"On Christmas-day, service in the church ended, the gentlemen presently repair into the hall to breakfast, with brawn, mustard, and malmsey.
"At dinner the butler, appointed for the Christmas, is to see the tables covered and furnished: and the ordinary butlers of the house
are decently to set bread, napkins, and trenchers, in good form, at every table; with spoones and knives. At the first course is served in a fair and large bore's head, upon a silver platter, with minstralsye.
"Two 'servants' are to attend at supper, and to bear two fair torches of wax, next before the musicians and trumpeters, and stand above the fire with the music, till the first course be served in through the hall. Which performed, they, with the musick, are to return into the buttery. The like course is to be observed in all things, during the time of Christmas.
"At night, before supper, are revels and dancing, and so also after supper, during the twelve daies of Christmas. The Master of the Revels is, after dinner and supper, to sing a caroll, or song; and command other gentlemen then there present to sing with him and the company; and so it is very decently performed."[205:A]
Beside the revelry and dancing here mentioned, we may add, that it was customary, at this season, after the Christmas sports and games had been indulged in, until the performers were weary, to gather round the ruddy fire, and tell tales of legendary lore, or popular superstition. Herrick, recording the diversions of this period, mentions one of them as consisting of "winter's tales about the hearth[205:B];" and Grose, speaking of the source whence he had derived many of the superstitions narrated in the concluding section of his "Provincial Glossary," says, that he gives them, as they had, from age to age, been "related to a closing circle of attentive hearers, assembled in a winter's evening, round the capacious chimney of an old hall or manor-house;" and he adds, that tales of this description formed, among our ancestors, "a principal part of rural conversation, in all large assemblies, and particularly those in Christmas holidays, during the burning of the Yule-block."[205:C]
Of the conviviality which universally reigned during these holidays, a good estimate may be taken by a few lines from the author of
Hesperides, who, addressing a friend at Christmas-tide, makes the following request:
———— "When your faces shine
With bucksome meat and cap'ring wine,