On the Saturday before Palm Sunday the grammar-school boys of Lanark paraded through the streets with a palm. In practice it was a flowering goat willow decorated with daffodils, mezereon and box. Dyer took this from Sinclair’s Statistical Account of Scotland, which called Palm Saturday a popish relic of great age.
Palm Saturday at Lanark
8 days before Easter · Lanark, Lanarkshire
No longer kept
the boys belonging to the grammar-school at Lanark, according to ancient usage, used to parade the streets with a palm, or its substitute, a large tree of the willow kind
From Dyer's British Popular Customs, p. 126. Read the original
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