Part 12

"There's rosemary," says Ophelia; "that's for remembrance: pray you, love, remember;" and the custom of decking the corpse with this flower, as well as that of flinging its sprigs into the grave, would naturally spring out of this touching superstition. Its presence at bridals would seem to suggest that it was dedicated to hope as well as to memory. We have in Shakspeare's play of "Romeo and Juliet" allusions to the use of this herb on both of these important but very different occasions, which allusions are affecting from the application of both to the same young girl. The first, which refers to the joyous celebration, occurs in an interview between Romeo and the Nurse of Juliet, in which arrangements are making for the secret marriage, where the garrulous old woman observes, as hinting at Juliet's willingness, "She hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it." The second is in that scene in which Juliet is supposed to be dead:

"_Friar._ Come, is the bride ready to go to church? _Capulet._ Ready to go, but never to return!"

And is inserted amongst the holy father's exhortations to resignation:--

"Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary On this fair corse; and, as the custom is, In all her best array bear her to church."

Independently of the beautiful suggestion to remembrance which is made by its enduring perfume, that precious perfume itself would recommend this herb, for reasons less fine, as "strewings fitt'st for graves." The fact of its being in bloom at this season would naturally introduce the rosemary, with all its fine morals, into the Christmas celebrations; and such customs as that which prescribed that the wassail-bowl should be stirred with a sprig of this plant before it went round amongst friends, seem to have a very elegant reference to its secret virtues ("that's for remembrance," perhaps), and suggest that the revellings of the season in those old times were mingled with the best and most refined feelings of our nature.

But the mistletoe, the mystic mistletoe, where is the man whose school-boy days are gone by, in whom that word conjures up no merry memories?

"Oh, the mistletoe-bough!" who hath not, at the name, thronging visions of sweet faces that looked sweetest in those moments of their startled beauty beneath the pendent bough! If the old spells with which superstition has invested the mistletoe have lost some of their power over me, it hath now another, which in earlier days I knew not of,--the power to restore the distant and to raise the dead. I am to laugh no more as I have laughed of old beneath the influence of that mystic cognizance of the gay Christmas-tide; but even now as I write thereof, look in upon my heart bright portraits, traced with a skill which no mortal pencil shall achieve,--faces on which the earth hath long lain, and others from whom the wide spaces of the world have separated me for many a weary year; and, heavier far, some to whom _unkindness_ hath made me too long a stranger! There they rise and stand, one by one, beneath the merry snare, each with the heightened beauty on her cheek, which is the transient gift of the sacred bough!

O M----! how very fair is thine image in the eye of memory, and how has thy going away changed all things for me! The bright and the beautiful lie still about,--still bright and beautiful even to me,--but in another manner than when thou wert here. All things are tinged with thy loss. All fair things have a look, and all sweet sounds a tone, of mourning since thou leftest me. How long it seems, as if ages, instead of years, of the grave had grown between us, as if, indeed, I had known thee in some former and far-removed state of being! I do not love to think of thee as dead, I strive to think of thee rather as of one whom I have left behind in the quiet valley of our youth and our love,--from whom I have wandered forth and lost my way amid the mazes of the world. But where is the clew that should lead me back to thee? There may have been fairer (sweeter never) things than thou in this fair world, but my heart could never be made to believe or understand it. Had I known thee only in that world, I might not so have marked thy beauty; but thou wert with me when the world left me. In the flood of the sunshine, when a thousand birds are about us, we go upon our way with a sense that there is melody around, but singling perhaps no one note to take home to the heart and make a worship of. But the one bird that sings to us in the dim and silent night--oh! none but they on whom the night has fallen can know how dear its song becomes, filling with its music all the deserted mansions of the lonely soul. But the bird is dead, the song is hushed, and the houses of my spirit are empty and silent and desolate!

And thou whom the grave hath not hidden, nor far distance removed, from whom I parted as if it were but yesterday, and yet of whom I have already learned to think as of one separated from me by long years of absence and death, as if it were very long since I had beheld thee,--as if I gazed upon thee from a far distance across the lengthened and dreary alleys of the valley of the dead! Physically speaking, thou art still within my reach; and yet art thou to me as if the tomb or the cloister had received thee, and made of thee (what the world or the grave makes of all things we have loved) a dream of the night, a phantom of the imagination, an angel of the memory, a creation of the hour of shadows! Whatever may be thy future fortunes, however thy name may hereafter be borne to my mortal ear, my heart will ever refuse to picture _thee_ but as one who died in her youth!

And _thou_!--thou too art there, with thy long fair hair and that harp of thine which was so long an ark of harmony for me. "Alas! we had been friends in youth." But _all_ things bring _thee_ back, and I am haunted yet, and shall be through the world, by the airs which thou wert wont to sing me long ago. I remember that even in those days, at times, in the silent night, when broken snatches of melodies imperfectly remembered stole through the chambers of my heart,--ever in the sweet tones in which it had learned to love them,--I have asked myself if the ties that bound us might ever be like those passing and half-forgotten melodies; if the time could ever come when they should be like an old song learned in life's happier day, and whose memory has been treasured, to make us weep in the years when the heart has need to be soothed by weeping; if there would ever be a day when thy name might be sounded in mine ear as the name of a stranger! And that day has long since come,--

"For whispering tongues will poison truth."

How truly may we be said to live but in the past and in the future,--to have our hearts made up of memory and of hope, for which the present becomes, hour after hour, more and more of a void! And alas! is it not true, as a consequence, that the more they are occupied with memory, the less room have they for hope? And thus the one is ever gaining upon the other, and the dark waters of memory are hourly spreading upon that shore where hope had room to build her edifices and to play about them, till at length they cover all, and hope, having "no rest for the sole of her foot," flies forward to a higher and a better shore!

And such are my visions of the mistletoe; these are amongst the spirits that rise up to wait upon my memory,--"they and the other spirits" of the mystic bough! But brighter fancies has that charmed branch for many of our readers, and merrier spirits hide amid its leaves. Many a pleasant tale could we tell of the mistletoe-bough which might amuse our readers more than the descriptions to which we are confined, if the limits of our volume would permit. But already our space is scarcely sufficient for our purpose. We think we can promise our readers in another volume a series of tales connected with the traditions and superstitions which are detailed in the present, and which may serve as illustrations of the customs of the Christmas-tide.

Some of the names by which this remarkable plant were formerly called are, "misselden," "misseldine," and, more commonly, "missel." Old Tusser tells us that,--

"If snow do continue, sheep hardly that fare, Crave mistle and ivy;"

and Archdeacon Nares says "the missel-thrush" is so designated "from feeding on its berries." From the generality of the examples in which this plant is mentioned by the name of "missel," it is suggested to us, by Mr. Crofton Croker that the additional syllable given to the name now in common use is a corruption of the old _tod_, and that mistletoe, or mistletod, implies a _bush_, or bunch, of missel, such as is commonly hung up at Christmas. He quotes in support of this suggestion the corresponding phrase of "ivy-tod," which occurs frequently in the writings of the Elizabethan age. If this be so, the expression "the mistletoe-bough" includes a tautology; but as it is popularly used, we retain it for the instruction of such antiquarians of remote future times as may consult our pages for some account of the good old customs which are disappearing so fast, and may fail to reach their day.

That this plant was held in veneration by the pagans, has been inferred from a passage in Virgil's description of the descent into the infernal regions. That passage is considered to have an allegorical reference to some of the religious ceremonies practised amongst the Greeks and Romans, and a comparison is therein drawn between the golden bough of the infernal regions, and what is obviously the misletoe:--

"Quale solet silvis brumali frigore _viscum_ Fronde virere nova, quod non sua seminat arbos, Et croceo fetu teretis circumdare truncos," etc.

The reference is given by Mr. Christie in his "Enquiry into the Ancient Greek Game" of Palamedes; and he mentions likewise the respect in which this plant was held by the Gothic as well as the Celtic nations. Sandys furnishes a legend from the Edda in proof of the extraordinary qualities ascribed to it by the former. Amongst the Celtic nations it is well known to have been an object of great veneration, and the ceremony of collecting it by the Druids against the festival of the winter solstice was one of high solemnity. It was cut by the prince of the Druids himself, and with a golden sickle. It was said that those only of the oaks were sacred to the Druids which had the mistletoe upon them, and that the reverence of the people towards the priests, as well as their estimation of the mistletoe, proceeded in a great measure from the cures which the former effected by means of that plant. Medicinal properties, we believe, are still ascribed to it, and it was not very long ago deemed efficacious in the subduing of convulsive disorders. Sir John Colbatch, in his dissertation concerning it, observes that this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty "for further and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes, or to be hung up surreptitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits." Against the latter it appears to have been used as a charm up to the last century.

Its introduction into the Christian festival might therefore be considered appropriate as emblematic of the conquest obtained over the spirits of darkness by the event of the Nativity; and perhaps its supposed healing properties might be deemed to recommend it further, as a symbol of the moral health to which man was restored from the original corruption of his nature, and a fitting demonstration of the joy which hailed the "Sun of Righteousness" that had arisen, "with _healing_ in his wings."

Notwithstanding all this, however, Brand is of opinion that its heathen origin should exclude it at all events from the decorations of our churches, and quotes a story told him by an old sexton at Teddington, in Middlesex, of the clergyman of that place having observed this profane plant intermingled with the holly and ivy which adorned the church, and ordered its immediate removal. Washington Irving, who has studied old English customs and manners with sincere regard, introduces a similar rebuke from the learned parson to his unlearned clerk, in his account of the Christmas spent by him at Bracebridge Hall.

The reverence of the mistletoe among the Ancient Britons appears, however, to have been limited to that which grew upon the oak; whereas the _Viscum album_, or common mistletoe,--the sight of whose pearly berries brings the flush into the cheek of the maiden of modern days,--may be gathered besides from the old apple-tree, the hawthorn, the lime-tree, and the Scotch or the silver fir. Whether there remain any traces of the old superstitions which elevated it into a moral or a medical amulet,--beyond that which is connected with the custom alluded to in the opening of our remarks upon this plant, and represented, by our artist here,--we know not. We should, however, be very sorry to see any light let in amongst us which should fairly rout a belief connected with so agreeable a privilege as this. That privilege, as all our readers know, consists in the right to kiss any female who may be caught under the mistletoe-bough,--and, we may hope, will continue, for its own pleasantness, even if the superstition from which it springs should be finally lost. This superstition arose, clearly enough, out of the old mystic character of the plant in question, and erects it into a charm, the neglect of which exposes to the imminent danger of all the evils of old-maidenism. For, according to Archdeacon Nares, the tradition is, "that the maid who was not kissed under it, at Christmas, would not be married in that year,"--by which, we presume, the Archdeacon means in the following year. Accordingly, a branch of this parasitical plant was hung (formerly with great state, but now it is generally suspended with much secrecy) either from the centre of the roof, or over the door,--and we recommend this latter situation to our readers, both as less exposed to untimely observation, and because every maiden who joins the party must of necessity do so by passing under it. We learn from Brand that the ceremony was not duly performed unless a berry was plucked off with each kiss. This berry, it is stated by other authorities, was to be presented for good luck to the maiden kissed; and Washington Irving adds that "when the berries are all plucked, the privilege ceases." If this be so, it behooves the maidens of a household to take good care that the branch provided for the occasion shall be as well furnished with these pearly tokens as the feast is likely to be with candidates for the holy state of matrimony. The practice is still of very common observance in kitchens and servants' halls, particularly in the country. But, as we have hinted, we have met with it (and so, we dare say, have most of our readers) in higher scenes; and many a merry laugh have we heard ring from beneath the mistletoe-bough. There are lips in the world that we would gladly meet there in this coming season.

Another of the symptoms of the approaching season which has, at least to us, a very pleasing effect, consists in the bursts of solemn minstrelsy by which we are aroused from our slumbers in the still hour of the winter nights, or which, failing to break our sleep, mingle with our dreams, leading us into scenes of enchantment, and filling them with unearthly music. This midnight minstrelsy, whether it comes in the shape of human voices, hallowing the night by the chanting of the Christmas carol, or breaks upon the silence of the mid-watches from the mingling instruments of those wandering spirits of harmony, the waits, has in each case its origin in the _Gloria in Excelsis_,--the song with which the angels hailed the birth of the Redeemer in the fields near Bethlehem. "As soon," says Jeremy Taylor, "as these blessed choristers had sung their Christmas carol, and taught the Church a hymn to put into her offices forever on the anniversary of this festivity, the angels returned into heaven." Accordingly, these nocturnal hymns, although they spread over the entire period of Advent, grow more and more fervent and frequent as the season approaches, and the night which ushers in the great day itself is filled throughout all its watches with the continued sounds of sacred harmony. How beautiful is the effect given to this music by this consideration of its meaning and its cause! Many and many a time have we been awakened by the melody of the waits when

"The floor of heaven _Was_ thick inlaid with patines of bright gold,"--

and have lain and listened to their wild minstrelsy, its solemn swells and "dying falls" kept musical by the distance and made holy by the time, till we have felt amid all those influences as if it were

"No mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owes,"

and could have fancied that the "morning stars" were again singing, as of old they "sang together for joy," and that the sounds of their far anthem came floating to the earth. This sort of fancy has occurred over and over again to him who has looked out from his bed upon a sky full of stars, and listened at the same time to invisible and distant music, under the holy impressions of the season. Shakspeare has helped us to this feeling, perhaps, as we can trace his influence upon _all_ our feelings, and upon none more than the most sacred or the most solemn:--

"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; Such harmony is in immortal souls."

To the rudest carol that ever flung its notes upon the still air of these solemn hours we have hearkened with a hush of pleasure which recognized how well--

"Soft stillness, and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony!"

And the wildest music that ever broke upon that solemn calm from the instruments of the most unskilful waits,--if it were but remote enough to keep its asperities out of the ear, and send us only its floating tones,--has brought Shakspeare into our hearts again:--

"_Portia._ Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. _Nerissa._ Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam."

The waits of to-day are the remote and degenerated successors of those ancient bards who filled an important place in the establishments of princes and nobles, as also of those wandering members of the fraternity who, having no fixed position, carried their gift of music from place to place as the tournament or the festival invited. Those of our readers who have much acquaintance with the old chroniclers have not to be told by us that these latter were frequently drawn together in considerable numbers by the Christmas celebrations. The name "wait," or "wayte," itself is of great antiquity amongst us, and appears to have been the title given to some member of the band of minstrels who either replaced the ancient minstrel-chronicler in the royal establishments, or was probably under his direction, the duty of which particular member it was to pass at night from door to door of the chambers and pipe the watches upon some species of instrument. As early as the reign of Edward III. we have mention of this individual minstrel by his title of "wayte," and in the subsequent ordinances for royal households the name frequently occurs. Dr. Burney, in his "History of Music," quotes from the "Liber niger domus regis," of Edward IV.'s time, a full description of the duties, privileges, and perquisites of this ancient officer. It is probably from this member of the royal household and his office that the corporations for towns borrowed their earliest appointment of watchmen; and the ancestors of those ancient gentlemen whose most sweet voices are amongst the lost sounds of the metropolis, and whose mysterious cries will soon, we fear, be a dead language, were no doubt in their original institution minstrels or waits. The sworn waits are, we believe, still attached to many corporations (although some of their duties have been alienated, and some of their prerogatives usurped), and amongst others to that of the City of London. The bellman and those "wandering voices," the watchmen, where they still exist, have, however, a title to the same high and far descent, and have succeeded to most of the offices of the ancient waits. It would seem, too, that both these latter important personages have at all times had it in view to assert their claim to a minstrel origin, their announcements being generally chanted in a species of music quite peculiar to themselves, and such as the world can never hope to hear again when these gentry shall be extinct. "Oh, what a voice is silent!" wrote Barry Cornwall long before the introduction of the new police into our streets; and the passionate exclamation must surely have originated in a prophetic vision of the extinction of the Dogberry who piped the night-watches in Bedford Square. As for those wandering musicians who charm the long nights of the Christmas time with _unofficial_ music, and are waits by courtesy, they bear the same relation to the corporation minstrels of modern times as did the travelling bards of former days to the ancient minstrels who were established in the households of nobles or of kings. The waits still on some occasions close their performance by calling the hour, and by certain other announcements descriptive of the weather or characteristic of the season.