They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them on the cow's-horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees with their sticks.

The following indications from the wind, on New Year's Eve, are said to be still observed and believed in the highlands of Scotland:

:

"If New Year's Eve night-wind blow south,
It betokeneth warmth and growth;

If west, much milk, and fish in the sea;
If north, much cold and storms there will be;

If east, the trees will bear much fruit;

If north-east, flee it man and brute."]

NEW YEAR'S DAY.

Froze January, leader of the year,

Minced pies in van, and calf's head in the rear.'

CHURCHILL.

As the vulgar, says Bourne, are always very careful to end the old year well, so they are no less solicitous of making a good beginning of the new one. The old one is ended with a

hearty compotation. The new one is opened with the custom of sending presents, which are termed New Year's Gifts, to friends and acquaintance. He resolves both customs into superstitions, as being observed that the succeeding year ought to be prosperous and successful. I find the New Year's Gift thus described in a poem cited in Poole's English Parnassus, in v. January:

"The king of light, father of aged Time,

Hath brought about the day which is the prime
To the slow gliding months, when every eye
Wears symptoms of a sober jollity;

And every hand is ready to present

Some service in a real compliment.

Alluding to an annual insult offered on the 30th of January to the

memory of the unfortunate Charles I.

Whilst some in golden letters write their love,
Some speak affection by a ring or glove,
Or pins and points (for ev'n the peasant may
After his ruder fashion, be as gay

As the brisk courtly Sir), and thinks that he
Cannot, without gross absurdity,

Be this day frugal, and not spare his friend
Some gift, to shew his love finds not an end
With the deceased year."

From the subsequent passage in Bishop Hall's Satires, 1598, it should seem that the usual New Year's Gift of tenantry in the country to their landlords was a capon.

"Yet must he haunt his greedy landlord's hall
With often presents at ech festivall;

With crammed capons every New Yeare's morne,
Or with greene cheeses when his sheepe are shorne,
Or many maunds-full of his mellow fruite," &c.

So, in A Lecture to the People, by Abraham Cowley, 4to, Lond. 1678:

"Ye used in the former days to fall

Prostrate to your landlord in his hall,

When with low legs, and in an humble guise,

Ye offer'd up a capon-sacrifice

Unto his worship, at a New Year's tide."

An orange, stuck with cloves, appears to have been a New Year's Gift. So, Ben Jonson, in his Christmas Masque: "He has an orange and rosemary, but not a clove to stick in it." A gilt nutmeg is mentioned in the same piece, and on the same occasion. The use, however, of the orange, stuck with cloves, may be ascertained from the Seconde Booke of Notable Things, by Thomas Lupton, "Wyne wyll be pleasant in taste and savour, if an orenge or a lymon (stickt round about with cloaves) be hanged within the vessel that it touch not the wyne and so the wyne wyll be preserved from foystiness and evyll savor."-Reed's edition of Shakspeare, Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. The quarto edition of that play, 1598, reads, "A gift nutmeg.

In a volume of Miscellanies, in the British Museum library, without title, printed in Queen Anne's time, p. 65, among "Merry Observations upon every month and every remarkable day throughout the whole year," under January it is said, "On the first day of this month will be given many

more gifts than will be kindly received or gratefully rewarded. Children, to their inexpressible joy, will be drest in their best bibs and aprons, and may be seen handed along streets, some bearing Kentish pippins, others oranges stuck with cloves, in order to crave a blessing of their godfathers and godmothers." In Stephens's Characters, 8vo, Lond. 1631, p. 283," Like an inscription with a fat goose against New Year's Tide."

Bishop Stillingfleet observes, that among the Saxons of the northern nations the Feast of the New Year was observed with more than ordinary jollity: thence, as Olaus Wormius and Scheffer observe, they reckon their age by so many Iolas:1 and Snorro Sturleson describes this New Year's Feast, just as Buchanan sets out the British Saturnalia, by feasting and sending presents or New Year's gifts to one another.2

In Westmoreland and Cumberland, "early on the morning of the 1st of January, the Fæx Populi assemble together, carrying stangs and baskets. Any inhabitant, stranger, or whoever joins not this ruffian tribe in sacrificing to their favorite saint-day, if unfortunate enough to be met by any of the band, is immediately mounted across the stang (if a woman, she is basketed), and carried shoulder height to the nearest public-house, where the payment of sixpence immediately liberates the prisoner. None, though ever so industriously inclined, are permitted to follow their respective avocations on that day."-Gent. Mag. 1791, p. 1169.3

The poet Naogeorgus is cited by Hospinian, as telling us, that it was usual in his time, for friends to present each other with a New Year's Gift; for the husband to give one to his wife; parents to their children; and masters to their ser

1 Iola, to make merry. Goth.

2 There is a curious account of the manner in which the Romans passed their New Year's Day, in Libanii Ekphrasin. Kalendr. p. 178; ed. 1606.

3" It seems it was a custom at Rome, upon New Year's Day, for all tradesmen to work a little in their business by way of omen-for luck's sake, as we say, that they might have constant business all the year after."-Massey's Notes to Ovid's Fasti, p. 14. He translates the passage in his author thus:

With business is the year auspiciously begun;

But every artist, soon as he has try'd

To work a little, lays his work aside.

vants, &c.; a custom derived to the Christian world from the times of Gentilism. The superstition condemned in this by the ancient fathers, lay in the idea of these gifts being considered as omens of success for the ensuing year. In this sense also, and in this sense alone, could they have censured the benevolent compliment of wishing each other a happy New Year. The latter has been adopted by the modern Jews, who, on the first day of the month Tisri, have a splendid entertainment, and wish each other a happy New Year. Hospinian also informs us that at Rome, on New Year's Day, no one would suffer a neighbour to take fire out of his house, or anything composed of iron; neither could he be prevailed upon to lend any article on that day.

The following is Barnabe Googe's translation of what relates to New Year's Day in Naogeorgus, better known by the name of "The Popish Kingdom," 1570.

"The next to this is New Yeare's Day, whereon to every frende
They costly presents in do bring, and Newe Yeare's Giftes do sende.
These giftes the husband gives his wife, and father eke the childe,
And maister on his men bestowes the like with favour milde;
And good beginning of the yeare they wishe and wishe againe,
According to the auncient guise of heathen people vaine.
These eight days no man doth require his dettes of any man,
Their tables do they furnish out with all the meate they can:
With marchpaynes, tartes, and custards great, they drink with

staring eyes,

They rowte and revell, feede and feaste, as merry all as pyes:
As if they should at th' entrance of this New Yeare hap to die,
Yet would they have their bellies full, and auncient friends allie."

Pennant tells us that the Highlanders, on New Year's Day, burn juniper before their cattle; and on the first Monday in every quarter sprinkle them with urine. Christie, in his Inquiry into the ancient Greek Game, supposed to have been invented by Palamedes," 1801, p. 136, says, "The new year of the Persians was opened with agricultural ceremonies (as is also the case with the Chinese at the present day)."

The Festival of Fools at Paris, held on this day, continued for two hundred and forty years, when every kind of absurdity and indecency was committed.'

For the following lines, which the common people repeat upon this

"At this instant," says Brand, 66 a little before twelve o'clock, on New Year's Eve, 1794, the bells in London are ringing in the New Year, as they call it." The custom is still continued.

In Scotland, upon the last day of the old year, the children go about from door to door asking for bread and cheese, which they call Nog-Money, in these words:

"Get up, gude wife, and binno sweir (i. e. be not lazy)

And deal your cakes and cheese while you are here;

For the time will come when ye'll be dead,

And neither need your cheese nor bread."

It appears, from several passages in Nichols's Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, that it was anciently a custom at court, at this season, both for the sovereigns to receive and give New Year's Gifts. In the preface, p. 28, we read, "The only remains of this custom at court now is, that the two chaplains in waiting, on New Year's Day, have each a crown piece laid under their plates at dinner." [According to Nichols, the greatest part if not all of the peers and peeresses of the realm, all the bishops, the chief officers of state, and several of the Queen's household servants, even down to her apothecaries, master cooks, serjeant of the pastry, &c., gave New Year's Gifts to Her Majesty, consisting, in general, either of a sum of money, or jewels, trinkets, wearing apparel, &c.

In the Banquet of Jests, 1634, is a story of Archee, the king's jester, who, having fooled many, was at length fooled himself. Coming to a nobleman's upon New Year's Day, to bid him good morrow, Archee received twenty pieces of gold, but, covetously desiring more, he shook them in his hand, and said they were too light. The donor answered, "I prithee, Archee, let me see them again, for there is one amongst them I would be loth to part with." Archee, expecting the sum to be

occasion, on New Year's Day, in some parts of France, I am indebted to Mr. Olivier :