By indenture, bearing date 11th April, 1691, John Hall, granted a messuage, in the parish of St. Martin Ongar, to Francis Kenton and another, in trust to pay out of the rents thereof, amongst other sums, ten shillings a year, to the churchwardens of the parish of St. Clement, Eastcheap, London, on the Thursday next before Easter, to provide two turkeys for the parishioners, to be eaten at their annual feast, called the reconciling or love feast, usually made on that day. The house is in the possession of the Weavers’ Company, who make the payment for the turkeys annually.—Ibid. p. 60.
Northumberland.
The Thursday before Easter is called Bloody Thursday by some of the inhabitants of this and the neighbouring county of Yorkshire.—N. & Q. 1st S. vol. x. p. 87; 4th S. vol. v. p. 595.
March 20.] GOOD FRIDAY.
March 20.]
GOOD FRIDAY.
The term Good Friday is erroneously said to be peculiar to the English Church; but it is certainly an adoption of the old German Gute Freytag, which may have been a corruption of Gottes Freytag, God’s Friday, so called on the same principle that Easter Day in England was at one period denominated God’s Day.
In a manuscript homily, entitled Exortacio in die Pasche, written about the reign of Edward IV., we are told that the Paschal Day “in some place is callede Esterne Day, and in sum place Goddes Day.”—Harl. MSS. Cod. id. fol. 94.
Another MS. quoted by Strutt (Horda Angel-Cynna, vol. iii. p. 175) says it is called Good Friday, because on this day good men were reconciled to God. The length of the services in ancient times on this day, occasioned it to be called Long Friday, the Lang Frigdæg of the Anglo-Saxons, which they probably received from the Danes, by whom at the present time the day is denominated Lang Freday.—Med. Ævi Kalend. 1841, vol. i. p. 186.