No idea of the origins. What I wrote was the Yorkshire version as learned from my Grandad. He would do the same for a few other houses along their street and the Irish couple in particular couldn't settle down until he'd been to visit.
When I was little I never thought to wonder why Grandad was turfed out of the house just before midnight,no matter what the weather, and allowed back in just afterwards. He used to walk up to the corner, talk for a while with other men on the same mission, and listen for the ships' sirens and hooters from the docks a few miles away.
There was no motorway traffic then, no 24 hour TV, and it was generally a 'silent night' until the crews hit the horns. If the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth was in dock, or one of the other big transatlantic liners, we could hear it even indoors. Accompanied by lesser sirens and piping little whistles from the tugboats and fishing vessels.
Even if your own clock was stopped, and you didn't have a radio, you couldn't miss the New Year sirens. The navies, both Merchant and Royal, could be relied on for spot-on timekeeping. If you were outside you'd see them shooting off out-of-date signal flares/rockets which had been kept aside for the occasion.
Indoors, on the radio, we could hear the fading last notes of Big Ben chiming midnight and within a minute there's be a knock on the door. Grandad, a tall old man, looked quite a threatening figure through the glass, wrapped up in his black greatcoat, thick scarf, and a broad brimmed hat if it was raining. I mentioned this once and Gran laughed but said ""Ee, just as well he's not carryin' a scythe." So I guess she saw it too.
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One year when Grandad was too ill, Paddy Murphy from up the street came and did the honours. He didn't do the new year poem, but brought in a lump of coal which he ceremoniously put on the fire and spoke the Irish words for "God bless all here."
Paddy said this wasn't a specific new year greeting but something they did when visiting a friend, often taking in a small lump of peat from the stack outside the house. A 'visiting gift' tradition, similar to many other cultures. It can sometimes be a mere token, but if you're visiting someone unexpectedly then 'something for the cooking pot' is never a bad thing. 'Fuel for the fire' or 'food for the belly' probably has its roots in harder times.
I remember Mum handing over a recently purchase tin of red kidney beans to the lass sat at the fire when we visited a New Age Travellers camp near Winchester.
She took it, thanked Mum with a curious old fashioned courtesy, and said it was nice to see someone remembering the old ways. I noticed later that some other new arrivals to the camp did the same. We were only visiting, but some of them were there for a week or two before moving on.
If you have a neighbour who 'just pops in for minute', saying she's 'overdone her baking and would you like half a cake or some home-made biscuits' she's probably just following an old tradition.
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