MISTLETOE AND HOGMANAY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3808, 14 September 1936, Page 2

MISTLETOE AND HOGMANAY

ANCIENT YULETIDE CUSTOMS. (By E.J.M. in Melbourne Age.) The Mistletoe is probably better known in Europe than in some part of Australia, but it flourishes in this country, and one of the species is a troublesome pest. In any case the accepted custom from the old country of the privilege of kissing the ladies under the bough is well appreciated here. This custom seems to be peculiars iy English, and there is no reliable explanation of its origin. It is quite possibly a survival of a pre-Christian Scandinavian custom. There and then mistletoe was deemed so sacred that when enemies met beneath it in the forest they grounded arms, and maintained a 24 hours’ truce. Students of Virgil will recollect that it was known as the Golden Bough, and by plucking it Aeneas was enabled to descend into hell and return safely. Some say that kissing under the mistletoe is a relic of some primitive marriage rite. THE DRUIDS. The most respectable festival of the Druids was called Yuletide; when mistletoe, which they called all-hea., was carried in their hands, and laid on their altars as an emblem of the advent of the messiah. They cut the mistletoe off the trees with their upright hatchets of brass, called eelts put upon the end of their staffs, which they carried in their hands. They regarded it as a specific for every disease and an antidote to every kind of poison. If it was found on an oak tree, it was solemnly consecrated by a sacrifice of white oxen, and cut from the parent stem by the Arch Druid with a golden knife, and on no account was it permitted to touch the ground. For many years, the mistletoe was hung in the kitchen or servants’ hall with a charm attached to it, and the superstition not kissed under it at Christmas would not be married in that year. The plant is known as far East as Kamschatka and among the Ainu in Japan, and wherever it is found it is associated with similar superstitions. It may come as a surprise to know that mistletoe and hogmanay are interrelated, but, as will be seen hereunder, hogmanay possibly owed its origin to mistletoe. New Year’s day or its eve have no official recognition in the calendars of either the Anglican or the Roman church. This is due to the fact that throughout Western Christendom the ecclesiastical year commences with advent. In very early times however, every great church festival had its “octave,” which was a kind of smaller celebration held on the eighth day; the intermediate days being devoted to meditation. The -midnight services held for the new year are not, as might be supposed, a survival of an ancient Pagan custom, but have been frankly borrowed from Methodism. When the Methodist Revival occurred about 1741 some colliers at Kingswood, prior to their spiritual awakening, instead of spending their Saturday nights in revelling and drinking, began to spend them in prayer and thanksgiving. Naturally the church approved of this and Wesley recommended it to the Methodist Society in London. Later the “watch-night” came to be specialised on New Year’s eve. HOW DID THE NAME ORIGINATE ? The word “Hagmena” or “Hogmanay,” with innumerable variants, is found in begging ditties sung on New Year’s Eve throughout Western Europe. The Holy Month, in Greek, is hagiamene, but this is hardly likely to fit in. The night before Yule was called hogginnott, or hogenat, signifying the slaughter night, and may have originated from the number of cattle slaughtered on that night, either as sacrifices or in preparation for the feast for the following day. This, in conjunction with the word “Mennie” which was reputed to be “the cup of remembrance, always drained at the Yule feast,” furnishes an interesting, but probably apocryphal, etymology of the word. ITS CONNECTION WITH MISTLETOE. In France, during the sixteenth century, companies of men and women dressed in fantastic costumes, on the last day of the year were wont to run about with their Christmas boxes, calling tire lire, begging both for money and wassels. The chief of these strollers was called Rollet Follet. They came into the churches and disturbed the devotions. This ended in 1598 on the representation of the Bishop of Angres, and the strollers were debarred, from coming into the churches. The. cry they used was —- Au gui menez, Rollet Follet, Au gui menez tire lire, Mainte du blanc et ponit du bis. Which bears a striking resemblance to the old cry of Hoymenay Trololay, Gi’us your white bread and nane o’ your gray. “Gui” is the French for mistletoe,

and the translation “au gui menez” would be “Lead to the mistletoe.” Another suggested derivation was “Au gui I’an neuf” that is ’ To the mistletoe the New Yearo.” Both, however, are doubtful. A YORKSHIRE INTERPRETATION. In Yorkshire a wood or coppice is known as a hagg and a wood cutter was called a hagman. It is perfectly feasible, therefore, that this version, which originated at a time when “Old King Harry” was still remembered by the living and wood was the fuel used by all may have been the wood cutters appeal to his customers for a Christmas box. Again, the old guisards, or Mummers who made their appearance at Christmastide and the New Year to entertain the gentlefolk, had an old song which went this wise:— Rise up, gude wife, and shake your feathers, Dinna think that we are beggars We are bairns come out to play And for to seek our homenay; Redd up stocks, redd up stools, Here comes in a pack of fools. Muckle head and little wit stand behint the door, But sic a set as we are, ne’er were here before. In the Gentleman’s Magazine, circa 1790, an old guisard’s rhyme is not so cheerful:— Rise up gude wife, 'and do na swe’er, To deal your bread as long’s you’re here; The time will come when you’ll be dead, And neither want for meal nor bread. FIRST FOOTING. Although this custom to-day is regarded as essentially Scottish, it was equally carried out in England as well. The custom of Scottish folk—and it will be carried out here, in this very city, on New Year’s Eve, wherever there is a Scottish reunion—is that a tall, dark man must be the first to set foot across the threshold of the house in the New Year, thereby ensuring good luck to the occupiers for the forthcoming year. In many parts of the country in England all the doors in the house are opened a minute or so before midnight, and are left open until the clock has struck the hour. This is so as to “Let the old year out and the New Year in.” An old superstition in the west of England is to open the Bible at random on New Year’s morning, and to read the verse on which the finger is bMndly placed, and from this to draw deductions and omens for the opening year. Allowing for the difference in time, Scotsmen will assemble as usual on Ludgate Hill, outside of St Paul’s Cathedral, in London, and in front of the General Post Office, in Melbourne, and doubtless numerous similar gatherings will occur throughout the world. On the stroke of midnight of the old year the stirring strains of Auld Lang Syne will arise in a united chorus, thus further strengthening that invisible chain of cameraderie and kinship which unbreakably binds the British Commonwealth of Nations to-day.