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Page 46
According to Jamieson, the eve of Yule was termed by the Northmen
_Hoggunott_, meaning Slaughter night, probably because then the cattle
for the coming feast were killed. During the feast, one of the leading
toasts was called _minnie_, meaning the cup of remembrance, and Dr.
Jamieson thinks that the popular cry which has come down to our times as
_Hogmany, trol-lol-lay_, was originally _Hogminne, thor loe loe_,
meaning the feast of Thor. After the Reformation, the Scotch transferred
Hogmanay to the last day of December, as a preparation day for the New
Year. The practice of children going from door to door in little bands,
singing the following rhyme, was in vogue at the beginning of this
century in country places in the West of Scotland:--
"Rise up, gudewife, and shake your feathers,
Dinna think that we are beggars,
We're girls and boys come out to-day,
For to get our Hogmanay,
Hogmanay, trol-lol-lay.
"Give us of your white bread, and not of your gray,
Or else we'll knock at your door a' day."
This rhyme has a stronger reference to Yule or Christmas than to the New
Year, and is doubtless a relic of pre-Reformation times.
At the Reformation, the Scottish Church, probably following the dictum
of Calvin, who condemned Yule as a pagan festival, forbade the people to
observe it because of its heathen origin; but probably the more potent
reason was that it was a Romish feast, for no objection was made against
keeping the New Year or _hansell Monday_, on which occasion practices
similar to those of Yule were observed, and I believe it was the
non-condemnation of these later festivals which enabled the Scottish
Church to abolish Yule. In fact, it would appear that the Yule practices
were simply transferred from a few days earlier to a few days later, and
thereby retained their original connection with the close of the year.
Prior to the Church interference there is no evidence that the first of
January was observed by the people as a general feast, but even with
this safety valve of a popular and yearly festival, the Church
encountered great difficulty in abolishing Yule. A few instances of the
opposition of the people will suffice.
The Glasgow Kirk Session, on the 26th December, 1583, had five persons
before them who were ordered to make public repentance, because they
kept the superstitious day called Yule. The _baxters_ were required to
give the names of those for whom they had baked Yule bread, so that they
might be dealt with by the Church. Ten years after this, in 1593, an Act
was again passed by the Glasgow Session against the keeping of Yule, and
therein it was ordained that the keepers of this feast were to be
debarred from the privileges of the Church, and also punished by the
magistrates.
Notwithstanding these measures, the people still inclined to observe
Yule, for fifty-six years after, in 1649, the General Assembly appointed
a commission to make report of the public practices, among others, "The
druidical customs observed at the fires of _Beltane_, _Midsummer_,
_Hallowe'en_, and _Yule_." In the same year appears the following minute
in the session-book of the Parish of Slains.--(See Rust's _Druidism
Exhumed_.)
26th Nov., 1649.--"The said day, the minister and elders being convened
in session, and after invocation of the name of God, intimate that Yule
be not kept, but that they yoke their oxen and horse, and employ their
servants in their service that day as well as on other work days."
Dr. Jamieson quotes the opinion of an English clergyman in reference to
such proceedings of the Scotch Church:--"The ministers of Scotland, in
contempt of the holy-day observed by England, cause their wives and
servants to spin in open sight of the people upon Yule day, and their
affectionate auditors constrain their servants to yoke their plough on
Yule day, in contempt of Christ's nativity. Which our Lord has not left
unpunished, for their oxen ran wud, and brak their necks and lamed some
ploughmen, which is notoriously known in some parts of Scotland." By
going back to the time of the Reformation, and finding what then were
the practices of the people in the celebration of the Yule festival, and
then by comparing these with the practices in vogue at the commencement
of this century during the New Year festivities, we shall be led to
conclude that the principal change effected by the Church was only
respecting the time of the feasts, and we can thus perceive that the
veto was not directed against the practices _per se_, but only against
the conjunction of these practices, Pagan in their origin, with a feast
commemorative of the birth of Christ. As they could not hold Christmas
without retaining the Yule practices along with it, they resolved to
abolish both.
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