cessions 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.

451

CHAPTER VI.

CHRISTMAS.

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. Its 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 recognise 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 year and the immortality of Nature? In our mistletoe 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 Time's Telescope, collected by my worthy friend John Millard, and in Hone's Everyday Table, and Year Books, matter on these subjects, and on the Christmas pageants, rites, and pro

cessions 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 plumporridge 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 chant, 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.

Though some churls at our mirth repine,

Round your foreheads garlands twine;
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,

And let us all be merry.

Now all our neighbours' chimneys smoke,
And Christmas blocks are burning,
Their ovens they with baked meats choke,
And all their spits are turning.

Without the door let sorrow lie;
And if from cold it hap to die,
We'll bury it in a Christmas pie,
And evermore be merry.

Now every lad is wondrous trim,
And no man minds his labour;

Our lasses have provided them
A bagpipe and a tabor:

Young men and maids, and girls and boys,

Give life to one another's joys;

And you anon shall by their noise

Perceive that they are merry.

Rank misers now do sparing shun;
Their hall of music soundeth;

And dogs thence with whole shoulders run,
So all things there aboundeth.

The country folks themselves advance

With crowdy-muttons out of France;

And Jack shall pipe, and Jyll shall dance,

And all the town be merry.

Ned Squash hath fetched his bands from pawn,
And all his best apparel;

Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn
With dropping of the barrel.

And those that hardly all the year

Had bread to eat, or rags to wear,

Will have both clothes and dainty fare,
And all the day be merry.

Now poor men to the justices

With capons make their errants; And if they hap to fail of these,

They plague them with their warrants:

But now they find them with good cheer,
And what they want, they take in beer,
For Christmas comes but once a year,
And then they shall be merry.

Good farmers in the country nurse
The poor, that else were undone;
Some landlords spend their money worse
On lust and pride in London.

There the roysters they do play;
Drab and dice their lands away,
Which may be ours another day,
And therefore let's be merry.

The client now his suit forbears;
The prisoner's heart is eased;
The debtor drinks away his cares,
And for the time is pleased.

Though others' purses be most fat,
Why should we pine or grieve at that?
Hang sorrow! care will kill a cat,

And therefore let's be merry.

Hark! now the wags abroad do call
Each other forth to rambling;
Anon you'll see them in the hall
For nuts and apples scrambling.

Hark how the roofs with laughter sound,
Anon they'll think the house goes round,
For they the cellar's depth have found,
And then they will be merry.