The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought / Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day

by Alexander Francis Chamberlain

On Christmas Eve thrash the garden with a flail, with only your shirt on, and the grass will grow well next year.

Tie wet strawbands around the orchard trees on Christmas Eve and it will make them fruitful.

On Christmas Eve put a stone on every tree, and they will bear the more (462. IV. 1790-1825).

Beat the trees on Christmas night, and they will bear more fruit (448. 337).

In Herefordshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, in England, the farmers and peasantry "salute the apple-trees on Christmas Eve," and in Sussex they used to "worsle," i.e. "wassail," the apple-trees and chant verses to them in somewhat of the primitive fashion (448. 219).

Some other curious items of Christmas folk-lore are the following, current chiefly in Germany (462. IV. 1779-1824):—

If after a Christmas dinner you shake out the table-cloth over the bare ground under the open sky, crumb-wort will grow on the spot.

If on Christmas Day, or Christmas Eve, you hang a wash-clout on a hedge, and then groom the horses with it, they will grow fat.

As often as the cock crows on Christmas Eve, the quarter of corn will be as dear.

If a dog howls the night before Christmas, it will go mad within the year.