Concerning this day, Bourne says. “How it came to have this particular knack of foretelling the good or ill fortune of the following year is no easy matter to find out. The monks, who were undoubtedly the first who made this wonderful observation, have taken care it should be handed down to posterity; but why, or for what reason, they have taken care to conceal. St. Paul did indeed labour more abundantly than all the apostles; but never that I heard in the science of astrology: and why this day should therefore be a standing almanac to the world, rather than the day of any other saint, will be pretty hard to find out.” In an ancient Romish calendar, much used by Brand, the vigil of St. Paul is called “Dies Ægyptiacus;” and he confesses his ignorance of any reason for calling it “an Egyptian-day.” Mr. Fosbroke explains, from a passage in Ducange, that it was so called because there were two unlucky days in every month, and St. Paul’s vigil was one of the two in January.
Dr. Forster notes, that the festival of the conversion of St. Paul has always been reckoned ominous of the future weather of the year, in various countries remote from each other.
According to Schenkius, cited by Brand, it was a custom in many parts of Germany, to drag the images of St. Paul and St. Urban to the river, if there was foul weather on their festival.
Apostle-Spoons.
St. Paul’s day being the first festival of an apostle in the year, it is an opportunity for alluding to the old, ancient, English custom, with sponsors, or visitors at christenings, of presenting spoons, called apostle-spoons, because the figures of the twelve apostles were chased, or carved on the tops of the handles. Brand cites several authors to testify of the practice. Persons who could afford it gave the set of twelve; others a smaller number, and a poor person offered the gift of one, with the figure of the saint after whom the child was named, or to whom the child was dedicated, or who was the patron saint of the good-natured donor.
Ben Jonson, in his Bartholomew Fair, has a character, saying, “And all this for the hope of a couple of apostle-spoons, and a cup to eat caudle in.” In the Chaste Maid of Cheapside, by Middleton, “Gossip” inquires, “What has he given her? What is it, Gossip?” Whereto the answer of another “Gossip” is, “A faire high-standing cup, and two great ’postle-spoons—one of them gilt,” Beaumont and Fletcher, likewise, in the Noble Gentleman, say:
“I’ll be a Gossip. Bewford,
I have an odd apostle-spoon.”
A Set of Apostle-Spoons.