Going a-mothering

Mothering Sunday

Still kept

On 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. The day’s dish was furmety, wheat boiled in sweet milk and spiced, while in the north and in Scotland it was carlings, peas fried in butter. Herrick wrote of bringing a simnel when going a-mothering, and Hone found the custom still alive in many parts of England in 1825. It lives on as Mothering Sunday.

A youth engaged in this amiable act of duty was said to go a-mothering, and thence the day itself came to be called Mothering Sunday.

From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 1, pp. 335-336; Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. 1, cols. 359-360. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

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 No longer kept EnglandA roll of the household expenses of Edward I for 1290 records a penny spent on pease on Mid-Lent Sunday.

Going a-mothering

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