Quaint Old Customs of Wales (Folklore History Series)

By Wirt Sikes

Numberless customs in Wales which appear to be meaningless, to people of average culture, are in truth replete with meaning. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473352391

Book preview

CHAPTER I.

Serious Significance of seemingly Trivial Customs—Their Origins—Common Superstitions—The Age we Live in—Days and Seasons—New Year’s Day—The Apple Gift—Lucky Acts on New Year’s Morning—The First Foot—Showmen’s Superstitions—Levy Dew Song—Happy New Year Carol—Twelfth Night—The Mari Lwyd—The Penglog—The Cutty Wren—Tooling and Sowling—St. Valentine’s Day—St. Dewi’s Day—The Wearing of the Leek—The Traditional St. David—St. Patrick’s Day—St. Patrick a Welshman—Shrove Tuesday.

I.

NUMBERLESS customs in Wales which appear to be meaningless, to people of average culture, are in truth replete with meaning. However trivial they may seem, they are very seldom the offspring of mere fooling. The student of comparative folk-lore is often able to trace their origin with surprising distinctness, and to evolve from them a significance before unsuspected. In many cases these quaint old customs are traced to the primeval mythology. Others are clearly seen to be of Druidical origin. Many spring from the rites and observances of the Roman Catholic Church in the early days of Christianity on Welsh soil—where, as is now generally conceded, the Gospel was first preached in Great Britain. Some embody historical traditions; and some are the outgrowth of peculiar states of society in medieval times. Directly or indirectly, they are all associated with superstition, though in many instances they have quite lost any superstitious character in our day.

Modern society is agreed, with respect to many curious old customs, to view them as the peculiar possession of ignorance. It is very instructive to note, in this connection, how blandly we accept some of the most superstitious of these usages, with tacit approval, and permit them to govern our conduct. In every civilised community, in every enlightened land on earth, there are many men and women to whom this remark applies, who would deem themselves shamefully insulted should you doubt their intelligence and culture. Men and women who ‘smile superior’ at the idea of Luther hurling inkstands at the devil, or at the Welsh peasant who thinks a pig can see the wind, will themselves avoid beginning a journey on a Friday, view as ominous a rainy wedding-day, throw an old slipper after a bride for luck, observe with interest the portents of their nightly dreams, shun seeing the new moon over the left shoulder, throw a pinch of salt over the same member when the salt-cellar is upset, tie a red string about the neck to cure nose-bleed, and believe in the antics of the modern spiritualistic ‘control.’ Superstition, however, they leave to the ignorant! The examples of every-day fetichism here cited are familiar to us, not specially among the Welsh, but among the English also, and the people of the United States—who, I may again observe, are no doubt as a people uncommonly free from superstition, in comparison with the older nations of the earth; but modesty is a very becoming wear for us all, in examining into other people’s superstitions.

Aside from their scientific interest, there is a charm about many of the quaint customs of the Welsh, which speaks eloquently to most hearts. They are the offspring of ignorance, true, but they touch the ‘good old times’ of the poet and the romancer, when the conditions of life were less harsh than now. So we love to think. As a matter of scientific truth, this idea is itself, alas! but a superstition. This world has probably never been so fair a place to live in, life never so free from harsh conditions, as now; and as time goes on, there can be no doubt the improving process will continue. The true halcyon days of man are to be looked for in the future—not in the past; but with that future we shall have no mortal part.

II.

In treating of customs, no other classification is needful than their arrangement in orderly sequence in two divisions: first, those which pertain to certain days and seasons; second, those relating to the most conspicuous events in common human life, courtship, marriage, and death.

Beginning with the year: there is in Glamorganshire a New Year’s Day custom of great antiquity and large present observance, called the apple gift, or New Year’s gift. In every town and village you will encounter children, on and about New Year’s Day, going from door to door of shops and houses, bearing an apple or an orange curiously tricked out. Three sticks in the form of a tripod are thrust into it to serve as a rest; its sides are smeared with flour or meal, and stuck over with oats or wheat, or bits of broken lucifer matches to represent oats; its top is covered with thyme or other sweet evergreen, and a skewer is inserted in one side as a handle to hold it by. In its perfection, this piece of work is elaborate; but it is now often a decrepit affair, in the larger towns, where the New Year is welcomed (as at Cardiff) by a midnight chorus of steam-whistles.

THE NEW YEAR’S APPLE.

The Christian symbolism of this custom is supposed to relate to the offering, by the Wise Men, of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Jesus. The older interpretation, however, takes the custom back to the Druidic days, and makes it a form of the solar myth. In the three supporting sticks of the apple are seen the three rays of the sun, , the mystic Name of the Creator; the apple is the round sun itself; the evergreens represent its perennial life; and the grains of wheat, or oats, Avagddu’s spears. Avagddu is the evil principle of darkness—hell, or the devil—with which the sun fights throughout the winter for the world’s life.

Thousands of children in Wales seek to win from their elders a New Year’s copper by exhibiting the apple gift, or by singing in chorus their good wishes. A popular verse on this occasion hopes the hearer will be blessed with an abundance of money in his pocket and of beer in his cellar, and draws attention to the singers’ thin shoes and the bad character of the walking. In many cases the juvenile population parades the street all night, sometimes with noisy fife bands, which follow the death knell, as it sounds from the old church tower, with shrill peals of a merrier if not more musical sort.

In Pembrokeshire, to rise early on New Year’s morning is considered luck-bringing. On that morning also it is deemed wise to bring a fresh loaf into the house, with the superstition that the succession of loaves throughout the year will be influenced by that incident. A rigid quarantine is also set up, to see that no female visitor cross the threshold first on New Year’s morning; that a male visitor shall be the first to do so is a lucky thing, and the reverse unlucky. A superstition resembling this prevails to this day in America among showmen. ‘There’s no showman on the road,’ said an American manager of my acquaintance, ‘who would think of letting a lady be first to pass through the doors when opening them for a performance. There’s a sort of feeling that it brings ill-luck. Then there are cross-eyed people; many a veteran ticket-seller loses all heart when one presents himself at the ticket-window. A cross-eyed patron and a bad house generally go together. A cross-eyed performer would be a regular Jonah. With circuses there is a superstition that a man with