The same idea is in evidence in English popular carols, in which St. Nicholas is praised particularly as a provider of husbands. One song of seven stanzas recites the story of how St. Nicholas saved the maidens, and ends with the stanza:
“Seynt Nicholas, at the townys ende,
Consoylid the maydens hom to wynde,
And throw Godes grace he xulde hem synde
Husbondes thre, good and kind.”
The refrain is:
“Alle maydenis for Godes Grace,
Worchepe ye seynt Nicolas.”[46]
One of the most important of marriages in English history is associated with this St. Nicholas custom. In one of Bishop Fisher’s sermons it is recorded of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., “that she prayed to St. Nicholas, the patron and helper of all true maydens, when nine years old, about the choice of a husband; and that the saint appeared to her in a vision and announced the Earl of Richmond.”[47]
From another ancient authority we have similar testimony,[48] as follows:
St. Nicholas was likewise venerated as the protector of virgins; there are, or were until lately, numerous fantastical customs observed in Italy and various parts of France, in reference to that peculiar tutelary personage. In several convents it was customary, on the eve of St. Nicholas for the boarders (sic) to place each a silk stocking at the door of the apartment of the abbess with a piece of paper enclosed, recommending themselves to “great St. Nicholas of her chamber,” and the next day they were called together to witness the saint’s attention, who never failed to fill the stockings with sweetmeats and other trifles of that kind, with which these credulous virgins made a general feast.
If the kindly saint, in this case, was not in position to provide husbands, he at least provided agreeable consolation.
The conception of St. Nicholas as the protector of maidens and the provider of husbands and the association of this idea with the story of his generous act toward the three maidens in distress, is by no means extinct in our own times, as is shown by the following account of English customs recorded in a recent newspaper:[49]