Plough Monday morris at Claybrooke

the first Monday on or after 7 January · Claybrooke, Leicestershire

No longer kept

Aulay Macaulay, in his History and Antiquities of Claybrooke of 1791, wrote that every Plough Monday a company of morris dancers came into Claybrooke from the neighbouring villages of Sapcote and Sharnford. He set it down as a regular yearly sight in his parish at the end of the eighteenth century. Brand placed the note among other accounts of the plough lads’ holiday on the first Monday after Twelfth Day, when they went about in odd dress to gather money for drink.

On Plow Monday I have taken notice of an annual display of morris-dancers at Claybrook, who come from the neighbouring villages of Sapcote and Sharnford.

From Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. 1, p. 509. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

Sunshine on the twelfth of January Lore and belief EnglandThe Shepherd's Almanack for 1676, among its notes on January, recorded that some people held that if the sun shone on 12 January it foretold much wind.
Cock in the pot on Plough Monday No longer kept EnglandTusser counted Plough Monday among the ploughman's feast days, and Tusser Redivivus of 1744 explained the rhyme that went with it.
Goose-dancing in Scilly No longer kept Isles of ScillyHone's Table Book, quoting the Monthly Magazine of January 1827, says that at Plough Monday time the young people of the Isles of Scilly went goose-dancing.
Plough Monday Still kept LincolnshireOn the first Monday after Twelfth Day farm lads dragged a plough decked with ribbons, the Fool Plough, from house to house, led by a man dressed as an old woman called Bessy and a Fool, sometimes with morris or sword dancers.

Plough Monday morris at Claybrooke

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