And I a maid at your window

To be your valentine."

In the Gentlemen's Magazine for 1779, a correspondent under the name of Kitty Curious, relates an odd ceremony that she has been witness to in some humble village in Kent. The girls from five or six to eighteen years old were assembled in a crowd, burning an uncouth effigy, which they called a holly-boy, and which they had stolen from the boys, while in another part of the village the boys were burning what they called an ivy girl, which they had stolen from the girls. The ceremony of each burning was attended with huzzas and other acclamations according to the receipt of custom in all such cases.

meat.

The Monday before Shrove Tuesday was in old times. called Collop Monday, " collop" being a term for slices of dried or salted meat, as "steak" signifies a slice of fresh The etymology is too uncertain to make it worth while to quote the different accounts of it, but upon this day it was customary to feast upon eggs and collops, and, as Lent was approaching, our ancestors used to cut up their meat in slices, and preserve it, till the season of fast was over, by salting, or drying it. In some parts the day seemed to have been kept as the vigil, or eve, of Shrove Tuesday, and in the neighbourhood of Salisbury, we are told, the boys went about from door to door, singing thus ; "Shrove-tide is nigh at hand,

And I am come a shroving;

Pray, dame, something,

An apple, or a dumpling,

Or a piece of truckle cheese

Of your own making,

Or a piece of pancake."

The observance of this day originated, if we may be

Brand and Hone, who have both quoted these lines, pass over the truckle-cheese in silence, as if it involved no difficulty; nor can I offer any certain explanation of the etymology. The epithet truckle,

lieve Polydore Virgil, in the Roman feasts of Bacchus, and some vestiges of such an origin remain to the present time in the custom that the Eton boys have of writing verses at this season in praise of the Lybian God. These were composed in all kinds of measures and affixed to the college-doors.

Shrove Tuesday,-or Pancake Tuesday,-or Fasting's Even, Fasterns, Fasten, as it is sometimes called from being the vigil of Ash Wednesday, the commencement of the Lent Fast,-is a day of great importance in the ritual calendar. It is said to have got its first, and more general, appellation from the circumstance of its being a day when every one was bound to confess and be shrove, or shriven, so long as the Roman Catholic faith was predominant. That none might plead forgetfulness of this ceremony the great bell was rung at an early hour in every parish, and in after times this ringing was still kept up in some places, though the cause of it ceased with the introduction of Protestantism; it then got the name of the Pancake-Bell, for reasons which we shall see hereafter.

Notwithstanding this necessity for confession, Shrove Tuesday with us had all the features of the last day of the Italian carneval. What it was in the old time may be judged from the account given by Taylor, the Waterpoet-" Always before Lent there comes waddling a fat, grosse, groome, called Shrove Tuesday, one whose manners shews he is better fed than taught, and indeed he is the only monster for feeding amongst all the dayes of the yeere, for he devoures more flesh in foureteene houres

which Hone, for some unexplained reason, prints with a capital T, may possibly have a reference to the round, wheel-shaped form of the cheese, for truckle, though well-nigh obsolete in that sense, was once commonly used for a wheel. However derived, the word is even now familiar both in Wiltshire and Dosetshire for a small, but superior kind of cheese.

than this old kingdom doth (or at the least should doe) in sixe weekes after. Such boyling and broyling, such roasting and toasting, such stewing and brewing, such baking, frying, mincing, cutting, carving, devouring, and gorbellied gurmondizing, that a man would thinke people did take in two month's provision at once. "Moreover it

is a goodly sight to see how the cookes in great men's kitchins doe frye in their master's suet, that if ever a cooke be worth the eating, it is when Shrove Tuesday is in towne, for he is so stued and larded, basted, and almost over-roasted, that a man may eate every bit of him and never take a surfet. In a word, they are that day extreme cholerike, and too hot for any man to meddle with, being monarchs of the marow-bones, marquesses of the mutton, lords high regents of the spit and the kettle, barons of the gridiron, and sole commanders of the frying-pan. And all this hurly burly is for no other purpose than to stop the mouth of this land-wheale, Shrove Tuesday, at whose entrance in the morning all the whole kingdome is in quiet, but by the time the clocke strikes elevenwhich by the help of a knavish sexton is commonly before nine, then there is a bell rung called the Pancake Bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted and forgetful either of manner or humanitie. Then there is a thinge cal'd wheaten flowre, which the sulphory, necromanticke cookes doe mingle with water, egges, spice, and other tragicall, magicall inchantments, and then they put it by little and little into a frying pan of boyling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing -like the Lernean snakes in the reeds of Acheron, Stix, or Phlegeton,-until at last by the skill of the cooke it is transformed into the forme of a Flap-Jack, which in our translation is call'd a pancake, which ominous incantation the ignorant people doe devoure very greedily-having for the most part well dined before-but they have no

sooner swallowed that sweet candied baite, but straight their wits forsake them, and they runne starke mad, assembling in routs and throngs numberlesse of ungovernable numbers, with uncivill civill commotions.

"Then Tim Tatters-a most valiant villaine-with an ensign made of a piece of a baker's maukin* fixed upon a broome-staffe, he displaies his dreadful colours, and calling the ragged regiment together, makes an illiterate oration, stuft with most plentifull want of discretion, the conclusion whereof is, that somewhat they will doe, but what they know not; untill at last comes marching up another troupe of tatterdemalions, proclayming wars against no matter who, so they may be doing. Then these youths arm'd with cudgels, stones, hammers, rules, trowels, and handsawes, put play-houses to the sacke, and *** to the spoyle, in the quarrel breaking a thousand quarrelst-of glasse, I meane-making ambitious brickbats breake their neckes, tumbling from the tops of lofty chimnies, terribly untyling houses, ripping up the bowels of feather beds, to the inriching of upholsters, the profit

* Brand, who quotes this last paragraph, says that he does not know what to make of it, and Sir H. Ellis, after having twice edited the work, is, according to his general custom on such occasions, as mute as a Pythagorean. There is however no difficulty whatever in the passage. A maukin, or as it is sometimes written, malkin, is explained by Minshew to be "instrumentum quo verruntur furni calescentes," i.e. an instrument by which ovens are swept out; and it farther appears from him that the word was used either for a broom or a dishclout. Cotgrave too says "A maulkin to make clean an oven, Patrouille, fourbalet, stroffignolo del forno." Here it means the baker's dishclout, which was fastened to a pole as a flag for the merry rout, and borne aloft by Tim Tatters-i.e. Tatterdemalion-a fanciful, and not inappropriate, designation for the leader of 'the ragged regiment.'

T It is perhaps hardly necessary to remind the reader that this is a pun upon the secondary meaning of the word " 'quarrel," i.e. a pane of glass, from the Latin, quadrum.

of plaisterers and dirt-dawbers, the gaine of glasiers, joyners, carpenters, tylers, and bricklayers; and, which is worse, to the contempt of justice; for what avails it for a constable with an army of reverend rusty bill-men to command peace to these beastes, for they with their pockets, instead of pistols, well charged with stone-shot, discharge against the image of authority whole volleys as thicke as hayle, which robustious repulse puts the better sort to the worser part, making the band of unscowred halberdiers retyre faster than ever they come on, and shew exceeding discretion in proving tall men of their heeles. Thus, by the unmanerly maners of Shrove Tuesday, constables are baffled, punckes are pillaged, panders are plagued, and the chiefe commanders of these valourous villiacoes, for their reward of all this confusion, doe in conclusion purchase the inheritance of a jayle, to the commodity of jailers, and the discommodity to themselves, with a fearfull expectation that Tiburne shall stoppe their throats, and the hangman take possession of their coates, or that some beadle in bloody characters shall imprint their faults on their shoulders. So much for Shrove Tuesday, Jacke-a-Lent's gentleman usher; these have beene his humours in former times, but I have some better hope of reformation in him hereafter and indeed I wrote this before his coming this yeere 1617, not knowing how hee would behave himselfe; but tottering betwixt despaire and hope I leave him."

With the apprentices of London this season was more particularly a time of revel; according to Dekker they "take the lawe into their own hands and doe what they liste."* One of their amusements was hunting and beating the poor creatures of the town, and it has been suggested from certain passages in the old dramatists that it was the custom at this period of the year for the consta

"Seven Deadly Sins of London." Quarto, 1606, p. 35.