“The harvest swains and wenches bound,
  For joy to see the hock-cart crown’d.”

Die Hocke was, in the language of Lower Saxony, a heap of sheaves. Hocken was the act of piling up these sheaves; and in that valuable repertory of old and provincial German words, the Woerterbuch of J.L.  Frisch, it is shown to belong to the family of words which signify a heap or hilly protuberance.

We should have been prepared to find the word in East Anglia; but from Herrick’s use of it, and others, it must have formerly been prevalent in the West of England also.  It has nothing to do with Hock-tide, which is the Hoch-zeit of the Germans, and is merely [Transcriber’s note:  illegible] feast or highday of which a very satisfactory account will be found in Mr. Hampson’s “Glossary” annexed to his Medii Aevi Kalendarium.  An interesting account of the Hoch-zeit of the Germans of Lower Saxony occurs where we should little expect it, in the Sprichwoerter of Master Egenolf, printed at Francfort in 1548, 4to.; and may perhaps serve to illustrate some of our obsolete rural customs:—­

“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.

* * * * *

CHARLES MARTEL.

(Vol. i. pp. 86. 275.)

If Charles Martel must no longer be the Mauler, he will only be excluded from a very motley band.  Here are a few of his repudiated namesakes:—­