Both Ippocras and Vernage wine Mount Rose and wine of Greek,
and not the honest juice of barley. Suffice it to note in passing that on the 2nd of February, 1601, John Manningham, a student of the Middle Temple, records in his Diary: “At our feast we had a play called Twelfth Night or What You Will.” This is the earliest recorded mention of that grand Twelfth-night revel, and was, perhaps, its first performance.
The appearance of Twelfth Cake is the signal for the disappearance of mince pies, in accordance with the farewell words an old carolist puts into the mouth of Christmas:—
Mark well my heavy doleful tale, For Twelfth-day now is come, And now I must no longer stay And say no word but mum. For I, perforce, must take my leave Of all my dainty cheer— Plum porridge, roast beef, and minced-pies, My strong ale and my beer.
A minor festival, Plough Monday, used to be celebrated on the first Monday after Twelfth Night. A plough, dressed up with ribbons by the villagers, was taken round from house to house. Its escort consisted of a number of rustics dressed up in various mummers’ guises, and chanting verses, the text of which was “God speed the Plough.” The principal performers were Bessy and the Clown, Bessy being, in fact, a man dressed up in fantastic female weeds. Bread, cheese, and ale were asked for at the farmhouses and seldom refused, and a variety of curious dances and uncouth antics completed the entertainment of the day. {241}
The season of Lent, of course, was marked by no special festivities, but when Easter Sunday was passed, the reaction from the enforced restraint of the previous period made the enjoyment of the Easter-week festivities all the keener. Easter Monday and Tuesday were in some places noted for the curious custom known as “heaving;” on the Monday the men “heaved” the women (i.e., lifted them off the ground and kissed them), and on the Tuesday the women’s turn came, and they heaved the men. “Many a time have I passed along the streets inhabited by the lower orders of people,” says one who has witnessed the ceremony, “and seen parties of Jolly matrons assembled round tables on which stood a foaming tankard of Ale. Woe to the luckless man that dared to invade their prerogatives! as sure as seen he was pursued, as sure taken, heaved and kissed, and compelled to pay a fine of sixpence for ‘leave and license’ to depart.”
The antiquity of the custom is proved by an entry in one of the Tower Rolls of payments made to certain maids-of-honour for having taken Edward I. in his bed and “lifted him.”
The second Monday and Tuesday after Easter were known in olden days as Hock-tide. The Tuesday was the principal day, and was designated Hock Day. Many derivations have been suggested for the name; the best seems to be that which connects it with the German hoch (high). Hock Day would thus denote a day of high festivity. Be that as it may, the name is of great antiquity. In the Annals of Dunstaple we read that in 1242 “Henry III., King of England, crossed over on Ochedai with a great army against the King of France.” On Hock Day the women of the village would go into the streets with cords in their hands, and every one of the opposite sex whom they could catch, was bound until he purchased his release by a contribution for the purposes of the common feast. On this day the feasting seems to have frequently passed into excess, and sometimes with direful results; the Annalist of Dunstaple tells that on Hokke-day in the year 1252 the village of Esseburne was “burned down miserably.” In 1450 a Bishop of Worcester prohibited the celebrations of Hock-tide, on the ground that they led to dissipation and other evils. There seems to be no connection between this festival and the Hock-cart spoken of by Herrick, and to be mentioned anon, save that the name of each takes its derivation, if our surmise be the correct one, from the word hoch. The Hock Day meaning High Day; and the Hock Cart, the harvest-home wain piled high with the trophies of autumn.
We next come to the May Day festivities, which in many respects {242} may be regarded as the most joyous and picturesque of all the year. Without staying to inquire whether the origin of the festival is to be traced to the old Roman Floralia, or games in honour of the goddess who ushered in the spring and strewed the earth with flowers, let us pause for a while to contemplate the old ceremony of “bringing home the May,” as it was performed some few centuries ago. On May Day morning the inhabitants of every village would go out at an early hour into the fields to gather garlands of hawthorn blossom and other flowers, with which they decorated the May-pole and every door and window of the village. These floral trophies were brought home to the tune of pipe and drum; the fairest maid in all the hamlet was crowned with flowers as Queen of the May, and, embowered in hawthorn branches, presided over the mirth and feasting of the day. Stubbe, in his Anatomy of Abuses (1585), describes the ceremony of raising the May-pole, in language which gives some notion of the pretty scene, and which is all the more likely not to be overdrawn, from the evident abhorrence of the writer to what he regarded as the impiety of the whole affair. “They have twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen,” he writes, “every one having a sweet nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maie pole (this stinckyng Idoll rather) which is couered all ouer with flowers and hearbes bounde rounde aboute with stringes, from the top to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred women and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up with handkerchiefs and flagges streaming on the toppe they strowe the grounde aboute, binde green boughes aboute it, sett up sommer houses, Bowers and Arbours hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their Idolles, whereof this is a perfect pattern or rather the thing itself.”
The May-pole once raised, of course the next thing to be done was to pour a libation in honour of the day, and in most cases this would, equally of course, be performed with the ale of Old England.