Hallowe’en to Candlemas 
French and Italian mountaineers rejoice in the bagpipe 
under a different name ! What a pity it is Carol-singing has 
died out. We do, indeed, have a visit once or twice in the 
winter, about New Year time, from folk calling themselves 
Guisarts or Gysarts. I wonder if this term was introduced 
in the days of Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary Queen of 
Scots, since I believe it was she who first made it the fashion 
for folk to disguise themselves and play pranks at Yule- 
tide. There was an oldjScotch word for “fashion” — “gyse,” 
which, I suppose, is the same as the English word “guise.” 
Our Guizards or mummers are generally farm lads, “ hinds ” 
with blackened or whitened faces in such guise their own 
mothers would scarcely know them, dressed in shirts inside 
out or flounced petticoats, and perhaps sunbonnets, playing 
melodies on teatrays and bones, and dancing, and singing 
comic songs, a sad come-down from — 
God rest ye, merry gentlemen, 
Let nothing you dismay, 
Remember Christ our Saviour 
Was born on Christmas Day ; 
or, 
Now is come our joyfulst day, 
Let every soul be jolly, 
With ivie let all things be drest. 
And every post with holly. 
Without the door let sorrow lie, 
And if perchance he hap to die, 
Let’s bury him in a Christmas-pye, 
And let us all be jolly. 
The term Carol seems to embrace much. I wonder if 
it comes from the old French carillonner , to ring out a 
peal of bells, or has anything to do with the old Scotch 
word to “ skirl” or cry aloud. To “ carol ” meant formerly 
to sing a tune whilst others danced, and even the semi- 
religious carols were set to very secular tunes. I have 
heard that Thomas, Archbishop of York, in the days of 
William the Conqueror, never heard a popular song with- 
out instantly writing a religious song to the same tune. 
“To be sure,” as somebody said in later years — Luther, if 
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