“How often has it been my melancholy duty to attend, sometimes as chief mourner (or mummer), the funeral of old _Bout de l’An_! A log of wood, wrapt up in sable cloth, was his usual representative, when, with great and even classical solemnity, just as the clock struck twelve, the juvenile procession set itself in motion, every member thereof carrying a lantern scooped out of a turnip, or made of oiled paper.… Ere the law-suit between old and new style was for ever settled, the annual log--Andrew Bonamy is mine authority--underwent the Pagan ceremony of incineration at the Gallet-Heaume.”--(Mr. Métivier in the _Star_, March 14th, 1831.) This is probably one of the superstitious practices against which the ordinance of the Royal Court in 1622 was directed. At the same time, children were wont to go about from house to house to beg for a New Year’s gift, under the name of “hirvières” or “oguinane.” In so doing they chanted the following rude rhyme:-- Oguinâni! Oguinâno! Ouvre ta pouque, et pis la recllios.[14] In Scotland _Hogmanay_ is the universal popular name for the last day of the year. “It is a day of high festival among young and old--but particularly the young.… It is still customary, in retired and primitive towns, for the children of the poorer class of people to get themselves on that morning swaddled in a great sheet, doubled up in front, so as to form a vast pocket, and then to go along the streets in little bands, calling at the doors of the wealthier classes for an expected dole of wheaten bread. This is called their Hogmanay.”[15]