CHAPTER II 
LADYDAY TO WHITSUNDAY 
March 25. — Lady Day, sometimes called Marymas. Al- 
though a house term in England, it is not so in Scotland, 
the house-flittings usually taking place at the end of May, 
which is the term of Whitsunday, and has nothing to do 
with the Whitsuntide of the English Church. Although 
probably it equally arose out of the White Sunday, when in 
the early Church times newly baptized persons were supposed 
to go to church in white garments, yet now in Presbyterian 
Scotland Whitsunday Term is nothing else but a term, it is 
no longer a Church festival, and seems only to be a festival 
with the rent collector. It is possible also that Whitsunday 
may be a corruption of Witan Sunday, as Witanagemote, the 
Anglo-Saxon for Wisdom Sunday, meant “ meeting of the 
wise.” They called this month sometimes Rhed monath, 
from their goddess Rheda, whose feast-day fell at this time ; 
Rede meant “council,” and this was the time of year at which 
warlike expeditions were debated by the Saxons. Rede is an 
old Scotch word and has many meanings — i.e., to counsel, to 
settle, &c. It still survives with this last meaning, I believe, in 
Pennsylvania beyond the sea. Boy and I saw from the window 
to-day the infant marauder among our young roses. Quoth 
Boy : “ IPs a pity Master Rabbit’s parents did not tell him it 
was not polite to go in a garden and eat other people’s roses.” 
I was then treated to a long and elaborate dissertation upon 
the advisability of laying a trap for the intruder in the shape 
of a pitfall, evidently a reminiscence of some story about lions 
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