TWELFTH NIGHT.

41

Deity. Lastly, it was termed BETHANIA, from a word compounded of Hebrew and Greek, namely n (beth), a house, and paivew, to show or to appear, "because he appeared in the house by the transformation of wine and water"-a singular derivation, but for which we have the authority of Belethus.

It may easily be imagined that so important a day in the Christian calendar would not be without its full share of ceremonies, either grave or farcical. These have gone through the usual routine; from pagan rites they have become Christian solemnities, and from these again they have degenerated into popular customs, which have grown fainter and fainter from year to year, and in all probability will be one day extinguished. Of those that still remain, the drawing for king and queen is the most important. In the olden time it was thus managed in our own country, and the same custom prevailed throughout the continent, with more or less variation in the details." After tea a cake is produced, and two bowls containing the fortunate chances for the different sexes. The host fills up the tickets, and the whole company, except the king and queen, are to be ministers of state, maids of honour, or ladies of the bedchamber. Often the host and hostess, more by design, perhaps, than accident, become the king and queen. According to Twelfth-Day law, each party is to support his character till midnight.' There was, however, at one time, another mode of electing their Twelfth Night Majesties, of which this seems to be only a corruption. The cake was made full of plums, a bean and a pea being mixed up amongst them; whoever upon the division of it got the bean, he was acknowledged for king; whoever got the pea, she was to be queen. Nothing can be more graphic than Herrick's poetical account of this ceremony:

TWELFE NIGHT, OR KING AND QUEENE.

Now, now the mirth comes

With the cake full of plums,

Where Beane's the king of the sport here;

Besides we must know

The Pea also

Must revell as queene in the court here.

This has generally been supposed to be in honour of the Three Kings of Cologne; but in all probability owes its origin to the Greek and Roman custom of casting lots at their banquets, for who should be the rex convivii, or, as Horace calls him, the arbiter bibendi. The lucky cast was termed Venus or Basilicus, and whoever threw it gave laws for the night to his competitors. The unlucky throw was called canicula and chius.

ST. DISTAFF'S DAY; ROCK DAY; January 7th.-St. Distaff is nothing more than a jocular saint of the people's creation, the rock being a distaff that is held in the hand, from which the wool is spun by twirling a ball below. It would appear from Herrick's little poem on the subject that the men now amused themselves with burning the flax and tow of the women, who in requital dashed pails of water over them.

PLOUGH MONDAY.

43

ST. DISTAFF'S DAY, OR THE MORROW AFTER TWELFTH DAY,

Partly worke and partly play,

Ye must on St. Distaff's Day;

From the plough some free your teame,

Then come home and fother them.

If the maids a spinning goe,

Burne the flax and fire the tow;

Bring in pailes of water then,

Let the maids bewash the men.
Give St. Distaff all the right

Then bid Christmas sport good night;

And next morrow every one

To his own vocation.

PLOUGH MONDAY; the first Monday after Twelfth Night. -This day is more peculiarly the ploughman's holiday, for though Tusser says:

Plough Monday next, after that Twelfthtide is past,
Bids out with the plough, the worst husband is last,

yet it is plain from the custom of the Stot Plough, White Plough, or Fond Plough, i.e. Fool Plough, that the days of merry-making are not yet over. It belongs to the olden times of papal supremacy, and is incidentally noticed by John Bale in his never-ending catalogue of the sins pertaining to Catholicism.

In speaking of the ceremonies appertaining to this day, it must be recollected that they varied much according to the time and place in which they were enacted. Sometimes the sword-dance formed a part of them, and the whole formed a sort of character-pageants, the dancers in strange attire dragging a plough, preceded by music, and accompanied by the Bessy "in the grotesque habit of an old woman, and the fool, almost covered with skins, a hairy cap on, and the tail of some animal hanging from his back. The office of one of these characters is to go about rattling a box amongst the spectators of the dance, in which he receives their little donations."

In Yorkshire, "the principal characters in this farce are the conductors of the plough, the plough-driver with a

blown bladder at the end of a stick by way of whip, the fiddler, a huge clown in female attire, and the commanderin-chief, Captain Cauf-Tail, dressed out with a cockade and a genuine calf's tail, fantastically crossed with various coloured ribbands. This whimsical hero is also an orator and a dancer, and is ably supported by the manual wit of the plough-driver, who applies the bladder with great and sounding effect to the heads and shoulders of his team," who are ploughmen harnessed in the place of horses or

oxen.

In some places the ceremony was of a much more simple nature. A number of men,-often as many as twentywould be harnessed to a plough, and draw it about before the houses and cottages, when, if they received the expected gift, they would cry out, "largess," and go on again; but if refused at any dwelling they would drive their plough through the pavement and raise up the ground in front of it. But in other parts women were harnessed to the plough, and the ceremony took place on Ash Wednesday, when it had a very different meaning, though it doubtless had the same origin. The maidens slected for the purpose were such as were supposed to have addicted themselves too much to dancing throughout the year, and in this guise they were driven into the nearest piece of water, a piper playing all the time as he sat upon the plough. Boemus Aubanus, who records this Franconian mode of treating the women, is much puzzled to account for it, except it be that the fair transgressors submitted voluntarily to be thus harnessed and ducked, by way of expiating their sins in having been too fond of holiday making, contrary to the express inhibitions of the Church. Another writer tells much the same story, with the addition of a whip being used by the driver of this female team, while a man follows the plough with antic gestures but grave face, and sows the furrows with sand or ashes.

I have already alluded to the Popish origin of Plough Monday, and in two customs yet to be mentioned we shall see the undeniable proofs of it. The first of these was the plough-light, maintained by the husbandman before some image. It will perhaps be replied that this was not necessarily connected with the day itself, since for aught that

ST. AGNES' DAY.

45

appears to the contrary, it may have burnt at other times; but allowing such to be the case, the same cannot be said of the drawing the plough about the fire upon this day-a custom evidently springing from the same source as the many fire-observances already noticed.*

ST. AGNES' DAY, January 21.-St. Agnes, or as it is more correctly written, Hagnes, was a Roman young lady, of only thirteen years of age, who had the misfortune as she passed to and fro in her daily visits to school to be seen and admired by the son of the city-prefect, Symphorianus. As she did not choose to return his passion, the angry lover caused her to be thrown into the flames, and, these being extinguished by her prayers, recourse was had, as was usual in all such cases, to the sword; and she was elected into the host of saints, as was made manifest by her appearance on the eighth day after her decease. It was then that her parents, who were praying at her tomb, beheld a choir of virgins all radiant in shining garments, and in the midst of them the blessed Agnes similarly attired, while at her right hand stood a lamb whiter than snow. Hence she is always painted with a lamb; and yearly also on this day two are offered to her by the Roman women, which are then placed in some rich pasture till the time comes for

It is mentioned in the thirty-fourth chapter of DIVES AND PAUPER (sig. e. ii.) amongst the things prohibited by law-"Ledynge of the plough about the fire as for gode begynnyng of the yere that they shulde fare the better alle the yere followyng, &c." But, though the form of the rights might vary, most nations have had their sacred ploughings; the Greeks, the Persians, and the Chinese had them beyond a question. The Athenians had three sacred ploughings. This custom of Plough Monday was kept up in some parts of Staffordshire to within about thirty years, when it was suddenly terminated by order of Sessions from the so-called Bullocks having, in one instance, driven their ploughshare too deeply into a gentleman's court and thrown down his iron pallisades, and in another, the same year, having come to affray with the choleric master of a country mansion, when they ploughed up his shrubbery, and he shot one of them. Within ten years they have been seen in Nottinghamshire, where they were an inoffensive show, suddenly making their appearance before the breakfast-room windows, a quaint bit of medieval life, leaping about in parti-coloured garments, the most faithful representation of the costume of the middle ages, although the material was of the commonest kind, and the fabricators were mere peasants, totally unconscious of the antiquity and poetic significance of their attire. This proves how strong a hold these ancient customs have on the popular mind.