ople quaffed their ale and sang, "Yule! Yule! a pack of new cards and
a Christmas stool!"[664] At Clee, in Lincolnshire, "when Christmas Eve
has come the Yule cake is duly cut and the Yule log lit, and I know of
some even middle-class houses where the new log must always rest upon
and be lighted by the old one, a small portion of which has been
carefully stored away to preserve a continuity of light and heat."[665]
At the village of Wootton Wawen in Warwickshire, down to 1759 at least,
the Yule-block, as it was called, was drawn into the house by a horse on
Christmas Eve "as a foundation for the fire on Christmas Day, and
according to the superstition of those times for the twelve days
following, as the said block was not to be entirely reduced to ashes
till that time had passed by."[666] As late as 1830, or thereabout, the
scene of lighting the hearth-fire on Christmas Eve, to continue burning
throughout the Christmas season, might have been witnessed in the
secluded and beautiful hill-country of West Shropshire, from Chirbury
and Worthen to Pulverbatch and Pontesbury. The Christmas brand or brund,
as they called it, was a great trunk of seasoned oak, holly, yew, or
crab-tree, drawn by horses to the farm-house door and thence rolled by
means of rollers and levers to the back of the wide open hearth, where
the fire was made up in front of it. The embers were raked up to it
every night, and it was carefully tended, that it might not go out
during the whole Christmas season. All those days no light might be
struck, given, or borrowed. Such was the custom at Worthen in the early
part of the nineteenth century.[667] In Herefordshire the Christmas
feast "lasted for twelve days, and no work was done. All houses were,
and are now, decorated with sprigs of holly and ivy, which must not be
brought in until Christmas Eve. A Yule log, as large as the open hearth
could accommodate, was brought into the kitchen of each farmhouse, and
smaller ones were used in the cottages. W---- P---- said he had seen a
tree drawn into the kitchen at Kingstone Grange years ago by two cart
horses; when it had been consumed a small portion was carefully kept to
be used for lighting next year's log. 'Mother always kept it very
carefully; she said it was lucky, and kept the house from fire and from
lightning.' It seems to have been the general practice to light it on
Christmas Eve."[668] "In many parts of Wales it is still customary to
keep part of the Yu