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two chaplains in waiting on New Year's Day have each a crown piece laid under their plates at dinner.'

In Westmoreland and Cumberland a singular trace of the olden time is yet found to linger. In these counties the first of January is by some odd process converted into a saint, and termed Saint New Year's Day, much, we may suppose, upon the same principle that the journeymen in other places have their Saint Monday. Early in the morning common 'people assemble with stangs, that is, poles,—and baskets, and whatever unlucky inhabitant or stranger chances to cross their way, he is compelled to do homage to their saint, or submit to the penalty which old custom has long sanctioned in all such cases of disobedience. If the recusant be a man, he is mounted astride the pole; if a woman, she is placed in the basket: and either offender is in this state carried upon the shoulders of the merry mob to the nearest public-house, where sixpence is exacted as the price of liberty. With laudable impartiality the like penance is inflicted upon all ranks and conditions, the squire or the parson being no more exempted from it than their own servants, and in the same spirit of equality the revellers will allow of no working on their saint's day; the rest of the world must be as idle and as jovial as themselves.

On the eve of Twelfth Day, at the approach of evening, the farmers, their friends, servants, etc., all assemble, and near six o'clock all walk together to a field where wheat is growing. The highest part of the ground is always chosen, where twelve small fires and one large one are lighted up. The attendants, headed by the master of the family, pledge the company in old cider, which circulates freely on these occasions. A circle is formed round the large fire, when a general shout and hallooing takes place, which you hear answered from all the villages and fields near; I have myself counted fifty or sixty fires burning at the same time, which are generally placed on some eminence. This being finished, the company all return to the house, where the goodwife and her maids are preparing supper, which on this occasion is very plentiful. A large cake is always provided, with a hole in the middle. After supper the company all attend the bailiff (or head of the oxen) to the wain-house, where the following ceremonial is ob

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served: the master, at the head of his friends, fills the cup (generally strong ale), and stands opposite the first or finest of the oxen (fourteen of which I have often seen tied up in their stalls together), he then pledges him in a curious toast, and the company follow his example with all the other oxen, addressing each by his name. This being over, the large cake is produced with much ceremony, and put on the horn of the first ox, through the hole in the cake; he is then tickled to make him toss his head: if he throws the cake behind, it is the mistress's perquisite; if before (in what is termed the boosy *) the bailiff claims the prize. This ended, the company all return to the house, the doors of which are in the meantime locked, and not opened till some joyous songs are sung. On entering, a scene of mirth and jollity commences, and reigns through the house till a late, or rather an early, hour the next morning. Cards are introduced, and the merry tale goes round.

This in Herefordshire is called wassailing; and the fires, as I shall have occasion to show hereafter, are nothing else than the ancient emblematic worship of the sun, the custom remaining long after the object of it has been very generally forgotten. In the same way the pledging of the animals in ale or cider with strange toasts, and the emptying the cups to each other, are plainly enough borrowed from the libations of the ancients to their rural deities; and we find the same custom at one time prevailed among the Danes.

The apple-trees also come in for their share of honour, as might naturally be expected in a county where cider was in so much request. In some parts of Devonshire it is the custom for the people "to go after supper into the orchard, with a large milk-pail full of cider having roasted apples pressed into it. Out of this each person in company takes what is called a clayen cup-i.e., an earthenware cup, full of liquor, and standing under each of the more fruitful apple

Boosy,-derived from the Anglo-Saxon Bosg, Bosig, or Bosih,-properly speaking signifies a stall for cows or oxen; but in the northern counties, to which the use of the word is now confined, it is more generally applied to the upper part of the stall where the fodder lies. Such is its limited meaning in the text above, where it is spelt in a somewhat uncommon fashion; I have generally found it written and pronounced, boose.

trees, passing by those that are not good bearers, he addresses it in the following words:

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And then, drinking up part of the contents, he throws the rest with the fragments of the roasted apple at the tree.— At each cup the company set up a shout."

In Devonshire a similar custom prevailed, of which the following account is given by a correspondent of the bland Sylvanus Urban.-" On the eve of the Epiphany, the farmer, attended by his workmen, with a large pitcher of cider, goes to the orchard, and there encircling one of the best among the trees, they drink the following toast three several times:

Here's to thee,

Old apple tree!

Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!

Hats-full, caps-full!
Bushel-bushel-sacks-full!
And my pockets full too.
Huzza!"

After this they return to the house, where they find the doors barred, as in Herefordshire; only here their admittance is made contingent upon their guessing what is on the spit, "which is generally some nice little thing difficult to be hit on, and is the reward of him who first names it." Mrs. Bray, however, when speaking of the same custom, says, that "they throw some of the cider about the roots of the trees, placing bits of the toast on the branches; and then forming themselves into a ring, they, like the bards of old, set up their voices and sing a song."

TWELFTH-DAY; EPIPHANY; January 6th.-This is called Twelfth Day because, being the twelfth from the Nativity, it is that on which the Magi came out of Persia and passed through Arabia into Bethlehem, to offer homage to the Infant in the manger. Collier, however, has given us one of Alfred's laws, which seems to point at another reason for

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this appellation. He says, "I shall mention one law with relation to holydays, by virtue of which the twelve days after the Nativity of our Saviour are made holydays." There is certainly nothing improbable in the idea that it might thus be named as being the twelfth and finishing day of the festivals.

In popular language these Magi are called the Three Kings of Cologne, the first of them being named Melchior, an aged man with a long beard, who offered gold to our Saviour, as to a king, in testimony of his regality; the second, Jasper, a beardless youth, who offered frankincense, as unto a God, in acknowledgment of his divinity; the third, Balthazar, a black, or Moor, with a large spreading beard, who offered myrrh, as to a man that was ready or fit for his sepulchre, thereby signifying his humanity. Their skulls, or what is said to be their skulls, are preserved as reliques at Cologne.*

Let us inquire who the Magi really were, and to what country they belonged.

Without entering into a disquisition, that must of necessity be tedious, on the etymology of the word, it will be sufficient to observe that by the concurrent testimony of all ancient writers the Magi were Persians, and that in the language of their country neither magia nor magus had the slightest reference to the black art as we now understand it. In that tongue the word Magus meant a philosopher and a priest, or at all events a philosopher who was particularly addicted to the study of religion; and who besides might be,-if he was not, for the most part-a royal counsellor, a physician, an astrologer, and a mathematician. In fact they were the same in Persia, that the Brahmins were in India, the Druids amongst the Gauls, and the Philosophers amongst the Greeks. We shall therefore the less wonder if we find strong reason for believing that Zoroaster was of their number, and that Pythagoras learnt his philosophy from them.

It is difficult to understand, upon mere human grounds, why the Persian Magi, who had a distinct faith of their own, should have travelled so far as Bethlehem to worship the

* In "Quentin Durward " Hayraddin makes Heinrick the "honest" lanceknecht face to the east, and swear by the Three Kings (or dead men) of Cologne, knowing that he cares for no other oath.

future founder of a yet unexistent religion. Two circumstances however may help to throw a light upon this difficulty, and both of them so singular in themselves as to be well worthy of consideration.

There is a prophecy of Zoroaster, and which had even reached the ancient Irish, wherein we find him predicting in terms not to be mistaken, the future birth of a Saviour and its announcement by a star. "He," says Abulpharagius, speaking of Zoroaster, or Zeradusht, "taught the Persians the manifestation of the Lord Christ, commanding that they should bring him gifts; and revealed to them that it would happen in the latter time that a Virgin would conceive, and that when her child was born, a star would appear and shine by day, in the midst of which would be seen the figure of a virgin. But you, my children, will see its rising before all the nations. When, therefore ye shall behold it, go whither the star shall guide ye, and adore the child, and offer up to him your gifts, seeing that he is the WORD, which has created the Heavens."

The second circumstance alluded to, and scarcely of less importance in the solution of this apparent difficulty, now remains to be explained. The Magi had long been accustomed to pay their annual visits to Bethlehem for the purpose of worshipping in the temple of Adonis on the 24th of December, at which time similar religious rites were celebrated throughout all the Mithraic caves of Persia in honour of the birth of their God Iao, who was supposed to have been born in a cave on the 25th of December, to have been put to death, and to have risen on the 25th of March. Perhaps too we miss the spirit of the sacred text by taking it in too literal a sense. When it is said that the star went before the Magi, it is not to be understood that the light actually preceded them as the pillar of fire went before the Israelites. Any star would naturally seem to be moving before those who followed in its direction; and the Magi, who were astrologers even more than they were astronomers, had read in his star the birth of Christ as foretold in the prophecy of Zoroaster.

This day was also called the EPIPHANY, that is to say the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles; and by some writers, though more rarely, the THEOPHANY, or Manifestation of the

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