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was also called, appears to have been, according to writers on popular antiquities, 
a general day of confession, and with the previous Monday, also a day of sport 
and pastime, being deemed by some the last day of Christmas, and celebrated 
with flags, masques, and other popular amusements. It is stated that on the 
morning of this day London school boys used to bring game cocks to their masters, 
and were permitted to amuse themselves with seeing them fight. Another amuse- 
ment of this day was that of threshing the fat hen, which is done as follows :— 
According to a notice in Fosbrooke’s Encyclopedia of Antiquities, the hen was 
hung on a man’s back, who had also bells hung about him, whilst others, who 
were blindfolded and had boughs in their hands, chased the man and the hen 
about some large court or small inclosure. The man who had the hen and bells 
shifted about as well as he could, whilst those who were blindfolded followed the 
sound to strike him and his hen. After the amusement was over, the hen was 
boiled with bacon; and plenty of pancakes and fritters were added to the enter- 
tainment. It is said that lazy or sluttish girls were presented with the first pan- 
cake ; which, if they well understood the joke, they of course declined to accept. 
In Wales, if hens did not lay eggs before Shrove Tuesday, they were threshed by 
aman, who, if he happened to strike and kill any, was entitled to them for his 
pains. There were other customs in connection with this day, such as masquer- 
ades and processions ; and effigies called holly-boys and ivy-girls (probably the 
evergreen remains of Chris‘:aas) were burned. Playing at football by married 
and unmarried women, archery, running, leaping, wrestling, and sham fights were 
also among the accustomed amusements of our ancestors on this day, but which 
have now happily given way to more rational and enlightened occupations. In 
Normandy there was a kind of Fraternity of Buffoons, known as Cornards, or 
Conards, who disguised themselves in grotesque dresses, and performed farces and 
burlesques in the streets on Shrove Tuesday, and we are informed that men of 
rank even entered their society. They were masked, and personated allegorical 
characters, such as Avarice, Revenge, Passion, &c., as well as the more real 
personages of Pope, Emperors, Kings, and others in authority. Among all the 
former customs of Shrove Tuesday, the pancake has most notably survived, and, 
like mince pie and plum pudding at Christmas, will no doubt continue to be 
handed down as a memorial of past times. The origin of the Shrove Tuesday 
pancake would appear to be a continuation of the Roman festival of Fornacalia 
on the 18th of February ; which, according to Ovid, were a kind of sacrifices 
offered before the grinding of corn, and continued in memory of the practice of 
baking bread on a hearth in the form of flat cakes before the Goddess T’ornax 
invented ovens. 
In connection with ancient-mythology there were various festive seasons 
which were continued, after a similar observance, under the change of religion 
from Paganism to Christianity, e.g., the 25th of March (our Lady-Day) was the 
Roman Hilaria in honour of the mother of the gods ; whilst December was famous 
for the feasts of Saturn, the most celebrated of the whole year, when all orders of 
persons were devoted to mirth and feasting—friends interchanged presents, and 
masters treated their slaves with special indulgencies. Amongst the Northern 
es 
