[852] Leges Ethelredi (Thorpe, Ancient Laws, i. 309) ‘Ordâl and âdhar sindon tocweden ... fram Adventum Domini odh octavas Epiphanie.... And beo tham hâlgum tîdan eal swa hit riht is, eallum cristenum mannum sib and sôm gemæne, and ælc sacu getwæmed.’ Cf. Leges Edwardi (Thorpe, i. 443).
[853] C. Moguntiacum, c. 36 (Mansi, xiv. 73) ‘In natali Domini dies quatuor, octavas Domini, epiphaniam Domini.’
[854] Tille, Y. and C. 203.
[855] Cf. the collection of prohibitions in Appendix N.
[856] C. of Tours, c. 18 (Appendix N, No. xxii).
[857] R. Sinker, in D. C. A. s. v. Circumcision.
[858] On this difficult subject see Tille, Y. and C. 134; H. Grotefend, Taschenbuch der Zeitrechnung (1898), 11; F. Ruhl, Chronologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (1897), 23; C. Plummer, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ii. cxxix; R. L. Poole, in Eng. Hist. Review (1901), 719.
[859] The position of Christmas would have made it natural that it should attract observances from the spring festivals also, and, in fact, it did attract the Mummers’ play: cf. p. 226. It cannot of course be positively said whether the Epiphany fires and some of the other agricultural rites to be presently mentioned (ch. xii) came from the November or the ploughing festival.
[860] C. of Auxerre (573-603), c. 11 (Appendix N. No. xxv).
[861] In the south of France Christmas is Chalendes, in Provence Calendas or Calenos. The log is calignau, chalendau, chalendal, calignaon, or culenos, and the peasants sang round it ‘Calène vient’ (Tille, D. W. 286; Müller, 475, 478). Thiers, i. 264, speaks of ‘le pain de Calende.’ Christmas songs used to be known in Silesia as Kolendelieder (Tille, D. W. 287). The Lithuanian term for Christmas is Kalledos and the Czechic Koleda (Polish Kolenda, Russian Koljada). A verb colendisare appears as a Bohemian law term (Tille, Y. and C. 84); while in the fourteenth century the Christmas quête at Prague was known as the Koledasammeln (Tille, D. W. 112). The Bohemian Christmas procession described by Alsso (cf. ch. xii) was called Calendizatio, and according to tradition St. Adalbert (tenth century) transferred it from the Kalends to Christmas, and called it colendizatio ‘a colendo.’