Nov. 11.]

ST. MARTIN’S DAY.

The festival of St. Martin, happening at that season when the new wines of the year are drawn from the lees and tasted, when cattle are killed for winter food, and fat geese are in their prime, is held as a feast day over most parts of Christendom. On the ancient clog almanacs, the day is marked by the figure of a goose, our bird of Michaelmas being, on the continent, sacrificed at Martinmas. In Scotland and the north of England, a fat ox is called a mart[84] clearly from Martinmas, the usual time when beeves are killed for winter use.—Book of Days, vol ii. p. 568.

Salt Silver.

—In the glossary to Kennett’s Parochial Antiquities (p. 496) is the following:—“Salt Silver.—One penny paid at the Feast of St. Martin, by the servile tenants to their lord, as a commutation for the service of carrying their lord’s salt from market to his larder.”

Buckinghamshire.

There is a house in Fenny Stratford, called St. Martin’s house, in the wall of which is a stone bearing the following inscription:—

“This house was settled on the parish officers of this town, for the annual observance of St. Martin’s Day.”—“Anno Domini 1752.”

The house is let at 5l. 4s. per annum, and the rent, after defraying the expense of repairs, is laid out in giving an entertainment to the inhabitants of the town.—Edwards, Old English Customs and Charities, 1842, p. 59.

Cambridgeshire.

Within the manor of Whitlesea there is a custom for the inhabitants to choose, on the Sunday next after the feast of St. Martin, two persons called storers, to oversee the public business, and likewise to provide a common bull, in consideration whereof they enjoy a certain pasture called Bull Grass; and the major part of the freeholders and copyholders at a meeting grant the grass every year to any person who will take it, to have the same from Lady-day till the corn is carried out of Coatsfield.—Blount’s Fragmenta Antiquitatis, 1815, p. 576.

Cumberland.

Thomas Williamson, by will, dated 14th December, 1674, gave the sum of 20l. to be laid out in land to be bestowed upon poor people born within St. John’s Chapelry or Castlerigg, in mutton or veal, at Martinmas yearly, when flesh might be thought cheapest, to be by them pickled or hung up and dried, that they might have something to keep them within doors upon stormy days.—Edwards, Old English Customs and Charities, 1842, p. 63.

Warwickshire.

Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire (1730, vol. i. p. 4), says:—There is a certain rent due unto the lord of the Hundred of Knightlow, called Wroth money or Warth money or Swarff penny, probably the same with Ward penny. This rent must be paid every Martinmas Day, in the morning, at Knightlow Cross, before the sun riseth: the party paying it must go thrice about the cross, and say “The Wrath money,” and then lay it in the hole of the said cross before good witness, for if it be not duly performed the forfeiture is thirty shillings and a white bull.

Yorkshire.

In the North Riding of Yorkshire it is customary for a party of singers, mostly consisting of women, to begin at the feast of St. Martin a kind of peregrination round the neighbouring villages, carrying with them a small waxen image of our Saviour adorned with box and other evergreens, and singing at the same time a hymn which, though rustic and uncouth, is nevertheless replete with the sacred story of the Nativity. The custom is yearly continued till Christmas Eve, when the feasting, or as they usually call it, “good living,” commences; every rustic dame produces a cheese preserved for the sacred festival, upon which, before any part of it is tasted, according to an old custom, she with a sharp knife makes rude incisions to represent the Cross. With this, and furmity made of barley and meal, the cottage affords uninterrupted hospitality.—Gent. Mag. 1811, vol. lxxxi. pt. i. p. 423.

IRELAND.

At St. Peter’s, Athlone, every family of a village, says Mason, in his Stat. Acc. of Ireland (1819, vol. iii. p. 75), kills an animal of some kind or other: those who are rich kill a cow or a sheep, others a goose or a turkey; while those who are poor and cannot procure an animal of greater value, kill a hen or a cock, and sprinkle the threshold with the blood, and do the same in the four corners of the house, and this ceremonious performance is done to exclude every kind of evil spirit from the dwelling where this sacrifice is made, till the return of the same day in the following year.