business was to see the king's lodgings furnished with tables, chairs, stools, and firing; as also to provide cards, dice, &c., and to decide disputes arising at cards, dice, bowling, &c. From allusions in some of Ben Jonson's and of Chapman's plays, it appears that he was allowed to keep an open gambling table at Christmas; and it is mentioned as still existing in one of Lady Mary Montague's eclogues : "At the groom-porters batter'd bullies play." Thursday. Ecl. iv. Dodsley's Collect. i. 107. This abuse was removed in the reign of George III.; but Bray, in his Account of the Lord of Misrule, in Archæologia, xviii. 317, says, George I. and II. played hazard in public on certain days, attended by the groom-porter. The appellation, however, is still kept up: the names of three groom-porters occurring among the inferior servants in the present enumeration of her Majesty's household. ST. AGNES'S DAY, OR EVE. ST. AGNES was a Roman virgin and martyr, who suffered in the tenth persecution under the Emperor Dioclesian, A.D. 306. She was condemned to be debauched in the public stews before her execution, but her virginity was miraculously preserved by lightning and thunder from heaven. About eight days after her execution, her parents, going to lament and pray at her tomb, saw a vision of angels, among whom was their daughter, and a lamb standing by her as white as snow, on which account it is that in every graphic representation of her there is a lamb pictured by her side. On the eve of her day many kinds of divination were practised by virgins to discover their future husbands. [Dreams were the most ordinary media for making the desired discovery, and many allusions to the belief may be traced even in late works. The following notice of it occurs in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1734: "Saint Agnes Day comes by and by, And they desire to dream no more, Or, if they must have these extreams, Wish all their sufferings were but dreams." And in the same periodical for the previous year, 1733, we have a similar account : "Tho' Christmas pleasure now is gone, St. Agnes' Fast is coming on; When maids who fain would married be, This year it has come so about, That Sunday shoves St. Agnes out : May find her here, and that's as well."] This is called fasting St. Agnes's Fast. The following lines of Ben Jonson allude to this: : And on sweet St. Anna's night Please you with the promis'd sight, Aubrey, in his Miscellanies, p. 136, directs that, “Upon St. Agnes's Night, you take a row of pins, and pull out every one, one after another, saying a paternoster, sticking a pin in your sleeve, and you will dream of him or her you shall marry.' 991 Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (ed. 1660, p. 538), speaks of Maids fasting on St. Agnes's Eve, to know who shall be their first husband. In Cupid's Whirligig, 1616, iii. 1, Pag says, "I could find in my heart to pray nine times I find the subsequent curious passage concerning St. Agnes, in the Portiforium seu Breviarium Ecclesiæ Sarisburiensis, fol. Par. 1556. Pars. Hyemalis: "Cumque interrogasset præses quis esset sponsus de cujus se Agnes potestate gloriabatur, exstitit quidam ex parasitis qui diceret hanc Christianam esse ab infantia, et magicis artibus ita occupatam, ut dicatur sponsum suum Christum esse. R. Jam corpus ejus corpori meo sociatum est, et sanguis ejus ornavit genas meas. Cujus mater Virgo est, cujus pater feminam nescit. Ipsi sum desponsata cui angeli serviunt, cujus pulchritudinem Sol et Luna mirantur, cujus mater Virgo." to the moone, and fast three St. Agnes's Eves, so that I might bee sure to have him to my husband." The following is the account of this festival, as preserved in the Translation of Naogeorgus, f. 46: "Then commes in place St. Agnes' Day, which here in Germanie Is not so much esteemde nor kept with such solemnitie : They offer them. The servants of the pope, when this is done, Then other wooll they mingle with these holy fleeces twaine, A passage not unsimilar occurs in The Present State of the Manners, &c. of France and Italy-in Poetical Epistles to Robert Jephson, Esq., 8vo. Lond. 1794, from Rome, February, 14, 1793, p. 58. St. Agnes's Shrine. "Where each pretty Ba-lamb most gayly appears, And receive consecration from Sanctity's fist: To chaste nuns he consigns them, instead of their dams, 1 ["There are two remarkable days this month, and both on the getting hand, which our customers like best. There is St. Agnes's Fast, for the maids to get sweethearts, which happens the twenty-first day; and Term begins on the twenty-third day, for the lawyers to get money, but it is with a difference, and the lawyers in this, as indeed in most other cases, have the advantage. The maids, if they do undergo the mortification of fasting, expect nothing but a dream for their labour; only if they dream of the man that afterwards they are married to, it makes amends. But the lawyer is not buoy'd up with dreams, for he is awake, and will have the money, ipso facto, before he speaks; and if the client lose both cause and money, it will make him awake too."-Poor Robin, 1733.] [The present rural address to the saint, as still heard in Durham, is as follows: "Fair Saint Agnes, play thy part, And send to me my own sweetheart, A curious old chap-book, called Mother Bunch's Closet newly Broke Open, has several notices of the St. Agnes divination: :- "On that day thou must be sure that no man salute thee, nor kiss thee; I mean neither man, woman, nor child, must kiss thy lips on that day; and then, at night, before thou goest into thy bed, thou must be sure to put on a clean shift, and the best thou hast, then the better thou mayst speed. And when thou liest down, lay thy right hand under thy head, saying these words, Now the god of Love send me my desire; make sure to sleep as soon as thou canst, and thou shalt be sure to dream of him who shall be thy husband, and see him stand before thee, and thou wilt take great notice of him and his complexion, and, if he offers to salute thee, do not deny him." And again, in the same tract, "There is, in January, a day called Saint Agnes' Day. It is always the one and twentieth of that month. This Saint Agnes had a great favour for young men and maids, and will bring unto their bedside, at night, their sweethearts, if they follow this rule as I shall declare unto thee. Upon this day thou must be sure to keep a true fast, for thou must not eat or drink all that day, nor at night; neither let any man, woman, or child kiss thee that day; and thou must be sure, at night, when thou goest to bed, to put on a clean shift, and the best thou hast the better thou mayst speed; and thou must have clean cloaths on thy head, for St. Agnes does love to see clean cloaths when she comes; and when thou liest down on thy back as streight as thou canst, and both thy hands are laid underneath thy head, then say,— Now, good St. Agnes, play thy part, And then be sure to fall asleep as soon as thou canst, and before thou awakest out of thy first sleep thou shalt see him come and stand before thee, and thou shalt perceive by his habit what tradesman he is; but be sure thou declarest not thy dream to anybody in ten days, and by that time thou mayst come to see thy dream come to pass.' Mr. Hone has preserved a curious charm for the ague, which is said to be only efficacious on St. Agnes's Eve. It is to be said up the chimney by the eldest female in the family : "Tremble and go! First day shiver and burn Second day shiver and learn; Third day never return."] ST. VINCENT'S DAY. JANUARY 22. MR. DOUCE's manuscript notes say, "Vincenti festo si Sol radiet memor esto;" thus Englished by Abraham Fleming : "Remember on St. Vincent's Day, If that the sun his beams display." Scott's Discov. of Witchcraft, b. xi. c. 15. [Dr. Foster is at a loss to account for the origin of the command; but he thinks it may have been derived from a notion that the sun would not shine unominously on the day on which the saint was burnt.] |