Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (79 page)

Twelfth Night

by Lauren Gilbert

T
welfth Night celebrations have taken place since medieval times. A religious holiday initially, it celebrated the coming of Epiphany, the arrival of the Magi at Jesus’ birthplace. It is the culminating festival of Christmastide, the twelve days of Christmas.

The English traditions of Twelfth Night are what most of us think of when the name “Twelfth Night” is used: food, especially an ornate cake and great feasting, drinking, games, plays, dances and masked balls, and other fun times.

Shakespeare’s play,
Twelfth Night
, is supposed to have been written to perform on Twelth Night.

Although the Christmas tree was a 19th century custom imported from Germany, decorating with greenery, such as rosemary, ivy, mistletoe, holly, bay, and laurel was very popular over centuries, from pagan times. Christmas fires, Yule logs, and candles were also part of the celebration. Even Oliver Cromwell was not able to completely stamp out all vestiges of Christmastide and Twelfth Night during his Puritan rule, and the festivities revived again under Charles II.

Traditionally, Twelfth Night is celebrated on either the fifth or the sixth of January (depending on how the twelve days are counted, which varies somewhat from one tradition to another). The Twelfth Night tradition still seems strong in Great Britain (witness the many pictures of the mummers’ parades, the Holly Man, and other festivities found with the simplest Google search), Hispanic cultures still celebrate Three Kings’ Night, and there are surviving traditions in the other western European countries.

However, in the United States, Twelfth Night is no longer celebrated commonly in the traditional sense. Twelfth Night was once widely celebrated in the colonies, especially those settled by the English. The colonists brought their traditions with them and adapted them to their new environment. George and Martha Washington were married on Twelfth Night in 1759, and entertained on Twelfth Night throughout the day each year; Martha’s papers include a recipe for an enormous Twelfth Night Cake. Christmas wreaths decorated with fruit (apples, oranges, etc., which were considered delicacies) were hung on doors, as can still be seen in Colonial Williamsburg.

The Twelfth Night Cake is customarily a ring-shaped cake with currants, candied fruits, and nuts (or any combination) baked into it. Also baked into the cake was a coin, a carved or cast-metal baby (representing the Christ Child), or a bean and a pea. Whoever got the coin or baby was the king; in the case of the bean or pea, the man who got the bean was king, the woman who got the pea was queen. The king and queen ruled the festivities. Later, the king’s privileges included providing the next year’s cake.

This cake may be elaborately iced and decorated, often with one or two crowns, or may be light and decorated with colored sugars. (This tradition still lives in the United States in some of the Mardi Gras customs; some Twelfth Night cakes are decorated with the colors now associated with Mardi Gras: purple, green, and gold or yellow.)

Wassailing was also a tradition during Christmastide and on Twelfth Night. Wassail (your health) involved toasting with a hot mulled cider and/or ale and was very popular in southern England from about the 14th century on. One custom was wassailing the apple trees, which involved pouring a little wassail on the trees to ensure a good harvest and good cider the next year.

One important footnote: it was essential to remove the greenery before midnight on the sixth of January. If left up, the greenery could attract goblins or cause bad luck in the New Year, so it was traditionally taken down and burned. In America, the fruits used to decorate the wreaths were eaten as part of the celebratory feasts.

Sources

Beckford, Martin. “Christmas Ends in Confusion Over When Twelfth Night Falls.”
The Telegraph
, 1/6/2009.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/4126725/Christmas-ends-in-confusion-over-when-Twelfth-Night-falls.html
.

Boyle, Laura. “Twelfth Night.”
Jane Austen Centre
.
http://www.janeausten.co.uk/twelfth-night/
.

Doe, Martha. “The Puritan Ban on Christmas.”
TimeTravelBritain.com
.
http://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/christmas/ban.shtml
.

Levins, Sandy. “Understanding Twelfth Night: The Holiday That Time Forgot.”
Camden County Historical Society,
1/3/2005.
http://historiccamdencounty.com/ccnews93.shtml
.

Miller, Amy, “What Is The Twelfth Night Christmas Season?”
ShareFaith
.
http://www.faithclipart.com/guide/Christian-Holidays/twelfth-night.html
.

Be My Valentine!

by Marie Higgins

When love is not madness, it is not love.

—Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Many are the starrs I see, but in my eye no starr like thee.

—English saying used on poesy rings

Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
Wind, Sand, and Stars
, 1939

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

—Albert Einstein

Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine!

—Thomas Hood

I claim there ain’t Another Saint As great as Valentine.

—Ogden Nash

Must, bid the Morn awake!

Sad Winter now declines,

Each bird doth choose a mate;

This day’s Saint Valentine’s.

For that good bishop’s sake

Get up and let us see

What beauty it shall be

That Fortune us assigns.

—Michael Drayton

“Be My Valentine...”

Who was Saint Valentine…and why do people celebrate his name by writing sonnets, giving flowers, or candy to those they love?

Here is what I researched about our dear
Saint Valentine.
Several articles were written about the “legend” of Saint Valentine....

There were many different Saint Valentines who were martyred during the days of ancient Rome. Little is known about the one whose feast day is celebrated on February 14, except that he is said to have been buried on that day on the Via Flaminia north of Rome.

One of the articles talked about a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers, he outlawed marriages for young men. The priest—Valentine—realized the injustice, defied the emperor, and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine was discovered to be going against the emperor, Claudius ordered the priest be put to death. On the eve of his execution, Valentine wrote a letter to his lover (some believed it was the daughter of one of the jailers). Valentine signed this letter, “from your Valentine”. Eventually, the Catholic Church canonised Valentine.

It wasn’t much later until this day became associated with “love”. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season.

Valentine greetings did not become popular until the Middle Ages. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt.

When I think about my favorite Valentine’s Day, only one comes to mind. I had just met my future husband, but at the time, I was dating his best friend. Little did I know that my future husband was secretly wishing I would love him and not his friend. Anyway, it was my future husband’s idea to get some red spray paint and spray a big heart on my snow-covered lawn. That morning when I pulled out of my driveway on my way to work, I saw the heart and inside it the words “Be Mine”. Ah…that’s been the most memorable Valentine’s Day gift!

The Origins of April Fools’ Day

by Richard Denning

H
ave you been tricked on this day by a prank or joke? Maybe you recall some famous tricks in the past. The BBC once broadcast a documentary of farmers in Italy picking spaghetti from bushes and trees after a bumper harvest. Thousands were tricked. In the USA, Taco Bell announced it had purchased the Liberty Bell and renamed it the Taco Liberty Bell.

When though did this tradition start?

The suggestion, recorded in
The Country Diary of Garden Lore
, is that 1 April was the day that Noah sent a rook out looking for land as the flood waters subsided, but where that comes from I cannot find out.

One explanation links it to ancient festivals such as the Roman Hilaria, celebrated at the end of March when people would dress up in disguises. There are theories that this time of year with its variable weather—sometimes cold, sometimes hot—tricks men and makes us fools.

A more substantial explanation related to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. This changed the start of the year from the last week of March/1 April as it used to be to January 1. Because it took a while for this fact to become known and accepted, people who celebrated the New Year on 1 April were ridiculed. A paper fish called a “poisson d’avril” would be stuck to their backs to show they were fools. This is still part of present day French culture.

In England, the celebration came in about 1700 becoming more popular as the century went on. The British changed calendars in 1752 themselves, which may have encouraged the tradition. The Scots celebrated a two day event (how come they often manage to get two days out of something we English get one day from!) Hunting the Gowk Day involved sending folk on wild goose chases or false errands, whilst Tailie Day involved pinning tails or notices to people’s backsides.

This morning my father recreated the spaghetti hoax in a picture he emailed me to show my son. Have you thought up any good ones? Or have you been the butt of an April fool?

MayDay, MayDay, Mayday!

by Mike Rendell

A
nd no, the internationally recognized distress signal has nothing whatsoever to do with the first day of May: it is a deliberate corruption of the French expression
venez m’aider
(“come and help me”), having been chosen in 1923 by a senior radio officer by the name of Frederick Stanley Moxford. He wanted a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency at his local airport (Croydon). It was soon picked up and is now the accepted distress call for planes and ships alike.

A less well-known call sign is “Pan-pan” (from the French
panne
—meaning a breakdown) which is used in less serious incidents such as mechanical problems which are not life-threatening. As with “Mayday” it is repeated three times to ensure clarity and to prevent confusion.

But I digress: what of May Day, the first day of May and the first day of summer? Traditionally, this was always celebrated in Northern Europe as a chance to say farewell to winter and an opportunity to have a celebratory bonfire (in some parts of Ireland it is still known as Bonfire Night, whereas the English save that expression for 5 November, being Guy Fawkes’ Night).

It is also the subject of some lovely customs, many of which lasted longer where the Celtic traditions remained strong, rather than elsewhere. Take the charming custom of washing your face with May dew. The 1652 book by Dr. Gerard Boate entitled
Irelands Naturall History
says this of the custom:

The English women, and gentlewomen of Ireland…did use in the beginning of summer to gather good store of dew, to keep it by them al the year after for several good uses both of physick and otherwise, wherein by experience they have learnt it to be very available.

The collecting of dew would take weeks of preparation. In April, May, and into June the girls would get up before the dawn, go to the green fields (wheat was best), and harvest the dew—either with their bare hands, or more especially by spreading a sheet out over the moist grass, and then wringing it out and collecting it in a glass jar. This would be topped up every day, and for the whole year would sit in the sunlight by a suitable window.

Every few days the concoction would be purified by carefully straining off the water so as to leave behind any sediment, dirt, or other impurities. And so, after nearly a year in which the freshest of fresh waters was imbued with sunbeams, it could be splashed on the face! Dr. Boate’s book opined,
“The dew, thus thoroughly purified, looketh whitish, and keepeth good for a year or two after.”

The distillation was at its most powerful if applied before sunrise on 1 May, and in an age when we consider it beneficial to rub avocado extract into our hair or spread unmentionable products over our skin to prevent wrinkles, who is to say that a spot of early morning dew water is not just as magical in its properties?

The practice gave rise to the riddle:

I washed my face in water

That had neither rained nor run,

And I dried it on a towel

That was neither woven nor spun.

The answer lay in the fact that having washed your face in dew, you always allowed it to dry in the fresh air—you would hardly go to all that trouble and then wipe it off afterwards!

This custom was by no means limited to the uneducated country poor—it was also favoured by ladies of fashion and has in some cases been transported, and lives on in at least one household in the United States. One woman tells a
story
that goes back several generations of how in one particular family the girls always set their alarms for six in the morning on May 1 so that they could run outside and rub their faces in the morning dew on the lawn!

Among the anticipated benefits of applying dew to the face (or even better, naked dew rolling!) was that it would prevent freckles, sunburn, and wrinkles. It could prevent headaches, and even walking barefoot through the dew would ease bunions and callouses as well as preventing corns! For some reason it also enabled the person concerned to have greater dexterity in untangling nets, ropes, or freeing knots from string and thread. (Memo to self: get up early 1 May and roll around in the buff on the neighbour’s lawn—I don’t have a lawn, so his will have to do!)

Ireland, in particular, had many other May Day traditions, including cutting down a thorn-bush and putting it up outside your house and decorating it with ribbons. Another custom was to keep the brightly coloured egg-shells left over from Easter, and then string them together as a loop to hang around the tree.

But tree-rustling was such a problem that a law was passed in the reign of George III (1775) stating:

every person who shall put up any Maybush opposite or near to his or her house or suffer any Maybush to be so put up or to remain for the space of three hours opposite or near to his or her own house…not being a person lawfully possessed of trees or woods or not having lawfully obtained the same…shall forfeit and pay such sum not exceeding forty shillings
[two pounds—the equivalent today of perhaps $220].

Another tradition was putting up a Maypole at a crossroads. The tallest was reputedly at the Strand in London, near the present St. Mary-le-Strand Church. It was erected shortly after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 (all such practices having been banned under Cromwell’s Protectorate) and was over 130 feet tall. It stood there until a storm blew it down twelve years later.

The tradition of putting up maypoles caused our legislators to impose controls (presumably because of the risk of serious injury to road users from collapsing poles). An Act of Parliament dated 1792 was passed to
“Improve and keep in repair the Post roads of the Kingdom”
. Amongst other things it stated that
“If any person…shall erect any sign-post or maypole or maybush on any part of the said roads…every person so offending shall forfeit the sum of twenty shillings.”