Of Saxon festivals none were more celebrated than their Jule or Yule (to which corresponds our Christmas), a strange combination of conviviality and religion. It appears to be a Saxon adaptation of an ancient Celtic festival. The Celts worshipped the sun. At the winter solstice the people testified their joy that the ‘greater light’ had returned to this part of the heavens, by celebrating a festival or sun-feast, which took its name from Heol, Hiaul, Houl, dialectic varieties of the Celtic expression for ‘sun.’ The prefix of the article will account for the Gothic forms Gehul, Juul, and hence again the softened forms, Jul, Yule. Upon this heathen festival the Christians engrafted their great festival, the anniversary of the rising of the Sun of Righteousness upon a dark world.[24]
Before leaving this subject notice should be taken of the grafol, or rent, paid upon lands. It furnishes some incidental details of the social life of our ancestors. Upon a certain estate in Lincolnshire we find that the following yearly rent was reserved:—(1) To the monastery, two tuns of bright ale, two oxen fit for slaughter, two mittan, or measures, of Welsh ale,[25] and six hundred loaves. (2) To the abbot’s private estate, one horse, thirty shillings of silver, or half a pound, one night’s pastus, fifteen mittan of bright and five of Welsh ale, fifteen sesters of mild ale.
Anglo-Saxon guilds, or social confederations, were associated with drink. Every member was compelled to bring a certain amount of malt or honey. The fines they imposed also imply that the materials of conviviality were not forgotten.
Amidst such surroundings it is scarcely matter for surprise that we occasionally read of profuseness in the high places of the Church as well as the State. Some of the leading ecclesiastics had been brought up in the lap of plenty. Wilfrid (consecrated Archbishop of York, a.d. 669) is described by his biographer, Eddius, as the most luxurious prelate of his age, but it should be remembered that he was the son of a Bernician noble, taught in his childhood to serve the cup in the mead-hall. His fame, however, for sanctity is abundantly attested. He has been called the first patron of architecture among the Anglo-Saxons. Hexham and Ripon owe to him their sacred piles. At the dedication of the latter was a disgraceful scene of riotous festivity in which the kings Ecgfrid and Aelwin with the principal nobles were engaged. Such a scene upon such an occasion would now happily be impossible. And it is by comparisons of this kind that one is able definitely to estimate the improvement or retrogression of moral tone. It should be added by way of extenuation that such festivities were continuations of the heathen paganalia, were countenanced—indeed, with certain modifications commanded—by order of Gregory the Great (a.d. 601), to Mellitus, the abbot, who accompanied Augustine to England. His words, as given by Bede (Eccl. Hist. i. 30), are—‘On the day of dedication, or the birthday of holy martyrs, whose relics are there deposited, let the people build themselves booths of the boughs of trees, round about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples, and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting.... For there is no doubt that it is impossible to efface every thing at once from their obdurate minds.’
FOOTNOTES:
[11] A translation of this poem by John Mitchell Kemble was published in 1837; one by Thomas Arnold in 1876; another more recently by Colonel Lumsden; another by Rev. S. Fox, 1864.
[12] A chapter is devoted to the question of the genuineness and chronology of Nennius in Wright’s Biographia Britannica Literaria.
[13] Geoffrey of Monmouth: British History, chap. xii.