BOOK II. eventually became pledges of love and friendship, and symbolical of good wishes; and this will account for the superstitious veneration, with which the Romans received Christmas. these presents, in after times accompanied by prayers for welfare.* Yule Can For this season, in some places, candles are made of a particular kind; because the candle that is lighted on Christmas day, must be so large as to burn from the time of its ignition to the close of the day, otherwise it will portend evil to the family for the ensuing year. This custom has also been transmitted from the time of heathenism. In the Roman Saturnalia, which we have seen, were connected with the winter solstice, lights were used in dles. worship of their deity, the father of the seasons and the source of warmth and light.† Hence, too, originated the custom of making presents of this kind. The poor were wont to present the rich with wax tapers; and Yule Candles are still in the north of Scotland, given by merchants to their stated customers. Within these few years, children at the village schools in Lancashire, were required to bring each a mould candle before the Parting or separation for the Christmas holidays; grocers, in Leeds, have the Scottish custom, and the candle so given is there called a Christmas Candle. At the present time children in London are presented with miniature candles on Boxing Day. By many persons in Scotland who rigidly observe the superstitions of the season, the Yule Candle is suffered to burn out; by others it is extinguished and preserved "for luck." Ovid. in init Fastor. "Primum anni incipientis diem lætis præcationibus, faustum ominarum," Plin. Lib. XXVIII. "Hinc Kalendas anni auspices, quibus mensium recursus aperitur, impertiendis Strenis dicavit antiquitas." Symmach. Lib. X., Epist. 20 apud Salmuth, Lib. cit. + Saturnus ipse, qui auctor est temporum et ideo a Græcis, immutata litera Kpovos quasi Xpovog vocatur, quid aliud nisi Sol intelligendus est?" Macrob. Lib. I., cap. 22. Kpovos appears to be a Greek corruption of CarOn the solar orb. Faber. Jamieson, ubi suprà. BOOK II. There are many other miscellaneous superstitions in relation to this period, of which two or three may be noticed. Christmas. In the morning one person rises before the rest of the family, and prepares food for them, which must be eaten in bed. This frequently consists of cakes baked with eggs, Care Cakes and called Care Cakes. A bannock, or cake, in Scotland is baked for all in the house; and if any one of these cakes should break in the toasting, the person for whom it is baked, will not, it is supposed, see another Christmas; a part of this custom is evidently of early Catholic origin, being the remnant of that of baking cakes in honor of the Virgin's delivery. Du Cange mentions that Calendar Loaves were formerly presented to the priest of the parish at Christmas, which was thence corruptly called Les Calenes.* For this custom the authority seems to have been derived from the Mosaiacal law;-"Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves, of two tenth deals: they are the first fruits unto the lord.† Among us the Church Scot of an early Saxon law seems to be analagous : 'Church Scot' says Ina king of the West Saxons in 688, "shall be given at the roof and hearth where a man is at mid-winter. This tax was paid in corn, whence it is named by an Anglo-Norman, Church seed.§ Some of Church * Gloss. Tom. V., col. 99. + Levit. XXIII., 17. to dam Cynic sceat man sceal agÿfan to dam healme [al. hæme] heorde. De se man on bid to middum pintɲa.-Cap. 61. Be cynic rceatrum. It may be mentioned that the author of the article on first fruits, in Rees's Encyclopædia, cites this law as a proof that first fruits existed so early as the reign of Ina; but it is evident that he has been misled by the equivocal term "Primitia" in Wilkins's translation. The first fruits, of which he was treating, are a comparatively modern exaction of the first year's revenue of a benefice; but the Saxon Church Scot was a tribute to the Clergyman. "Chercheseed, ou Chirceomer, ou Cherceamber, fuit un certein de blee batu, que chescun home devoit al temps dez Brytons et dez Englez porter a lour Eglise le jour seint Martin." Wilkins, Gloss. ad Leges Saxonicas. The these Care Cakes were preserved until Twelfth Night for the purpose of choosing the king of that season. Aubrey, in 1686 says "It was anciently the custom in Yorkshire, in the Christmas holidays, to dance in the church after prayers, crying or singing "Yole, Yole, Yole.*" BOOK II. Christmas. Wolves. The ancient superstition respecting Were-wolves, the mu- Were tation of men into wolves at this season, is much too remarkable to be omitted. Olaus Magnus, archbishop of Upsal, and metropolitan of Sweden, relates in his History of the Goths, that at the festival of Christmas in the cold northern parts, there is a strange conversion of men into beasts; and that at a place previously fixed among themselves, there is a gathering of a huge multitude of wolves which have been changed from men, and which during that night, rage with such fierceness against mankind and other creatures not fierce by nature, that the inhabitants of the country suffer more hurt from them, than they ever do from natural wolves; for these human wolves attack houses, break down the doors in order that they may destroy the inmates, and descend into the cellars where they drink out whole tuns of beer or mead, leaving the empty vessels heaped one upon another. If any man afterwards comes to the place where they have met, and his cart overturn, or he fall down in the snow, it is believed that he will die that year. The author relates, that there is standing a wall of a certain castle that was destroyed, to which, at an appointed time, these unnatural wolves come and endeavour to leap over it; and that those wolves which cannot leap over the wall from fatness or otherwise, are whipped by their leaders: and, moreover, it is believed that among them second names Chirceomer and Cherceamber, are one and the same; the termination amber, amphora, a certain measure, taking place of seed, or the thrashed corn, which, he says, every man in the time of the Britons and Angles was obliged to bring to his church on the day of St. Martin. For this change of the time from Christmas to Martinmas see Ll. Cnut. cap. 10. -Constit. temp. Ethelred. &c. * Time's Telescope, 1826. BOOK are the great men and chief nobility of the land. This change of a natural man into a brute is effected by mutChristmas. tering certain words and drinking a cup of ale to a manwolf, which, if he accept the same, renders the man-natural worthy of admission into the society of men-wolves. He may then change himself into the form of a wolf by going into a secret cellar, or private wood; and may put off his wolf's form and resume his own at pleasure. The following instances, or anecdotes, are related in confirmation of this statement:-A certain nobleman, while on a journey through the woods was benighted and hungry; and it so fell out that among his servants were some who had this faculty of becoming wolves; one of these proposed that the rest should be quiet, while he withdrew, and that they should not be surprised to tumult by anything they saw in his absence; and, so saying, he went into a thick wood, and there privily transformed himself, and came out as a wolf, and fell fiercely on a flock of sheep, and caught one of them and brought it to his companions, who, knowing the bringer thereof, received it gratefully, and he returned into the wood as a wolf would, and came back again in his shape as the nobleman's servant. Not many years since it happened in Livonia, that a nobleman's wife disputed with one of her servants, whether men could turn themselves into wolves, and the lady said they could not; but the servant said, with her permission, he would presently shew her an example of that business: and forthwith he went alone into the cellar, and presently after came forth in the form of a wolf; and the dogs hunted him through the fields into a wood, where he defended himself stoutly, but they bit out one of his eyes, and the next day he came with only one eye to his lady. Lastly he says, that it is yet fresh in memory that the duke of Prussia, though he paid attention to stories of this kind, required a person, who was reputed to be skilled in this sorcery to give a to give a proof of his art. The man accordingly transformed himself into a wolf; the duke was satis fied, and caused the unlucky experimentalists to be burned BOOK for idolatry.* II. Mentioning this superstition in an article in Blackwood's Christmas, Magazine, I attributed its origin to the fable of Lycaon, in consequence Voltaire's lines, "Ces montagnes, ces bois qui bordent l'horison, Sont couverts des métamorphoses: Ce cerf aux pieds légers est le jeune Actéon, But on reconsideration, it seems very probable, that the fables of Lycaon and of the were-wolf have a common origin, and not that one is the parent of the other. The superstition has no doubt, existed in every country, that has been infested by wolves; the loup-garou, gar signifying a man, is precisely the same as the Saxon peɲe pulf and the German wär, or wehr wolff, a man-wolf. Pomponius Mela says that the Scythians if they choose, can at a stated time change themselves into wolves, and at pleasure resume their own form; and speaking of the virgins of the isle of Sena, whom he calls priestesses of a Gallic deity and oracle, he says, that they think to excite the sea and wind by their incantations, and to turn themselves into beasts. It, therefore, appears says Wachter, opposing an opinion that the men-wolves were only hypochondriacs, that this transformation, according to ancient belief was not a disease, but a free and voluntary act.]] Pliny seriously declares that we may confidently consider it as false that men are changed to wolves and afterwards restored to their own shape, or we must believe all the fables transmitted to us from remote antiquity.¶ *Hist. Septent. Gent. Breviarum, Lib. XVIII., cap. 133. + Apologie de la Fiction. Geogr. Lib. II. cap. 1. Ibid. Lib. III., cap. 6. Glossar. Tom. II., col. 1881. Apud eundem, ubi etiam Pomp. Mela. |