Jack o’ Lent at Polperro

Ash Wednesday · Polperro, Cornwall

No longer kept

At the start of Lent, Polperro people carried a straw figure in old clothes round the village and then burnt it, shot at it or otherwise disposed of it. The figure was called Jack o’ Lent and was thought to stand for Judas Iscariot. Hazlitt quoted Jonathan Couch’s history of the fishing village (1871), which said the custom had lately died out.

A figure, made up of straw and cast-off clothes, was carried round the town, amid much noise and merriment, after which it was either burnt, shot at, or brought to some other ignominious end.

From Hazlitt's Faiths and Folklore, vol. 2, p. 344. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

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Jack o’ Lent at Polperro

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