The Methley Roots of Hogmanay

The following article appeared in the Dalesman Magazine in December 2025. We have reproduced an excerpt from a longer article.

THE YORKSHIRE ROOTS OF A SCOTTISH TRADITION

Niamh Ward discovers the Yorkshire roots of a Scottish tradition.

Scottish culture lays claim to many traditions that stand alone in Britain as wholly derived from that highest portion of our mainland, such as the annual celebration of Burns Night, bagpipes, the Highland Games and Hogmanay, the celebration of the New Year.

Or so it is believed in regard to the latter. In fact, did you know that this Scottish celebration of the New Year, which today see all-night celebrations across Scotland’s largest cities, as well as customs such as fireball swinging, was first evidenced in Yorkshire?

That’s right, the earliest known reference to Hogmanay dates to 1443, in a Latin record from Methley, West Yorkshire – more than 160 years before its first mention in Scotland in 1604 in Elgin court records, where someone was accused of ‘singing hogmanay’.

The Yorkshire entry documents payments for gifts given in the New Year in the estate accounts of Sir Robert Waterman, with the translation reading as follows: ‘And paid on the 31st December for a large hogmanay (Latin hagnonayse) 12 pence and for a small hogmanay 8 pence, 20 pence.

Aligned with the traditional context of sending gifts at New Year, this record shows an early form of Hogmanay being used in Yorkshire, at a point in the fifteenth century when the county was at a cultural crossroads, influenced by Norse, Anglo and Norman French traditions, many believe that the term Hogmanay derived from the northern French dialect term ‘hoguinane’ meaning a New Year’s gift.

Was the concept of Hogmanay in oral and colloquial circulation solely in Northern England, then, before it reached Scotland? Unlikely. However, the account does suggest that it was not exclusively Scottish in its early usage, as can also be seen from the celebratory customs for the New Year in both Scotland and Yorkshire.