Nov. 11.] St. Martin’s Day
Nov. 11.]
ST. MARTIN’S DAY.
The festival of St. Martin, happening at that season when the new wines of the year are drawn from the lees and tasted, when cattle are killed for winter food, and fat geese are in their prime, is held as a feast day over most parts of Christendom. On the ancient clog almanacs, the day is marked by the figure of a goose, our bird of Michaelmas being, on the continent, sacrificed at Martinmas. In Scotland and the north of England, a fat ox is called a mart84 clearly from Martinmas, the usual time when beeves are killed for winter use.—Book of Days, vol ii. p. 568.
Salt Silver—In the glossary to Kennett’s Parochial Antiquities (p. 496) is the following:—“Salt Silver.—One penny paid at the Feast of St. Martin, by the servile tenants to their lord, as a commutation for the service of carrying their lord’s salt from market to his larder.”
Notes
84 Mart, according to Skinner, is a fair, who considers it a contraction of market. Brand (Pop. Antiq. 1849, vol. i. p. 400) says that, had not mart been the general name for a fair, one might have been tempted to suppose it a contraction of Martin, the name of the saint whose day is commemorated.