“Why, rot thee, Dick! see Dundry’s Peak
Lucks like a shuggard motherin’-cake.”
A sort of spiced ale called Braggot, Bragget, or Braggat, was used in many parts of Lancashire on these visits of relations, whence the day was called Braggot Sunday.
In Nares’ Glossary (Halliwell and Wright, 1859, vol. i. p. 102) the following receipt for making bragget is given from the Haven of Health, chap. 239, p. 268:
Take three or four galons of good ale, or more as you please, two dayes or three after it is densed, and put it into a pot by itselfe; then draw forth a pottle thereof, and put to it a quart of good English honey, and set them over the fire in a vessell, and let them boyle faire and softly, and alwayes as any froth ariseth skumme it away, and so clarifie it, and when it is well clarified, take it off the fire and let it coole, and put thereto of pepper a pennyworth, cloves, mace, ginger, nutmegs, cinamon, of each two pennyworth, beaten to powder, stir them well together, and set them over the fire to boyle againe awhile, then bring milke warme, put it to the reste, and stirre alltogether, and let it stand two or three daies, and put barme upon it, and drink it at your pleasure.
Minshen in his Ductor in Linguas (1617, p. 50) tells us that Braggot is composed of two Welsh words, Bräg, malt, and Gots, honeycombs.
In Ben Jonson’s masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies is the following reference to this word:
“And we have serv’d there, armed all in ale,
With the brown bowl, and charg’d in braggat stale.”
On this day also boys went about in ancient times into the villages with a figure of death made of straw, from whence they were generally driven by the country people, who disliked it as an ominous appearance, while some gave them money to get the mawkin carried off. Its precise meaning under that form is doubtful, though it seems likely to have purported the death of winter, and to have been only a part of another ceremony conducted by a larger number of boys, from whom the death carriers were a detachment, and who consisted of a large assemblage carrying two figures to represent Spring and Winter. These two figures they bore about, and fought; in the fight, Summer or Spring got the victory over Winter, and thus was allegorized the departure or burial of the death of the year, and its commencement or revival as Spring.—Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 358.
In the north of England, and also in the Midland Counties, the following names are given to the Sundays of Lent, the first of which however is anonymous:
“Tid, Mid, Misera,
Carling, Palm, Paste Egg-day.”