second Pretender; and no doubt gave rise to the following Epigram printed in the Works of Bishop

Quære Peregrinum.

"Three Strangers blaze amidst a bonfire's revel;
The Pope, and the Pretender, and the Devil.
Three Strangers hate our faith, and faith's defender,
The Devil, and the Pope, and the Pretender.
Three Strangers will be strangers long we hope;
The Devil, and the Pretender, and the Pope.

Thus, in three rhymes, three Strangers dance the hay :
And he that chooses to dance after 'em, may."

In a volume of Miscellanies, without a title, in the British Museum, but evidently of the time of George the First, we find "Merry Observations upon every Month, and every remarkable Day throughout the whole year." Under November it is said: "The 19th of this month will prove another protestant Holiday, dedicated to the pious memory of that antipapistical Princess and virgin Preserver of the reformed Churches, Queen Elizabeth. This night will be a great promoter of the tallow-chandler's welfare; for marvellous illuminations will be set forth in every window, as emblems of her shining virtues; and will be stuck in clay, to put the world in mind that grace, wisdom, beauty, and virginity, were unable to preserve the best of women from mortality."

With the Society of the Temple, the 17th of November is considered as the grand day of the year. It is observed as a holiday at the Exchequer, and at Westminster and Merchant-Taylors Schools.

At Christ's Hospital also the Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth is a prime holiday. The Governors attend an annual sermon at Christ Church, and afterwards dine together in their Hall.

ST CLEMENT'S DAY.

23rd of November.

In children should be decked, 2e 54 about upon 3. Nicholas, S.

Na Proclamation dated July 22, 1540, it is ordered, "neither that

Katherine, S. Clement, the Holy Innocents, and such like dayes."

Brady, in the Clavis Calendaria (1812), observes that OLD MARTINMASS continues to be noticed in our Almanacks on the twenty-third of November, because it was one of the ancient quarterly periods of the year, at which even to this time a few rents become payable.

Plot, in his History of Staffordshire, describing a Clog-Almanack, says: "A pot is marked against the 23rd of November, for the Feast of St Clement, from the ancient custom of going about that night to beg drink to make merry with."

St Clement is the patron of blacksmiths; accordingly on the

This is a mistake. The 19th of November was the day of Saint Elizabeth.

evening of his day the apprentices in the dockyard at Woolwich have an annual ceremony. One of the senior apprentices, chosen to act the part of "Old Clem," is attired in a great coat; his head being covered with an oakum wig, and his face masked, with a long white beard flowing therefrom. Thus equipped, he seats himself in a large wooden chair mostly covered with a sort of stuff called buntin, with a crown and anchor made of wood on the top, and around it four transparencies representing "the blacksmiths' arms," "anchor smiths at work," "Britannia with her anchor," and "Mount Etna." Before him he has a wooden anvil, and in his hands a pair of tongs and wooden hammer, which he generally uses pretty freely while reciting his speech. A mate, also masked, attends him with a wooden sledgehammer; and he is also surrounded by a number of other attendants; some of them carrying torches, banners and flags, and others battle-axes, tomahawks, and other implements of war. This procession, headed by a drum and fife, and six men with Old Clem mounted on their shoulders, perambulates the town, stopping to refresh at numerous public-houses, and not omitting to call upon the blacksmiths and officers of the dockyard. "Order" having been called by his mate,

"Gentlemen all, attention give,

And wish St Clem long, long to live."

Old Clem delivers the following speech

"I am the real St Clement, the first founder of brass, iron and steel, from the ore. I have been to Mount Etna, where the god Vulcan first built his forge, and forged the armour and thunderbolts for the god Jupiter. I have been through the deserts of Arabia; through Asia, Africa, and America; through the city of Pongrove; through the town of Jipmingo; and all the northern parts of Scotland. I arrived in London on the twenty-third of November, and came down to Her Majesty's dockyard at Woolwich, to see how all the gentleman Vulcans came on there. I found them all hard at work, and wish to leave them well on the twenty-fourth."

The mate then adds

"Come, all you Vulcans stout and strong,
Unto St Clem we do belong.

I know this house is well prepared

With plenty of money and good strong beer;

And we must drink before we part,

All for to cheer each merry heart.

Come, all you Vulcans, strong and stout,

Unto St Clem I pray turn out;

For now St Clem's going round the town:
His coach and six goes merrily round."

A supper, it is hardly necessary to add, terminates the proceedings of the day.

In the afternoon of St Clement's day, it was the custom in Worcestershire for the boys to form a body and go from house to house. At every door they recited or chanted these lines

"Catherine and Clement, be here, be here;
Some of your apples and some of your beer;
Some for Peter, and some for Paul,

And some for him that made us all.
Clement was a good old man :
For his sake give us some;

Not of the worst, but some of the best,
And God will send your soul to rest."

The last line was sometimes varied into

"And God will send you a good night's rest."

The boys repaired with their store of apples to the house of one of their number, where they roasted and ate them; and frequently old age would unite with youth; large vessels of ale or cider would be introduced; and some of the roasted apples would be thrown hot into the liquids, to the social enlivenment of the evening.

S

ST CATHERINE'S DAY.

25th of November.

AINT CATHERINE has already been noticed as the favourer of
learned men. Naogeorgus adds-

"What should I tell what sophisters on Cathrin's Day devise?
Or else the superstitious joyes that maisters exercise."

The very women and girls, writes Camden in his Ancient and Modern Manners of the Irish, "keep a Fast every Wednesday and Saturday throughout the yeare, and some of them also on St Catharine's Day; nor will they omit it though it happen on their birthday, or if they are ever so much out of order. The reason given by some for this is, that the girls may get good husbands, and the women better by the death or desertion of their present ones, or at least by an alteration in their manners."

La Motte, in his Essay upon Poetry and Painting (1730) writes, St Catherine is "esteemed in the Church of Rome as the Saint and Patroness of the spinsters; and her holiday is observed, not in Popish countries only, but even in many places in this nation; young women meeting on the 25th of November, and making merry together, which they call Catherning."

A ceremony, similar to that observed on St Clement's day, used to take place in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. A man dressed in female attire, with a large wheel by his side to represent St Catherine, was taken round the town in a large wooden chair, attended by the retinue appropriate to such occasions. A speech was recited from door to door.

The Churchwardens' Accounts of Horley, in the county of Surrey, contain these entries

"Mem. that reste in the hands of the wyffe of John Kelyoke and John Atye, 4 merkes, the yere of ower Lorde God 1521, of Sent Kateryn mony."

"Mem. that rests in the hands of the wyff of John Atthy and the wyff of Rye Mansell, 3 pounds 25. 9d. the yere of our Lorde God 1522, of Sent Kateryn mony."

ST ANDREW'S DAY.

30th of November.

to in his Table-Talk, of

Feast of St Andrew, the young maidens in Germany strip themselves naked; and, in order to learn what sort of husbands they shall have, they recite the following prayer: Deus, Deus meus, O Sancte Andrea effice ut bonum pium acquiram virum; hodie mihi ostende qualis sit cui me in uxorem ducere debet."

The Popish Kingdome probably alludes to some such observ

ances

"To Andrew all the lovers and the lustie wooers come,

Beleeving, through his ayde, and certaine ceremonies done,

(While as to him they presentes bring, and conjure all the night,)
To have good lucke, and to obtaine their chiefe and sweete delight."

To Duddingston, distant from Edinburgh a little more than a mile, many of the opulent Edinburgh citizens used to resort in the summer months to solace themselves over one of the ancient homely dishes of Scotland, for which the place has been long celebrated. The use of singed sheep's heads boiled or baked, so frequent in this village, is supposed to have arisen from the practice of slaughtering the sheep fed on the neighbouring hill for the market, removing the carcases to town, and leaving the head, &c., to be consumed in the place.

Singed sheep's heads are borne in the procession before the Scots in London on St Andrew's Day.

According to Hasted, in the parish of Easling in Kent, on St Andrew's Day there was yearly a diversion called squirrel-hunting, when the labourers and lower kind of people, assembling together, formed a lawless rabble, and provided with guns, poles, clubs, and other such weapons, spent the greatest part of the day in parading through the woods and grounds, with loud shoutings. Under the pretence of demolishing the squirrels, some few of which they killed, they destroyed numbers of hares, pheasants, partridges, and in short whatever came in their way, breaking down the hedges, and doing much other mischief, and in the evening betaking themselves to the alehouses, finished their career there, as is usual with such sort of gentry.

ST

ST NICHOLAS'S DAY.

6th of December.

T NICHOLAS was born at Patara, in Lycia, and, though a layman, was for his piety advanced to the bishopric of Myra. He died on the 8th of the ides of December, A.D. 343.

In the English Festyval (1511) we read: " He kepeth the name of the child, for he chose to kepe vertues, meknes, and simplenes; he fasted Wednesday and Friday; these dayes he would souke but ones of the day, and therewyth held him plesed. Thus he lyved all his Ïyf in vertues with this childes name, and therefore children doe him worship before all other Saints."

In an old MS. account of the Saints, probably of the age of Henry VI., the following couplet is devoted to St Nicholas

"Ye furst day yat was ybore: he gan to be good and clene,

For he ne wolde Wednesday ne Friday never more souke but ene.”

So, also, the Golden Legend: "He wolde not take the brest ne the pappe, but ones on the Wednesday, and ones on the Frydaye."

Some have thought that it was on account of his very early abstinence that he was chosen patron of school boys;* but a much better reason is supplied by a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1777, in a translation from an Italian Life of St Nicholas, of the following story; which fully explains the occasion of boys addressing themselves to St Nicholas's patronage

"The fame of St Nicholas's virtues was so great that an Asiatic gentleman, on sending his two sons to Athens for education, ordered them to call on the bishop for his benediction; but they, getting to Myra late in the day, thought proper to defer their visit till the morrow, and took up their lodgings at an inn, where the landlord, to secure their baggage and effects to himself, murdered them in their sleep, and then cut them into pieces, salting them, and putting them into a pickling tub, with some pork which was there already, meaning to sell the whole as such. The bishop, however, having had a vision of this impious transaction, immediately resorted to the inn, and calling the host to him, reproached him for his horrid villany. The man, perceiving that he was discovered, confessed his crime, and entreated the bishop to intercede on his behalf to the Almighty for his pardon; who, being moved with compassion at his contrite

It appears that Gregory the Great was also the patron of scholars, and that on his day boys were called (as in Hospinian's time) to the school with certain songs; one being appointed to act as bishop on the occasion with his companions of the sacred order. Presents were added to induce the boys to love their schools. This custom is stated to have descended from the heathens to the Christians. Among the ancient Romans, the Quinquatria, on the 20th of March, were the holidays both of masters and scholars; on which occasion the scholars presented their masters with the Minervalia, and the masters distributed among the boys ears of corn.

P