History of England 1-6

On Plough Monday, a ‘fool plough’ or ‘white plough’ was dragged about the village by young ploughmen covered in ribbons and other gay ornaments; they asked for pennies at every door and, if refused, they ploughed the ground before the cottage. The leader of the ploughmen, or ‘plough-bullocks’, was a young man dressed up as an old woman and known as Bessy. Another participant would wear a foxskin as a hood, with the tail hanging behind his back. This ancient ceremony was still being performed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, perhaps testifying to the customary nature of English rural life. It is still practised in certain areas of eastern England, where its origins in the Danelaw are assumed to lie. The feast of Candlemas on 2 February, commemorating the Purification of the Virgin, was the time for tillage to be resumed; it was the moment for the ‘lenten seed’ of oats and barley and beans to be sown. This was also the time for the pruning of trees.

From Hocktide, the second Monday and Tuesday after Easter, to Lammas, on the first day of August, came the summer. That is why the May queen or Flora was known as the summer queen rather than the spring queen. On the day before Hockday the females of the village captured and bound as many men as they could find, and kept them until a fee or ransom had been paid. On Hockday itself the males of the village engaged in the same sport. Days of festival were always celebrated before the resumption of serious agricultural work. This was the time when the husbandman must lay down the manure, cut the wood, shear the sheep, clear the land of weeds, repair fences, rebuild the fish-weirs and the mills. The fallow fields were ploughed. Midsummer occurred on the feast of the nativity of St John the Baptist. On St John’s Eve, 23 June, as a thirteenth-century monk from Winchcombe observed, ‘the boys collect bones and certain other rubbish, and burn them, and therefrom a smoke is produced on the air. They also make brands and go about the fields with the brands. Thirdly, the wheel which they roll.’ The wheel was the wheel of fire, set aflame and sent rolling down the hills of the region. In this way the pagan rituals and the Christian calendar were united in one celebration. On St John’s Day itself the harvest of hay was brought in. When all the hay had been stacked a sheep was let loose in the field; it became the prize of the mower who caught it. Only after St John’s Day were the thistles in the fields cut down; it was said that if they were removed earlier, they would increase threefold.

From Lammas to Michaelmas, at the end of September, came the harvest time of corn known as autumpnus. The name Lammas came from the Anglo-Saxon hlaf-Mass or loaf-Mass; in a good year it was a time of fruitfulness. When the last sheaf had been ceremonially cut, a supper known as harvest home was served. As Thomas Tusser wrote in the sixteenth century,

In harvest time, harvest folk, servants and all

Should make altogether good cheer in the hall.

In their laughter and in their dancing they were keeping time with the seasons and at the same time celebrating the continuities of the earth; they were part of a universal rhythm which they experienced but did not necessarily understand.

After the harvest had been taken in, the cattle would be allowed to graze on the stubble. At the same time rye and wheat would be sown in the fallow fields after they had been ploughed and harrowed. After the sowing was over there was customarily a feast with seed cake, pasties and a dish of milk, wheat, raisins and spices known as furmenty or frumenty. Then came a time when the sheaves of the harvest were threshed, separating the ears from the straw; this was followed by the winnowing, when the grain was divided from the chaff. Also at this period the labourers were obliged to prepare the sheep-pens and the pigsties.

So the agricultural year was embedded in the ritual year. That is why, in the churches and cathedrals of England, the capitals and pillars were decorated with images of the months; the mowers are carved to celebrate the month of July, while a husbandman with sickle is the stone emblem of September. In Southwell Minster the pigs snuffle among the great stone oak leaves for the acorns of November. The natural world is familiar and immutable. The ease of summer and the woe of winter are part of the eternal order in which the humblest labourer participated; in medieval poetry, the ploughman was often considered to be holy. On sacred days the worshippers in the parish church, and the labourers in the field, were participating in complementary rituals. On the three rogation days preceding the Ascension Day, the parishioners would walk around the boundaries and bless the fields.