WHAT DATE IS IT?

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21355, 24 December 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

WHAT DATE IS IT?

(By Donald Cowic)

At this time of the year, when every home, office, and school receives its quota of new calendars and proceeds proudly to nail them up on the long-suffering wall, it is interesting to take a short journey into the past and investigate our ancestor:;' methods of determining Ihe date. The calendar was given its name by the Romans. The new month was always announced in ancient Rome by a special notice in a prominent public place. As'-the first of the month was the Ka'endae, the special notice was called Fasti Calendarcs. Among the ruins of Pompeii has been found an old Roman calendar made out of a block of marble. It closely resembles a modern calendar. But the Romans, when cal-endar-making, were more concerned with the future than the present. Not only did they expecttheir calendars to tell them the date, but they relied upon them to foretell coming events. Thus the average Roman calendar is divided for the greater part of its space into perpendicular columns, that are filled with sundry information about what might happen in the future! One column is occupied by predictions of religious events;'another contains astrological information; another, in the modern manner, informs the farmer what kind of crops he might have; and so on. The oldest type of English calendar is the Clog Almanac. Up till recently this type was still used in country districts; and. according to antiquaries, it was first introduced by the Danes. The calendar consisted of a block of wood, that was hung in the chimney-corner. The days of the year were marked by notches in its sides; and anniversaries and special dates were distinguished by curious hieroglyphics similar to those on the Romnn calendars. There are several Clog Almanacs in the British Museum, and they have a curiously foreign appearance. This effect is produced, no doubt, hy the hieroglyphics. They seem to have strayed from the Egyptian section. Our ancestors were no less superstitious than the Romans. Calendar-making in old England

CALENDARS FROM THE BEGINNING

.was the prerogative of the astrologers, those unfortunate individuals who spent their lives "seeing stars" and then frightening their neighbours wi.h the news. They were particularly fond of issuing their curious predictions in book form. Here is the title-page of such an almanac published in 1553 by a certain Leonard Digges: "A Prognostication everlasting of Right Good Effect, fructfully augmented by the Author, containing Plaine, Bricfe, Pleasant Chosen Rules to judge the Weather by the Sunne, Moon, Starres, Comets. Rainbow, Thunder, Clowdcs, with other Extraordinary Tokens, not omitting the Aspoc'S of the Planets, with a Bri°£ Judgment for ever, of Plentie. Warres, etc., opening also many natural causes worthie lo be kiuv.vnc. To. these and others now at the last are joined divers gencrall pleasant Tables, with many compendious Rules, easie to be had in mem-jrie, manifolde wayes profitable to dll men of understanding." In due course these makers ol almanacs waxed so rich and important that they adopted a new name, "philomaths," meaning lovers of mathematics, to distinguish them from the ordinary astrologers. Their period of greatest prosperity was that of the Civil War, when the uncertainty of the times encouraged superstition. Occasionally an almanac would be produced that possessed considerable literary value. Such an one was the Kalendarium Hortonse, or Gardeners' Almanac, by the great diarist John Evelyn, published in 16G4. To-day the calendar is almost completely divorced from the almanac; that, in to s.'.v, it t-<i'ifit.. .-; itself to telling Ihe date. If our modern calendar has any outstanding feature that will distinguish it for posterity, that, will possibly be the use of pictorial illustrations. To our eyes a calendar without a picture is a dull thing. Though in these time? the almanac has been divorced from the calendar it has not, however, altogether disappeared. Such publications as "Old Moore's Almanac." that was founded in 1698. are slill firm favourites with a certain class of people. The ar;;o of superstition is not yet over. Not by a long way.