Chapter Bee to Before the Mast of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

to look after the Magi when they went to offer their gifts, and said she would wait to see them on their return; but they went another way, and Befana, every Twelfth Night, watches to see them. The name is a corruption of Epiphania.

Before the Lights in theatrical parlance, means on the stage, before the foot-lights.

Before the Mast To serve before the mast. To be one of the common sailors, whose quarters are in the forward part of the ship. The half-deck is the sanctum of the second mate, and, in Greenland fishers, of the spikeoneer, harpooners, carpenters, coopers, boatswains, and all secondary officers; of low birth.

“I myself come from before the mast.”- Sir W. Scott: The Antiquary, chap. xx.