Thursday Processions in Advent
The Eve of the festival of St. Nicholas, December 5, in mediæval days was the occasion when choir and altar boys met and in solemn mimicry of the procedure of their elders elected a boy-bishop and his prebendaries who remained in office and moreover exercised practically full episcopal functions until Holy Innocents Day.
In the full vestments of the church these minor clergy made "visitations" in the neighborhood usually on three successive Thursdays, and collected small sums of money known as the "Bishop's Subsidy." Says Barnaby Googe:—
"Three weeks before the day whereon was borne the Lorde of Grace,
And on the Thursdays boyes and gyrles do runne in every place
And bounce and beat at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps
And crie the Advent of the Lord, not borne as yet perhaps,
And wishing to the neighbors all, that in the houses dwell,
A happy year, and everything to spring and prosper well;
Here have they peares, and plumbs and pence, each man gives willinglie,
For these three nights are always thought unfortunate to bee,
Where in they are afrayde of sprites, cankred witches spight,
And dreadful devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.
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In these same dayes yong, wanton gyrles that meete for marriage bee,
Doe search to know the names of them that shall their husbands bee
Four onyons, five, or eight, they take, and make in every one
Such names as they do fansie most and best do think upon;
Thus neere the chimney them they set, and that same onyon than,
That first doth sproute, doth surely beare the name of their good man."
In these same December nights it is that these "yong gyrles," according to Barnaby, creep to the woodpile after nightfall and at random each pulls out the first stick the hand touches.
"Which if it streight and even be, and have no knots at all,
A gentle husband then they thinke shall surlie to them fall;
But if it fowle and crooked bee, and knotties here and there,
A crabbed churlish husband then they earnestly do feare."
In the last days before Christmas, says Lady Morgan, Italian pifferari descend from the mountains to Naples and Rome in order to play their pipes before the pictures of the Virgin and the Child, and—out of compliment to Joseph—in front of the carpenters' shops.