On Christmas Day, and indeed during all the Christmas holidays, the tables were spread from morn till eve; sirloins of beef, mince pies and foaming ale formed the chief ingredients of the feast. In many places, in the houses of the great, the ceremonious custom was observed of bringing in the boar’s head on a dish of costly plate, the whole company following in procession, chanting the well-known lines beginning:— Caput apri defero, Reddens laudes Domino. The custom still observed at Queen’s College, Oxford, of bringing in the boar’s head at Christmas is said to have arisen from the adventure of a student of that house in far-off legendary days, who, according to the wont of students in those distant times, was walking abroad studying his Aristotle, when a wild boar, who happened to be in the neighbourhood, whether annoyed at having his lair disturbed, or out of mere malice, charged down upon him with open mouth. However, the student’s presence of mind did not desert him; with a loud cry of “Græcum est” he thrust the volume down the throat of the monster, who, choked by the tough morsel, then and there expired. Turning from the tables of the great to the cottage of the humble, we find a description of the effect of Old Father Christmas’s approach upon the labourer’s home in Bampfylde’s _Sonnet on Christmas_:— With footstep slow, in furry pall yclad, His brows enreathed with holly never sere, Old Christmas comes, to close the waned year, And aye the shepherd’s heart to make right glad, Who, when his teeming flocks are homeward had, To blazing hearth repairs, and nut-brown beer, And views well pleased the ruddy prattlers dear Hug the grey mongrel; meanwhile maid and lad Squabble for roasted crabs—Thee, Sire, we hail, {263} Whether thine aged limbs thou dost enshroud, In vest of snowy white, and hoary veil, Or wrap’st thy visage in a sable cloud: Thee we proclaim with mirth and cheer, nor fail To greet thee well with many a carol loud. It is the practice in many parts of Cumberland at Christmas to roast apples before the fire on a string, and hold under them a bowl of spiced or mulled ale. The apples roast on until they drop into the ale. Many an ancient Christmas carol tells of the joviality which at that time reigned supreme. The following example is taken from a collection of rare old songs and carols:— Mye boyes come here Theres capital cheere ’Tis Christmas tyme, let myrthe goe rounde With a flaggon of ale, by tyme well brown’d. Drink boyes drinke And never thinke Of crustie old tyme, his scythe and his glasse, He cannot, nor dare not, this waye passe. Drinke and be wise Till red Phœbus arise And banish colde care from the good waning year: The Old year he shall dye, mid plenty of cheere. My boyes, come passe Your empty glasse, And fill them with Ale, as the world is of strife And toaste to the widow, the maide and the wife.