The spit got up like a naked man,

And swore he'd fight with the dripping pan;
The pan got up and cocked his tail,

And swore he'd send them all to jail."

The story told, to account for the title of "king of all birds," here given to the wren, is a curious sample of Irish ingenuity,and is thus stated, in the clever "Tales of the Munster Festivals," by an Irish servant, in answer to his master's inquiry :— "Saint Stephen! why what the mischief, I ask you again, have I to do with Saint Stephen ?"

“Nothen, sure, sir, only this being his day, when all the boys o' the place go about that way, with the wran, the king of all birds, sir, as they say, bekays wanst when all the birds wanted to choose a king, and they said they'd have the bird that would fly highest, the aigle flew higher than any of 'em, till at last when he couldn't fly an inch higher, a little rogue of a wran that was a-hide under his wing, took a fly above him a piece, and was crowned king (of the aigle an' all, sir), tied in the middle o' the holly, that way, you see, sir, by the leg, that is. An old custom, sir."

Vainly have we endeavored to arrive at the probable origin of hunting and killing these little birds, upon this day. The tradition commonly related is by no means satisfactory. It is said that a Danish army would have been surprised and destroyed, by some Irish troops, had not a wren given the alarm, by pecking at some crumbs upon a drum-head-the remains of the sleeping drum mer's supper; which roused him, when he instantly beat to arms And that, from this circumstance, the wren became an object of hatred to the Irish.

Songs, similar in spirit to that of the Irish Droleen boys, were popularly sung by the Greeks. In D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," may be found translations of "the crow song," and "the swallow song ;"-between which and the Irish wren song. the resemblance is very striking. "Swallow-singing or chelidonising, as the Greek term is," was, it appears, a method of collecting eleemosynary gifts in the month of Boedromion or August. We think D'Israeli is right, in his opinion that there is, probably, a closer connexion between the custom which produced

the songs of the crow and the swallow, and that of our northern mummeries, than may be at first sight suspected. The subject of mumming we have elsewhere treated at some length;—but this curious variety of the practice-and the manner in which it seems to connect the subject with the ceremonies of the Greeks,— we could not allow ourselves wholly to omit.

NEW-YEAR'S EVE.

31ST DECEMBER.

THIS is the last day of the year; and the feelings which belong to it are of a tangled yarn. Regrets for the past are mingled with hopes of the future ;—and the heart of man, between the meeting years, stands, like the head of Janus, looking two ways.

The day and eve which precede the new year are marked, in England, by few outward observances, save such as are common to the season; and it is in the peculiar trains of thought to which they give rise that they have a character of their own.

In Scotland, on the other hand, the festival of this season is, since the Reformation, nearly limited to these two days; and the last day of the year is distinguished both by omens and by customs peculiar to itself. In Mr. Stewart's "Popular Superstitions of the Highlands,” there is an account of some of these omens,—as they were gathered, at no distant period, in that land of mist and mystery; and a singular example may be mentioned, in the auguries drawn from what was called the Candlemas Bull. The term Candlemas, which has been given to this season, in Scotland and elsewhere, is supposed to have had its origin in some old religious ceremonies which were performed by candle light;—and the bull was a passing cloud, which, in the Highland imagination, assumed the form of that animal,—and from whose rise or fall, or motions generally, on this night, the seer prognosticated good or bad weather. Something of the same kind is mentioned in Sir John Sinclair's “Statistical Account of Scotland," who explains more particularly the auguries gathered from the state of the atmosphere, on New-year's-eve. The superstition in ques

tion, however, is not peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland; but shared with the northern European nations in general,-most of whom assigned portentous qualities to the winds of Newyear's-eve.

It is on this night, that those Scottish mummers, the Guisars,to whom we have already, more than once, alluded,—still go about the streets,—habited in antic dresses, having their faces covered with vizards, and carrying cudgels in their hands. The doggrel lines repeated by these masquers, -as given by Mr. Callender, in a paper contributed by him to the Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, are as follows:

and much learning has been exhausted, and ingenuity exercised, in their explanation. The admirable paper of Mr. Repp, in the same Transactions (to which we have already alluded, and which we recommend to the notice of our antiquarian readers) connects them, as we have before hinted, with another superstition common to many of the northern nations ;—and which may be compared with one of the articles of popular belief before described, as prevailing in England, on Christmas-eve,-that, viz., which seems to imply that the spirits of evil are, at this time, in peculiar activity, unless kept down by holier and more powerful influences. According to this able investigator, the moment of midnight on New Year's-eve was considered to be a general removing term for the races of Genii,-whether good or bad;—and the two first lines of the cry in question,-which, as he explains them, after the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic dialects, were words of appeal to the good genii (the hoghmen or hillmen), and of execration against the evil ones (the trolles),—were so used, in consequence of such belief (that these different spirits were, at that hour, in motion),` and of the further one that the words of men had power to determine that motion to their own advantage. It is well known that, in some countries, and we may mention Germany-great importance is attached to words involuntarily uttered, at certain

seasons, and under certain circumstances:—and they are supposed to be either words of betrayal, leaving the speaker open to the machinations of evil spirits, who may apply them in a strained and fatal sense, if at all ambiguous, or words of power, controlling the designs of demons, and compelling them to work out the good of the utterer, against their will. Now, a superstition of this kind, Mr. Repp says, attaches generally to the doctrines of demonology; and he states that he could prove his position, by many instances from Arabic and Persian fairy lore. We may observe that some of the Highland superstitions mentioned by Mr. Stewart, such as that of sprinkling the household with water, drawn from the dead and living ford,—and that of fumigating the apartments, and half smothering their tenants with the smoke from burning piles of the juniper-bush (both considered to operate as charms against the spells of witchcraft, and the malignity of evil eyes), have, evidently, their origin in that same belief, that the powers of evil are on the wing at this mysterious and solemn time of natural transition.

Some ancient superstitions are likewise alluded to in the old dialogue of Dives and Pauper, as being in force at the beginning of the year,—and which appear to have had a like origin with the Highland ones above described. As an example, mention may be made of the practice of "setting of mete or drynke, by nighte, on the benche, to fede Alholde or Gobelyn.”

We must not forget to observe that Brand speaks of an ancient custom, which he says is still retained in some parts of England, -in which young women go about on this eve, carrying a wassail-bowl, and singing certain verses from door to door;—which custom has certainly some analogy with the Hogmanay practice in Scotland. And we may further state, while we are in the way of tracing resemblances, that the het pint, which, in Scotland, was formerly carried about the streets at the midnight of the new year's coming in,-and which was composed of ale, spirits, sugar, and nutmeg or cinnamon-is neither more nor less, though it was borne about in a kettle, than a Scottish version of the wassailbowl.

In Ritson's collection of ancient songs, there is a very spirited carol given, at length,-which appears to have been sung by these