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

on foot.

      Six guards. King. Queen. Six guards.

      Guards. Jason. Princess Medea. Guards.

      Bishop’s Chaplain.

      Bishop Blase.

      Shepherd and Shepherdess.

      Shepherd Swains.

      Woolsorters, on horseback, with ornamented caps, and various coloured slivers.

      Comb Makers.

      Charcoal Burners.

      Combers’ Colours.

      Band.

      Woolcombers, with wool wigs, &c.

      Band.

      Dyers, with red cockades, blue aprons, and crossed slivers of red and blue.

      

      Before the procession started it was addressed by Richard Fawcett, Esq., in the following lines:

      Hail to the day, whose kind auspicious rays

       Deign’d first to smile on famous Bishop Blase!

       To the great author of our Combing trade,

       This day’s devoted, and due honour’s paid

       To him whose fame thro’ Britain’s isle resounds,

       To him whose goodness to the poor abounds.

       Long shall his name in British annals shine,

       And grateful ages offer at his shrine!

       By this our trade are thousands daily fed,

       By it supplied with means to earn their bread.

       In various forms our trade its work imparts,

       In different methods, and by different arts:

       Preserves from starving indigents distress’d,

       As Combers, Spinners, Weavers, and the rest.

       We boast no gems, or costly garments vain,

       Borrow’d from India or the coast of Spain;

       Our native soil with wool our trade supplies,

       While foreign countries envy us the prize.

       No foreign broil our common good annoys,

       Our country’s product all our art employs;

       Our fleecy flocks abound in every vale,

       Our bleating lambs proclaim the joyful tale.

       So let not Spain with us attempt to vie,

       Nor India’s wealth pretend to soar so high;

       Nor Jason pride him in his Colchian spoil,

       By hardships gain’d, and enterprising toil;

       Since Britons all with ease attain the prize,

       And every hill resounds with golden cries,

       To celebrate our founder’s great renown.

       Our shepherd and our shepherdess we crown.

       For England’s commerce and for George’s sway

       Each loyal subject give a loud Huzza.

       Huzza!

      Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 209. See also Northamptonshire Words and Phrases, ii. p. 416.

      Minshen, in his Ductor in Linguas, (1617, p. 236), under the word Hock-tide speaks of S. Blase his day, about Candlemas, when countrywomen goe about and make good cheere; and if they finde any of their neighbour women a spinning that day, they burne and make a blaze of fire of the distaffe, and thereof called S. Blaze his day.

      Dr. Percy, in his Notes to the Northumberland Household Book (1825, pp. 333–435), tells us that the anniversary of St. Blasius is the 3rd of February, when it is customary in many parts of England to light fires on the hills on St. Blayse night: a custom anciently taken up, perhaps, for no better reason than the jingling resemblance of his name to the word “blaze.”

Candles offered to St. Blaze.

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      —In honour of St. Blaze there formerly were offered to him candles, which after receiving benediction were considered holy, and became highly serviceable to all pious uses.

      Clavis Calendaria, Brady, 1812. vol. i. p. 299. Beauties of England and Wales, Brayley and Britton, 1809, vol. ii. p. 418.

SHROVE TUESDAY.

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      Shrove Tuesday derives its distinctive epithet in English, from the custom of the people in applying to the priest to shrive them, or hear their confessions, before entering on the great fast of Lent the following day. Its Latin and Continental names have all a reference to the last time of eating flesh. After the people had made the confession required by the ancient discipline of the Church, they were permitted to indulge in festive amusements, though restricted from partaking of any repasts beyond the usual substitutes for flesh; hence the name carnaval, etymologically signifying, Flesh, fare thee well. From this cause originated the custom of eating pancakes at Shrovetide, which began on the Sunday before the first in Lent.—Med. Ævi Kalend. vol. i. p. 158.

      That none, however, might plead forgetfulness of the ceremony of confessing and being shriven, the great bell was rung at an early hour in every parish, and in after times this ringing was still kept up in some places, though the cause of it ceased with the introduction of Protestantism; it then got the name of the Pancake Bell.

      Taylor, the water poet (in his Jacke-a-Lent Workes, 1630, vol. i. p. 115), gives the following curious account as to the way in which Shrove Tuesday was celebrated in olden times:

      

      “Always before Lent there comes waddling a fat, grosse groome, called Shrove Tuesday, one whose manners show he is better fed than taught, and indeed he is the only monster for feeding amongst all the dayes of the yeere, for he devoures more flesh in fourteene houres than this old kingdom doth (or at least should doe) in sixe weekes after. Such boyling and broyling, such roasting and toasting, such stewing and brewing, such baking, frying, mincing, cutting, carving, devouring, and gorbellied gurmondizing, that a man would thinke people did take in two months’ provision at once. Moreover it is a goodly sight to see how the cookes in great men’s kitchins doe frye in their master’s suet, that if ever a cooke be worth the eating, it is when Shrove Tuesday is in towne, for he is so stued and larded, basted, and almost over-roasted, that a man may eate every bit of him and never take a surfet. In a word, they are that day extreme cholerike, and too hot for any man to meddle with, being monarchs of the marrow-bones, marquesses of the mutton, lords high regents of the spit and kettle, barons of the gridiron and sole commanders of the frying-pan. And all this hurly burly is for no other purpose than to stop the mouth of the land-wheale, Shrove-Tuesday, at whose entrance in the morning all the whole kingdome is in quiet, but by the time the clocke strikes eleven—which by the help of a knavish sexton is commonly before nine—then there is a bell rung called the Pancake-Bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted and forgetful either of manner or humanitie. Then there is a thing cal’d wheat’n flowre, which the sulphory, necromanticke cookes doe mingle with water, eggs, spice, and other tragicall, magicall inchantments, and then they put it little by little into a frying-pan of boyling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing—like the Lernean snakes in the reeds