English Traditional Begging

[Catlady]

Back on the main list, I said:
<<<It is remarkable how many old English  traditions involve going
around
from house to house begging for money or a drink of alcohol. In USA, we
just
have Halloween begging for candy (trick-or-treating).>>>

and Neil replied:

<<<Hmmmm.  I can't imagine what you mean.  The only tradition I
can think of is Carol Singing at Christmas, when the singers may be
collecting for charity. Some may dole out hot toddies, but I usually
just peer at them through the letterbox and shout "Bah, Humbug!".
 If you could care to expand on your observation on OT Chatter
(or to me, privately), I'm intrigued.>>>

I was thinking of old and probably dead traditions that I've read about,
often in books of old dead traditions, from which I often get the
impression that the authors did their research in books that were
written in the Victorian Era about practices that were already
considered quaint.

For example, rather than Christmas Caroling, the old traditions were
Wassailing and the Mummers' Play. The wassailers and the costumed
play-actors would be rewarded with a drink of wassail at each house.  I
went to the living room and fetched THE ENGLISH YEAR which is an extract
of a Victorian book, Robert Chambers' s THE BOOK OF DAYS, and here is a
quote: "The poorer class of people carried a bowl adorned with ribbons
around the neighborhood, begging for something wherewith to obtain the
means of filling it, so that they too might enjoy wassail as well as the
rich."

Plough Monday, first Monday after 12th Day. Plowmen went from house to
house begging with a beribboned plow, one of their number dressed as an
old woman and another dressed as a Fool and optional Morris dancers and
sword dancers.

May Day. Once upon a time, children went begging from house to house
carrying miniature May Poles and a doll dressed as May Queen  "as a
claim for a halfpence to be employed on the purchasing of sweetmeats"
while in London the chimney-sweeps and the milkmaids were the beggars,
the groups of chimney-sweeps "in fantastic dresses" and a fife and drum
accompanying Jack in the Green and the groups of milkmaids in flower
garlands accompanying a beribboned cow and a man dancing while hidden in
a huge costume of greenery covered with silverware. I am certain that
I've read in some other book that the children's procession also
included a hoop from which dangled a ball wrapped in silver paper and
one wrapped in gold paper and said to represent the sun and the moon,
altho' the author uttered Victorian double entendres about what they
"really" represented. I would think that before the Victorian period,
only very rich people would have had access to silver paper (tin foil?)
and gold paper.

Btw, the above is is one of the entertainments at Renaissance Faire:
groups of costumed Faire actors carry huge effigies around all day
(which can be considered a disordered procession); one group's effigy is
Jack in the Green, another's is Jack Tar (kind of a sailor costume) and
another's is Persephone. However, the spectators (the Faire folk's word
for us is 'turkeys') just take photos of or with the actors and effigy,
not give them money.

St James Day. July 25. Has a description of children in London making
piles of seashells (scavenged from the trash of eateries) topped with a
candle and sitting beside it 'whining' "Mind the Grotto!" which is a
request for cash.

etc etc etc. I feel like a big fool telling an English person about
archaic English customs whose descriptions I have to look up in a book.
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