The practice of children going from door to door in little bands,
singing the following rhyme, was in vogue at the beginning of this
century in country places in the West of Scotland:--
"Rise up, gudewife, and shake your feathers,
Dinna think that we are beggars,
We're girls and boys come out to-day,
For to get our Hogmanay,
Hogmanay, trol-lol-lay.
"Give us of your white bread, and not of your gray,
Or else we'll knock at your door a' day."
This rhyme has a stronger reference to Yule or Christmas than to the New
Year, and is doubtless a relic of pre-Reformation times.
At the Reformation, the Scottish Church, probably following the dictum
of Calvin, who condemned Yule as a pagan festival, forbade the people to
observe it because of its heathen origin; but probably the more potent
reason was that it was a Romish feast, for no objection was made against
keeping the New Year or _hansell Monday_, on which occasion practices
similar to those of Yule were observed, and I believe it was the
non-condemnation of these later festivals which enabled the Scottish
Church to abolish Yule.
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