The Mediaeval Stage, Volume 1 (of 2)

by E. K. Chambers

The agricultural customs are just those of the summer feasts over again. Once more the fertilization spirit is abroad in the land. The embodiment of it in vegetation takes several forms. Obviously the last foliage and burgeoning flowers of spring and summer are no longer available. But there is, to begin with, the sheaf of corn or ‘harvest-May’ in which the spirit appeared at harvest, and which is called upon once more to play its part in the winter rites. This, however, is not a very marked part. A Yorkshire custom of hanging a sheaf on the church door at Christmas is of dubious origin[865]. But Swedish and Danish peasants use the grain of the ‘last sheaf’ to bake the Christmas cake, and both in Scandinavia and Germany the ‘Yule straw’ serves various superstitious purposes. It is scattered on barren fields to make them productive. It is strewed, instead of rushes, upon the house floor and the church floor. It is laid in the mangers of the cattle. Fruit-trees are tied together with straw ropes, that they may bear well and are said to be ‘married[866].’

More naturally the fertilization spirit may be discerned at the approach of winter in such exceptional forms of vegetation as endure the season. In November the apples and the nuts still hang upon their boughs, and these are traditional features in the winter celebrations. Then there are the evergreens. Libanius, Tertullian, and Chrysostom tell how on the Kalends the doors of houses throughout the Roman empire were crowned with bay. Martin of Braga forbade the ‘pagan observance’ in a degree which found its way into the canon law. The original strena which men gave one another on the same day for luck was nothing but a twig plucked from a sacred grove; and still in the fifth century men returned from their new year auguries laden with ramusculi that they might thereafter be laden with wealth[867]. It is not necessary to dwell upon the surviving use of evergreens in the decoration at Christmas of houses and churches[868]. The sacredness of these is reflected in the taboo which enjoins that they shall not be cast out upon the dust-heap, but shall, when some appropriate day, such as Candlemas, arrives, be solemnly committed to the flames[869]. Obviously amongst other evergreens the holly and the ivy, with their clustering pseudo-blossoms of coral and of jet, are the more adequate representatives of the fertilization spirit[870]; most of all the mistletoe, perched an alien visitant, faintly green and white, amongst the bared branches of apple or of oak. The mistletoe has its especial place in Scandinavian myth[871]: Pliny records the ritual use of it by the Druids[872]; it is essential to the winter revels in their amorous aspect; and its vanished dignities still serve, here to bar it from, there to make it imperative in, the edifices of Christian worship[873]. A more artificial embodiment of the fertilization spirit is the ‘Christmas tree’ par excellence, adorned with lights and apples, and often with a doll or image upon the topmost sprig. The first recorded Christmas tree is at Strassburg in 1604. The custom is familiar enough in modern England, but there can be little doubt that here it is of recent introduction, and came in, in fact, with the Hanoverians[874].

Finally, there can be little wonder that the popular imagination found a special manifestation of the fertilization spirit in the unusual blossoming of particular trees or species of trees in the depths of winter. In mild seasons a crab or cherry might well adorn the old winter feast in November. A favourable climate permits such a thing even at mid-winter. Legend, at any rate, has no doubt of the matter, and connects the event definitely with Christmas. A tenth-century Arabian geographer relates how all the trees of the forest stand in full bloom on the holy night. In the thirteenth-century Vita of St. Hadwigis the story is told of a cherry-tree. A fifteenth-century bishop of Bamberg tells it of two apple-trees, and to apple-trees the miracle belongs, in German folk-belief, to this day[875]. In England the stories of Christmas-flowering hawthorns or blackthorns are specific and probably not altogether baseless[876]. The belief found a special location at Glastonbury, where the famous thorn is said by William of Malmesbury and other writers to have budded from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, who there ended his wanderings with the Holy Grail. Where winter-flowering trees are not found, a custom sometimes exists of putting a branch of cherry or of hawthorn in water some weeks before Christmas in order that it may blossom and serve as a substitute[877].

It may fairly be conjectured that at the winter, as at the summer feast, the fertilization spirit, in the form of bush or idol, was borne about the fields. The fifteenth-century writer, Alsso, records the calendisationes of the god Bel in Bohemia, suppressed by St. Adalbert[878]. In modern England, a ‘holly-bough’ or ‘wesley-bob,’ with or without an image or doll, occasionally goes its rounds[879]. But a definite lustration of the bounds is rare[880], and, for the most part, the winter procession either is merely riotous or else, like too many of the summer processions themselves, has been converted, under the successive influence of the strenae and the cash nexus, into little more than a quête. Thus children and the poor go ‘souling’ for apples and ‘soul-cakes’ on All Souls’ day; on November 5 they collect for the ‘guy’; on November 11 in Germany, if not in England, for St. Martin; on St. Clement’s day (November 23) they go ‘clemencing’; on St. Catherine’s (November 25) ‘catherning.’ Wheat is the coveted boon on St. Thomas’s day (December 21) or ‘doling day,’ and the quête is variously known as ‘thomasing,’ ‘mumping,’ ‘corning,’ ‘gooding,’ ‘hodening,’ or ‘hooding[881].’ Christmas brings ‘wassailing’ with its bowl of lamb’s-wool and its bobbing apple, and this is repeated on New Year’s day or eve[882]. The New Year quête is probably the most widespread and popular of all. Ducange records it at Rome[883]. In France it is known as l’Aguilaneuf[884], in Scotland and the north of England as Hogmanay, terms in which the philologists meet problems still unsolved[885]. Other forms of the winter quête will crop up presently, and the visits of the guisers with their play or song, the carol singers and the waits may be expected at any time during the Christmas season. As at the summer quêtes, some reminiscence of the primitive character of the processions is to be found in the songs sung, with their wish of prosperity to the liberal household and their ill-will to the churl[886].

In the summer festivals both water-rites and fire-rites frequently occur. In those of winter, water-rites are comparatively rare, as might naturally be expected at a season when snow and ice prevail. There is some trace, however, of a custom of drawing ‘new’ water, as of making ‘new’ fire, for the new year[887]. Festival fires, on the other hand, are widely distributed, and agree in general features with those of summer. Their relation to the fertility of crop and herd is often plainly enough marked. They are perhaps most familiar to-day in the comparatively modern form of the Guy Fawkes celebration on November 5[888], but they are known also on St. Crispin’s day (October 25)[889], Hallow e’en[890], St. Martin’s day[891], St. Thomas’s day[892], Christmas eve[893], New Year[894], and Twelfth night[895]. An elaborate and typical example is the ‘burning of the clavie’ at the little fishing village of Burghead on the Moray Firth[896]. This takes place on New Year’s eve, or, according to another account[897], Christmas eve (O.S.). Strangers to the village are excluded from any share in the ritual. The ‘clavie’ is a blazing tar-barrel hoisted on a pole. In making it, a stone must be used instead of a hammer, and must then be thrown away. Similarly, the barrel must be lit with a blazing peat, and not with lucifer matches. The bearers are honoured, and the bridegroom of the year gets the ‘first lift.’ Should a bearer stumble, it portends death to himself during the year and ill-luck to the town. The procession passes round the boundaries of Burghead, and formerly visited every boat in the harbour. Then it is carried to the top of a hillock called the ‘Doorie,’ down the sides of which it is finally rolled. Blazing brands are used to kindle the house fires, and the embers are preserved as charms.

The central heathen rite of sacrifice has also left its abundant traces upon winter custom. Bede records the significant name of blôt-monath, given to November by the still unconverted Anglo-Saxons[898]. The tradition of solemn slaughter hangs around both Martinmas and Christmas. ‘Martlemas beef’ in England, St. Martin’s swine, hens, and geese in Germany, mark the former day[899]. At Christmas the outstanding victim seems to be the boar. Caput apri defero: reddens laudem Domino, sings the taberdar at Queen’s College, Oxford, as the manciple bears in the boar’s head to the Christmas banquet. So it was sung in many another mediaeval and Elizabethan hall[900], while the gentlemen of the Inner Temple broke their Christmas fast on ‘brawn, mustard, and malmsey[901],’ and in the far-off Orkneys each householder of Sandwick must slay his sow on St. Ignace’s or ‘Sow’ day, December 17[902]. The older mythologists, with the fear of solstices before their eyes, are accustomed to connect the Christmas boar with the light-god, Freyr[903]. If the cult of any one divinity is alone concerned, the analogous use of the pig in the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter would make the earth-goddess a more probable guess[904]. A few more recondite customs associated with particular winter anniversaries may be briefly named. St. Thomas’s day is at Wokingham the day for bull-baiting[905]. On St. Stephen’s day, both in England and Germany, horses are let blood[906]. On or about Christmas, boys are accustomed to set on foot a hunt of victims not ordinarily destined to such a fate[907]; owls and squirrels, and especially wrens, the last, be it noted, creatures which at other times of the year a taboo protects. The wren-hunt is found on various dates in France, England, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, and is carried out with various curious rituals. Often the body is borne in a quête, and in the Isle of Man the quêteurs give a feather as an amulet in return for hospitality. There are other examples of winter quêtes, in which the representation of a sacrificial victim is carried round[908]. ‘Hoodening’ in Kent and other parts of England is accompanied by a horse’s head or hobby-horse[909]. The Welsh ‘Mari Lwyd’ is a similar feature[910], while at Kingscote, in Gloucestershire, the wassailers drink to a bull’s head called ‘the Broad[911].’

The hobby-horse is an example of an apparently grotesque element which is found widespread in folk-processions, and which a previous chapter has traced to its ritual origin. The man clad in a beast-skin is the worshipper putting himself by personal contact under the influence and protection of the sacrificed god. The rite is not a very salient one in modern winter processions, although it has its examples, but its historical importance is great. A glance at the ecclesiastical denunciations of the Kalends collected in an appendix will disclose numerous references to it. These are co-extensive with the western area of the Kalends celebrations. In Italy, in Gaul, in southern Germany, apparently also in Spain and in England, men decked themselves for riot in the heads and skins of cattle and the beasts of the chase, blackened their faces or bedaubed them with filth, or wore masks fit to terrify the demons themselves. The accounts of these proceedings are naturally allusive rather than descriptive; the fullest are given by a certain Severian, whose locality and date are unknown, but who may be conjectured to speak for Italy, by Maximus of Turin and Chrysologus of Ravenna in the fifth century, and by Caesarius of Arles in the beginning of the sixth. Amongst the portenta denounced is a certain cervulus, which lingers in the Penitentials right up to the tenth century, and with which are sometimes associated a vitula or iuvenca. Caesarius adds a hinnicula, and St. Eadhelm, who is my only authority for the presence of the cervulus in England, an ermulus. These seem to be precisely of the nature of ‘hobby-horses.’ Men are said cervulum ambulare, cervulum facere, in cervulo vadere, and Christians are forbidden to allow these portenta to come before their houses. The Penitential of the Pseudo-Theodore tells us that the performers were those who wore the skins and heads of beasts. Maximus of Turin, and several writers after him, put the objection to the beast-mimicry of the Kalends largely on the ground that man made in the image of God must not transform himself into the image of a beast. But it is clear that the real reason for condemning it was its unforgettable connexion with heathen cult. Caesarius warns the culprit that he is making himself into a sacrificium daemonum, and the disguised reveller is more than once spoken of as a living image of the heathen god or demon itself. There is some confusion of thought here, and it must be remembered that the initial significance of the skin-wearing rite was probably buried in oblivion, both for those who practised it and for those who reprobated. But it is obvious that the worshipper wearing a sacrificial skin would bear a close resemblance to the theriomorphic or semi-theriomorphic image developed out of the sacrificial skin nailed on a tree-trunk; and it is impossible not to connect the fact that in the prohibitions a cervulus or ‘hobby-buck’ rather than a ‘hobby-horse’ is prominent with the widespread worship throughout the districts whence many of these notices come of the mysterious stag-horned deity, the Cernunnos of the Gaulish altars[912]. On the whole I incline to think that at least amongst the Germano-Keltic peoples the agricultural gods were not mimed in procession by human representatives. It is true that in the mediaeval German processions which sprang out of those of the Kalends St. Nicholas plays a part, and that the presence of St. Nicholas may be thought to imply that of some heathen precursor. It will, however, be seen shortly that St. Nicholas may have got into these processions through a different train of ideas, equally connected with the Kalends, but not with the strictly agricultural aspect of that festival. But of the continuity of the beast-masks and other horrors of these Christmas processions with those condemned in the prohibitions, there can be no doubt[913]. A few other survivals of the cervulus and its revel can be traced in various parts of Europe[914].

The sacrifices of cereals and of the juice of the vine or the barley are exemplified, the one by the traditional furmenty, plum-porridge, mince-pie, souling-cake, Yule-dough, Twelfth night cake, pain de calende, and other forms of ‘feasten’ cake[915]; the other by the wassail-bowl with its bobbing apple[916]. The summer ‘youling’ or ‘tree-wassailing’ is repeated in the orchard[917], and a curious Herefordshire custom represents an extension of the same principle to the ox-byre[918]. A German hen-yard custom requires mixed corn, for the familiar reason that every kind of crop must be included in the sacrifice[919].

Human sacrifice has been preserved in the whipping of boys on Innocents’ day, because it could be turned into the symbol of a Christian myth[920]. It is preserved also, as throughout the summer, in the custom, Roman as well as Germano-Keltic, of electing a mock or temporary king. Of such the Epiphany king or ‘king of the bean’ is, especially in France, the best known[921]. Here again, the association with the three kings or Magi has doubtless prolonged his sway. But he is not unparalleled. The rex autumnalis of Bath is perhaps a harvest rather than a beginning of winter king[922]. But the shoemakers choose their King Crispin on October 25, the day of their patron saints, Crispin and Crispinian; on St. Clement’s (November 23) the Woolwich blacksmiths have their King Clem, and the maidens of Peterborough and elsewhere a queen on St. Catherine’s (November 25). Tenby, again, elects its Christmas mock mayor[923]. At York, the proclaiming of Yule by ‘Yule’ and ‘Yule’s wife’ on St. Thomas’s day was once a notable pageant[924]. At Norwich, the riding of a ‘kyng of Crestemesse’ was the occasion of a serious riot in 1443[925]. These may be regarded as ‘folk’ versions of the mock king. Others, in which the folk were less concerned, will be the subject of chapters to follow.

Before passing to a fresh group of Christmas customs, I must note the presence of one more bit of ritual closely related to sacrificial survivals. That is, the man masquerading in woman’s clothes, in whom we have found a last faint reminiscence of the once exclusive supremacy of women in the conduct of agricultural worship. At Rome, musicians dressed as women paraded the city, not on the Kalends, but on the Ides of January[926]. The Fathers, however, know such disguising as a Kalends custom, and a condemnation of it often accompanies that of beast-mimicry, from the fourth to the eighth century[927].