[971] Brand, i. 3, 209, 226, 257; Spence, Shetland Folk-Lore, 189; Grimm, iv. 1777-1848 passim; Jackson and Burne, 176, 380, &c., &c. Burchardus (App. N, No. xlii) mentions that the Germans took New Year omens sitting girt with a sword on the housetop or upon a [sacrificial] skin at the crossways. This was called liodorsâza, a term which a glossator also uses for the kindred custom of cervulus (Tille, Y. and C. 96). Is the man in Hom. de Sacr. (App. N, No. xxxix) ‘qui arma in campo ostendit’ taking omens like the man on the housetop, or is he conducting a sword-dance?
[972] Burchardus (App. N, No. xlii).
[973] Brand, i. 209.
[974] Grimm, iv. 1781, 1797, 1818.
[975] Quoted Pfannenschmidt, 489 ‘quod autem obscoena carmina finguntur a daemonibus et perditorum mentibus immittuntur, quidam daemon nequissimus, qui in Nivella urbe Brabantiae puellam nobilem anno domini 1216 prosequebatur, manifeste populis audientibus dixit: cantum hunc celebrem de Martino ego cum collega meo composui et per diversas terras Galliae et Theutoniae promulgavi. Erat autem cantus ille turpissimus et plenus luxuriosis plausibus.’ On Martinslieder in general cf. Pfannenschmidt, 468, 613.
[976] T. Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Veritatum (1403-58), ed. Rogers, 144.
[977] Aubrey, Gentilisme and Judaisme (F. L. S.), 1.
[978] Tille, D. W. 55; K. Simrock, Deutsche Weihnachtslieder (1854); Cortet, 246; Grove, Dict. of Music, s. v. Noël; Julian, Dict. of Hymn. s. v. Carol; A. H. Bullen, Carols and Poems, 1885; Helmore, Carols for Christmastide. The cry ‘Noël’ appears in the fifteenth century both in France and England as one of general rejoicing without relation to Christmas. It greeted Henry V in London in 1415 and the Marquis of Suffolk in Rouen in 1446 (Ramsay, Lancaster and York, i. 226; ii. 60).
[979] Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, de Caeremoniis Aulae Byzantinae, Bk. i. c. 83 (ed. Reiske, in Corp. Script. Hist. Byz. i. 381); cf. Bury-Gibbon, vi. 516; Kögel, i. 34; D. Bieliaiev, Byzantina, vol. ii: Haupt’s Zeitschrift, i., 368; C. Kraus, Gotisches Weihnachtsspiel, in Beitr. z. Gesch. d. deutschen Sprache und Litteratur, xx (1895), 223.
[980] Fouquier-Cholet, Hist. des Comtes de Vermandois, 159, says that Heribert IV (ob. †1081) persuaded the clergy of the Vermandois to suppress the fête de l’âne. This would have been a century before Belethus wrote. But he does not give his probatum, and I suspect he misread it.