their sins. Herrick, in his Noble Numbers, has some lines on keeping Lent by fasting : 66 [Aubrey, in MS. Lansd. 231, gives the following very curious information : It is the custom for the boys and girls in country schools, in several parts of Oxfordshire, at their breaking up in the week before Easter, to goe in a gang from house to house, with little clacks of wood, and when they come to any door, there they fall a-beating their clacks, and singing this song :— 1 For several curious customs or ceremonies observed abroad during the three first days of the Quinquagesima Week, see Hospinian de Origine Festorum Christianorum, fol. 45, and the translation of Naogeorgus, by Barnaby Googe, so frequently quoted in this work. Herrings, herrings, white and red, Three for Jack a Lent's all- They expect from every house some eggs, or a piece of bacon, which they carry baskets to receive, and feast upon at the week's end. At first coming to the door, they all strike up very loud," Herrings, herrings," &c., often repeated. As soon as they receive any largess, they begin the chorus, "Here sits a good wife, Pray God save her life; But if they lose their expectation, and must goe away empty, then with a full cry, — "Here sits a bad wife The devil take her life; Set her upon a swivell, And send her to the devill." And, in further indignation, they commonly cut the latch of the door, or stop the key-hole with dirt, or leave some more nasty token of displeasure."]' At Dijon, in Burgundy, it is the custom upon the first Sunday in Lent to make large fires in the streets, whence it is called Firebrand Sunday. This practice originated in the processions formerly made on that day by the peasants with lighted torches of straw, to drive away, as they called it, the bad air from the earth. [Miss Plumptre has given us an account of a ceremony in Marseilles, on Ash Wednesday, called interring the carnival. A whimsical figure is dressed up to represent the carnival, which is carried, in the afternoon, in procession to Arrens, a small village on the sea-shore, about a mile out of the town, where it is pulled to pieces. This ceremony is usually attended by crowds of the inhabitants of Marseilles, of all ranks and classes.] 1 Thoms' Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 113. A Jack-o'-Lent was a puppet formerly thrown at, in our own country, in Lent, like Shrove Cocks. So, in the Weakest goes to the Wall, 1600, "a mere anatomy, a Jack of Lent.” Again, in the Four Prentices of London, 1615, "Now you old Jack of Lent six weeks and upwards," and in Green's Tu quoque, "for if a boy, that is throwing at his Jack o' Lent, chance to hit him on the shins.' So, in the old Comedy of Lady Alimony, 1659: [Elderton, in a ballad, called Lenton Stuff, in a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum, thus concludes his account of Lent:"Then Jake à Lent comes justlynge in, With the hedpeece of a herynge, And saythe, repent yowe of yower syn, For shame, syrs, leve yower swerynge : And to Palme Sonday doethe he ryde, With sprots and herryngs by hys syde, And makes an end of Lenton tyde !"] In Quarle's Shepherd's Oracles, 1646, p. 88, we read,— "How like a Jack a Lent He stands, for boys to spend their Shrove-tide throws, [The term, as now used in the provinces, is applied to a scarecrow of old clothes, sometimes stuffed, and Fielding employs the term in that sense in his Joseph Andrews. It was also a term of contempt (See Halliwell's Dictionary, p. 481). Taylor, the Water-poet, wrote a very curious tract, called "Jack a Lent, his beginning and entertainment, with the mad prankes of his gentleman-usher, Shrove Tuesday, that 1 Again in Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub : "On an Ash-Wednesday, When thou didst stand six weeks the Jack o' Lent, And in Beaumont and Fletcher's Tamer Tamed: "If I forfeit, Make me a Jack o' Lent and break my shins goes before him, and his footman Hunger attending." It commences as follows: "Of Jacke an Apes I list not to endite, Nor of Jack Daw my gooses quill shall write; It is a proverb in Norfolk that wherever the wind lies on Ash Wednesday, it continues during the whole of Lent.] ST. DAVID'S DAY. MARCH 1. "March, various, fierce, and wild, with wind-crackt cheeks, By wilder Welshman led, and crown'd with Leeks.-CHURCHILL." ACCORDING to Pitts, St. David, Archbishop of Menevy, now from him called St. David's, in Pembrokeshire, flourished in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian era, and died at the age of a hundred and forty years. [His day is still annually celebrated in London by the Society of Ancient Britons, and has long been assigned to the Welsh. In the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII., 1492, is the following entry under March 1st, "Walshemen, on St. David Day, £2." We read in the Festa Anglo-Romana, 1678, p. 29, that 'the Britons on this day constantly wear a Leek, in memory of a famous and notable victory obtained by them over the Saxons; they, during the battle, having Leeks in their hats, [The Britannia Sacra says he was a Bishop of Menevia, and died in 544; and, according to Hospinian, as quoted by Hampson, he was not commemorated before the twelfth century.] for their military colours and distinction of themselves, by the persuasion of the said prelate, St. David." Another account adds, that they were fighting under their king Cadwallo, near a field that was replenished with that vegetable. So, Walpole, in his British Traveller, tells us: "in the days of King Arthur, St. David won a great victory over the Saxons, having ordered every one of his soldiers to place a Leek in his cap, for the sake of distinction: in memory whereof the Welsh to this day wear a Leek on the first of March." The following verses occur among Holmes' MS. collections in the British Museum, Harl. 1977, f. 9, "I like the Leeke above all herbs and flowers, When first we wore the same the feild was ours. The Leeke the fairest emblyn that is worne." [In the Salysburye Prymer, 1533 are the following curious. lines, 66 Davyd of Wales loveth well lekes, That wyll make Gregory lene chekes; The court at one time practised the custom of wearing leeks on this day; the Flying Post, 1699, informs us, "Yesterday, being St. David's Day, the King, according to custom, wore a leek in honour of the ancient Britons, the same being presented to him by the Serjeant-porter, whose place it is, and for which he claims the cloaths which his Majesty wore that day. The courtiers, in imitation of his Majesty, wore leeks likewise."-Archæologia, xxxii. 399. Aubrey, MS. Lansd. 231, says, "the vulgar in the West of England doe call the moneth of March lide: a proverbial rhythm, "Eate leekes in Lide, and Ramsins in May, The following proverbial sayings relative to this day are still current in the North of England, "Upon St. David's day, Put oats and barley in the clay." |