Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
- Author: Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer
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A popular name for Easter Monday was Black Monday, so called, says Stow, because “in the 34th of Edward III. (1360), the 14th of April, and the morrow after Easter Day, King Edward, with his host, lay before the city of Paris; which day was full dark of mist and hail, and so bitter cold, that many men died on their horses’ backs with the cold. Wherefore unto this day it hath been call’d the Blacke Monday.” Thus, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 5), Launcelot says, “it was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at six o’clock i’ the morning.”
St. David’s Day (March 1). This day is observed by the Welsh in honor of St. David, their patron saint, when, as a sign of their patriotism, they wear a leek. Much doubt exists as to the origin of this custom. According to the Welsh, it is because St. David ordered his Britons to place leeks in their caps, that they might be distinguished from their Saxon foes. Shakespeare introduces the custom into his play of “Henry V.” (iv. 7), where Fluellen, addressing the monarch, says:
“Your grandfather of famous memory, an’t please your majesty, and your great uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here in France.
K. Henry. They did, Fluellen.
Flu. Your majesty says very true: if your majesties is remembered of it, the Welshmen did goot service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which, your majesty know, to this hour is an honourable padge of the service; and I do pelieve, your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day.”
It has been justly pointed out, however, that this allusion by Fluellen to the Welsh having worn the leek in battle under the Black Prince is not, as some writers suppose, wholly decisive of its having originated in the fields of Cressy, but rather shows that when Shakespeare wrote Welshmen wore leeks.[650] In the same play, too (iv. 1), the well-remembered Fluellen’s enforcement of Pistol to eat the leek he had ridiculed further establishes the wearing as a usage. Pistol says:
Upon Saint Davy’s day.”
In days gone by this day was observed by royalty; and in 1695 we read how William III. wore a leek on St. David’s Day, “presented to him by his sergeant, Porter, who hath as perquisites all the wearing apparel his majestie had on that day, even to his sword.” It appears that formerly, among other customs, a Welshman was burned in effigy upon “St. Tavy’s Day,” an allusion to which occurs in “Poor Robin’s Almanack” for 1757:
To see th’ English hang poor Taff:
A pair of breeches and a coat,
Hat, shoes, and stockings, and what not,
Are stuffed with hay, to represent
The Cambrian hero thereby meant.”
St. Patrick’s Day (March 17). Shakespeare, in “Hamlet” (i. 5), makes the Danish prince swear by St. Patrick, on which Warburton remarks that the whole northern world had their learning from Ireland.[651] As Mr. Singer[652] observes, however, it is more probable that the poet seized the first popular imprecation that came to his mind, without regarding whether it suited the country or character of the person to whom he gave it. Some, again, have supposed that there is a reference here to St. Patrick’s purgatory, but this does not seem probable.
St. George’s Day (April 23). St. George, the guardian saint of England, is often alluded to by Shakespeare. His festival, which was formerly celebrated by feasts of cities and corporations, is now almost passed over without notice. Thus, Bedford, in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 1), speaks of keeping “our great Saint George’s feast withal.” “God and St. George” was once a common battle-cry, several references to which occur in Shakespeare’s plays. Thus, in “Henry V.” (iii. 1), the king says to his soldiers:[653]
Again, in “1 Henry VI.” (iv. 2), Talbot says:
Prosper our colours in this dangerous fight!”
The following injunction, from an old act of war, concerning the use of St. George’s name in onsets, is curious: “Item, that all souldiers entering into battaile, assault, skirmish, or other faction of armes, shall have for their common crye and word, St. George, forward, or, Upon them, St. George, whereby the souldier is much comforted, and the enemie dismaied, by calling to minde the ancient valour of England, with which that name has so often been victorious.”[654]
The combat of this saint on horseback with a dragon has been very long established as a subject for sign-painting. In “King John” (ii. 1) Philip says:
Sits on his horseback at mine hostess’ door.”
It is still a very favorite sign. In London alone[655] there are said to be no less than sixty-six public-houses and taverns with the sign of St. George and the Dragon, not counting beer-houses and coffee-houses.
May Day. The festival of May day has, from the earliest times, been most popular in this country, on account of its association with the joyous season of spring. It was formerly celebrated with far greater enthusiasm than nowadays, for Bourne tells us how the young people were in the habit of rising a little after midnight and walking to some neighboring wood, accompanied with music and the blowing of horns, where they broke down branches from the trees, which, decorated with nosegays and garlands of flowers, were brought home soon after sunrise, and placed at their doors and windows. Shakespeare, alluding to this practice, informs us how eagerly it was looked forward to, and that it was impossible to make the people sleep on May morning. Thus, in “Henry VIII.” (v. 4), it is said:
Unless we sweep ’em from the door with cannons—
To scatter ’em, as ’tis to make ’em sleep
On May-day morning.”
Again, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (i. 1), Lysander, speaking of these May-day observances, says to Hermia:
Steal forth thy father’s house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.”
And Theseus says (iv. 1):
The rite of May.”[656]
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (ii. 3), one of the four countrymen asks: “Do we all hold against the Maying?”
In Chaucer’s “Court of Love” we read that early on May day “Fourth goth al the Court, both most and lest, to fetche the flowris fresh and blome.” In the reign of Henry VIII. it is on record that the heads of the corporation of London went out into the high grounds of Kent to gather the May, and were met on Shooter’s Hill by the king and his queen, Katherine of Arragon, as they were coming from the palace of Greenwich. Until within a comparatively recent period, this custom still lingered in some of the counties. Thus, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the following doggerel was sung:
For I’ve been four long miles from hame,
I’ve been gathering my garlands gay,
Rise up, fair maidens, and take in your May.”
Many of the ballads sung nowadays, in country places, by the village children, on May morning, as they carry their garlands from door to door, undoubtedly refer to the old practice of going a-Maying, although fallen into disuse.
In olden times nearly every village had its May-pole, around which, decorated with wreaths of flowers, ribbons, and flags, our merry ancestors danced from morning till night. The earliest representation of an English May-pole is that published in the “Variorum Shakespeare,” and depicted on a window at Betley, in Staffordshire, then the property of Mr. Tollet, and which he was disposed to think as old as the time of Henry VIII. The pole is planted in a mound of earth, and has affixed to it St. George’s red-cross banner and a white pennon or streamer with a forked end. The shaft of the pole is painted in a diagonal line of black colors upon a yellow ground, a characteristic decoration of all these ancient May-poles, as alluded to by Shakespeare in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 2), where it gives point to Hermia’s allusion to her rival Helena as “a painted May-pole.”[657] The popularity of the May-pole in former centuries is shown by the fact that one of our London parishes, St. Andrew Undershaft, derives its name from the May-pole which overhung its steeple, a reference to which we find made by Geoffrey Chaucer, who, speaking of a vain boaster, says:
As ye would bear the great shaft of Cornhill.”
London, indeed, had several May-poles, one of which stood in Basing Lane, near St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was a large fir pole, forty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter, and fabled to be the justing staff of Gerard the Giant. Only a few, however, of the old May-poles remain scattered here and there throughout the country. One still supports a weathercock in the churchyard at Pendleton, Manchester; and in Derbyshire, a few years ago, several were to be seen standing on some of the village greens. The rhymes made use of as the people danced round the May-pole varied according to the locality, and oftentimes combined a curious mixture of the jocose and sacred.
Another feature of the May-day festivities was the morris-dance, the principal characters of which generally were Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Scarlet, Stokesley, Little John, the Hobby-horse, the Bavian or Fool, Tom the Piper, with his pipe and tabor. The number of characters varied much at different times and places. In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 2), the clown says: “As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney ... a morris for May-day.”[658]
In “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1) the Duke of York says of Cade:
Him caper upright, like a wild Morisco,
Shaking the bloody darts, as he his bells.”
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (iii. 5) Gerrold, the schoolmaster, thus describes to King Theseus the morris-dance:
We are a few of those collected here,
That ruder tongues distinguish villagers;
And, to say verity and not to fable,
We are a merry rout, or else a rable,
Or company, or, by a figure, choris,
That
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