British Popular Customs, Present and Past: Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People. Arranged According to the Calendar of the Year. — John Shaqi
British Popular Customs, Present and Past: Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People. Arranged According to the Calendar of the Year.Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (Thomas Firminger)
History
British Popular Customs, Present and Past: Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People. Arranged According to the Calendar of the Year.
Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (Thomas Firminger)
Folklore -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Social life and customs
Strype, in his _Ecclesiastical Memorials_ (1822, vol. iii. part i. p.
331), says: On the 25th of January (1554), being St. Paul’s Day, was a
general procession of St. Paul by every parish, both priests and clerks,
in copes, to the number of an hundred and sixty, singing _Salve festa
dies_, with ninety crosses borne. The procession was through Cheap unto
Leadenhall. And before went two schools; that is, first, all the
children of the Gray Friars, and then those of St. Paul’s school. There
were eight bishops, and the Bishop of London, mitred, bearing the
Sacrament, with many torches burning, and a canopy borne over. And so
about the churchyard, and in at the West door, with the Lord Mayor and
Aldermen, and all the Companies in their best liveries. And within a
while after, the King came, and the Lord Cardinal, and the Prince of
Piemont, and divers lords and knights. At the foot of the steps to the
choir, as the King went up, kneeled the gentlemen lately pardoned,
offering him their service. After mass, they returned to the court to
dinner. And at night bonfires, and great ringing of bells in every
church. And all this joy was for the conversion of the realm.
It was on this day that the husbandmen of old used to make prognostics
of the weather, and of other matters for the whole year, a custom which
Bourne (_Antiquitates Vulgares_, chap. xviii. p. 159) has tried to
unravel.--_New Curiosities of Literature_, Soane, 1847, p. 42.
_St. Paul’s Cathedral._--One of the strangest of the old ceremonies in
which the clergy of St. Paul’s Cathedral used to figure was that which
was performed twice a year, namely, on the day of the Conversion, and on
that of the Commemoration of St. Paul. On the former of these festivals
a fat buck, and on the latter a fat doe, was presented to the church by
the family of Baud, in consideration of some lands which they held of
the Dean and Chapter at West Lee in Essex. The original agreement made
with Sir William Le Baud, in 1274, was that he himself should attend in
person with the animals; but some years afterwards it was arranged that
the presentation should be made by a servant, accompanied by a
deputation of part of the family. The priests, however, continued to
perform their part in the show. On the aforesaid days, the buck and doe
were brought by one or more servants at the hour of the procession, and
through the midst thereof, and offered at the high altar of St. Paul’s
Cathedral; after which the persons that brought the buck received of the
Dean and Chapter, by the hands of their chamberlain, twelvepence for
their entertainment; but nothing when they brought the doe. The buck
being brought to the steps of the altar, the Dean and Chapter,
apparelled in copes and proper vestments, with garlands of roses on
their heads, sent the body of the buck to be baked, and had the head and
horns fixed on a pole before the cross in their procession round about
the church, till they issued at the West door, where the keeper that
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