Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee,
For these three nightes are alwayes thought unfortunate to bee;
Wherein they are affrayde of sprites and cankred witches spight,
And dreadful devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.[208]
During Hogmanay it was customary for youths to go in procession from house to house singing chants of heroic origin:—
As we used to do in old King Henry’s day,
Sing fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
The King Henry here mentioned is probably not one of the Tudors, but the more primitive Nick or Old Harry, and the percipient divine who thundered against the popular festival: “Sirs, do you know what Hagmane signifies? It is the Devil be in the house! That’s the meaning of its Hebrew original,” had undoubtedly good grounds for his denunciation.
But the still more original meaning of Hagman was in all probability the uchman, or high man, or giant man. According to Hellenic mythology Hercules was the son of Jove and Alcmena: the name Alcmena is apparently the feminine form of All or Holy Acmen—whence indirectly the word acumen or “sharp mind”—the two forms mena and man seemingly figure in Scotch custom as Hogmanay, and as the Hagman of “Sing Hagman heigh!”[209]
One of the great Roman roads of Britain is known as Akeman Street, and as it happens that this prehistoric highway passes Bath it has been gravely suggested that it derived its title from the gouty, aching men who limped along to Bath to take the waters. But as man is the same word as main the word Akeman Street resolves more reasonably into High Main Street, which is precisely what it was.