TWELFTH NIGHT, OR KING AND QUEEN. Now, now the mirth comes, With the cake full of plums, Where bean's the king of the sport here; Beside we must know, The pea also Must revel as queen in the court here. Begin then to choose, This night as you use, Who shall for the present delight here; Be a king by the lot, And who shall not Be twelfth-day queen for the night here. Which known, let us make And let not a man then be seen here, Who unurged will not drink, To the base from the brink, A health to the king and the queen here. Next crown the bowl full With gentle lambs' wool; Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger, And thus ye must do To make the wassail a swinger. Give then to the king And queen wassailing ; And though with ale ye be wet here As free from offence, As when ye innocent met here. OR, THE MORROW AFTER TWELFTH DAY. PARTLY work and partly play Ye must on St. Distaff's day; From the plough soon free your team, Then come home and fother them. Give St. Distaff all the right, Then bid Christmas sport good night; And next morrow, every one To his own vocation. CEREMONY FOR CANDLEMAS EVE. OWN with rosemary and bays, The greener box, for show. The holly hitherto did sway; Let box now domineer, Then youthful box, which now hath grace Grown old, surrender must his place When yew is out, then birch comes in, Both of a fresh and fragrant kin, To honour Whitsuntide. Green rushes then, and sweetest bents, Come in for comely ornaments, To re-adorn the house. Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold; This is the first reference to the mistletoe, in its quality of a Christmas evergreen, that we have met with in the writings of our early poets. ANOTHER CEREMONY. Down with the rosemary, and so Down with the bays and mistletoe ; Wherewith ye dressed the Christmas hall; That so the superstitious find No one least branch there left behind; CEREMONY FOR CANDLEMAS DAY. KINDLE the Christmas brand, and then Till sunset let it burn; Which quenched, then lay it up again, Part must be kept, wherewith to tend In Herrick's time it was customary with the country people to prolong the merriment of the Christmas season until Candlemas Day— a circumstance referred to in the following couplet: CANDLEMAS DAY. END now the white-loaf and the pie, "ALL plums the prophet's sons defy, Christmas, farewell! thy days, I fear, NEDHAM. DIVISION IV. CHRISTMAS SONGS AND CAROLS OF THE TIME OF THE CIVIL WARS, THE COMMONWEALTH, AND THE RESTORATION. HE lively Christmas verses by Wither, written before his Puritanical zeal had developed itself, that open the present section of our work, introduce us to an amusing picture of the rejoicings of the season, ere the civil troubles of the reign of Charles I. had interfered, to throw a damper on the national hilarity. The holly and the ivy had not yet come to be regarded as emblems of Paganism. The Christmas log still blazed on the hospitable hearth, and music and dancing were not considered irrelevant and indecent amusements. The wassail bowl, too, was still in fashion, and even mumming was indulged in by both young. men and maidens: "With twenty other gambols mo, Because they would be merry." In the course of a few short years we find that penalties were enforced against parish officers for permitting the decking of churches, and even for allowing divine service to be performed therein on Christmas morning; and, to quote the words of old John Taylor, the water poet :"All the liberty and harmless sports, the merry gambols, dances, and friscols, with which the toiling ploughman and labourer once a year were wont to be recreated, and their spirits and hopes revived for a whole twelvemonth, are now extinct and put out of use, in such a fashion as if they never had been. Thus are the merry lords of bad rule at Westminster; nay more, their madness hath extended itself to the very vegetables; the senseless trees, herbs, and weeds, are in a profane estimation amongst them-holly, ivy, mistletoe, rosemary, bays, are accounted ungodly branches of superstition for your entertainment. And to roast a sirloin of beef, to touch a collar of brawn, to take a pie, to put a plum in the pottage pot, to burn a great candle, or to lay one block the more in the fire for your sake, Master Christmas, is enough to |