Sometimes a female bogey used to appear: Budelfrau in Lower Austria,
Berchtel in Swabia, Buzebergt in the neighbourhood of Augsburg.{46} The
last two are plainly variants of Berchte, who is specially connected with the
Epiphany. Berchtel used to punish the naughty children with a rod, and
reward the good with nuts and apples; Buzebergt wore black rags, had her
face blackened and her hair hanging unkempt, and carried a pot of starch
which she smeared upon people's faces.{47}

As Santa Klaus St. Nicholas is of course known to every English child, but
rather as a sort of incarnation of Christmas than as a saint with a day of his
own. Santa Klaus, probably, has come to us viâ the United States, whither
the Dutch took him, and where he has still immense popularity.

In the Middle Ages in England as elsewhere the Eve of St. Nicholas was a
day of great excitement for boys. It was then that the small choristers and
servers in cathedral and other churches generally elected their “Boy
Bishop” or “Nicholas.”{48} He had in some places to officiate at First
Vespers and at the services on the festival itself. As a rule, however, the
feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, was probably the most important
day in the Boy Bishop's career, and we may therefore postpone our
consideration of him. We will here only note his connection with the
festival of the patron saint of boys, a connection perhaps implying a
common origin for him and 221 for the St. Nicholases who in bishops’
vestments make their present-giving rounds.

The festival of St. Nicholas is naturally celebrated with most splendour at
the place where his body lies, the seaport of Bari in south-eastern Italy. The
holy bones are preserved in a sepulchre beneath a crypt of rich Saracenic
architecture, above which rises a magnificent church. Legend relates that in
the eleventh century they were stolen by certain merchants of Bari from the
saint's own cathedral at Myra in Asia Minor. The tomb of St. Nicholas is a
famous centre for pilgrimages, and on the 6th of December many thousands
of the faithful, bearing staves bound with olive and pine, visit it. An
interesting ceremony on the festival is the taking of the saint's image out to
sea by the sailors of the port. They return with it at nightfall, and a great
procession escorts it back to the cathedral with torches and fireworks and
chanting.{49} Here may be seen the other, the seafaring, aspect of St.
Nicholas; by this mariners’ cult we are taken far away from the present-
giving saint who delights the small children of the North.

St. Lucia's Day.

The only folk-festivals of note between St. Nicholas's Day and Christmas
are those of St. Lucia (December 13) and St. Thomas the Apostle

(December 21).

In Sweden St. Lucia's Day was formerly marked by some interesting
practices. It was, so to speak, the entrance to the Christmas festival, and was
called “little Yule.”{50} At the first cock-crow, between 1 and 4 a.m., the
prettiest girl in the house used to go among the sleeping folk, dressed in a
white robe, a red sash, and a wire crown covered with whortleberry-twigs
and having nine lighted candles fastened in it. She awakened the sleepers
and regaled them with a sweet drink or with coffee,[94] sang a special song,
and was named “Lussi” or “Lussibruden” (Lucy bride). When everyone was
dressed, breakfast was taken, the room being lighted by many candles. The
domestic animals 222 were not forgotten on this day, but were given special
portions. A peculiar feature of the Swedish custom is the presence of lights
on Lussi's crown. Lights indeed are the special mark of the festival; it was
customary to shoot and fish on St. Lucy's Day by torchlight, the parlours, as
has been said, were brilliantly illuminated in the early morning, in West
Gothland Lussi went round the village preceded by torchbearers, and in one
parish she was represented by a cow with a crown of lights on her head. In
schools the day was celebrated with illuminations.{51}

What is the explanation of this feast of lights? There is nothing in the
legend of the saint to account for it; her name, however, at once suggests
lux—light. It is possible, as Dr. Feilberg supposes, that the name gave rise
to the special use of lights among the Latin-learned monks who brought
Christianity to Sweden, and that the custom spread from them to the
common people. A peculiar fitness would be found in it because St. Lucia's
Day according to the Old Style was the shortest day of the year, the turning-
point of the sun's light.{52}

In Sicily also St. Lucia's festival is a feast of lights. After sunset on the Eve
a long procession of men, lads, and children, each flourishing a thick bunch

of long straws all afire, rushes wildly down the streets of the mountain
village of Montedoro, as if fleeing from some danger, and shouting
hoarsely. “The darkness of the night,” says an eye-witness, “was lighted up
by this savage procession of dancing, flaming torches, whilst bonfires in all
the side streets gave the illusion that the whole village was burning.” At the
end of the procession came the image of Santa Lucia, holding a dish which
contained her eyes.[95] In the midst of the piazza a great mountain of straw
had been prepared; on this everyone threw his own burning torch, and the
saint was placed in a spot from which she could survey the vast bonfire.{53}

In central Europe we see St. Lucia in other aspects. In the Böhmerwald she
goes round the village in the form of a nanny-goat with horns, gives fruit to
the good children, and threatens to rip open the belly of the naughty. Here
she is evidently related 223 to the pagan monsters already described. In Tyrol
she plays a more graceful part: she brings presents for girls, an office which
St. Nicholas is there supposed to perform for boys only.{55}

In Lower Austria St. Lucia's Eve is a time when special danger from
witchcraft is feared and must be averted by prayer and incense. A
procession is made through each house to cense every room. On this
evening, too, girls are afraid to spin lest in the morning they should find
their distaffs twisted, the threads broken, and the yarn in confusion. (We
shall meet with like superstitions during the Twelve Nights.) At midnight
the girls practise a strange ceremony: they go to a willow-bordered brook,
cut the bark of a tree partly away, without detaching it, make with a knife a
cross on the inner side of the cut bark, moisten it with water, and carefully
close up the opening. On New Year's Day the cutting is opened, and the
future is augured from the markings found. The lads, on the other hand,
look out at midnight for a mysterious light, the Luzieschein, the forms of
which indicate coming events.{56}

In Denmark, too, St. Lucia's Eve is a time for seeing the future. Here is a
prayer of Danish maids: “Sweet St. Lucy let me know: whose cloth I shall
lay, whose bed I shall make, whose child I shall bear, whose darling I shall
be, whose arms I shall sleep in.”{57}

St. Thomas's Day.

Many and various are the customs and beliefs associated with the feast of
St. Thomas (December 21). In Denmark it was formerly a great children's
day, unique in the year, and rather resembling the mediaeval Boy Bishop
festival. It was the breaking-up day for schools; the children used to bring
their master an offering of candles and money, and in return he gave them a
feast. In some places it had an even more delightful side: for this one day in
the year the children were allowed the mastery in the school. Testimonials
to their scholarship and industry were made out, and elaborate titles were
added to their names, as exalted sometimes as “Pope,” “Emperor,” or
“Empress.” Poor children used to go about showing these 224 documents and
collecting money. Games and larks of all sorts went on in the schools
without a word of reproof, and the children were wont to burn their master's
rod.{58}

In the neighbourhood of Antwerp children go early to school on St.
Thomas's Day, and lock the master out, until he promises to treat them with
ale or other drink. After this they buy a cock and hen, which are allowed to
escape and have to be caught by the boys or the girls respectively. The girl
who catches the hen is called “queen,” the boy who gets the cock, “king.”
Elsewhere in Belgium children lock out their parents, and servants their
masters, while schoolboys bind their teacher to his chair and carry him over
to the inn. There he has to buy back his liberty by treating his scholars with
punch and cakes. Instead of the chase for the fowls, it was up to 1850 the
custom in the Ardennes for the teacher to give the children hens and let

them chop the heads off.{59} Some pagan sacrifice no doubt lies at the root
of this barbarous practice, which has many parallels in the folk-lore of
western and southern Europe.{60}

As for schoolboys’ larks with their teachers, the custom of “barring out the
master” existed in England, and was practised before Christmas{61} as well
as at other times of the year, notably Shrove Tuesday. At Bromfield in
Cumberland on Shrove Tuesday there was a regular siege, the school doors
were strongly barricaded within, and the boy-defenders were armed with
pop-guns. If the master won, heavy tasks were imposed, but if, as more
often happened, he was defeated in his efforts to regain his authority, he had
to make terms with the boys as to the hours of work and play.{62}

St. Thomas's Eve is in certain regions one of the uncanniest nights in the
year. In some Bohemian villages the saint is believed to drive about at
midnight in a chariot of fire. In the churchyard there await him all the dead
men whose name is Thomas; they help him to alight and accompany him to
the churchyard cross, which glows red with supernatural radiance. There St.
Thomas kneels and prays, and then rises to bless his namesakes. This done,
he vanishes beneath the cross, and each Thomas returns to his grave. The
saint here seems to have taken over 225 the character of some pagan god,
who, like the Teutonic Odin or Woden, ruled the souls of the departed. In
the houses the people listen with awe for the sound of his chariot, and when
it is heard make anxious prayer to him for protection from all ill. Before
retiring to rest the house-father goes to the cowhouse with holy water and
consecrated salt, asperges it from without, and then entering, sprinkles
every cow. Salt is also thrown on the head of each animal with the words,
“St. Thomas preserve thee from all sickness.” In the Böhmerwald the cattle
are fed on this night with consecrated bayberries, bread, and salt, in order to
avert disease.{63}

In Upper and Lower Austria St. Thomas's Eve is reckoned as one of the so-
called Rauchnächte (smoke-nights) when houses and farm-buildings must
be sanctified with incense and holy water, the other nights being the Eves of
Christmas, the New Year, and the Epiphany.{64}

In Germany St. Thomas's, like St. Andrew's Eve, is a time for forecasting
the future, and the methods already described are sometimes employed by
girls who wish to behold their future husbands. A widely diffused custom is
that of throwing shoes backwards over the shoulders. If the points are found
turned towards the door the thrower is destined to leave the house during
the year; if they are turned away from it another year will be spent there. In
Westphalia a belief prevails that you must eat and drink heartily on this
night in order to avert scarcity.{65}

In Lower Austria it is supposed that sluggards can cure themselves of
oversleeping by saying a special prayer before they go to bed on St.
Thomas's Eve, and in Westphalia in the mid-nineteenth century the same
association of the day with slumber was shown by the schoolchildren's
custom of calling the child who arrived last at school Domesesel (Thomas
ass). In Holland, again, the person who lies longest in bed on St. Thomas's
Day is greeted with shouts of “lazybones.” Probably the fact that
December 21 is the shortest day is enough to account for this.{66}

In England there was divination by means of “St. Thomas's onion.” Girls
used to peel an onion, wrap it in a handkerchief and put it under their heads
at night, with a prayer to the satin 226 to show them their true love in a
dream.{67} The most notable English custom on this day, however, was the
peregrinations of poor people begging for money or provisions for
Christmas. Going “a-gooding,” or “a-Thomassin’,” or “a-mumping,” this
was called. Sometimes in return for the charity bestowed a sprig of holly or
mistletoe was given.{68} Possibly the sprig was originally a sacrament of the

healthful spirit of growth: it may be compared with the olive- or cornel-
branches carried about on New Year's Eve by Macedonian boys,{69} and
also with the St. Martin's rod (see last chapter).

One more English custom on December 21 must be mentioned—it points to
a sometime sacrifice—the bull-baiting practised until 1821 at Wokingham
in Berkshire. Its abolition in 1822 caused great resentment among the
populace, although the flesh continued to be duly distributed.{70}

We are now four days from the feast of the Nativity, and many things
commonly regarded as distinctive of Christmas have already come under
notice. We have met, for instance, with several kinds of present-giving, with
auguries for the New Year, with processions of carol-singers and well-
wishers, with ceremonial feasting that anticipates the Christmas eating and
drinking, and with various figures, saintly or monstrous, mimed or merely
imagined, which we shall find reappearing at the greatest of winter
festivals. These things would seem to have been attracted from earlier dates
to the feast of the Nativity, and the probability that Christmas has borrowed
much from an old November festival gradually shifted into December, is
our justification for having dwelt so long upon the feasts that precede the
Twelve Days.
227 228 229

CHAPTER IX

CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS

Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht—Talking Animals
and other Wonders of Christmas Eve—Scandinavian Beliefs about
Trolls and the Return of the Dead—Traditional Christmas Songs in
Eastern Europe—The Twelve Days, their Christian Origin and
Pagan Superstitions—The Raging Host—Hints of Supernatural
Visitors in England—The German Frauen—The Greek
Kallikantzaroi.

CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE—THE MUMMERS COMING IN

Christmas Eve.

Christmas in the narrowest sense must be reckoned as beginning on the
evening of December 24. Though Christmas Eve is not much observed in
modern England, throughout the rest of Europe its importance so far as

popular customs are concerned is far greater than that of the Day itself.
Then in Germany the Christmas-tree is manifested in its glory; then, as in
the England of the past, the Yule log is solemnly lighted in many lands; then
often the most distinctive Christmas meal takes place.

We shall consider these and other institutions later; though they appear first
on Christmas Eve, they belong more or less to the Twelve Days as a whole.
Let us look first at the supernatural visitors, mimed by human beings, who
delight the minds of children, especially in Germany, on the evening of
December 24, and at the beliefs that hang around this most solemn night of
the year.

First of all, the activities of St. Nicholas are not confined to his own
festival; he often appears on Christmas Eve. We have already seen how he
is attended by various companions, including 230 Christ Himself, and how he
comes now vested as a bishop, now as a masked and shaggy figure. The
names and attributes of the Christmas and Advent visitors are rather
confused, but on the whole it may be said that in Protestant north Germany
the episcopal St. Nicholas and his Eve have been replaced by Christmas
Eve and the Christ Child, while the name Klas has become attached to
various unsaintly forms appearing at or shortly before Christmas.

We can trace a deliberate substitution of the Christ Child for St. Nicholas as
the bringer of gifts. In the early seventeenth century a Protestant pastor is
found complaining that parents put presents in their children's beds and tell
them that St. Nicholas has brought them. “This,” he says, “is a bad custom,
because it points children to the saint, while yet we know that not St.
Nicholas but the holy Christ Child gives us all good things for body and
soul, and He alone it is whom we ought to call upon.”{1}

The ways in which the figure, or at all events the name, of Christ Himself,
is introduced into German Christmas customs, are often surprising. The
Christ Child, “Christkind,” so familiar to German children, has now become
a sort of mythical figure, a product of sentiment and imagination working
so freely as almost to forget the sacred character of the original. Christkind
bears little resemblance to the Infant of Bethlehem; he is quite a tall child,
and is often represented by a girl dressed in white, with long fair hair. He
hovers, indeed, between the character of the Divine Infant and that of an
angel, and is regarded more as a kind of good fairy than as anything else.

In Alsace the girl who represents Christkind has her face “made up” with
flour, wears a crown of gold paper with lighted candles in it—a parallel to
the headgear of the Swedish Lussi; in one hand she holds a silver bell, in
the other, a basket of sweetmeats. She is followed by the terrible Hans
Trapp, dressed in a bearskin, with blackened face, long beard, and
threatening rod. He “goes for” the naughty children, who are only saved by
the intercession of Christkind.{2}

In the Mittelmark the name of de hêle (holy) Christ is strangely 231 given to
a skin- or straw-clad man, elsewhere called Knecht Ruprecht, Klas, or
Joseph.{3} In the Ruppin district a man dresses up in white with ribbons,
carries a large pouch, and is called Christmann or Christpuppe. He is
accompanied by a Schimmelreiter and by other fellows who are attired as
women, have blackened faces, and are named Feien (we may see in them a
likeness to the Kalends maskers condemned by the early Church). The
procession goes round from house to house. The Schimmelreiter as he
enters has to jump over a chair; this done, the Christpuppe is admitted. The
girls present begin to sing, and the Schimmelreiter dances with one of them.
Meanwhile the Christpuppe makes the children repeat some verse of
Scripture or a hymn; if they know it well, he rewards them with
gingerbreads from his wallet; if not, he beats them with a bundle filled with

ashes. Then both he and the Schimmelreiter dance and pass on. Only when
they are gone are the Feien allowed to enter; they jump wildly about and
frighten the children.{4}

Knecht Ruprecht, to whom allusion has already been made, is a prominent
figure in the German Christmas. On Christmas Eve in the north he goes
about clad in skins or straw and examines children; if they can say their
prayers perfectly he rewards them with apples, nuts and gingerbreads; if
not, he punishes them. In the Mittelmark, as we have seen, a personage
corresponding to him is sometimes called “the holy Christ”; in
Mecklenburg he is “rû Klas” (rough Nicholas—note his identification with
the saint); in Brunswick, Hanover, and Holstein “Klas,” “Klawes,” “Klas
Bûr” and “Bullerklas”; and in Silesia “Joseph.” Sometimes he wears bells
and carries a long staff with a bag of ashes at the end—hence the name
“Aschenklas” occasionally given to him.{5} An ingenious theory connects
this aspect of him with the polaznik of the Slavs, who on Christmas Day in
Crivoscian farms goes to the hearth, takes up the ashes of the Yule log and
dashes them against the cauldron-hook above so that sparks fly (see Chapter
X.).{6} As for the name “Ruprecht” the older mythologists interpreted it as
meaning “shining with glory,” hruodperaht, and identified its owner with
the god Woden.{7} Dr. Tille, however, regards him 232 as dating only from
the seventeenth century.{8} It can hardly be said that any satisfactory
account has as yet been given of the origins of this personage, or of his
relation to St. Nicholas, Pelzmärte, and monstrous creatures like the
Klapperbock.

In the south-western part of Lower Austria, both St. Nicholas—a proper
bishop with mitre, staff, and ring—and Ruprecht appear on Christmas Eve,
and there is quite an elaborate ceremonial. The children welcome the saint
with a hymn; then he goes to a table and makes each child repeat a prayer
and show his lesson-books. Meanwhile Ruprecht in a hide, with glowing

eyes and a long red tongue, stands at the door to overawe the young people.
Each child next kneels before the saint and kisses his ring, whereupon
Nicholas bids him put his shoes out-of-doors and look in them when the
clock strikes ten. After this the saint lays on the table a rod dipped in lime,
solemnly blesses the children, sprinkling them with holy water, and
noiselessly departs. The children steal out into the garden, clear a space in
the snow, and set out their shoes; when the last stroke of ten has sounded
they find them filled with nuts and apples and all kinds of sweet things.{9}

In the Troppau district of Austrian Silesia, three figures go round on
Christmas Eve—Christkindel, the archangel Gabriel, and St. Peter—and
perform a little play before the presents they bring are given. Christkindel
announces that he has gifts for the good children, but the bad shall feel the
rod. St. Peter complains of the naughtiness of the youngsters: they play
about in the streets instead of going straight to school; they tear up their
lesson-books and do many other wicked things. However, the children's
mother pleads for them, and St. Peter relents and gives out the presents.{10}

In the Erzgebirge appear St. Peter and Ruprecht, who is clad in skin and
straw, has a mask over his face, a rod, a chain round his body, and a sack
with apples, nuts, and other gifts; and a somewhat similar performance is
gone through.{11}

If we go as far east as Russia we find a parallel to the girl Christkind in
Kolyáda, a white-robed maiden driven about in a sledge from house to
house on Christmas Eve. The young people who attended her sang carols,
and presents were given 233 them in return. Kolyáda is the name for
Christmas and appears to be derived from Kalendae, which probably
entered the Slavonic languages by way of Byzantium. The maiden is one of
those beings who, like the Italian Befana, have taken their names from the
festival at which they appear.{12}

No time in all the Twelve Nights and Days is so charged with the
supernatural as Christmas Eve. Doubtless this is due to the fact that the
Church has hallowed the night of December 24-5 above all others in the
year. It was to the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night that,
according to the Third Evangelist, came the angelic message of the Birth,
and in harmony with this is the unique Midnight Mass of the Roman
Church, lending a peculiar sanctity to the hour of its celebration. And yet
many of the beliefs associated with this night show a large admixture of
paganism.

First, there is the idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve animals have the
power of speech. This superstition exists in various parts of Europe, and no
one can hear the beasts talk with impunity. The idea has given rise to some
curious and rather grim tales. Here is one from Brittany:—

“Once upon a time there was a woman who starved her cat and dog. At
midnight on Christmas Eve she heard the dog say to the cat, ‘It is quite time
we lost our mistress; she is a regular miser. To-night burglars are coming to
steal her money; and if she cries out they will break her head.’ ‘’Twill be a
good deed,’ the cat replied. The woman in terror got up to go to a
neighbour's house; as she went out the burglars opened the door, and when
she shouted for help they broke her head.”{13}

Again a story is told of a farm servant in the German Alps who did not
believe that the beasts could speak, and hid in a stable on Christmas Eve to
learn what went on. At midnight he heard surprising things. “We shall have
hard work to do this day week,” said one horse. “Yes, the farmer's servant is
heavy,” answered the other. “And the way to the churchyard is long and
steep,” said the first. The servant was buried that day week.{14}

234It may well have been the traditional association of the ox and ass with
the Nativity that fixed this superstition to Christmas Eve, but the conception
of the talking animals is probably pagan.

Related to this idea, but more Christian in form, is the belief that at
midnight all cattle rise in their stalls or kneel and adore the new-born King.
Readers of Mr. Hardy's “Tess” will remember how this is brought into a
delightful story told by a Wessex peasant. The idea is widespread in
England and on the Continent,{15} and has reached even the North
American Indians. Howison, in his “Sketches of Upper Canada,” relates
that an Indian told him that “on Christmas night all deer kneel and look up
to Great Spirit.”{16} A somewhat similar belief about bees was held in the
north of England: they were said to assemble on Christmas Eve and hum a
Christmas hymn.{17} Bees seem in folk-lore in general to be specially near
to humanity in their feelings.

It is a widespread idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve all water turns to
wine. A Guernsey woman once determined to test this; at midnight she drew
a bucket from the well. Then came a voice:—

“Toute l'eau se tourne en vin,
Et tu es proche de ta fin.”

She fell down with a mortal disease, and died before the end of the year. In
Sark the superstition is that the water in streams and wells turns into blood,
and if you go to look you will die within the year.{18}

There is also a French belief that on Christmas Eve, while the genealogy of
Christ is being chanted at the Midnight Mass, hidden treasures are
revealed.{19} In Russia all sorts of buried treasures are supposed to be
revealed on the evenings between Christmas and the Epiphany, and on the

eves of these festivals the heavens are opened, and the waters of springs and
rivers turn into wine.{20}

Another instance of the supernatural character of the night is found in a
Breton story of a blacksmith who went on working after the sacring bell had
rung at the Midnight Mass. To him 235 came a tall, stooping man with a
scythe, who begged him to put in a nail. He did so; and the visitor in return
bade him send for a priest, for this work would be his last. The figure
disappeared, the blacksmith felt his limbs fail him, and at cock-crow he
died. He had mended the scythe of the Ankou—Death the reaper.{21}

In the Scandinavian countries simple folk have a vivid sense of the nearness
of the supernatural on Christmas Eve. On Yule night no one should go out,
for he may meet uncanny beings of all kinds. In Sweden the Trolls are
believed to celebrate Christmas Eve with dancing and revelry. “On the
heaths witches and little Trolls ride, one on a wolf, another on a broom or a
shovel, to their assemblies, where they dance under their stones.... In the
mount are then to be heard mirth and music, dancing and drinking. On
Christmas morn, during the time between cock-crowing and daybreak, it is
highly dangerous to be abroad.”{22}

Christmas Eve is also in Scandinavian folk-belief the time when the dead
revisit their old homes, as on All Souls’ Eve in Roman Catholic lands. The
living prepare for their coming with mingled dread and desire to make them
welcome. When the Christmas Eve festivities are over, and everyone has
gone to rest, the parlour is left tidy and adorned, with a great fire burning,
candles lighted, the table covered with a festive cloth and plentifully spread
with food, and a jug of Yule ale ready. Sometimes before going to bed
people wipe the chairs with a clean white towel; in the morning they are
wiped again, and, if earth is found, some kinsman, fresh from the grave, has
sat there. Consideration for the dead even leads people to prepare a warm

bath in the belief that, like living folks, the kinsmen will want a wash before
their festal meal.[96] Or again beds were made ready for them while the
living slept on straw. Not always is it consciously the dead for whom these
preparations are made, sometimes they are said to be for the Trolls and
sometimes even for 236 the Saviour and His angels.{24} (We may compare
with this Christian idea the Tyrolese custom of leaving some milk for the
Christ Child and His Mother{25} at the hour of Midnight Mass, and a Breton
practice of leaving food all through Christmas night in case the Virgin
should come.{26} )

It is difficult to say how far the other supernatural beings—their name is
legion—who in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland are believed to
come out of their underground hiding-places during the long dark Christmas
nights, were originally ghosts of the dead. Twenty years ago many students
would have accounted for them all in this way, but the tendency now is
strongly against the derivation of all supernatural beings from ancestor-
worship. Elves, trolls, dwarfs, witches, and other uncanny folk—the beliefs
about their Christmas doings are too many to be treated here; readers of
Danish will find a long and very interesting chapter on this subject in Dr.
Feilberg's “Jul.”{27} I may mention just one familiar figure of the
Scandinavian Yule, Tomte Gubbe, a sort of genius of the house
corresponding very much to the “drudging goblin” of Milton's “L'Allegro,”
for whom the cream-bowl must be duly set. He may perhaps be the spirit of
the founder of the family. At all events on Christmas Eve Yule porridge and
new milk are set out for him, sometimes with other things, such as a suit of
small clothes, spirits, or even tobacco. Thus must his goodwill be won for
the coming year.{28}

In one part of Norway it used to be believed that on Christmas Eve, at rare
intervals, the old Norse gods made war on Christians, coming down from
the mountains with great blasts of wind and wild shouts, and carrying off

any human being who might be about. In one place the memory of such a
visitation was preserved in the nineteenth century. The people were
preparing for their festivities, when suddenly from the mountains came the
warning sounds. “In a second the air became black, peals of thunder echoed
among the hills, lightning danced about the buildings, and the inhabitants in
the darkened rooms heard the clatter of hoofs and the weird shrieks of the
hosts of the gods.”{29}

237The Scandinavian countries, Protestant though they are, have retained
many of the outward forms of Catholicism, and the sign of the cross is often
used as a protection against uncanny visitors. The cross—perhaps the
symbol was originally Thor's hammer—is marked with chalk or tar or fire
upon doors and gates, is formed of straw or other material and put in stables
and cowhouses, or is smeared with the remains of the Yule candle on the
udders of the beasts—it is in fact displayed at every point open to attack by
a spirit of darkness.{30}

Christmas Eve is in Germany a time for auguries. Some of the methods
already noted on other days are practised upon it—for instance the pouring
of molten lead into water, the flinging of shoes, the pulling out of pieces of
wood, and the floating of nutshells—and there are various others which it
might be tedious to describe.{31}

Among the southern Slavs if a girl wants to know what sort of husband she
will get, she covers the table on Christmas Eve, puts on it a white loaf, a
plate, and a knife, spoon, and fork, and goes to bed. At midnight the spirit
of her future husband will appear and fling the knife at her. If it falls
without injuring her she will get a good husband and be happy, but if she is
hurt she will die early. There is a similar mode of divination for a young
fellow. On Christmas Eve, when everybody else has gone to church, he

must, naked and in darkness, sift ashes through a sieve. His future bride will
then appear, pull him thrice by the nose, and go away.{32}

In eastern Europe Christmas, and especially Christmas Eve, is the time for
the singing of carols called in Russian Kolyádki, and in other Slav countries
by similar names derived from Kalendae.{33} More often than not these are
without connection with the Nativity; sometimes they have a Christian form
and tell of the doings of God, the Virgin and the saints, but frequently they
are of an entirely secular or even pagan character. Into some the sun, moon,
and stars and other natural objects are introduced, and they seem to be
based on myths to which a Christian appearance has been given by a
sprinkling of names of holy persons of the 238 Church. Here for instance is a
fragment from a Carpathian song:—

“A golden plough goes ploughing,
And behind that plough is the Lord Himself.
The holy Peter helps Him to drive,
And the Mother of God carries the seed corn,
Carries the seed corn, prays to the Lord God,
‘Make, O Lord, the strong wheat to grow,
The strong wheat and the vigorous corn!
The stalks then shall be like reeds!’”{34}

Often they contain wishes for the prosperity of the household and end with
the words, “for many years, for many years.” The Roumanian songs are
frequently very long, and a typical, oft-recurring refrain is:—

“This evening is a great evening,
White flowers;
Great evening of Christmas,
White flowers.”{35}

Sometimes they are ballads of the national life.

In Russia a carol beginning “Glory be to God in heaven, Glory!” and
calling down blessings on the Tsar and his people, is one of the most
prominent among the Kolyádki, and opens the singing of the songs called
Podblyudnuiya. “At the Christmas festival a table is covered with a cloth,
and on it is set a dish or bowl (blyudo) containing water. The young people
drop rings or other trinkets into the dish, which is afterwards covered with a
cloth, and then the Podblyudnuiya Songs commence. At the end of each
song one of the trinkets is drawn at random, and its owner deduces an omen
from the nature of the words which have just been sung.”{36}

The Twelve Days.

Whatever the limits fixed for the beginning and end of the Christmas
festival, its core is always the period between Christmas 239 Eve and the
Epiphany—the “Twelve Days.”[97] A cycle of feasts falls within this time,
and the customs peculiar to each day will be treated in calendarial order.
First, however, it will be well to glance at the character of the Twelve Days
as a whole, and at the superstitions which hang about the season. So many
are these superstitions, so “bewitched” is the time, that the older
mythologists not unnaturally saw in it a Teutonic festal season, dating from
pre-Christian days. In point of fact it appears to be simply a creation of the
Church, a natural linking together of Christmas and Epiphany. It is first
mentioned as a festal tide by the eastern Father, Ephraem Syrus, at the end
of the fourth century, and was declared to be such by the western Council of
Tours in 567.{37}

While Christmas Eve is the night par excellence of the supernatural, the
whole season of the Twelve Days is charged with it. It is hard to see whence
Shakespeare could have got the idea which he puts into the mouth of
Marcellus in “Hamlet”:—

“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.”{38}

Against this is the fact that in folk-lore Christmas is a quite peculiarly
uncanny time. Not unnatural is it that at this midwinter season of darkness,
howling winds, and raging storms, men should have thought to see and hear
the mysterious shapes and voices of dread beings whom the living shun.

Throughout the Teutonic world one finds the belief in a “raging 240 host” or
“wild hunt” or spirits, rushing howling through the air on stormy nights. In
North Devon its name is “Yeth (heathen) hounds”;{40} elsewhere in the west
of England it is called the “Wish hounds.”{41} It is the train of the unhappy
souls of those who died unbaptized, or by violent hands, or under a curse,
and often Woden is their leader.{42} At least since the seventeenth century
this “raging host” (das wüthende Heer) has been particularly associated
with Christmas in German folk-lore,{43} and in Iceland it goes by the name
of the “Yule host.”{44}

In Guernsey the powers of darkness are supposed to be more than usually
active between St. Thomas's Day and New Year's Eve, and it is dangerous
to be out after nightfall. People are led astray then by Will o’ the Wisp, or
are preceded or followed by large black dogs, or find their path beset by
white rabbits that go hopping along just under their feet.{45}

In England there are signs that supernatural visitors were formerly looked
for during the Twelve Days. First there was a custom of cleansing the house
and its implements with peculiar care. In Shropshire, for instance, “the

pewter and brazen vessels had to be made so bright that the maids could see
to put their caps on in them—otherwise the fairies would pinch them, but if
all was perfect, the worker would find a coin in her shoe.” Again in
Shropshire special care was taken to put away any suds or “back-lee” for
washing purposes, and no spinning might be done during the Twelve
Days.{46} It was said elsewhere that if any flax were left on the distaff, the
Devil would come and cut it.{47}

The prohibition of spinning may be due to the Church's hallowing of the
season and the idea that all work then was wrong. This churchly hallowing
may lie also at the root of the Danish tradition that from Christmas till New
Year's Day nothing that runs round should be set in motion,{48} and of the
German idea that no thrashing must be done during the Twelve Days, or all
the corn within hearing will spoil. The expectation of uncanny visitors in
the English traditions calls, however, for special attention; it is perhaps
because of their coming that the house must be left spotlessly clean and
with as little as possible about on which they can work mischief.{49}
Though I know of no distinct English belief in the 241 return of the family
dead at Christmas, it may be that the fairies expected in Shropshire were
originally ancestral ghosts. Such a derivation of the elves and brownies that
haunt the hearth is very probable.{50}

The belief about the Devil cutting flax left on the distaff links the English
superstitions to the mysterious Frau with various names, who in Germany
is supposed to go her rounds during the Twelve Nights. She has a special
relation to spinning, often punishing girls who leave their flax unspun. In
central Germany and in parts of Austria she is called Frau Holle or Holda,
in southern Germany and Tyrol Frau Berchta or Perchta, in the north down
to the Harz Mountains Frau Freen or Frick, or Fru Gode or Fru Harke, and

there are other names too.{51} Attempts have been made to dispute her
claim to the rank of an old Teutonic goddess and to prove her a creation of
the Middle Ages, a representative of the crowd of ghosts supposed to be
specially near to the living at Christmastide.{52} It is questionable whether
she can be thus explained away, and at the back of the varying names, and
much overlaid no doubt with later superstitions, there may be a traditional
goddess corresponding to that old divinity Frigg to whom we owe the name
of Friday. The connection of Frick with Frigg is very probable, and Frick
shares characteristics with the other Frauen.{53}

All are connected with spinning and spinsters (in the literal sense). Fru
Frick or Freen in the Uckermark and the northern Harz permits no spinning
during the time when she goes her rounds, and if there are lazy spinsters she
soils the unspun flax on their distaff. In like manner do Holda, Harke,
Berchta, and Gode punish lazy girls.{54}

The characters of the Frauen can best be shown by the things told of them
in different regions. They are more dreaded than loved, but if severe in their
chastisements they are also generous in rewarding those who do them
service.

Frau Gaude (also called Gode, Gaue, or Wode) is said in Mecklenburg to
love to drive through the village streets on the Twelve Nights with a train of
dogs. Wherever she finds a street-door open she sends a little dog in. Next
morning he wags his 242 tail at the inmates and whines, and will not be
driven away. If killed, he turns into a stone by day; this, though it may be
thrown away, always returns and is a dog again by night. All through the
year he whines and brings ill luck upon the house; so people are careful to
keep their street-doors shut during the Twelve Nights.{55}

Good luck, however, befalls those who do Frau Gaude a service. A man
who put a new pole to her carriage was brilliantly repaid—the chips that fell
from the pole turned to glittering gold. Similar stories of golden chips are
told about Holda and Berchta.{56}

A train of dogs belongs not only to Frau Gaude but also to Frau Harke; with
these howling beasts they go raging through the air by night.{57} The
Frauen in certain aspects are, indeed, the leaders of the “Wild Host.”

Holda and Perchta, as some strange stories show, are the guides and
guardians of the heimchen or souls of children who have died unbaptized.
In the valley of the Saale, so runs a tale, Perchta, queen of the heimchen,
had her dwelling of old, and at her command the children watered the
fields, while she worked with her plough. But the people of the place were
ungrateful, and she resolved to leave their land. One night a ferryman
beheld on the bank of the Saale a tall, stately lady with a crowd of weeping
children. She demanded to be ferried across, and the children dragged a
plough into the boat, crying bitterly. As a reward for the ferrying, Perchta,
mending her plough, pointed to the chips. The man grumblingly took three,
and in the morning they had turned to gold-pieces.{58}

Holda, whose name means “the kindly one,” is the most friendly of the
Frauen. In Saxony she brings rewards for diligent spinsters, and on every
New Year's Eve, between nine and ten o'clock, she drives in a carriage full
of presents through villages where respect has been shown to her. At the
crack of her whip the people come out to receive her gifts. In Hesse and
Thuringia she is imagined as a beautiful woman clad in white with long
golden hair, and, when it snows hard, people say, “Frau Holle is shaking her
featherbed.”{59}

More of a bugbear on the whole is Berchte or Perchte (the name is
243

variously spelt). She is particularly connected with the Eve of the Epiphany,
and it is possible that her name comes from the old German giper(c)hta
Na(c)ht, the bright or shining night, referring to the manifestation of
Christ's glory.{60} In Carinthia the Epiphany is still called Berchtentag.{61}

Berchte is sometimes a bogey to frighten children. In the mountains round
Traunstein children are told on Epiphany Eve that if they are naughty she
will come and cut their stomachs open.{62} In Upper Austria the girls must
finish their spinning by Christmas; if Frau Berch finds flax still on their
distaffs she will be angered and send them bad luck.{63}

In the Orlagau (between the Saale and the Orle) on the night before Twelfth
Day, Perchta examines the spinning-rooms and brings the spinners empty
reels with directions to spin them full within a very brief time; if this is not
done she punishes them by tangling and befouling the flax. She also cuts
open the body of any one who has not eaten zemmede (fasting fare made of
flour and milk and water) that day, takes out any other food he has had, fills
the empty space with straw and bricks, and sews him up again.{64} And yet,
as we have seen, she has a kindly side—at any rate she rewards those who
serve her—and in Styria at Christmas she even plays the part of Santa
Klaus, hearing children repeat their prayers and rewarding them with nuts
and apples.{65}

There is a charming Tyrolese story about her. At midnight on Epiphany Eve
a peasant—not too sober—suddenly heard behind him “a sound of many
voices, which came on nearer and nearer, and then the Berchtl, in her white
clothing, her broken ploughshare in her hand, and all her train of little
people, swept clattering and chattering close past him. The least was the
last, and it wore a long shirt which got in the way of its little bare feet, and
kept tripping it up. The peasant had sense enough left to feel compassion, so

he took his garter off and bound it for a girdle round the infant, and then set
it again on its way. When the Berchtl saw what he had done, she turned
back and thanked him, and told him that in return for his compassion his
children should never come to want.”{66}

In Tyrol, by the way, it is often said that the Perchtl is Pontius Pilate's
244

wife, Procula.{67} In the Italian dialects of south Tyrol the German Frau
Berchta has been turned into la donna Berta.{68} If one goes further south,
into Italy itself, one meets with a similar being, the Befana, whose name is
plainly nothing but a corruption of Epiphania. She is so distinctly a part of
the Epiphany festival that we may leave her to be considered later.

Of all supernatural Christmas visitors, the most vividly realized and
believed in at the present day are probably the Greek Kallikantzaroi or
Karkantzaroi.{69} They are the terror of the Greek peasant during the
Twelve Days; in the soil of his imagination they flourish luxuriantly, and to
him they are a very real and living nuisance.

Traditions about the Kallikantzaroi vary from region to region, but in
general they are half-animal, half-human monsters, black, hairy, with huge
heads, glaring red eyes, goats’ or asses’ ears, blood-red tongues hanging
out, ferocious tusks, monkeys’ arms, and long curved nails, and commonly
they have the foot of some beast. “From dawn till sunset they hide
themselves in dark and dank places ... but at night they issue forth and run
wildly to and fro, rending and crushing those who cross their path.
Destruction and waste, greed and lust mark their course.” When a house is
not prepared against their coming, “by chimney and door alike they swarm
in, and make havoc of the home; in sheer wanton mischief they overturn
and break all the furniture, devour the Christmas pork, befoul all the water
and wine and food which remains, and leave the occupants half dead with

fright or violence.” Many like or far worse pranks do they play, until at the
crowing of the third cock they get them away to their dens. The signal for
their final departure does not come until the Epiphany, when, as we saw in
Chapter IV., the “Blessing of the Waters” takes place. Some of the hallowed
water is put into vessels, and with these and with incense the priests
sometimes make a round of the village, sprinkling the people and their
houses. The fear of the 245 Kallikantzaroi at this purification is expressed in
the following lines:—

“Quick, begone! we must begone,
Here comes the pot-bellied priest,
With his censer in his hand
And his sprinkling-vessel too;
He has purified the streams
And he has polluted us.”

Besides this ecclesiastical purification there are various Christian
precautions against the Kallikantzaroi—e.g., to mark the house-door with a
black cross on Christmas Eve, the burning of incense and the invocation of
the Trinity—and a number of other means of aversion: the lighting of the
Yule log, the burning of something that smells strong, and—perhaps as a
peace-offering—the hanging of pork-bones, sweetmeats, or sausages in the
chimney.

Just as men are sometimes believed to become vampires temporarily during
their lifetime, so, according to one stream of tradition, do living men
become Kallikantzaroi. In Greece children born at Christmas are thought
likely to have this objectionable characteristic as a punishment for their
mothers’ sin in bearing them at a time sacred to the Mother of God. In
Macedonia{70} people who have a “light” guardian angel undergo the
hideous transformation.

Many attempts have been made to account for the Kallikantzaroi. Perhaps
the most plausible explanation of the outward form, at least, of the uncanny
creatures, is the theory connecting them with the masquerades that formed
part of the winter festival of Dionysus and are still to be found in Greece at
Christmastide. The hideous bestial shapes, the noise and riot, may well have
seemed demoniacal to simple people slightly “elevated,” perhaps, by
Christmas feasting, while the human nature of the maskers was not
altogether forgotten.{71} Another theory of an even more prosaic character
has been propounded—“that the Kallikantzaroi are nothing more than
established nightmares, limited like indigestion to the twelve days of
feasting. This view is 246 taken by Allatius, who says that a Kallikantzaros
has all the characteristics of nightmare, rampaging abroad and jumping on
men's shoulders, then leaving them half senseless on the ground.”{72}

Such theories are ingenious and suggestive, and may be true to a certain
degree, but they hardly cover all the facts. It is possible that the
Kallikantzaroi may have some connection with the departed; they certainly
appear akin to the modern Greek and Slavonic vampire, “a corpse imbued
with a kind of half-life,” and with eyes gleaming like live coals.{73} They
are, however, even more closely related to the werewolf, a man who is
supposed to change into a wolf and go about ravening. It is to be noted that
“man-wolves” (λυκανθρωποι) is the very name given to the Kallikantzaroi
in southern Greece, and that the word Kallikantzaros itself has been
conjecturally derived by Bernhard Schmidt from two Turkish words
meaning “black” and “werewolf.”{74} The connection between Christmas
and werewolves is not confined to Greece. According to a belief not yet
extinct in the north and east of Germany, even where the real animals have
long ago been extirpated, children born during the Twelve Nights become
werewolves, while in Livonia and Poland that period is the special season
for the werewolf's ravenings.{75}