Pockets vul and awl!
Urrah! Urrah!
Aw ’ess, hats vul, caps vul,
And dree-bushel bags vul,
Urrah! Urrah!
When enough of this serenading has been accomplished, guns are fired into the branches,’ Peasant Speech of Devon, 2nd edit. 1892.
Plough Monday
The first Monday after Twelfth Day is Plough Monday, once celebrated throughout the greater part of England. A company of men wearing white shirts over their jackets, decorated with ribbons, drew a plough through the village or town. They were variously designated in different localities as: Plough-bullocks, or -bullockers, Plough-jags, Plough-slots, and Plough-witchers. Among them were usually two special characters, the Fool, and a man dressed up in showy female costume called the Bessy; but in some places there were two, and even four female characters with names such as Sweet Sis, Old Joan, Maid Marian, or collectively named Bessybabs, Ladymadams, Queens. This troupe performed some kind of morris-dance or sword-dance, and collected money from the onlookers. Gradually the old ceremonies fell into disuse, the plough no longer appeared in the procession, and instead of the original ploughmen, a band of children paraded the streets to keep up the memory of Plough Monday, a day which Tusser includes among the ‘ploughmans feasting daies’, which no good housewife should forget:
Good huswiues, whom God hath enriched ynough,
forget not the feastes that belong to the plough.