PLOUGH MONDAY.
This was the name of a rustic festival, held the first Monday after Twelfth Day, formerly of great account in England, bearing in its first aspect, like St. Distaff’s Day, reference to the resumption of labour after the Christmas holidays. In Catholic times, the ploughmen kept lights burning before certain images in churches to obtain a blessing on their work; and they were accustomed on this day to go about in procession, gathering money for the support of these plough lights, as they were called. The Reformation put out the lights, but it could not extinguish the festival. The peasantry contrived to go about in procession, collecting money, though only to be spent in conviviality in the public-house. It was at no remote date a very gay and rather pleasant-looking affair. A plough was dressed up with ribbons and other decorations—the Fool plough. Thirty or forty stalwart swains, with their shirts over their jackets, and their shoulders and hats flaming with ribbons, dragged it along from house to house, preceded by one in the dress of an old woman, but much bedizened, bearing the name of Bessy. There was also a fool, in fantastic attire. In some parts of the country morris-dancers attended the procession; occasionally, too, some reproduction of the ancient Scandinavian sword-dance added to the means of persuading money out of the pockets of the lieges.—Book of Days, vol. i. p. 94.
In Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the account of the Ploughman’s Feast Days, are the following lines:
“Plough Munday, next after that twelf-tide is past,
Bids out with the plough: the worst husband is last.
If plowman get hatchet or whip to the skrene,
Maids loseth their cocke, if no water be seen.”
Which are thus explained in Tusser Redivivus (1744, p. 79): “After Christmas (which formerly, during the twelve days, was a time of very little work), every gentleman feasted the farmers, and every farmer their servants and task-men. Plough Monday puts them in mind of their business. In the morning, the men and the maid-servants strive who shall show their diligence in rising earliest. If the ploughman can get his whip, his ploughstaff, hatchet, or anything that he wants in the field, by the fireside, before the maid hath got her kettle on, then the maid loseth her shrove-tide cock, and it wholly belongs to the men. Thus did our forefathers strive to allure youth to their duty, and provided them with innocent mirth as well as labour. On this Plough Monday they have a good supper and some strong drink.” See also Every Day Book, 1826, vol. i. p. 71.
In the British Apollo (fol. 1710, ii. 92), to an inquiry why the first Monday after Twelfth Day is called Plough Monday, answer is given: “Plough Monday is a country phrase, and only used by peasants, because they generally used to meet together at some neighbourhood over a cup of ale, and feast themselves, as well as wish themselves a plentiful harvest from the great corn sown (as they call wheat and rye), as also to wish a God-speed to the plough as soon as they begin to break the ground, to sow barley, and other corn, which they at that time make a holiday to themselves as a finishing stroke after Christmas, which is their master’s holiday time, as ’prentices in many places make it the same, appropriated by consent to revel among themselves.”
Formerly the following custom prevailed in the northern counties of England on Plough Monday. If a ploughman came to the kitchen-hatch, and could cry, “Cock in the pot,” before the maid could cry “Cock on the dunghill,” he was entitled to a cock for Shrove Tuesday.—N. & Q. 2nd S. vol. i. p. 386.
Cambridgeshire.
Plough Monday is observed at Cambridge by parties going about the town variously dressed in ribbons, etc.; some with a female among them, some with a man in women’s clothes, some with a plough: they dance and collect money which is afterwards spent in a feast.—Time’s Telescope, 1816, p. 3.