University of Virginia Library

PLOUGH MONDAY.

Sherwood Forest is a region that still retains
much of the quaint customs and holyday games
of the olden time. A day or two after my arrival
at the Abbey, as I was walking in the cloisters,
I heard the sound of rustic music, and now
and then a burst of merriment, proceeding from
the interior of the mansion. Presently the chamberlain
came to me and informed me that a
party of country lads were in the servants' hall,
performing Plough Monday antics, and invited
me to witness their mummery. I gladly assented,
for I am somewhat curious about these relics
of popular usages. The servants' hall was a fit
place for the exhibition of an old gothic game.
It was a chamber of great extent, which, in
monkish times had been the refectory of the
Abbey. A row of massive columns extended
lengthwise through the centre, from whence
sprung gothic arches, supporting the low vaulted
ceiling. Here was a set of rustics dressed up
in something of the style represented in the
books, concerning popular antiquities. One was
in a rough garb of frieze, with his head muffled
in bearskin, and a bell dangling behind him, that

jingled at every movement. He was the clown,
or fool of the party, probably a traditional representative
of the ancient satyr. The rest were
decorated with ribands and armed with wooden
swords. The leader of the troop recited the
old ballad of St. George and the Dragon, which
has been current among the country people for
ages; his companions accompanied the recitation
with some rude attempt at acting, while the
clown cut all kinds of antics.

To these succeeded a set of morrice dancers,
gaily dressed up with ribands and hawks' bells.
In this troop we had Robin Hood and Maid Marian,
the latter represented by a smooth faced
boy: also, Belzebub, equipped with a broom,
and accompanied by his wife Bessy, a termagant
old beldame. These rude pageants are the
lingering remains of the old customs of Plough
Monday, when bands of rustics, fantastically
dressed, and furnished with pipe and tabor, dragged
what was called the “fool plough” from
house to house, singing ballads and performing
antics, for which they were rewarded with money
and good cheer.

But it is not in “merry Sherwood Forest”
alone that these remnants of old times prevail.
They are to be met with in most of the counties
north of the Trent, which classic stream seems
to be the boundary line of primitive customs.

During my recent christmas sojourn at Barlboro'
Hall, on the skirts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire,
I had witnessed many of the rustic festivities
peculiar to that joyous season, which have rashly
been pronounced obsolete, by those who draw
their experience merely from city life. I had
seen the great Yule clog put on the fire on
Christmas Eve, and the wassail bowl sent round,
brimming with its spicy beverage. I had heard
carols beneath my window by the choristers of
the neighbouring village, who went their rounds
about the ancient Hall at midnight, according to
immemorial christmas custom. We had mummers
and mimers too, with the story of St.
George and the Dragon, and other ballads and
traditional dialogues, together with the famous
old interlude of the Hobby Horse, all represented
in the antichamber and servants' hall by rustics,
who inherited the custom and the poetry
from preceding generations.

The boar's head, crowned with rosemary, had
taken its honoured station among the christmas
cheer; the festal board had been attended by
glee singers and minstrels from the village to
entertain the company with hereditary songs
and catches during their repast; and the old
Pyrrhic game of the sword dance, handed down
since the time of the Romans, was admirably
performed in the court yard of the mansion by

a band of young men, lithe and supple in their
forms and graceful in their movements, who I
was told went the rounds of the villages and
country seats during the christmas holydays.

I specify these rural pageants and ceremonials,
which I saw during my sojourn in this neighbourhood,
because it has been deemed that some
of the anecdotes of holyday customs given in
my preceding writings, related to usages which
have entirely passed away. Critics who reside
in cities have little idea of the primitive manners
and observances, which still prevail in remote
and rural neighbourhoods.

In fact, in crossing the Trent one seems to
step back into old times: and in the villages of
Sherwood Forest we are in a black letter region.
The moss green cottages, the lowly mansions
of gray stone, the gothic crosses at each
end of the villages, and the tall May pole in the
centre, transport us in imagination to foregone
centuries: every thing has a quaint and antiquated
air.

The tenantry on the Abbey estate partake of
this primitive character. Some of the families
have rented farms there for nearly three hundred
years; and, notwithstanding that their mansions
fell to decay, and every thing about them
partook of the general waste and misrule of the
Byron dynasty, yet nothing could uproot them

from their native soil. I am happy to say, that
Colonel Wildman has taken these staunch loyal
families under his peculiar care. He has favoured
them in their rents, repaired, or rather rebuilt
their farm houses, and has enabled families that
had almost sunk into the class of mere rustic labourers,
once more to hold up their heads among
the yeomanry of the land.

I visited one of these renovated establishments
that had but lately been a mere ruin, and now
was a substantial grange. It was inhabited by
a young couple. The good woman showed
every part of the establishment with decent
pride, exulting in its comfort and respectability.
Her husband, I understood, had risen in consequence
with the improvement of his mansion,
and now began to be known among his rustic
neighbours by the appellation of “the young
Squire.”