Plough Monday
Plough Monday is the traditional start of the English agricultural year. It is the first Monday after Epiphany, 6 January. References to Plough Monday date back to the late 15th century. 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.
History
Plough Monday was celebrated on the first Monday after Twelfth Night, and marked the beginning of the ploughing season and the start of the agricultural year in England. Customs associated with the beginning of the ploughing season are known from the medieval period – for example a plough race on 7 January was held at Carlton in Lindrick in Nottinghamshire in the late thirteenth century. By the mid-fifteenth century, these celebrations were generally observed on Plough Monday. The earliest source known to name the day Plough Monday comes from Cambridgeshire in 1529.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.
While religious Plough Monday celebrations were suppressed, private observances continued. The most common custom involved dragging a plough and collecting money. 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.
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. 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. In Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Rutland, a kind of Mummers' play called a Plough Play was performed.
Modern observances
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. 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. Though some Plough Monday customs continued into the 1930s, they did not continue past the beginning of the Second World War.From the 1960s, Plough Monday customs began to be revived following the second British folk revival. In 1972, the tradition of traveling around the village with a plough to collect money was revived at Balsham in Cambridgeshire. Subsequently, the Cambridge Morris Men revived the practice of Plough Monday molly dancing in 1977.