237.—Saxon Emblems of the Month of April.details

April

The illumination of the Saxon Calendar for this month represents three persons elevated on a sort of throne, each with drinking-cups in their hands, and surrounded with attendants upon their festivities (Figs. 237, 267). Strutt, in his description of this drawing, says, “Now, taking leave of the laborious husbandman, we see the nobleman regaling with his friends, and passing this pleasant month in banquetings and music.” But he assigns no cause for the appropriateness of this jollity to the particular season. Is not this picture an emblem of the gladness with which the great festival of Easter was held after the self-denials of Lent? April was called by the Anglo-Saxons “by the name of Oster-monat; some think, of a goddess called Goster, whereof I see no great reason, for if it took appellation of such a goddess (a supposed causer of the easterly winds), it seemeth to have been somewhat by some miswritten, and should rightly be Oster, and not Goster. The winds indeed, by ancient observation, were found in this month most commonly to blow from the east, and east in the Teutonic is Ost, and Ost-End, which rightly, in English is East-End, hath that name for the eastern situation thereof, as to the ships it appeareth which through the narrow seas do come from the west. So as our name of the feast of Easter may be as much to say as the feast of Oster, being yet at this present in Saxony called Ostern, which cometh of Oster-monat, their and our old name of April.” Those who are banqueting on the dais in the illumination, have each cups in their hands; the man sitting at their feet is filling a horn from a tankard; the young man on the right is drinking from a horn. There is a clear distinction between the rank of the persons assembled at this festivity; and the difference of the vessels which they are using for their potations might imply that the horns were filled with the old Saxon ale or mead, and the cups with the more luxurious wine. In Alfric’s Colloquy a lad is asked what he drank; and he answers, “Ale if I have it, or water if I have not.” He is further asked why he does not drink wine, and he replies, “I am not so rich that I can buy me wine, and wine is not the drink of children or the weak-minded, but of the elders and the wise.” But if we may reason from analogy, the drinking-horn had a greater importance attached to it than the drinking-cup. Inheritances of land were transferred by the transfer of a horn; estates were held in fee by a horn. The horn of Ulphus (Fig. 292) is a remarkable curiosity still preserved in the Sacristy of the Cathedral at York.

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