THE HIDDEN MEANING OF WHAT SNAPDRAGON SIGNIFIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2693, 24 December 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE HIDDEN MEANING OF WHAT SNAPDRAGON SIGNIFIES.

(“Pearson’s Weekly.”)

Perhaps the most essentially “Christmassy” of all Christmas games is snapdragon. It is also one of the oldest; and has a hidden and exceedingly sinister ' , . The ordeal by fire of the Middle Ages, the Druidical fire-worship of a remoter epoch, the “passing of the children through the fire x of Moloch,’ ail these, and many other horrid rites, in which fire played' the principal part, are commemorated in this harmless amusement. “Snap,” and “dragon!” Divide the same into its two chief component parts, and one at once remembers that flaming dragon of Hesperia, whom Hercules slow, and the eternally burning fruit- in the enchanted orchard off which lie made his fiery meal. This, the later Roman legend, was recounted to little Roman children by their Roman papas and mammas two thousand years ago, when the game was played just the same as it is now. Go back yet another ten centuries, and one finds a slightly different version current among the children and parents of ancient Egypt. But the game was played then —forty centuries ago—precisely as it is at present. There wsis the same scramble among the_ flaming fruit, the same crowding around of halfaffrighted, half-delighted youngsters, the same background of interested adults. This we know from ancient frescoes.

Blind man’s buff, again, has been traced up to the very rites connected with the'prehistoric worship of Odin, the sightless deity of our old* Norse ancestors.

It was, however, not much of a “game” then, at all events, so far as regards the individual chiefly concerned, for he was really blind, bis sight being purposely distroyed prior to the commencemfent of the “festivities.”

To make sport of an unfortunate in this predicament, to buffet and trip him, and to watch his furious, but usually futile efforts to lay bold upon bis persecutors, was a source of tin-' failing delight to the barbarous and semi-barbarous races who lived in olden times.

. Afterwards, as men became more civilised, a purposely-blinded animal was substituted for the human victim; and et a later date still, men, their eyes bandaged and their bodies swathed in skins, personated the beasts. In South Germany the game is still called blinde. bock, i.e., “blind goat,” and in North Germany bliqde kuhe, or “blind cow;” while in Scotland it is called “blind .liarie,” in allusion to the rough, or hairy attire once worn by the principal actor. In old houses, with many rooms and nooks and corridors, the game known as hide-and-seek, touch, and tag, are favorite Yuletide ones. They are taken bodily from an ancient miracle-play portraying the story of Diana and her nymphs. Puss-in-the-corner, again, is buT a variation of the same old legend, with the Greek Artemis substituted for the Italian Diana. Both Diana and Artemis. of course, stood for the moon in ancient mythology; and “puss” is indifferently either a cat, a hare, or a rabbit. All these three animals love to roam abroad on moonlight nights, and when alarmed, even by a, passing shadow, will scamner at full speed to the nearest “corner.”

Oranges and- lemons, another favorite Christmas game in old-fashioned households, represents in crude childish pantomime a mediaeval battle. The children choose sides, elect a captain, and go through every detail of the fight down to the execution of the prisoners. In Here-we-go-ipund-the-mulberry. hush, we are introduced, as in so many other similar games, to a primeval marriage service. Trees were formerly sacred to dancing at the wedding festival, and the mulberry had a special significance. The Christmas tree is directly connected with the worship of the god Woden, a benevolent individual, who was said to shower down gifts from the forest trees on such of liis_ favorite disciples as chanced to wander beneath their branches.

Pantomimes are a direct survival of the Roman - Saturnalia, when slaves were privileged to buffet senators, exactly as to-day the clowns do the policemen, who are modern representatives of law and order, as were the senators in question twenty centuries ago. While the Yuletide log', without which Christmas would not he Christinas in thousands of old-fashioned country houses, is but a degenerate descendant of those mightv bonfires, each composed of hundreds of old pin« trees, with which our remote Scandinavian ancestors were wont, to honor during the winter solstice, their God Thor.