Shrove Tuesday
Shrove Tuesday derives its distinctive epithet in English, from the custom of the people in applying to the priest to shrive them, or hear their confessions, before entering on the great fast of Lent the following day. Its Latin and Continental names have all a reference to the last time of eating flesh. After the people had made the confession required by the ancient discipline of the Church, they were permitted to indulge in festive amusements, though restricted from partaking of any repasts beyond the usual substitutes for flesh; hence the name carnaval, etymologically signifying, Flesh, fare thee well. From this cause originated the custom of eating pancakes at Shrovetide, which began on the Sunday before the first in Lent.—Med. Ævi Kalend. vol. i. p. 158.
That none, however, might plead forgetfulness of the ceremony of confessing and being shriven, the great bell was rung at an early hour in every parish, and in after times this ringing was still kept up in some places, though the cause of it ceased with the introduction of Protestantism; it then got the name of the Pancake Bell.
Taylor, the water poet (in his Jacke-a-Lent Workes, 1630, vol. i. p. 115), gives the following curious account as to the way in which Shrove Tuesday was celebrated in olden times:
“Always before Lent there comes waddling a fat, grosse groome, called Shrove Tuesday, one whose manners show he is better fed than taught, and indeed he is the only monster for feeding amongst all the dayes of the yeere, for he devoures more flesh in fourteene houres than this old kingdom doth (or at least should doe) in sixe weekes after. Such boyling and broyling, such roasting and toasting, such stewing and brewing, such baking, frying, mincing, cutting, carving, devouring, and gorbellied gurmondizing, that a man would thinke people did take in two months’ provision at once. Moreover it is a goodly sight to see how the cookes in great men’s kitchins doe frye in their master’s suet, that if ever a cooke be worth the eating, it is when Shrove Tuesday is in towne, for he is so stued and larded, basted, and almost over-roasted, that a man may eate every bit of him and never take a surfet. In a word, they are that day extreme cholerike, and too hot for any man to meddle with, being monarchs of the marrow-bones, marquesses of the mutton, lords high regents of the spit and kettle, barons of the gridiron and sole commanders of the frying-pan. And all this hurly burly is for no other purpose than to stop the mouth of the land-wheale, Shrove-Tuesday, at whose entrance in the morning all the whole kingdome is in quiet, but by the time the clocke strikes eleven—which by the help of a knavish sexton is commonly before nine,—then there is a bell rung called the Pancake-Bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted and forgetful either of manner or humanitie. Then there is a thing cal’d wheat’n flowre, which the sulphory, necromanticke cookes doe mingle with water, eggs, spice, and other tragicall, magicall inchantments, and then they put it little by little into a frying-pan of boyling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing—like the Lernean snakes in the reeds of Acheron, Stix, or Phlegeton—until at last by the skill of the cooke it is transformed into the forme of a flap-jack, which in our translation is call’d a pancake, which ominous incantation the ignorant people doe devoure very greedily—having for the most part well dined before—but they have no sooner swallowed that sweet candied baite, but straight their wits forsake them, and they runne starke mad, assembling in routs and throngs numberlesse of ungovernable numbers, with uncivill civil commotions.
“Then Tim Tatters—a most valiant villaine—with an ensign made of a piece of a baker’s maukin fixed upon a broomstaffe, he displaies his dreadful colours, and calling the ragged regiment together, makes an illiterate oration, stuft with most plentiful want of discretion, the conclusion whereof is that somewhat they will doe, but what they know not; until at last comes marching up another troupe of tatterdemalions, proclayming wars against no matter who, so they may be doing. Then these youths arm’d with cudgels, stones, hammers, rules, trowels, and handsawse, put play-houses to the sacke, and * * * to the spoyle, in the quarrel breaking a thousand quarrels—of glasse, I mean—making ambitious brickbats breake their neckes, tumbling from the tops of lofty chimnies, terribly untyling houses, ripping up the bowels of feather beds, to the inriching of upholsters, the profit of plaisterers and dirt-dawbers, the gaine of glasiers, joyners, carpenters, tylers and bricklayers; and, what is worse, to the contempt of justice; for what avails it for a constable with an army of reverend rusty bill-men to command peace to these beastes? for they with their pockets, instead of pistols, well charged with stone-shot, discharge against the image of authority whole volleys as thicke as hayle, which robustious repulse puts the better sort to the worst part, making the band of unscowered halberdiers retyre faster than ever they come on, and show exceeding discretion in proving tall men of their heels. So much for Shrove Tuesday, Jacke-a-Lent’s gentleman usher; these have been his humours in former times, but I have some better hope of reformation in him hereafter, and indeed I wrote this before his coming this yeere, 1617, not knowing how hee would behave himselfe; but tottering betwixt despaire and hope I leave him.”
In connection with the custom of eating pancakes on this day, Fosbroke in his Encyclopædia of Antiquities (vol. ii. p. 572) says that “Pancakes, the Norman Crispellæ, are taken from the Fornacalia, on Feb. 18th, in memory of the practice in use before the goddess Fornax invented ovens.”
The Saxons called February “Solmonath,” which Dr. F. Sayers, in his Disquisitions, says is explained by Bede’s “Mensis Placentarum,” and rendered by Spelman, in an inedited MS., “Pancake month,” because in the course of it cakes were offered by the Pagan Saxons to the Sun.
Our most usual name of this Tuesday, says Hampson (Med. Ævi Kalend. vol. i. p. 158), is originally Swedish: pankaka, an omelette; but, it has been absurdly derived from the Greek παν and κακοι, all bad, in reference to the penitents at confession.
At one time Shrove Tuesday was the great holiday of the apprentices. Why it should have been so, says Hone (Every Day Book, 1826, vol. i. p. 258), is easy to imagine, on recollecting the sports that boys were allowed on that day at school. The indulgences of the ancient city apprentices were great, and their licentious disturbances stand recorded in the annals of many a fray. The old plays make us aware of a licence which they took on Shrove Tuesday to assail houses of dubious repute, and cart the unfortunate inmates through the city.—Book of Days, vol. i. p. 239; See Dekker’s Seven Deadly Sinnes, 1606, p. 35.