‘Here comes I that never come yet, ...
I have a great head but little wit.’
He also jests (l. 229) on his ‘tool’; cf. p. 196 n.
[735] Brand, i. 278; Dyer, 37; Ditchfield, 47; Drake, 65; Mrs. Chaworth Musters, A Cavalier Stronghold, 387. Plough Monday is the Monday after Twelfth night, when the field work begins. A plough is dragged round the village and a quête made. The survivals of the custom are mainly in the north, east and east midlands. In the city, a banquet marks the day. A Norfolk name is ‘Plowlick Monday,’ and a Hunts one ‘Plough-Witching.’ The plough is called the ‘Fool Plough,’ ‘Fond Plough,’ ‘Stot Plough’ or ‘White Plough’; the latter name probably from the white shirts worn (cf. p. 200). At Cropwell, Notts, horses cut out in black or red adorn these. In Lincolnshire, bunches of corn were worn in the hats. Those who draw the plough are called ‘Plough Bullocks,’ ‘Boggons’ or ‘Stots.’ They sometimes dance a morris-or sword-dance, or act a play. At Haxey, they take a leading part in the Twelfth day ‘Hood-game’ (p. 150). In Northants their faces are blackened or reddled. The plough is generally accompanied by the now familiar grotesques, ‘Bessy’ and the Fool or ‘Captain Cauf-Tail.’ In Northants there are two of each; the Fools have humps, and are known as ‘Red Jacks’; there is also a ‘Master.’ In Lincolnshire, reapers, threshers, and carters joined the procession. A contribution to the quête is greeted with the cry of ‘Largess!’ and a churl is liable to have the ground before his door ploughed up. Of old the profits of the quête or ‘plow-gadrin’ went into the parish chest, or as in Norfolk kept a ‘plow-light’ burning in the church. A sixteenth century pamphlet speaks of the ‘sensing the Ploughess’ on Plough Monday. Jevons, 247, calls the rite a ‘worship of the plough’; probably it rather represents an early spring perambulation of the fields in which the divinity rode upon a plough, as elsewhere upon a ship. A ploughing custom of putting a loaf in the furrow has been noted. Plough Monday has also its water rite. The returning ploughman was liable to be soused by the women, like the bearer of the ‘neck’ at harvest. Elsewhere, the women must get the kettle on before the ploughman can reach the hearth, or pay forfeit.
[736] Printed by Mrs. Chaworth Musters in A Cavalier Stronghold (1890), 388, and in a French translation by Mrs. H. G. M. Murray-Aynsley, in R. d. T. P. iv. 605.
[737] ‘Hopper Joe’ also calls himself ‘old Sanky-Benny,’ which invites interpretation. Is it ‘Saint Bennet’ or ‘Benedict’?
‘In comes I, Beelzebub,
On my shoulder I carry my club,
In my hand a wet leather frying-pan;