where. The profits, as well as those from Sunday games-there being no poor-rates-were given to the poor, for whom this was one mode of provision, according to the Christian rule, that all festivities should be rendered innocent by alms. "In every parish," says Aubrey, "was a church-house, to which belonged spits, crocks, and other utensils for dressing provisions. Here the house-keepers met. The young people were there too; and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc., the ancients sitting gravely by, and looking on.

King James, to check the progress of non-conformity, and keep people to church, published his "Book of Sports," and commanded attendance on Whitsun-ales; church-ales, etc.; but he soon found that forced sport is no sport at all. These Friendly Societies, however, by adopting this day, have revived the Agapai in a more popular shape, and long may they continue, refined indeed, and made more temperate by better information, and a better morality. These being held at public houses, and their monthly nights, on which they pay their contributions, being held there too, has made many persons object to them, and the utilitarian spirit, especially during periods of general distress, has induced many of them to give up their bands, banners, and ribbons, and to throw the money thus saved into the general stock; but if we are to retain any rustic festival at all, we cannot, I think, have a more picturesque one, or at a pleasanter time. Let all means be used to preserve a day of relaxation and good-fellowship from gross intemperance, but let not the external grace and rustic pageantry be shorn away. As I have met these

Whitsuntide processions in the retired villages of Staffordshire, or as I saw them in the summer of 1835 at Warsop in Nottinghamshire, I would wish to see them as many years hence as I may live. In the latter village, Miss Hamilton, a lady of poetical taste, and author of several poetical works, had painted the banner for this rural fête with her own hands, and the flowers with which the wands were crowned were selected and disposed in a spirit of true poetry. Long, I say, may this bright day of rejoicing come to the hamlet; and the musing poet stop in the glades of the near woodlands, and exclaim with Kirk White:

Hark how the merry bells ring jocund round,
And now they die upon the veering breeze ;
Anon they thunder loud

Full on the musing ear.

Wafted in varying cadence, by the shore
Of the still twinkling river, they bespeak
A day of jubilee,

An ancient holiday.

And lo! the rural revels are begun,
And gaily echoing to the laughing sky,
On the smooth-shaven green

Resounds the voice of mirth.

Mortals! be gladsome while ye have the power,
And laugh, and seize the glittering lapse of joy;
In time the bell will toll

That warns ye to your graves.

192

CHAPTER VI.

CHRISTMAS.

Its

THE next and last of these popular festivities that I shall notice at any length, is jolly old Christmas,--the festival of the fireside; the most domestic and heartfelt carnival of the year. It has changed its features with the change of national manners and notions, but still it is a time of gladness, of home re-union and rejoicing; a precious time, and one so thoroughly suited to the grave yet cheerful spirit of Englishmen, that it will not soon lose its hold on our affections. old usages are so well known; they have been so repeatedly of late years brought to our notice by Washington Irving, Walter Scott, Leigh Hunt in his most graphic and cordial-spirited Months, Indicator, and London Journal, and by many other lovers of the olden time, that I shall not now particularly describe them. We have already seen how, in all our religious festivals, the most ancient customs and rites have been interwoven with Catholicism. Who does not recognize, in the decoration of our houses and churches with ivy, holly, and other evergreens, the decorations of the altars of Greece and Rome with laurels and bays as the symbols of the renewal of the

In our mistle

year and the immortality of Nature? toe branches the practice of Druidical times? Who does not see in the Abbot of Unreason, and his jolly crew, the Saturnalia of ancient times? Those who do not, may find in Brand's Antiquities, the various volumes of Times' Telescope, collected by my worthy friend John Millard, and in Hone's Every-day, Table, and Year Books, matter on these subjects, and on the Christmas pageants, rites, and processions of Rome, that would of itself fill a large volume. In old times it was from Christmas to Candlemas a period of general jollification; for the first twelve days—a general carnival. The churches were decorated with evergreens; midnight mass was celebrated with great pomp; according to Aubrey, they danced in the church after prayers, crying Yole, Yole, Yole, etc. For a fortnight before Christmas, and during its continuance, the mummers, or guisers, in their grotesque array, went from house to house, acting George and the Dragon, having the princess Saba, the doctor, and other characters all playing and saying their parts in verse. Others acted Alexander the Great, and the King of Egypt. Bands of carollers went about singing; and all the great gentry had

A good old fashion when Christmas was come,

To call in their old neighbours with bagpipe and drum.

And then in those good old halls, what a feasting, and a sporting, and a clamour was there! The Yule block on the fire, the plum-porridge and mince-pies on the table, with mighty rounds of beef, plum-pudding, turkeys, capons, geese, goose-pies, herons, and sundry other game and good things. Ale of twelve

months old circling round, and the old butler and his serving-men carrying up the boar's head, singing in chorus the accustomed chaunt, as they set it before the lord of the feast:

Caput Apri defero

Reddens laudes domino.

The boar's head in hand bring I,
With garlands gay and rosemary;
I pray you all sing merrily,

Qui estis in convivio, etc.

Then, as Burton in his Anatomie of Melancholie tells us," what cards, tables, dice, shovel-board, chesse-play, the philosopher's game, small trunkes, billiards, musicke, singing, dancing, ale-games, catches, purposes, questions, merry tales of arrant knights, kings, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, fairies, goblins, friars, witches, and the rest. Then what kissing under the mistletoe! roaring of storms without, and blazing hearths and merry catches within!"

With all this rude happiness we cannot now linger; let us be thankful that our ancestors, rich and poor, enjoyed it so thoroughly, enjoyed it together, as became Christians, on the feast of the nativity of their common Saviour. We will just review this state of things as it existed in the time of old Wither, two hundred years ago; and the remembrance of it, as it glanced on the imagination of Scott, and then turn to it as it exists amongst us now.

CHRISTMAS.

So now is come our joyful'st feast;

Let every man be jolly;

Each room with ivy leaves is dressed,

And every post with holly.