‘When Christmas comes,
Every one should rejoice,
For it is a New Covenant.’
Following the grandmother and joining in the song, the children and the rest of the family marched thrice round the log, which was as fine a log as could be got.”[650] We can now, perhaps, understand why in Perigord people who sat on the Yule log suffered from boils,[651] and why in Lorraine young folks used to be warned that if they sat on it they would have the scab.[652] The reason probably was that the Virgin and child were supposed to be seated, [pg 254] invisible, upon the log and to resent the indignity of contact with mortal children.
The Yule log in the Vosges. The Yule log in Franche-Comté and Burgundy.
On Christmas Eve the mountaineers of Rupt, in the Vosges, also never fail to put on the hearth the largest log which the hearth can hold; they call it la galeuche de Noë, that is, the Yule log. Next morning they rake the ashes for any charred fragments and keep them as valuable talismans to guard them against the stroke of lightning. At Vagney and other places near it in the Vosges it used to be customary on the same evening to grease the hinges and the latches of the doors, that no harsh grating sound should break the slumbers of the infant Christ. In the Vosges Mountains, too, as indeed in many other places, cattle acquired the gift of speech on Christmas Eve and conversed with each other in the language of Christians. Their conversation was, indeed, most instructive; for the future, it seems, had no secret worth mentioning for them. Yet few people cared to be caught eavesdropping at the byre; wise folk contented themselves with setting a good store of fodder in the manger, then shut the door, and left the animals to their ruminations. A farmer of Vecoux once hid in a corner of the byre to overhear the edifying talk of the beasts. But it did him little good; for one ox said to another ox, “What shall we do to-morrow?” and the other replied, “We shall carry our master to the churchyard.” Sure enough the farmer died that very night and was buried next morning.[653] In Franche-Comté, the province of France to the west of the Jura mountains, if the Yule log is really to protect a house against thunder and lightning, it is essential that it should burn during the midnight mass, and that the flame should not go out before the divine service is concluded. Otherwise the log is quite useless for the purpose.[654] In Burgundy the log which is placed on the fire on Christmas Eve is called the suche. While it is burning, the father of the family, assisted by his wife and children, sings Christmas carols; and when he has finished, [pg 255] he tells the smallest children to go into a corner of the room and pray God that the log may give them sweeties. The prayer is invariably answered.[655]
The Yule log and the Yule candle in England.
In England the customs and beliefs concerning the Yule log, clog, or block, as it was variously called, used to be similar. On the night of Christmas Eve, says the antiquary John Brand, “our ancestors were wont to light up candles of an uncommon size, called Christmas Candles, and lay a log of wood upon the fire, called a Yule-clog or Christmas-block, to illuminate the house, and, as it were, to turn night into day. This custom is, in some measure, still kept up in the North of England. In the buttery of St. John's College, Oxford, an ancient candle-socket of stone still remains ornamented with the figure of the Holy Lamb. It was formerly used to burn the Christmas Candle in, on the high table at supper, during the twelve nights of that festival.”[656] “A tall mould candle, called a Yule candle, is lighted and set on the table; these candles are presented by the chandlers and grocers to their customers. The Yule-log is bought of the carpenters' lads. It would be unlucky to light either of them before the time, or to stir the fire or candle during the supper; the candle must not be snuffed, neither must any one stir from the table till supper is ended. In these suppers it is considered unlucky to have an odd number at table. A fragment of the log is occasionally saved, and put under a bed, to remain till next Christmas: it secures the house from fire; a small piece of it thrown into a fire occurring at the house of a neighbour, will quell the raging flame. A piece of the candle should likewise be kept to ensure good luck.”[657] In the seventeenth century, as we learn from some verses of Herrick, the English custom was to light the Yule log with a fragment of its predecessor, which had been kept throughout the year for the purpose; where it was so kept, the fiend could do no mischief.[658] Indeed the practice of preserving a piece of the [pg 256] Yule-log of one year to light that of the next was observed by at least one family at Cheadle in Staffordshire down to the latter part of the nineteenth century.[659]
The Yule log in the North of England, in Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire. The Yule log in Wales.
In the North of England farm-servants used to lay by a large knotty block of wood for the Christmas fire, and so long as the block lasted they were entitled by custom to ale at their meals. The log was as large as the hearth could hold.[660] At Belford, in Northumberland, “the lord of the manor sends round to every house, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the Yule Logs—four or five large logs—to be burnt on Christmas Eve and Day. This old custom has always, I am told, been kept up here.”[661] The custom of burning the Yule log at Christmas used to be observed in Wensleydale and other parts of Yorkshire, and prudent housewives carefully preserved pieces of the log throughout the year. At Whitby the portions so kept were stowed away under the bed till next Christmas, when they were burnt with the new log; in the interval they were believed to protect the house from conflagration, and if one of them were thrown into the fire, it would quell a raging storm.[662] The practice and the belief were similar at Filey on the coast of Yorkshire, where besides the Yule log a tall Yule candle was lit on the same evening.[663] In the West Riding, while the log [pg 257] blazed cheerfully, the people quaffed their ale and sang, “Yule! Yule! a pack of new cards and a Christmas stool!”[664] At Clee, in Lincolnshire, “when Christmas Eve has come the Yule cake is duly cut and the Yule log lit, and I know of some even middle-class houses where the new log must always rest upon and be lighted by the old one, a small portion of which has been carefully stored away to preserve a continuity of light and heat.”[665] At the village of Wootton Wawen in Warwickshire, down to 1759 at least, the Yule-block, as it was called, was drawn into the house by a horse on Christmas Eve “as a foundation for the fire on Christmas Day, and according to the superstition of those times for the twelve days following, as the said block was not to be entirely reduc'd to ashes till that time had passed by.”[666] As late as 1830, or thereabout, the scene of lighting the hearth-fire on Christmas Eve, to continue burning throughout the Christmas season, might have been witnessed in the secluded and beautiful hill-country of West Shropshire, from Chirbury and Worthen to Pulverbatch and Pontesbury. The Christmas brand or brund, as they called it, was a great trunk of seasoned oak, holly, yew, or crab-tree, drawn by horses to the farm-house door and thence rolled by means of rollers and levers to the back of the wide open hearth, where the fire was made up in front of it. The embers were raked up to it every night, and it was carefully tended, that it might not go out during the whole Christmas season. All those days no light might be struck, given, or borrowed. Such was the custom at Worthen in the early part of the nineteenth century.[667] In Herefordshire the Christmas feast “lasted for twelve days, and no work was [pg 258] done. All houses were, and are now, decorated with sprigs of holly and ivy, which must not be brought in until Christmas Eve. A Yule log, as large as the open hearth could accommodate, was brought into the kitchen of each farmhouse, and smaller ones were used in the cottages. W—— P—— said he had seen a tree drawn into the kitchen at Kingstone Grange years ago by two cart horses; when it had been consumed a small portion was carefully kept to be used for lighting next year's log. ‘Mother always kept it very carefully; she said it was lucky, and kept the house from fire and from lightning.’ It seems to have been the general practice to light it on Christmas Eve.”[668] “In many parts of Wales it is still customary to keep part of the Yule-log until the following Christmas Eve ‘for luck.’ It is then put into the fireplace and burnt, but before it is consumed the new log is put on, and thus ‘the old fire and the new’ burn together. In some families this is done from force of habit, and they cannot now tell why they do it; but in the past the observance of this custom was to keep witches away, and doubtless was a survival of fire-worship.”[669]