What was the custom of "Yule-firth" or "Unthrifty Folk"?

       Before the Reformation (1517), there was in Scotland and the north of England a custom of great but uncertain antiquity called "Yule-firth", i.e."Christmas Truce". Where this prevailed no criminal prosecution could be initiated in the week immediately preceding Christmas; and during the week next following all legal proceedings were temporarily suspended in honor of the feast. 

       Of the extent to which Yule-firth was observed we have no information; but something may be said in this connection of a strange custom at York, of which the earliest definite mention is found about the time of Henry VIII. On St. Thomas's Day the Sheriff made proclamation at the pillory that, during the Twelve Days of Christmas, all manner of thieves, gamblers, loose women, "and all other unthrifty folk be welcome to the town, whether they come late or early, in reverence of the High Feast of Yule"; on condition, however, that they kept the king's peace and submitted to certain police regulations. How long this custom survived is uncertain; but a writer in the middle of the eighteenth century refers to it as not long discontinued. "

       It would be pleasant if we could accept as historic the very beautiful symbolism which a lady has lately read into the strange custom. Adopting the Neo-Druidic idea that the parasitical mistletoe represents man in his dependence on God, she associates the York invitation to all and sundry with the ceremonial placing of mistletoe on the altar in the cathedral; and sees in it an object lesson that only when man lays himself on the altar as ready for sacrifice, can pardon, freedom, and true life be fully enjoyed. But it is more likely, we think, that the authorities at York were of opinion that by giving these "unthrifty folk" temporary security against arrest, they might the better be kept under observation, and their depredations guarded against. Municipal regulation of vice, however, always has tended and always will tend to deterioration of public morals; and we can very well believe that the York proclamation, like the unseemly pranks of the Lord of Misrule, did much to prepare the way towards the austerity of Puritan reaction.