perides, in 1648. He gives us in his title the additional information that Rock, or Saint Distaff's Day, was the morrow after Twelfth Day; and he advises that it should terminate the sports of Christmas. SAINT DISTAFF'S OR THE MORROW AFTER TWELFTH-DAY. Partly worke and partly play Ye must on S. Distaff's day: From the plough soone free your teame; If the Maides a spinning goe, Then bid Christmas sport good night, And next morrow, every one To his owne vocation." * The first Monday after Twelth Day used to be celebrated by the ploughmen as a Holiday, being the season at which the labours of the plough commenced, and hence the day has been denominated Plough-Monday. Tusser, in his poem on husbandry, after observing that the "old guise must be kept," recommends the ploughmen on this day to the hospitality of the good huswife: "Good huswives, whom God hath enriched ynough, He then adds, for comfort with labour, is fit to be had." "Plough-Munday, next after that Twelftide is past, bids out with the plough, the worst husband is last : These lines allude to a custom prevalent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which Mr. Hilman, in a note on the passage, has thus explained: "After Christmas (which formerly, during the twelve days, was a time of very little_work), every gentleman feasted the farmers, and every farmer their servants and task-men. PloughMonday puts them in mind of their business. In the morning the men and maid-servants strive who shall shew their diligence in rising earliest; if the ploughman can get his whip, his ploughstaff, hatchet, or any thing that he wants in the field, by the fire-side, before the maid hath got her kettle on, then the maide loseth her Shrovetide cock, and it wholly belongs to the men. Thus did our forefathers strive to allure youth to their duty, and provided them innocent mirth, as well as labour. On this Plough-Monday they have a good supper and some strong drink, that they might not go immediately out of one extreme into another."+ In the northern and north-western parts of England, the entire day was usually consumed in parading the streets, and the night was devoted to festivity. The ploughmen, apparently habited only in their shirts, but in fact with flannel jackets underneath, to keep out the cold, and these shirts decorated with roseknots of various coloured riband, went about collecting what they called "ploughmoney for drink." They were accompanied by a plough, which they dragged along, and by music, and not unfrequently two of the party were dressed to personate an old woman, whom they called Bessy, and a Fool, the latter of these characters being covered with skins, with a hairy cap on his head, and the tail of some animal pendent from his back. On one of these antics was devolved the office of collecting money from the spectators by rattling a box, into which their contributions were dropped, while the rest of the ploughmen were engaged in performing a sword-dance, a piece of pageantry derived from our northern ancestors, and of which Olaus Magnus has left us an accurate description in his history of the Gothic nations.* It consisted, for the most part, in forming various figures with the swords, sheathed and unsheathed, commencing in slow time, and terminating in very rapid movements, which required great agility and address to be conducted with safety and effect.+ It was the opinion of Dr. Johnson that Shakspeare alluded to the sword-dance, where, in Anthony and Cleopatra, he makes his hero observe of Augustus, that "He, at Philippi, kept His sword even like a dancer."‡ But Mr. Malone has remarked, with more probability, that the allusion is to the English custom of dancing with a sword worn by the side; in confirmation of which idea, he quotes a passage from All's Well That Ends Well, where Bertram, lamenting that he is kept from the wars, says, "I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, This It has been observed in a preceding page, that, among the common people, the festivities of Christmas were frequently protracted to Candlemas-Day. was done under the idea of doing honour to the Virgin Mary, whose purification is commemorated by the church at this period. It was generally, remarks Bourne, "a day of festivity, and more than ordinary observation among women, and is therefore called the Wives' Feast-Day." S The term Candlemas, however, seems to have arisen from a custom among the Roman Catholics, of consecrating tapers on this day, and bearing them about lighted in procession, to which they were enjoined by an edict of Pope Sergius, A. D. 684; but on what foundation is not accurately ascertained. At the Reformation, among the rites and ceremonies which were ordered to be retained in a convocation of Henry VIII., this is one, and expressedly because it was considered as symbolical of the spiritual illumination of the Gospel. ++ From Candlemas to Hallowmas, the tapers which had been lighted all the winter in Cathedral and Conventual Churches ceased to be used; and so prevalent, indeed, was the relinquishment of candles on this day in domestic life, that it has laid the foundatiou of one of the proverbs in the collection of Mr. Ray: "On Candlemas-day throw Candle and Candlestick away." On this day likewise the Christmas greens were removed from churches and private houses. Herrick, who may be considered as the contemporary of Shakspeare, being five-and-twenty at the period of the poet's death, has given us a pleasing description of this observance; he abounds, indeed, in the history of local rites, and, though surviving beyond the middle of the seventeenth century, paints with great accuracy the manners and superstitions of the Shakspearean era. He has paid particular attention to the festival that we are describing, and enumerates the various greens and flowers appropriated to different seasons in a little poem entitled Olai Magni Gent. Septent. Breviar. p. 341. +See Brand on Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares, p. 194; and Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, p. 307, edit. of 1810. Of this curious exhibition on Plough-Monday, I have often, during my boyhood, at York, been a delighted spectator, and, as far as I can now recollect, the above description appears to be an accurate detail of what took place. Act iii. sc. 9. ++ Fuller's Church History, p. 222. § Bourne's Antiquities apud Brand, p. 244. The usage which we have alluded to, of preserving the Christmas cheer and hospitality to Candlemas, is immediately afterwards recorded and connected with a singular superstition, in the following poems under the titles of "CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMASSE DAY. Kindle the Christmas Brand, and then Till sunne-set, let it burne; Which quencht, then lay it up agen, Part must be kept wherewith to teend + End now the white-loafe, and the pye, To the exorcising power of the Christmas Brand is added, in the subsequent effusion, a most alarming denunciation against those who heedlessly leave in the Hall on Candlemas Eve, any the smallest portion of the Christmas greens. "CEREMONY UPON CANDLEMASSE EVE. Down with the Rosemary, and so Wherewith ye drest the Christmas Hall: That so the superstitious find No one least Branch there left behind: For look, how many leaves there be, The next important period of feasting in the country occurred at Shrove tide, which among the Roman Catholics was the time appointed for shriving or confession of sins, and was also observed as a carnival before the commencement of Lent. The former of these ceremonies was dispensed with at the Reformation; but the rites attending the latter were for a long time supported with a rival spirit of hilarity. The Monday and Tuesday succeeding Shrove Sunday, called Collop Monday and Pancake Tuesday, were peculiarly devoted to Shrovetide amuse Hesperides, p. 337. 338 Teend, to kindle. Hesperides, p. 361. Dramatic amusements were frequent on this day, as well in the halls of the nobility in the country, as at court. With regard to their exhibition in the latter, many documents exist; for instance, in a chronological series of Queen Elizabeth's payments for plays acted before her (from the Council Registers) is the following entry: 18th March, 1573-4. To Richard Mouncaster, (Mulcaster, the Grammarian), for two plays presented before her on Candlemas-day and Shrove-Tuesday last, 20 marks.” * Gentleman's Magazine, vide life of Richard Mulcaster, May, June, and July, 1800, ment; the first having been, in papal times, the period at which they took leave of flesh, or slices of meat, termed collops in the north, which had been preserved through the winter by salting and drying, and the second was a relic of the feast preceding Lent; eggs and collops therefore on the Monday, and pancakes, as a delicacy, on the Tuesday, were duly if not religiously served up. Tusser, in his very curious and entertaining poem on agriculture, thus notices some of the old observances at Shrovetide: "At Shroftide to shroving, go thresh the fat hen, For an explanation of the obsolete custom of "threshing the fat hen," we are indebted to Mr. Hilman. "The hen," says he, is hung at a fellow's back, who has also some horse-bells about him; the rest of the fellows are blinded, and have boughs in their hands, with which they chase this fellow and his hen about some large court or small enclosure. The fellow with his hen and bells shifting as well as he can, they follow the sound, and sometimes hit him and his hen; at other times, if he can get behind one of them, they thresh one another well favour'dly; but the jest is, the maids are to blind the fellows, which they do with their aprons, and the cunning baggages will endear their sweet-hearts with a peeping hole, whilst the others look out as sharp to hinder it. After this the hen is boil'd with bacon, and store of pancakes and fritters are made. She that is noted for lying in bed long, or any other miscarriage, hath the first pancake presented to her, which most commonly falls to the dogs' share at last, for no one will own it their due." Mr. Hilman concludes his comment on the text with a singular remark; "the loss of the above laudable custom, is one of the benefits we have got by smoaking tobacco."* Shakspeare has twice noticed this season of feasting and amusement; first, in All's Well That Ends Well, where he makes the Clown tell the Countess (among a string of other similes), that his answer is "as fit as a pancake for ShroveTuesday;" and in the Second Part of King Henry IV, he has introduced Silence singing the following song: "Be merry, be merry, my wife's as all; For women are shrews, both short and tall: And welcome merry shrovetide. Be merry, be merry, &c." The third line of this song appears to have been proverbial, and of considerable antiquity; for Adam Davie, who flourished about 1312, has the same imagery with the same rhyme, in his "Life of Alexander :" 66 Merry swithe it is in halle, When the berdes waveth alle." § Hilman's Tusser, p. 80. Mr Hilman seems to have had as great an aversion to tobacco as King James; for, in another part of his notes, he observes, that "Suffolk and Essex were the counties wherein our author was a farmer, and no where are better dairies for butter, and neater housewives than there, if too many of them at present do not smoke tobacco.” p. 49. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii, p. 272. 273. Act ii. sc. 2. Warner has also noticed this culinary article as appropriated to Shrove-Tuesday in his Albion's England, chapter xxiv., where, enumerating the feasts and holidays of his time, he says, they had "At fasts-eve pan-puffes."-Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 564. Shrove or Pancake Tuesday, is still called, in the North, Fastens, or Fasterns E'en, as preceding AshWednesday, the first day of Lent; and the turning of these cakes in the pan is yet observed as a feat of dexterity and skill. Of the pancake bell which used to be rung on Shrove-Tuesday, Taylor, the Water Poet, has given us the following most singular account :-" Shrove Tuesday, at whose entrance in the morning all the whole krigdom is unquiet, but by that time the clocke strikes eleven, which (by the help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before nine, then there is a bell rung, cal'd pancake-bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted, and forgetful either of manners or humanitie." See his Works, folio, 1630. p. 115. my wife's as all; i. e. as all women are. Farmer. Wartou's History of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 225. note (p). And the subsequent passage, quoted by Mr. Reed from a writer contemporary with Shakspeare, proves, that it was a common burden or under song in the halls of our gentry at that period :-"which done, grace said, and the table taken up, the plate presently conveyed into the pantrie, the hall summons this consort of companions (upon payne to dyne with Duke Humphfrie, or to kisse the hare's foot), to appear at the first call: where a song is to be sung, the under song or holding whereof is, 'It is merrie in haul where beards wag all.' The Serving-man's Comfort, 1698, sign. C. * The evening of Shrove-Thuesday was usually appropriated, as well in the country as in town, to the exhibition of dramatic pieces. Not only at Court, where Jonson was occasionally employed to write Masques on this night, † but at both the Universities, in the provincial schools, and in the halls of the gentry and nobility, were these the amusements of Shrovetide, during the days of Elizabeth and James. Warton, speaking of these ephemeral plays, adds, in a note, "I have seen an anonymous comedy, 'Apollo Shroving,' composed by the Master of Hadleigh-school, in Suffolk, and acted by his scholars, on ShroveTuesday, Feb. 7, 1626, printed 1627, 8vo. published, as it seems, by E. W. Shrove-Tuesday, as the day immediately preceding Lent, was always a day ofextraordinary sport and feasting.-"Some of these festivities," he proceeds to say, "still remain in our universities. In the Percy Houshold Book,' 1512, it appears, that the clergy and officers of Lord Percy's chapel performed a play before his lordship upon Shrowftewesday at night." Pag. 345. § 66 The cruel custom of Cock-throwing, which until lately was a diversion peculiar to this day, seems to have originated from the barbarous, yet less savage, amusement of Cock-fighting. Every yeare on Shrove-Tuesday," says Fitzstephen, who wrote in the reign of Henry II., "the schoole-boyes doe bring cockes of the game to their master, and all the forenoone they delight themselves in Cock-fighting.' At what period this degenerated into Cock-throwing cannot now be ascertained; Chaucer seems to allude to it in his "Nonnes Priests' Tale," where the Cock revenges himself on the Priest's son, because he and that it was common in the sixteenth century, we have the testimony of Sir Thomas More, who, describing the state of childhood, speaks of his skill in casting a cok-stele, that is, a stick or cudgel to throw at a cock.++ The first effective blow directed against this infamous sport, was given by the moral pencil of Hogarth, who in one of his prints called "The Four Stages of Cruelty," has represented, among other puerile diversions, a group of boys throwing at a Cock, and, as Trusler remarks, "beating the harmless feathered animal to jelly." The benevolent satire of this great artist gradually produced the necessary reform, and for some time past, the magistrates have so * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 235. See his Masque on the Shrove-Tuesday at night 1608, and Chloridia, a Masque, at Shrovetide, 1630. The author of " Apollo Shroving" was William Hawkins, who likewise published "Corolla varia contexta per Guil. Haukinum scholarcham Hadleianum in agro Suffolcienci. Cantabr. ap. Tho. Buck." 12mo. 1634. It may be observed, that Shrove-Tuesday was considered by the apprentices as their peculiar holiday and it appears that in the days of Shakspeare, they claimed a right of punishing, at this season, women of ill-fame. To these customs Dekker and Sir Thomas Overbury allude, when the former says: "They presently (like Prentises upon Shrove-Tuesday) take the lawe into their owne handes and do what they list." Seven Deadly Sinnes of London, 4to. p. 35. 1606. And when the latter, in his Characters, speaking of a bawd, remarks: "Nothing daunts her so much as the approach of Shrove-Tuesday;" and describing a "roaring boy," adds, "he is a supervisor of brothels, and in them is a more unlawful reformer of vice than prentices on Shrove-Tuesday." History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 387. ft Vide Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 250 **Stow's Survey of London, edit, of 1618, p. 142 #Vide Hogarth Moralized p.134. |