Plough Monday

Plough Monday is the traditional start of the English agricultural year. It is the first Monday after Epiphany, 6 January.^[1][2] References to Plough Monday date back to the late 15th century.^[2] The day before Plough Monday is Plough Sunday, on which a ploughshare is brought into the local Christian church with prayers for the blessing of human labour, tools, as well as the land.^[3][4]

Plough Monday, from George Walker's The Costume of Yorkshire, 1814

History

A plough being pulled through the streets of Whittlesey as part of the Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival procession. Ploughs were traditionally taken around by Plough Monday mummers and molly dancers in parts of eastern England and in some places were used as a threat: if householders refused to donate to the participants their front path would be ploughed up.^[5]

The day traditionally saw the resumption of work after the Christmas period in some areas, particularly in northern and eastern England.^[6] Though mostly associated with the east of England, Plough Monday celebrations are also known elsewhere in the country, for instance in Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Cornwall.^[7] The customs observed on Plough Monday varied by region, but a common feature to a lesser or greater extent was for a plough to be hauled from house to house in a procession, collecting money. They were often accompanied by musicians, an old woman or a boy dressed as an old woman, called the "Bessy," and a man in the role of the "fool." 'Plough Pudding' is a boiled suet pudding, containing meat and onions. It is from Norfolk and is eaten on Plough Monday.^[1] In Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Rutland, a kind of Mummers' play called a Plough Play was performed.^[8]

In the fifteenth century, churches lit candles called "plough lights" to bless farmworkers. Some parishes kept a plough in the church for those who did not own one, and in some parishes, the plough was paraded around the village to raise money for the church. This practice seems to have died out after the Reformation.^[9]

While religious Plough Monday celebrations were suppressed, private observances continued. The most common custom involved dragging a plough and collecting money.^[10] The Plough Monday celebrants were known by a variety of regional names, including Plough Boys, Bullocks, Lads, Jacks, Stots, and Witches. The Plough Boys usually dressed in costume, often with one or more in female clothing.^[11]

William Hone made use of Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Including the Whole of Mr. Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares (1777) by the antiquary John Brand. Brand's work (with additions by Henry Ellis) mentions a northern English Plough Monday custom also observed in the beginning of Lent.^[12]

The FOOL PLOUGH goes about: a pageant consisting of a number of sword dancers dragging a plough, with music; one, sometimes two, in very strange attire; the Bessy, in the grotesque habit of an old woman, and the Fool, almost covered with skins, a hairy cap on, and the tail of some animal hanging from his back. The office of one of these characters, in which he is very assiduous, is to go about rattling a box amongst the spectators of the dance, in which he receives their little donations.^[13]

Modern observances

Whittlesey Straw Bear

Plough Monday customs declined in the 19th century. The advent of mechanised farming meant that agricultural workers were less numerous and relatively better paid, and thus did not have to beg for money in the winter.^[14] Additionally, the rowdy and threatening behaviour of the plough gangs was increasingly controversial in this period, and there was pressure from authorities to stop, or moderate their excesses.^[15] Though some Plough Monday customs continued into the 1930s, they did not continue past the beginning of the Second World War.^[14]

From the 1960s, Plough Monday customs began to be revived following the second British folk revival.^[14] In 1972, the tradition of traveling around the village with a plough to collect money was revived at Balsham in Cambridgeshire.^[16] Subsequently, the Cambridge Morris Men revived the practice of Plough Monday molly dancing in 1977.^[17] Livery Companies in the City of London, notably the Worshipful Company of Feltmakers, hold a traditional banquet with a medieval sung grace, with the response from those gathered of 'God speed the plough'.

Whittlesey Straw Bear festival

In the Cambridgeshire villages of Ramsey and Whittlesey during the nineteenth century, on Plough Monday or Tuesday men or boys would dress in a layer of straw and were known as straw bears, who went door to door dancing for money. The tradition, which died out around the time of the First World War, was revived in 1980 at Whittlesey.^[18] The revived straw bear tradition is practiced annually on the Saturday before Plough Monday, when a straw bear is paraded through the village's streets.^[19]

Goathland Plough Stots

Based in Goathland, North Yorkshire, on every Plough Monday, the Goathland Plough Stots perform a long sword dance.^[20] In 1913 Cecil Sharp visited Goathland but was unable to find anyone who remembered the dance, last performed around 1868; the dance was revived for Plough Monday in 1923. In the historical tradition, the Goathland Plough Monday celebrations involved, as well as sword dancers, a mummers' play and plough procession; since the revival the sword dance has become the main feature of the tradition.^[21]

See also

• Distaff Day, 7 January, the day that household work traditionally resumed after the Christmas season
• Hobby horse#Plough Monday mummers
• Mummers' play#Local seasonal variants
• Royal Ploughing Ceremony, a royal rite in mainland Southeast Asia
• Plugușorul, a Romanian ploughing celebration on Saint Basil's Eve (New Year's Eve)

References

1. Hone, William (1826). The Every-Day Book. London: Hunt and Clarke. p. 71.
2. "Plough Monday". Oxford English Dictionary (online edition, subscription required). Retrieved 1 December 2006.
3. "After Epiphany, the Twelfth Night of Christmas". St. Andrew Lutheran Church. 9 January 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2023. Sunday celebrations usually involved bringing a ploughshare into a church with prayers for the blessing of the land.
4. Nicholls, Janet (2006). "Plough Sunday" (PDF). Diocese of Chelmsford. Retrieved 4 June 2023.
5. Jo Draper (January 2010). "Plough Monday in Dorchester". Dorset Life Magazine. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
6. Millington, Peter (1979). "Plough Monday Customs in England". Folk Play Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland. Master Mummers. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
7. Needham, Joseph (1936). "The Geographical Distribution of English Ceremonial Dance Traditions". Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 3 (1): 18. JSTOR 4521092.
8. Hutton, Ronald (1996). The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in England. Oxford University Press. p. 129.
9. Roud, Stephen (2006). The English Year: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Nation's Customs and Festivals, from May Day to Mischief Night. Penguin. p. 20.
10. Hutton, Ronald (1996). The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in England. Oxford University Press. pp. 126–127.
11. Hutton, Ronald (1996). The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in England. Oxford University Press. p. 127.
12. "Hone's Every-Day Book". The material is omitted from the Plough Monday entry in the Revised edition of Brand of 1905.
13. John Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777). Loc. in new edition with the additions of Sir Henry Ellis (Chatto and Windus, London 1900), p. 273-274.
14. Hutton, Ronald (1996). The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in England. Oxford University Press. pp. 132–133.
15. Roud, Stephen (2006). The English Year: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Nation's Customs and Festivals, from May Day to Mischief Night. Penguin. p. 21.
16. "Balsham to Mark 50 Years Since Plough Monday Revival". BBC News. 9 January 2022. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
17. Irvine, Richard D. G. (2018). "Following the Bear: The revival of Plough Monday traditions and the performance of rural identity in the East Anglian fenlands". Ethnoscripts. 20 (1): 20.
18. Roud, Stephen (2006). The English Year: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Nation's Customs and Festivals, from May Day to Mischief Night. Penguin. pp. 24–25.
19. Project Britain
20. Lloyd, Chris (6 January 2009). "Are the bells tolling for a great English tradition?". The Northern Echo. p. 3. ISSN 2043-0442.
21. Schofield, Derek (1991). "The English Long Sword Dance: A Comparison Between Two Contemporary Traditional Teams". Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 33 (1): 321–322. JSTOR 902454.