It is deemed lucky to see the new moon with some money (silver) in the pocket. A similar idea is perhaps connected with the desire to enter the new year rife o’ roughness. The grand affair among the boys in the town is to provide themselves with fausse faces, or masks; and those with crooked horns and beards are in greatest demand. A high paper cap, with one of their great grandfather’s antique coats, then equips them as a guisard—they thus go about the shops seeking their hogmenay. In the carses and moor lands, however, parties of guisards have long kept up the practice in great style. Fantastically dressed, and each having his character allotted him, they go through the farm houses, and unless denied entrance by being told that the OLD STYLE is kept, perform what must once have been a connected dramatic piece. We have heard various editions of this, but the substance of it is something like the following:—
One enters first to speak the prologue in the style of the Chester mysteries, called the Whitsun plays, and which appear to have been performed during the mayoralty of John Arneway, who filled that office in Chester from 1268 to 1276. It is usually in these words at present—
Rise up gudewife and shake your feathers!
Dinna think that we’re beggars,
We are bairns com’d to play
And for to seek our hogmenay;
Redd up stocks, redd up stools,
Here comes in a pack o’ fools.[12]
Muckle head and little wit stand behint the door,
But sic a set as we are, ne’er were here before.
One with a sword, who corresponds with the Rollet, now enters and says:
Here comes in the great king of Macedon,
Who has conquer’d all the world but Scotland alone.
When I came to Scotland my heart grew so cold
To see a little nation so stout and so bold,
So stout and so bold, so frank and so free!
Call upon Galgacus to fight wi’ me
If national partiality does not deceive us, we think this speech points out the origin of the story to be the Roman invasion under Agricola, and the name of Galgacus (although Galacheus and Saint Lawrence are sometimes substituted, but most probably as corruptions) makes the famous struggle for freedom by the Scots under that leader, in the battle fought at the foot of the Grampians, the subject of this historical drama.
Enter Galgacus.
Here comes in Galgacus—wha doesna fear my name?
Sword and buckler by my side, I hope to win the game!
They close in a sword fight, and in the “hash smash” the chief is victorious. He says:
Down Jack! down to the ground you must go—
Oh O! what’s this I’ve done?
I’ve killed my brother Jack, my father’s only son!
Call upon the doctor.