COUNTRY LIFE
THERE is an old, trite Latin couplet (quoted by Sir Thomas Browne): "Si so! splendescat Maria purificante
Major erit glacies post feswni quam fuit ante ; "
and there is a Scottish jingle—is it a translation?—to the same effect. A sunny February 2nd foretells that "the half o' winter's to come and mair." The date takes, perhaps, a bigger place in popular custom and superstition than any other, and the Christian celebration has a predecessor in the " Februation " of the people in ancient Rome. As to the influence of the day on weather, the German in the Middle Ages preferred to see a wolf in his sheep-fold rather than the sun, and harvest was estimated in our Western islands by certain mystic evidence taken on the night of February 2nd. Herrick has been much quoted for his urgency to take down every sprig of holly and mistletoe by this day ; but from where did he get his idea that box should be substituted till Easter, and after that yew and then birch for Whitsuntide and rushes and oak thereafter ? It is the result of the inefficient wording of an Act of Parliament that the close season in Britain begins not on the first but the second day of February. We have many superfluous double letters in English which there is a tendency to drop, as in faggot, but one would like to see the older spelling of Candlemass restored, that the derivation might be widely appreciated. Even Henry VIII advised the lighting of candles on this date.
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