Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore

by Elizabeth Mary Wright

Mummings and Wassailing

Christmas Eve was the great night for the mummers who acted the play of St. George and the Dragon; or again, there were men and boys who carried round a wooden figure representing a horse’s head, the mouth of which was made to open and shut by means of a string. Sometimes it was the skull of a dead horse, decorated with ribbons, and supported on a pole by a man concealed under a sheet. This figure was called Old Hob (Chs.), Mari Lwyd or Merry Hewid (Wal.), and in Kent the performance was known as Hodening. In some northern counties the mummers were termed guisers, and in Sussex and Hampshire, tipteerers, or tip-teariers. The children used to go a-wassailing carrying a decorated bough, or a garland which they called a wessel-bob, and singing doggerel verses such as: Here we come a-wassailing, Among the leaves so green; Here we come a-singing, So fair to be seen. The vessel-cup, or bezzle-cup—both words being corruptions of wassail-cup, due to popular etymology—was a box containing two dolls representing the Virgin and Child, carried round by women or by children who sang this carol: God bless the maysther of this hoose, The mistheress also; An’ all the lahtle intepunks, That round the table go (Yks.).

There are some still living who can remember the time when people went out at midnight on Christmas Eve to the cow-byre to see the owsen kneeling in their stalls in adoration of the Heavenly Babe.

A quaint custom at Dewsbury in Yorkshire is the ringing of the Devil’s knell on Christmas Eve. The bells toll first a hundred strokes, then a pause, then three strokes, three strokes, and three strokes again, to signify that the Devil died when Christ was born.

It is still customary in the West Riding of Yorkshire to eat spice-cake at Christmas time. It is a rich cake containing currants, sultanas, spices and candied peel, made only at this season of the year, and eaten together with cheese. In Northumberland and Durham children are given a cake called a Yule-babby, or Yule-dough, a figure made in ginger-bread or dough, rolled out flat, and cut out with a head, arms and body. The arms are folded across, and two currants put in for eyes. In Shrewsbury and the neighbourhood it was customary to eat wigs or caraway buns dipped in ale for supper on Christmas Eve. An East Anglian Christmas cake is the kickel, a flat triangular cake with currants and sugar on the top, O.E. coecil, tortum, M.E. kechil, Chauc. Somnours Tale, l. 39. A very favourite Christmas dish in the north of England is—or used to be—frummety, a preparation of wheat which is creed or softened in the oven, and then boiled in milk, sweetened and flavoured with spice. In some districts it is eaten with plum loaf and cheese.

Wren-hunting on Christmas Day

Wren-hunting was formerly a Christmas Day practice in Ireland. The following day, St. Stephen’s Day, the slaughtered birds tied to a bush decked with ribbons, were carried round by young lads, called wren-boys, who begged for money, and sang a song, one version of which begins thus: The wran, the wran, the king of all birds, St. Stephen’s Day is caught in the furze; Although he is little his family is great—Rise up, landlady, and give us a trate. Various legends are told in explanation of the origin of this custom. According to one story, the Jews were searching for St. Stephen, when his hiding-place was betrayed to them by the noisy cries of a couple of wrens flying in and out of a furze-bush where the saint lay concealed. The custom has also been found in the Isle of Man, Wales, and parts of England, the song varying in different localities, and in some places the wren being carried round on Twelfth Day instead of on St. Stephen’s Day.

December 28 is Holy Innocents’ Day, popularly called Childermas Day. In many parts of England, notably the northern counties and Cornwall, this day has always been regarded as unlucky. People would refrain from starting on a journey, or beginning a new undertaking, and housewives would even forbear to wash clothes on this day. Indeed so forceful is its evil influence that the day of the week on which it fell was marked as a black one throughout the ensuing year (Yks.). Dr. Johnson gives this superstitious belief in his definition of Childermas Day: ‘The day of the week, throughout the year, answering to the day on which the feast of the holy Innocents is solemnized, which weak and superstitious persons think an unlucky day.’

Fairs, Feasts, and Wakes

Amongst the customs connected with corporate village life must be included the observance of the local carnival variously termed the Feast, Revel, Tide, Wake, &c., coupled with the name of the village, or with that of the patron Saint of the parish church, as, for instance, St. Giles’ Fair and St. Clement’s Fair here in Oxford. The Feast is generally held on or about the name-day of the Saint to whom the church is dedicated, or on the anniversary of the church opening or consecration. It is everywhere the great gathering time for distant friends and relations; the one important event of the year from which all dates are reckoned, e.g. ’Twill be a year cum next Heetown Wake. In the north of England the mills and workshops close during the Tide; all is holiday-mirth and hospitality. People will pinch and scrape for weeks beforehand in order to be able to afford a goodly joint of Tide-beef, or Wake-beef, to provide which herds of fat oxen have been slain in readiness; and every good housewife prepares a store of cakes, tarts, pies, and pasties. Tusser felt the importance of this housewifely baking when he wrote his lines on The Wake day: