•YULE AND CHRISTMAS THEIR PLACE IN THE GERMANIC YEAR BY ALEXANDER XILLE, Ph.D. LECTURER IN GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW DAVID NUTT, 270-271 STRAND, LONDON 1899 ^^HBHAL I 7S77f Only two hundred copies of this book are for sale GLASGOW ! PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY DEAR FRIEND, GEORGE NEILSON, AUTHOR OF "trial BY COMBAT," " PEEL ; ITS MEANING AND DERIVATION," " CAUDATUS ANGLICUS," ETC., ETC TO WHOSE PERSONAL ASSISTANCE, LEARNING, AND LIBRARY IT OWES MORE THAN TO ANY SOURCE REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT OR NOTES. 175779 PREFACE This book treats of the problems connected with the Germanic year— the three-score-day tide of Yule, the Germanic adoption of the Roman calendar, and the introduction of the festival of Christ's Nativity into a part of the German year, which till then had apparently been without a festivity. It traces the revolution brought about by these events, in custom, belief, and legend up to the fourteenth century. By that time, the Author believes, most of the fundamental features which go towards the making of modern Christmas had already come to have their centre in the 25th day of December. Five chapters of the present book—but somewhat shortened—appear simultaneously in the Proceedings of the Glasgow Archmological Society. ALEXANDER TILLE. 2 Strathmore Gardens, Hillhead, Glasgow, March, 1899. CONTENTS CHAP. I. The Germanic Year, I II. The Beginning of the Anglo-German Year, , III. The Feast of Martinmas, 24 IV. Martinmas, and the Tri-Partition of the Year, 34 V. Martinmas, and the Dual Division of the Year 49 VI. Martinmas and Michaelmas, 57 VII. Solstices and Equinoxes, . 71 VIII. The Calends of January, 81 IX. Tabula Fortunae, .... 107 X. The Nativity of Christ, 119 XI. Beda, De Mensibus Anglorum, . 138 XII. Nativity, Christes M^ss, and Christmas, 158 XIII. The Scandinavian Year, 177 XIV. Scandinavian Offering Tides, . ... 189 XV. Scandinavian Yule, 200 XVI. Results, 214 ; YULE AND CHRISTMAS: THEIR PLACE IN THE GERMANIC YEAR. CHAPTER I. THE GERMANIC YEAR. The oldest descriptive remark on the mode in which the Germanics divided their year is exactly eighteen hundred years old. It is found in the Germania of Tacitus, which, in all probability, was written a.d. 98, and " runs thus : They do not divide the year into so many seasons as we do. Only winter, spring, and summer have a name and a meaning among them the name of autumn they know as little as its gifts." ^ It plainly means that the Germans of the first century of our era divided their year into three seasons, the names of which cannot, of course, have exactly corre- sponded to the Latin terms, htems, ver, and aestas, each covering a quarter of a year. This statement has been assailed from various sides, and for various reasons, even Jacob Grimm expressing his belief that it was based on some misconception by Tacitus.^ He understood Tacitus to refer solely to the meaning of the words, and remarked that the Romans did not use ^ " Germania, chap, xxvi., Unde annum quoque ipsum non in totidem digerunt species : hiems et ver et aestas intellectum et vocabula habent ; autumni perinde nomen et bona ignorantur." ^Deutsche Mythologie, p. 717. A 3 YULE AND CHRISTMAS the name of atitumnus for the harvest of grain, but for the gathering of fruit, vintage, and after-math, things which were at that time unknown to the Germans. But such a view is scarcely tenable. For Tacitus speaks decidedly of the seasons as such, and in the case of autumnus, at the non- existence of which the Romans might wonder, he makes an explanatory and rather melancholy observation. In course of time, on a closer study of the questions connected with the Germanic partition of the year, extensive material has been discovered which undoubtedly goes to support Tacitus. Grimm himself lived to collect part of it, and to admit that he had been wrong.^ Another scholar has told us that he knows better than Tacitus, and that the ancient Germans had the word herbst, with the meaning " time of fruits." But that word seems to have meant originally, just like English harvest, the act of reaping the ripe grain and fruits, and not the time of their ripeness, though it was later used to denote the period of bringing in the harvest. Considerations of that kind can as little influence our judgment V on Tacitus' report as can the fact that we are unable to say exactly which German word he meant to correspond with Latin ver, spring ; for spring, lent (German Lenz), and Friihling are, as is generally admitted, of later growth. The tri-partition of the Germanic year is an unshakable fact. It has been preserved for a very long time on legal ground. The three seasons answer to the three not-ordered law courts, i.e., the three annual legal meetings which were fixed by tradition and not called by special royal ordinance. This fact is even admitted by Professor Weinhold of Berlin in his book on the German division of the year, who, on the whole, takes the view that the Germanics, just like the Romans, quartered their year according to solstices and equinoxes.^ Professor Weinhold, however, there concedes so much as to acknowledge that those law courts were originally held at the beginning of winter, in spring, and about midsummer : whilst later the beginning of winter, midwinter, spring; midwinter, Easter, mid- ^ Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, Leipzig, 1848, Vol. L, p. 74. ^ Uber die deutsche Jahrteilung, Kiel, 1862, p. 8. THE GERMANIC YEAR 3 summer ; and February, May, autumn, took the place of those terms- Professor Weinhold gives ^ proofs for the several cases. Others agree with him in this proposition. So the greatest German authority on chronology, ^ *' Grotefend, says : The tri-partition of the year has been preserved almost exclusively in juridical relations, and there finds its principal appli- cation in the so-called dreidinge, echteitdinge, echtendage, or eiting, the not-ordered law court of the country, which was held at three terms in the year. The terms vary, though with a general prevalence of midwinter (or beginning of winter), Easter, and midsummer (also the Twelve-nights, Easter, and Pentecost, or St. John's day), the basis of the tri-partition being a division of the year into winter, spring, and summer." The capitulary of Louis the Pious, of 817, ordains "/« anno tria solummodo generalia plactda"^ which, of course, can only be taken as a codification of existing law, and not as a creation of a new jurisdiction. This usage lived on till at least the fifteenth century.^ The fact of the early existence of three German annual law courts is so generally admitted that it is an exception for any authority to disagree. And even those who disagree have to account for a number of important indisputable facts. So Pfannenschmid,^ believing that there were four Germanic law assemblies annually, finds it extremely strange that far more frequently only three such assemblies are enumerated, and that the examples of four assemblies are both rarer and later than those of three. In Anglo-Saxon times the tri-partition of the year was preserved in the mode of paying the wages of female servants, who received a sheep for the feast at the beginning of winter, a measure of beans for the mid- ' lent dinner (Sunday Jnvocavit), and whey on siimera ' (corresponding ^ C/l>er die deutsche Jahrteilung, Kiel, 1862, pp. 18, 19. ^ Zeitrechnung des deutschen Mittelalters, 1891, p. 90, Jahreszeitefi. ^ Sohm, Fr'dnkische Keichs- und Gerichtsverfassung, p. 398. " * " 1407 in unsen geheygeden gerichten to Luneborch drie des jares to den eddagen (Centralarchiv zu Oldenburg), Grotefend, Zeiirechnung, II., 2, 194, Hannover und Leipzig, 1898. * Germanische Erntefeste, 1878, p. 338. ^ 4 YULE AND CHRISTMAS to Old Icelandic ^ at sumri^ i.e., June 9), which is about July lo.^ It not only appears from the value of the gifts mentioned that the gift for the winter feast was the largest, but besides the enumeration of the three terms begins with that term, as the old Germanic, and so late as in the eleventh century the economic, year began with it.^ In the thirteenth century three terms existed in some districts of Eng- ^ Thorpe's Ancient Laws, I., 436, 7, "Rectitude Ancillae : Uni ancillae Vlll. pondia annonae ad victum. i. ovis vel III. denarios, ad hiemale companagium, i. sester fabae ad quadragesimalem convictum. In estate suum hweig vel i. denaiium ; Be Wifmonna Metsunge. Dheowan wifmen viii. pund comes to mete, i. sceap odhdhe 11 1. peningas to winter-sufle, l. syster beana to Isengten-sufle. hwseig on sumera odhdhe l. pening." 2 Male servants also received three such gifts a year [Ibid., I., 436, 7: "Omnibus ehtemannis jure competit Natalis firma, et Paschalis sulhsecer, id est, carruce acra, et manipulus Augusti in augmentum jure debiti recti ; Eallum gehte-mannum gebyredh Mid- winter feorm. and Eastor-feorm sulh-aecer. and hserfest-handful. to-eacan heora nyd-rihte "), though two of the terms for these had, in the eleventh century, shifted to the two Christian festivals, Christmas and Easter, while the third had, in the same direction, moved onwards to August. The payment of shepherds' wages is regulated not so much by an old tri-partition of the year as the by development of sheep during the year [Ibid., I., 438, 9 : " Pastoris ovium rectum est, ut habeat dingiam xii. noctium in Natali Domini, et i. agnum de juventute hornotina, et l. belflis, id est, timpani vellus, et lac gregis sui, Vli.