Pease for the king’s household on Mid-Lent Sunday

Mothering Sunday · England

No longer kept

A roll of the household expenses of Edward I for 1290 records a penny spent on pease on Mid-Lent Sunday. Brand, quoting the roll as it was communicated to the Society of Antiquaries in 1805, wondered whether the pease stood in for the frumenty or the carlings that northern people still ate in Lent in his own day.

"Pro pisis j.d.," i. e. for pease one penny.

From Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. 1, p. 112. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

Going a-mothering Still kept EnglandOn Midlent Sunday, the fourth in Lent, young people in service or apprenticed away went home to see their parents, especially their mothers, taking a cake or a trinket as a present.
Shrewsbury simnels Still kept Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, ShropshireIn Shropshire and Herefordshire, and above all at Shrewsbury, rich simnel cakes were made in Lent and at Easter and Christmas.
Mothering cakes at Bristol No longer kept GloucestershireA Bristol reader told Hone in 1827 that Mothering Sunday was kept scrupulously in the city and, he believed, all over the west of England, much as Twelfth Night was kept in London.
Fig-pie Wake at Draycott-in-the-Moors No longer kept StaffordshireDraycott-in-the-Moors and its neighbouring villages kept Fig-pie Wake on Mid-Lent Sunday, when friends came visiting to eat fig pies.
Simnel Sunday crowds at Bury No longer kept LancashireOn Mid-Lent Sunday thousands of people poured into Bury from all over the district to eat simnels, and shops and public houses stayed open in defiance of the law.
Loins of veal on Mid-lent Sunday No longer kept HerefordshireIn Herefordshire Mid-Lent Sunday was kept by every rank, with children of all ages coming home to dine with their parents on loins of veal.

Pease for the king’s household on Mid-Lent Sunday

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