Martlemas beef hung up for Easter

11 November · England

No longer kept

At Martinmas the farmer killed a beast and hung the beef up to dry in the chimney, keeping it until Easter. Stall-fed and pea-fed cattle cost too much, Tusser said, and with Martlemas beef the household ate well until grass beef came in. His eighteenth-century editor explained that the beef was dried like bacon.

(For Easter) at Martilmas hang vp a beefe, / for stalfed and pease fed plaie pickpurse the theefe: / With that and the like, er an grasse biefe come in, / thy folke shal looke cheerelie when others looke thin.

From Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, p. 57. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

Martinmas stray-sheep day at Patterdale No longer kept Cumberland, WestmorlandIn the dales round Ullswater nobody went looking for a strayed sheep; whoever found one simply looked after it.
Martinmas is past and gone at Wooler Lore and belief NorthumberlandA Wooler rhyme lamented that Martinmas had come and gone with Christmas drawing near and no mutton left in the house for the feast.
St Martin’s little summer Lore and belief EnglandSt Martin's little summer was the name for the spell of fine days that sometimes breaks into the usual stormy weather about the beginning of November.
The Martinmas mart No longer kept Northumberland, ScotlandMartinmas was the time to kill beasts and salt them down for winter, so in Scotland and the north of England a fat ox for killing was called a mart.
Wroth Silver at Knightlow Cross Still kept WarwickshireBefore sunrise on Martinmas morning the parishes of the hundred of Knightlow paid their wroth silver, or ward money, to the lord of the hundred at the stump of Knightlow Cross near Rugby.

Martlemas beef hung up for Easter

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