Kechoun is kitchen, and Stephen (who waited on the King at bed and board) stepped out of it into the hall, "boar's head on hand." Kyst, means cast; eylet, aileth; wod is mad. So too brede, I fancy. When the roasted capon or cock crowed in its dish, Herod, in wrath and fear cried on his torturers, "by two and all by one" to rise up and kill.
In later times a clay or earthenware box made all of a piece, with a slit in it, was carried by apprentices through the streets on St. Stephen's day, for money. And never a Catholic missionary once sailed for the Indies, Barbary, or the Islands of the Anthropophagites, but a box was hung by the priests in the church for alms against his return. From the former old custom comes our "Boxing Day."
In the Isle of Man, however, the Christmas Box was called the Wren Box, and for this reason: There dwelt of old a Lorelei, siren or sea-elf, in the emerald green creeks and caves of a solitary precipitous island. She was as lovely as she was cruel, and her shrill sweet voice rose amid the roaring and soughing of the waves in her steep rocky habitation as shines a poisonous flower in the dark of a forest. Thus she would at daybreak enchant to their doom sailors following their craft on the sea. Leaning to listen to this music creeping by them on the waters, they drew in to her haunts. Of their bones were coral made; while she lived on; sang on. She was hunted down at last in her sea-grottoes by those who, like Ulysses, had stopped their ears against her incantations. Brought finally to bay, her beauty and bright hair suddenly dwindled and dimmed, and she escaped in the shape of—Jenny Wren. Alas, for Jenny Wren! condemned ever after for the woes of this siren to be pursued with sticks and stones by young loons, cullions and Jerry Sneaks, on every St. Stephen's Day. As goes the rhyme:
"Oh, where are you going?" says milder to melder;
"Oh, where are you going?" says the younger to the elder.
"Oh, I cannot tell," says Festel to Fose;
"We're going to the woods," says John the Red Nose.
"We're going to the woods," says John the Red Nose.
"Oh, what will you do there?" says milder to melder;