labours and anxieties of life; or what satisfaction there is now and then, when out of school, in making a useful fool of one’s-self.
The Boar’s head was a celebrated dish at Christmas, and ushered in with great pomp and ceremony. Some writers have stated it to have been introduced at this feast in abhorrence of Judaisrn, but there is no sufficient proof, as it was introduced also at other great feasts. Holinshed relates that in the year 1170, King Henry the Second, on the day when his son was crowned, served him at table himself as sewer, bringing up the boar’s head, with trumpets before it, “according to the manner.”[1] During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at the revels of the Inner Temple, “At the first course (on Christmas day) is served in, a fair and large bore’s head, upon a silver platter, with minstralsye.”
At the time of the celebrated Christmas Prince, at St. John’s, Oxford, in 1607, “The first messe was a boar’s head, wch was carried by ye tallest and lustiest of all ye guard, before whom (as attendants) wente first, one attired in a horseman’s coate, wth a boar’s speare in his hande, next to him an other huntsman in greene, wth a bloody faucion drawne; next to him 2 pages in tafatye sarcenet, each of yem wth a messe of mustard; next to whome came hee yt carried ye boares-head crost wth a greene silke scarfe, by wch hunge ye empty scabbard of ye faulcion, wch was carried before him. As yei entred ye hall, he sange this Christmas Caroll, ye three last verses of euerie staffe being repeated after him by ye whole companye.”[2]
Queen’s College, Oxford, is famed for its Boar’s Head Carol, “Caput apri defero,” &c. and the accompanying
