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In the Tryall of a Man's own Selfe, by Thomas Newton, 1602, p. 44, he inquires, under "Sinnes externall and outward" against the first commandment, "whether, for the avoiding of any evill, or obtaining of any good, thou hast trusted to the helpe, protection, and furtherance of angels, either goode or badde. Hereunto is to be referred the paultring mawmetrie and heathenish worshipping of that domesticall god, or familiar aungell, which was thought to bee appropriated to everie particular person."

In answer to a query in the Athenian Oracle, vol. i. p. 4, "Whether every man has a good and bad angel attending him?" we find the following to our purpose: "The ministration of angels is certain, but the manner how, is the knot to be untied. 'Twas generally believed by the ancient philosophers, that not only kingdoms had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular genius, or good angel, to protect and admonish him by dreams, visions, &c. We read that Origen, Hierome, Plato, and Empedocles in Plutarch, were also of this opinion; and the Jews themselves, as appears by that instance of Peter's deliverance out of prison. They believed that it could not be Peter, but his angel. But for the particular attendance of bad angels we believe it not, and we must deny it till it finds better proofs than conjectures."

MICHAELMAS GOOSE.

"September, when by custom, right divine,

Geese are ordain'd to bleed at Michael's shrine."-CHURCHILL.

THERE is an old custom still in use among us of having a roast goose to dinner on Michaelmas-day. "Goose-intentos," as Blount tells us, is a word used in Lancashire, where "the husbandmen claim it as a due to have a Goose-intentos on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost: which custom took origin from the last word of the old church-prayer of that day: Tua

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nos quæsumus, Domine, gratia semper præveniat et sequatur; ac bonis operibus jugiter præstet esse intentos.' The common people very humorously mistake it for a goose with ten toes. This is by no means satisfactory. Beckwith, in his new edition of the Jocular Tenures, p. 223, says, upon it: "But besides that the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, or after Trinity rather, being moveable, and seldom falling upon Michaelmas day, which is an immoveable feast, the service for that day could very rarely be used at Michaelmas, there does not appear to be the most distant allusion to a goose in the words of that prayer. Probably no other reason can be given for this custom, but that Michaelmas-day was a great festival, and geese at that time most plentiful. In Denmark, where the harvest is later, every family has a roasted goose for supper on St. Martin's Eve.I

[The old custom of eating goose on Michaelmas-day has much exercised the ingenuity of antiquaries. Brady remarks that this festival "is no longer peculiar for that hospitality which we are taught to believe formerly existed, when the landlords used to entertain their tenants in their great halls upon geese: then only kept by persons of opulence, and of course considered as a peculiar treat, as was before the case at Martinmas, which was the old regular quarterly day though as geese are esteemed to be in their greatest perfection in the autumnal season, there are but few families who totally neglect the ancient fashion of making that bird a part of their repast on the festival of St. Michael." There is a current but erroneous tale, assigning to Queen Elizabeth the introduction of this custom of the day. Being on her way to Tilbury Fort on the 29th September, 1588, she is alleged to have dined with Sir Neville Humfreville, at his seat near that place, and to

See Molesworth's Account of Denmark, p. 10. From Frolich's Viatorium, p. 254, I find that St. Martin's Day is celebrated in Germany with geese, but it is not said in what manner. See Sylva Jucund. Serm. p. 18, and Martinmas infra. The practice of eating goose at Michaelmas does not appear to prevail in any part of France. Upon St. Martin's Day they eat turkeys at Paris. They likewise eat geese upon St. Martin's Day, Twelfth Day, and Shrove Tuesday, at Paris. See Mercer, Tableau de Paris, tom. i. p. 131. In the King's Art of Cookery, p. 63, we read,

"So stubble geese at Michaelmas are seen,
Upon the spit; next May produces green."

have partaken of a goose, which the knight, knowing her taste for high-seasoned dishes, had provided; that after her dinner she drank a half-pint bumper of Burgundy to the destruction of the Spanish Armada; soon after which she received the joyful tidings that her wishes had been fulfilled; and that, being delighted with the event, she commemorated the day annually by having a goose for dinner, in imitation of Sir Neville's entertainment; and that, consequently, the court adopted the like practice, which soon became general throughout the kingdom. This anecdote is a strong proof that the usage was sanctioned by royalty in the days of Queen Bess, but there is evidence that it was practised long anterior to the destruction of the Spanish Armada.] Among other services, John de la Haye was bound to render to William Barnaby, Lord of Lastres, in the county of Hereford, for a parcel of the demesne lands, one goose fit for the lord's dinner on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel. And this as early as the tenth year of King Edward the Fourth. The custom may have originated in a habit among the rural tenantry, of their bringing a good stubble goose with their rent to the landlord at Michaelmas, in the hope of making him lenient. In the Poesies of George Gascoigne, 1575, are the following lines:

"And when the tenauntes come to paie their quarter's rent,
They bring some fowle at Midsummer, a dish of fish in Lent,
At Christmasse a capon, at Michaelmasse a goose,

And somewhat else at New Yere's tide, for feare their lease flie

loose."

A pleasant writer in the periodical paper called The World, No. 10 (if I mistake not, the late Lord Orford), remarking on the effects of the alteration of the style, tells us : "When the reformation of the calendar was in agitation, to the great disgust of many worthy persons, who urged how great the harmony was in the old establishment between the holidays and their attributes (if I may call them so), and what confusion

1" Crossthwaite church, in the Vale of Keswick, in Cumberland, hath five chapels belonging to it. The minister's stipend is £5 per annum, and Goose-grass, or the right of commoning his geese; a Whittle-gait, or the valuable privilege of using his knife for a week at a time at any table in the parish; and, lastly, a hardened sark, or a shirt of coarse linen."-Note by Mr. Park.

would follow if Michaelmas-day, for instance, was not to be celebrated when stubble-geese are in their highest perfection; it was replied, that such a propriety was merely imaginary, and would be lost of itself, even without any alteration of the calendar by authority; for if the errors in it were suffered to go on, they would in a certain number of years produce such a variation that we should be mourning for good King Charles on a false 30th of January, at a time when our ancsetors used to be tumbling over head and heels in Greenwich Park in honour of Whitsuntide; and at length be choosing king and queen for Twelfth Night, when we ought to be admiring the London Prentice at Bartholomew Fair."

It is a popular saying, "If you eat goose on Michaelmasday you will never want money all the year round." Geese are eaten by ploughmen at harvest home.1 In Poor Robin's Almanack for 1695, under September, are the following quaint lines:

"Geese now in their prime season are,
Which, if well roasted are good fare:
Yet, however, friends, take heed
How too much on them you feed,
Lest when as your tongues run loose,
Your discourse do smell of goose."

Buttes, in his Dyets dry Dinner, 1599, says, on I know not what authority, that "a goose is the emblem of meere modestie."

In a curious tract entitled A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen, or the Servingman's Comfort, 1598, is the following passage: "He knoweth where to have a man that will stande him in lesse charge-his neighbour's sonne, who will not onely maynteine himselfe with all necessaries, but also his father will gratifie his maister's kindnesse at Christmas with a New Yeere's Gyft, at other festivall times with pigge, goose, capon, or other such like householde provision." It appears, by the context, that the father of the serv

1 In the margin of a MS. in the Harleian Collection, No. 1772, fol. 115 b, is written, in a hand of the ninth or tenth century, the following, which I give as I find it: "Cave multum ne in his tribus diebus, sanguinem minuas, aut pocionem sumas, aut de Anxere" (Ansere) "manducas; nono Kalendis Aprilis die lunis; intrante Augusto die lunis xx ; exeunte Decembris die lunis."

ingman does this to keep his son from going to serve abroad as a soldier. In Deering's Nottingham, p. 107, mention occurs of "hot roasted geese" having formerly been given on Michaelmas-day there by the old mayor, in the morning, at his house, previous to the election of the new one.

In the British Apollo, fol. Lond. 1708, vol. i. No. 74, is the following:

"Q. Supposing now Apollo's sons

Just rose from picking of goose bones,
This on you pops, pray tell me whence
The custom'd proverb did commence,
That who eats goose on Michael's-day
Shan't money lack his debts to pay.

A. This notion, fram'd in days of yore,
Is grounded on a prudent score;
For, doubtless, 'twas at first designed
To make the people Seasons mind,
That so they might apply their care
To all those things which needful were,
And, by a good industrious hand,

Know when and how t'improve their land."

In the same work, 1709, ii. 55, we have:

"Q. Yet my wife would persuade me (as I am a sinner)
To have a fat goose on St. Michael for dinner :
And then all the year round, I pray you would mind it,
I shall not want money-oh! grant I may find it.
Now several there are that believe this is true,
Yet the reason of this is desired from you.

A. We think you're so far from the having of more,

That the price of the goose you have less than before :
The custom came up from the tenants presenting
Their landlords with geese, to incline their relenting
On following payments."

Our ancestors, when they found a difficulty in carving a goose, hare, or other dish, used to say, jestingly, that they should hit the joint if they could but think on the name of a cuckold.

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