BEAN-FEAST

'Bean-feast', primarily an annual dinner given by an employer
to his workpeople, and by extension, colloquially, describes any jollification.
The phrase is variously derived. The most probable theory is
that which connects it with the custom in France, and afterwards
in Germany and England, of a feast on Twelfth Night, at which
a cake with a bean buried in it was a great feature. The bean-king
was he who had the good fortune to have the slice of cake in
which was the bean. This choosing of a king or queen by a bean
was formerly a common Christmas diversion at the English and
Scottish courts, and in both English universities. This monarch
was master of the revels like his congener the Lord of Misrule. A
clue to his original functions is possibly found in the old popular
belief that the weather for the ensuing twelve months was
determined by the weather of the twelve days from Christmas to
Twelfth Night, the weather of each particular month being prognosticated
from each day. Thus the king of the bean of Twelfth
Night may have originally reigned for the twelve days, his chief
duty being the performance of magical ceremonies for ensuring
good weather during the ensuing twelve months. Probably in
him and the lord of misrule it is correct to find the lineal descendant
of the old king of the Saturnalia, the real man who personated
Saturn and, when the revels ceased, suffered a real death in his
assumed character. Another but most improbable derivation for
bean-feast connects it with M.E. bene "prayer," "request," the
allusion being to the soliciting of alms towards the cost of their
Twelfth Night dinner by the workpeople.
See Wayzgoose; misrule, Lord of; also J. Boemus, Mores,
leges et ritus omnium gentium (Lyons, 1541), p. 222; Laisnel
de la Salle, Croyances et légendes du centre de la France, i. 19-29;
Lecoeur, Esquisses du Bocage normand, ii. 125; Schmitz, Sitten und
Sagen des Eifler Volkes, i. 6; Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great
Britain (Hazlitt's edit. 1905), under "Twelfth Night"; Cortet,
Fêtes religieuses, p. 29 sqq.

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