185 



Till St. James's Day be come and gone, 

 You may have hops or you may have none. 

 From these lines we infer that there is no certainty as to the hops 

 being a good crop or otherwise till after the date of this festival ; 

 it depends upon the previous weather. And this seems confirmed by 

 statements we sometimes find in the papers in connection with the 

 hop market. Thus, in the Times of the 25th of July last, the very 

 day on which this festival occurs in our present calendar, we read 

 as follows : " The hop plant is now in so advanced a condition 

 towards maturity, that a reasonable guess may be given as to the 

 prospects of the crop." Then a week after, in the same paper, a 

 report from the hop-gardens at "Worcester says, " The most critical 

 period for hops is past.'' 



And there are other sayings connected with this festival. St. 

 James is said to bring oysters as well as hops. How is this ? If 

 we set the festival forward to Old Style, it occurs on the 5th of 

 August, the first day on which oysters are allowed to be sold in 

 London. Those who have been in London on that day probably 

 know the customary demand made by children on the passer-by in 

 the streets — " Pray remember the grotto ;" this grotto, to which 

 he is asked to contribute, being "formed of oyster shells, and 

 lighted with a votive candle," in honour of St. James. A writer 

 in " Notes and Queries" thinks we have in this custom a 

 " memorial of the world-renowned shrine of St. James at 

 Compostella."* Oysters are closely associated with the scallop- 

 shells formerly worn by pilgrims when they visited the shrine. 



It is further said, " Whoever eats oysters on St. James's day 

 will never want money for the rest of the year," which is only 

 worth mentioning from the circumstance of the same thing being 

 said of those " who eat goose on Michaelmas Day," alFording 

 another instance of the way in which the same ideas and the same 

 sayings were used formerly to be associated with more saints than 

 one, as in the case of those relating to St. Swithiu. And there is 

 yet another instance of this, in a saying with which St. James and 

 St. Swithin are both connected. There is a saying in many places, 

 when it rains on St. Swithin's Day, that " St. Swithin is christen- 



* " Notes and Queries," vol. i., p. 6. See also on this subject Chambers's 

 Book of Days, vol. ii., pp. 121, 122. 



