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rites of memorable beastliness at megalithic sites all over Europe.
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Yet more mistletoe dangled from the genial bundle of evergreens, the
kissing bough, that invitation to the free exchange of precious bodily fluids.
And what is that bunch of holly, hung with red apples and knots of red
ribbon? Why, it is a wassail bob.
This is what you did with your wassail bob. You carried it to the
orchard with you when you took out a jar of hard cider to give the apple trees
their Christmas drink. All over Somerset, all over Dorset, everywhere in the
apple-scented cider country of Old England, time out of mind, they souse the
apple trees at Christmas, get them good and drunk, soak them.
You pour the cider over the tree trunks, let it run down to the roots.
You fire off guns, you cheer, you shout. You serenade the future apple crop
and next year's burgeoning, you "wassail" them, you toast their fecundity in
last year's juices.
But not in this village. If a sharp smell of fruit and greenery wafted
from the leafy ship to the shore, refreshing their dreams, all the same, the
immigration officials at the front of the brain, the port of entry for memory,
sensed contraband in the incoming cargo and snapped: "Permission to land
refused!"
There was a furious silent explosion of green leaves, red berries, white
berries, of wet, red seeds from bursting pomegranates, of spattering cherries
and scattering flowers; and cast to the winds and scattered was the sappy,
juicy, voluptuous flesh of all the wood demons, tree spirits and fertility
goddesses who had ever, once upon a time, contrived to hitch a ride on
Christmas.
Then the ship and all it had contained were gone.
But the second ship now began to belch forth such a savoury aroma from a
vent amidships that the most abstemious dreamer wrinkled his nose with
pleasure. This ship rode low in the water, for it was built in the
unmistakable shape of a pie dish and, as it neared shore, it could be seen
that the deck itself was made of piecrust just out of the oven, glistening
with butter, gilded with egg yolk.
Not a ship at all, in fact, but a Christmas pie!
But now the piecrust heaved itself up to let tumbling out into the water
a smoking cargo of barons of beef gleaming with gravy, swans upon spits and
roast geese dripping hot fat. And the figurehead of this jolly vessel was a
boar's head, wreathed in bay, garlanded in rosemary, a roasted apple in its
mouth and sprigs of rosemary tucked behind its ears. Above, hovering a pot of
mustard, with wings.
Those were hungry days in the new-found land. The floating pie came
wallowing far closer in than the green ship had done, close enough for the
inhabitants of the houses on the foreshore to salivate in their sleep.
But then, with one accord, they recalled that burnt offerings and pagan
sacrifice of pig, bird and cattle could never be condoned. In unison, they
rolled over on to their other sides and turned their stern backs.
The ship span round once, then twice. Then, the mustard pot swooping
after, it dove down to the bottom of the sea, leaving behind a bobbing mass of
sweetmeats that dissipated itself gradually, like sea wrack, leaving behind
only a single cannonball of the plum-packed Christmas pudding of Old England
that the sea's omnivorous belly found too much, too indigestible, and rejected
it, so that the pudding refused to sink.
The sleepers, freed from the ghost not only of gluttony but also of
dyspepsia, sighed with relief.
Now there was only one ship left.
The silence of the dream lent this apparition an especial eeriness.
This last ship was packed to the gunwales with pagan survivals of the
most concrete kind, the ones in -- roughly -- human shape. The masts and spars
were hung with streamers, paperchains and balloons, but the gaudy decorations
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were almost hidden by the motley crew of queer types aboard, who would have
been perfectly visible from the shore in every detail of their many-coloured
fancy dress had anyone been awake to see them.
Reeling to and fro on the deck, tumbling and dancing, were all the
mummers and masquers and Christmas dancers that Cotton Mather hated so, every
one of them large as life and twice as unnatural. The rouged men dressed as
women, with pillowing bosoms; the clog dancers, making a soundless
rat-a-tat-tat on the boards with their wooden shoes; the sword dancers
whacking their wooden blades and silently jingling the little bells on their
ankles. All these riotous revellers used to welcome in the festive season back
home; it was they who put the "merry" into Merry England!
And now, horrors! they sailed nearer and nearer the sanctified shore, as
if intent on forcing the saints to celebrate Christmas whether they wanted to
or no.
The saint the Church disowned, Saint George, was there, in paper armour
painted silver, with his old foe, the Turkish knight, a chequered tablecloth
tied round his head for a turban, fencing with clubs as they used to every
Christmas in the Old Country, going from house to house with the mumming play
that was rooted far more deeply in antiquity than the birth it claimed to
celebrate.
This is the plot of the mumming play: Saint George and the Turkish
knight fight until Saint George knocks the Turkish knight down. In comes the
Doctor, with his black bag, and brings him back to life again -- a shocking
mockery of death and resurrection. (Or else a ritual of revivification,
depending on one's degree of faith, and also, of course, depending on one's
degree of faith in what.)
The master of these floating revels was the Lord of Misrule himself, the
clown prince of Old Christmas, to which he came from fathoms deep in time. His
face was blackened with charcoal. A calf's tail was stitched on to the rump of
his baggy pants, which constantly fell down, to be hitched up again after a
glimpse of his hairy buttocks. His top hat sported paper roses. He carried an
inflated bladder with which he merrily battered the dancing heads around him.
He was a true antique, as old as the festival that existed at midwinter before
Christmas was ever thought of. Older.
His descendants live, all year round, in the circus. He is mirth,
anarchy and terror. Father Christmas is his bastard son, whom he has disowned [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]