Beginning with the year: there is in Glamorganshire a New Year’s Day custom of great antiquity and large present observance, called the apple gift, or New Year’s gift. In every town and village you will encounter children, on and about New Year’s Day, going from door to door of shops and houses, bearing an apple or an orange curiously tricked out. Three sticks in the form of a tripod are thrust into it to serve as a rest; its sides are smeared with flour or meal, and stuck over with oats or wheat, or bits of broken lucifer matches to represent oats; its top is covered with thyme or other sweet evergreen, and a skewer is inserted in one side as a handle to hold it by. In its perfection, this piece of work is elaborate; but it is now often a decrepit affair, in the larger towns, where the New Year is welcomed (as at Cardiff) by a midnight chorus of steam-whistles.
THE NEW YEAR’S APPLE.
The Christian symbolism of this custom is supposed to relate to the offering, by the Wise Men, of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Jesus. The older interpretation, however, takes the custom back to the Druidic days, and makes it a form of the solar myth. In the three supporting sticks of the apple are seen the three rays of the sun, /|\, the mystic Name of the Creator; the apple is the round sun itself; the evergreens represent its perennial life; and the grains of wheat, or oats, Avagddu’s spears. Avagddu is the evil principle of darkness—hell, or the devil—with which the sun fights throughout the winter for the world’s life.
Thousands of children in Wales seek to win from their elders a New Year’s copper by exhibiting the apple gift, or by singing in chorus their good wishes. A popular verse on this occasion hopes the hearer will be blessed with an abundance of money in his pocket and of beer in his cellar, and draws attention to the singers’ thin shoes and the bad character of the walking. In many cases the juvenile population parades the street all night, sometimes with noisy fife bands, which follow the death knell, as it sounds from the old church tower, with shrill peals of a merrier if not more musical sort.
In Pembrokeshire, to rise early on New Year’s morning is considered luck-bringing. On that morning also it is deemed wise to bring a fresh loaf into the house, with the superstition that the succession of loaves throughout the year will be influenced by that incident. A rigid quarantine is also set up, to see that no female visitor cross the threshold first on New Year’s morning; that a male visitor shall be the first to do so is a lucky thing, and the reverse unlucky. A superstition resembling this prevails to this day in America among showmen. ‘There’s no showman on the road,’ said an American manager of my acquaintance, ‘who would think of letting a lady be first to pass through the doors when opening them for a performance. There’s a sort of feeling that it brings ill-luck. Then there are cross-eyed people; many a veteran ticket-seller loses all heart when one presents himself at the ticket-window. A cross-eyed patron and a bad house generally go together. A cross-eyed performer would be a regular Jonah. With circuses there is a superstition that a man with a yellow clarionet brings bad luck.’ Another well-known New York manager in a recent conversation assured me that to open an umbrella in a new play is deemed certain failure for the piece. An umbrella may be carried closed with impunity, but it must not be opened unless the author desire to court failure. The Chinese have the Pembrokeshire superstition exactly, as regards the first foot on New Year’s Day. They consider a woman peculiarly unlucky as a first foot after the New Year has begun, but a Buddhist priest is even more unlucky than a woman, in this light.[113]
Another Pembrokeshire custom on New Year’s morning is quaint and interesting. As soon as it is light, children of the peasantry hasten to provide a small cup of pure spring water, just from the well, and go about sprinkling the faces of those they meet, with the aid of a sprig of evergreen. At the same time they sing the following verses:
Here we bring new water from the well so clear,
For to worship God with, this happy new year;
Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine,
With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine;
Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her toe;
Open you the west door and turn the old year go;
Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her chin;
Open you the east door and let the new year in!
This custom also is still observed extensively. The words ‘levy dew’ are deemed an English version of Llef i Dduw, (a cry to God).
A Welsh song sung on New Year’s Day, in Glamorganshire, by boys in chorus, somewhat after the Christmas carol fashion, is this: