The Old Christmas

In the days of our grandmothers, Old Christmas Day, the fifth of
January, was believed to be the true Christmas. On Black Thomas's
Eve, which was the first day of the Christmas holidays, the spinning
wheels all had to be put away, the making of nets ceased, and no work
of any kind must be done until after Twelfth Day.

But there was once an old woman named Peggy Shimmin, at Ballacooil,
and she was bent on finishing some spinning that she had begun,
so on Old Christmas Eve she said to herself:

'The New Christmas is pas' an' surely it's no wrong to do a bit o'
spinning to-night,' though she doubted in her heart if she were not
sinning. So when Himself and the rest were in bed, she called her
young servant-girl, lil Margad, and said:

'Margad, me an' you will finish the spinning to-night.' Margad was
frightened, terrible, but she got out her wheel and sat beside her
mistress. The two began to spin, and they were spinning and spinning
till near midnight, and behold ye, just before midnight old Peggy saw
the flax she was drawing from the distaff grow blacker and blacker
till it was as black as tar. But Margad's flax did not change colour
because she had only done what her mistress bade her. Peggy dropped
the flax quick, put away her wheel, and crept in fear to bed. She knew
now which was the true Christmas Day and never more did she spin on
Old Christmas Eve.

Margad was left alone in the kitchen when her mistress had gone to bed,
and at first she was trembling with fright; but she was a middling
brave girl, and she took a notion, as there was no person to stop
her, to see if all the things were true that she had heard about Old
Christmas Eve.

'They're saying,' she thought, 'that the bees are coming out, an'
the three-year-old bullocks going down on their knees, an' the myrrh
coming up in bloom.' Then she says to herself:

'I'm thinking I'll go out an' watch the myrrh.' So she put a cloak
round her and crept out at the door into the cold frosty moonlit
night, and midnight had just struck as she put her foot outside. She
stooped to look on the spot where the myrrh root was buried, and as
she was looking, the earth began to stir and to crack, and soon two
little green shoots pushed up to the air. She bent closer to see what
would happen, and to her great wonder the leaves and stalks grew big
and strong before her eyes, and then the buds began to show, and in
a few minutes the lovely white flowers were in bloom and the garden
was sweet with their fragrance. Margad could do nothing but stare at
them at first, but at last she dared to gather one small piece of the
blossom, and she kept it for luck all her life. Then she went to the
cowhouse and peeped through the door. She heard a groaning sound and
there were the young bullocks on their knees, moaning, and the sweat
was dropping from them. Margad knelt down, too, and put up a bit of
a prayer to the Holy Child that was born in a stall. But the wonders
were not over yet, for as she went silently back to the house she
noticed that the bees were singing and flying round the hive--they
were inside again, when she shut the door of the house behind her.

Always after that, when the neighbours would ask her if she believed
in the wonders of the Old Christmas Eve, she would say:

'I know it's true, for I've seen it myself.'