Nicholas was, of course, the patron saint of schoolboys and of children generally[1328]. His prominence in the winter processions of Germany and the presents which in modern folk-belief he brings to children have been touched upon in an earlier chapter. It now appears that originally he took rather than gave presents, and that where he appeared in person he was represented by the Boy Bishop. And this suggests the possibility that it was this connexion with St. Nicholas, and not the profane mummings of Michael the Drunkard at Constantinople, which led to the use of the term ‘bishop’ for the _dominus festi_, first at the Feast of Boys, and ultimately at the other Christmas feasts as well. For St. Nicholas was not only the boys’ saint _par excellence_; he was also, owing to the legend of his divinely ordered consecration when only a layman as bishop of Myra, the bishop saint _par excellence_[1329]. However this may be, I think it is a fair guess that St. Nicholas’ day was an older date for a Feast of Boys than that of the Holy Innocents, and that the double date records an instance of the process, generally imperfect, by which, under Roman and Christian influence, the beginning of winter customs of the Germano-Keltic peoples were gradually transformed into mid-winter customs[1330]. The beginning of winter feast was largely a domestic feast, and the children probably had a special part in it. It is possible also to trace a survival of the corresponding beginning of summer feast in the day of St. Gregory on March 12, which was also sometimes marked by the election of a _Schul-Bischof_[1331]. CHAPTER XVI GUILD FOOLS AND COURT FOOLS