'Merry Christmas', Kenny Meadows, Illustrated London News, 25 December, 1847.
An episode of festive “medieval” poetry.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Andrews, William. At the Sign of the Barber's Pole: A Study in Hirsute History. Lethe Press, 2008.
Cook, Megan. "Dirtbag Medievalism," Avidly. July 14, 2021.
Eco, Umberto. Travel in Hyperreality. Harcourt, inc, 1986.
Jackson, Sophie. The Medieval Christmas. The History Press, 2013.
Scott, Walter. Marmion. Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1896.
Script:
Quote:
“For many a merry hour we’ve known.
And heard the chimes of midnight's tone.
Cease, then, my friend! a moment cease,
And leave these classic tomes in peace!
Of Roman and of Grecian lore
Sure mortal brain can hold no more.
These ancients, as [one well] might say,
Were pretty fellows in their day,
But time and tide o'er all prevail—
On Christmas eve a Christmas tale.”
Hello, and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, a podcast that normally follows in the footsteps of those who travelled that world but which today will be doing something different, and it is a podcast that is supported by a Patreon. As this is something of an end-of-year episode, though there will be another episode out this month, I do want to take this opportunity to send out my thanks to everyone who has supported the Patreon.
Your support has really meant a great deal in a year when finding regular work has been a bit of a struggle, in a year that has been a struggle of various sorts for a great many people actually, and it’s honestly very nice, with the way podcasting can be a bit of an exercise in speaking out into the void, to know that there are people out there who enjoy what you do. So thank you very much, all of you, for your kind support. And thank you also, everyone who has listened this year, whether you’re someone who listens to every episode, just the odd one, or maybe just this one. Whatever the case may be, thank you very much.
We’re going to start today off with a poem, and it being the festive season, it is a, of course, a festive poem. It is, to be specific, a Christmas one with lovely touches of winter, of the food and the festivities, if not exactly the ones that you or I tend to experience.
There are some touches that will remain familiar today, like mistletoe or burning logs, even for those of us who don’t actually have fireplaces in our homes or tend to encounter mistletoe when out in the world. But there’s also the sorts of things that you might very well expect more of a quote/unquote “medieval Christmas.” There is, in other words, going to be boar and steer to be had at the feast, among a wonderful cluster of other such images. There is going to be talk of serfs and lords and barons, barbarous mirth and vulgar games, and so on, and so forth.
It begins like this, setting the scene of autumn turned to winter, and preparing the stage for festive times ahead.
“November’s sky is chill and drear,
November’s leaf is red and sear:
Late, gazing down the steepy linn
That hems our little garden in,
Low in its dark and narrow glen
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble thrilled the streamlet through:
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen
Through bush and briar, no longer green,
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And foaming brown, with doubled speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.”
And we’ll let ourselves be carried with those waters a moment, let ourselves drift along through some 170 pages of source material and past that month of November to the festive season itself.
“Heap on more wood! [command’s the poet] — the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer:
Even, heathen yet, the savage Dane
more deep the mead did drain,
High on the beach his galleys drew.
And feasted all his pirate crew;
Then in his low and pine-built hall,
Where shields and axes decked the wall.
They gorged upon the half-dressed steer.
Caroused in seas of sable beer.
While round in brutal jest were thrown
The half-gnawed rib and marrowbone.
Or listened all in grim delight
While scalds yelled out the joys of fight.
Then forth in frenzy would they hie.
While wildly loose their red locks fly,
And dancing round the blazing pile,
They make such barbarous mirth the while
As best might to the mind recall
The boisterous joys of Odin's hall.”
As I mentioned, not all of these images will align with your own festive celebrations. You may be forgiven if your own holiday meal doesn’t involve getting deep into the mead with “savage Danes,” if your halls aren’t decked with axes and shields rather than holly, if you don’t round out the night hurling “half-gnawed” bones and dancing around the fire, if you don’t partake of Scandinavian Skaldic poetry, or if the mirth on offer is somehow less than barbarous. I intend no judgement on the other hand if that’s exactly what you get up to, but let’s get back to the poem.
“And well our Christian sires of old
Loved when the year its course had rolled,
And brought blithe Christmas back again
With all [of] his hospitable train.
Domestic and religious rite
Gave honor to the holy night;
On Christmas eve the bells were rung,
On Christmas eve the mass was sung;
That only night in all the year
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merrymen go,
To gather in the mistletoe.
Then opened wide the baron's hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside,
And Ceremony doffed his pride.
The heir, with roses in his shoes,
That night might village partner choose;
The lord, underogating, share
The vulgar game of 'post and pair.'
All hailed, with uncontrolled delight
And general voice, the happy night
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down.”
That “vulgar game” of post and pair was a card game of stake-making and bluffing, the “kirtle” which the damsel donned, a kind of gown. And again, this might not be quite like your own festive enjoyments. Maybe there’s a little less in the way of crowns, barons, vassals, and serfs. Still, there is that familiar mistletoe, and there are those opening lines with their pretty relatable message: we’ve waited all through the dullness of the year, and isn’t it nice that the festive time has finally arrived.
But we continue.
“The fire, with well-dried logs supplied,
Went roaring up the chimney wide;
The huge hall-table's oaken face,
Scrubbed till it shone, the day to grace,
Bore then upon its massive board
No mark to part the squire and lord.
Then was brought in the lusty brawn
By old blue-coated serving-man;
Then the grim boar's-head frowned on high,
Crested with bays and rosemary.
Well can the green-garbed ranger tell
How, when, and where, the monster fell.
What dogs before his death he tore,
And all the baiting of the boar.
The wassail round, in good brown bowls
Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls.
There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by
Plum-porridge stood and Christmas pie;
Nor failed old Scotland to produce
At such high tide her savory goose.
Then came the merry maskers in,
And carols roared with blithesome din;
If unmelodious was the song.
It was a hearty note and strong.
Who lists may in their mumming see
Traces of ancient mystery;
White shirts supplied the masquerade.
And smutted cheeks the visors made ;
But oh! what maskers, richly dight,
Can boast of bosoms half so light!
England was merry England when
Old Christmas brought his sports again.
‘Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale
‘Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year.”
And on it goes, for longer after this than you might expect, though I won’t read the whole thing here. But you might be wondering who the author is here, and what is the source? Or maybe you already know, but if you don’t, then maybe you have the sense that despite the abundance of medievalisms on offer—the boar, the serfs, and so on—there’s something that’s not quite actually medieval about all of this. And you’d be right. For a clue, of a very vague sort, as to our source’s identity, I’ll read one last short section.
“And thus my Christmas still I hold
Where my great-grandsire came of old.
With amber beard and flaxen hair
And reverend apostolic air.
The feast and holy-tide to share,
And mix sobriety with wine.
And honest mirth with thoughts divine;
Small thought was his, in after time
E'er to be hitched into a rhyme.
The simple sire could only boast
That he was loyal to his cost,
The banished race of kings revered.
And lost his land—but kept his beard.”
The story of the writer’s great grandfather was all there in the last few lines, in the loss of land because of his loyalty to banished kings, and then in that somewhat odd touch about the facial hair.
The unfortunate land-loser/beard-keeper in question was a man nicknamed “Beardie,” a loyalist to the house of Stuart who swore never to shave his beard until that family was restored to the throne that had eluded them since Queen Anne’s death in 1714. But he seems to have gone beyond merely hoping and beard-growing. “...he took arms and intrigued in their cause,” his grandson wrote, “until he lost all he had in the world.”
Beardie’s name was Walter Scott, as was that of his great grandson, Sir Walter Scott as you’ll often see it, who in 1808 published a historical romance about 16th-century Scotland named Marmion.
In that text, that story in verse, there among the cantos that followed the titular Lord Marmion in his scheming and all the way to his eventual demise at the 1513 Battle of Flodden, were introductory epistles addressed to certain contemporaries of Scott’s. The festive sections that you’ve just heard come from his introduction to the last canto, “The Battle,” and are addressed to his friend, the book collector Richard Heber. “How just that at this time of glee,” Scott wrote, “My thoughts should, Heber, turn to thee!”
Though many over the years have questioned why these epistolary interludes need to have existed at all—or why not just publish them separately, some have asked—I do find something very charming in this expression of friendship here. I find it actually adds weight to the words around it, rather than detracting from them.
“But, hark! I hear the distant drum! [concludes Scott]
The day of Flodden Field is come, —
Adieu, dear Heber! life and health.
And store of literary wealth.”
And so finishing his toast of friendship, Scott returns to his story, marching towards Marmion’s death at Flodden Field and the end of his 16th-century fantasy. But there is fantasy too in what he writes to Heber, in those depictions of a Christmas past that we heard in his poetry, in their absolute hodge-podge of various medievalisms.
Danish pirates bringing their tankards together in raucous delight, the skalds among them bellowing out their poetry. The wild boar, hunted by the ranger’s dogs, its head bedecked in herbs for the feast. The wassail, with a good brown bowl ornamented with festive ribbons. The heir to the throne mixing with villagers while the lord indulges in a commoners’ game of cards. The mummers, those players in their masks or otherwise covered faces—but what play was it? Quite possibly, it would have been one of George and the dragon, the latter sometimes replaced by someone like a Turkish knight, and it would have gone something like this.
“Silence, hast thou come to see our glory?” the saint might announce. “My name is George and I have come to sing our story.” He would then introduce the two figures with him: the doctor, “good soul and wise,” and the “dragon from land afar, come [t]here to sport with [him] and spar.” He would boast of having slain just such a dragon in those far off lands, eastern Turkey perhaps or North Africa, Egypt in the text that I’m reading, a more modern adaptation.
The dragon would make its own boasts before falling in combat to George’s sword, but George would then regret having killed the dragon and would call upon the doctor. Now that character would come forward and do his own bragging, though in his case of medical prowess, of curing this disease and that ailment, of the body, mind, and conscience. He would administer the potion, and the dragon would rise with fresh insults on its lips for George. Another fight would break out, and the dragon would fall for a second and final time.
“This season comes but once a year, [George’s player would announce]
And with it comes what we hold dear,
Merriment and laughter,
Joy from now and hereafter,
With this comes our entertainment,
I hope our play has brought amusement,
Our small troupe has done our best,
But it’s not time yet to go and rest.”
And indeed it is not quite yet time to go and rest because I wasn’t quite done on the topic of Scott’s poem.
What his liberal sprinkling of medieval elements in the Christmas stew really reminded me of is an article I read this year by Megan Cook about what she rather pleasingly termed “dirtbag medievalism” in an article of that same name.
Dirtbag medievalism, for Cook, is not necessarily accurate, historically speaking, but it’s as unignorable as it is fun. It’s themed drinks and a turkey leg at Medieval Times. It is, to borrow more of Cook’s examples, the music of Led Zeppelin or, quote, “buying a deck of tarot cards and an incense burner shaped like a dragon … because you’re fifteen and you’re already at the mall and Katie’s mom isn’t coming to pick you up until 3:30.” The whole article’s good, and very readable, but what I’m getting at is the term could also apply to an early 19th-century poet such as Walter Scott using the trappings of the medieval period for the telling of his story and for the nostalgic celebration of the sort of Christmas that he could not have experienced any more than we have.
As Umberto Eco put it in his Travels in Hyperreality, “thanks to Walter Scott [and others], the whole 19th century would dream of its own Middle Ages,” just as we dream of ours. His poem is not a jousting tournament with “We Will Rock You” in the background, as in A Knight’s Tale, but as old as it now seems to us, as far removed from Queen or from Heath Ledger, it has more in common with the movie than you might at first think.
We’ll end today’s episode there. I hope whether or not your holiday season involves wild boar and masked caroling, that you have a merry one and that you take good care of yourself. I will be back one more time before the year is done with another full length episode, and I’ll talk to you then.