Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/88

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Bring us out a table, And spread it with a cloth. Bring out a mouldy cheese, Also your Christmas loaf.

Good master and mistress, While you’re sitting by the fire, Pray think of us poor children, Who are wandering in the mire.

Later in the evening, the streets of many a Northumbrian town (I use the word in its fullest meaning) echo the same carol, or the yet finer one “Christians awake, salute the happy morn!”, In the West Riding the singers are dressed in the most fanciful attire, and are called “mummers.” Throughout the district of Cleveland they carry about with them a “bessel cup,” more properly a wassail cup, together with figures of the Virgin and Child, placed in a box and surrounded with such ornaments as they can collect. To send these singers away unrequited is to forfeit good luck for the year. No meat is eaten there on Christmas Eve, doubtless because it is a fast of the Church; the supper there consists of frumety, or wheat boiled in milk with spice and sugar, and of fruit tarts. At its close the yule-cake and cheese are cut and partaken of, while the master taps a fresh cask of ale. This cake and cheese are offered through the season to every visitor who calls. At Horbury, near Wakefield, and at Dewsbury, on Christmas Eve is rung the “devil’s knell:” a hundred strokes, then a pause, then three strokes, three strokes, and three strokes again.

But to return to Cleveland. The yule-log (or clog) and yule candles are duly burned there on Christmas Eve, the carpenter supplying his customers with the former, the grocer with the latter. It would be most unlucky to light log or candle before the proper time. The whole season has a festive character, and visiting and card-playing are kept up throughout it. Christmas-boxes, however, are not common in Cleveland. New Year’s Day is the time there for making presents, as in the eastern counties is St. Thomas’s Day. The poor, and especially poor widows, go from house to house on this last day, asking for Christmas gifts. This custom prevails also in the West Hiding of Yorkshire,