Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/133

Rh churches to aid the minds of ignorant and weak-brained worshippers in the formation of the idea of a person to whom their praises and their prayers were addressed. This fixing of events and beliefs in the minds of children by association, was a part of household discipline, which in our forefathers' days did not always take so agreeable a shape as that of making presents. Children—poor, weak, helpless creatures, what did they not endure at the hands of those who were always stronger than they, but not always so very much wiser!—used to be flogged, not only for punishment but by way of fixing things in their memories. Thus, on Innocents' Day—well named, it would seem, for more than one reason—children were whipped in their beds by their parents "in order that the memorie of Herod's murder of the Innocents might stick the closer." This whipping was no mere sham or formula; it was administered by parents who believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, many of whom, we may be sure, found in their creed a convenient excuse for the indulgence of savage passions. In England, the boys of the parish were made once a year to walk over the parish boundaries with the authorities, and were then and there in turn beaten, that they might remember those limits. The custom, called "beating the bounds," although the children and not the bounds were beaten, is not yet quite extinct in England, in some of the remote rural districts of which the bounds are still beaten by the parish beadle, accompanied by all boys subject to his authority. The flogging, however, is now omitted, but the boundary, wherever it may lead, is strictly followed by the procession. During a recent perambulation of this kind the procession was brought to a stand. The parish boundary line passed directly through the oven which projected from the side of a farm house. It had been the custom on beating the bounds, for one of the boys to get into this oven, that the line might be followed, and that the important fact that Farmer 's oven was not all in the parish, might never be forgotten. But, on the occasion we are speaking of, it happened that the goodwife, forgetful or regardless of the day of the procession, was baking, and her oven was like Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace. No boy was found willing to play the part either of Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego; and upon grave consideration of the subject, the beadle came to the conclusion that it would hardly do to insist upon the usage under all the circumstances, shocking as it was that the parish boundary should not be followed. Finally, it was decided that the requirements of custom would be fulfilled, pro hac vice, by a boy's clambering over the oven in the line of the boundary; and this, notwithstanding the heat and the uncertain footing given by the rounded top of the place, was done. But to return to our Christmas customs. Mince, or rather minced pies, not only pertain to this season, but should rightfully be called Christmas pies. They used to be made in the form of a cradle or a manger, typical of the Nativity, and the custom of making a pie of this kind at this season, was derived from the presentation of paste images and sweetmeats to the Fathers of the Vatican on Christmas Eve. The origin of the latter custom has not been discovered; but it probably was, like most others of this kind, Pagan. In the middle ages, the bakers at this season used to present their customers with Yule dough in images of baked paste. This custom has survived in our New Year cakes, or cookies, as the Dutch called them; the figures on which are probably mere descendants and modifications of images with Christian names, which themselves were descendants and representatives of heathen idols. With such tenacity do men cling to a once well-established popular custom. Minced pies having this origin and this significance, it must be admitted that the Puritans were not quite as narrow-minded as they have