p. 155,) tells us: "On the 24th of December, towards evening, all the servants in general have a holiday; they go not to bed all night, but ramble about till the bells ring in all the churches, which is at twelve o'clock: prayers being over, they go to hunt the wren; and after having found one of these poor birds, they kill her, and lay her on a bier with the utmost solemnity, bringing her to the parish church, and burying her with a whimsical kind of solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call her knell; after which, Christmas begins." hit A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1795, p. 110, gives the following account of a custom which takes place annually on the 24th of December, at the house of Sir Holt, Bart. of Aston juxta Birmingham: "As soon as supper is over, a table is set in the hall. On it is placed a brown loaf, with twenty silver threepences stuck on the top of it, a tankard of ale, with pipes and tobacco; and the two oldest servants have chairs behind it, to sit as judges if they please. The steward brings the servants both men and women, by one at a time, covered with a winnow sheet, and lays their right hand on the loaf, exposing no other part of the body. The oldest of the two judges guesses at the person, by naming a name, then the younger judge, and lastly the oldest again. If they upon the right name, the steward leads the person back again; but, if they do not, he takes off the winnow sheet, and the person receives a threepence, makes a low obeisance to the judges, but speaks not a word. When the second servant was brought, the younger judge guessed first and third; and this they did alternately, till all the money was given away. Whatever servant had not slept in the house the preceding night, forfeited his right to the money. No account is given of the origin of this strange custom, but it has been practised ever since the family lived there. When the money is gone, the servants have full liberty to drink, dance, sing, and go to bed when they please." Can this be what Aubrey, in a passage already quoted from the Introduction to his Survey of Wiltshire, calls the sport of "Cob-loaf-stealing?" Mr. Beckwith, in Gent. Mag. for February, 1781, p. 99, tells us that, in the country about Rotherham, in Yorkshire, Furmety used, in his remembrance, to be always the breakfast and supper on Christmas Eve. Douce says: "Thiers mentions, that some imagine that bread baked on Christmas Eve will not turn mouldy,"-Traité des Superst. i. 317. Sir Herbert Croft informs us, that the inhabitants of Hamburgh are obliged, by custom, to give their servants carp for supper on Christmas Eve.-Letter from Germany, 4to. 1797, p. 82. It is to be regretted the learned gentleman did not inquire into the origin of this practice. L'Estrange, in his Alliance of Divine Offices, p. 135, says: "The celebration of Christmas is as old as the time of Gregory Nazianzen, and his great intimate St. Basil, having each an excellent homily upon it; the latter of whom says: We name this festival the Theophany.' Andrews, in his History of Great Britain, connected with the Chronology of Europe, 1795, i. par. 2, p. 329, mentions "the humorous pageant of Christmass, personified by an old man hung round with savory danties;" which, he says, in common with "dancing round the May-pole and riding the hobby-horse," suffered a severe check at the Reformation. John Herolt, a Dominican friar, in a sermon on the Nativity, condemning those who make a bad use of this festival, mentions: qui istam noctem in ludo consumpserunt. Item qui cumulos salis ponunt, et per hoc futura prognosticant. Item qui calceos per caput jactant; similiter qui arbores cingunt. Et significantur qui cum micis et fragmentis, qui tolluntur de mensa in vigilia natalis Christi sua sortilegia exercent." A superstitious notion prevails in the western parts of Devonshire, that at twelve o'clock at night on Christmas Eve the oxen in their stalls are always found on their knees, as in an attitude of devotion; and that (which is still more singular) since the alteration of the style they continue to do this only on the eve of old Christmas Day. An honest countryman, living on the edge of St. Stephen's Down, near Launceston, Cornwall, informed me, October 28th, 1790, that he once, with some others, made a trial of the truth of the above, and watching several oxen in their stalls at the above time, at twelve o'clock at night, they observed the two oldest oxen only fall upon their knees, and as he expressed it, in the idiom of the country, make "a cruel moan like Christian creatures." I could not but with great difficulty keep my countenance: he saw this, and seemed angry that I gave so little credit to his tale, and walking off in a pettish humour, seemed to "marvel at my unbelief." There is an old print of the nativity, in which the oxen in the stable, near the Virgin and Child, are represented upon their knees, as in a suppliant posture. This graphic representation has probably given rise to the above superstitious notion on this head. GOING A HODENING. [AT Ramsgate, in Kent, they commenced the festivities of Christmas by a curious procession. A party of young people procured the head of a dead horse, which was affixed to a pole about four feet in length; a string was affixed to the lower jaw; a horse-cloth was also attached to the whole, under which one of the party got, and by frequently pulling the string, kept up a loud snapping noise, and was accompanied by the rest of the party, grotesquely habited, with hand-bells. They thus proceeded from house to house, ringing their bells, and singing carols and songs. They were commonly offered refreshments or money. This custom was provincially called going a hodening, and the figure above described a hoden or wooden horse. It is now discontinued, but the singing of carols at Christmas is still called hodening.] YULE, OR CHRISTMAS. I HAVE met with no word of which there are so many and such different etymologies as this of YULE, of which there seems nothing certain but that it means CHRISTMAS. Mrs. Elstob, in her Saxon Homily on the birthday of St. Gregory (Append. p. 29), has the following observations on it: "Cehol. geol. Angl. Sax. Iol, vel Iul, Dan. Sax.; and to this day in the north Yule, Youle, signifies the solemn festival of 1 "All the Celtic nations," says Mallet, in his Northern Antiquities, ii. 68,"have been accustomed to the worship of the sun; either as distin Christmass, and were words used to denote a time of festivity very anciently, and before the introduction of Christianity. among the northern nations. Learned men have disputed much about this word, some deriving it from Julius Cæsar, others from the word gehpeol, a wheel, as Bede, who would therefore have it so called because of the return of the sun's annual course, after the winter solstice. But he, writing De Ratione Temporum, speaks rather as an astronomer than an antiquary. 66 years A writer in the Gent. Mag. for 1784, p. 97, observes that the night of the winter solstice was called by our ancestors "Mother Night," as they reckoned the beginning of their from thence. "One of the principal feasts," it is added, 'among the Northern nations was the Juul, afterwards called Yule, about the shortest day, which, as Mr. Mallet observes, bore a great resemblance to the Roman Saturnalia, feasts instituted in memory of Noah, who, as Mr. Bryant has shown, was the real Saturn. In the Saturnalia all were considered on a level, like master like man; and this was to express the social manner in which Noah lived about this time with his family in the ark. And as Noah was not only adored guished from Thor, or considered as his symbol. It was a custom that everywhere prevailed in ancient times, to celebrate a feast at the winter solstice, by which men testified their joy at seeing this great luminary return again to this part of the heavens. This was the greatest solemnity in the year. They called it, in many places, Yole or Yuul, from the word Hiaul and Houl, which even at this day, signifies the SUN in the languages of Bass-Britagne and Cornwall." This is giving a Celtic derivation of a Gothic word (two languages extremely different). The learned Dr. Hickes thus derives the term in question: I-ol Cimbricum, Anglo-Saxonice scriptum Geol, et Dan. Sax. Iul, o in u facile mutato, ope intensivi præfixi i et ze, faciunt Ol, commessatio, compotatio, convivium, symposium. (Isl. Ol cerevisiam denotat et metonymicè convivium.)-Junii Etym. Ang. v. Yeol. Our ingenious author, however, is certainly right as to the origin and design of the Yule Feast; the Greenlanders at this day keep a Sun feast at the winter solstice, about Dec. 22, to rejoice at the return of the sun, and the expected renewal of the hunting season, &c.; which custom they may possibly have learnt of the Norwegian colony formerly settled in Greenland. See Crantz's History of Greenland, i. 176. A vast number of conjectures have been written on the origin of Yule, but so little to the purpose, that we do not transfer them to these pages. "December Guili, eodem quo Januarius nomine vocatur. Guili a conversione solis in auctum Diei, nomen accipit."-Bèda de Rat. Temp. cap. xiii. as the god of the Deluge, but also recognised as a great benefactor to mankind, by teaching or improving them in the art of husbandry, what could be more suitable than for them to regale themselves on it with a palatable dish for those times, the principal ingredient of which is wheat?" This is to account for the use of Furmety on Christmas Eve. The same writer, ibid. p. 347, derives the feast Juul or Yule from a Hebrew word Ĺile, night. Lile, he adds, is formed from a verb signifying to howl, because at that time, i. e. at night, the beasts of the forest go about howling for their "In prey. the northern counties, nothing is more common than to call that melancholy barking dogs oft make in the night Yowling, and which they think generally happens when some one is dying in the neighbourhood." Park, in his copy of Bourne and Brand's Popular Antiquities, p. 167, has inserted the following note: "At Christmas, or the feast of Yule (Festis Iolensis, as it is translated from the Scandinavian language, vide Baillie's Lettres sur les Sciences), peculiar dishes have been always employed, and every domestic diversion adopted that tends to cheer or to dissipate the gloom of winter. See Henry's History of Great Britain, xii. 384." Blount tells us, that in Yorkshire, and other Northern parts, they have an old custom: After sermon or service on Christmas day, the people will, even in the churches, cry Ule, Ule, as a token of rejoicing; and the common sort run about the streets, singing, "Ule, Ule, Ule, Ule, Three puddings in a pule, This puts one in mind of the proverb in Ray's collection: "It is good to cry Ule at other men's costs." There is a Scottish proverb on this subject, which runs thus: "A Yule Feast may be quit at Pasche;" i. e. one good turn deserves another. ["Captain Potter, born in the north of Yorkshire, sayes that in the country churches at Christmas, in the holydaies, after prayers, they will dance in the church, and as they doe dance, they cry or sing, Yole, Yole, Yole, &c. In the West Riding of Yorkshire, on Christmas eve, at night, they bring in |