THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER, THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT. IN Poor Robin's Almanack for the year N Poor Robin's Almanack for the year 1677 are the following "Now boys with Squibs and crackers play, It is still customary in London and its vicinity for the boys to dress up an image of the infamous conspirator Guy Fawkes, holding in one hand a dark lantern, and in the other a bundle of matches, and to carry it about the streets begging money in these words, "Pray remember Guy Fawkes!" In the evening there are bonfires, and these frightful figures are burnt in the midst of them. Nor is the celebration confined to London and its neighbourhood. When the Prince of Orange came in sight of Torbay, in 1688, it was the particular wish of his partizans (says Burnet) that he should defer his landing till the day the English were celebrating their former deliverance from popish tyranny. Bishop Sanderson, in one of his Sermons, prays: "God grant that we nor ours ever live to see November the fifth forgotten, or the solemnity of it silenced." OF MARTINMAS. 11th of November. ORMERLY at this season a custom prevailed everywhere amongst us, though now generally confined to country villages, of killing cows, oxen, swine, and other animals, which were cured for the winter, when fresh provisions were seldom or never to be had. In Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under June, we have "When Easter comes, who knows not than And Martilmass Beefe doth beare good tacke, With this note in Tusser Redivivus, "Martlemas beef is beef dried in the chimney, as Bacon, and is so called, because it was usual to kill the beef for this provision about the Feast of St Martin, Nov. 11." Hall, in his Satires, mentions "dried flitches of some smoked beeve, Hang'd on a writhen wythe since Martin's Eve." "A piece of beef hung up since Martlemass" is also mentioned in the Pinner of Wakefield (1599). In the Statistical Account of Scotland (1793), of the parish of Forfar we learn that half a century before, "between Hallowmass and Christmass, when the people laid in their winter provisions, about twenty-four beeves were killed in a week; the best not exceeding sixteen or twenty stone. A man who had bought a shilling's worth of beef, or an ounce of tea, would have concealed it from his neighbours like murder." Of the parish of Tongland, county of Kirkcudbright, we have some extracts from a Statistical Account, "drawn up about sixty or seventy years ago," i. e., from 1793, in which it is stated that "at Martilmass," the inhabitants "killed an old ewe or two, as their winter provision, and used the sheep that died of the braxy in the latter end of autumn." Of the parish of Wigton we read: "Almost no beef, and very little mutton, was formerly used by the common people; generally no more than a sheep or two, which were killed about Martinmass, and salted up for the provision of the family during the year." And so of the parishes of Sandwick and Stromness, county of Orkney, "In a part of the parish of Sandwick, every family that has a herd of swine, kills a sow on the 17th day of December, and thence it is called Sow-day. There is no tradition as to the origin of this practice." Two or more of the poorer sort of rustic families still club to purchase a cow, or other animal, for slaughter at this time, called always in Northumberland a mart ;* the entrails of which, after having been filled with a kind of pudding meat, consisting of blood, suet, groats, &c., are formed into little sausage links, boiled, and sent about as presents. They are called black-puddings from their colour. Black-pudding is not forgotten by Butler in his Hudibras. the religious scruples of the fanatics of his time, he notes— "Some for abolishing black-pudding, And eating nothing with the blood in." Among There is a vulgar saying in the North of England that "blood without groats is nothing," meaning that birth without fortune is of no value. The vulgarism is not destitute of philosophy; but the pun is absolutely unintelligible except to those familiar with the composition of a black-pudding. Mart, according to Skinner, is a fair. He thinks it a contraction of market. These cattle are usually bought at a kind of Cow Fair, or mart at this time. Had it not been the general name for a fair, one might have been tempted to suppose it a contraction of Martin, the name of the Saint whose day is commemorated. This word occurs in "the Lawes and Constitutions of Burghs made be king David the 1st at the New Castell upon the Water of Tyne," in the Regiam Majestatem, printed after the edit. of 1609 (1774)— "Chap. 70. of Buchers and selling of flesh. -2. "The fleshours sall serve the burgessis all the time of the slauchter of Mairts; that is, fra Michaelmes to Zule, in preparing of their flesh and in laying in of their lardner.'" The author of the Convivial Antiquities tells us that in Germany there was in his time a kind of entertainment called the "Feast of Sausages, or Gut-puddings," which was wont to be celebrated with great joy and festivity. The Feast of Saint Martin is a day of debauch among Christians on the Continent. The new wines are then begun to be tasted, and the Saint's day is celebrated with carousing. Aubanus tells us that in Franconia there was a great deal of eating and drinking at this season; no one was so poor and niggardly that on the Feast of St Martin had not his dish of the entrails either of oxen, swine, or calves. As he also informs us, they drank very liberally of wine on the occasion. The Ancient Calendar of the Church of Rome thus marks the 11th of November: "Wines are tasted and drawn from the lees. The Vinalia, a feast of the ancients, removed to this day. Bacchus in the figure of Martin.” Among the Churchwardens' Accounts of St Martin Outwich are the following articles A. D. 1517. "Payd on Seynt Marten's Day for bred and drynke for the syngers, vd." A. D. 1524. A. D. 1525. "It'm for mendyng of the hovell on Sent Marten, vjď.” Payd for brede, ale, and wyne, and garlonds, on Sent Martyns Day, ye translacyon xvjd." Stukeley, referring to Martinsal-hill, observes: "I take the name of this hill to come from the merriments among the Northern people, call'd Martinalia, or drinking healths to the memory of St Martin, practis'd by our Saxon and Danish ancestors. I doubt not but upon St Martin's Day, or Martinmass, all the young people in the neighbourhood assembled here, as they do now upon the adjacent St Ann'shill, upon St Ann's Day." A note adds: "St Martin's Day, in the Norway clogs, is marked with a goose; for on that day they always feasted with a roasted goose: they say, St Martin, being elected to a bishoprick, hid himself (noluit episcopari), but was discovered by that animal. We have transferred the ceremony to Michaelmas." Moresinus refers the great doings on this occasion, which, he says, were common to almost all Europe in his time, to an ancient Athenian Festival, observed in honour of Bacchus, upon the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth days of the month Anthesterion, corresponding with our November. Aubanus seems to confirm this conjecture, though there is no mention of the slaughter of any animal in the description of the rites of the Grecian Festival. The eleventh month had a name from the ceremony of "tapping their barrels on it ;" when it was customary to make merry. It is very observable that the fatted goose, so common in England at MICHAELMAS, is, by the above foreign authors and others, marked as one of the delicacies in common use at every table on the Continent at Martinmas. Forster's Perennial Calendar calls attention to the fact that the "It is festival of St Martin occurs when geese are in high season. always celebrated with a voracity the more eager, as it happens on the eve of the petit carême, when fowls can no longer be presented on the tables of a religious age. A German monk has made it a case of conscience whether, even on the eve of the Little Lent, it be allowable to eat goose-An liceat Martinalibus anserem comedere?' After diving into the weedy pool of the casuist's arguments, the delighted devotee emerges with the permission to roast his goose: and thus the goose came to be a standing dish on Martinmas as well as Michaelmas day." We read in the Glossary to Kennet's Parochial Antiquities: “SALTSILVER. One penny paid at the Feast of Saint Martin by the servile tenants to their lord, as a commutation for the service of carrying their lord's SALT from market to his larder." According to Douce's MS. Notes, on St Martin's night boys expose vessels of water, which they suppose will be converted into wine. The parents deceive them by substituting wine. In the Popish Kingdome we read— "To belly cheare yet once againe doth Martin more encline, Therefore they him unto the skies extoll with prayse devine, And drinking deepe in tankardes large, and bowles of compasse wide: Not praysing Martyn much, but at the Goose rejoyceing tho', FR QUEEN ELIZABETH'S ACCESSION. The 17th of November. ROM a variety of notices scattered in different publications, the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's Accession appears to have been constantly observed even within the last century. In many of the Almanacks it was noted certainly as late as 1684, and probably considerably later. In A Protestant Memorial for the Seventeenth of November, being the Inauguration Day of Queen Elizabeth (1713), is the following passage "In a grateful remembrance of God's mercy, in raising up, continuing, and prospering this most illustrious benefactor of England, the good Protestants of this nation (those especially of LONDON and WESTMINSTER) have annually taken notice (and not without some degree of decent and orderly solemnity) of the 17th of November, being the day on which her majesty queen Elizabeth began her happy reign. "And" (continues the author), "such decent and orderly observation of it seems to me not only warranted by former motives, but also enforc'd by a new and extraordinary argument. "For this present Pope, call'd Clement XI., has this very year canoniz'd the forementioned enemy of England, Pope Pius the Fifth, putting him into the number of heavenly Saints, and falling down and worshipping that image of a deity, which he himself has set up. "Now the good Protestants of England, who well consider that this present Pope has, so far as in him lies, exalted that Pope who was so bold and so inveterate an adversary of queen Elizabeth and all her subjects; as, also, that he is an avow'd patron of the Pretender; will think it behoves them to exert their zeal now, and at all times, (tho' always in a fit and legal manner,) against the evil spirit of Popery, which was cast out at the Reformation, but has ever since wander'd about, seeking for a readmittance, which I verily hope the good providence of God, at least for his truth's sake, will never permit. "I say we have now a new motive to this zeal, the preservation of our most gracious queen Anne being to be added to the vindication of the most gracious queen Elizabeth." The figures of the Pope and the Devil were usually burnt on this occasion. In the Gentleman's Magazine for November 1760 is an account, taken from Lord Somers' collection, of the remarkable cavalcade in London, on the evening of this day in the year 1679, when the bill for excluding the Duke of York (afterwards James II.) from the throne was in agitation. The Pope, it should seem, was carried on this occasion in a pageant representing a chair of state covered with scarlet, richly embroidered and fringed; and at his back, not an effigy, but a person representing the Devil, acting as his holiness's privy-counsellor; and "frequently caressing, hugging, and whispering him, and oftentimes instructing him aloud." The procession set out from Moorgate, and, passing first through Aldgate, went thence through Leadenhall-street, by the Royal Exchange and Cheapside, to Temple Bar. The statue of the queen on the inner or eastern side of Temple Bar having been conspicuously ornamented, the figure of the Pope was brought before it; when, after a song, partly alluding to the protection afforded by Elizabeth to Protestants, and partly to the existing circumstances of the times, a vast bonfire having been prepared" over against the Inner Temple Gate, his holiness, after some compliments and reluctances, was decently toppled from all his grandeur into the impartial flames; the crafty devil leaving his infallibilityship in the lurch, and laughing as heartily at his deserved ignominious end as subtle Jesuits do at the ruin of bigoted lay Catholics, whom themselves have drawn in." In Queen Anne's time, a fresh advantage was taken of this Anniversary; and the figure of the Pretender, in addition to those of the Pope and the Devil, was burnt by the populace. This custom was probably continued even after the defeat of the |