Sheep-shearing was one of the ploughman’s feast days, when the farmer’s wife was told to spare neither meat nor corn. Tusser, whose margin places the custom in Northamptonshire, wanted wafers and cakes made for the shearers. The neighbours who came to help asked for nothing but good cheer and a neighbourly welcome. He set sheep washing and shearing in his June.
Wafers and cakes for the sheep-shearing
Printed under 1 June · Northamptonshire
No longer kept
Wife make vs a dinner, spare flesh neither corne, / make wafers and cakes, for our sheepe must be shorne. / At sheepe shearing neighbours none other thing craue, / but good cheere and welcome like neighbours to haue.
From Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, p. 181. Read the original
Get a copy: Amazon · Bookshop.org · AbeBooks
We may earn a small commission if you buy through these links.
Questions and comments