ScullridgeGoodbye #PloughMonday
A Cambridge DiaryToday is Plough Monday which marks the end of the Christmas holidays for agricultural workers and a return to the land.
Since the 15th century bands of young men in fancy dress, including a ‘Betty’, would drag a decorated plough through the village knocking on doors asking for money, food and drink to supplement meagre wages or none at all over the holiday period.
And that’s why the Cambridge Morris Men were dancing on Market Square today - in case you wondered :)
Andy AldridgePlough Monday - "10 songs in celebration of Plough Monday - the first Monday after the twelfth day of Christmas when agricultural activities traditionally resumed"
Featuring #AnneBriggs #VashtiBunyan #SteeleyeSpan #TheCopperFamily
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3uqbu1MdrlgUefDZadKlte?si=391804afee4343bf
Happy Plough Monday!
"For Plough Monday was the day when village life in many agricultural areas focused on the dragging of a decorated plough, sometimes a real one but often just a replica, around a community by bands of young men who would knock on doors and ask for money, food or drink. These men were [known as Plough Stotts in the North East]"
via @EFDSS
No sign of a plough or Plough Stotts in Whitley Bay sadly!
Neil Philip#Folklore #PloughMonday Today is Plough Monday, one of 3 days when knockabout folk plays were performed in England (w/Christmas & Easter) in return for largesse. Ethel Rudkin collected one in Jerusalem, Lincolnshire. Here's some nonsense from the Fool: "I am going to ask all you stickmejacks to me and ladys wedding and what you like best you must bring on with you. I know what me and me lady likes and what me lady is goin to have. We're going to have a barley chaff dumplin buttered with wool and a gallon of ropy ale to it. "
Ian HuntHere in northern winter (according to a Christian calendar that is eminently secularisable), today counts as #PloughMonday -- a day to ask blessing for tools and objects of use. Here are the superb pages (226-230) about the plough in Nature Near London, 1883, by #RichardJefferies -- who was a modern, not a nostalgic writer. In an earlier section he describes a scene of ploughing with the Crystal Palace at Sydenham in the distance. https://archive.org/details/naturenearlondonj00jeffiala/page/230/mode/2up
Mark CrailHere’s a selection of agricultural workers’ union badges to mark #PloughMonday - traditionally the first day back at work after Christmas. Hope you’ll all be dragging a plough round the village today, collecting donations and ploughing up the doorsteps of those who won’t donate #TradeUnionBadges #histodons
Sue Walker WhiteToday is #PloughMonday (the first Monday after twelfth night or Epiphany) it is historically the day which marked the end of the Christmas festival for the agricultural communities in the eastern counties of England.
