Curious Church Customs and Cognate Subjects

by Unknown

By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a.

It is not surprising that a multitude of quaint customs has sprung up around the holy days of the church. For these were the holidays of the people in “Merrie England” of the bygone times; the seasons when gossips met to talk, and young folk to play, and all the country-side was gathered first in the church, and then on the village green, or round their neighbours’ hospitable hearths. By sermon or by eloquent device of ritual, the parish priest endeavoured to imprint upon the simple minds of his flock the great truth which the holy day commemorated; and they, on their part, as free for the day from responsibility as from labour, showed their joy in a hundred different jests and homely sports. Within the church and without, therefore, was there ample scope for curious customs to grow up, some of which, even though the origin and meaning have been lost, live on among us to the present day.

The word feast, in the sense of a banquet, is now so familiar to us, that we are in danger of altogether forgetting that originally it contained no allusion to eating and drinking. But so universal is the idea that on all days of rejoicing a meal of special dainties should form part of the celebration, that long before we English had wrought the word into its present form, the Roman poets had begun to use its Latin original in the sense of a festal banquet. Certainly no high day is complete and national with us unless it include a dinner amongst its pleasures. We find, therefore, in surveying the holy day customs of yore, signs of much merry-making of this kind, and particularly of the dedication of special viands to certain occasions.

From time immemorial, for instance, Christmas cheer was incomplete without its mince-pies and plum-pudding; the former emblematic, so some say, by their shape, of the manger-bed of the Infant Redeemer, and the latter by its rich ingredients of the offerings of the three kings. The pancakes of Shrove Tuesday are equally universal, and form so conspicuous a part of the day’s solemnities that the day is often known as “pancake-day,” and the bell which formerly summoned the faithful to the shriving was similarly named the “pancake-bell.” In many parts of the country, as for example at Crowle, in North Lincolnshire, the bell is still rung under that name.

Mid-Lent, or Mothering Sunday, has its peculiar fare in simnel cakes. Few days in the year have received so many titles as this one. It is Mothering Sunday from the ancient practice of priests and people going, on that day, in pilgrimage to the mother-church of the district, from which arose also a traditional habit of children visiting their parents on the same occasion. At this family re-union simnels were the proper fare. But the day is also Bragget Sunday, from the draughts of bragget, or mulled ale, with which, in some parts, notably in Lancashire, the cakes were washed down. Again it is Fag-pie Sunday, from another refection sacred to it in the same county, namely a pie of figs and spices. Refreshment Sunday, and the Sunday of the Five Loaves, have reference to the Eucharistic Gospel for the day.

The following Sunday, Passion Sunday, has its special dish in carlings, or peas fried in butter; and on Palm Sunday figs were again thought appropriate. A strange custom, existing till comparatively recent times at Sellack, in Hertfordshire, was the distribution to those present at church on Palm Sunday of buns and cider by the churchwardens, with the words, “Peace and good neighbourhood.”

Even the great fast of the year has its peculiar food in the hot cross buns of Good Friday. These are probably a survival of the heathen practice of offering consecrated cakes to the gods. They were originally unleavened cakes, made, it is said, from the dough out of which the hosts for the altar were baked, a fact which suggests a connection with the Pascal regulations of the Jews. The stamp of the cross probably marks the effort of the church to give a Christian significance to a practice that was found to be practically ineradicable.

Easter, the “Queen of Festivals,” has no fare so unmistakably assigned to it as some other holy days. Hare-pie is the correct thing in some places, and at Hallaton, in Leicestershire, there is an endowment for providing hare-pie, bread, and ale, for distribution at this season. At Twickenham two large cakes were formerly divided among the young folk of the parish at Easter; a harmless practice which the Puritans suppressed in 1645, with the result that often attends the efforts of busy-bodies, matters were altered for the worse; for, thenceforward, penny loaves were purchased with the money, and flung from the Church Tower to be scrambled for. At Biddenden, in Kent, a large number of cakes and loaves are given away on this day, on the former of which is impressed the image of two females, joined together at hip and shoulder. These are the “Biddenden Maids,” Eliza and Mary Chulkhurst, who are said to have been born in the village, in the year 1100, thus strangely joined, and in whose memory the rent of a plot of land, called the “Bread and Cheese Land,” is thus distributed.

Other viands traditionally connected with certain holy days are the great spiced-cakes on Twelfth Night, and Valentine Buns given to children in Leicestershire, on S. Valentine’s Day. A special “brand” of toffee is made at Bozeat, in Northamptonshire, for S. Andrew’s Day; and roast goose has long been considered essential to the due observance of Michaelmas.

Reference was made above to the survival of heathen customs among us, in a dress more or less Christian; and there can be no doubt that such is the fittest description of very many holy day practices. Some usage was found in vogue, in itself harmless enough, but allied by long association with the superstitions of paganism. In some cases the mere conservatism of popular feeling kept these alive, after all meaning had died out of them; but in many instances the church took them up, and gave to the dry bones of the heathen custom a soul of Christian meaning. Conspicious among such are the use of mistletoe, and the burning of the Yule-log, as adjuncts to the gaiety and brightness of the Feast of the Nativity. Mistletoe was the most sacred of plants in the days of the Druids; and it is certainly one of the most extraordinary examples of the tenacity of life displayed by popular customs, that a tradition of special privilege should still cling to the mistletoe in spite, not only of the passage of so many centuries, but even of the exterminating wars waged against the Druids by the Romans, and against the Britons generally by the English. It was these same English forefathers of ours who taught us to burn the Yule-log in sacrifice to Thor the Thunderer.