The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 45

If after a Christmas dinner you shake out the table-cloth over the bare ground under the open sky, crumb-wort will grow on the spot.

If on Christmas Day, or Christmas Eve, you hang a wash-clout on a hedge, and then groom the horses with it, they will grow fat.

As often as the c.o.c.k crows on Christmas Eve, the quarter of corn will be as dear.

If a dog howls the night before Christmas, it will go mad within the year.

If the light is let go out on Christmas Eve, some one in the house will die.

When lights are brought in on Christmas Eve, if any one's shadow has no head, he will die within a year; if half a head, in the second half-year.

If a hoop comes off a cask on Christmas Eve, some one in the house will die that year.

If on Christmas Eve you make a little heap of salt on the table, and it melts over night, you will die the next year; if, in the morning, it remain undiminished, you will live.

If you wear something sewed with thread spun on Christmas Eve, no vermin will stick to you.

If a s.h.i.+rt be spun, woven, and sewed by a pure, chaste maiden on Christmas Day, it will be proof against lead or steel.

If you are born at sermon-time on Christmas morning, you can see spirits.

If you burn elder on Christmas Eve, you will have revealed to you all the witches and sorcerers of the neighbourhood (448. 319).

If you steal hay the night before Christmas, and give the cattle some, they thrive, and you are not caught in any future thefts.

If you steal anything at Christmas without being caught, you can steal safely for a year.

If you eat no beans on Christmas Eve, you will become an a.s.s.

If you eat a raw egg, fasting, on Christmas morning, you can carry heavy weights.

The crumbs saved up on three Christmas Eves are good to give as physic to one who is disappointed (462. IV. 1788-1801).

It is unlucky to carry anything forth from the house on Christmas morning until something has been brought in.

It is unlucky to give a neighbour a live coal to kindle a fire with on Christmas morning.

If the fire burns brightly on Christmas morning, it betokens prosperity during the year; if it smoulders, adversity (246. 160).

These, and many other practices, ceremonies, beliefs, and superst.i.tions, which may be read in Grimm (462), Gregor (246), Henderson (469), De Gubernatis (427, 428), Ortwein (3l5), Tilte (370), and others who have written of Christmas, show the importance attached in the folk-mind to the time of the birth of Christ, and how around it as a centre have fixed themselves hundreds of the rites and solemnities of pa.s.sing heathendom, with its recognition of the kins.h.i.+p of all nature, out of which grew astrology, magic, and other pseudo-sciences.

_Flowers of the Christ-Child._

Many flowers are believed to have first sprung into being or to have first burst into blossom at the moment when Christ was born, or very near that auspicious hour.

The Sicilian children, so Folkard tells us, put pennyroyal in their cots on Christmas Eve, "under the belief that at the exact hour and minute when the infant Jesus was born this plant puts forth its blossom."

Another belief is that the blossoming occurs again on Midsummer Night (448. 492).

In the East the Rose of Jericho is looked upon with favour by women with child, for "there is a cherished legend that it first blossomed at our Saviour's birth, closed at the Crucifixion, and opened again at Easter, whence its name of Resurrection Flower" (448. 528).

Gerarde, the old herbalist, tells us that the black h.e.l.lebore is called "Christ's Herb," or "Christmas Herb," because it "flowreth about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ" (448. 281).

Certain varieties of the hawthorn also were thought to blossom on Christmas Day. The celebrated Abbey of Glas...o...b..ry in England possessed such a thorn-tree, said to have sprung from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, when he stuck it into the ground, in that part of England, which he is represented as having converted. The "Glas...o...b..ry Thorn" was long believed to be a convincing witness to the truth of the Gospel by blossoming without fail every Christmas Day (448. 352, 353).

Many plants, trees, and flowers owe their peculiarities to their connection with the birth or the childhood of Christ. The _Ornithogalum umbellatum_ is called the "Star of Bethlehem,"

according to Folkard, because "its white stellate flowers resemble the pictures of the star that indicated the birth of the Saviour of mankind"

(448. 553). The _Galium verum,_ "Our Lady's Bedstraw," receives its name from the belief that the manger in which the infant Jesus lay was filled with this plant (448. 249).

The flight of the Holy Family into Egypt has attracted to it as a centre a large group of legends belonging to this category, many of which are to be found in Folkard and Busk.

Of a certain tree, with leaves like the sensitive plant, in Arabia, we read that this peculiarity arose from the fact that when near the city of Heliopolis "Joseph led the dromedary that bore the blessed Mother and her Divine Son, under a neighbouring tree, and as he did so, the green branches bent over the group, as if paying homage to their Master."

Near Mataria there was said to be a sycamore-tree, called "the Tree of Jesus and Mary," which gave shelter at nightfall to the Holy Family, and to this fact the Mohammedans are reported to attribute the great longevity and verdure of the sycamore (448. 558).

A widespread tradition makes the "Rose of Jericho," called also "St.

Mary's Rose," spring up on every spot where the Holy Family rested on their way to Egypt. The juniper owes the extraordinary powers with which it is credited in the popular mind to the fact that it once saved the life of the Virgin and the infant Christ. The same kind offices have been attributed to the hazel-tree, the fig, the rosemary, the date-palm, etc. Among the many legends accounting for the peculiarity of the aspen there is one, preserved in Germany, which attributes it to the action of this tree when the Holy Family entered the dense forest in which it stood (448. 230):--

"As they entered this wilderness, all the trees bowed themselves down in reverence to the infant G.o.d; only the Aspen, in her exceeding pride and arrogance, refused to acknowledge Him, and stood upright." In consequence of this "the Holy Child p.r.o.nounced a curse against her; ...

and, at the sound of His words, the Aspen began to tremble through all her leaves, and has not ceased to tremble to this day." According to a Sicilian legend, "the form of a hand is to be seen in the interior of the fruit of the pine," representing "the hand of Jesus blessing the tree which had saved Him during the flight into Egypt by screening Him and His mother from Herod's soldiers" (448. 496).

We have from Rome the following tradition (415. 173):--

"One day the Madonna was carrying the Bambino through a lupine-field, and the stalks of the lupines rustled so, that she thought it was a robber coming to kill the Santo Bambino. She turned, and sent a malediction over the lupine-field, and immediately the lupines all withered away, and fell flat and dry on the ground, so that she could see there was no one hidden there. When she saw there was no one hidden there, she sent a blessing over the lupine-field, and the lupines all stood straight up again, fair and flouris.h.i.+ng, and with ten-fold greater produce than they had at first." In a Bolognese legend the lupines are cursed by the Virgin, because, "by the clatter and noise they made, certain plants of this species drew the attentions of Herod's minions to the spot where the tired and exhausted travellers had made a brief halt"

(448. 473). Another tradition, found over almost all Italy, says that when the Holy Family were fleeing from the soldiers of King Herod:--

"The brooms and the chick-peas began to rustle and crackle, and by this noise betrayed the fugitives. The flax bristled up. Happily for her, Mary was near a juniper; the hospitable tree opened its branches as arms and enclosed the Virgin and Child within their folds, affording them a secure hiding-place. Then the Virgin uttered a malediction against the brooms and the chick-peas, and ever since that day they have always rustled and crackled." The story goes on to tell us that the Virgin "pardoned the flax its weakness, and gave the juniper her blessing,"

which accounts for the use of the latter for Christmas decorations, --like the holly in England and France (448. 395).

_Birds of the Christ-Child._

Several birds are a.s.sociated with the infant Christ in the folk-lore of Europe and the East. In Normandy, the wren is called _Poulette de Dieu, Oiseau de Dieu,_ "G.o.d's Chicken," "G.o.d's Bird,"--corresponding to the old Scotch "Our Lady's Hen,"--because, according to legend, "she was present at the birth of the Infant Saviour, made her nest in his cradle, and brought moss and feathers to form a coverlet for the Holy Child" (539. 35).

A Tyrolian folk-tale informs us that in days of yore the ravens were "beautiful birds with plumage white as snow, which they kept clean by constant was.h.i.+ng in a certain stream." It happened, once upon a time, that "the Holy Child, desiring to drink, came to this stream, but the ravens prevented him by splas.h.i.+ng about and befouling the water.

Whereupon he said: 'Ungrateful birds! Proud you may be of your beauty, but your feathers, now so snowy white, shall become black and remain so till the judgment day!'" In consequence of their uncharitable action have the ravens continued black ever since (539. 92).

In his childhood Christ is often represented as playing with the other little Jewish children. One Sabbath day He and His playmates amused themselves by making birds out of clay, and after the children had been playing a while, a Sadducee chanced to pa.s.s that way. The story goes on to tell that "He was very old and very zealous, and he rebuked the children for spending their Sabbath in so profane an employment. And he let it not rest at chiding alone, but went to the clay birds and broke them all, to the great grief of the children. Now, when Christ saw this, He waved His hands over all the birds He had fas.h.i.+oned, and they became forthwith alive, and soared up into the heavens" (539. 181). From Swainson we learn that in the Icelandic version of the legend the birds are thought to have been the golden plover "whose note 'deerin' sounds like to the Iceland word 'dyrdhin,' namely 'glory,' for these birds sing praise to their Lord, for in that He mercifully saved them from the merciless hand of the Sadducee."

A Danish legend, cited by Swainson, accounts for the peculiar cry of the lapwing, which sounds like "Klyf ved! klyf ved!" i.e. "Cleave wood!

cleave wood!" as follows (539. 185):--"When our Lord was a wee bairn, He took a walk out One day, and came to an old crone who was busy baking. She desired Him to go and split her a little wood for the oven, and she would give Him a new cake for His trouble. He did as He was bid, and the old woman went on with her occupation, sundering a very small portion of the dough for the promised recompense. But when the batch was drawn, this cake was equally large with the rest. So she took a new morsel of the dough still less than before, and made and baked another cake, but with the like result. Hereupon she broke out with 'That's a vast overmuckle cake for the likes o' you; thee's get thy cake anither time.' When our Lord saw her evil disposition, His wrath was stirred, and He said to the woman: 'I split your wood as you asked me, and you would not so much as give me the little cake you promised me. Now you shall go and cleave wood, and that, too, as long as the world endures!'

With that he changed her into a weep (_vipa_) [lapwing]."

Among the many legends of Isa, as Jesus is called by the Moslems, current among the Mohammedan peoples is a variant of the story of the clay-birds, as follows: "When Isa was seven years old, he and his companions made images in clay of birds and beasts, and Isa, to show his superiority, caused his images to fly and walk at his command." Clouston informs us that this story is also found in the Gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew, and in that of the Infancy (422. II. 408).

In Champagne, France, legend makes the cuckoo to have issued from a Christmas log (462. I. 113), and in a Latin poem of the Middle Ages we are told that "the crossbill hatches its eggs at Christmas and the young birds fly in full plumage at Easter" (539. 67).

_Animals._