Observations on popular antiquities chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand.

  • John Brand
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Observations on popular antiquities chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/858 (page 42)
    The Status Scholae Etonensis, A.D. 1560, mentions a custom of that school on Shrove Tuesday, of the boys being allowed to play from eight o’clock for the whole day, and of the cook’s coming and fasten- ing a pancake to a crow, which the young crows are calling upon, near it, at the school-door. The crows generally have hatched their young at this season. Most places in England have eggs and collops (slices of bacon) on Shrove yio’ad.diy, pancakes on Tuesday, and fritters on the Wednesday in the same week for dinner. From The Westmerland Dialect, by A. Walker (1790), it appears that cock-fighting and casting pancakes were then practised on Shrove Tuesday in that county. Thus : “ Whaar ther wor tae be Cock-feightin, for it war Pankeak Tuesday.” And “ We met sum Lads an Lasses gangin ta kest their Pankeaks.” It appears from Middleton’s Masque of The World tossed at Tennis, which was printed in 1620, that batter'nzs used on Shrove Tuesday at that time, no doubt for the purpose of making pancakes. Shakespeare alludes to this well-known custom of having pancakes on Shrove Tuesday in the following string of comparisons put into the mouth of the clown in All’s Well that Ends Well: “ As fit—as Tib’s rush for Tim’s forefinger, as a Pancake for Shrove Tuesday, a Morris for May-day,” &c. In Gayton’s Festivous Notes upon Don Quixote, speaking of Sancho Panza’s having converted a cassock into a wallet, our pleasant annotator observes : “ It were serviceable after this greasie use for nothing but to preach at a Carnivale or Shrove Tuesday, and to tosse Pancakes in after the exercise: or else (if it could have been conveighed thither) nothing more proper for the man that preaches the Cook’s Sermon at Oxford, when that plump Society rides upon their Governours horses to fetch in the Enemie, the Flie.” That there was such a custom at Oxford, let Peshall in his History of that city be a voucher, who, speaking of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, says: “To this Hospital Cooks from Oxford flocked, bringing in on Whitsun-week the Fly.” [Aubrey saw this ceremony performed in 1642. He adds : “On Michaelmas day they rode thither again to convey the Fly away.”] At Newcastle-upon-Tyne the great bell of St Nicholas’ Church was tolled at twelve o’clock at noon on this day ; shops were immediately shut up, offices closed, and all kind of business ceased ; a little carni- val ensuing for the remaining part of the day.* * “The great bell which used to be rung on Shrove Tuesday, to call the people together for the purpose of confessing their sins, was called Pancake- Bell, a name which it still retains in some places where this custom is still kept up” (Gent. Mag. 1790). Macaulay, in his History and Antiquities of Claybrook in Leicestershire, says : “ On Shrove-'l'uesday a bell rings at noon, which is meant as a signal for the people to begin frying their Pancakes. ” In A Vindication of the Letter out of the North, concerning Bishop Lake’s Declaration of his dying in the belief of the Doctrine of Passive Obedience, &c. (1690), we find the subsequent passage : “They have for a long time at York had a custom (which now challenges the priviledge of a prescription) that