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Information taken from various websites.
Yule, according to the Venerable Bede, comes from the
Norse Iul meaning 'wheel'.
Traditional activities included carolling, wassailling
, burning the Yule log, decorating the Yule tree, exchanging presents,
kissing under the mistletoe, and feeding animals and birds with
grains and seeds.
Traditional foods included cookies and caraway cakes soaked
in cider, fruits, nuts, pork dishes, ginger tea, spiced cider,
wassail or lamb's wool (ale, sugar, nutmeg, roasted apples).
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Ancient wassailing.
A group of wassailers would take bowls filled with wassail (originally
mulled ale, curds, apples, and sometimes nuts) from house to house
and 'wassail' the apple and cherry trees with songs and loud noises
to ensure a good crop from the orchards the next year.
The Yule log was brought
in on Mother Night, set ablaze and left to burn for all Twelve
Nights (the log was nearly an entire tree and was burned in the
long pits of a long house). The burning stems from the old custom
of the Yule Bonfire, burned to give life and power to the Sun,
which was thought to be reborn at the Winter Solstice. As the
Oak Tree was considered to be the Cosmic Tree of Life by the ancient
Druids, the Yule Log is traditionally Oak.
Different areas had different customs concerning
the Yule log. Everywhere it was garlanded and decorated with ribbons
prior to the joyous procession to the longhouse. Once it was burning,
barefooted women were not allowed near it. In Yorkshire, England,
children would go begging and singing from house to house as the
log was brought in. In other areas, the children were allowed
to wassail the log on the first night and drink to it.
Riddles. Sagaluthien
emailed me to say that, in Sweden, riddles
are still attached to Christmas gifts. The riddle describes what
is inside the wrapping, and the recipient guesses the answer before
he or she opens the gift! The person giving the gift tries to
come up with an original rhyme, and there are books to help.
Mistletoe was
held sacred by both the Celtic Druids and the Norseman. Once called
Allheal, it was used in folk medicine to cure many ills.
In Scandinavian antiquity it was the plant of peace: if enemies
met by chance beneath it in a forest, they laid down their arms
and maintained a truce until the next day. Five days after the
New Moon following winter solstice, the Druid priests cut mistletoe
from a holy oak tree with a golden sickle, catching the branches
before they touched the ground because they were believed to hold
the soul of the host tree. The druids divided the branches and
distributed them to the people, who hung them over doorways as
protection against thunder, lightning and other evils. A sprig
placed in a baby's cradle would protect the child from faeries.
Giving a sprig to the first cow calving after New Year would protect
the entire herd.
Mistletoe was believed to give mortal men access
to the underworld. The living plant was thought to be the genitalia
of the great God, whose sacred tree is the Oak: its white berries
were drops of the God's Divine Semen, whilst the red berries of
the Holly were equated with the Sacred Menstrual Blood of the
Goddess. Mistletoe was therefore a symbolic divine substance,
suggesting the God's life-giving essence, and provided and a sense
of immortality to those who hung it at Yuletide. In ancient times,
ecstatic sexual orgies frequently accompanied the rites of the
Oak King; in modern times, however, the custom of kissing under
the mistletoe is all that remains.
Dreams experienced during the Twelve
Nights of Yule were believed to predict the events of the coming
year.
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A festival of lights is celebrated in Northern countries
and seems to be an ancient holiday in connection with Yule. Candles,
torches, and other forms of light were left burning to light up
the night skies.
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Homes were decorated with ivy, holly, boughs of evergreens
and ribbons; the entire home was covered with garlands and wreathes.
The tradition of the Yule tree comes from Germany. Originally
it is believed the trees were decorated outside and gifts left
for the land wights. This custom can still be observed in parts
of Northern Europe. With Christianity, the trees were hidden indoors.
Modern tradition uses a Yule wreath as an oath ring. This
wreath is oathed upon as well as wished upon, and then burned
at the Twelfth Night.
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The killing of the wren acts out the vanquishing of the
Holly King, God of the Waning Year, by the Oak King, God of the
Waxing Year. The wren, 'little king' of the Waning Year, is killed
by his counterpart, the robin redbreast, who finds him hiding
in an ivy bush (or sometimes in Ireland in a holly bush, as befits
the Holly King). The robin's tree is the birch, which follows
the Winter Solstice in the Celtic Tree calendar. In the acted-out
ritual, men hunted and killed the wren with birch rods.
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19 Girithron: Legolas, Eowyn and friends leave Eryn Carantaur
21 Girithron: They spend Mother Night at The
Four Alls tavern where they celebrate the Lighting of the
Yule Log and the Rising of the Sun.
23 Girithron: Legolas and Eowyn find the body at Osgiliath,
then reach Minas Tirith; Aragorn and Eomer spend the day hunting
and the night sheltering in the cave.
24 Girithron Aragorn and Eomer discover three more bodies.
The Dressing of the Yule Tree. Eowyn seduces Legolas. Legolas,
Gimli and Haldir visit the brothel.
25 Girithron: Fidelin tells his story; Legolas receives
his father's letter; Eowyn and Haldir go shopping; Gimli meets
Admant; Dinendal questions Master Cuthbert; Legolas visits the
old lady's house; Eowyn discovers that she is not pregnant.
26 Girithron: Haldir raids the thieves' hideout; Eowyn
practises with her staff; Aragorn, Eomer and Eowyn question the
assassin; Legolas is captured; Gimli attends the Killing of
the Wren. Eowyn and Gimli, Haldir and Dinendal, and Eomer
join forces to rescue Legolas; Haldir, Gimli, Eomer and Berkin
spend the night at the Golden Goose.
27 Girithron: Haldir, Gimli, Eomer and Berkin escape through
the caves. The true extent of Lord Berodin's villainy is exposed.
1 Narwain: Twelfth Night. The Burning of the
Yule Wreaths
Girithron is the equivalent of December; Narwain
is January.I don't know if Tolkien intended for them to fall on
the same days as the modern months, but I have assumed that they
do.
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Do elves sleep?
Legolas and Gimli slept and Aragorn lay flat, stretched upon
his back; but Gandalf stood, leaning on his staff, gazing into
the darkness, east and west. The King of the Golden Hall,
The Two Towers
It must be potent wine to make a wood-elf drowsy; but this
wine, it would seem, was the heady vintage of the great gardens
of Dorwinion, not meant for his soldiers or his servants, but
for the king's feasts only, and for smaller bowls, not for the
butler's great flagons.
Very soon the chief guard nodded his head, then he laid
it on the table and fell fast asleep. The butler went on talking
and laughing to himself for a while without seeming to notice,
but soon his head too nodded to the table, and he fell asleep
and snored beside his friend. Barrels Out of Bond, The
Hobbit
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Extracts from The Art of Mediaeval Hunting: the Hound and the
Hawk, by John Cummins, which I bought on holiday in Vancouver,
and which inspired the hunting scene.
Medieval man saw the stag and the boar as polarised extremes
… In contrast to the timid, elegant, wily deer, thought to
have a special bone in its heart which alone saved it from dying
of fear, the boar is massive and ugly, black in appearance and
character, the archetype of unrelenting ferocity. Completely fearless,
unmoved by pain, it is capable of killing dog, horse or man. In
imaginative literature it is the quarry of the epic hero; less
subtle and evasive than the stag … 'he tresteth not wel myche
on his rennying, but only on his defence and his despitous dedes'.
The boar is able to draw on extremes of bravery and pride or orgueil
in its own nature, and demands a like response from the hunter
in the single combat in which its pursuit ends.
For Gaston Phoebus, the boar is the most dangerous animal in the
world:
…I have seen him strike a man and split him from knee
to chest, so that he fell dead without a word … he has often
brought me to the ground, horse and man together, and killed my
horse.
… The huntsman … found the boar's bed, felt it with
his hand, and, if it was warm, blew for the release of the hounds.
Even at this early stage, scorning the evasive crafts of the stag,
the boar might face the hounds and attack them, and later in his
flight he might do this repeatedly and then run on with striking
stamina, 'and flee from the sonne rysing to the sonne goyng doun
if he be a yonge boar of III yere old' … The difficulty of
bringing the boar finally to bay made it essential to organize
one's relays of hounds, 'for a boar will run far, and also he
kills and injures many hounds. If there were no fresh hounds he
could well escape, so have at least two or three relays posted.'
[When facing the boar on foot] the hunter's time was short, quick
reflexes and calmness essential. 'The eyes roll in rage, and it
takes two or three steps towards him, ears pricked. As soon as
the hunter sees this, he must prepare himself, for let him be
sure that the boar will come so quickly that it will seem that
not an instant elapses between the beginning of his charge and
his arrival on the spear; or, if the hunter misses his aim, on
the man himself.' … Gaston Phoebus is very specific about
the hunter's grip on the spear:
His spear should be crossed [i.e. with a crosspiece a little
way back from the point; this could be a detachable bar bound
on with a thong, or could be forged as part of the blade or riveted
to it], sharp and keen; he must hold the shaft in the middle,
with as much in front of him as behind, for if he held it too
short in front, when he struck the boar, which has a long head,
the snout would reach him, for the spear would go deep and the
boar … could wound or kill him. So as to be able to put more
force into the blow and to move his hand wherever necessary, he
must never grip the spear in his armpit, but after the impact
he should put it there and thrust hard. And if the boar is stronger
than him, he must jump about retaining his hold, and push and
push until God gives him aid or help arrives.
… The death of the boar was followed by the unmaking or cutting-up
of the body, and by the 'reward' or fouail,
a ceremonial sharing of the benefits with the dogs … some
hunters looked on the boar's testicles as a prized addition to
their diet [which would increase their own virility] and removed
them as the first act after the kill.
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'extreme sports'!
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A scan of the article about mediaeval
brothels that inspired the Golden Goose. Please be
patient whilst it loads!
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The inspiration for Berodin's house: a view of Minas Tirith by
Alan Lee.
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Berkin's father's desk, by William Burges,
in the Manchester City Art Gallery, England.
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The Caves of Nottingham
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There are no natural caves in Nottingham. A visitor of 1639 stated
that, A great many of the inhabitants, especially of the poorer
sort, dwell in valts, holes or caves which are digged out of the
rock, so that anyone possessed of a mattock could easily provide
himself with a house.
The earliest caves would have been cut into the face of the rock
and used mainly as dwellings. Entrances would, where possible,
be above ground level to avoid the regular flooding of the river
Leen. The early caves had one entrance, leading to a short passage
that opened into a small chamber with a vertical shaft that acted
as a chimney.
The caves proved to be the ideal premises for certain types of
trade because they were easy to extend; had a near constant temperature
(of fifty three to fifty four degrees, winter or summer, which
just happens to be the ideal temperature for malting); were dark,
which made it possible to malt barley all the year round; provided
a constant supply of clean water (filtered through many feet of
rock) as long as there were no cesspits nearby; and were relatively
safe because sandstone does not burn.
The caves were made to be lived and worked in, and are of human
size with ceiling heights in excess of 6ft 6in, and doorways no
smaller than in a house. Tunnels tended to be short and to connect
together caves or areas owned by the same person or group. An
example of a longer tunnel is Western Passage in the Castle Rock,
which is believed to have been a back way out, or Sally Port,
from the old castle. Along its length are the remains of what
would have been defensive stations, small rooms that could only
be entered from the back, like pill boxes. The occupiers of the
castle would have used the tunnel as an emergency exit in time
siege.
'The Park', one of the more expensive areas of the town, originally
had seven levels, each interconnected by steps and underground
passageways. The area also had a giant tunnel, the Park Tunnel,
intended for horse drawn traffic.
The caves that can be visited by the public include: the Pillar
Cave & Tannery (Nottingham was an important leather producer
during the 15th and 16th centuries and the Pillar Cave features
the remains of Britain's only medieval underground tannery); Sam
Hancock's Cave (formerly a pub cellar in which the constant cool
temperature provided the perfect conditions for the brewing and
storage of Nottingham's celebrated ales).
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