British Popular Customs, Present and Past. T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

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      Jan. 7.]

      ST. DISTAFF’S DAY.—ROCK DAY.

      “Partly work, and partly play

       Ye must on St. Distaff’s Day:

       From the plough soone free your teame,

       Then home and fother them;

       If the maides a spinning goe,

       Burn the flax and fire the tow.

      ****

      Bring in pails of water, then

       Let the maides bewash the men;

       Give St. Distaff all the night,

       Then bid Christmas sport good night;

       Then next morning, every one

       To his own vocation.”

      Med. Ævi Kalend. vol. i. p. 138.

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      In Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the account of the Ploughman’s Feast Days, are the following lines:

      “Plough Munday, next after that twelf-tide is past,

       Bids out with the plough: the worst husband is last.

       If plowman get hatchet or whip to the skrene,

       Maids loseth their cocke, if no water be seen.”

      Which are thus explained in Tusser Redivivus (1744, p. 79): “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. Plough Monday puts them in mind of their business. In the morning, the men and the maid-servants strive who shall show their diligence in rising earliest. If the ploughman can get his whip, his ploughstaff, hatchet, or anything that he wants in the field, by the fireside, before the maid hath got her kettle on, then the maid loseth her shrove-tide cock, and it wholly belongs to the men. Thus did our forefathers strive to allure youth to their duty, and provided them with innocent mirth as well as labour. On this Plough Monday they have a good supper and some strong drink.” See also Every Day Book, 1826, vol. i. p. 71.

      In the British Apollo (fol. 1710, ii. 92), to an inquiry why the first Monday after Twelfth Day is called Plough Monday, answer is given: “Plough Monday is a country phrase, and only used by peasants, because they generally used to meet together at some neighbourhood over a cup of ale, and feast themselves, as well as wish themselves a plentiful harvest from the great corn sown (as they call wheat and rye), as also to wish a God-speed to the plough as soon as they begin to break the ground, to sow barley, and other corn, which they at that time make a holiday to themselves as a finishing stroke after Christmas, which is their master’s holiday time, as ’prentices in many places make it the same, appropriated by consent to revel among themselves.”

      Formerly the following custom prevailed in the northern counties of England on Plough Monday. If a ploughman came to the kitchen-hatch, and could cry, “Cock in the pot,” before the maid could cry “Cock on the dunghill,” he was entitled to a cock for Shrove Tuesday.—N. & Q. 2nd S. vol. i. p. 386.

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      Plough Monday is observed at Cambridge by parties going about the town variously dressed in ribbons, etc.; some with a female among them, some with a man in women’s clothes, some with a plough: they dance and collect money which is afterwards spent in a feast.—Time’s Telescope, 1816, p. 3.

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      On Plough Monday the “Plough bullocks” are occasionally seen; they consist of a number of young men from various farmhouses, who are dressed up in ribbons, their shirts (for they wear no coats or waistcoats) literally covered with rosettes of various colours and their hats bound with ribbons, and decorated with every kind of ornament that comes in their way; these young men yoke themselves to a plough, which they draw about, preceded by a band of music, from house to house, collecting money. They are accompanied by the Fool and Bessy; the Fool being dressed in the skin of a calf, with the tail hanging down behind, and Bessy generally a young man in female attire. The Fool carries an inflated bladder tied to the end of a long stick, by way of whip, which he does not fail to apply pretty soundly to the heads and shoulders of his team. When anything is given a cry of “Largess!” is raised, and a dance performed round the plough. If a refusal to their application for money is made they not unfrequently plough up the pathway, door-stone, or any other portion of the premises they happen to be near.—Jour. of Arch. Assoc. 1852, vol. vii. p. 202.

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      Plough Monday is observed in this county. The mummers are called “Plough-Witchers,” and their ceremony, “Plough-Witching.”—N. & Q. 2nd S. vol. ix. p. 381.

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      Macaulay (History