[In the following essay, Laroque investigates the origins and representation of folk festivals in the Elizabethan calendar.]

As E. K. Chambers says in The Medieval Stage,¹ the student of English popular ludi and fêtes cannot but be put off by the complexity and confusion of the recorded material. We are very much in need of a clear and systematic calendar establishing the precise place and function of all these traditional ceremonies, in order to complete the study of their local and temporal variations. Already at the time of the Elizabethans there were many hesitations and inconsistencies as to the precise date on which such or such festival was kept; Shakespeare, for instance, situates the May-games in Midsummer² and also very probably at Whitsuntide,³ whereas they were ritually observed on the night before and on the morning of 1 May. What we propose here is not to make a synthetic recapitulation of all these customs, for which a thick volume would be necessary, but simply to sketch the preliminaries of such a work.

The first difficulty of this task concerns the question of the calendar itself. Indeed, its present state, obtained after its revision by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, has very complex origins. There is, first of all, the fact that the Greek and Roman calendars, prior to Julius Caesar's reformation in 45 b.c., were based on twelve lunar months of 354 days, with an intercalatory system to catch up with the eleven and a quarter missing days. The Teutonic-Celtic calendar, whose influence in England combined with that of the Roman calendars, was also based on a lunar system, and a certain number of dislocations of the original festivities resulted from the passage from a lunar to a solar calendar. But, in spite of these transformations, the old pagan festivals did not disappear; they remained in the background of the new Christian ceremonies. This was partly due to the policy followed by the Church, which always tried to absorb ancient customs into Christianity by making religious feasts coincide with the dates at which pagan ceremonies were observed. As Frazer points out: “Taken altogether, the coincidences of the Christian with the pagan festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. They mark the compromise which the Church in the hour of its triumph was compelled to make with its vanquished yet still dangerous rivals.”⁴

It is indeed easy to trace back to Greco-Oriental as well as to Celtic sources the Elizabethan customs mentioned in our calendar below. The Haxey Hood games, for example, which were performed in Lincolnshire on the day of the Epiphany, are symbolic of the fight between winter and spring present in many fertility cults of Antiquity; the May-pole also refers to ancient pagan ceremonies and particularly to the sacred pine-tree representing the self-emasculated Attis at the spring festival in Rome (Hilaria).⁵

As for Celtic customs and traditions, the process was the same. The year was originally divided into six tides of three score days each, and the beginnings of these tides fell at the middle of the months of the Roman calendar, so that they had to be dislocated to fit the new pattern. According to E. K. Chambers, “ceremonies of the winter feast were pulled back to November 1, the high summer feast was attracted from mid-May or mid-July respectively to the important Roman dates of the Floralia on May 1 and the summer solstice on June 24.”⁶ The year, divided into a winter half (Geimhdredh) and a summer half (Samhradh), was made of four main periods and festivals:

These four quarters, as can be seen on our calendar, coincide with a) the Winter Feast, spreading from All Souls to Twelfth Night, b) the Ploughing Feast, including Plough Monday, Candlemas, Shrovetide or Carnival, c) the Summer and High Summer Feast, corresponding to Easter and Midsummer and d) the Harvest Feast at Michaelmas. Moreover, we also see that the beginning of each half year (November 1 and May 1) coincides with two very important festivals of the calendar.

But since we chose to study the situation of the Elizabethan era, we must now try to be more precise. First, it must be said that most of the customs and festivals recorded on our plan did not originate in the reign of Elizabeth but had developed from time immemorial until the Middle Ages, when they seemed to reach their climax. Later on, these observances slowly entered a process of decline, but they knew a brief period of revival at the end of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth centuries as a countercheck to Puritan attacks. They then became the subjects of conscious and systematic interest, as can be seen from the important part they play not only in the theatre but also at Court, in the formal Entertainments and Progresses.

Another important element which characterizes this particular period is of course the Reformation of the Church undertaken by Henry VIII which brought about the suppression of many feasts of the Roman liturgy. This might give support to the thesis that traditional holidays and ceremonies were then on the wane. In fact, quite the contrary happened, and Mrs St Clare Byrne suggests that this sudden historical decision failed to destroy those potent folk traditions and that the festivals continued to be kept with as great an enthusiasm as before: “The Elizabethan … had lost the holidays of the Roman Catholic calendar, but had not lost the spirit of merry-making and his delight in festivals and foolish old customs. May Days and Church Ales, Cotswold Games and Lord Mayor's Shows still called him out into the open and relieved the tedium of the long work hours.”⁷ So, however short-lived this phenomenon may have been, it shows that the Elizabethan era remained the golden age of festivity, certainly worthy of the best moments of Merry England.

This is also apparent from the number of ludi, folk customs and festivals mentioned on our calendar below, which by no means constitutes an accurate and complete catalogue but rather a cross-section of the most characteristic observances of the Elizabethan Age. The stress is not laid on diachrony (the correspondences with ancient pagan festivals are in fact only indicative of a certain number of analogies) but on a set of inter-relations forming a recurrent pattern. Each festival has its specific place in the calendar, but it is also inserted within a given cycle or tide: Twelfth Night, for instance, is characterized by the solemnities belonging to the Epiphany and also by the fact that it represents the end of the dodecameron, or twelve-day cycle of Christmas-tide …

In order to lessen the impression of complexity and confusion linked with the paraphernalia of popular festivities, we shall divide them into four main categories. There are, to start with, the innumerable minor customs and observances, the ‘popular antiquities’ described by Brand and Ellis or by Dyer and other folklorists.⁸ Then, we find major festivities like Christmas, which finds its origin in the Roman Saturnalia as well as in the Mithraic cult of Sol Invictus,⁹ or like New Year's Eve, which goes back to the festival of the Kalends. Thirdly, there are the complex festivals like May Day linked to the beginning of the High Summer Feast in E. K. Chambers' terminology. May Day ceremonies and games stood at the cross-roads of all pagan traditions—Greek with the Thargelia, Roman with the celebrations to honour the Bona Dea, Celtic with Beltane. Lastly, we find ceremonies traceable to recent or even contemporary (i.e. Elizabethan) history, like Hock-Tide,¹⁰ Guy Fawkes' Day, or the Cotswold Games.¹¹

If we now consider the folk ceremonies themselves, we soon discover that they are best presented in terms of certain polarities and oppositions. The most general is that between town and country with, on the one hand, purely agricultural ceremonies like Harvest Home or the Sheep-Shearing Feast, not confined to any particular day in the calendar, as Joseph Strutt points out in The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801); they correspond to old vegetation rites and are described in many pastoral works. On the other hand, we have city celebrations such as the Lord Mayor's Show or the Shrove-Tide customs of the London apprentices (cock throwing, sacking of bawdy houses … reported by Dekker or John Taylor. Some festivals, the May games for instance, are common to both, although the specific observances were somewhat different, especially in London, with its milkmaids' dances and pageants of chimney-sweepers. Then, there is the contrast between indoor and outdoor occasions, naturally related to the season during which these ceremonies were performed and differentiating the festivities of the Winter half from those of the Summer half. Here, we fall back upon the private/public opposition, with the feasts held inside the family circle to celebrate births, marriages, and funerals (there is a most curious example of this in the curious birth-to-death painting of the life of Sir Henry Unton, 1557?-1596, in the National Portrait Gallery in London); in opposition to which we find Church Ales, wakes and fairs, which were purely public merry-makings. Finally, the fact that, in Antiquity, ceremonies like the Bacchanalia, the Thesmophoria, or those of the Bona Dea were reserved to women, puts the question of the importance of the male/female opposition in the folk festivals of Elizabethan England. There are indeed traces of such an opposition in customs like those of Hock-Tide, which were revived for Queen Elizabeth during the Kenilworth Entertainment and were observed until the end of the sixteenth century. On Hock-Monday, women used to ‘hock’ the men, that is to say, to bind them with ropes and exact a forfeit from them, while men could retaliate on the following day. In the words of E. K. Chambers: “… the curious arrangement by which … the roles of sacrificers and sacrificed are exchanged between men and women on the second day … lends support to the theory … that the village worship was marked by the merging of previously independent sex-cults.”¹² But, besides this archaic opposition between the sexes, there is also the typically festive custom of the exchange of clothes between men and women, as in the Saturnalia. In England, men masquerading as women appear in the Morris Dance and the Mummers' plays, and take the parts of Maid Marian and Bessy, mainly at two important moments of the festive year, namely, at Christmas (and on Plough Monday), and in May (on May Day and at Whitsuntide).

Two remarks must be made in conclusion to this brief presentation. Firstly, as can be seen from our calendar, most festivities were concentrated at specific moments of the year, roughly corresponding to three periods: the first from mid-December to mid-February, the second from mid-April to mid-May, and the last from the end of September to mid-November. The small number of festivals kept during the summer months, in spite of the fact that the atmospheric conditions may appear to be more appropriate for outdoor rejoicings, is in fact indicative of the link between agriculture and seasonal festivities, since it is during the summer months that the ‘husbandmen’ are most busy and thus least likely to hold a feast. Secondly, we must recall that the various festivals mentioned in our plan, and which could not be dealt with at length here, are dependent on lany local and temporal variations, as the studies of folklorists show. There is no doubt that a systematic presentation and classification of this material by a modern anthropologiest would be very helpful. It might even define new perspectives for research on the relationships between art and folk traditions.

Notes

1. E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage (1903), O.U.P., I, p. 116, bibliographical note.

2. See Midsummer Night's Dream, I.1.168 and IV.2.132-3.

3. Chambers, op. cit., I, p. 173: “The May-game is probably intended by the ‘Whitsun pastorals’ of Winter's Tale IV.4.134 and the ‘pageants of delight’ at Pentecost … of Two Gentlemen of Verona”, IV.4.163.

4. J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Macmillan abridged edition, p. 475.

5. See E. O. James, Seasonal Feasts and Festivals, London, 1961, Thames & Hudson, p. 309.

6. Chambers, op. cit., p. 114.

7. Muriel St Clare Byrne, Elizabethan Life in Town and Country, 1961 (first edition 1925), University Paperbacks, p. 240.

8. T. F. T. Dyer, British Popular Customs, 1891. John Brand and Henry Ellis, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 1849.

9. Chambers, op. cit., pp. 234-5: “… the day of the solstice … was known as the ‘birthday’ of Sol Novus or Sol Invictus … The Sol Invictus was identified with the central figure of that curious half-oriental, half-philosophical worship of Mithra, which at one time threatened to become a serious rival to Christianity as the religion of the thinking portion of the Roman world. That an important Mithraic feast also fell on December 25 can hardly be doubted …”

10. Hock-tide can be defined as the season of the hock-days, observed on the Monday and Tuesday following the second Sunday after Easter-Day. It is said to have been instituted in memory of the almost total destruction of the Danes in England under Ethelred, on 13 November 1002. The word hock itself refers to the fact that most of them were not killed but simply houghed or hamstringed, which was a way to render them incapable of serving in war (see O.E.D.). The dislocation of its observance from November to two weeks after Easter may be due to its being attracted by and absorbed into an older festival to which it bore many resemblances.

11. Holiday tradition of the Cotswolds revived under James I, thanks to the initiative of Robert Dover, a Warwickshire attorney. The games took place on May 31, and included leaping and wrestling for the men, dancing for the maids and also grey hound coursing (cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, I.1.89-90) and horse-racing. See description and woodcut in R. Chambers, Book of Days, volume I, pp. 712-14.

12. E. K. Chambers, op. cit., p. 159.