Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/612

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. ii. DEC. 2*. MM.

received largesse, and ten loads of green boughs were placed in the royal privy chamber at Hampton Court and Oatlands ; but the king's offering on Christmas Day was nil ('Trevelyan Papers,' ii. 16). The Prayer-Book of 1549 was -compared to a Christmas game ('Troubles of the Prayer-Book, 1549,' p. 169). The word Christ-tide is used in 1629 in ' Diary of John Kous,' p. 46. In the same year Mr. Viccars, of Stamford, in Lincolnshire, preached against the keeping of Christmas as superstitious, and said that Christ was not born on 25 December, for which he was condemned by the High Commission Court (' Star Chamber Cases,' pp. 200, 222). The disturb- ances at Canterbury in 1648 are noticed in Gostling's ' Walk,' 1777, p. 8, where a note says that the history is to be seen at large in the 'History of Independency.' Dr. W. de <Gray Birch's ' Catalogue of the Bute MSS. of the Inquisition in the Canary Islands,' 1904, tells of the Christmas diversions of the nuns in 1652, and how in 1792 masqueraders -danced in church. There are many notes on the " Christmas Lord," the " boar's head," and on Christmas Day under the Commonwealth, in Baker's ' Hist. S. John's Coll., Camb.,' ed. Mayor, i. 121, 445 ; ii. 573, 649. At Malwood there was a famous oak which bloomed on Christmas Day and faded at night (Pococke's 4 Travels/ ii. 242). W. C. B.

WOOING STAFF. Prof. Angelo de Guber- natis writes in his * Mythologie des Plantes,' 1878, tome i. p. 62 :

"Ainsi le jeune pretendant des Abruzzes, pour savoir si la jeune fille 1'aime et 1'accepte comme <epoux, depose k la porte de sa maison un tronc de chene ; si la jeune fille le retire, le jeune amoureux prend courage et entre dans la maison ; si elle le laisse a sa place, le pretendant le reprend et se retire en bon ordre."

An analogous usage in ancient Japan is -given in Terashima's ' Wakan Sansai Dzue,' 1713 (reprint 1884), tome Ixv. p. 1110, thus :

" Tradition says it was formerly a custom here '[the district of Nambu] for any wooer to plant a staff about a foot long, and painted in variegated style, before the entrance of the maiden's house. It was called ' nishiki-gi ' (variegated wood), which the lady would take in if she consented to his pro- posal ; otherwise, even though several thousand specimens of such wood were planted, she would not take them inside."

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA.

WAITS. When the judges held the assizes at Hereford in July, 1601, they gave 2s. Qd. to the " waites of y e cittie " (' Camden. Misc.,' IV. art. ii. p. 49). At Pontefract, in 1657, the town- waits had coats and cognizances, coats of blue cloth faced with white taffety 44 as formerly" ; in 1701-4 they had three old

silver badges for the fiddlers, and in 1725 \l. Is. 5d. was paid to the "musicians" (R. Holmes, 'Pontefract Book of Entries,' 1882, pp. 36, 266, 363). There were waits at Wake- field in 1670, and their silver badge, dated 1688, is engraved in Walker's 'Wakefield Cathedral,' 1888, p. 307. One of the Halifax waits died in 1696 ('Diaries' of O. Hey wood, ii. 180). W. C. B.

CHRISTMAS CAROLS : WAITS : GUISERS. There were such things as these, one believes, when Dickens wrote 'A Christmas Carol,' but were they known in Dickens - land 1 Away in the Midlands, at any rate, each Christmas brought round the carol singers, some with instruments of music and some without, and at our doors tuneful notes filled the frosty air, and made children at least dream afterwards of

Angels from the clouds descending ; and to them

Hark ! the herald angels sing was realistic. There was no going to sleep on Christmas Eve, though children were abed long before the stroke of twelve. They lay awake listening for the waits and the carol singers, and heard them as they grouped around the house-door. Then came the sound of the pitch- fork, as the leader gave them the pitch, and then the carol came into being with full swing from a score of hearty throats. There has been no singing since like that which then rolled around the house, and the chorus following each verse will never be forgotten, for it was full of harmonious twists and turns, rolling in one after another and oft repeated. The waits came next, a village band, home-made as it were, fiddle as leader, with bass fiddle, clarionet, trombone, triangle, and other instruments under him. These presented carols hymns without words with strange introductions, variations, and finales, some of them home-made like the band of waits. These were of the midnight time ; and later, or more correctly early in the morning, came the children with lesser carols, their little round of verses ending with

God bless the master of this house,

Likewise the mistress too,*

And all the little children

That round the table go !

The 'Guisers (disguisers) sometimes came on the Eve, but it was their time properly on the night following Christmas Day. They gave * Saint George ' known by other titles, 'Th' owd Tup' or ' T' owd Hoss,' plays

[* In the West Riding the line was " The mis- ter-ess also."]