Mothering Sunday
—In many parts of England it was formerly customary for servants, apprentices, and others to carry presents to their parents on this day. This practice was called Going a-Mothering, and originated in the offerings made on this day at the mother-church.
In the Gent. Mag. (vol. liv. p. 98) a correspondent tells us that whilst he was an apprentice the custom was to visit his mother on Mid-Lent Sunday (thence called Mothering Sunday) for a regale of excellent furmety.21
Another correspondent of the same journal for May (vol. liv. p. 343) says, “I happened to reside last year near Chepstow, in Monmouthshire; and there, for the first time, heard of Mothering Sunday. My inquiries into the origin and meaning of it were fruitless; but the practice thereabouts was for servants and apprentices on Mid-Lent Sunday to visit their parents, and make them a present of money, a trinket, or some nice eatable; and they are anxious not to fail in this custom.”
A mothering-cake is alluded to in Collins’s Miscellanies, 1762, p. 114:
“Why, rot thee, Dick! see Dundry’s Peak
Lucks like a shuggard motherin’-cake.”
A sort of spiced ale called Braggot, Bragget, or Braggat, was used in many parts of Lancashire on these visits of relations, whence the day was called Braggot Sunday.
In Nares’ Glossary (Halliwell and Wright, 1859, vol. i. p. 102) the following receipt for making bragget is given from the Haven of Health, chap. 239, p. 268:
Take three or four galons of good ale, or more as you please, two dayes or three after it is densed, and put it into a pot by itselfe; then draw forth a pottle thereof, and put to it a quart of good English honey, and set them over the fire in a vessell, and let them boyle faire and softly, and alwayes as any froth ariseth skumme it away, and so clarifie it, and when it is well clarified, take it off the fire and let it coole, and put thereto of pepper a pennyworth, cloves, mace, ginger, nutmegs, cinamon, of each two pennyworth, beaten to powder, stir them well together, and set them over the fire to boyle againe awhile, then bring milke warme, put it to the reste, and stirre alltogether, and let it stand two or three daies, and put barme upon it, and drink it at your pleasure.
Minshen in his Ductor in Linguas (1617, p. 50) tells us that Braggot is composed of two Welsh words, Bräg, malt, and Gots, honeycombs.
In Ben Jonson’s masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies is the following reference to this word:
“And we have serv’d there, armed all in ale,
With the brown bowl, and charg’d in braggat stale.”
On this day also boys went about in ancient times into the villages with a figure of death made of straw, from whence they were generally driven by the country people, who disliked it as an ominous appearance, while some gave them money to get the mawkin carried off. Its precise meaning under that form is doubtful, though it seems likely to have purported the death of winter, and to have been only a part of another ceremony conducted by a larger number of boys, from whom the death carriers were a detachment, and who consisted of a large assemblage carrying two figures to represent Spring and Winter. These two figures they bore about, and fought; in the fight, Summer or Spring got the victory over Winter, and thus was allegorized the departure or burial of the death of the year, and its commencement or revival as Spring.—Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 358.
In the north of England, and also in the Midland Counties, the following names are given to the Sundays of Lent, the first of which however is anonymous:
“Tid, Mid, Misera,
Carling, Palm, Paste Egg-day.”
Another version of this couplet is given in the Gent. Mag., 1788, vol. lviii. p. 288.
“Tid, and Mid, and Misera,
Carling, Palm, and Good-Pas-Day.”
The first three names are no doubt corruptions of some part of the ancient Latin service or psalms used on each.—Brand’s Pop. Antiq. 1849, vol. i. p. 116; see the Festa Anglo-Romana, 1678.
In the Gent. Mag. (1785, p. 779) an advertisement for the regulation of Newark fair is quoted, which mentions that “Careing Fair will be held on Friday before Careing Sunday;” and Nichols remarks on this passage that he had heard the following old Nottinghamshire couplet:
“Care Sunday, Care away,
Palm Sunday and Easter Day.”
—Ibid. p. 113.
Notes
21 Furmenty, Furmity, or Frumity; still a favourite dish in the north, consisting of hulled wheat boiled in milk and seasoned. It was especially a Christmas dish. In the True Gentlewoman’s Delight, 1676, p. 17, the following receipt is given for making furmity:
Take a quart of sweet cream, two or three sprigs of mace, and a nutmeg cut in half, put it into your cream, so let it boil; then take your French barley or rice, being first washed clean in fair water three times and picked clean, then boil it in sweet milk till it be tender, then put it into your cream, and boil it well, and when it hath boiled a good while, take the yoke of six or seven eggs, beat them very well to thicken on a soft fire, boil it, and stir it, for it will quickly burn; when you think it is boiled enough sweeten it to your taste, and so serve it in with rosewater and musk-sugar, in the same manner you make it with wheat.—Nares’ Glossary (Halliwell and Wright), 1859, vol. i. p. 340.