Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

ORIGINAL DINNERS.

In 1609, Christian, Elector of Saxony, defrayed for 1600 guests, who, at the sound of the trumpet, saw the table covered. The Elector himself remained at table six hours; and that time nothing was done but to contend which of the party should eat the most and drink the largest. The custom of feasting was not confined to the great; all ranks participated in the sensual propensity, against which sumptuary laws proved wholly unavailing. In the town of Munden, in Brunswick, it was ordained, that the dinner should not last above three hours, and that even a wedding feast should not exceed twenty-four dishes, allowing ten persons to every dish.

LADIES APPEARING AT COURT.

Anne of Brittany, wife of Charles 8th, and Louis 12th, kings of France, was the first who introduced the fashion of ladies appearing publicly at court. This fashion was introduced much later in England, when, even down to the revolution, women of rank never appeared in the streets without a mask. In Scotland the veil or plaid continued much longer in fashion, and with which every woman was covered.

SMOAKING WITH PIPES AND TAKING SNUFF.

Aubrey says, after alluding to tobacco being first brought into England (1533), "They had first silver pipes. The ordinary sort made use of a walnut shell and a straw. I have heard my grandfather say (says he) that one pipe was handed from man to man round the table." A pamphlet on the Natural History of Tobacco, in the Harleian Miscellany, says, The English are said to have had their pipes of clay from the Virginians," who were styled barbarians; and the origin of manufacturing tobacco into snuff is thus given to the sister kingdom. "The Irishmen do most commonly powder their tobacco, and snuff it up their nostrils."

66

Reader! if thou art a snuff-taker, peruse the following calculation of the waste of time: it is from the pen of the late Earl Stanhope; "Every professed, inveterate, and incurable snuff-taker," says his Lordship," at a moderate computation, takes one pinch in ten minutes. Every pinch, with the agreeable ceremony of blowing and wiping his nose, and other incidental circumstances, consumes 1 minute. One minute and a half out of 10, allowing 16 hours to a snufftaker a day, amounts to 2 hours and 24 minutes out of every natural day, or 1 day out of 10. One day out of every 10, amounts to 36 days and a half in a year. If we suppose the practice to be conti. nued 40 years, 2 entire years of the snuff-taker's life are dedicated to tickling his nose, and two more to his blowing of it." The waste of constitution attendant on this nauseous practice is shewn under the article Nicotiana.

HOWLING AT IRISH FUNERALS.

The Irish howl at funerals originated from the Roman outcry at the decease of their friends, they hoping thus to awaken the soul, which they supposed might lie inactive. The preficia of the an

cients.

GRACE AT MEAT.

The table was considered by the ancient Greeks as the altar of friendship, and held sacred; and they would not partake of any meat, till they had offered part of it, as the first fruits, to their gods. The ancient Jews offered up prayers always before meat, and from their example the primitive Christians did the same.

GOOSE ON MICHAELMAS DAY.

The joyful tidings of the defeat of the Spanish armada arrived on Michaelmas day, and was communicated to queen Elizabeth whilst at dinner partaking of a goose. Hence the origin of eating that savory dish on Michaelmas day-a day

"When geese do bleed at Michael's shrine."

WELCH LEEK, AS A BADGE OF HONOUR.

Upon the first of March King Cadwallo met a Saxon army in the field. In order to distinguish his men from their enemies, he, from an adjoining field of leeks, placed one in each of their hats; and having gained a signal and decisive victory over the Saxons, the leek became the future badge of honour among the Welch, and particularly worn on the 1st of March, or St. David's day.

SHAMROCK AS THE IRISH BADGE OF HONOUR.

The wild trefoil was very highly regarded in the superstitions of the ancient Druids, and has still medicinal virtues of a particular kind accredited to it by the more remote Highlanders of Scotland, where it is culled according to the ancient rites.

[ocr errors]

"In the list of plants," says a Scotch statistical writer, must be reckoned the seamrog, or the wild trefoil, in great estimation of old by the Druids. It is still considered as an anodyne in the diseases of cattle; from this circumstance it has derived its name, seimh, in the Gaelic, signifying pacific or soothing. When gathered, it is plucked with the left hand. The person thus employed must be silent, and never look back till the business be finished."* This is the seamrog, or shamrog, worn by Irishmen in their hats, as O'Brien says, 66 by way of a cross on Saint Patrick's day in memory of this great saint." It is said, that when St. Patrick landed near Wicklow, to convert the Irish in 433, the Pagan inhabitants were ready to stone him; he requested to be heard, and endeavoured to explain God to them, as the Trinity in Unity, but they could not understand him; till plucking a trefoil, or shamrog, from the ground, he said, "Is it not as possible for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as for these three leaves, to grow upon a single stalk?” Then," says Brand, "the Irish were immediately convinced, and became converts to Christianity; and, in memory of which event, the Irish have ever since worn the shamrog, or shamrock, as a badge of honour.

66

ELECTION RIBBONS.

These party emblems were first introduced March 14th, 1681.The "Protestant Intelligencer" states, after mentioning the Parliament, that was held at Oxford this year, on which occasion, the

[ocr errors]

* Kirkmichael, Banffs. Statist. Acc. xii.

representatives of the city of London assembled at Guildhall on the 17th of March, for the purpose of commencing their journey. Many of the citizens met them there, intending to accompany them part of their way, together with others who were deputed to go to Oxford, as a sort of council to the city members. Some of our ingenious London weavers had against this day contrived a very fine fancy, that is, a blue satin ribband, having these words plainly and legibly wrought upon it, No Popery,' 'No Slavery,' which being tied up in knots, were worn in the hats of the horsemen who accompanied our members." Such was the origin of wearing ribbands on electioneering occasions.

[ocr errors]

PERAMBULATING PARISHES ON ASCENSION DAY.

This custom is of considerable antiquity. Spelman thinks it was derived from the heathens, and that it is an imitation of the feast called Terminalia, which was observed in the month of February, in honour of the god Terminius, who was supposed to preside over bounds and limits, and to punish all unlawful usurpations of land.

In making the parochial perambulations in this country on Ascension Day, the minister, accompanied by the churchwardens and parishioners, used to deprecate the vengeance of God, by a blessing on the fruits of the earth, and implore him to preserve the rights of the parish. This custom is thus noticed by Withers in his Emblems:

"That every man might keep his own possessions,
Our fathers used in reverent processions,

(With zealous prayers and many a praiseful cheer),

To walk their parish limits once a year;

And well known marks (which sacriligious hands

Now cut or break) so border'd out their lands,

That every one distinctly knew his own,

And many brawls, now rife, were then unknown."

In Lyson's "Environs of London," in the Churchwarden's Book of Children, there is the following

1670. Spent at perambulation dinner Given to the boys that were whipt Paid for poynts for the boys

THE PASSING BELL.

£3 10 0
040
0 20

Men's deaths I tell by doleful knell.
Lightning and thunder I break asunder.
On Sabbath all to church I call.
The sleepy head I raise from bed.
The winds so fierce I do disperse.
Men's cruel rage I do assuage.

The passing bell, so called, because the defunct has passed from one state to another, owes its origin to an idea of sanctity attached to bells by the early Catholics, who believed that the sound of these holy instruments of percussion actually drove the devil away from the soul of the departing christian.

"Come list and hark, the bell doth toll
For some but now departing soul,
Whom even now those ominous fowle,
The bat, the night-jar, or screech owl,

Lament; hark! I hear the wilde wolfe howle
In this black night that seems to scowle,
All these my black book shall enscrole.
For hark! still still the bell doth toll
For some but now departing soul."

CHIMES.

Rape of Lucrece.

"How sweet the tuneful bells responsive peal!
As when at opening morn, the fragrant breeze
Breaths on the trembling sense of wan disease,
So piercing to my heart their force I feel!

And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall,
And now, along the white and level tide,
They fling their melancholy music wide;
Bidding me many a tender thought recall
Of summer days, and those delightful years
When by my native streams, in life's fair prime,
The mournful magic of their mingling chime
First wak'd my wondering childhood into tears!
But seeming now, when all those days are o'er,

The sounds of joy once heard, and heard no more."

Besides the common way of tolling bells, there is also ringing, which is a kind of chimes used on various occasions in token of joy. This ringing prevails in no country so much as in England, where it is a kind of diversion, and, for a piece of money, any one may have a peal. On this account it is that England is called the "ringing island."

Chimes are something very different, and much more musical; there is not a town in all the Netherlands without them, being an invention of that country. The chimes at Copenhagen are one of the finest sets in all Europe; but the inhabitants, from a pertinacious fondness for old things, or the badness of their ear, do not like them so well as the old ones, which were destroyed by a conflagration.

OUTLAWRY.

66

Some may derive the antiquity of Outlawry from Cain, who, for the murder of his brother, was, as it were, out of the protection of the law; or, as the ancient English would say, a friendless man ;" however, although we cannot ascend so high as Cain, certain it is, that this kind of punishment is very ancient, for Cæsar, speaking of the Druids, saith thus-"Whoever he is that obeys not their sentence, they forbid him their sacrifices, which is amongst them the most grievous of punishments; for they who are thus interdicted, are accounted in the number of the most impious and wicked,—all people shunning them, and refusing their conversation, lest they should receive damage by the infection thereof; nor is justice to be afforded them at their desire, nor any honour allowed unto them."

Bracton describes the nature of our English outlawry thus:"When any person is outlawed justly, and according to the law of the land, let us see what he suffers by this his outlawry, if after the first summons he doth not appear. First, therefore, be it known, he forfeits his country and the kingdom, and becometh a banished man; such an one as the English call utlaugh, but anciently they

* Written at Ostend, July 22, 1787.

had wont to call him " a friendless man," whereby it seemeth he forfeiteth his friends, so that if after such outlawry and expulsion, any one shall willingly give him food, and entertain him, or knowingly converse with him in any sort whatever, or shall shelter him and hide him, he is to undergo the same punishment as the person outlawed ought to do, which is to lose all his goods, and also his life, unless it please the king to be more merciful to him," &c.

CARVING AT TABLE BY LADIES.

This custom, Verstegan says, originated among our Saxon ancestors; and the title of lady sprung from this office, as laford, or loafgiver (now lord), was so called from his maintaining a number of dependents; so leaf-dian or loaf-dian, i. e. loaf server, is the origin of lady, she serving it to the guests.

GAMMON OF BACON AT EASTER.

Drake, in his "Shakspeare and his Times," says, the custom of eating a gammon of bacon at Easter, still maintained in some parts of England, is founded on the abhorrence our forefathers thought proper to express, in that way, towards the Jews at the season of commemorating the resurrection.

EASTER HUNT AT EPPING.

Fitzstephen informs us, that the hunting at Epping and round London at Easter time, commenced in 1226, when king Henry 3d confirmed to the citizens of London, free warren, or liberty to hunt a circuit about their city, in the warren of Staines, Hainhault* forest, &c.; and in ancient times the lord mayor, aldermen, and corporation, attended by a due number of their constituents, availed themselves of this right of chace in solemn guise.

From newspaper reports, it appears that the office of Common Hunt, attached to the mayoralty, is in danger of disuetude. The Epping hunt seems to have lost the lord mayor and his brethren in their corporate capacity, and the annual sport to have become a farcical show.

PETER PENCE.

In 1720, Ina, king of the West Saxons, went to Rome, and made the Pope a present of the tax, since called Peter Pence, or Rome Scot. It was called Peter Pence, because it was to be paid on the feast of St. Peter ad Vincula;" it was given for maintaining an English school at Rome, though future popes pretended it was a tribute due to the see of Rome from this nation.

NIGHTLY WATCH.

The curfew bell was commanded by William the Conqueror to be nightly rung at eight o'clock, as a warning, or command, that all people should then put out their fires and lights, and continued throughout the realm till the time of Henry 1st, when Stow says, "that it followed, by reason of warres within the realme, that many men gave themselves up to robbery and murders in the night."

It appears that the city of London was subject to these disorders till 1253, when Henry 3d commanded watches to be kept in the ci

* What is now called Epping Forest, was formerly a part of the Forest of Hainhault.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »