Dusk falls in the village of Bêlý in the uplands of Czechia’s Hradec Kralove region. Hradec Kralove means ‘King’s Castle’, and tonight there are no fewer than three kings prowling the streets. The date is January the 5th, Twelfth Night, and the kings – the oldest one just 12 years old – chalk “2025 B + M + K” on every door in the village.
The initials are shorthand for Kašpar, Melichar, and Baltazar, the Czech names for the three kings/wise men/magi who, 2,025 years ago, took a long, apocryphal journey on camels, travelling from hither via thither to deliver slightly eccentric gifts to a cattle shed in Bethlehem.
The kings’ names (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar in English) derive from the Latin Christus mansion benedicat, meaning “God bless this house”. The crosses between the letters are not plus signs but crosses symbolising the Holy Trinity. In folklore, these crosses, along with the Kings’ initials, had the power to protect a house from perils such as evil spells, health problems, and canvassers from the Reform Party.
If one of the doors the kinglets visit has not been cleaned for 12 months, they save time by simply rubbing out “4” and replacing it with “5”. Anyone they catch at home is treated with a short song and a sachet of sugar. In return, the householder is expected to hand over some money, which is given to a local charity.
The kings make this procession every year in many Czech towns and villages to mark the Feast of the Three Kings (Svátek Tří Králů in Czech), the last of the Twelve Days of Christmas. You don’t have to be pre-teen to be a king, but that’s how it is in the remote hills of Bêlý.
The Czech kings are dressed for the occasion in gowns and crowns, and as it’s a long process – some of them have to cover almost as much ground as the original magi and their camels – they are often spotted in daylight, sometimes on January 4th to get a head start.
The Three Kings’ chalk was formerly a key element of the tradition. Blessed in the local church, it was handed out to the congregation on Twelfth Night and, ground up, was a key ingredient of the first-aid box. In addition to inscribing protective blessings on the doorways of houses, barns and livestock sheds, the Kings’ chalk was a cure-all for your family and other animals. Mixed into livestock feed, it protected the beasts against witchcraft. A small supplement of ground chalk kept cows’ milk healthy (there’s probably a joke in there somewhere about chalk and cheese, but I won’t pursue it). The chalk was also made into amulets and hung around infants’ necks to ward off the attentions of those ever-vigilant fairies and witches.
Some alternatives to twelve drummers drumming
Like a folk session where all the djembe and bodhran players turn up simultaneously, the twelfth day of Christmas is renowned for the twelve drummers your perverse true love sent you. Many of them used to beat their tattoos at traditional Twelfth Night bonfires. Communities would build 12 of these, one for each of the 12 days of Christmas, plus a 13th ‘Judas fire’, which was manually extinguished during the proceedings. So, that’s just one drummer per fire.
At Brough-under-Stainmore in Cumbria, the fire was mobile, as large burning holly and ash branches were carried through the streets accompanied by more drums, lots of music and fireworks. Two factions attempted to transport the burning wood to their favoured hostelry, and the attempts usually descended into a brawl. This occasion was known as Holly Night, and the crowds gathered bits of the charred wood as lucky tokens. These pieces of wood had similar health-giving properties to the Czech chalk mentioned earlier.
The Twelfth Night medicine cabinet can be completed with a bottle of Herefordshire holy water. After the first stroke of midnight on January the 6th, the usually calm waters of Saint Anne’s well that Aconbury near Hereford begin to bubble and blue smoke rises from the water. The first water drawn from the well afterwards has medicinal value and is especially good for the eyes.
Let them eat cake
In Somerset, livestock formerly enjoyed old Christmas as a holiday, and treats were secreted into the feeding troughs, including salted herring for the cattle. In Herefordshire, cattle received a specially baked 12th Night Cow Cake with a hole in the middle. The beasts were serenaded with a song:
Fill your cups my merry men all
For here is the best ox in the stall,
Oh, he is the best ox, of that there’s no mistake,
And so let us crown him with the 12th cake.
The cake was then hooked over one of the animal’s horns, where it briefly stayed until tossed to pieces by the irritated ox.
Having applied fruitcake to their livestock, the revellers – all male – then danced home to find themselves locked out. This was all part of the ritual. In some places, the men had to guess what the women indoors had put at the end of a long stick before they were allowed indoors. If they failed to guess correctly, their female counterparts assumed they were too drunk to deserve readmission, and they were left to sober up in the cold night air.
Twelfth Night cake, known as Uphalieday cake in Scotland, was a traditional treat throughout Britain until early in the twentieth century, when it was elbowed off the menu by the now ubiquitous Christmas cake. The cake contained a pea and a bean, and the lucky recipients of these became mock king (the pea) and mock queen (the bean) for the night.
The tradition of tokens hidden in cakes has echoes elsewhere in Europe. In Czechia, for example, traditional Twelfth Night sweet bread contained a hidden coin, just like the traditional sixpence in a British Christmas Cake. The finder of the coin was crowned king or queen, and their non-onerous duties included blessing the home and garden with holy water and marking doorways with protective wooden or chalk crosses. In practice, then, they became the Fourth of the Three Kings (a bit like D’Artagnan becoming the Fourth of the Three Musketeers).
A version of Twelfth Night cake is still baked for the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, London. The 1794 will of cook-turned-actor Robert Baddeley included £100 for the annual baking of a cake in his honour. Actors still raise their glasses and slices of Baddeley Cake in Robert’s memory tonight in the theatre’s Green Room.
The one place where they still have their cake and eat it, celebrating Christmas Day and Twelfth Night simultaneously, is the island of Foula West of Shetland. Foula still celebrates Christmas Day on January the 6th, having somehow failed to log the calendar change of 1752. The traditional foods of the day include salt-smoked mutton, potato soup and a Yule bread made with caraway seeds. Traditionally, the men used to nip out with their guns and bag a brace of Shag for the communal pot. There are only around 40 residents on Foula, so there’s enough Shag for everyone.
We’re All Going to Die, and Other Jolly Folklore
Twelfth Night traditions have largely died away in Britain, but I’m pleased to report that, in addition to the graffiti-mad Three Kings, Czechia has maintained a few snippets of ancient customs and folklore. One of the most disturbing involves predicting imminent death. Family members take candles of equal sizes and light them simultaneously. The wick that extinguishes first symbolises that family member’s death at the hands of Morana, the Slavic goddess of winter and death. Not necessarily soon, but before any of the luckier candle-holders. The manner of the candle’s burning holds further significance: upward smoke and a bright flame foretell a heavenly afterlife, while sputtering, downward smoke and an uneven flame indicate a descent into the underworld.
On a lighter note, good health can be obtained through the invigorating act of diving into a river or stream on January 5th. Alternatively, and less bracingly, consuming holy water from the church on an empty stomach brings health and good luck.
Christmas is officially knocked on the head at Twelfth Night Czech church services and communal village gatherings. During the services, the clergy blesses various items – incense, myrrh, water, gold objects, and the ubiquitous chalk. These magical items can then be used to purify and protect home and livestock.
Weather you like it or not
No day of folkloric observation is complete without a dose of weatherlore. In Czechia, a windy Three Kings Day means a fertile year in farm and field, with a clear, starry night on January 5th specifically signalling a plentiful potato harvest. If the stars do lots of twinkling, it means a bumper crop of white lambs.
Just to spoil the fun, in English weatherlore, those same twinkling stars mean storms and precipitation. Generally, British weatherlore is very cynical in January. These are just a few of the miserable pronouncements from the Met Office’s Folklore department:
- January warm, the Lord have mercy.
- A summerish January, a winterish spring.
- A January spring is worth naething.
- Fog in January brings a wet spring.
Finally, January’s bad-rhyme award is a toss-up between the following:
The blackest month in all the year is the month of Janiveer.
Frost in Janiveer nips the nose of the nascent year.
March in Janiveer, Janiveer in March, I fear.
If you see grass in January, lock your grain in your granary.
To their credit, the Czech Three Kings are weatherproof. They sometimes resort to ponchos and umbrellas, but whatever the weather, they will be out with their chalk and good cheer for all foreseeable Twelfth Nights to come.
very interesting article I am going to be wassailing and chalking tomorrow and I’m using it as a practice because I’m going to do it on the 17th of January as well in Matlock in Derbyshire where Saint Giles Church Matlock also does the chalking apparently I have found in another article so thank you very much for the information