SAINT DISTAFF'S DAY.
7th January.
CONCLUSION.
The day which precedes this is, as we have already informed our readers, the last of the twelve days which constitute what is emphatically the Christmas season; and with the revelries of Twelfth-night the general holiday is in strictness considered to be at an end. As however we found it necessary to approach the throng of its celebrations with some degree of preparation,—to pass through some of its lighted antechambers, before we ventured to trust our eyes amid the blaze of the temple itself,—so also we dare not step at once from its thousand lights into the common air of the every-day world without a previous subjecting of our imaginations to the diminished glare of the outer chambers which lie on this other side. And this it is the more incumbent on us to do, because the revellers whose proceedings it is our business to describe take the same course in returning to the business of life.
It is not, as we have said, to be expected that after the full chorus of increased mirth which hath swelled up anew for the last of these celebrations, the ear should all at once accustom itself to a sudden and utter silence,—should endure the abrupt absence of all festival sound; nor can all the laughing spirits of the season who were engaged in added numbers for the revelries of last night, be got quietly laid at rest in the course of a single day. One or other of them is accordingly found lurking about the corners of our chambers after the ceremonies for which they were called up are over, encouraged to the neglect of the order for their dismissal by the young hearts, who have formed a merry alliance with the imps which they are by no means willing to terminate thus suddenly. And sooth to say, those youngsters are often able to engage heads who are older, and we suppose should know better, in the conspiracies which are day by day formed for the detention of some one or more of these members of the train of Momus.
Even in rural districts, where the necessary preparations in aid of the returning season are by this time expected to call men abroad to the labors of the field, our benevolent ancestors admitted the claim for a gradual subsiding of the Christmas mirth in favor of the children of toil. Their devices for letting themselves gently down were recognized; and a sort of compromise was sanctioned between the spirit of the past holiday and the sense of an important coming duty to be performed. The genius of mirth met the genius of toil on neutral ground for a single day; and the two touched hands in recognition of the rightful dominion of each other, ere they severally set forth in their own separate directions.
Thus, on the day which followed Twelfth-night, the implements of labor were prepared and the team was even yoked for a space; but the business of turning the soil was not required to be laboriously engaged in until the Monday which followed, and which therefore bore (and bears) the title of Plough Monday. After a few hours of morning labor, a sort of half-holiday was the concluding privilege of this privileged season; and the husbandman laid aside his plough, and the maiden her distaff, to engage in certain revels which were peculiar to the day and to the country districts. From the partial resumption of the spinning labors of the women on this morning, the festival in question takes its name; and it is (or was) sometimes called also "Rockday," in honor of the rock, which is another name for the distaff. It is described as being "a distaff held in the hand, from whence wool is spun by twirling a ball below."