lips of the English peasantry. What idea it conveys to their minds I will not inquire. There is an old rhyme yet current which avers:
If the sun shine out of Candlemas Day, of all days in the year,
The shepherd had rather see his wife on the bier.
Or, according to another version—
If the sun shines bright on Candlemas Day,
The half of the winter’s not yet away;
which corresponds with the Latin proverb—
Si sol splendescat Maria purificante,
Major erit glacies post festum quam fuit ante.
The oak and ash, both sacred trees, and the ash in particular, the cloud-tree of the Norsemen, with sacred fountains springing from every root, still supply us with a weather prophecy. If the oak comes into leaf before the ash, expect a fine summer; if the ash is first, a wet one; or, as it runs in verse:
If the oak’s before the ash,
You will only get a splash;
If the ash precede the oak,
You will surely have a soak.
It is customary in Scotland for children to go to the neighbouring houses on New Year’s Eve, singing this verse:
Rise, good wives, and shake your feathers,
And dinna think that we are beggars;
We’re but bairns come out to play,
Rise up and gie’s your hogmaney.
Oat-cakes are given to them, on which they sing:
We joyful wish you a good day,
And thank ye for your hogmaney.
Now here we come upon a custom of great antiquity, and very widely spread, if, as Mr. Ingledew informs us in his Ballads and Songs of Yorkshire, Hagmena songs were formerly sung through-
