FIRST-FOOTING, a Scottish custom still existing. Late in the evening of Hogmonay (31 December) in each year thousands of the com mon people assemble in the vicinity of the Edinburgh Tron Church, to ascertain on good evidence when the new year commences. When the clock is about to strike 12 they cheer so loudly that the strokes are not heard. Instantly that it has finished, they depart for the purpose of first-footing; that is each one tries to be the first person that year to cross the threshold of his friend's house and wish him the compli ments of the season. On such occasions also not a few are accustomed to drink their friends' health at the manifest risk of their own. It is considered unlucky to go into a house empty handed, and good luck is supposed to attend the resident whose "first foot" is dark-com plexioned.
and FIRSTLINGS are terms of the Mosaic and Jewish law, denoting respectively those portions of the fruits of the earth and of the increase of live stock which were to be offered to the Lord. (For First fruits consult Exod. xxii, 29; Num. xviii, 12 etc.; for Firstlings, consult Exod. xiii, 12; Num. xviii, 15, etc.). A custom which had its rise in the Roman Catholic Church as early as the 6th century was that men ordained to ecclesiastical offices made to the bishop who ordained them an offering of some portion of the first year's revenue of the office. In course of time the
claim of the See of Rome to the whole of the first year's income of a bishopric or an abbey or other office or benefice was recognized and enforced. When in 1531 King Henry VIII for bade the payment of this tax to the papal see by his subjects, the amount of the first-fruits annually forwarded from England to Rome was about D,000. When Henry was made supreme head on earth of the Anglican Church, the tax of the first-fruits was still exacted, but the pro ceeds were turned into the royal treasury. Such was the disposition made of the first-fruits in England till in 1704 Queen Anne, for herself and successors, relinquished the income from first-fruits and other imposts on the profits of spiritual preferments and, under an act of the Parliament, formed this income into a fund for the relief of clergymen holding poor liv ings: this is "Queen Anne's Bounty." The official name of first-fruits is Annates, or An nalia, from annus, year; they are also called primitive, the Latin equivalent of first-fruits.