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And in King Lear, iii. 4, Edgar exclaims: "This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks to the first cock."]

In Bridges's History of Northamptonshire, i. 110, speaking of Byfield church, the author tells us: "A bell is rung here at four in the morning, and at eight in the evening, for which the clerk hath 20s. yearly paid him by the rector." A bell was formerly rung at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, also, at four in the morning.

In Hutchins's Dorset, ii. 267, the author, speaking of Mapouder church, mentions land given "to find a man to ring the morning and curfeu bell throughout the year." Also (ibid. p. 422), under Ibberton, is mentioned one acre given for ringing the eight o'clock bell, and £4 for ringing the morning bell. Macaulay, in his History of Claybrook, 1791, p. 128, says: "The custom of ringing curfew, which is still kept up at Claybrook, has probably obtained without intermission since the days of the Norman Conqueror." [It is probable in the middle ages some superstitious regard was paid to the ringing of the couvre-feu, for we find that land was occasionally left to pay for the ringing of the couvre-feu bell. This feeling appears not to have been altogether extinct, even so late as the close of the sixteenth century, for in Bishop Hall's Fourth Satire occurs the following:

"Who ever gives a paire of velvet shooes
To th' Holy Rood, or liberally allowes
But a new rope to ring the couvre-feu bell,
But he desires that his great deed may dwell,
Or graven in the chancel window glasse,

Or in his lasting tombe of plated brasse."

We find the couvre-feu mentioned as a common and approved regulation. It was used in most of the monasteries and towns of the north of Europe, the intent being merely to prevent the accidents of fires. All the common houses consisted at this time of timber. Moscow, therefore, being built with this material, generally suffers once in twenty years. That this happened equally in London Fitzstephen proves: "Solæ pestes Lundoniæ sunt stultorum immodica potatio, et frequens incendium." The Saxon Chronicle also makes frequent mention of towns being burned, which might be expected for the same reason, the Saxon term for building being getimbrian.

The Hon. Daines Barrington, in his Observations on the Ancient Statutes, p. 153, tells us: "Curfew is written curphour in an old Scottish poem, published in 1770, with many others from the MS. of George Bannatyne, who collected them in the year 1568. It is observed in the annotations on these poems, that by act 144, parl. 13, Jam. I., this bell was to be rung in boroughs at nine in the evening; and that the hour was afterwards changed to ten, at the solicitation of the wife of James Stewart, the favourite of James the Sixth."

There is a narrow street in the town of Perth, in Scotland, still called Couvre-feu Row, leading west to the Black Friars, where the couvre-feu bell gave warning to the inhabitants to cover their fires and go to rest when the clock struck ten. Muses' Threnodie, note, p. 89.

"At Ripon, in Yorkshire, at nine o'clock every evening, a man blows a large horn at the Market Cross, and then at the mayor's door." Gent. Mag. for Aug. 1790, lx. 719.

[The curfew bell is still tolled at Hastings at eight o'clock in the evening, from Michaelmas to Lady Day.

The bell-ringing in the city of London is not to be invariably attributed to the curfew, but in numerous instances to bequests in wills for the purpose. In the parish of St. Mary-le-Bow, one Mr. Donne, a mercer and citizen of London, had devised two tenements in Bow lane (then called Hosier lane), for the ringing of the tenor bell of Bow church (now the most celebrated peal in the kingdom), at six o'clock in the morning and eight o'clock in the evening. Mr. Lott, after considerable research for this will, has at last discovered it in the Hustings' Court of London. The early ringing was supposed to be for the purpose of waking up the London apprentices. The poetical remonstrance of these personages to the parish clerk of Bow, in consequence of his neglect of his duty, is thus recorded by Stow :

"Clerk of the Bow bell,

With thy yellow locks,

For thy late ringing,

Thy head shall have knocks."

The clerk of that day was a match for his young complainants, and replied in equal poetical vein―

"Children of Cheap,

Hold you all still,

For you shall hear the Bow bell
Rung at your will."

Mr. N. Gould, F.S.A., informs us that, during his parochial reign, he had kept the beadle to a strict performance of this duty, which is performed to this day. Mr. Gould describes, in a humorous vein, his ascent to the summit of the steeple, on the back of the dragon, during the repairs of 1820, and refuted the alleged fulfilment of the old prophecy of the visits of the Exchange grasshopper and dragon of Bow, the latter having never quitted the country during the repairs. We may also notice a bequest in Spitalfields, for matinal and evening bell-ringing; and another provincial bequest for the same purpose, by a lady who had lost her way on a moor, and was guided home by the sound of a church bell.]

THE LAKE-WAKE.

THE word Lake-Wake, that is, a watching with the dead, is plainly derived from the Anglo-Saxon lic or lice, a corpse, and wæcce, a wake, vigil, or watching. It is used in this sense by Chaucer, in his Knight's Tale:

"Shall not be told by me

How that Arcite is brent to ashen cold,

Ne how that there the liche-wake was y-hold
All that night long."

They were wont, says Bourne, to sit by the corpse from the time of death till its exportation to the grave, either in the house it died in, or in the church itself. To prove this he cites St. Austin, concerning the watching the dead body of his mother Monica; and Gregory Turon., concerning that of St. Ambrose, whose body was carried into the church the same hour that he died.

Under the word Walkin, in Ruddiman's Glossary to Douglas's Virgil, we read: “ Proper like-wakes (Scotch) are the meetings of the friends of the deceased a night or nights before the burial." 991

I Dr. Jamieson says: "This ancient custom most probably originated from a silly superstition with respect to the danger of a corpse being carried off by some of the agents of the invisible world, or exposed to the ominous liberties of brute animals. But, in itself, it is certainly a decent

"The

Pennant, in describing Highland ceremonies, says: late-wake is a ceremony used at funerals. The evening after the death of any person, the relations or friends of the deceased meet at the house, attended by a bagpipe or fiddle: the nearest of kin, be it wife, son, or daughter, opens a melancholy ball, dancing and greeting, i. e. crying violently at the same time; and this continues till daylight, but with such gambols and frolics among the younger part of the company, that the loss which occasioned them is often more than supplied by the consequences of that night. If the corpse remain unburied for two nights, the same rites are renewed. Thus, Scythian-like, they rejoice at the deliverance of their friends. out of this life of misery." He tells us in the same place that the Coranich, or singing at funerals, is still in use in some places. "The songs are generally in praise of the deceased; or a recital of the valiant deeds of their ancestors."-Tour in Scotland, 1769, p. 112.

"In North Wales," says Pennant, speaking of the manners of the eighteenth century, "the night before a dead body is to be interred, the friends and neighbours of the diseased resort to the house the corpse is in, each bringing with him some small present of bread, meat, drink (if the family be something poor), but more especially candles, whatever the family be; and this night is called wyl nós, whereby the country people seem to mean a watching night. Their going to such a house, they say, is i wilior corph, i. e. to watch the corpse; but wylo signifies to weep and lament, and so wyl nós may be a night of lamentation. While they stay together on that night they are either singing psalms, or reading some part of the holy scriptures. Whenever anybody comes into a room where a dead body lyes, especially the wyl nôs and the day of its interment, the first thing he does, he falls on his knees by the corpse, and says the Lord's prayer."

In the Irish Hudibras, a burlesque of Virgil's story of Eneas going down to visit his father in the shades, 1689, p. 34, is the following description of what is called in the margin an Irish Wake:

and proper one; because of the possibility of the person, considered as dead, being only in a swoon. Whatever was the original design, the likwake seems to have very early degenerated into a scene of festivity extremely incongruous to the melancholy occasion."

"To their own sports (the masses ended)
The mourners now are recommended.

Some for their pastime count their beads,
Some scratch their breech, some louse their heads;
Some sit and chat, some laugh, some weep;

Some sing cronans (songs), and some do sleep;
Some pray, and with their prayers mix curses;
Some vermin pick, and some pick purses;

Some court, some scold, some blow, some puff;
Some take tobacco, some take snuff;
Some play the trump, some trot the hay;
Some at macham, some at noddy' play,
With all the games they can devise;
And (when occasion serves 'em) cries.

Thus did mix their grief and sorrow,
Yesterday bury'd, kill'd to-morrow."

An account of the wake, less overcharged, will be read with pleasure from the glossary of Castle Rackrent, by Miss Edgeworth, ed. 1810, p. 214: "In Ireland a wake is a midnight meeting, held professedly for the indulgence of holy sorrow, but usually it is converted into orgies of unholy joy. When an Irish man or woman of the lower order dies, the straw which composed the bed, whether it has been contained in a bag to form a mattress, or simply spread upon the earthen floor, is immediately taken out of the house, and burned before the cabin door, the family at the same time setting up the death-howl. The ears and eyes of the neighbours being thus alarmed, they flock to the house of the deceased, and by their vociferous sympathy excite, and at the same time soothe, the sorrows of the family. It is curious to observe how good and bad are mingled in human institutions. In countries which were thinly inhabited, this custom prevented private attempts against the lives of individuals, and formed a kind. of coroner's inquest upon the body which had recently expired, and burning the straw upon which the sick man lay, became a simple preservative against infection. At night the dead body is waked; that is to say, all the friends and neighbours of the deceased collect in a barn or stable, where the corpse is laid upon some boards, or an unhinged door, supported upon stools, the face exposed, the rest of the body covered with a white sheet. Round the body are stuck in brass can

' Macham and noddy are games at cards.

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