[921] Dyer, 24; Cortet, 32; Frazer, iii. 143; Deslyons, Traités contre le Paganisme du Roi boit (2nd ed. 1670). The accounts of Edward II record a gift to the rex fabae on January 1, 1316 (Archaeologia, xxvi. 342). Payments to the ‘King of Bene’ and ‘for furnissing his graith’ were made by James IV of Scotland between 1490 and 1503 (L. H. T. Accounts, 1. ccxliii; 11. xxiv, xxxi, &c.). The familiar mode of choosing the king is thus described at Mont St. Michel ‘In vigilia Epyphaniae ad prandium habeant fratres gastellos et ponatur faba in uno; et frater qui inveniet fabam, vocabitur rex et sedebit ad magnam mensam, et scilicet sedebit ad vesperas ad matutinam et ad magnam missam in cathedra parata’ (Gasté, 53). The pre-eminence of the bean, largest of cereals, in the mixed cereal cake (cf. ch. vi) presents no great difficulty; on the religious significance attached to it in South Europe, cf. W. W. Fowler, 94, 110, 130. Lady Jane Grey was scornfully dubbed a Twelfth-day queen by Noailles (Froude, v. 206), just as the Bruce’s wife held her lord a summer king (ch. viii).
[922] Accts. of St. Michael’s, Bath, s. ann. 1487, 1490, 1492 (Somerset Arch. Soc. Trans. 1878, 1879, 1883). One entry is ‘pro corona conducta Regi Attumnali.’ The learned editor explains this as ‘a quest conducted by the King’s Attorney’!
[923] Ashton, 119; Dyer, 388, 423, 427.
[924] Brand, i. 261, prints from Leland, Itinerary (ed. 1769), iv. 182, a description of the proclamation of Youle by the sheriffs at the ‘Youle-Girth’ and throughout the city. In Davies, 270, is a letter from Archbp. Grindal and other ecclesiastical commissioners to the Lord Mayor, dated November 13, 1572, blaming ‘a very rude and barbarouse custome maynteyned in this citie and in no other citie or towne of this realme to our knowledge, that yerely upon St. Thomas day before Christmas twoo disguysed persons, called Yule and Yule’s wife, shoulde ryde throughe the citie very undecently and uncomely....’ Hereupon the council suppressed the riding. Drake, Eboracum (1736), 217, says that originally a friar rode backwards and ‘painted like a Jew.’ He gives an historical legend to account for the origin of the custom. Religious interludes were played on the same day: cf. Representations. The ‘Yule’ of York was perhaps less a ‘king’ than a symbolical personage like the modern ‘Old Father Christmas.’
[925] Ramsay, Y. and L. ii. 52; Blomefield, Hist. of Norfolk, iii. 149. The riot was against the Abbot of St. Benet’s Holm, and the monks declared that one John Gladman was set up as a king, an act of treason against Henry VI. The city was fined 1,000 marks. In 1448 they set forth their wrongs in a ‘Bill’ and explained that Gladman ‘who was ever, and at thys our is, a man of sad disposition, and trewe and feythfull to God and to the Kyng, of disporte as hath ben acustomed in ony cite or burgh thorowe alle this realme, on Tuesday in the last ende of Cristemesse, viz. Fastyngonge Tuesday, made a disport with hys neyghbours, havyng his hors trappyd with tynnsoyle and other nyse disgisy things, coronned as kyng of Crestemesse, in tokyn that seson should end with the twelve monethes of the yere, aforn hym yche moneth disguysed after the seson requiryd, and Lenton clad in whyte and red heryngs skinns, and his hors trapped with oystyr-shells after him, in token that sadnesse shuld folowe, and an holy tyme, and so rode in diverse stretis of the cite, with other people, with hym disguysed makyng myrth, disportes and plays.’
[926] Jevons, Plutarch’s Romane Questions, 86. The Ides (Jan. 9) must have practically been included in the Kalends festival. The Agonium, probably a sacrifice to Janus, was on that day (W. W. Fowler, 282).
[927] Appendix N, Nos. ix, xi, xiv, xvii, xviii, xxviii, xxxvi.
[928] G. L. Gomme, in Brit. Ass. Rep. (1896), 616 sqq.; Tille, D. W. 11, Y. and C. 90; Jahn, 253; Dyer, 446, 466; Ashton, 76, 219; Grimm, iv. 1793, 1798, 1812, 1826, 1839, 1841; Bertrand, 111, 404; Müller, 478.
[929] Tille, Y. and C. 95.
[930] Dyer, 456; Ashton, 125, 188. A Lombard Capitulary (App. N, No. xxxviii) forbids a Christmas candle to be burnt beneath the kneading-trough.