Weather: the weather today
indicates the weather in July.
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“Plough-Monday, next after
that Twelfth-tide is past,
Bids out with the plough – the
worst husband is last;
If ploughman get hatchet, or
whip to the screen,
Maids loseth their cock, if
no water be seen.”
Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred
Points of Good Husbandry
This being the first working
day after Epiphany, today is St. Distaff’s Day, when the women return to work
after the Christmas holidays.
This being also the first
Monday after Epiphany, today is Plough Monday as well, when the men return to
work after the Christmas holidays.
In keeping with the spirit
of the last twelve days, today is a mixture of work and frolic – of tricks
being played on each other, of races to be first to finish their chores, with
forfeits claimed from the losers.
In Thomas Tusser’s bit of doggerel above, if the ploughman can get his one
of his field implements to the kitchen fire (the fireplace ‘screen’) before the
maid gets a kettle of water on the fire, she forfeits to him the cockerel with
which she would have celebrated Shrove Tuesday. And Robert Herrick describes how the men would try to singe
the spinning materials, while the maids would keep buckets of water with which
to douse the men.
Have a bit of fun today,
when you go back to work.
“Partly work and partly play
You must on St. Distaff's
Day.”
Robert Herrick
Artwork:
“Spinning with the Distaff”,
found in Robert Chambers, The Book of
Days (1863), p. 69
