NOVELLA. [JusTrsireseS LEGISLATION.] NOVEMBER, the eleventh month of the Julian year, was the ninth November, the eleventh month of the Julian year, was the ninth in the year of Romulus, whence it received its name. This name was assigned to it in the Alban calendar. It originally consisted of thirty days, which were continued by Romulus and Numa. Julius Cmsar gave it another day, but Augustus reduced it again to thirty, and this number it has ever since retained.
Our Saxon ancestors called November Blot-monath (blood-month), the month of sacrifice, because at this season the heathen Saxons made a provision for winter, and offered in sacrifice many of the animals which were then killed. This is distinctly stated in an ancient account of the Saxon months, printed in Hickes's Thesaurus' (vol. i., p. 219). It was common at this season to slaughter oxen, sheep, hogs, &c., for the use of the ensuing winter. The stock of salted meat
prepared at this time was to last through the winter months till vege tation came again sufficiently forward to enable them to resume the use of fresh provisions. Some notion of the vast extent to which the opulent provided for themselves and their retainers at this season may be formed from the contents of the larder of the elder Spenser, in 1327, which, in the month of May, contained "the carcases of eighty salted beeves, five hundred bacons, and six hundred muttons," the reliques of his winter provisions.
Martlemass or Martinmas beef, cured about the festival of St. Martin, the Ilth of this month, was a provision formerly well and in some places still known. The Spanish proverb, " His Martinmas is coining, when we shall be all hogs alike," alludes to the slaughter of swine at this period.
(l'itisci, Lexicon Antiq. Roman. ; Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Diet. ; Brady's Cleats Calendaria.)