Threshing the Hen
was a custom formerly practised on this day. The following account taken from Tusser Redivivus, 1710 (8vo. June, p. 15), is curious. “The hen,” says the writer, “is hung at a fellow’s back, who also has some horse-bells about him, the rest of the fellows are blinded, and have boughs in their hands, with which they chase this fellow and his hen about some large court or small enclosure. The fellow with his hen and bells shifting as well as he can, they follow the sound, and sometimes hit him and his hen; other times, if he can get behind one of them, they thresh one another well favouredly; but the jest is, the maids are to blind the fellows, which they do with their aprons, and the cunning baggages will endear their sweethearts with a peeping-hole, whilst the others look out as sharp to hinder it. After this the hen is boiled with bacon, and store of pancakes and fritters are made.”
The same writer adds that after the hen-threshing, “she that is noted for lying a-bed long, or any other miscarriage, hath the first pancake presented to her, which most commonly falls to the dogs’ share at last, for no one will own it their due.”
With regard to the origin of this custom, it has been conjectured that as the fowl was a delicacy to the labourer, it was therefore given to him on Shrove Tuesday for sport and food.—Tusser, in his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1620), has the following lines:
“At Shrovetide to shroving, go thresh the fat hen,
If blindfold can kill her, then give it thy men.
Maids, fritters, and pancakes enough see you make,
Let Slut have one pancake, for company sake.”
In some places, if flowers are to be procured so early in the season, the younger children carry a small garland, for the sake of collecting a few pence, saying:
“Flowers, flowers, high do!
Shreeny, greeny, rino!
Sheeny greeny, sheeny greeny,
Rum tum fra!”
Brand, Pop. Antiq. 1849, vol. i. p. 68.