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YULE-TIME. 



I SUPPOSE most people know that Yule was the name 

 originally applied by our Scandinavian ancestors to the 

 great annual festival of the winter solstice, which they 

 celebrated with feasting and revelry and wassail "in 

 commemoration of the return of the fiery sun-wheel." 



Shetlanders do not speak of Christmas so much as 

 of Yule. Nay, more, if you were asking a native why 

 Yule is kept as a holiday, the chances are that his reply 

 would contain no reference whatever to the Nativity. 

 He would simply say, it " had aye been kept by the auld 

 folk " — meaning his forefathers. Be that as it may. 

 Yule is in Shetland the great holiday of the year, or 

 at least was so when I was a boy. But Yule was not 

 the 25 th of December by the modern calendar, but 

 the 6th of January; for in the "melancholy isles of 

 furthest Thule," time was always reckoned according 

 to the " old style." We were always, therefore, twelve 

 days behind the rest of the civilised world. All that, 

 however, is now passing away, thanks to steamboats 

 and electric telegraphs and newspapers and general 

 intercourse with the South ; and I daresay Yule, the 

 dear Yule I remember so well, will ere long be known 

 and spoken of only as a tradition ; for altogether life 



