Copy 1, Volume 1

Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain: chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar and provincial customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand.

  • Brand, John, 1744-1806.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain: chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar and provincial customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    554/570 (page 528)
    mas pie, is made an abomination.” [This prejudice is also alluded to in a rare tract called London Bewitched, 1708, p. 7: ‘‘Grocers will now begin to advance their plumbs, and bellmen will be very studious concerning their Christmas verses. Fanaticks will begin to preach down superstitious minc'd pyes and abominable plumb porridge ; and the Church of England will highly stand up for the old Christmas hospi- tality.” And in the old metrical history of Jack Horner, “ containing his witty tricks and pleasant pranks which he play’d from his youth to his riper years, right pleasant and delightful for winter and summer’s recreation,” we read— “ And in the corner would he sit In Christmas holydays, When friends they did together meet To pass away the time, Why, little Jack, he sure would eat His Christmas pye in rhyme : And said, Jack Horner in the corner Eats good Christmas pye, And with his thumb pulls out the plumb, And said, good boy am I! These pretty verses which he made Upon his Christmas cheer, Did gain him love, as it is said, Of all both far and near.”] Selden, in bis Table Talk, tells us that the coffin of our Christmas pies, in shape long, is in imitation of the cratch, i. e. the manger, wherein the infant Jesus v/as laid. In Fletcher’s Poems and Translations, 1656, p. 154, in a poem styled “ Christmas Day,” we find the ingredients and shape of the Christmas pie. “ Christ-mass ? give me my beads : the word implies A plot, by its ingredients, beef and pyes. The cloyster’d steaks with salt and pepper lye Like nunnes with patches in a monastrie. Prophaneness in a conclave ? Nay, much more, Idolatrie in crust! Babylon’s whore Rak’d from the grave, and bak’d by handies, then Serv’d up in coffins to unholy men ; Defil’d, with superstition, like the Gentiles Of old, that worship’d onions, roots, and lentiles!” Misson, in his Travels in England, by Ozell, pp. 34, 35,