It is strange to think of William Shakespeare at a loss for a title for a play. Such allegedly was the case, however, when it came to naming Twelfth Night; the title has nothing to do with the convoluted contents of the play itself but recalls the fact that it was written for performance at the Twelfth Night revelries, probably those of January, 1601.
Twelfth Night is tonight, the eve of Old Christmas Day, or Nollaig na mBan as it was called in Ireland - a day on which women had the privilege of resting from their housework. Its significance stems from the old Julian calendar used in these parts until 1752, and by which Christmas Day fell on the day we now designate January 6th.
Twelfth Night in former times was an occasion for great merrymaking, and at the end of the party all decorations were taken down and the holly and ivy stowed away until used to start the fire on which the pancakes would be made on Shrove Tuesday.
Twelfth Night was also a time when the weather pattern for the coming year was clear.
It was believed that the Twelve Days of Christmas were "days of fate", each symbolically governing the character of the month that occupies the corresponding place for the succeeding year.
"What the weather shall be on the sixth and twentieth day of December," wrote Gervase Markham who, coincidentally, was a contemporary of Shakespeare and one of that select band of talented authors who are sometimes accused of having written many of the plays - "the like shall it be in the month of January: what it shall be on the seventh and twentieth, the like shall be the following February, and so on until the Twelfth Day, each day's weather fore-showing a month of the year."
It was also possible to make the assessment scientifically. All one had to do was place 12 onions, each identified with a specific month, on the window-sill on Christmas Day. On each onion was a pinch of salt: if the salt on a particular onion had melted by Twelfth Night, the corresponding month was certain to be wet; if the salt was unaffected, that month could confidently be predicted to be dry.
There was also a more macabre variation. In Ireland long ago a small cake was baked for each member of the family and a candle placed on each one. When the family were gathered together for the festivities, the candles were lit and the order in which they burned out was a sure indication of the order of death of the persons represented.