My attempt at reviving ancient Scottish festive customs this year did not go as well as expected. I had been studying how Christmas and New Year were celebrated in the Angus Glens in the mid-1800s.
In those days, both festivals were rolled into one and just called Yuletide, or the Daft Days. This chiefly focused on New Year but there was a faint nod to the nativity.
Women played a pivotal role in these celebrations. For months they devoted their leisure time to spinning clothes for themselves befitting Yuletide celebrations. A superior standard of dress was expected of men so they commissioned new suits from professional tailors.
As the festival approached, the women turned their hands to baking oatcakes and making mammoth cheeses. Then they got down to some serious housework. Homes were redd up and brasses and clocks polished until they shone like mirrors.
On the day of the New Year feast, the “gude man” took his seat at the top of the table in the farmhouse kitchen.
His “gude wife” was permitted to stand behind his chair during the meal and direct his attention to the needs of guests.
If she got hungry, the gude man allowed her to use her fingers to snatch a piece of meat or cabbage from his plate.
Now, Mrs Ferguson took a dissenting view on the revival of ancient customs so I had to continue my studies as an academic exercise.
Whisky was not too common in the glens in those days but each family opened a bottle at New Year. Even the gude wife was allowed a sip.
Celebrations began on New Year’s Eve with children guising from house to house demanding food from the womenfolk and chanting Hogmanay Trollalay. This is thought to be a corruption of Homme est ne, Trois Rois la, A man is born, three kings are there. Other suggestions for the origins of Hogmanay were it was derived from Hogg Night when animals were sacrificed and Yule logs burned.
Back then, the glens of Clova, Prosen and Isla were heavily populated and families took it in turn to host parties over the course of a week, hence the term Daft Days.
New Year’s Day was marked by farmers pulling down a stack of corn and laying the sheaves on the barn floor in the hope of good luck.
Then the men would stage a fox hunt to which younger women were invited.
The New Year’s Day feast began with plum porridge. This was made with boiling beef or mutton thickened with brown bread and with raisins, currants, prunes and ginger added. It was served with fresh venison or mutton but if a lord was present at the table, the brown bread was left out.
A downside was the presence of the Witch of Clova who had to be appeased with meal or fowl left at her door. At the moment of her death, it is said she was claimed by a man on horseback.