Note 920 — Chapter XII · NEW YEAR CUSTOMS

Gregory, Posthuma, 113 ‘It hath been a Custom, and yet is elsewhere, to whip up the Children upon Innocents-Day morning, that the memory of this Murther might stick the closer, and in a moderate proportion to act over the cruelty again in kind.’ In Germany, adults are beaten (Grimm, iv. 1820). In mediaeval France ‘innocenter,’ ‘donner les innocents,’ was a custom exactly parallel to the Easter prisio (Rigollot, 138, 173).