BOOK II. New Year's Day. them from all harms, and particularly from the danger of battle. When Christianity was introduced among the barbarous Celtæ and Gauls, it is probable that the clergy, when they could completely abolish the Pagan rites would endeavour to give them a Christian turn. We have abundant instances of this in the ceremonies of the Romish church. Accordingly this seems to have been done in the present instance; for about the middle of the sixteenth century, many complaints were made to the Gallic synod of great excesses which were committed on the last night of the year, and on the first of January, during the Fête des Fous, by companies of both sexes, dressed in fantastic habits, who ran about with their Christmas Boxes, called Tire Lire, begging for the lady in the straw both money and wassels. These beggars were called Bachelettes, Guisards. Guisards, and their chief Rollet Follet. They came into let. the churches during the services of the vigils, and disturbed the devotions by their cries of Au gui menez; tiri liri, mainte du blanc et point du bis. Thiers, Hist. des Fêtes et Rollet Fol years, and the period of thirty years they term an age; for at that season the moon has sufficient influence, and is above half full. They call this plant in their language All Heal. The priest habited in white, mounts the tree and with a golden hook cuts the misletoe which is received in a white cloth." Lib. XVI., cap. 44. The learning and genius of Camden have given currency to a notion that the Druids derived their name from dovç, an oak, because they frequented groves. It is merely given by him as a conjecture, "Quocunque nomine, hi suis Celtis, et Britannis innotuerint, mihi persuasum est hoc Druidum nomen a Græco fonte scilicet Apvc, i. robur sive quercus, profluxisse, non solum quod viscus e robore nihil illis fuerit sacratius." Loc. cit. To admit this we must believe that the British and Gallic Druids spoke Greek. Borel on the contrary supposes that the Greek word comes from the old British dru or derw, an oak, Gorop. Beanus takes it to be the old Celtic and German trowes or truwis, and to mean a doctor of the truth and the faith. In Celtic, Tru, joined to Wis, signifies a wise man, and appears to have relation to the Turkish term Dervis. Voyez Journ. Britann. Tom. XV., p. 396. * We shall have occasion to offer some circumstances, that render it probable that part of these ceremonies sprang from the orgies of Bacchus, to which this name bears a manifest reference. BOOK Day. des Jeux. At last in 1598, at the representation of the bishop of Augres, a stop was put to their coming into New Year's churches; but they became more licentious, running about the country, and frightening the people in their houses, so that the legislature was obliged to put a final stop to the Fête des Fous in 1668. The resemblance of the above cry to our Hogmanay Trololay, give us your white bread and none of your grey; and the name Guisards given to our Bacchanals, are remarkable circumstances; and our former connections with France, render it not improbable that these festivities were taken from thence; and this seems to Daft Days be confirmed by our name of Daft Days, which is nearly a translation of Fête des Fous. It deserves to be noticed that the bishop of Augres says, that the cry, Au gui menez, Rollet Follet, was derived from the ancient Druids, who went out to cut the gui or misletoe, shouting and hollaing all the way, Au gui l'an neuf, le Roi vient.* Now although we must not suppose that the Druids spoke French we can easily allow the cry to have been changed. with the language, whilst the custom was continued. If the word Gui should be Celtic or Scandinavian, it would add force to the above conjecture.+ Perhaps, too, the word Rollet is a corruption of the ancient Norman invocation of their * The boys in some parts of France still run about the streets on the first of January begging, and singing "Au guy l'an neuf, Au guy Gaulois." Keysler, p. 395. In Germany they cry about the streets at Christmas, Gut hyl, Gut hyl, which some suppose refers to the Christian Salvation, but Keysler, Antiq. Septent. p. 307, finds in it Pliny's All Heal. See Gough's Camden, Vol. I., p. lvii., note q. Gut Heil is in fact, good safety, welfare or preservation. A writer in the N. American Quarterly Review, thinks that the word Gui is of Celtic origin, because in all the dialects of that language, Gui in some form or other signifies trees. In Celtic, Guez is trees; Guezecq and Guczennecq, a place abounding in trees. In the Armoric, or Bas Breton Guezen is a tree, Gues, trees; Guetzennic, shrubs; while in the Welsh Guid is a tree; and Guidhele, bushes. The last is not very different from the German cry of " Gut Hyl," which is undoubtedly Pliny's All Heal. Day. II. hero, Rollo. But where is this invocation found? To BOOK me it seems to be no other than Roitelet Follet, slightly changed into Rollet Follet (just as rotulus becomes rôlet, New Year's whence rôle, a character in a play, from the roll on which the part was written) a vagrant petty king; or, if for le Roi vient, the populace read le roi voila, we may have Rollet Follet in another way. Of the Scottish "Bacchanals" named in the preceding extract, Warton says, "Mummeries, which they call Gysarts, composed of moral personifications are still known in Scotland: and even till the beginning of this century, especially among the festivities of Christmas, itinerent maskers were admitted into the houses of the Scotch nobility.† In England, it is still a custom to hang up a bunch of misletoe on Christmas Day, under which the young men salute their sweethearts. This, as before observed, is an evident relic of Druidism, as well as that of adorning churches with it, or with holly and other evergreens; and both customs may be viewed as a traditionary vestige of its consecration in the worship of the ancient-Britons. In an "Inquiry into the ancient Greek Game, supposed to have been invented by Palamedes," Mr. Christie speaks of the respect which the northern nations entertained for the misletoe, and of the Celts and Goths being distinct in the instance of their equally venerating the misletoe about the time of the year, when the sun approached the winter solstice. He adds, "We find by the allusion in Virgil, who compared the golden bough in infernis to the misletoe, that the age of the plant was not unknown in the religious ceremonies of the ancients, particularly the Greeks, of whose poets he was the acknowledged imitator."+ Dr. Jamieson, in his Supplement, observes that "the cry of, Trololay, has been resolved into Trois Rois là," and, if this be correct, it would appear to bear an allusion to the Three Kings of the Epiphany, and is another instance of the blending of Christianity with pagan superstitions, so common in popular customes and ceremonies. Hist. Engl. Poetry, Vol. II., p. 279.—Dr. Jamieson supposes that the Scottish term is derived from the Teutonic Guyse, a scoff. The passage to which Mr. Christie alludes, is Æn. VI. 205. BOOK Day.. The practice of Mumming, so called from the Dutch momme, a mask, otherwise named Guising, or Disguising, New Year's lasted throughout the time of Christmas. Thomas Walsingham records a memorable instance of its existence Mumming, among our ancient nobility, where it formed a part of a treasonable plot, which the earls of Salisbury, Huntingdon and Kent, contrived against the life of Henry the Fourth, in 1400. They came to Windsor Castle, on the Sunday next before the feast of the Circumcision, in the disguise of mummers or Christmas players; but being detected, they fled to Cirencester, where, after some resistance, they were seized and decapitated by the inhabitants.* Strutt has given, from a manuscript of the age of Edward the Third, representations of mummers: with works, framed like the heads of bulls, stags and goats. The mummings and disguisings of the Goths, during the winter solstice, were of the same ludicrous description. Of the latter, the once popular game of Blindman's Buff is with great proman's Buff. bability supposed to be a relic. Loccenius speaks as if Blinde-Bok, or blindman's buff, had been the same as the Julbok, the goat or stag of Yule, in the time of paganism.‡ The game was not unknown to the Greeks. They called it Κολλαβισμος, from Κολλαβίζω, impingo; and it is defined "Ludi genus, quo hic quidam manibus expansis oculos suos tegit, alius vero postquam percussit, quærit num verberarit.§ Blind * Hist. p. 401., n. 30. Vide etiam. Thom. Otterbourne Chron. Tom. I., p. 224. + Glig Gamena, Pl. XVI. Antiq. Sueo-Goth. p. 23. Jamieson.-The Germans, by their name, Die Blinde Kuh, have identified their game with that of the Swedish BlindeBok. See Jamieson's quotation from Wachter, and Ihre's answer to his objection. § Robertson's Thesaur. Græcæ Linguæ, v. kodλabi?w.—Mr. Strutt gives a representation of this game in his Glig Gamena. Pl. xxxiv, and an account of it under the name of Hoodman Blind, B. IV., ch. 4., sect. 11. He erroneously says that it was called Mvia xaλkı; but Pollux defines the Xaλkioμọc thus, "Ludus in quo ludebant chalcis, aut alio numismate, quidam fuisse dicunt ludi genus, quo nunmum raptim circumagendo, digito impositum, excuticbant pueri, et priusquam humi caderet, excipicbant recto It was also used by the Romans.* Verelius digito." Poll. 6. et. Eust. referente Robertson, Lib. cit. in v. xaλkıdıžeiv. "Chack, to clack or make a clicking noise; to cut or bruise by a sudden stroke." Jamieson, Ibid. art. Chacke and Chacke Blyndman. Atlant. Tom. II., p. 306. Jamieson, Suppl. art. Belly Blynde. § Speaking of the Bock, he says, "Bacchus a familia haud alienus censeri potest. Nam hoc prostibulum deorum sæpe vehitur hirco, et comites habet Faunos, Satyrosque, &c. Nomina autem deorum sæpe formari solent ab animalibus, quibus pro vehiculo utuntur, ut Hermes ab ariete, Artemis a cerva, &c." Antiq. Celtic. p. 344, apud Wachter et Ihre. De Moribus Germ. cap. 45. ¶ Geogr. Lib. X, |