A Regency Christmas Quiz 2

Anne here, offering a little bit of Festive Season fun with the Regency Christmas Quiz No.2.

As usual, you will need a pen and paper to jot down your choices, then at the end, click on the link to check your answers. Don't forget to come back and tell us how you went. (The illustration on your right is not Regency, but is from the Victorian Era, when Christmas as we know it really got going.)

1)  Who was the Lord of Misrule?   

 a) The Lord of the Manor, who had to pay penance for his sins during the year by distributing nuts and beer to the poor.

 b) A judge appointed to review appeals over the twelve days of Christmas.

 c) A man chosen to rule over drunken Christmas revelries.

 d) The target person in a game of Hunt-the-Fool.

 

2) Which Christmas carol might have been sung by Regency people?

a) Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

b) The First Noel.

c) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

d) We Three Kings of Orient Are.

from THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame, 

illustration by Inga Moore

3) Which Christmas carol would NOT have been sung by Regency people?

a) Away in a Manger.

b) I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing By.

c) Silent Night.

d) All of the above.
 

4) Which of these plants are traditionally part of Christmas greenery?

a) bay.

b) laurel.

c) rosemary.

 d) all of the above.
 

5) Stir-Up Day is:

 a) The last Sunday before Advent, when the minister traditionally gives a fiery sermon to stir the congregation from sin and complacency.

 b) The day when in the country, the winter hay is turned, to prevent it going moldy.   

 c) the day when all the members of the family gather to stir the Christmas pudding.

 d) The day when the foxes are stirred from their dens to prepare for hunting on Boxing Day (26th December).

6) Mummers are:

a) Men who dress up at Christmas and silent act out a play — never speaking.

b) Groups of poor men who come around before Christmas looking for odd jobs. They are traditionally paid with coal or food.

c) A men-only choir who sing Christmas songs in church. 

d) A group of men who at Christmas dress up, sing and act out plays.

 

7) The Christmas game "Hot Cockles"

a) involves snatching shells tossed in a bowl of burning wood shavings.

b)  involves putting your head in someones lap and guessing who is smacking your bottom.

c) involves standing on one foot as long as you can while ducking balls of wool thrown at you.

d) involves hiding a golden shell (or nut) somewhere in a room and setting others to find it.

8) Syllabub is

 a) a drink made of sweetened cream curdled in wine or cider.

 b) a non-alcoholic drink popular at Christmas containing cream and cinnamon.

 c) a game involving bobbing for plums floating in a tub of water.

 d) a savory Christmas tart containing cream and eggs but no meat or salt.

 

9) If you were given a "fire spill" for Christmas it would probably be:

a) A bucket of sand with a scoop for smothering a fire or an escaped hot coal.

b) A candle holder with a deep circular dish for catching hot wax.

c) a specially folded piece of paper for transferring fire or lighting candles or pipes.

d) An alcoholic dessert that is set alight just before serving.

 

10) When gathering mistletoe for a kissing bough, people

a)  preferred mistletoe with no berries (because they were poisonous).

b)  preferred mistletoe with lots of berries.   

c)  cut the berries off, to discourage lewdness.

d) had to cut the branches with a special sickle.
 

11) Buffy Gruffy was

a) a fictional character from the north of England (like an early sort of Santa Claus) who put coal in the stockings of bad children.

b) a Scottish term for a snowball fight.

c) a masked character who distributed food boxes to the poor on Boxing Day.

d) a game, a bit like blindman's buff, only with questions.

12) The Yule log was

a) made from dried plums, cocoa, crushed biscuits (cookies) and cream.

b) set alight on Christmas Eve and burned for up to twelve days.

c) in some places made from rolls of newspaper, dipped in tar and pitch.

d) a tree cut down on Boxing Day and stored for a full year before burning.

  * * * * *

I hope you enjoyed my little quiz. Now you've noted down your answers, click here to find out how many you got right. Then come back and tell us how you went.

And if you're still in the mood for more Christmas quizzing, the first Regency Christmas Quiz can be found here, a Quiz on Dickens's A Christmas Carol is here, and for the well-read romance reader, try my Ten Lords a'Leaping Quiz.

Wishing you all the very best for Christmas and the festive season, whatever you're celebrating (or not.) As usual, the Word Wenches will be posting their daily short posts over the Christmastide period (the 12 days of Christmas starting with 25 December). See you then.

Comments

[Mary T]

I love these quizzes. I only had 3 wrong, but I do admit that several of the answers were pure guesses. And thanks for the additional quizzes. Looks like they were out there before I discovered you ladies so they will be new to me. I look forward to doing them.

I wish all of you wenches and all who leave comments a happy Christmas and a blessed New Year.

[Samantha Craig]

I missed two! Merry Christmas, may your New Years be bright. You all certainly brighten my year.

[Cheryl W]

I missed 3. Merry Christmas to you! I love the quizzes!

[Amy]

Woot! I got 9, but still feel like I should be brushing up on my Regency Xmas lore. Thankfully, I have umpteen years of the Signet and other collections stockpiled on my shelf for re-reading.

[Jo Banks]

Hot Cockles never heard of it !But got the rest right !Several very good guesses.Great fun I do enjoy your quizzes. Merry Christmas.

[Sue McCormick]

I missed only two (with some lucky guesses).

As a side note: My church — here in Columbia Missouri — was founded about 1848 II forget the exact year). Every year on the Sunday which falls between Christmas day and New Years day, we have a service celebrating the history of our particular congregation. We always sing "Once in Royal David's City (which Anne listed in her dated carols list) because the father of our first organist and choir leader wrote it (or maybe the organist did, but I think it was his father.)

Obviously I'm not too good on my congregations details. But I do think it interesting that we have a particular connection with that carol.

[Anne Gracie]

Glad you enjoyed it, Mary. I enjoy making them up. And yes, there are quite a few quizzes -- do a search for Quiz in the search area in the left sidebar of the Wordwench site and some of them will pop up.

[Anne Gracie]

Thanks Samantha -- and well done. Enjoy the festive season.

[Anne Gracie]

Thank you Cheryl -- and well done. I think the first Regency Christmas quiz was a bit harder. I used up a lot of the good tricky questions there. Had no idea the Quizzes would prove to be so popular. Have a lovely Christmas

[Anne Gracie]

LOL Amy -- yes, go and do your homework! (heh heh) Really, you know, I suspect I learned most of my history and general knowledge from reading novels.

[Anne Gracie]

Jo the "Hot Cockles" game is mentioned in a couple of places on the web (including Jo Beverley's site), but I never knew what the game involved. Then an old book was discovered and put up for auction, in which a lot of these now-obscure games were described -- and lo! there was the picture I used on the answers page. Such a silly game and why hot cockles? I still don't know.

[Anne Gracie]

That's wonderful, Sue. It's surprising to see how many of the carols we think of people singing for centuries are really fairly modern, and that very few of them would have been sung by our regency characters.

[Judy Goodnight]

That was fun! I got 9 out of 12 correct. I knew the hot cockles question, but never heard of buffy gruffy.

[Cindy A]

Guess I missed the most - 4. Never heard of Hot Cockles.

[Anne Gracie]

Well done, Judy -- I've only recently found out what the Hot Cockles game was, and Buffy Gruffy was too good a name to resist.

[Anne Gracie]

It's mentioned on the few sites, Cindy, but it was only this year I found out what the game was about. The picture in the old book is priceless, I think.

[Maryellen Webber]

I didn't do so well with this quiz!! I had 5 correct answers. I never heard of Hot Cockles and I thought syllabub was a dessert, not a drink. It was fun anyways..

[Anne Gracie]

Maryellen, you did just fine. Most people hadn't heard of Hot Cockles, and these days Syllabub is a dessert. It wasn't in the Regency, though. Glad you enjoyed it.

[Janice]

I had 7 correct, which was more than I thought. It was informative - I'd never heard of some of these customs. I too missed the syllabub one, also thinking it was some sort of whipped dessert, not a drink. Good quiz :)

[Anne Gracie]

Well done, Janice. Really the syllabub one was extra tricky, because these days it IS a dessert, but back then it was a drink. So . . . Glad you enjoyed it anyway. All the best for Christmas

[Karin]

I was surprised at how well I did-I only missed 2,7 and 11.

[Anne Gracie]

Thats great Kareni. Have a wonderful Christmas.