Horses.
Whether Stephen was the patron of horses does not appear; but our ancestors used his festival for calling in the horse-leech. Tusser, in his “Five Hundred Points of Husbandry,” says,
Yer Christmas be passed, let Horsse be lett blood,
For many a purpose it doth him much good:
The day of St. Steven, old fathers did use,
If that do mislike thee, some other day chuse.
An annotator on Tusser subjoins, “About Christmas is a very proper time to bleed horses in, for then they are commonly at house, then spring comes on, the sun being now coming back from the winter solstice, and there are three or four days of rest, and if it be upon St. Stephen’s day it is not the worse, seeing there are with it three days of rest, or at least two.” In the “Receipts and Disbursements of the Canons of St. Mary in Huntingdon,” is the following entry: “Item, for letting our horses blede in Chrystmasse weke iiijd.”[428] According to one of Mr. Douce’s manuscript notes, he thinks the practice of bleeding horses on this day is extremely ancient, and that it was brought into this country by the Danes. It is noticed in “Wits Fits and Fancies,” an old and rare book, that on “S. Stevens-day it is the custome for all horses to be let bloud and drench’d. A gentleman being (that morning) demaunded whether it pleased him to have his horse let bloud and drencht, according to the fashion? He answered, no, sirra, my horse is not diseas’d of the fashions.” Mr. Ellis in a note on Mr. Brand quotes, that Aubrey says, “On St. Stephen’s-day the farrier came constantly and blouded all our cart-horses.”[429]
The Finns upon St. Stephen’s-day, throw a piece of money, or a bit of silver, into the trough out of which the horses drink, under the notion that it prospers those who do it.[430]
Heit! Heck! Whoohe! and Geho!
The well-known interjection used by country people to their horses, when yoked to a cart, &c. Heit! or Heck! is noticed by Mr. Brand to have been used in the days of Chaucer:—
“They saw a cart, that charged was with hay,
The which a carter drove forth on his way:
Depe was the way, for which the carte stode;
The carter smote and cryde as he were wode,
Heit Scot! Heit Brok! what spare ye for the stones?
The Fend quoth he, you fetch, body and bones.”[431]
Brok is still in frequent use amongst farmer’s draught oxen.[432]