British Goblins Part 21

The festivities of All Hallows in Wales are in the main like those of other Christian lands, in so far as they consist of feasting and making merry. Bonfires were kindled in many places until recently, and perhaps are still, in some parts, again in pursuance of the Druidic rites, which the Christian Church adopted and continued while changing their significance. In Owen's account of the Bards occurs a curious description of the autumnal fires kindled in North Wales on the eve of the first of November, and the attendant ceremonies. There was running through the fire and smoke, and casting of stones into the fire, 'all running off at the conclusion to escape from the black short-tailed sow.'[129] This custom of running through the fire is said to survive in Ireland. It is no doubt related to the ancient sacrificial rites. As testimonies to the kins.h.i.+p of our race, all these customs possess a deep interest, which is increased in this direction as they lose in the charm of the unique.

On the Welsh Border there prevails a Hallow-e'en custom among the children of going about to the houses singing the rhymes which follow:

Wissel wa.s.sel, bread and possel, Cwrw da, plas yma: An apple or a pear, a plum or a cherry, Or any good thing to make us merry.

Sol cakes, sol cakes, Pray you, good missus, a sol cake; One for Peter, and two for Paul, And three for the good man that made us all.

The roads are very dirty, My shoes are very thin, I've got a little pocket, To put a penny in.

Up with the kettle and down with the pan, Give us an answer and we'll be gan.

(_A loud rap at the door._)

_Spoken._ Please to give us a 'apenny.

Some of these rhymes are heard in Glamorgans.h.i.+re and elsewhere at Christmas and New Year's.

The puzzling jug is a vessel in use in some quarters as a means of increasing the hilarity of a Hallow-e'en party. It is a stone jug, 'out of which each person is compelled to drink. From the brim, extending about an inch below the surface, it has holes fantastically arranged so as to appear like ornamental work, and which are not perceived except by the perspicacious; three projections, of the size and shape of marbles, are around the brim, having a hole of the size of a pea in each; these communicate with the bottom of the jug through the handle, which is hollow, and has a small hole at the top, which, with two of the holes being stopped by the fingers, and the mouth applied to the one nearest the handle, enables one to suck the contents with ease; but this trick is unknown to every one, and consequently a stranger generally makes some mistake, perhaps applying his mouth as he would to another jug, in which case the contents (generally ale) issue through the fissures on his person, to the no small diversion of the spectators.'[130]

Another merry custom of All Hallows was--and is--twco am 'falau, bobbing for apples. A large tub (crwc) is brought into the kitchen of a farm-house and filled with water; a dozen apples are thrown into it, and the rustic youths bob for them with their mouths. To catch up two apples at a single mouthful is a triumphant achievement. Again the revellers will form a semicircle before the fire, while there depends above their mouths from a hook in the ceiling, a string with a stick attached. At one end of the stick is an apple, at the other end a candle. To s.n.a.t.c.h the apple with the lips, and yet avoid the candle, is the aim of the compet.i.tors. The stick is so hung that it turns easily on its axis, and the bobbers often find themselves catching the candle in their hair while aiming at the apple. This appears to be a relic of the ancient Welsh game of quintain, or gwyntyn.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] Brand, 'Pop. Ant.,' i., 191.

[130] 'Camb. Sup.,' 174.

V.

November the Fifth, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, is much observed in Wales. 'G.o.d grant,' said Bishop Sanderson in one of his sermons, 'that we nor ours ever live to see November the Fifth forgotten, or the solemnity of it silenced.' The words are similar to those used by a great American, of the early days of the Republic, with regard to the 4th of July--G.o.d grant it might never be forgotten.

But the rites by which both days are celebrated are as old as tradition, and much older than history. As the Americans have given a historical significance to bonfires and fireworks, so the English before them did to sacrificing a puppet on Guy Fawkes' Day; and so again some Catholic nations have made the rite a religious one, in the hanging of Judas. All three customs are traced to the same original--the ancient Druidic sacrifices to the sun-G.o.d Beal or Moloch. It is noteworthy that the Fifth of November and the Fourth of July--or rather the fiery features of these days--are alike voted a nuisance by respectable and steady-going people in the countries to which they respectively belong.

VI.

On St. Clement's Day (the 23rd of November) it was customary in Pembrokes.h.i.+re in the last century to parade an effigy of a carpenter, which had been hung to the church steeple the night before. Cutting the effigy down from where it hung, the people carried it about the village, repeating loudly some doggerel verses which purported to be the last will and testament of St. Clement, distributing to the different carpenters in town the several articles of dress worn by the effigy. After the image was thus stripped of its garments, one by one, the padded remains were thrown down and carefully kicked to pieces by the crowd.

CHAPTER IV.

Nadolig, the Welsh Christmas--Bell-Ringing--Carols--Dancing to the Music of the Waits--An Evening in Carmarthens.h.i.+re--Shenkin Harry, the Preacher, and the Jig Tune--Welsh Morality--Eisteddfodau--Decorating Houses and Churches--The Christmas Thrift-box--The Colliers' Star--The Plygain--Pagan Origin of Christmas Customs.

I.

We come now to the most interesting holiday season of the year, by reason of its almost universality of observance among Christian peoples, and the variety of customs peculiar to it. In the land of Arthur and Merlin it is a season of such earnest and widespread cordiality, such warm enthusiasm, such hearty congratulations between man and man, that I have been nowhere equally impressed with the geniality and joyousness of the time. In some Catholic countries one sees more merriment on the day itself; indeed, the day itself is not especially merry in Wales, at least in its out-door aspects. It is the season rather than the day which is merry in Wales. The festival is usually understood, throughout Christendom, to include twelve days; the Welsh people not only make much of the twelve days, but they extend the peculiar festivities of the season far beyond those limits.

Christmas has fairly begun in Wales a week or two before Christmas-day. The waits are patrolling the streets of Cardiff as early as December 5th, and Christmas festivals are held as early as December 19th, at which Christmas-trees are displayed, and their boughs denuded of the toys and lollipops in which the juvenile heart delights. After Christmas-day the festival continues I know not just how long, but apparently for weeks.

The characteristic diversions of the Christmas season are, in the main, alike in all Christian countries. In Wales many well-known old customs are retained which in some other parts of Great Britain have disappeared, such as the mummers, the waits, carols, bell-ringings, etc. Not only do the bell-ringers of the several churches throughout the princ.i.p.ality do their handsomest on their own particular bells, but there are grand gatherings, at special points, of all the bell-ringers for leagues around, who vie with each other in showing what feats they can perform, how they can astonish you with their majors, bob-majors, and triple bob-majors, on the brazen clangers of the steeples. At Cowbridge, for instance, on Christmas will come together the ringers from Aberdare, Penarth, St. f.a.gan's, Llantrisant, Llanblethian, and other places, thirty or forty in number, and after they have rung till the air above the town is black with flying clefs and quavers from the steeples, they will all sit down to a jolly Christmas-dinner at the Bear. The bands of waits, or 'pipers of the watch,' who wake the echoes of the early morning with their carols, are heard in every Welsh town and village. In some towns there are several bands and much good-natured rivalry. The universal love of music among the Welsh saves the waits from degenerating into the woe-begone creatures they are in some parts, where the custom has that poor degree of life which can be kept in it by s.h.i.+vering cl.u.s.ters of bawling beggars who cannot sing. Regularly organised and trained choirs of Welshmen perambulate the Cambrian country, chanting carols at Christmas-tide, and bands of musicians play who, in many cases, would not discredit the finest military orchestras. Carols are sung in both Welsh and English; and, generally, the waits are popular. If their music be not good, they are not tolerated; irate gentlemen attack them savagely and drive them off. Not exactly that boot-jacks and empty bottles are thrown at them, but they are excoriated in 'letters to the editor,' in which strong language is hurled at them as intolerable nuisances, ambulatory disturbers of the night's quiet, and inflicters of suffering upon the innocent. But such cases are rare.

The music is almost invariably good, and the effect of the soft strains of melodiously-warbled Welsh coming dreamily to one's ears through the darkness and distance on a winter morning is sweet and soothing to most ears. Sometimes small boys will pipe their carols through the key-holes. The songs vary greatly in character, but usually the religious tone prevails, as in this case:

As I sat on a sunny bank, a sunny bank, a sunny bank, All on a Christmas morning, Three s.h.i.+ps came sailing by, sailing by, sailing by.

Who do you think was in the s.h.i.+ps?

Who do you think was in the s.h.i.+ps?

Christ and the Virgin Mary.

Both English and Welsh words are sung. Sometimes a group of young men and women will be seen dancing about the waits to the measure of their music, in the hours 'ayont the twal.' In one aspect the Welsh people may be spoken of as a people whose lives are pa.s.sed in the indulgence of their love for music and dancing. The air of Wales seems always full of music. In the Christmas season there is an unending succession of concerts and of miscellaneous entertainments of which music forms a part, while you cannot enter an inn where a few are gathered together, without the imminent probability that one or more will break forth in song. By this is not meant a general musical howl, such as is apt to be evoked from a room full of men of any nationality when somewhat under the influence of the rosy G.o.d, but good set songs, with good Welsh or English words to them, executed with respect for their work by the vocalists, and listened to with a like respect by the rest of the company. When an Englishman is drunk he is belligerent; when a Frenchman is drunk he is amorous; when an Italian is drunk he is loquacious; when a Scotchman is drunk he is argumentative; when a German is drunk he is sleepy; when an American is drunk he brags; and when a Welshman is drunk he sings. Sometimes he dances; but he does not do himself credit as a dancer under these circ.u.mstances; for when I speak of dancing I do not refer to those wooden paces and inflections which pa.s.s for dancing in society, and which are little more than an amiable pretext for bringing in contact human elements which are slow to mix when planted in chairs about a room: I refer to the individual dancing of men who do not dance for the purpose of touching women's hands, or indulging in small talk, but for the purpose of dancing; and who apply themselves seriously and skilfully to their work--to wit, the scientific performance of a jig.

I chanced to pa.s.s one evening, in the Christmas-time, at a country inn in a little Carmarthens.h.i.+re village remote from railways. Certain wanderings through green lanes (and the lanes were still green, although it was cold, mid-winter weather) had brought me to the place at dusk, and, being weary, I had resolved to rest there for the night.

Some local festivity of the season had taken place during the day, which had drawn into the village an unusual number of farmer-folk from the immediate neighbourhood. After a simple dinner off a chop and a half-pint of cwrw da, I strolled into what they called the smoke-room, by way of distinguis.h.i.+ng it from the tap-room adjoining. It was a plain little apartment, with high-backed wooden settles nearly up to the ceiling, which gave an old-fas.h.i.+oned air of comfort to the place.

Two or three farmers were sitting there drinking their beer and smoking their pipes, and toasting their trouserless s.h.i.+ns before the blazing fire. Presently a Welsh harper with his harp entered from out-doors, and, seating himself in a corner of the room, began to tune his instrument. The room quickly filled up with men and women, and though no drinks but beer and 'pop' were indulged in (save that some of the women drank tea), Bacchus never saw a more genial company. Some one sang an English song with words like these:

Thrice welcome, old Christmas, we greet thee again, With laughter and innocent mirth in thy train; Let joy fill the heart, and s.h.i.+ne on the brow, While we s.n.a.t.c.h a sweet kiss 'neath the mistletoe-bough-- The mistletoe-bough, The mistletoe-bough, We will s.n.a.t.c.h a sweet kiss 'neath the mistletoe-bough.

The words are certainly modern, and as certainly not of a high order of literary merit, but they are extremely characteristic of life at this season in Wales, where kissing under the mistletoe is a custom still honoured by observance. There was dancing, too, in this inn company--performed with stern and determined purpose to excel, by individuals who could do a jig, and wished to do it well. The harper played a wild lilting tune; a serious individual who looked like a school-teacher took off his hat, bowed to the company, jumped into the middle of the floor, and began to dance like a madman. It was a strange sight. With a face whose grave earnestness relaxed no whit, with firmly compressed lips and knitted brow, the serious person shuffled and double-shuffled, and swung and teetered, and flailed the floor with his rattling soles, till the perspiration poured in rivulets down his solemn face. The company was greatly moved; enthusiastic e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns in Welsh and English were heard; shouts of approbation and encouragement arose; and still the serious person danced and danced, ending at last with a wonderful pigeon-wing, and taking his seat exhausted, amid a tremendous roar of applause.

Scenes like this are common throughout Wales at the Christmas-time; and they contrast strangely with the austerities of religious observance which are everywhere proceeding. But there is not so wide a chasm between the two as would exist in some countries. The best church-members frequently do not deem a little jollity of this sort a hanging matter, and there are ministers who can do a double-shuffle themselves if the worst comes to the worst. A worthy pastor in Glamorgans.h.i.+re related to me, with a suspicious degree of relish, a story about two ministers who were once riding through a certain village of Wales on horseback. One was the Rev. Evan Harris, the other a celebrated old preacher named Shenkin Harry. And, as they rode on, Harris noticed his companion's legs twitching curiously on his horse's sides. 'Why, what ails your leg?' he asked. 'Don't you hear the harp,'

was the reply, 'in the public-house yonder? It makes my old toes crazy for a jig.' But the moral tone of Wales is certainly better, on the whole, than that of most countries--better even than that of Great Britain generally, I should say. There is, I know, a prevailing impression quite to the contrary; but it is utterly absurd. It is an impression which has grown, I imagine, out of English injustice to Welshmen in former times, allied to English ignorance in those times concerning this people. Until within the last hundred years, English writers habitually wrote of Wales with contempt and even scurrility.

But no one can live in Wales and not form the opinion that the Welsh are, in truth, an exceptionally moral people; and the nature of their public entertainments throughout the Christmas-time enforces this conclusion. Stendhal's declaration that, in true Biblical countries, religion spoils one day out of seven, destroys the seventh part of possible happiness, would find strong ill.u.s.tration in Wales. It is not my purpose to argue whether the ill.u.s.tration would prove or disprove Stendhal's a.s.sertion, though one might fairly ask whether religious people are not, perhaps, as happy in going to church on Sunday as irreligious people are in staying away.

II.

Let it not be supposed that there is any lack of amus.e.m.e.nt on Christmas-day for people who are willing to be amused in a G.o.d-fearing manner. Although you cannot go to the theatre or the circus, you can have a wide liberty of choice among oratorios, concerts, examinations, exhibitions, eisteddfodau, and other odd diversions. Concerts especially thrive. The halls in which they are held are decorated with evergreens, and the familiar custom is in Wales habitually and commonly a.s.sociated with the ancient Druids, who viewed the green twigs as the symbols of perennial life. Thus a peculiar poetic grace rests with a custom beautiful in itself, and capable in any land of being poetized by any one poetically inclined. Many of those unique gatherings called eisteddfodau are held in different parts of the princ.i.p.ality, when poetry, music, and essays, in Welsh and in English, are put forth by the strivers in these Olympian games of intellect and culture, after the prizes which in h.e.l.las would have given them crowns of olive-leaves instead of gold-coins of the realm. When Pindar and Sophocles handed in poems, and Herodotus competed among the essayists, and Phidias and Praxiteles among the cutters of stone, there was no Christmas,--but it is claimed there were eisteddfodau, here in Wales; ay, and before that; for has not Herodotus spoken of the British bards who held them?

III.

In the family circle, the rules which regulate the Sabbath in Wales--which are almost as repressive as those of bonnie Scotland, where, by the way, Christmas-day is scarcely observed at all--are relaxed, and the aspect of the home is as bright as can be. The rooms are elaborately decorated with flowers and evergreens, holly and ivy, ferns and rare plants. In Glamorgans.h.i.+re, and other of the southern counties looking on the sea, roses and hawthorn-sprays may be sometimes seen in full bloom out-of-doors at Christmas. The decoration of churches is also elaborate beyond anything I have elsewhere seen.

It is a sight to behold, the preparations for and the work of decorating a vast pile of ecclesiastical buildings like Llandaff Cathedral--the huge quant.i.ties of evergreens and holly, flowers, cedars, etc., which are day by day acc.u.mulated by the ladies who have the business in charge; and the slow, continual growth of forms of grace--arches, crosses, wreaths, festoons; green coverings to font, altar, pulpit, choir-stalls, pillars, reredos, and rood-screen; panels faced with scarlet cloth bearing sacred devices worked in evergreen; the very window-sills glowing with banks of colour--until all the wide s.p.a.ces in chancel, nave, and transepts, are adorned.

IV.

Of common prevalence formerly, and still observed in numerous parishes, is the custom called the Plygain, or watching for the dawn.

This consists in proceeding to the church at three o'clock on Christmas morning, and uniting in a service which is held by the light of small green candles made for the purpose. Sometimes this ceremony is observed at home, the people in a farm-house holding a jollification on the Christmas eve, and sitting up all night to greet the dawn. If the east wind blew on the Christmas eve the circ.u.mstance was deemed propitious in this connection. This wind was called 'gwynt traed y meirw,' (the wind blowing over the feet of the corpses,) because it blew towards the foot of the graves in the churchyards. It was also believed that the dumb animals paid their tribute of respect to this night; the bees would hum loudly in their hives at midnight, and the cattle in the cow-houses would bend their knees as in adoration.[131]

A Christmas-eve custom among Welsh colliers is to carry from house to house a board stuck over with lighted candles, or to wheel a handbarrow containing a bed of clay in which the candles are stuck.

This is called 'the Star,' sometimes 'the Star of Bethlehem,' and when stopping before a house the men kneel about it and sing a carol. A like custom exists in Belgium, among children. The purpose is to solicit a Rhodd Nadolig, or Christmas gift.

FOOTNOTE:

[131] 'Cymru Fu,' 403.

V.