"We Germans keep carnival (all the time between Epiphany and
Ash-Wednesday) St. Bernard's and St. Martin's days, Whitsuntide
and Easter, as times, above all other periods of the year, when
we should eat, drink, and be merry. St. Burchard's day, on account
of the fermentation of the new must. St. Martin's, probably on
account of the fermentation of the new wine: then we roast fat
geese, and all the world enjoy themselves. At Easter we bake
pancakes (_fladen_); at Whitsuntide we make bowers of green
boughs, and keep the feast of the tabernacle in Saxony and
Thuringia; and we drink, Whitsun-beer for eight days. In Saxony,
we also keep the feast of St. Panthalion with drinking and eating
sausages and roast legs of mutton stuffed with{11} garlic. To the
_kirmse_, or church feast, which happens only once a year, four
or five neighbouring villages go together, and it is a
praiseworthy custom, as it maintains a neighbourly and kindly
feeling among the people."

The pleasing account of the English harvest feast in Gage's _Hengrave_,
calls it _Hochay_. Pegge, in his Supplement to Grose's _Provincial Words,
Hockey_. Dr. Nares notices it in his _Glossary_, and refers to an account
of its observance in Suffolk given in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for
November, 1820. See also Major Moor's _Suffolk Words_, and Forby's
_Vocabulary of East Anglia_, who says that Bloomfield, the rustic poet of
Suffolk, calls it the _Horky_; Dr. Nares having said that Bloomfield does
not venture on this provincial term for a _Harvest-home_.

S.W. SINGER.

May 14. 1850.