cross-legged to St. Valentine for good luck. In some parts of England the poorer classes of children array themselves fantastically, and visit the houses of the wealthy, singing, "Good morning to you, Valentine, Curl your locks as I do mine, Two before and three behind, COLLOP, OR SHROVE MONDAY. IN the North of England, the Monday preceding Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Tuesday, is called Collop. Monday. Eggs and collops compose a usual dish at dinner on this day, as pancakes do on the following, from which customs they have plainly derived their names. It should seem that on Collop Monday they took their leave of flesh in the papal times, which was anciently prepared to last during the winter by salting, drying, and being hung up. Slices of this kind of meat are to this day termed collops in the north, whereas they are called steaks when cut off from fresh or unsalted flesh; a kind of food which I am inclined to think our ancestors seldom tasted in the depth of winter. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine asserts that most places in England have eggs and collops (slices of bacon) on Shrove Monday. My late learned friend, the Rev. Mr. Bowles, informed me that in the neighbourhood of Salisbury, in Wiltshire, the boys go about before Shrove-tide, singing these rhymes :— "Shrove-tide is nigh at hand, And I am come a shroving; Pray, Dame, something, An apple or a dumpling, Or a piece of truckle cheese Of your own making, Or a piece of pancake." At Eton school it was the custom, on Shrove Monday, for the scholars to write verses either in praise or dispraise of Father Bacchus, poets being considered as immediately under his protection. He was therefore sung on this occasion in all kinds of metres, and the verses of the boys of the seventh and sixth, and some of the fifth forms, were affixed to the inner doors of the College. Verses are still written and put up on this day, but I believe the young poets are no longer confined to the subject of writing eulogiums on the god of wine. It retains, however, the name of Bacchus. In the Ordinary of the Butchers' Company at Newcastleupon-Tyne, dated 1621, I find the following very curious clause: "Item, that noe one Brother of the said Fellowship shall hereafter buy or seeke any Licence of any person whatsoever to kill Flesh within the Towne of Newcastle in the Lent season, without the general consent of the Fellowship, upon payne for every such defaute to the use aforesaide, £5." They are enjoined, it is observable, in this charter, to hold their head meeting-day on Ash-Wednesday. They have since altered it to the preceding Wednesday. Sir Thomas Overbury, in his Characters, 1615, speaking of a Franklin, says, that among the ceremonies which he annually observes, and that without considering them as reliques of Popery, are Shrovings. [The passage is sufficiently curious to deserve a quotation : "He allowes of honest pastime, and thinkes not the bones of the dead anything brused, or the worse for it, though the country lasses daunce in the churchyard after evensong. Rocke Monday, and the wake in summer, shrovings, the wakefull ketches on Christmas Eve, the hoky or seed cake, these he yearely keepes, yet holdes them no reliques of Popery."] SHROVE-TIDE, OR SHROVE TUESDAY ; CALLED ALSO FASTERN'S, FASTEN, OR FASTING EVEN, AND PANCAKE TUESDAY. SHROVE-TIDE plainly signifies the time of confessing sins, as the Saxon word shrive, or shift, means confession. This season has been anciently set apart by the church of Rome for a time of shriving or confessing sins. This seemingly no bad preparative for the austerities that were to follow in Lent, was, for whatever reason, laid aside at the Reformation, In the Oxford Almanacks, the Saturday preceding this day is called the Egg-Feast. Perhaps the same as our Collop Monday. See, under Paste Eggs, Hyde's Account of the Festum Ovorum. In the churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary-at-Hill, in the City of London, A.D. 1493, is the following article: "For a mat for the Shreving Pewe, iij. d." The luxury and intemperance that usually prevailed at this season were vestiges of the Romish carnival, which the learned Moresin derives from the times of Gentilism, introducing Joannes Boemus Aubanus as describing it thus: "Men eat and drink and abandon themselves to every kind of sportive foolery, as if resolved to have their fill of pleasure before they were to die, and as it were to forego every sort of delight."1 Thus also Selden: "What the church debars us one day, she gives us leave to take out another-first there is a Carnival, and then a Lent." 'J. Boemus Aubanus gives us the following description of the manner of spending the three days before the Lent-Fast commenced, commonly called the Carnival, that is, "the bidding farewell to flesh." "Quo item modo tres præcedentes quadragesimale jejunium dies peragat, dicere opus non erit, si cognoscatur, qua populari, qua spontanea insania cætera Germania qua et Franconia minimè desciscit, tunc vivat. Comedit enim et bibit, seque ludo jocoque omnimodo adèo dedit, quasi usus nunquam veniant, quasi cras moritura, hodie prius omnium rerum satietatem capere velit. Novi aliquid spectaculi quisque excogitat, quo mentes et oculos omnium delectet, admirationeque detineat. Atque, ne pudor obstet, qui se ludicro illi committunt facies larvis obducunt, sexum et ætatem mentientes, viri mulierum vestimenta, mulieres virorum induunt. Quidam Satyros, aut malos dæmones potius repræsentare volentes, minio se aut atramento tingunt, habituque nefando deturpant, alii nudi discurrentes Lupercos agunt, a quibus ego annuum istum delirandi morem ad nos defluxisse existimo." p. 267. And Bishop Hall, in his Triumph of Rome, thus describes the Jovial Carneval: "Every man cries Sciolta letting himself loose to the maddest of merriments, marching wildly up and down in all forms of disguises; each man striving to outgo other in strange pranks of humourous debauchedness, in which even those of the holy order are wont to be allowed their share; for howsoever it was by some sullen authority forbidden to clerks and votaries of any kind to go masked and misguised in those seemingly abusive solemnities, yet more favourable construction hath offered to make them believe it was chiefly for their sakes, for the refreshment of their sadder and more restrained spirits, that this free and lawless festivity was taken up." p. 19.. 1 extraordinary sport and feasting. In the Romish Church. there was anciently a Feast immediately preceding Lent, which lasted many days, called CARNISCAPIUM. (See Carpentier et Supp. Lat. Gloss. Du Cange, i. 381.) In some cities of France an officer was annually chosen, called Le Prince d'Amoreux, who presided over the sports of the youth for six days before Ash-Wednesday. Ibid. v. AMORATUS, p. 195; v. ČARDINALIS, p. 818; v. SPINETUM, iii. 848. Some traces of these festivities still remain in our universities. In the Percy Household Book, 1512, it appears "that the Clergy and Officers of Lord Percy's Chapel performed a play before his Lordship, upon Shrowftewesday at night." p. 345. See also Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays, xii. 403, and notes in Shakespeare on part of the old song, "And welcome merry Shrove-tide." In a curious tract, entitled, "Vox Graculi," quarto, 1623, p. 55, is the following quaint description of Shrove-Tuesday: "Here must enter that wadling, stradling, bursten-gutted Carnifex of all Christendome, vulgarly enstiled ShroveTuesday, but more pertinently, sole Monarch of the Mouth, high Steward to the Stomach, chiefe Ganimede to the Guts, prime Peere of the Pullets, first Favourite to the Frying pans, greatest Bashaw to the Batter-bowles, Protector of the Pan-cakes, first Founder of the Fritters, Baron of Bacon-flitch, Earle of Egge-baskets, &c. This corpulent Commander of those chollericke things called Cookes, will shew himselfe to be but of ignoble education; for by his manners you may find him better fed than taught wherever he comes. The following extract from Barnaby Googe's Translation of Naogeorgus will show the extent of these festivities : "Now when at length the pleasant time of Shrove-tide comes in place, 1 See Dufresne's Glossary, v. Carnelevamen. Wheatley on the Com. Prayer, ed. 1848, p. 216. 2"This furnishyng of our bellies with delicates, that we use on Fastingham Tuiesday, what tyme some eate tyl they be enforsed to forbeare all again, sprong of Bacchus Feastes, that were celebrated in Rome with great joy and delicious fare."-Langley's Polidore Vergile, fol. 103. Downe goes the hogges in every place, and puddings every wheare Do swarme the dice are shakte and tost, and cardes apace they teare: In every house are showtes and cryes, and mirth, and revell route, And daintie tables spred, and all beset with ghestes aboute : With sundrie playes and Christmasse games, and feare and shame away, The tongue is set at libertie, and hath no kinde of stay. And thinges are lawfull then and done, no pleasure passed by, And chase such as they meete, and make poore boys for feare to quake. Some naked runne about the streetes, their faces hid alone Or as the goose doth use to do, or as the quacking ducke. Some like the filthie forme of apes, and some like fooles are drest, I would there might another be, an officer of those, Whose roome might serve to take away the scent from every nose. |