A bit o' apple dumplin' plaze. My throat is so dry.

In Warwickshire the school children, demanding a half-holiday, cry

"Pancake day, Pancake day,

If you don't give us a holiday we'll all run away."

Other Customs.

In Wiltshire the children join hands round the church, walk round three times, and say

"Shrove Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, (poor) Jack went to plow, His mother made pancakes, she scarcely knew how;

She tossed them, she turned them, she made them so black With soot from the chimney that poisoned poor Jack."

Eighty or a hundred years ago, the charity children of Birmingham did it every Easter Monday (Hone, i. 431).

The rhyme, with some slight variations ("She put so much pepper she poisoned poor Jack") is current around Pulverbatch, Shropshire. See Shreds and Patches, March 5, 1884, and AP. 323.

THRESHING THE HEN.

This cruel custom is mentioned by Tusser, in his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1620); and the lines given below, current in Suffolk, either suggested Tusser's verse, or are taken from it

"Come go to the barn now, my jolly ploughmen,
Blindfolded, and speedily thresh the fat hen,
And if you can kill her, then give her thy men,
And go ye on fritters and pancakes dine then."

The details of this piece of barbarity are taken from Tusser Redivius, 1710. "The hen is hung at a fellow's back, who also has some horse-bells about him; the rest of the fellows are blinded, and have boughs in their hands, with which they chase this fellow and his hen about some large court or small enclosure. The fellow with his hen and bells shifting as well as he can, they follow the sound, and sometimes hit him and his hen; other times, if he can get behind one of them, they thresh one another wellfavouredly; but the jest is, the maids are to blind the fellows, which they do with their aprons, and the cunning baggages will endear their sweethearts with a peeping-hole, whilst the others look out as sharp to hinder it. After this the hen is boiled with bacon, and store of pancakes and fritters are made."

Lent.

Lent is so called from the time of the year wherein it is observed; Lent in the Saxon language signifying Spring, being now used to signify the Spring Fast, which always begins so that it may end at Easter, to remind us of our Saviour's sufferings, which ended at his Resurrection. See Wheatley on the Common Prayer, 1741, p. 224.

Or

"Carl, Paum, good Pas-day."

See Kennett, MS. Lansd. 1033: Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lviii. p. 188.

The above terms are supposed to signify the Sundays of Lent. Another version is-

Tid, Mid, Misera,

Carling, Palm, Paste Egg-day.

The first line is supposed to have been formed from the beginning of Psalms, etc., viz. Te deum, Mideus, Miserere mei. BD. i. 189, 190.

A contributor to Notes and Queries writes thus: "I do not think that the lines

Tid: Mid: Mis: Ra:

Carling, Palm, and Easter Day,

are meant to include all the Sundays in Lent, but only the last three, with Easter Sunday. I think they begin at the fourth Sunday, and the meaning is that this Sunday is Mid Lent-TideMid-Miserere, or the middle of Miserere Tide, that is, Lenten Tide, when the Miserere Psalm is recited continually. Then follows Passion Sunday, by its well-known name of Carling, and the last two speak for themselves." CH. i. 232. See CARE SUNDAY, PALM SUNDAY, EASTER SUNDAY.

MID LENT.

Simnel Sunday-so called because large cakes, called Simnels, were made on this day-is better known as Mid-Lent, or Mothering Sunday. In many parts of England, says Dyer, Pop. Cust., 116, it was formerly customary for servants, apprentices, and others, to carry presents to their parents on this day. This practice was called Going-a-Mothering, and originated in the offerings made on this day at the mother-church.

In Northamptonshire they have a proverb, says Miss Baker, in her Words and Phrases-

On Mothering Sunday, above all other,
Every child should dine with its mother.

CARE SUNDAY. (Second before Easter.)

"Care Sunday; care away,

Palm Sunday, and Easter day."

Nottinghamshire. BD. i. 189, 190.

In the Gentleman's Magazine, 1785, p. 779, an advertisement for the regulation of Newark fair is quoted, which mentions that "Careing Fair will be held on Friday before Careing Sunday."

= a

This day is the ancient Passion Sunday, and Dr. Jameson observes of the title Care: "This name may have been imposed in reference to the satisfaction made by our Saviour [Karr satisfaction for a fine or penalty]. Some, however, understand it as referring to the accusations brought against him on this day, from the Sueo-Gothic Koera, to complain." Etymol. Dict.

Hone, Every Day Book, 1826, i. 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 Curles or Carlen.

A correspondent of Notes and Queries, ser. i., 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. P. 123.

PALM SUNDAY. (The Sunday before Easter.)

In the neighbourhood of Sheffield children gather the fruit of the palm, and carry them in their hands as palm-tree leaves, repeating

"Palm Sunday, Palm away,

Next Sunday's Easter-day."

Hunter's MS. : R. 168.

Brand, in his Popular Antiquities, 1849, remarks that slips with the willow flowers or buds were selected as substitutes for the real palm, because they are generally the only things which can be easily obtained at this season (i. 127).

The day is called Palm Sunday in memory of Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, when the multitude strewed the way with palm branches and leaves (John xii.).

"... bearing of palms on Palm Sunday is in memory of the receiving of Christ into Jerusalem a little before his death, and that we may have the same desire to receive him into our hearts." Fuller, Church History, 1655, p. 222.

Here's to his Holiness

The Pope with his triple crown,

And here's to nine dollars

For ev'ry cask in the town.

Spoken as a toast at Lowestoft, Suffolk, in the herring season. The Pope is commemorated for his encouragement of the consumption of salt fish in Lent. The nine dollars has reference to the price per barrel, at which it is hoped that herrings will sell on the arrival in Italy. CU. 403.

"It is the custom for boys and girls in country schools in several parts of Oxfordshire (as Beechingdon, Weston, Charlton, etc.), at their breaking up in the week before Easter to goe in a gang from house to house with little clacks of wood, and when they come to any door they fall a beating their clacks, and singing [the following] song, and expect from every house some eggs, or a piece of bacon, which they carry baskets to receive, and feast upon them at the week's end. At first coming to ye door, they all strike up, very loud

*Harings Harings white and red,

Ten a penny, Lent's dead,
Rise dame and give a Negg,
Or else a piece of Bacon,
One for Peter, two for Paul,
Three for Jack a Lents all,
Away, Lent, away.'

"Often repeated.

"As soon as they receive any largess, they begin the chorus—

'Here sits a good wife,

Pray God save her life,
Set her upon a hod,

And drive her to God.'

"But if they lose their expectation, and must goe away empty, then wth a full cry

'Here sits a bad wife,

The devil take her life,
Set her upon a swivell,
And send her to ye devil.'

* Herrings.