Cornish tinners claimed a holiday on the last Thursday falling a clear week before Christmas, anciently called White Thursday. Tradition said that on that day black tin ore was first smelted into white metal in Cornwall. Dyer took this from Hitchins’s History of Cornwall.
White Thursday for the Cornish tinners
the first Thursday on or after 11 December · Cornwall
No longer kept
for the tinners to claim a holiday, because, according to tradition, on this day black tin or ore was first melted or turned into white tin or metal in these parts.
From Dyer's British Popular Customs, p. 468. Read the original
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