— 242 — 



Our steward hath provided this 

 In honor of the king of Bliss 

 Which on this day to be served is 



In Reginensi Atrio. 



Caput apri defer o 



Reddens laudes domino. 



Oxford and Cambridge, where the wassailers pom- 

 pously introduced the grim boar's head, bearing in its 

 extended jaws an apple or a lemon, to the famous, very 

 old health : 



Caput Apris defer o 



Reddeo laudes Domino. 

 The bore's head in hande brynge I, 

 With garlands gay and rosemary. 

 I pray you still sing merely. 



Qui estis in convivis. 



The bore's head, I understande, 

 Is the chefe servyce in this land 

 Looke wherever it be fande. 

 Servile cum, cantico ! 



Be glad both man and lasse, 

 For this hath ordayned our Stewarde, 

 To cheere you all this Christmasse 

 With bore's head with mustarde. 



— (Christmas Carolles by Wynkyn de Worde, 1521.) 



A delightful legend in England shed its glamour over 

 Christmas : the legend of the miraculous thorn-tree of 

 Glastonbury Abbey, in Somersetshire, " which tree 

 always blows on Christmas Day." It had sprouted from 

 the staff of St. Joseph of Arimathea, a dry hawthorn- 

 stick, stuck by him on a hill, where the saintly gentle- 

 man and his weary companions had rested ; that thorn, 

 however, had been grubbed up in the time of the civil 

 wars, but others had been raised from it in the lawns. 



In Scotland, the Lord of Misrule made room for the 

 Abbot of Unreason, until the 3^ear 1515, when, it seems, 

 this important potentate was dethroned by act of par- 

 liament. 



