BOOKS.

CURIOUS CHURCH CUSTOMS.* Tins is, in some respects, a rather disappointing book. There is a fascination, not of curiosity only, but of sentiment about all old customs, and especially about those which make part of oar Church history. But the various writers who have contributed short papers to the volume which Mr. Andrews edits and publishes have unfortunately handled their topics too drily to bring out much of the sentiment of the usages they record. They have given us notes rather than essays; and so the book depends more than it should for interest upon the chances of other reading and capacity for reflection in the individual reader. There is nothing that better repre- sents the wise attitude of the Church towards the life of the people, in the days when the Church was a national power, than some of its quaint and, to our feeling, most incongru- ous usages,—devised in good faith by much simpler but not less pious minds than ours, observed for two or three centuries in all innocence and reverence, and then gradually corrupted by impulses of riot and extravagance till what was once a solemn ceremonial befitting a holy-day degenerated into a scene of brutal license and irreverence, making a scandal for councils of Bishops to condemn and Puritan heads to wag over, it is remarkable, but the more one thinks about it only natural, that the grossest abuses should have come, not out of the sports which, beginning with a secular inten- tion, received from the Church only a kind of baptism of adoption, but from those which originated with the Church, and were designed to meet within the sanctuary itself the universal need of young human creatures for something of the nature of play. Of customs of this kind and their disgrace- ful outcome, a very interesting instance is the institution of the St. Nicholas or Boy-Bishop, once almost universal throughout England and the Continent, practised in the cathedrals and the great collegiate churches, and also in obscure villages of country districts.

"It originated in the idea of rewarding, after a religious fashion, the most deserving choir-boy or scholar of the church school. The selected lad was appointed Bishop of the boys on St. Nicholas's Day (the patron-saint of boys), during the solemn singing of the Magnifie,at, and was vested in special pontificals of a small size. He held the office from December 6th (St. Nicholas's Day) to December 28th (Holy Innocents). The ceremonies attached to this boyish parody of a most solemn office varied considerably, but it is known to have existed in all the cathedral churches of France and Spain, as well as in many parts of Germany and Switzerland. In England, every cathedral which possesses post- [surely this is a misprint for pre-] reformation records, yields abundant evidence of the Child-Bishop customs. We found interesting mention of it in several places when setting in order the chaotic mass of capitular muniments at Lichfield. An inventory of 1345 names four small choir copes for the use of boys on the feast of Holy Innocents. The next century names a mitre, cope, sandals, gloves, and staff for the Nicholas Bishop. An in- variable part of the proceedings seems to have been a ser- mon from the Boy-Bishop, delivered from the usual pulpit. He was doubtless well-drilled in the discourse by the chancellor or by his substitute, the choir schoolmaster. Indeed, several sermons that were learned by rote by the Boy-Bishop are still extant. At Salisbury, the whole details are set forth in the printed procession of the Cathedral Church. In the order of the procession, on the eve of Innocents' Day, the Dean and Canons residentiary walked first, and were followed by the Chaplains ; the Boy-Bishop, with his boy-prebendaries, closing the procession as the position of the greatest dignity. The Boy-Bishop and his attendants took the highest places in choir, the Canons carrying the incense, tapers, &c. At the conclusion of compline the boy gave the benediction, and until the close of the procession, on the following evening, none of the clergy of any condition were allowed to ascend to the upper part of the sanctuary, which was reserved for the choir-boys and their Prelate."

In most churches the boys performed all the ceremonies and read all the offices, excepting only the Mass, during the period of their mimic investiture; and startling as it seems, in some churches they were allowed to celebrate even the Mass. But

this obviously was the beginning of corruption, which in- Creased and spread, until the indecent levities attending the ceremony created a scandal in the Church, and the Council

Ottri011. Church Customs and Cognate Subjects. Edited by 'William Andrew., P.B.E.S. Mull: William Andrews and Co. London: Simpkin, hi iota% L.1 Co.

of Bade condemned it altogether in the year 1431. But in spite of the Council's Canon, the Boy-Bishop pastime lingered on in England, and was at last put down by a proclamation of Henry VIII.

It is very easy to see how, out of such a strange custom as this of the Boy-Bishop, scandal must come sooner or later; and especially easy to see it when the scandal has come and gone, and the custom has died oat. And yet, before it was generally abused, this usage was probably fruitful of more good than harm. It was designed in all sincerity to promote affectionate interest in Church ceremonies, and to reward the best boys in school or choir by associating them closely with the sacred offices of the Church. Whoever knows much of the minds of children, knows how real such mimic dignities are to them : how as they touch the outward sign they catch the sentiment and the significance of the thing symbolised. And though among every dozen of boys there will probably be at least one who, if he is allowed to take part more than once in such a ceremonial, will be moved to tarn it into ridicule, yet while the restraints of reverence are duly enforced by the proper authorities, the mockers will not carry the day openly, and before they have succeeded in quite desecrating the pageant, a very large number of boys will have gained from it exactly what it was intended that they should gain—a holiday entertainment, full of mysterious glories and delights, con- nected with their religious duties, and granted as a reward for pious diligence in the discharge of them. Without going the puritan length of excommunicating all sports and pas- times, we must know but little of human nature if we can doubt that the spirit of play is always a dangerous imp, never to be trusted altogether, and not to be trusted at all for long ; and therefore all the more should we regard with respect and affection the efforts of the Church to keep the sports of the people in touch with religion.

Christmas mummers are remembered by most of us, and for those who have not seen them, there is Mr. Hardy's graphic, description in The Return of the Native. But some may not know that their older name of Morris dancers meant Moorish dancers, and that their doggerel drama had its origin in a legend of the Crusades, or that in the old time it was acted in the nave of the parish church. From the clumsy antics of clod-hopping mummers to the processional dances of the Hebrew nation----the dance of Miriam, of Deborah and David—the way seems long &esthetically. But the idea was the same in the beginning; they danced for joy because the enemies of the Lord had been overthrown, and they danced without shame before the Lord. In the Cathedral of Seville —so our book tells us—dancing is still a religious rite :—

" A singular and attractive relic of the custom of dancing in churches is still practised three times a year in the great cathedral of Seville,—namely, on the feasts of the Immaculate Conception, and of Corpus Christi, and on the last three days of the Carnival. Ten choristers, dressed in the costume of pages of the time of Philip III., with plumed hats, dance a stately but most graceful measure, for about half-an-hour, within the iron screens in front of the high altar. They are dressed in blue and white for the Blessed Virgin, and in red and white for Corpus Christi. The boys accompany the minuet-like movements with the clinking of castanets. During the measure, a hymn arranged for three voices with orchestral accompaniment, is sung in honour of the Blessed Sacrament."

Here we have a picture of "Sport in Church" held in bonds of religious decorum. If we want to realise how those

restraints may be suddenly broken up by an eruption of that rebellious spirit of animal life that is perpetually making pagan renascences small and great, in the world of ordered conventions, we must turn to the description in Mr. Pater's Imaginary Porbraite of the Game of Ball in the Cathedral at Auxerre—so stately in its beginning, so wild and perilous after Denys l'Auxerrois joined in :—

" Vespers being sung, instead of conducting the Bishop to his palace, they proceeded in order into the nave, the people standing in two long rows to watch. Girding up their skirts a little way, the whole body of clerics awaited their turn in silence, while the captain of the singing-boys cast the ball into the air, as high as he might, along the vaulted roof of the central aisle, to be caught by any boy who could, and tossed again with hand or foot till it passed on to the portly chanters, the chaplains, the CRUM themselves, who finally played out the game with all the decorum of an ecclesiastical ceremony. It was just then, just as the canons took the ball to themselves so gravely, that Denys — Denys l'Auxerroia, as he was afterwards called — appeared for the first time. Leaping in among the timid children, he made the thing really a game. The boys played • like boys, the men almost like madmen, and all with a

deli.htfal glee which became contagious, first in the clerical body, and then among the spectators. The aged Dean of the Chapter, Protonotary of his Holiness, held up his purple skirt a little higher, and stepping from the ranks with an amazing levity, as if suddenly relieved of his burden of eighty years, tossed the ball with his foot to the venerable capitular Homilist, equal to the occasion. And then, unable to stand inactive any longer, the laity carried on the game among themselves, with shouts of not too boisterous amusement ; the sport continuing till the flight of the ball could no longer be traced along the dusky aisles."

Here we get the two first stages of the " baptised " sport,— the conventional stage which in all sobriety and stateliness symbolises the redemption of all our life, even down to its animal spirits. Ball is not a sinful game ; therefore, once a year, on the Church's great festival of the Resurrection, which falls in with Nature's high festival of new birth, it shall be

admitted within the sacred precincts of the Cathedral. But it is played " with all the decorum of an ecclesiastical ceremony "—that is to say, it is a symbolic game merely, not

a real one till Denys leaps in. Denys is the renaissance in- carnate—the principle of Nature and of Nature's life freeing

itself from convention and turning symbol into reality. The thing is no longer a ceremony but a game. The boys play like boys, the men like madmen ; the aged Dean, the protonotary of his Holiness, is infected with "an amazing levity." Still, the spirit of reverence lingers—and the game, bizarre and incongruous as it is, is played, even when caught up by the laity, with shouts of "not too boisterous amuse- ment." The end of the story shows the Pagan spirit a stage further on, when a darker renascence has begun of a nature that has cast off the human and returned to the beast,—a madness of evil passion and lust and cruelty.

But if the riotous spirits of youth sometimes turned canonical usages into a scandal, Puritanism has also to take

its share of blame for some unseemly practices connected with the festivals of the Church. Once on a time two large cakes used to be divided among the young people of Twickenham on Easter Day, but in 1645 the Puritans suppressed this altogether pleasant and innocent custom, with the result that the money so far spent on the cakes was used to buy penny loaves, which were flung from the church tower and scrambled for. Hot cross-buns, Michaelmas geese, Shrove Tuesday pancakes, simnel cakes at Mid-Lent ; all these are still among us, and pretty generally eaten at their appointed times. But Hare-pie as an Easter Day dish, and Fag-pie, made of figs and spices as an alternative for simnel cake on Mothering Sunday, are both unknown to the writer of this review. And so are Valentine Buns, which seem worthy of revival now that we post too many cards at Christmas and Easter to be inclined to send laced letters and jokes on Valentine's Day.

Of other customs besides eating ones, connected with special holy-days, the book tells us little that is new, and that little is chiefly painful. In Stamford town, bull-running was a sport considered specially appropriate to the keeping of St. Brice's Day. The death of St. Stephen used to be commemorated by stoning a wren to death,—about as revolting a piece of realism, and as complete a carrying out of the principle that observes the letter and slays the spirit, as could be conceived. We like as much as anything in the book the two chapters on Church Bells, their inscriptions, and the laws of the Belfry. It seems to have been an old custom to ring the church bells during storms. "Our forefathers believed," says the writer of this paper, "that church bells had the power to allay storms." Whether they literally believed it or not, there is a beautiful appropriateness in the call to thoughts of prayer in the hour of alarm. Among the inscriptions, so many are good that it is difficult to choose any for special commendation. Terseness—and not terseness only—has something to say for the motto on the bells at Semperingham, "Be not over busie," and "Arise and go about your business," on the bell of St. Ives, protests pleasantly against the opposite fault. "Come let us ring for Church and King," has a good lilt and a good sentiment.

While the words on the passing-bell at Brant Broughton are full of solemn monition :—

"Beg you of God your soul to save Before sc e call you to the grave."

The Laws of the Belfry were much the same everywhere, and were inspired by feelings of unimpeachable propriety.

Some belfries have rhymed versions and some plain prose. The earlier ones are tempting to quote, on account of their naivete, but the latest is the shortest, and must therefore carry the day. It comes from Bowden, and is dated 1787 :—

"You ringers all, observe these orders well ! He pays his sixpence that o'erturns a bell; And he that rings with either spur or hat, Must pay his sixpence certainly for that ; And he that rings and does disturb ye peal, Must pay his sixpence or a gun of ale. These laws elsewhere, in ev'ry church are used, That bell and ringers may not be abused."

Among curious burial customs, a kindly one was the Swedish

practice of placing a small looking-glass in the coffin of an unmarried woman. Matrons wore their hair braided and bound, but maids carried it loose, and it was thought they would be glad of their looking-glass to help them "put it tidy" when they awoke at the sound of the last trump.

In the seventeenth century banns of marriage were forbidden in church on slighter grounds than would justify such inter- ference now. The forbidding of the banns of Edward Morton and Jane Godwin at Frampton, in Lincolnshire, on the ground first, that Morton was a stranger, and that, therefore, there was no knowing if he was married or single ; and secondly, because he was a poor man, and it was desirable "to secure the town from any charge of him or his," savours of an attitude

toward the outlander not far removed from the feeling of Punch's workman,—" There goes a foreigner, heave half a brick

at him." Bat perhaps this excess of caution is better than the recklessness of the Herrnhuters, whose method of selecting husbands and wives is as follows :—

" The men and women of a marriageable age are collected in a house with a suite of three rooms, each opening into the other, the young men in one end room and the young women in the other ; then the doors from these two rooms are thrown open into the middle room, which is perfectly darkened. After this follows a sort of general scramble, or catch who can,' and whichever girl the man catches becomes his wife."

Of a very different kind of interest is the ceremony of reuniting man and wife after years of estrangement, recorded by the register of St. Mary's Church, Bermondsey, 1604, with a form of solemn words appointed for the renewal of vows.

Altogether, the book is a medley of strange matter, serious and grotesque, commonplace and recondite. We should have liked it better if it had been less thin ; but it suggests thought if it does not supply it, and it is entirely readable and pleasant to read.