Lord Mayor’s Day (November 9). A custom which was in days gone by observed at the inauguration dinner was that of the Lord Mayor’s fool leaping, clothes and all, into a large bowl of custard. It is alluded to in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 5), by Lafeu: “You have made shift to run into’t, boots and spurs and all, like him that leaped into the custard.” Ben Jonson, in his “Devil’s an Ass” (i. 1), thus refers to it:
“He may, perchance, in tail of a sheriff’s dinner,
Skip with a rime o’ the table, from new nothing,
And take his almain leap into a custard,
Shall make my lady mayoress and her sisters,
Laugh all their hoods over their shoulders.”
St. Martin’s Day (November 11). The mild weather about this time has given rise to numerous proverbs; one of the well-known ones being “St. Martin’s little summer,” an allusion to which we find in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 2), where Joan of Arc says:
“Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon days.”
which Johnson paraphrases thus: “Expect prosperity after misfortune, like fair weather at Martlemas, after winter has begun.” As an illustration, too, of this passage, we may quote from the Times, October 6, 1864: “It was one of those rare but lovely exceptions to a cold season, called in the Mediterranean St. Martin’s summer.”
A corruption of Martinmas is Martlemas. Falstaff is jocularly so called by Poins, in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 2), as being in the decline, as the year is at this season: “And how doth the martlemas, your master?”
This was the customary time for hanging up provisions to dry, which had been salted for winter use.
St. Nicholas (December 6). This saint was deemed the patron of children in general, but more particularly of all schoolboys, among whom his festival used to be a very great holiday. Various reasons have been assigned for his having been chosen as the patron of children—either because the legend makes him to have been a bishop while yet a boy, or from his having restored three young scholars to life who had been cruelly murdered,[693] or, again, on account of his early abstinence when a boy. In the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (iii. 1) he is alluded to in this capacity:
“Speed. Come, fool, come; try me in thy paper.
Launce. There; and Saint Nicholas be thy speed.”