The Origin of the Yule-Log.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 3, Issue 958, 24 December 1881, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Origin of the Yule-Log.

ERIVED from our ancient British [j raK, and Scandinavian ancestors, the n eWj cußtpm.is,so to speak, a Christian;,. ised-heathen one. They had,;in common with other .and niorecivilised nations, a great festival at'this season of. the year—the winter solstice; and immense bonfires, were kindled in, honour of the god.Thor, representing, in their, faith, our Jehovah., This feast was called by our ancestors Juul, the festival of the sun, corrupted in the Scottish dialect to Yule. Curiously enough, the Gothio word Giul means a wheel; and in our ancient " Clog Almanacks" a■ wheel forms' the device marking Yule-tide, Yule, or Juul, was so named in Danish; in Welsh it h'Haul, or the festival of the sun—the sun of the new year boing then ushered in, In Saxon it was, called "the sun-feast;" in Swedish Oel, with the article "j." Mallet, in his "Northern Antiquities,"says that "allthe Celtic nations have been accustomed to the worship of the sun, and to celebrate a feast at the winter solstice." " They called it," he adds, "Yok, or Yttul, from Hiaulm&ffoul, which signifies the sun in the Bretaign, Basque, and Cornwall languages," Blount, in "Our Northern Parts," derives the word from the French Nouel of Nod, The Greenlanders also to this day keep a sun-feast at the same season, to rejoice at the return of that luminary. Much more might be said on the'subject of the term Yule, kit further space cannot be afforded for the purpose,