Yule and Yule's Wife

Today is December 21^st, Midwinter day and also the traditional date of the feast of St Thomas, which sees winter traditions continuing  all over Britain, Europe and further afield.

In York, the longest night and shortest day heralded the ancient custom of the Yule Riding and the beginning of Christmas festivities. During the reign of Elizabeth I, in around 1570, an anonymous balladeer wrote Yule in Yorke, a broadside ballad describing the Riding. [1] The custom included a disguised couple carrying a leg or shoulder of lamb and  a cake of ‘purest meale’, the playing of music and the throwing of nuts by the following crowds. The full text of this ballad and many others like it has been made available through the Bodleian Libraries Ballads Online project, which brings together a rich collection of often unique printed songs, satires, news and moral advice.

The ballad of Yule in Yorke, shared under Creative Commons licence.

This pious representation of the celebration links (sometimes rather tenuously) each part of the festivities to the birth of Jesus. A rather different view of St Thomas’ Day and ‘the very old, gray bearded Gentleman called Christmas’ is shown in a satirical passage printed in London in 1645, which describes a Bacchanalian Father Christmas enjoying, food, drink and gambling amongst other activities!

Printed by the festively named Simon Minc'd-Pye and Cissely Plum Porridge.
Thewhole document can be read at Early English Books Online

One can imagine that it was celebrations more like these that prompted the 1572 letter written to the Mayor and Aldermen of York decrying the city’s ‘verie rude and barbarouse’ Yule Riding. Recorded in the Act Book of the High Commission, the letter bemoans the profaning of the holy day and despairs at the crowds of people drawn from otherwise divine services to watch (and presumably participate in!) the spectacle.

HC.AB.7 f42v

HC.AB.7 f41r

Transcribed, the letter reads as follows:

13 November 1572

After our hartie commendacions, whereas there hath bene heretofore a verie rude and barbarouse custome mainteyned in this citie, and in no other citie or towne of this realme to our knowledge,

that yerelie upon St Thomas Daie before Christmas two disguised persons called Yule and Yules Wief should ryde thorow the citie verey undecentlie and uncomelie, drawinge great concurses of people after them to gaise, often times committinge other enormities, forasmuche as the said disguysed rydinge and concourse afforesaid besydes other enconvenientes tendeth also to the prophanynge of that daie appointed to holie uses and also withdrawethe great multitudes of people frome devyne service and sermons, we have thought good by thes presents to will and require yow & nevertheles in the Quenes Majesties name and by vertew of hir highnes commission for causeis ecclesiasticall within the Province of Yorke to us & others directed, straitlie to charge and commaunde yow that ye take order that no such ryding of Yule and Yules Wief be frome hencefurth attempted or used, and that yow cause this our preceipte and order to be registred of recorde and to be duelie observed not onelie for this yere but also for all other yeres ensueng, requiringe you hereof not to fale as our truste is you will not and as ye will answere for the contrarie.   Fare you hartelie well atYorke this XIII^th of November 1572

                                                   Your lovinge frendes

  Edm. Ebor

           Matth. Hutton[2]
John Rokbye

       Thomas Eymis

Will. Stryckland 

Chrisofer Asheburne

[To the]  

Maior and aldermen

of Yorke

The letter was signed by Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of York (previously Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury). Upon his appointment  two years earlier, he had already found that “many superstitious practices remained” amongst the people of York and he recommended that the boisterous Yule festival be banned ‘for all other yeres ensuing’. When read to the council, it was agreed that “no disguysed persons called Yule and Yule’s wif … shall ryde this yere nor any yere hensforth, on Saynt Thomas Day before Christmas”.

But do not despair! Although the Yule Riding was banned in 1572, to this day the York Waits process from Micklegate Bar around the city on Midwinter night, accompanied by traditional Tudor instruments and a crowd of followers. Maybe if you're out after dark, you'll be able to hear the sounds of Elizabethan York in the ancient streets once more.

Sources:
R. Davies, Municipal Records of the City of York, 1843.
F. Drake, Eboracum, 1736
A. F. Johnston, Records of Early English Drama, Vol.1, No.1. 1976

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[1] Broadside ballads were printed on large sheets of paper and sold from street-corners, or stuck up in pubs, by travelling ballad singers.

[2] Then Dean of the Minster and later Archbishop himself.

Football in the Archive

Written by Alexandra Medcalf.

As the University of York's Chancellor Greg Dyke has just been appointed the new Director of the Football Association we thought it would be appropriate to investigate football in the archive.

Although many people think of football as a nineteenth-century invention, this was simply when different versions were codified into the modern sports (for example, rugby football at Rugby School in 1845). In fact, football can be traced back to the middle ages and beyond and was often a violent and dangerous sport. The Oxford English Dictionary cites an early mention of football in Scotland where, in 1424:

  The king forbiddes þ^t na man play at þe fut ball vnder þe payne of iiijd.
  

Clearly, he wasn't envisaging a quick kick-about in the park with a fine like that

Our example of medieval football comes from 1565/6, and is an entry from High Commission Act Book 2 (HC.AB.2). In it, a group of young men are punished for playing football in York Minster.


Transcript

Officium dominorum contra Christoferum Dobson, Ricardum Leache, Georgium Bargeman, Christoferum Fordonne et oswaldum atkinson

[On Wednesday 13^th February 1565/6 in the consistory place in York Minster between 9 and 11 in the morning before John Rokeby LLD, Thomas Eynns Esq, and Thomas Lakyn MA, notary public Edward Fawcett] [Dobson Leache Bargeman Fordonne and Atkinson appeared] …that they have plaied at the foote ball within this Cathedrall churche of yorke to which objection they awnsweringe confessed that the foote Ball was Broughte into the church by the said Dobson thereupon the said oswald atkinson did take the same Ball[e] frome hime in the said said churche and there was but one stroke striken at the same in the church aforesaid wherefore the said Commissioners did order that the same Oswald Atkinson shalbe sett in the stockes by the churcheside upon sonday nexte at nyne of the clocke before noone and ther to sytt in the same stockes by the space of one hole houre and at the houre ende be tayken furthe and laid over the said stockes and have sex yertes with a Byrchen rod upon his buttockes and that christofer Dobson shall have likewise sex yertes upon his buttockes with a birchen rod and that will[ia]m gibsonne JohnWhytfeild and John Scott the vergers and Richard Sinerthwaite and Peter Pecket shall se this order executed in manner and form as is aforesaid.

 

Incidentally, large community football matches were a common way of celebrating important Christian festivals like Shrovetide, Easter and Whitsun in the medieval period... but I wouldn't recommend an attempt to reinstate football in the Minster this Sunday, even if I doubt the publishment would be as painfully humiliating as that which befell Oswald Atkinson and Christopher Dobson four hundred years ago.