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The Book of Days. A Miscellany of Popular Antiquties, in …, Volume 1
By Robert Chambers
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238 – 242
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his day, according to their creed. is the buri ol of good living. After sundry absurd miumneries, the corpse is deposited in the earth.” in the latter part of the last century, a guriotis custom of : similar nature ; tıil survived in Kent. A group of girls enoa themselves at one part of a village in burning an unçouth image, which they colled a holly buy, and which they had stocol from the boys: while the boys were to be found in another part of the village burning a like effigy, which they called the icy girl, and which they had stolen from the girls : the ceremony being in both cases accompaniel by loud huzzas. These are fashions, wo inuinbly opine. sm ng of a very early ond probably pagan origin. At Bromiield, in Cumberland, there used to be a still more 1 emarkable custom. The scholars of the free school of that parish assumed a right, from old use and wont, Wo bar out the moster, and keep hill out for three days. Puring the poriod of this expulsion, the doors were strongly bat ricoided within ; and the boys, who defended it like a resieged city. were armed in general with guns inade of the lollow * Morning shronicle, March 16, 1791. t (; ntleman’s Mogoc, 1779.
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“THE BOOK OF DAYS.
windows with :
SHBOVE TUESDAY.
twigs of the elder, or bore-tree. The master, meanwhile, made various efforts, by force and stratagem, to regain his lost authority. If he succeeded, heavy tasks were imposed, and the business of the school was resumed and subimitted to ; but it more commonly happened that all his efforts were unavailing. In this case, after three days’ siege, terms of capitulation were proposed by the master and accepted by the boys. The terms always included permission to enjoy a full allowance of Shrovetide sports.” in days not very long gone by, the inhumane sport of throwing at cocks was practised at Shrovetide, and nowhere was it more certain to he seen than at the grammar-schools. The poor animal was tied to a stake by a short cord, and the unthinking men and boys who were to throw at it, took their station at the distance of about. twenty yards. Where the cock belonged to some one disposed to Inake it a matter of business, two pence was paid for three shies at it, the missile used being a broomstick. The sport was continued till the poor creature was killed outright by the blows. Such tumult and outrage attended this inhuman sport a century ago, that, agcording to a writer in the Gentleman’s liage:*, it was sometimes dangerous to be near the oace where it was practised. Hens wore also the subjects of popular amusement at this festival. It was customary in Cornwall to take any one which had not laid eggs before Shrove-Tuesday. and lay it on a barn-floor to be thrashed to death. A man hit, it her with a ilail; and if he succeeded in killing her illerewith, he got hor for his pains. It was customary for a fellow to ge’ a h; n tied to his back, with some horse-bells hung beside it. A number of other fellow s. blindsolded, with boughs in their hands, followed bim by the sound of the bells, endeavouring to get a sirol.e. at the bird. This gave occasion to natuch merriment, for sometimes the man was hit instead of ille hen, and sometinues the assailants hit each other instead of either. At the conclusion, the hem was boiled with bacon, and added to the usual pancake feast. Cock-fights were also columon on this day. Strange to say, they w in many instances the sanctioned sport of public schools, ille master receiving on the occasion a suiall tax from the boys under the name of a rock-pony. I’erhaps this last practice took its rise in the circumstance of the master supplyiug the cocks, which seems to have been the custon in some places in a remote age. Such cockfights regularly took place on Fosten’s Jo’en in many parts of Scotland till the middle of the eighteenth century, the master presiding at the battle, and enjoying the perquisite of all the runaway cocks, which were technically called Jogies. Nay, so late as 1790, the minister of Applecross, in Ross-shire, in the account of his parish, states the schoolmaster’s income as composed of two hundred merks, with 1s. 6d. and 2s. 6d. per quarter from cach scholar, and th: rock-sigh’ dues, which are cqual to one quarter’s payinsul for each scholar.t The other Shrovetide observances were chiefly * Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland. + Cock-fighting is now legally a misdemeanour, add punishable by penalty.
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of a local nature. The old plays make us aware | of a licence which the London prentices took on | ! this occasion to assail houses …” dubious repute, | and cart the unfortunate inmates through the | city. This seems to have been done partly under favour of a privilege which the common people
| assumed at this time of breaking down doors for sport, and of which we have perhaps some remains, in a practice which still exists in some remote districts, of throwing broken crockery and other rubbish at doors. In Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, if not in other counties, the latter practice is called Lent Crocking. The boys go round in small parties, headed by a leader,” who goes up and knocks at the door, leaving his followers behind him, armed with a good stock of potsherds– the collected relics of the washingTans, jugs, dishes, and plates, that have become the victims of concussion in the hands of unlucky or careless housewives for the past year. When the door is opened, the hero—who is perhaps a farmer’s boy, with a pair of black eyes sparkling under the tattered brim of his brown
milking-hat, -hangs down his head, and, with one oner of his mouth turned |. into an irre|
pressible smile, pronounces the following lines: A-shrovin, a-shrovin, l I le come a-shrowin; A piece of brend, a piece of checse,
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Sometimes he gets a bit of bread and cheese. and at some houses he is told to be gone; in vil’oil, latter, case, he calls up his followers to ond their missiles in a rattling broadside against i the door. It is rather remarkable that, in Frussia, and perhaps other parts of central
ope, the throwing of broken crockery at ors is a regular practice at marriages. Malinesbury, who in 1791 married a princess of thot country as proxy for the Duke of York. tools us that the morning after the ceremonial, a great leap of such rubbish was found at her royal highness’s door.
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to be shied at by the boys on Shrove Tuesday, and at the feast of St Nicholas, as at Wyke, near Ashford. No Mr Graham had hequeathed a silver boll to Mayfield, as he had done to the school at Wreay in 1961, to be fought for annually, when two of the boys, who had been chosen as captains, and who were followed by their partisans, distinguished by blue and red ribbons, marched in procession to the village-green, where each produced his cocks: and when the fight was won, the bell was suspended to the hat of the victor, to be transmitted from one successful captain to another. There were no potation pence, when there were deep drinkings, sometinues for the benefit of the clerk of the parish, when it was called clerk’s ale, and more often for the schoolmaster, and in the words of some old statutes, “for the solace of the neighbourhood :’ potations which Agues Mellors, avowess, the widow of a wealthy bellfounder of Nottingham, endeavoured, in some degree, to restrain when she founded the granmar-school in that town in 1513, by declaring that the schoolmaster and usher of her school should not make use of any potations, cock-fightings, or drinkings, with his or their wives, hostess, or hostesses, more that a twice a year. There were no “delectations’ for the scholars, such as th: barring out of the schoolmaster, which Sir John JJeane, who fonnded the grammar-school at Wilion, near Northbeach, to prevent all quarrels between the teacher and the taught, determined shoull take place only twice a year, a week before Christmas and Easter, “as the custom was in other orcat schools.” No unhappyram was provided by the butcher, as used to be the caso at Eton in days long gone by, to be pursued and knocked on the Head by the boys, till on one occasion, the poor animal, being sorciy pressed, swam across the Thanies, and, leeling into the marketplace at Windsor, followed by its persecutors, did such mischief, that this sport was stopped, and insteal thereof it was hainstrung, after the speech on Flection Saturday, and clubbed to death. None of these humanising influences were at work at Mayfi, lù : thcle was not even ihe customary clarge of 53, to each boy for rods. No such rules as those in force at th: free grammarschool at Cui kicki prevailed at Mayfield. They were not taught on every working day one of the eight pearl of reason, with the word according to the same, that is 1.0 say, Yout it with .1m0, 1’ronomen with A mor, to be sail by heart; nor as being a modern and a thoroughly Protestant school, were they called upon before breakfast each Friday to listen to a little piece of the Pater Noster, or Ave Maria, the Credo, or the verses of the Mariners, or the Ten Commandments, or the Five Evils, or some other proper saying in Latin met t for babies.’ Still less, as in the case of the grammar-school at Stockport,
dil any founder will that soone cunning oriest, with all his scholars, should, on Wednesday and I’vilay of
every week, come to the church to the g, ve where the bodies of his father and mother lay buried, and there say the psalm of Joe Profunds, after the Salisbury use, anoi pray especially for his soul, and for the souls of his father and mother, anol for all Christian souls.” Neither did the trustees, that they might sow the sceds of ambition in the mind ; of the scholars, ordain, as was done at Tunbridge and at Lewisham, ‘that the lest scholars and the best writers should wear some pretty garland on their heads, with silver pens well fastened thereunto, and thus walk to church and back again for at least a month. A ceremony which in these days would infallibly secure for them all sorts of scoffings, and probably a broken head.* * The above mention of silver pens would seem to
carry the use of metal pens back to a period long antecedent to the date generally attributed.
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to hold as a period of fasting and solemnity the
forty days preceding Easter, in commemoration of the miraculous abstinence of Jesus when under temptation. From leng’en-tide, a Saxon term for spring (as being the time of the lengthening of the day), came the familiar word for this period-Lot, Originally, she period began on what is now the first Sunday in Lent ; but, it being found that, when Sundays, as improper for fasting, were omitted, there remained only thirtysix days, the period was made by Pope Gregory to commence four days earlier; o
has since been called Ash Wednessay. name was derived from the notable ceremony of
When our
THE BOOK OF DAYS.
LENT—ASH WEDNESDAY. | the day in the Romish church. It being thought i proper to remind the faithful, at commencement of the great penitential season, that they were i
but dust and ashes, the priests took a quantity of
water. The worshipper then approaching in sack
I
|
i
ashes, blessed them, and sprinkled them withholy
cloth. the priest took up some of the ashes on the end of his fingers, and made with them the mark of the cross on the worshipper’s forehead, saying, “1emento, homo, quia cini’s es, et in pulcern reporteris ‘ (Remember, man, that you are of ashes, and into dust will return). The ashes used were commonly made of the palms consecrated on the Palm Sunday of the previous year. In England, soon after the IReformation, the use of . ashes was discontinued, as a vain show, and Ash Wednesday thence became only a day of . marked solemnity, with a memorial of its original character in a reading of the curses denounced against impenitent sinners. The popular observances on Ash Wednesday are not of much account. The cocks being now dispatched, a thin scare-crow-like figure or puppet was set up, and shied at with sticks, in imitation of one of the sports of the preceding day. The figure was called a Jack-a-lent, a term which is often met with in old literature, as expressive of a small and insignificant person. Beaumont and Fletcher, in one of their plays, make a character say— “If I forfeit. Make me a Jack o’ Lent and break my shins : For untagged points and counters.” 1. Boys used to go about clacking at doors, to get is eggs or bits of bacon wherewith to make up a . feast among themselves; and when refused, would stop the keyhole with dirt, and depart with a rhymed denunciation. In some parts of Ger. ‘ many, the young men gathered the girls inio cart, and drove them into a river or pool, and there washed them favouredly,’—a process which shews that abstinence from merriment was not there held as one of the proprieties of the day. Among the ancient customs of this country which have sunk into disuse, was a singularly absurd one. continued even to so late a period as the reign of George I. JDuring the Lenten season, an officer denominated the King’s sack Crower crowed the hour each night, within the precincts of the Palace, instead of proclaiming it in the ordinary manner of watchmen.” On the first -1sh Jeonesday after the accession of the JIouse of Ilanover, as the Prince of Wales, after wards George II., sat down to supper, this officer abruptly entered the apartment, and according to accustomed usage, proclaimed in a sound re. , sembling the shrill pipe of a cock, that it was “past ten o’clock.” Taken by surprise, on in perfectly acquainted with the English language, the astonished prince naturally mistock the tremulation of the assumed crow, as solo mockery intended to insult him, and instantly rose to resent the assront : nor was it witho’ ‘ difficulty that the interpreter explained the mature of the custom, and satisfied him, that a
• In Debrett’s Imperial Calendar for the year 18*.
7, on what in the list of persons holding appointments in the Lord
This
Steward’s department of the Royal Household, occurs the ‘Cock and Cryer at Scotland-yard.’
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| his eccentric Dutch scholar, a son of Gerard Vossius, a still more learned man, died on the 10th
| of February, 1688-9, in Windsor Castle, where
Charles II, had assigned him apartments fifteen
years previously, when he came to England from
| Holland, and the king made him a canon of
| Windsor. Never did a man undertake the cleri
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cal oilice who was more unfit for it. Although a canon of Windsor, he did not believe in the divine origin of the Christian religion, and he treated religious matters with contempt, although in all other things he was exceedingly credulous, i Charles, on one occasion, said, ‘This learned ‘ divine is a strunge man ; he will believe anything except the Bible.’ When he, attended divine service in the chapel at Windsor, it is ! said that he used to read Ovid’s Ars Amandi i’ instead of the prayer-book. . He knew all the | ! European languages, without being able to speak | one of them correctly. Ile was funiliar with the | || manners and customs of the ancients, but pro| foundly ignorant of the world and the affairs of |, ordinary life. On his death-bed he refused the sacrament, and was only prevailed upon to take it by the remark of one of his colleagues, that if he would not do it for the love of God, he ought to do it for the honour of the chapter to which he belonged. Vossius took an odd delight in having his hair combed in a measured or rhythmical imannor. He would have it done by barbers or is other persons skilled in the rules of prosody. A Latin treatise on rhythm, published by him at Oxford in 1673, contains this curious passage: ‘ ‘ ‘ Many people take delight in the rubbing of ; , ; their imbs, and the combing of their hair; but | | these exercises would delight much more, if the i servants, at the baths, and of the barbers, were so skilful in this art, that they could express any |, … measure with their fingers. I remember that ! !” Imore than once I have fallen into the hands of ‘ ‘ men of this sort, who could imitate any measure i of songs in combing the hair; so as sometimes , to express ye, intelligibly iambics, trochees, ; : , destyles. | ISAAC VOSSIU8. FEBRUARY 10. | | | whom numbers were killed and wounded. The HISTORY OF THE IMBRELLA [ocr errors] I | citizens were, consequently, debarred the rises and consolations of the church; their privileges | were greatly narrowed; they were heavily fined ; and an annual penance for ever was enjoined that on each anniversary of St Scholassign, the mayor and sixty-two citizens attend at St Mary’s Church, where the Litany should be read at the altar, and an oblation of one penny made by each man. t l | | | [ocr errors] to bear off the rain ; and Kersey, many years before (1708), had described it as “a kind of broad fan or screen, commonly used by avomen || to shelter them from rain; also, a wooden frame, covered with cloth, to keep off the sun from a window.’ Phillips, in his Now IWorld of Words, edit. 1720, descri’yes the umbrella as ‘now commonly used by women to shelter them from rain,” | As a shade from the sun, the umbrella is of great antiquity. We see it in the sculptures and Saintings of Egypt, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson |. engraved a delineation of an Ethiopian pincess, travelling in her chariot through (`pper | Egypt to Thebes, wherein the car is furnished with a kind of tumbrella fixed to a tall stas’ rising from the centre, and in its arrangement closely resembling the chaise umbrella of the present time. The recent discoveries at Nineveh shew that the umbrella (or parasol) was generally carried over the king in time of peace, and even in war. In shape,’ says Layard, it resembled very closely those now in common use, but it is always seen open in the sculptures. It was edged with tassels, and was … adorned at the top by a flower or some other ornament. On the later bas-reliefs, a long piece of linen or silk, falling from one side, like a curtain, appears to screen the king completely from the sun. The parasol was reserved exclusively for the monarch, and is never represented as borue over any other person. On several bas-reliefs from Persepolis, the king is represented under an umbrella, which I’ a female slavé holds over his head.’ | From the very limited use of the parasol in Asia and Africa, it seems to have passed, both as a distinction and a luxury, into Greece and Rome. The Skiadeion, or day-shade of the Greeks, was carried over the head cis the ciligy of Bacchus; and the daughters of the aliens at Athens were required to bear parasols over the heads of the maidens of the city at the great festival of the Panathenea. We see also the parasol figured in the hands of a princess on the IIamilton * in 21]. | [ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small] the Britisi, Museum. At Rome, when the veil could not be spread over the roof of the theatre, if was the custom for females and esseminate men to defend themselves from the sun with the to brella or it. Thracotri of the period; and this covering appears to have been formed of skin or !eather, capable of being raised or lowered, as circumstances might require. Although the use of the umbrella was thus early introduced into Italy, and had probably beef, continued there as a vestige of ancient Toman moners, yet so late as 1608, Thomas Corvai motios the ii, ention in such terms as to indicate that it was not commonly known in his ow a country. After describing the fans of the Ito’s. He adds : Many of them do carry other fine tinngs, of a lar greater price, i.at will cost ai oast a durat (5. tol.), which tiley commonly roll, in the to H. n tongue. 1, orch res, that is, illings toot *.inister shadow ounto them, for shel. ler against the scorching heat of the sun. These are made of “ather, something answerable to the form of a little canopy, old hooped in the inside with divers lilil, wooden he opes, that extend the *m’, c//a into a pretty large compasse. They are used csi.ecially by Jorsemen, who carry them in their hands whom they ri, ië, fastening the end of the handie upen one of heir thighs; and they impart so long a shadow unto theid. that it keepoth the heate of the sun from the upper part of their bodies. It is probable that a similar contrivance existed, at the same period, in Spain and Portugal, whence it was taken to the New Worsli Öoe i viii be remonierod, makes Robinson Cru-, e describe that he had seen uns. bre, as emploved 1: the Brazils, and that he had constructed his own usabrella in ionination of ihoon, ‘ I overed it with skins.’ he adds the hair outwards, so that it east of the rain like a polithouse, and kept of the sun so effectually, that. I could walk out it, the hotte of of the weather with greatei advantage than 1 could beiore in the coolcst.’ In commemoration o’ this ingenious production, one species of the old heavy umbrellas was called ‘The Robinson.’ The umbrella was used in England as a luxuriotis sun-shade early in the seventeenih century Ben Jonson mentions it by name in a comedy produced in 1616; and it occurs in Beaumont, and Fletchers loude at Wijt fad Have a TV so, where Aitca says: “Are you at ease ? Now is your li: art at rest: In those days, as we may infer from a passage in Drayton, the umbrella was composed exteriorly of feathers, in imitation of the plumage of water-birds Afterwards, oiled silk was the ordinary material. In the reign of Queen Anne, the umbrella appears to have been in common use in London as a screen from rain, but only for the yeaker sex Swift in the Tafler, October 17, 1710, says, in The City Shower:” “The tuck’d up scannstress walks with hasty strides. While streams run down her oiled unubrella’s sides.” Gray speaks of it in his Thrivia ; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of Tondon : THE BOOK OF DAYS. HISTORY OF THE UMBRELLA, * Good housewives all the winter’s despise, befended by the riding-hood’s o (r underneath th’ j. oily shed, Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread. Let Persian dames th’ umbrella’s ribs display, To guard their beauties from the sunny ray; Qr sweating slaves support the shady load, When Eastern monarchs shew their state abroad: Britain in winter only knows its aid, To guard from chilly showers the walking maid.” This passage, which points to the use of the umbrella exclusively by women, is confirmed by another passage in the Tricia, wherein the sus. tout is recommended for men to keep out ‘the drenching shower:” • By various names, in various countries known, Yet held in all the true surtout alone, Pethine of kersey firm, though small the cost; Then brave unwet the rain, unchill’d the irost.” At Woburn, Abbey is a full-length portrait of the beautiful Duchess of Bedford, painted about 1730, representing the lady as attended by a black servant, who holds an open umbrells to shade her. C’s about the same period is the sketch engraved on the next page, being the vignette to a song of Aaron Hill’s, entitled The Gcineroos Re. pu’se, and set to a tolerable air by Carey: * Thy vain pursuit, fond youth, give o’er. What more, alas ! can Flavia do 2 Thy worth I own, thy fate deplore, All are not happy that are true. * + * * * * “Put if revenge can ease thy pain, I’ll scothe the ills I cannot cure, ‘Tell thee I drag a hopeless chain, -nd all that Illiflict endure.” Flavia, as will be observed, administers this poorish cousolation, seated on a flowery bank, and keeping of the sunshine with a long-stalked umbrella, or what we should now call a parasol, while the fond youth’ reclines bare-headed by her side. The eighteenth century was half elapsed before the unbrella had even begun to be used in England by both sexes, as we now see it used. In 1752, Lieutenant-Colonel (afterwards General, Wolfe, writing from Paris, says: ‘The people here use umbrellas in hot weather to defend them from the sun, and something of the same kind to sar, them from the snow and rain. I wonder a practice so useful is not introduced in England.’ Just about that time, a gentleman did exercise the mural courage to use an umbrelle in the streets of London. He was the noted Jonas Hanway, newly returned from Persia, and in delicate health, by which, of course, his usin such a convenience was justified both to himsel and the considerate part of the public. “A parapluie.’ we are told, ‘defended Mr Hanway’s face and wig.” For a time, no others than the dainly beings then called Macaronies ventured to carry an umbrella. Any one doing so was sure to be hailed by the mob as ‘a mincing Frenchman. One John Macdonald, a footman, who has favoured the public with his memoirs, found as late as 1770, that, on appearing with a siue silk umbrell; which he had brought from Spain, he was saluted with the cry of “Frenchman, why don’t you get a coach?’ It appears, however, as if there had pre [graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic]
On the 10th of February 1354, in the reign of Edward III., a dire conflict took place between the students of the University of Oxford and the citizens. The contest continued three days. On the second evening, the townsmen called into their assistance the country people; and thus reinforced, completely overpowered the scholars, of
The designation of this useful contrivance (from wmbra, shade) indicates the earliest of its twofold uses. Johnson describes it as a screen used in hot countries to keep of the sun, and in others
HISTORY OF THE UMBRELLA.
Now you have got a shadow, an umbrella,
To keep the scorelling world’s opinion
From your fair credit.”
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