The sailor explained, through a young interpreter, that he was the commander of twenty hulks and that he and several of his captains had been driven by the storm onto the rocks at the Fair Isle of Scotland, and were shipwrecked there, where the survivors had remained for six or seven weeks in great hunger and cold. Taking a barque out of Orkney, they had come to supplicate to the king of Scotland and seek relief for themselves and their crew of 260 men, ‘whose condition was for the present maist miserable and pitifull’.
After a short homily on the kind beneficence of the Scottish Kirk, the commander and his captains were invited to come ashore for refreshment, while the men were kept on board the ship until Lord Anstruther arrived to entertain the officers humanely in his own house, and to permit the crew to disembark. The soldiers, ‘for the maist part young beardless men, sillie, trauchled [exhausted], and houngered’, were given kale, pottage and fish. Their general was Juan Gomez de Medina, who had the charge of the flagship El Gran Grifón, and the command of twenty urcas (supply ships) to the Spanish fleet.
The sailors did not know the extent of the damage that the fleet had sustained until Melville bought a pamphlet in St Andrews with the names of the ships and the lives which were lost, which when it was shown to Gomez de Medina, ‘O then he cryed out for grieff, bursted and grat’.
Gomez de Medina, who had made such a great impression in Anstruther, set out with his compatriots for Edinburgh and was eventually repatriated in a convoy of four Scottish ships, paid for and allowed free passage by Elizabeth. The ships were waylaid by the Dutch, and many soldiers drowned. The general, though, survived, and lived to return the favour, when he came upon an Anstruther ship captured at Cadiz. He went to plead on her behalf at court, made much of Scotland to his king, and ‘tuk the honest men to his hous’, where he ‘inquryt for the Lard of Anstruther, for the Minister, and his host, and sen[t] hame manie commendations’.
His ship El Gran Grifón had been wrecked at Stroms Heeler, between Orkney and the Fair Isles (on Fair Isle is a spot called the ‘Spainnarts’ Graves’). The wreck was excavated in 1970 and a full description of the site and excavation can be found online at Canmore. In 1984 a party from the reconstructed Spanish Orden Tercio Viejo del Mare Océano, wearing the costume of the old conquistadors, retraced the steps of the shipwrecked sailors from El Gran Grifón to Fair Isle where they planted a cross to commemorate the men who died there, and to the harbour at Anstruther where they were no doubt as warmly received as their ancestors had been almost four hundred years before them. The Anstruther manse, built for James Melville in 1590, is said to have been paid for by Spanish gold. I have heard no report that it has a ghost.
MARTINMAS LORE OF THE LAND
November take flayle,
Let ship no more sayle.
Forgotten month past,
Do now at the last.
November is the last chance to do what must be done before the winter comes. It is time to put the earth to bed, and to plan for the following year, ‘contrive or forecast where and what you are to sow and plant,’ prepare composts and soils, plant fruit trees and cabbages, and to gather in the seeds of holly and the yew.
In season still are onions, leeks, purslane and fresh parsnips. The apples and pears are weathering nicely, to a point where Doctor Locke, with his horror of fresh fruit, may consider they are almost safe to eat. In the physic garden, Meg is growing liquorice root, good to open up the lungs and to cleanse the phlegm prevailing at this time of year, which is cold and wet.
Phlegmatic men, her husband says, ‘must abstain from meats the which is cold. And also they must refrain from eating viscous meat specially from all meats the which doth engender fleumatic humours, as fish, fruit, and white meat . . . And to beware not to dwell nigh to waterish and moorish ground. These things be good for fleumatic persons moderately taken, onions, garlic, pepper, ginger. And all meats the which be hot and dry. And sauces the which be sour.’
Meg buys ginger and pepper from the apothecary, who has replenished his stocks at the last of the fairs in November. After the end of the month, there will be no more ships until the spring. Thankfully the harbour has come through the storms, though it wants repair.
The Martinmas beef has been salted and stored, but should not be eaten in excess, or the briny flesh may lead to bladder stones. There is, at least, a remedy: ‘If it do come accidentally by eating of meats ye wi ingender the stone, take of the bloud of an Hare, & put it in an earthen potte, and put therto three ounces of Saxifrage rootes, and bake this together in an oven, & than make pouder of it, and drinke of it morning and evening.’
According to Gray’s almanac, this month will be filled with fogs, clouds, sleet, rain and winds. The seventeenth is bent to storms. The eighteenth and nineteenth will produce ‘a pretty gale’ and weather ‘fit for the season’. The following three days will be ‘freezing’.
The full moon on the twenty-third, near one of the clock in the morning, in Gemini, will bring in some ‘good winter weather’, followed by increasing winds, three days dark and changeable, until the month comes to a close with ‘great winds’ and ‘dark air’, liable to freeze.
The almanacs predict the weather many months ahead, with a breezy confidence rarely to be found in forecasts made today, though doubtless with as little, or as much, success. Richard Grafton warns in his:
November breeds rheum that will trouble the head
Beware of new wine though it be of the best
And baths of warm water are to be fled
And so is venery as well as the rest
The bright cheer of Yule still feels far away.
YULE
3ule Day, December 25 1588
Yule, or 3ule in Old Scots, is the festive period lasting from late December into January, of twelve or twenty days, and sometimes longer still. It includes the twelve days of Christmas; Yule Day on December 25; New 3eris Day and Evin; Hansel Monday, the first Monday in the year when the New Year’s gift or Han(d)sel was given to bring luck; and Uphalyday, Twelfth night (and day), the Feast of the Epiphany. Rarely in Scotland was it known as Christmas, even in the years before the Reformation. At the Reformation itself, it ceased to be a holiday (that is, a ‘holy day’) and the celebration of the nativity of Christ was not officially restored until 1958. Many Scots today do not remember Christmas as a childhood holiday, but were given gifts at New Year instead.
The present giving harks back to the old Handsel day (from Old English, to give into the hand), but the transferring of festivities to the secular New Year, and the death of Yule, did not begin at once at the Reformation; while the battle persisted between Episcopalians and the Presbyterians over the right of governance over the reformed Kirk, the old traditions smouldered on until well into the middle of the seventeenth century, and were kept ablaze in many parts of Scotland.
In February 1588 the General Assembly at Edinburgh complained of the ‘superstitious keeping’ of the Yule in Fife, and the Kirk Sessions were kept busy in the first month of each year with the discipline of those who persisted in the holiday. In January 1573/4 the archbishop of St Andrews (not yet Patrick Adamson but the ailing John Douglas, who died in the pulpit in 1574) had recommended the insertion in the record books ad futuram rei memoriam that
upon Sunday the xxiiii day of January Walter Ramsay, lorimar [a maker of horse bits and buckles], Walter Lathangie, cutlar, and John Smith, blacksmith, being accused and convicted . . . of observing of superstitious days and specially of Yule-Day became penitent and made open satisfaction thereof in presence of the whole congregation then being present. And therefore the minister, at command of the assembly, publicly denounced . . . that all persons within this parish, that observed superstitiously the said Yule-day . . . should be punished in like manner if they abstain from their work and labour that day, more than any other day except Sunday.
The keeping of the Yule was offensive, in particular, because it flouted the prerogative of the Sabbath day to be the single holy day
of rest. The revellers were not willing to give up so quietly. On the same day Walter Younger refused to submit to the Church’s discipline, complaining that ‘it was unbecoming for an honest man to have to sit upon the stool of repentance’, and saying that ‘he is a young man and saw Yule-Day kept holiday and that the time may come that he may see the like yet; and therefore would not become obliged nor restricted in time coming to work or abstain from work that day, but at his own pleasure’. Younger was quickly brought to book, and found his place on the stool of repentance with the rest. But others would continue to offend. In the following year James Thomson, mason, accused of ‘superstitious keeping of Yule last as holy day’ promised that ‘who would or would not he would not work on Yule day, and was not in use of the same . . . and in time coming . . . should never keep the said Yule day holiday, but would work on that day as on any other day to any man that would offer him work . . . and if no man charges him with work, he shall work some ridge stones of his own’. The key was to look busy when the Kirk dropped by.
The General Assembly had also condemned the singing of carols at Yule, despite the very lovely ones which had found their way into the Gude and Godlie Ballads, such as Luther’s ‘children’s hymn for Christmas Eve’, ‘I come from hevin to tell’, ‘to be sung to the tune of the lullaby, Ba lula low’, and ‘To us is borne a barne of blis’.
The carols were still sung – and danced – and people still dressed up, women guising in men’s clothes, and crying ‘Zwil, Zwil, Zwil!’ in loud and lewd company, while the Kirk did its best to discourage them. The story of the dog crying Yule is attributed to the preacher David Calder: ‘A learned brother at a catechising told Yule-day was derived thus: There was a certain man hanged his dog on the 25th December, the creature was three hours hung, and at the end, the cord was loosed, and the dog lived; and running off, cryed Ule, Ule, Ule, and hence, says he, comes the word, Yule, Yule, Yule’. And Robert Blair of St Andrews, with a characteristic Presbyterian bluntness, is reported to have said: ‘You will say, Sirs, good old Youle day; I’ll tell you, good old Fool-day; you will say it is a brave Holiday; I will tell you it is a brave Belly-day; You will say, these are bonny Formalities, but I tell you, they are bonny Fartalities’. Blair had a turbulent career in the Kirk. He was nominated minister at the Kirk of Holy Trinity, St Andrews, in 1639.
It is in this spirit that the prying Alan Guthrie comes to peer into the windows of Hew’s house at Kenley Green, in search of superfluous cheer. The law of which Hew falls foul was enacted first in 1552 by Mary of Guise, ‘concerning the order of every man’s house’, ensuring that all men should eat and keep table according to their rank and status in the land. The act was the result of a dearth of food to share among the poor and a damage of excess ensuing to the gluttonous:
because of the superfluous cheer used commonly in this realm, amongst small men as well as great men, to the great hurt of the commonwealth of the same and damage to the body, which make a man unable to perform all necessary lawful and good works
the following restrictions must apply: an archbishop, bishop or earl should have at his table no more than eight dishes of meat; an abbot, lord, prior or dean no more than six; a baron or freeholder (in which we may count Hew) no more than four; a burgess ‘but three, with one kind of meat in each kind of dish’. Those who broke the law were to be punished with fines.
In those early days, already under shadow of the sharp axe of Reform, Christmas and Easter banquets were exempt, as were saints’ days and marriages and entertaining strangers, and the clergy could expect a satisfying board. By 1581, when the Parliament of James VI ruled against ‘superfluous banqueting and the inordinate use of confections and sweetmeats’ (in the original, the more decadent ‘drogges’), there were no exceptions, but ‘bridals and banquets’ were targeted specifically, while the Yule and Pasche already had their cards marked by the Kirk. The ‘inordinate consumption’ not only of native foodstuffs, but of ‘sweetmeats, confections and spices brought from the parts beyond sea’ was now to be deplored, for the shortage and inflation of prices it had caused, to the detriment of those who could not ‘sustain that cost’.
In consequence, it was now prohibited for anyone below the rank of prelate, earl, lord, baron or landed gentleman worth less than 2,000 merks a year to have ‘at their banquets or tables in ordinary cheer’ any ‘sweetmeats or confections’ brought from overseas, such as the sweets and spices given to the farmers of Hew’s lands at Yule, ‘Under pain of £20 to be paid by any person doer in the contrary as well of the master of the house where the effect of this act is contravened’.
To enforce the law, the provosts and the bailies of the burghs were constrained to make use of official searchers, ‘to which searchers open doors shall be made of whatsoever house they come to search, under the pains to be esteemed culpable in the transgression of this act if they refuse; and the offenders being apprehended, to be taken and held in ward until they have paid the said pecuniary pains, to be employed the one half to the benefit of the ordinary officers and searchers and the other half to the poor of the parish’.
It is an act entirely in the spirit of Protestant Reform; well-founded to assist the poor, and to curb the excesses of the rich and powerful, while it brings with it an oppressive joylessness, reflected in poor Alan’s sad officious end. The king and his entourage were naturally exempt.
The law of Yule girth, invoked by Hew to take advantage of a stay of execution, was an ancient one, the remnant of which was reflected still in the justice courts. Originally, it appears to have conferred immunity from prosecution, in the sense of sanctuary, at least for a limited time. ‘Girth’ means immunity from harm, and to ‘tak girth’ means to take refuge.
When Hew invokes Yule girth, he knows it must be temporary. For the purpose of evading Alan Petrie’s prying, it will serve his tenants well, allowing them the chance to consume the evidence. But justice cannot be escaped for long. In the Burgh court of Glasgow, convening after Yule, disturbing of the peace in the time of girth does not seem to remit, but almost to compound the ordinary fault. So Margaret Andro, spouse to John Anderson, cordiner (shoemaker), is called to make amends for striking and pulling the hair of Janet Taylor, daughter to James Taylor, ‘within the time called of old the proclamation of Yule girth, and now of abstinence’.
And Patrick Spreull is pursued by John Boill, Chapman, for assault resulting in a bloody nose ‘upon the 9th of January instant, within the time of proclamation of feriat time and abstinence’. The ‘feriat’ and ‘abstinence’ referred to here are not immunity from charges faced by the transgressors, but recognition of the fact that the courts were not in session at that time. January brings a backlog of complaints, and the Burgh sessions are as busy as the Kirk’s following excessive freedom during Yule, when any sense of licence may be limited, and false.
YULE LORE OF THE LAND
Bot Yule is young, thay say vpon Yule evin.
And diuers times it hes bene hard and sene,
That efter most joy followis aduersitie.
Proverbs of the Yule do not abound in cheer. In the natural world, this is a bleak time of year. ‘He is als bair as the birk in yule evin’ is recorded in four versions in James Carmichaell’s list of proverbs, and brings a shiver with it. Where Yule does bring joy, it will be short-lived: ‘Ilk day is not yule day, cast the cat a castock’; ‘a yule feast may be quit at pasche’. And mild weather at this time of year will fill up the kirkyard. Whatever the moment, the outlook is grim.
The cat who looks disdainfully upon the cabbage stalk perhaps reflects the sourness of the Scottish Kirk, sneering in the face of the festivities. James Carmichaell, who left behind these proverbs in a manuscript collection, was a student of St Salvator’s in the early 1560s, and later master at the St Andrews grammar school. He then became Kirk minister and schoolmaster in Haddington, and was one of the reformers charged with the revision of (what became) the second book of discipline in 1578. With Andrew Melville, he refu
sed to sign a bond accepting the authority of bishops in the Kirk, and fled to England with Melville, Patrick Galloway and John Davidson, poet and minister of Prestonpans, who had been a regent of St Leonard’s College, at the beginning of 1584. They were there in exile at the same time as Hew.
Hew’s yuletide celebrations would have embarrassed him, perhaps, if he came into the company of former friends and teachers such as these. Like the king, he is committed to the ‘trew religion’, in which he has been brought up since he was a child, despite his father’s – and his sister’s – lasting Catholic sympathies. But also like the king, he does not like constraint, nor does he want his faith to hamper the festivities. He has an English wife, and in England, where Reformation was imposed by the Crown upon the Church, and not, as in Scotland, the other way round, Christmas celebrations are not yet discouraged (that was all to come).
It is not hard for Hew to justify the Yule, which is the highlight, for his tenant farmers, of another year of hardship in the agricultural calendar, and brings a little joy into the darkest time. Winters at the close of the sixteenth century were exceptionally cold, and 1588 was, on every count, an exceptional year. That they have survived it is due to careful management, by Frances of the land, and by Meg of the medicines and the food stores that will see them safely through the winter months. They deserve their feast.
Note: a full set of historical sources and suggested reading matter can be viewed on the author’s website.
1588 A Calendar of Crime Page 30