OLD SAENIA: 



ITS CUSTOMS, MP]RRY-MAKINGS and SUPERSTITIONS. 



(Compiled from iiarious sources.) 

 BY MR. HENllY E. .ArAlt(^UAXI). 



La Longiie Veille, or Long-Eve, December 23, the Mother- 

 night of the Venerable Bede, was originally kept on the 

 Solstitial eve as an astronomical festival. Christmas Eve 

 still coincides with the Iloman vigil of the Winter Solstice ; 

 and in the Calendar of Ancient Greece the threefold night of 

 the Sun's figurative birth was one of the most remarkable 

 fictions of the religious year. When the Church Vigils were 

 changed into nominal fasts, our Guernsey islanders prepared 

 themselves by the convivialities of the 23rd for an invohmtary 

 shoAV of abstinence on the 24th. Thanks to De la Marche, 

 La Place, and other warm enthusiasts of the Puritanic school, 

 little remains of the primitive ceremonial ; enough, however, 

 still survives to remind the antiquary and the ])oet that 

 Nature has her holidays as well as the Church. An early 

 Scandinavian emblem of the Sun's Nativity still blazes, here 

 and there, upon a cheerful hearth, Avhere no encroachment has 

 hitherto been made on the wide altar of hospitality by the 

 paltry meanness of modern innovation. (3ur Tronquet de 

 Noel identifies itself with the Yule Log of the North ; but, 

 alas, fashion and Puritanism, which, whatever may be their 

 relative merits, are equally odious to Robin (xoodfellow, and 

 now threaten all our household gods Avith unceremonious ex- 

 pulsion from la Jonqiiiere, the old winter settle, and the 

 delightful corner of the rural kitchen hob. If ^' nods and 

 becks and wreathed smiles " had ever a charm for Milton, 

 how remember the many dark vicissitudes of this strange life 

 and not regret the de])arture of these huuinous eras of harm- 

 less amusement ? " Were I," remarked old friend Nicolas, 

 one evening in autumn, as he solemnly laid down his hrule 

 (jveule (broken pipe), " a prophet in my own country, I would 

 exhort every old wife in my congregation to keep the ' longue 

 veille,' to knead the anniversary biscuit, or to mull a reason- 

 able measure of the best ' piment,' or spiced wine, ' le vin 

 brule,' as if nothing had happened." The cider jug may now 



