St Chad’s bough on the clog

The old clog almanac was a square stick of box or other hard wood, notched along its edges for every day of the year and hung up in the parlour or carried as a walking cane. Feasts were marked with little symbols, and March opened with two of them. St David’s Day had a harp, because the Welsh saint praised God on that instrument, and the notch for 2 March, St Chad’s Day, ended in a bough for the hermit’s life Chad led in the woods near Lichfield.