"Joy health, love, and peace
Be to you in this place,
By your leave we will sing
Concerning our King:
Our King is well drest,
In silks of the best;
With his ribbons so rare,
No King can compare.
In his coach he does ride,
With a great deal of pride;
And with four footmen
To wait upon him.
We four were at watch,
And all nigh of a match;
With powder and ball,
We fired at his hall.
We have travelled many miles
Over hedges and stiles,
To find you this King,
Which we now to you bring.
Now Christmas is past,
Twelfth day is the last,
Th' Old Year bids adieu;
Great joy to the New."

Hone, in his Table Book, p. 26, gives a description of "Holly Night" at Brough, Westmoreland, in 1838. "Formerly the 'Holly Tree' at Brough was really holly, but ash being abundant, the latter is now substituted. There are two head inns in the town, which provide for the ceremony alternately, although the good townspeople mostly lend their assistance in preparing the tree, to every branch of which they fasten a torch. About eight o'clock in the evening it is taken to a convenient part of the town, where the torches are lighted, the town band accompanying, and playing till all is completed, when it is removed to the lower end of the town; and after divers salutes and huzzas from the spectators, is carried up and down the town in stately procession. The band march behind it, playing their instruments, and stopping every time they reach the town bridge and the cross, where the 'holly' is again greeted with shouts of applause. Many of the inhabitants carry lighted branches and flambeaus; and rockets, squibs, etc., are discharged on the joyful occasion. After the tree is thus carried, and the torches are sufficiently burnt, it is placed in the middle of the town, when it is again cheered by the surrounding populace, and is afterwards thrown among them. They eagerly watch for this opportunity; and, clinging to each end of the tree, endeavour to carry it away to the inn they are contending for, where they are allowed their usual quantum of ale and spirits, and pass a merry night, which seldom breaks up before two in the morning."

According to Waldron, in his Description of the Isle of Man, 1859, p. 156, the following singular custom is in force on Twelfth day. In this island there is not a barn unoccupied on the whole twelve days after Christmas, every parish hiring fiddlers at the public charge. On Twelfth day the fiddler lays his head in the lap of some one of the wenches, and the mainstyr fiddler asks who such a maid, or such a maid, naming all the girls one after another, shall marry, to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during the time of merriment, and whatever he says is absolutely depended upon as an oracle; and if he couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth; this they call "cutting off the fiddler's head," for after this he is dead for a whole year.

CHAPTER XXXII
St. Distaff's Day—Plough Monday—Customs on the Day—Feast of the Purification.

Here Christ-tide ought to end, and men and women should have returned to their ordinary avocations, but the long holiday demoralised them; and although the women were supposed to set to work on the day succeeding Twelfth day, thence called St. Distaff's day, or Rock[94] day, there was rough play, as Herrick tells us:—

Partly work, and partly play,
Ye must, on St. Distaff's day:
From the Plough soone free your teame;
Then come home and fother them.
If the Maides a spinning goe,
Burne the flax, and fire the tow:
Bring in pails of water then,
Let the Maides bewash the men.
Give S. Distaffe all the right,
Then bid Christmas sport good-night.
And, next morrow, every one
To his owne vocation.

The men, however, could not settle down to work so speedily, serious work not beginning till after "Plough Monday," or the Monday after Twelfth Day. Tusser says:

Plough Munday, next after that twelf tide is past,
Bids out with the plough—the worst husband is last.
If plowman get hatchet, or whip to the skrene,
Maids loseth their cocke, if no water be seen.

This verse would be rather enigmatical were it not explained in Tusser Redivivus (1744, p. 79). "After Christmas (which, formerly, during the twelve days, was a time of very little work) every gentleman feasted the farmers, and every farmer their servants and task-men. Plough Monday puts them in mind of their business. In the morning, the men and the maid-servants strive who shall show their diligence in rising earliest. If the ploughman can get his whip, his ploughstaff, hatchet, or any thing that he wants in the field, by the fireside before the maid hath got her kettle on, then the maid loseth her Shrove-tide cock, and it belongs wholly to the men. Thus did our forefathers strive to allure youth to their duty, and provided them with innocent mirth as well as labour. On this Plough Monday they have a good supper and some strong drink."