HOGMANAY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 8, 4 January 1913, Page 4

HOGMANAY.

The ‘Lyttelton Times’ discoursing on Hogmanay, remarks that the ceremonies associated with the celebration of the Hogmanay by the Scotch people are deep-rooted in the traditions oi the past,, although it has been impossible in these modern times to preserve all the features of what an unsympathetic historian has called the “annual Scots’ saturnalia.” It used to ho the custom, for instance, foi the children to mark the occasion by “getting themselves swaddled in r. great sheet, doubled in front, so as to make a vast pocket,” and then mak ing house-to-house calls in search of gifts of oat-cake. Several chants were regarded as suitable to the occasion the one most commonly used running thus: My feet’s could, my shoou’s thin; Lie’s ray cakes and let me rin! Another verse, which was longer and therefore less popular, had a moralis iug strain: i Get up, good wife, and dinna sweir, And deal your bread to them that’s here; For the time will come when ye’ll be dead, And then ye’ll neither need ale nor bread. The housewives were expected to have prepared for the visits by providing an extra store of oat-cake, and it was “no unpleasing scene to see the children going laden home, each with his larg apron bellying out before him, stuff ed full of cakes and perhaps scarcely 'able to waddle under the load.” Mum mers, or “guisers,” used to play a conspicuous part in the Hogmanay celebrations throughout Scotland. 1 was their part to call at as man; houses as possible and to sing appro priate songs while disguised in flow ing robes and masks. The household er was expected to pay a halfpenny fo the entertainment. Things are dom just a little differently in New Zea land, but the celebrations are no less hearty on the part of the Scottish people in our midst. ■ ii'iiif ,