Joy, health, love, and peace, We were four at watch, And all nigh of a match; We have travell'd many miles, To find you this king Which we now to you bring. Th' Old Year bids adieu; (1876, p. 35.) On grouping together these various pieces, we are struck by their likeness, and by the antiquity of their allusions. The bird was usually slain with stones and sticks, which are among the most primitive weapons. In Wales bows and arrows, which are old also, were declared preferable to guns. cannons and In Wales the bird was cut up with hatchets and cleavers in preference to knives and forks; it was boiled in the brewery pan, or in cauldrons and pans, in preference to kettles and pots; and it was conveyed about in a waggon or cart in preference to being carried on four men's shoulders. Sometimes the bird was plucked. Finally it was cut up in a sacrificial manner; one wing-another-one leg-another-and the spare ribs or the pluck, as the least valuable part of the feast, went to the poor. The representative huntsmen in England are Robbin, Bobbin, Richard, and John-all-alone. In Scotland they are Fozie-Mozie, Johnie Rednosie, and Foslin, besides "the brethren and kin." In Wales they are Milder, Malder, Festel, Fose, and John the Rednose. Of these characters only Robin and Bobbin (the names are sometimes run together) and Richard, reappear in other nursery pieces. In the oldest collection of 1744 stand the lines : Robbin and Bobbin, two great belly'd men, These powers of eating perhaps refer to the first share of these characters at the feast. They are further dwelt on in the following nursery rhyme : Robin the Bobbin, the big-headed hen [or ben] He eat a cow, he eat a calf, He eat a butcher and a half; He eat a church, he eat a steeple, He eat the priest and all the people. To which some collections add : (c. 1783, p. 43.) And yet he complained that his belly was not full. Other pieces dilate on Robin and Richard as lazy in starting, and on Robin, whose efforts as a huntsman were attended with ill luck :: : Robin and Richard were two pretty men, Robin-a-Bobbin bent his bow, The Shot at a woodcock and killed a yowe [ewe]; (1890, p. 346.) Halliwell saw a relation between the huntsman of this verse and the bird robin, since the robin was reckoned to disappear at Christmas and not to return till Midsummer. As a matter of fact, the robin leaves the abodes of man and retires into the woodland as soon as the sharp winter frost is over. However this may be, the presence of the wren and of the robin was mutually exclusive, as we shall see in the pieces which deal with the proposed union, the jealousy, and the death of these two birds. CHAPTER XVI BIRD SACRIFICE HE custom of slaying the wren is wide THE spread in France also. But the chants that deal with it dwell, not like ours, on the actual hunt, but on the sacrificial plucking and dividing up of the bird. Moreover, the French chants depend for their consistency not on repetition like ours, but are set in cumulative form. Both in contents and in form they seem to represent the same idea in a later development. At Entraigues, in Vaucluse, men and boys hunted the wren on Christmas Eve, and when they caught a bird alive they gave it to the priest, who set it free in church. At Mirabeau the hunted bird was blessed by the priest, and the curious detail is preserved that if the first bird was secured by a woman, this gave the sex the right to jeer at and insult the men, and to blacken |