Spain and Portugal, at twelve o'clock at night we were much alarmed with a violent knocking at the door. 'Quein es?' asked the landlord ; 'Isabel de San Juan,' replied a voice: he got up, lighted the lamp, and opened the door, when five or six sturdy fellows, armed with fuzils, and as many women, came in. After eating a little bread, and drinking some brandy, they took their leave; and we found that, it being the Eve of St John, they were a set of merry girls with their lovers, going round the village to congratulate their friends on the approaching festival. A gentleman who had resided long in Spain informed the author that in the villages they light up fires on St John's Eve, as in England. ST PETER'S DAY. 29th of June. STOW informs us that the rites of St John Baptist's Eve were also used on the Eve of St Peter and St Paul; and Moresinus relates that in Scotland the people used, on this latter night, to run about on the mountains and higher grounds with lighted torches, like the Sicilian women of old in search of Proserpine." Something similar to this was apparently practised about a century and a half ago in Northumberland on this night; the inhabitants carried some kind of firebrands about the fields of their respective villages. They made encroachments, on these occasions, upon the bonfires of the neighbouring towns, of which they took away some of the ashes by force. This they called "carrying off the flower (probably the flour) of the wake." Moresinus thinks this a vestige of the ancient Cerealia. From the sermon preached at Blandford Forum, in Dorsetshire, January 17, 1570, by William Kethe, it would seem that in the papal times in this country fires were customary, not only on the Eves of St John the Baptist at midsummer, and of St Peter and St Paul the Apostles, but also on that of St Thomas a Becket, or, as he is there styled, "Thomas Becket the Traytor." The London Watch on this evening, put down in the time of Henry VIII. and renewed for one year only in that of his successor, has been already noticed under Midsummer Eve.t In Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland (1792) the minister of Loudoun in Ayrshire, under the head of Antiquities, tells us: "The custom still remains amongst the herds and young people to kindle fires in the high grounds, in honour of Beltan. Beltan, which in Gaelic signifies Baal, or Bels Fire, was antiently the time of this solemnity. It is now kept on St Peter's Day." See also the extract (in p. 175) from the Ordinary of the Company of Cooks in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dated 1575. Piers' Description of Westmeath makes the ceremonies used by the Irish on St John Baptist's Eve common to that of St Peter and St Paul. It appears also from the Status Scholæ Etonensis, that the Eton boys had a great bonfire annually on the east side of the Church on St Peter's Day, as well as on that of St John Baptist. In an old Account of the Lordship of Gisborough in Cleveland, Yorkshire, and the adjoining coast, printed in the Antiquarian Repertory from an ancient manuscript in the Cotton Library, speaking of the fishermen, it is stated that "upon St Peter's Daye they invite their friends and kinsfolk to a festyvall kept after their fashion with a free hearte, and noe shew of niggardnesse: that daye their boates are dressed curiously for the shewe, their mastes are painted, and certain rytes observed amongst them, with sprinkling their prowes with good liquor, sold with them at a groate the quarte, which custome or superstition suckt from their auncesters, even contynueth down unto this present tyme." ST ULRIC. 4th of July. S dukes of per Germany. He became Bishop of Augsburg, T ULRIC was the son of Count Hucbald, one of the leading and rebuilt the celebrated cathedral there in 962, dedicating it to St Afra, patroness of the city. He died in 973, at the advanced age of eighty, on ashes laid in the form of a cross upon the floor. The following ceremonies of this day are thus detailed in Googe's version of Naogeorgus "ST HULDRYCHE. "Wheresoeuer Huldryche hath his place, the people there brings in BLOUNT ST SWITHIN'S DAY. 15th of July. LOUNT tells us that St Swithin, a holy Bishop of Winchester about the year 860, was called the weeping St Swithin, for that, about his feast, Præsepe and Aselli, rainy constellations, arise cosmically and commonly cause rain. Gay, in his Trivia, mentions "How if, on Swithin's Feast the welkin lours, And every pent-house streams with hasty showers, Twice twenty days shall clouds their fleeces drain, The following is said to be the origin of the old adage: "If it rain on St Swithin's Day, there will be rain more or less for forty-five succeeding days." In the year 865, St Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, to which rank he was raised by King Ethelwolfe, the Dane, dying, was canonised by the then Pope. He was singular for his desire to be buried in the open churchyard, and not in the chancel of the minster, as was usual with other bishops, which request was complied with; but the monks, on his being canonised, taking it into their heads that it was disgraceful for the saint to lie in the open churchyard, resolved to remove his body into the choir, which was to have been done with solemn procession on the 15th of July. It rained, however, so violently on that day, and for forty days succeeding, as had hardly ever been known, which made them set aside their design as heretical and blasphemous, and instead, they erected a chapel over his grave, at which many miracles are said to have been wrought. Nothing occurs in the legendary accounts of this saint which throws any light on the subject. The following lines are from Poor Robin's Almanack for 1697— "In this month is St Swithin's Day ; Who made them all as sound, or more Than ever that they were before. But whether this were so or no And to make hay while sun doth Than to believe in tales and lies Which idle monks and friars devise." Churchill thus glances at the superstitious notions about rain on St Swithin's Day "July, to whom, the Dog-star in her train, A writer in the World, No. 10 [Horace Walpole (?)], referring to the alteration of the style, inquires: "Were our Astronomers so ignorant as to think that the old Proverbs would serve for their new-fangled Calendar? Could they imagine that St Swithin would accommodate her rainy planet to the convenience of their calculations?" Douce heard these lines upon St Swithin's Day "St Swithin's Day if thou dost rain, For forty days it will remain : St Swithin's Day if thou be fair, There is an old saying, when it rains on St Swithin's Day, that the saint is christening the apples. In the Churchwardens' Accounts of the parish of Horley, in the county of Surrey, under the years 1505-6, is the following entry, which implies a gathering on this saint's day or account "Itm. Saintt Swithine farthyngs the said 2 zeres, 3s. 8d." And in the parish accounts of Kingston-upon-Thames the following items appear "23 Hen. VII. Imprimis, at Ester for any howseholder kepyng a brode gate, shall pay to the paroche prests wages 3d. Item, to the paschalld. To St Swithin d. "Also any howse-holder kepyng one tenement shall pay to the paroche prests wages 2d. Item, to the Paschalld. And to St Swithin d." ST MARGARET'S DAY. 20th of July. BUTLER, in his Lives of the Saints, mentions St Margaret as a virgin said to have been instructed in the faith by a Christian nurse, persecuted by her father, who was a pagan priest, and, after being tormented, martyred by the sword in the last general persecution. Her name occurs in the Litany, inserted in the old Roman order, and in ancient Greek calendars; and from the East the veneration of her spread rapidly through England, France, and Germany during the Crusades. Granger, in the Biographical History of England, quotes the following passage from Sir John Birkenhead's Assembly Man As many Sisters flock to him as at Paris on St Margaret's Day, when all come to church that are or hope to be with child that year." ST BRIDGET. HE Roman Martyrology (1627) records on this date 66 Bridget who, after many peregrinations made to holy places, full of the Holy Ghost, finally reposed at Rome : whose body was after translated into Suevia. Her principal Festivity is celebrated upon the seaventh of October." The Diarium Historicum (1590) notes: "Emortualis Dies S. Brigittæ Reg. Sueciæ, 1372.” Vallancey, in his Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language, speaking of Ceres, tells us: “Mr Rollin thinks this Deity was the same Queen of Heaven to whom the Jewish women burnt incense, poured out drink offerings, and made cakes for her with their own hands." (Jer. ch. xvii. v. 18.) And he adds: "This pagan custom is still preserved in Ireland on the Eve of St Bridget; and which was probably transposed to St Bridget's Eve from the Festival of a famed Poetess of the same name in the time of Paganism. In an ancient Glossary now before me, she is described: 'Brigit, a poetess, the daughter of Dagha; a Goddess of Ireland.' On St Bridget's Eve every farmer's wife in Ireland makes a cake, called Bairin-breac, the neighbours are invited, the madder of ale and the pipe go round, and the evening concludes with mirth and festivity." Yet, according to Porter's Flowers of the Lives of the most renowned Saincts of the three Kingdoms, England, Scotland, and Ireland (1632), the day of Brigitt (Virgin of Kildare in Ireland) was February the first. ST JAMES'S DAY. 25th of July. APPLES were blessed eum there is a special form for the blessing. PPLES were blessed on this day by the priest. In the Manual Hasted, in his History of Kent, records of Cliff that "the rector, by old custom, distributes at his parsonage house on St James's Day, annually, a mutton pye and a loaf, to as many persons as chuse to demand it, the expence of which amounts to about 151. per annum.” On St James's Day (old style) oysters came in in London; and there is a popular superstition still in force, like that relating to goose on Michaelmas Day, that whoever eats oysters on this day will never want money for the rest of the year. GULE OF AUGUST, COMMONLY CALLED LAMMAS DAY. PETTINGAL, in the second volume of the Archæologia, derives "Gule" from the Celtic or British " Wyl," or "Gwyl," signifying a festival or holyday, and explains "Gule of August" to mean no more than the holyday of St Peter ad Vincula in August, when the people of England paid their Peter's pence. This is confirmed by Blount, who tells us that Lammas Day, the 1st of August, otherwise called the Gule, or Yule of August, may be a corruption of the British word "Gwyl Awst," signifying the Feast of August; or, he adds, "it may come from Vincula (chains), that day being called in Latin Festum Sancti Petri ad Vincula." According to Gebelin, as the month of August was the first in the Egyptian year, the first day of it was called Gule, which being Latinised makes Gula. Our legendaries, surprised at seeing this word at the head of the month of August, did not overlook it, but converted it to their own purpose. They made out of it the feast of the daughter of the Tribune Quirinus, cured of some disorder in the throat (gula is Latin for throat) by kissing the chains of St Peter, whose feast is solemnised on this day. Gebelin's derivation of the word will be considered under Yule as formerly used to signify Christmas. Antiquaries are divided also in their opinions concerning the origin of the word Lam, or Lamb-mass. |