117 



by a meal corresponding to the name. The two former evidently date 

 from before the reformation. Under the Roman Catholic rule Monday 

 in Shrove week was the last day on which people were permitted to eat 

 meat, until the end of Lent ; and in consequence every one contrived to 

 have it on that day, and hence it came to be called Collop Monday. Of the 

 origin of making Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, many widely different 

 accounts have been given. The most obvious explanation seems to be, 

 that the people being debarred the use of meat during the whole of 

 Lent, eggs would be much used as a substitute, and the housewives of 

 the time would, no doubt, for the sake of variety, contrive various ways 

 of cooking them. They made them into pancakes and puddings, they 

 mulled ale with them, and they dyed them into pace eggs for the 

 children. Ash Wednesday is a remarkable example of the curious way 

 in which, among dialect speaking people, words sometimes become 

 corrupted both in pronunciation and meaning. It was called Ash 

 Wednesday because, in early times, on that the second day of Lent, it 

 was the custom for devout christians to sprinkle themselves with ashes, 

 in token of sorrow and humiliation. In later times, however, after the 

 old religious observances were discontinued and forgotten, the day came 

 to be called not Ash, but Hash Wednesday, and the country people 

 commemorated it by having a hash to dinner on that day. 



The second Sunday before Easter was formerly called Carling Sunday, 

 and it was a very general custom, in the northern counties, on that day, to 

 offer visitors peas, which had first been boiled, and afterwards fried in 

 butter, and were called carlings. It was also common for people, on 

 that day, to carry raw peas in their pockets, and to throw them at each 

 other. The origin of this curious custom is very remote. For centuries 

 before the introduction of the potatoe into England, and when grain was 

 imported in very small quantities, if at all, pulse was one of the chief 

 staples of food, and at that particular time in the spring, when the winter 

 stores of the poor were all exhausted, it became a custom for charitable 

 people to make a distribution, or dole, of peas, to the serfs, or carles, 

 and hence it came to be called Carling Sunday. In some of the midland 

 counties, doles of wheat are given out in the same manner. 



8 



