churchwardens, the following entry occurs: "Garlands on Corpus Christi Day, xd." I find also, among the ancient annual church disbursements, "For four (six or eight) men bearing torches about the parish" on this day, payments of Id. each. Among the same accounts for the 19th and 21st years of Edw. IV. we have: "For flaggs and garlondis, and pak-thredde for the torches, upon Corpus Christi Day, and for six men to bere the said torches, iiijs. vijd." And in 1485, "For the hire of the garments for pageants, js. viijd." Rose-garlands on Corpus Christi Day are also mentioned under the years 1524 and 1525, in the parish accounts of St. Martin Outwich. Pennant's Manuscript says, that in North Wales, at Llanasaph, there is a custom of strewing green herbs and flowers at the doors of houses on Corpus Christi Eve. [On this day the members of the Skinners' Company of London, attended by a number of boys which they have in Christ's Hospital school, and girls strewing herbs before them, walk in procession from their hall, on Dowgate-hill, to the church of St. Antholin, in Watling-street, to hear service. This custom has been observed time out of mind.] Nares, in his Glossary, p. 103, says this festival was held annually on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, in memory, as was supposed, of the miraculous confirmation of the doctrine of Transubstantiation under Pope Urban IV. Its origin, however, is involved in great obscurity. ST. VITUS'S DAY. JUNE 15. IN the Sententiæ Rythmicæ of J. Buchlerus, p. 384, is a passage which seems to prove that St. Vitus's Day was equally famous for rain with St. Swithin's: "Lux sacrata Vito si sit pluviosa, sequentes Triginta facient omne madere solum." Googe, in the translation of Naogeorgus, says: "The nexte is Vitus sodde in oyle, before whose ymage faire Both men and women bringing hennes for offring do repaire: The cause whereof I doe not know, I thinke for some disease Which he is thought to drive away from such as him do please." See a Charm against St. Vitus's Dance in Turner on the Diseases of the Skin, p. 419. [The following rural charm on parchment was actually carried by an old woman in Devonshire, as a preventive against this complaint: THE Pagan rites of this festival at the summer solstice may be considered as a counterpart of those used at the winter solstice at Yule-tide. There is one thing that seems to prove this beyond the possibility of a doubt. In the old Runic Fasti, as will be shown elsewhere, a wheel was used to denote the festival of Christmas. The learned Gebelin derives Yule from a primitive word, carrying with it the general idea of revolution and a wheel; and it was so called, says Bede, because of the return of the sun's annual course, after the winter solstice. This wheel is common to both festivities. Thus Durand, speaking of the rites of the Feast of St. John Baptist, informs us of this curious circumstance, that in some places they roll a wheel about, to signify that the sun, then occupying the highest place in the zodiac, is beginning to descend, and in the amplified account of these ceremonies "Rotam quoque hoc die in quibusdam locis volvunt, ad significandum quod sol altissimum tunc locum in cœlo occupet, et descendere incipiat in zodiaco." Among the Harleian Manuscripts, in the British Museum, 2345, Art. 100, is an account of the rites of St. John Baptist's Eve, in which the wheel is also mentioned. The writer is speaking" de Tripudiis quæ in Vigilia B. Johannis, fieri solent, quorum tria genera." "In Vigilia enim beati Johannis," the author adds, "colligunt pueri in quibusdam given by the poet Naogeorgus, we read that this wheel was taken up to the top of a mountain and rolled down from thence; and that, as it had previously been covered with straw, twisted about it and set on fire, it appeared at a distance as if And he farther the sun had been falling from the sky. observes, that the people imagine that all their ill luck rolls away from them together with this wheel. Googe, in the translation of Naogeorgus, says: "Then doth the joyfull feast of John the Baptist take his turne, The reader will join with me in thinking the following extract from the Homily De Festo Sancti Johannis Baptista a pleasant piece of absurdity:-"In worshyp of Saint Johan the people waked at home, and made three maner of fyres: one was clene bones, and noo woode, and that is called a Bone Fyre; another is clene woode, and no bones, and that is called a Wode Fyre, for people to sit and wake therby; the thirde is made of wode and bones, and it is callyd Saynt Johannys regionibus ossa et quædam alia immunda, et in simul cremant, et exinde producitur fumus in aere. Cremant etiam Brandas (seu Fasces) et circuiunt arva cum Brandis. Tertiam, de Rota quam faciunt volvi. Quod cùm immunda cremant, hoc habent ex Gentilibus." The catalogue describes this curious manuscript thus, "Codex membranaceus in 4to. cujus nunc plura desiderantur folia : quo tamen continebantur diversa cujusdam monachi, uti videtur, Winchelcumbensis, opuscula." fyre. The first fyre, as a great clerke Johan Belleth telleth he was in a certayne countrey, so in the countrey there was soo greate hete the which causid that dragons to go togyther in tokenynge that Johan dyed in brennynge love and charyté to God and man, and they that dye in charyté shall have parte of all good prayers, and they that do not, shall never be saved. Then as these dragons flewe in th'ayre they shed down to that water froth of ther kynde, and so envenymed the waters, and caused moche people for to take theyr deth therby, and many dyverse sykenesse. Wyse clerkes knoweth well that dragons hate nothyng more than the stenche of brennynge bones, and therefore they gaderyd as many as they mighte fynde, and brent them; and so with the stenche thereof they drove away the dragons, and so they were brought out of greete dysease. The second fyre was made of woode, for that wyl brenne lyght, and wyll be seen farre. For it is the chefe of fyre to be seen farre, and betokennynge that Saynt Johan was a lanterne of lyght to the people. Also the people made blases of fyre, for that they shulde be seene farre, and specyally in the nyght, in token of St. Johan's having been seen from far in the spirit by Jeremiah. The third fyre of bones betokenneth Johan's martyrdome, for hys bones were brente, and how ye shall here." The Homilist accounts for this by telling us that after John's disciples had buried his body, it lay till Julian, the apostate emperor, came that way, and caused them to be taken up and burnt, "and to caste the ashes in the wynde, hopynge that he shuld never ryse again to lyfe." Bourne tells us, that it was the custom in his time, in the North of England, chiefly in country villages, for old and young people to meet together and be merry over a large fire, which was made for that purpose in the open street. This, of whatever materials it consisted, was called a Bonefire.1 1 These fires are supposed to have been called bonefires because they were generally made of bones. There is a passage in Stow, however, wherein he speaks of men finding wood or labour towards them, which seems to oppose the opinion. Dr. Hickes also gives a very different etymon. He defines a bonefire to be a festive or triumphant fire. In the Islandic language, he says, Baal signifies a burning. In the Anglo-Saxo, Bael-Fyn, by a change of letters of the same organ is made Baen-ry whence our bone-fire. In the Tinmouth MS. cited in the History of Newcastle, "Boon-er," and "Boen-Harow," occur for ploughing and harrowing gratis, or by gift. There is a passage also, much to our purpose, in Over and above this fire they frequently leap, and play at various games, such as running, wrestling, dancing, &c.: this, however, is generally confined to the younger sort; for the old ones, for the most part, sit by as spectators only of the vagaries of those who compose the "Lasciva decentius ætas," and enjoy themselves over their bottle, which they do not quit till midnight, and sometimes till cock-crow the next morning. The learned Gebelin, in his Allégories Orientales, accounts in the following manner for the custom of making fires on Midsummer Eve: "Can one," says he, "omit to mention here the St. John Fires, those sacred fires kindled about midnight, on the very moment of the solstice, by the greatest part as well of ancient as of modern nations; a religious ceremony of the most remote antiquity, which was observed for the prosperity of states and people, and to dispel every kind of evil? The origin of this fire, which is still retained by so many nations, though enveloped in the mist of antiquity, is very simple: it was a Feu de Joie, kindled the very moment the year began; for the first of all years, and the most ancient that we know of, began at this month of June. Thence the very name of this month, junior, the youngest, which is renewed; while that of the preceding one is May, major, the ancient. Thus the one was the month of young people, while the other belonged to old men. These Feux de Joie were accompanied at the same time with vows and sacrifices for the prosperity of the people and the fruits of the earth. They danced also round this fire (for what feast is there without a dance?), and the most active leaped over it. Each on departing took away a firebrand, great or Aston's Translation of Aubanus, p. 282,-" Common fires (or, as we call them here in England, bone-fires)." I am therefore strongly inclined to think that bone-fire means a contribution-fire, that is, a fire to which every one in the neighbourhood contributes a certain portion of materials. The contributed ploughing days in Northumberland are called bone-dargs. "Bon-fire," says Lye (apud Junii Etymolog.), "not a fire made of bones, but a boon-fire, a fire made of materials obtained by begging. Boon, bone, bene, vet. Angl. petitio, preces." Fuller, in p. 25 of his Mixt Contemplations in Better Times, 1658, says he has met with "two etymologies of bone-fires. Some deduce it from fires made of bones, relating it to the burning of martyrs, first fashionable in England in the reign of King Henry the Fourth; but others derive the word (more truly in my mind) from boon, that is good, and fires." |