The book of days : a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, including anecdote, biography, & history, curiosities of literature and oddities of human life and character / edited by R. Chambers.

Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The book of days : a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, including anecdote, biography, & history, curiosities of literature and oddities of human life and character / edited by R. Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    70/854 (page 56)
    TWELFTH -DAY EVE. THE BOOK OF DAYS. OLD ENGLISH PRONUNCIATIONS. in old cider, which circulates freely on these occasions. A circle is formed round the large fire, when a general shout and hallooing takes place, which you hear answered from all the adjacent villages and fields. Sometimes fifty or sixty of these fires may he all seen at once. This being finished, the company return home, where the good housewife and her maids are preparing a good supper. A large cake is always provided, with a hole in the middle. After supper, the company all attend the bailiff (or head of the oxen) to the wain-house, where the following par- ticulars are observed: The master, at the head of his friends, fills the cup (generally of strong ale), and stands opposite the first or finest of the oxen. He then pledges him in a curious toast: the company follow his example, with all the other oxen, and addressing each by his name. This being finished, the large cake is produced, and, with much ceremony, put on the horn of the first ox, through the hole above mentioned. The ox is then tickled, to make him toss his head: if he throw the cake behind, then it is the mistress’s perquisite; if before (in what is termed the hoosy), the bailiff himself claims the prize. The company then return to the house, the doors of which they find locked, nor will they be opened till some joyous songs are sung. On their gaining admit- tance, a scene of mirth and jollity ensues, which lasts the greatest part of the night.’— Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1791. The custom is called in Herefordshire Wassailing. The fires are de- signed to represent the Saviour and his apostles, and it was customary as to one of them, held as representing Judas Iscariot, to allow it to burn a while, and then put it out and kick about the materials. At Pauntley, in Gloucestershire, the custom has in view the prevention of the smut in wheat. ‘ All the servants of every farmer assemble in one of the fields that has been sown with wheat. At the end of twelve lands, they make twelve fires in a row with straw; around one of which, made larger than the rest, they drink a cheerful glass of cider to their master’s health, and success to the future harvest; then returning home, they feast on cakes made with carraways, soaked in cider, which they claim as a reward for their past labour in sowing the grain.’* ‘In the south hams [villages] of Devonshire, on the eve of the Epiphany, the farmer, attended by his workmen, with a large pitcher of cider, goes to the orchard, and there encircling one of the best bearing trees, they drink the following toast three several times :— ‘ Here’s to thee, old apple-tree, Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow ! And whence thou mayst bear apples enow ! Ilats full! caps full! Bushel—bushel—sacks full, And my pockets full too! Huzza ! This done, they return to the house, the doors of which they are sure to find bolted by the females, who, be the weather what it may, are inexorable to all entreaties to open them till some one has * Rudge’s Gloucester. 56 guessed at what is on the spit, which is generally some nice little thing, difficult to be hit on, and is the reward of him who first names it. The doors are then thrown open, and the lucky clod- pole receives the tit-bit as his recompense. Some are so superstitious as to believe, that if they neglect this custom, the trees will bear no apples that year.’—Gentleman s Magazine, 1791, p. 403. OLD ENGLISH PRONUNCIATIONS. The history of the pronunciation of the English language has been little traced. It fully appears that many words have sustained a considerable change of pronunciation during the last four hundred years : it is more particularly marked in the vowel sounds. In the days of Elizabeth, high personages pronounced certain words in the same way as the common people now do in Scot- land. Eor example, the wise Lord Treasurer Burleigh said whan instead of when, and ivar instead of were; witness a sentence of his own: ‘ At Enfield, fyndying a dozen in a plump, whan there was no rayne, I bethought myself that they war appointed as watchmen, for the apprehend- yng of such as are missyng,’ &c.—Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, 1586. (Collier’s Papers to ShaJcspeare Society.) Sir Thomas Gresham, writing to his patron in behalf of his wife, says : ‘ I humbly beseech your honour to be a stey and some comfort to her in this my absence.’ Find- ing these men using such forms, we may allowably suppose that much also of their colloquial dis- course was of the same homely character. Lady More, widow of the Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More, writing to the Secretary Cromwell in 1535, beseeched his ‘ especial gude maistersliip,' out of his ‘ abundant gudeness ’ to consider her case. ‘ So, bretherne, here is my maister,' occurs in Bishop Lacy’s Exeter Pontifical about 1450. These pronunciations are the broad Scotch of the present day. Tway for two, is another old English pronun- ciation. ‘ By whom came the inheritance of the lordship of Burleigh, and other lands, to the value of twai hundred pounds yearly,’ says a contemporary life of the illustrious Lord Trea- surer. Tway also occurs in Piers Ploughman’s Creed in the latter part of the fourteenth cen- tury: ‘ Thereon lay a litel chylde lapped in cloutes, And tweyne of tweie yeres olde, ’ &c. So also an old manuscript poem preserved at Cambridge : ‘ Dame, he seyde, liow schalle we doo, He fayleth twaye tethe also.’ This is the pronunciation of Tweeddale at the present day; while in most parts of Scotland they say twa. Tway is nearer to the German zicei. A Scotsman, or a North of England man, speaking in his vernacular, never says ‘ all: ’ he says ‘ a’.’ In the old English poem of HaveloTc, the same form is used : ‘ He shall haven in his hand A Denemark and Engeland.’