On this day, in the northern counties, and in Scotland, a custom obtains of eating Carlings, which are grey peas, steeped all night in water, and fried the next day with butter:
“There’ll be all the lads and lassies
Set down in the midst of the ha’,
With sybows, and ryfarts, and carlings
That are bath sodden and raw.”
Ritson’s Scottish Songs, vol. i. p. 211.
As to the origin of this custom, Brand (Pop. Antiq. 1849, vol. i. p. 114) offers the following explanation:—“In the Roman Calendar, I find it observed on this day, that a dole is made of soft beans. I can hardly entertain a doubt but that our custom is derived from hence. It was usual among the Romanists to give away beans in the doles at funerals; it was also a rite in the funeral ceremonies of heathen Rome. Why we have substituted peas I know not, unless it was because they are a pulse somewhat fitter to be eaten at this season of the year.” Having observed from Erasmus that Plutarch held pulse (legumina) to be of the highest efficacy in invocation of the Manes, he adds: “Ridiculous and absurd as these superstitions may appear, it is quite certain that Carlings deduce their origin from thence.” This explanation, however, is by no means regarded as satisfactory.
Hone (Every Day Book, 1826, vol. i. p. 379) says, How is it that Care Sunday is also called Carl and Carling Sunday; and that the peas, or beans of the day are called Carlings? Carle, which means a Churle, or rude boorish fellow, was anciently the term for a working countryman or labourer; and it is only altered in the spelling, without the slightest deviation in sense, from the old Saxon word Ceorl, the name for a husbandman. The older denomination of the day, then, may not have been Care, but Carl Sunday, from the benefactions to the Carles or Carlen. A correspondent of Notes & Queries (1st S. vol. iii. 449) tells us that on the north-east coast of England, where the custom of frying dry peas on this day is attended with much augury, some ascribe its origin to the loss of a ship freighted with peas on the coast of Northumberland. Carling is the foundation beam of a ship, or the beam on the keel.
Cambridgeshire.
In several villages in the vicinity of Wisbeach, in the Isle of Ely, the fifth Sunday in Lent has been, time immemorial, commemorated by the name of Whirlin Sunday, when cakes are made by almost every family, and are called, from the day, Whirlin Cakes.—Gent. Mag. 1789, vol. lix. p. 491.
Yorkshire.
The rustics go to the public-house of the village, and spend each their Carling-groat, i.e., that sum in drink, for the Carlings are provided for them gratis; and a popular notion prevails that those who do not do this will be unsuccessful in their pursuits for the following year.—Brand, Pop. Antiq., 1849, vol. i. p. 114.
