In this series:
2) Zombie Apocalypse & Trick-or-Treating: Halloween
through History.
According to the OED, the verb pule means “to cry in
a thin or weak voice, as a child; to whine, to cry in a querulous tone.” Numerous citations beginning in the
1520s support the definition.
To read about All Souls Day, however, is to learn that the
definition isn’t everything it needs to be.
The three days that began with the Eve of the Vigil of All Hallows (our
Halloween) and continued through All Souls’ Day (November 2nd) were the
Catholic substitute for the Druidic Festival of Samhain. Among other things of the greatest importance,
on Samhain the Undead rose from the abyss to spend a night back in the world of
the living. The households of the living
prepared a fine feast to share with their venerated ancestors returned from the netherworld.
They also made cakes to placate those souls that wandered aimlessly
having no welcome waiting from their families.
In the 16th century, numerous sources refer to giving out the
oaten soul-cakes to the poor that came to the door of a house on All Soul’s Day. It is to this custom the Shakespeare refers
in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:
Valentine. Why, how know you that I am in love?
Speed. Marry, by these special marks: first, you have
learned… to speak puling, like a
beggar at Hallowmas.[1]
Looking closely, however, we see that this Shakespeare quote
has moved the “puling” (which it was actually called) back one day to
Hallowmas, All Hallows Day[2],
rather than All Souls. Far more
important, he has actually referred to puling as a special kind of speech
spoken by beggars on Hallowmas Day.
Valentine’s point makes clear that this puling is the most abject kind
of begging, so much so that it is proverbial.
The author of the Medii Ævi Kalendarium adds that a
Mr. George Tollet glossed the above quote, in the 1780s, with “It is worth remarking that on All
Saints' Day, the poor people in Staffordshire, and perhaps in other country
places, go from parish to parish souling, as they call it, i.e., begging
and puling (or singing small, as Bailey's Dictionary explains the word puling)
for soul-cakes, or any good things to make them merry.”[3]
When Sir Thomas More wrote the pamphlet “The poor seely
souls pewling out of purgatory” (1529) — source of the earliest citations of
the word, perhaps — the souls were not the poor standing-in for souls between
cycles of rebirth — which may or may not have been the original custom — but
rather for the dead crying out to be redeemed from Purgatory into Heaven. Considered precisely, this left intact a
cherished tradition of baking soul-cakes on the day but no Undead to enjoy
them.
This all was part of the church’s patient way to turn the Druidic
worship of the dead — which was one of the several aspects of the enormously
popular festival of Samhain — into a remembrance of those trapped for long ages
in God’s penitentiary. The outnumbering
Undead of the Celts, awaiting rebirth, were transformed into the inhabitants of
Purgatory.
At some point, the tiny, begging, half-human voices of the
Undead had been transformed into a game the poor played in order to expropriate
the soul-cakes. Presumably dressed for
the part. By Shakespeare’s time, it
would seem, not only the poor went begging door-to-door for treats as stand-ins
for the Undead.
Whether that transition occurred toward the end of Druidism
or the beginning of Christianity is not certain. It is not even clear that there was a
time-certain at which Druidism ended and Christianity took over as opposed to centuries
of blending during which each altered the other.
The stronger argument would seem to be that “puling” had begun
to be a tradition during Druidic times. The
Greek poet Homer describes the speaking of the dead as a “thin piercing noise”[4] Virgil, in his Aeneid, does the same: “some raise a
shout—faintly; the cry essayed mocks their gaping mouths.”[5]
Shakespeare himself clearly knows the fact, as he indicates
elsewhere:
The
sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the
streets.[6]
He has duly read his classics. It will be another couple of centuries before
the Indo-European diaspora is discovered such that scholars might detect any
connection between it and puling.
But the people who went puling were the unlettered members
of society. How would they know about
how the Undead were supposed to sound?
It’s not impossible that the educated members taught them how the dead
sounded. But how likely is it?
We are not surprised that Homer and Virgil might share a belief as to how the speech of
the dead sounded. We see the ancient
Greeks and Romans as being culturally quite close. What does
not come as easily to mind, however, is that millennia before that
relationship, they began their routes of migration as Indo-European
peoples. They went south.
The Celts went predominantly west and became the peoples who are our present subject. Surely it is more likely that the idea that
the Undead speak in tiny voices — that they pule — goes back some 7000+
years, that each of these Indo-European peoples had believed in the tiny voices
from the time of their common cultural origin in the Anatolia region of modern
Turkey. Puling, then, more likely
started sometime before the first Christian missionaries arrived on British
soil.
Bailey shows a further evolution in the idea of puling. Plaintive begging has taken on music. By 1841
(the date of the Kalendarium), in more puritan areas the custom
has further evolved into “Psalm-caking” in which “a sort of procession of young
people [went] from house to house, at each of which they recited psalms, and, in
return, received presents of cakes”. But,
children being children, puritanism couldn’t hold for long, and, while the
singing is done on All Souls once again,
a more modern lyric is recorded in Notes And Queries.
Soul! Soul! for a soul cake:
Pray, good mistress, for a soul cake.
One for Peter, two for Paul,
Three for them who make us all.
Soul! Soul! for an apple or two;
If you’ve got no apples, pears will
do. &c.
An apple or pear or plum or cherry,
Is a very good thing to make us
merry. &c.[7]
The singing is certainly no longer “small,” the begging no
longer abject. Nor do the singers
pretend to be the Undead freed for the night from the abyss. The householder who failed to provide treats
received a curse for their unkindness.
[1] Two
Gentlemen of Verona, II.i.15-6, 25.
[2] In
modern parlance, “All Saints Day”. The
Undead emerging only at night, Shakespeare may actually be referring to October
31st, our Halloween.
[3] Hampson, R. T. Medii Ævi Kalendarium or Dates,
Charters, and Customs of the Middle Ages (1841). I.375. Mr. Tollet provided notes to George Steevens’s and Samuel Johnson’s works of
Shakespeare published in the 1780s.
[4] Homer. The Odyssey, Volume 2 (Loeb, 1919).
Tr. A. T. Murray. “ταί δέ τριζουσαι ἕποντο.”
“: “They followed speaking in a thin,
piercing noise.” I have replaced Murray’s
insufficient “gibbering”.
[5]
Virgil. Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid
I-VI, Volume 1. (Loeb, 1916). Tr. H. Rushton Fairclough. 541. “tollere
vocem exiguam… hiantes”.
[6] Hamlet,
I.i.115-6.
[7]
Notes and Queries, Volume 4, November 15, 1851. 381.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- Why the Wait for Halloween Seems to Last 7000 Years. October 21, 2019. “The accounts written in the monasteries beginning in the late 7th century are a fascinating resource telling us as much about the scribes as the purported events they wrote about.”
-
Malvolio’s Crow's Feet and “the new Mappe”. October 14, 2019. “Percy Allen’s candidate is not mentioned by any of these parties. The traditionalists, of course, could not consider it possible because it would suggest far too early a date for the play.”
- A Brief Introduction to Poisoning a Nobleman. August 4, 2019. “As those who read the primary accounts whenever possible know, never were vagaries so vague as in the Middle Ages.”, he was waiting for a return letter from King James VI of Scotland.”
- What Color Were Shakespeare’s Potatoes? July 27, 2019. “By the year 1599-1600, when Shakespeare’s play would seem to have been written, the potato was available in London. It was considered a delectable treat and an aphrodisiac.”
- Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Why the Wait for Halloween Seems to Last 7000 Years. October 21, 2019. “The accounts written in the monasteries beginning in the late 7th century are a fascinating resource telling us as much about the scribes as the purported events they wrote about.”
- Malvolio’s Crow's Feet and “the new Mappe”. October 14, 2019. “Percy Allen’s candidate is not mentioned by any of these parties. The traditionalists, of course, could not consider it possible because it would suggest far too early a date for the play.”
- A Brief Introduction to Poisoning a Nobleman. August 4, 2019. “As those who read the primary accounts whenever possible know, never were vagaries so vague as in the Middle Ages.”, he was waiting for a return letter from King James VI of Scotland.”
- What Color Were Shakespeare’s Potatoes? July 27, 2019. “By the year 1599-1600, when Shakespeare’s play would seem to have been written, the potato was available in London. It was considered a delectable treat and an aphrodisiac.”
- Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
1 comment:
Very interesting
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