Chambers's Book of Days

Robert Chambers, The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar (2 vols, 1862-1864).

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Two volumes, 1862 to 1864. Facsimile reprints are easy to find, and original sets turn up second-hand.

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51 to 75 of 439 entries

2 February

3 February

3 February, not tied to the day

Folklore from the old calendars

The Claddagh Ring Still kept ConnachtRings with two clasped hands were a common old wedding design, and Chambers found the fashion still in daily use among the fishing families of the Claddagh at Galway, a close community of five or six thousand who seldom married outside their own people.
The Healing Ring Finger Lore and belief England, Ireland, SomersetThe wedding ring is worn on the fourth finger of the left hand from an old belief that a nerve ran from it straight to the heart.
Willie Wastle in His Castle No longer kept Berwickshire, ScotlandWhen Cromwell's Colonel Fenwick summoned Hume Castle to surrender in February 1651, the governor is said to have answered him with a scrap of rhyme about William of the Wastle in his castle whom all the dogs in the town could not bring down.

7 February, not tied to the day

10 February

13 February

14 February

15 February, not tied to the day

Shrove Tuesday