as at the baptism of Charles the Sixth in December 1368; the entry of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, with his sister, to Paris, in 1429; and the entry into Paris of Charles the Seventh in 1437, in which the people proclaimed their pleasure by loud shouts of “Noel, Noel,” &c. On the entry also of Henry the Fifth into Rouen, after the siege thereof in January 1419, as described in an old English poem published in the 22nd volume of the “Archæologia,” the people received him with shouts of Nowell.
“Wilcome our lorde,” they seide, “so fre!”
“Wilcome into thyne owne righte,
“As it is the wille of god almyzt.”
Wt that thay kryde alle “nowelle!”
Lydgate also, in his account of the expedition of Henry the Fifth, and his return to London, says,
Virgyues out of the castelle gon glyde,
For ioye of him they were daunsyog,
They knelyd adoun alle in that tyde,
Nowell! Nowell! alle thei gon syng.
Chaucer uses the term in the same sense, though, being applied to Janus, it may be considered in the passage cited as appropriated to the time of Christmas.
Janus sit by the fire with double herd,
And drinketh of his bugle horn the wine
Beforn him stant braune of the tusked swine,
Aud nowel crieth every lusty man.[1]
The ancient Christmas customs in France were, no doubt, similar in many respects to those used in England, having a common origin, and it was in like manner considered a great time for feasting and rejoicing. In the “Bataille de Karesme et de Charnage,”
- ↑ Chaucer, 11564 & seq. The Frankeleine’s Tale.
