Loading your reading…

The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 3 (of 3): Everlasting Calerdar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the AlmanacHone, William

History

The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 3 (of 3): Everlasting Calerdar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac

Name: The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 3 (of 3): Everlasting Calerdar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac
Author: Hone, William

Hone, William

Days; Great Britain -- Social life and customs

The song always concludes with “wishing a merry Christmas and a happy
new year.” When wood was chiefly used as fuel, in heating ovens at
Christmas, this was the most appropriate season for the _hagman_, or
wood-cutter, to remind his customers of his services, and to solicit
alms. The word _hag_ is still used in Yorkshire, to signify a wood. The
“hagg” opposite to Easby formerly belonged to the abbey, to supply them
with fuel. Hagman may be a name compounded from it. Some derive it from
the Greek Αγιαμηνη, the holy month, when the festivals of the church for
our Saviour’s birth were celebrated. Formerly, on the last day of the
year, the monks and friars used to make a plentiful harvest, by begging
from door to door, and reciting a kind of carol, at the end of every
stave of which they introduced the words “agia mene,” alluding to the
birth of Christ. A very different interpretation, however, was given to
it by one John Dixon, a Scotch presbyterian minister, when holding forth
against this custom in one of his sermons at Kelso. “Sirs, do you know
what the _hagman_ signifies? It is the devil to be in the house; that is
the meaning of its Hebrew original.”[6]

       *       *       *       *       *


SONNET

ON THE NEW YEAR.

    When we look back on hours long past away,
      And every circumstance of joy, or woe
      That goes to make this strange beguiling show,
    Call’d life, as though it were of yesterday,
    We start to learn our quickness of decay.
      Still flies unwearied Time;--on still we go
      And whither?--Unto endless weal or woe,
    As we have wrought our parts in this brief play.
    Yet many have I seen whose thin blanched locks
      But ill became a head where Folly dwelt,
    Who having past this storm with all its shocks,
      Had nothing learnt from what they saw or felt:
    Brave spirits! that can look, with heedless eye,
    On doom unchangeable, and fixt eternity.

  [5] Every-Day Book, i. 9.

  [6] Clarkson’s History of Richmond, cited by a correspondent, A. B.


~Antiquities.~


WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

The following letter, written by Horace Walpole, in relation to the
tombs, is curious. Dr. ----, whom he derides, was Dr. Zachary Pearce,
dean of Westminster, and editor of Longinus, &c.

  _Strawberry-hill, 1761._

No reviews yet