Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/86

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CHAPTER II.

DAYS AND SEASONS.

Christmas—St. Stephen’s Day—The Sword Dancers—Mummers—New Year’s Eve—New Year’s Day—The first foot—Shrove Tuesday—Passion Sunday—Palm Sunday—Good Friday—Easter Day—May Day—Ascension Day—Whitsun Day—Corpus Christi—The Harvest, Mell Supper, and Kern Baby—St. Agnes’ Fast—St. Valentine’s Day—April 1—First Cuckoo Day—The Borrowing Days—May 29th—St. Michael’s Day—All Hallowe’en—St. Clement’s Day—St. Andrew’s Day—Epithets for the days of the week.

F we pass on to days and seasons we shall find them marked in the North by time-honoured customs, unobserved for the most part elsewhere. Of course we must not look in Scotland for any distinctive note of Christmas, though I am informed that the observance of this festival is much increasing there. The shops of Edinburgh and Glasgow are now decorated with evergreens as gaily as those of any English town. Christmas-trees are common there, too, and mince-pies may be found on the tables even of strict Presbyterians. In the English Border-counties there is much to mark this blessed season. Yule-cakes are spread on our tables at Christmas tide, and the yule-log lights up our hearths as duly as does the ashen faggot in Devonshire.^[1] In the city of Durham, and in many other northern towns, an old woman carries from house to house, on Christmas Eve, figures of the Virgin and Child, and shows them to the young people while she sings the old carol:

God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmay Day,
To save our souls from Satan’s fold, which long had gone astray.
And ’tis tidings of comfort and joy!

1. A Devonshire friend informs me of the legend connected with this west-country observance. It is said that the Divine Infant at Bethlehem was first washed and dressed by a fire of ashwood.