ELEGI
DECEMB:
1949,
ENGLISH SAYINGS ABOUT CHRISTMAS
ANY old ndages con
much truth,
Mtain
scientists admit today, Here are a few which wers once part of the common specch of the English countryside, together with n sad little doggerel which calls up a picture of a silent, anowy, starlit night: As far as the sun shines
on Christmas,
So far will вnow blow in
May.
If the sun shines through the apple tree Christmas Day
there will be good cff
the following year.
оп
A Warm Christmas, a
Cold Easter,. />.
A green
Christmas,
White Easter,
A light Christmas,
heavy shenf,
n
"Christmas is not like it was when I was young—we had real" tin hats, parties down the shelters, lovely boxes of anti-gas_ointment to put on the soles of Auntie Aggie's shoes,?,
London Express Servic
Wind on Christmas Day,
much fruit,
A wet Christmas makes barn .and
empty
barrel,
Snow at Christmas brings good haycroft next year,
*
*
In the town of Bewdley in Worcestershire, it was the custom for the bellman
(a man authorised to go round a town calling out
WHO
WAS GOOD
KING WENCESLAS?
TN the British Empire The romantic story
of a hero prince who was murdered his brother by Protestant and at the church door modern. Wenceslas, on the other hand, was a Catholic
the United and in Statca of America, items of urgent news, Good King Wenceslas" is articles found or missing. and so on) to make a circuit the most popular of all of the houses in the early Christmas carols. Yet the
ÍA carol hours of Christmas morn- ing, ringing his bell and singing the following dog- gerel: the last word seems
to suggest algh:
д heartfelt
"Arise mistresses, arise, And make your tarts and
pies,
And make your maids ile
still;
For if they should rise
and spoil your pies
You'd take it very ill.
Whilst you are sleeping
in your bed
I
the cold wintry
Pust
must tread,
twelvo
Eho!"
night
Charity
Catholics all over the world spurned them and gave to the and his own countrymen have poor.
and service to our name with rich invested bla garlands of legend. There are a neighbours are still the greatest thousand stories of his mint and, to put them at their liness: how he vowed himself lowest value, the most
of allo Christian to itfelong chastity, how he fying
under his virtues. And today, more than wore a hair shirt magnificent robes, "thus shin- ever, the words are true:
saint, who was martyred By R. H.BRUCE LOCKHART
for the Christian faith
n
before
God and
thousand and twenty years Wenceslas's name,
tho words to a beautiful man," how he was assiduous at
ago.
How comes it then, that at every Christmastide millions of Catholic and
Anglo-Saxon voices are raised in praise of
IN
onn
His father,
and Atled ing equally medieval tune which had: pre- Divine Service and daily made offering. gathering and threshing the wheat and] viously been used for a spring an carol
Born in 107, Wenceslas was cutting and pressing the grapes of Barivo), the with his own hands in order the grandson first Christian Prince of to prepare the bread and wine. King Wenceslas of whom it Bohemie, and of Ludmilia, the The
nightly story of his safe to say that not
first Czech saint.
dates Englishman or American In
Wratislav, fell fighting against pilgrimages to the poor hundred knows more than the the
in 920, and gack to the earliest chroniclers. the Hungarians mere name?
during the period of Wenceslas's They relate how, disguised as accompanied rainority the reins of power a forester, and
by his follhful page. The words of the carol were
mother Drahomin. Podevin, he would go into the written some 90 years ago by were placed in the hands of only
the bis
woods in the coldest weather J.M. Neale,
brother his English hymnologist and the Wenceslas
treading in hig master's author of "Brief Life is Here Boleslav were entrusted to the to cut wood for the needy. By Our Portion" and "Jerusalem care of Ludmilla,
footsteps the page did not feel the
this legend cold...It is Golden."
which
inspired the English CATOL
Podevin, Incidentally, DRAHOMIRA was no ordinary escaped and fled the country on She was ambitious the morning of his master's and loved power. Her fiery murder... Teturning later, he and slew one of the seized character, too, had been only imperfectly suppressed by the murderers, but was subsequently
by
and 'captured
Boleslav adoption of Christianity. Among the Bohemian nobles there
the
the
o'clock, carol
legends
Rev.
le
based his many
St
on one of the
which surround
Why we eat turkey
(when We can get it)
on Christmas Day
and
were two parties: one christianed on the
His habitat is America; North dangers, ed their cattle from the America and South America,
ox
Side by side with these legenda and pro-Ludmilla, the other
and anti-Ludmila. of the religious Wenceslas stands pagan Drahomiru sided with the the legend of Wenceslas
of Bohemia. CROSS the shires of She is zealous to guard them pagans and, directly or in- Veclav, as the Czechs call him, A England as December against all enemies, and their parens, responsible for the the patron-salat
centuries he greatest enemies are not black
saint has been the darkness falla men sit up marketzers.
who has murder of her saintly, mother- Throughout the but their Own
hlossed their long. struggle for and watch their turkeys fathers, who
cannot abide the in-law,
After running considerable
His lance, borne at with shotguns, just as the infant bird.
Wenceslas assumed liberty,
the lead of the Czech armies, control of his principally in Border farmers once guard-
presaged victory. The Husailes, His wh He was then 18. 025.
who bore his image on their
attributed In Britain
two most important contribution to shields, thens are
his peace treaty successes to his protective in- species of turkey, the smaller history was
By fluence. sort, called the Norfolk Turkey, with Henry the Fowler, and the Cambridge Turkey, making terms with that power- which has a metallic sheen to ful monarch he saved the Slavs its fenthers.
of Central Europe from ex- The Norfolk Turkey comes tinction
and the He North America
however, too was, from Cambridge Turkey comes from advanced for his times, and his South America.
Erother Boleslav, secure of the support of the pagen
Scottish rovers.
וי
We do not really change so much
But ncter all.
today Christmas would not be itself without a turkey.
And yet the most important facts about this astonishing bird
their
his curól is not sung in his own country there
is 0
Both of them have been Intermined to murdes y de Wenceslas canticle which for:
.him.
Ho
1. It has nothing to do with Turkey nothing whatever: Britain as domestle fowls these therefore invited Wenceslas to
2. It has no traditional, his- 400 years. torical or national connection with Christmas,
THE PILGRIMS
4
Ave hundred years has been the national anthem of the Czecha a banquet at his castle. When It was sung by the Hussites. It Wenceslas arrived, the was sung during the dark years to after the battle of the White conspirators had planned
It was sung during ill him at the banquet Thrice Mountain.
their the revolutionary movement of drew stealthily There is much to be said for When the Arst. Spanish con- they
Czechs strove 1848, when the from beneath their querars of Mexico brought the words
vain to
the off Thrice they slood
It was › GUDZ
the turkey and against him.
throw
His stalking gait named one of earliest turkeys into Europe garments. the first dances of our contem-" (that was about 1530) Jewish up with murder in their hearts, Austrian yoke.
school of swing, the merchants Introduced them to "but God, desiring perchance to clandestinely, because it was by the Austrians, which forbidden Yurkey Trok">
then part of the Turkish let the following day (on which during the Great War. as-yet-no-festival-fall) become a Saint's Day, did not permit,Today, its two most famous Greeks were them to...accomplish
out-
Greece,
The way speaks his mind, Empire.
ne noisily, vigorously, and spokenly, when he flushes andSharp-witted
Saint Wenceslas, [re-
lines, bristles all tho 28 quills in his swift to see a likeness between designs."
thy people.. wing and the 18 in his double the new bird and their old lords. The conspirators therefore member thy race,
It strutted pompously, it was determined to kill Wenceslas suffer not us or our children to
the tol, and the poppy carbuncley!
adorp
great that hangs upon his head stands Inflated with dignity, above all it on his way to church the next perish,"
#totuo -on- For this purpose Wenceslas upright in his wrath, has given had a little red headpiece like morning,
the doors of the Wenceslas Square in Prague.
the American people u phrase, "to talk turkey when they mean to talk straight,
LAUGHING STOCK
His innata.
the fez cap that a Turk wore they caused
"
it a Yankee Prince could - not And... coma the national hero
So they called it the turkey.church to be bolted so that the Wenceslas, in fact, has be
We ought to call it e Trus it has been driven out of canctuary.
Now England for 'many yours.
But when, the Elgrim Fathers and landed
Christmas
on
stupidity Alister (when wild turkeys Massachusetts,
gather to cross a stream they do Day, 1620, they abounded there.
S Wenceslas approached the
of his people. His Square
Is the Trafalgar Square of Prague, and if over Czecholovakia goes to war, it will be on the slops of his her officers will statue that sharpen their swords. Syba it with the maximum of fuss and So these Pilgrim Fathers sat church, Bolesny ran from bother and usually drop into 11 down to a thanksgiving meal his hiding place and struck the Vary curious is this, double when they attempt to fly across). They slow the big wild birds frat blow Wenceslas caught interpretation, which has made have made the unfortunate the birds we now call turkeys), the sword with his bare band, of Wenceslasita bisa people.a creature a laughing stock in both and solemnly offered up their but hot wishing to kain his kind of Nelson, and to the rest the America from
which he grautute for a safe deliverance.
crime.) of of the world, a symbol of the boul with the These Pilgrins were all Eng-ratricide, throw it on the Christian virtues r turkey Birtues 100% fireman and women. And their ground, Boleslavia), followers
We, in our furn, need not be then rushed forwards, and, with great occasion found its echo the Mother Country, swords and spears
But the There is no
The hen bir Hook. of chic seldom/lar,mEL
have been
the unf
eating turkey on Christmas De
*"Therefore Christian men be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing, Ye who now will bless the
Door
Shall yourselves and bless-
ing
ART POTTERY
Beswick Vases Doulton Figures Sylval Flower Baskets
Gifts
GIVE HIM SHIRTS & TIES
that please
CLOCKS or WATCHES THAT REMIND OF THE CIVER ALL THE TIME.
A gift of art in pottery. will add to the home: decoration and be trea sured by the repicent for a long time,"
LADIES'
Shirts & Ties are gifts appreciated by any man. Your, problem: can" be ́much simplified at the choice from our diversi- fied stock of established brands.
"ER GO" - for best value iri shirts.
GIVE HER PERFUME
Nothing more accept- ablo by ladies than per- fumes or tollet articles. We have a wide range to suit every tasto and every purse.
You won't go wrong if "you ́make a choice from our range of OMEGA, MARVIN, CYMA, MOVADO, JUVENIA, ETERNA, ERNEST BOREL,.. HAMILTON, BIG BEN, TEMCO, etc.
STATIONERY
Boxes Stationery Handibook Sets. Utility Desk Sets. Artistic Calendars for all people of good tasto.
TRY OUR MONO- GRAMMING OR NAME IMPRINTIN SERVICE.
HAND
BAGS
made of alligator or suede': loather, smartly styled for Mylady's day- time use, or, the dainty brocaded or beaded bags for her evening ensem-
blo..
CUT GLASS WARE See our splendid collec- tion of
STUART
CRYSTALS If they please you, they wilt surely please the person you have in mind
SHOP EARLY, COMFORTABLY & HAPPILY AT
SINCERE'S
Famous Since 1815
Paul Bahre