The day after Twelfth Day was called Rock Day[8] and St. Distaff’s Day, because on that day women resumed their spinning, which had been interrupted by the sports of Christmas; for our ancestors, it seems, returned to their work in a very leisurely manner. From Herrick’s _Hesperides_ (p. 374) we learn that the men, in boisterous merriment, burned the women’s flax, and that they in retaliation dashed pails of water upon the men: “Partly work, and partly play Ye must on St. Distaff’s Day: From the plough soone free your teame, Then home and fother them; If the maides a spinning goe, Burn the flax and fire the tow. * * * * * Bring in pails of water, then Let the maides bewash the men; Give St. Distaff all the night, Then bid Christmas sport good night; Then next morning, every one To his own vocation.” _Med. Ævi Kalend._ vol. i. p. 138. [8] See ‘Things not generally known,’ by John Timbs, 1859, pp. 1-6. PLOUGH MONDAY. This was the name of a rustic festival, held the first Monday after Twelfth Day, formerly of great account in England, bearing in its first aspect, like St. Distaff’s Day, reference to the resumption of labour after the Christmas holidays. In Catholic times, the ploughmen kept lights burning before certain images in churches to obtain a blessing on their work; and they were accustomed on this day to go about in procession, gathering money for the support of these _plough lights_, as they were called. The Reformation put out the lights, but it could not extinguish the festival. The peasantry contrived to go about in procession, collecting money, though only to be spent in conviviality in the public-house. It was at no remote date a very gay and rather pleasant-looking affair. A plough was dressed up with ribbons and other decorations--the _Fool plough_. Thirty or forty stalwart swains, with their shirts over their jackets, and their shoulders and hats flaming with ribbons, dragged it along from house to house, preceded by one in the dress of an old woman, but much bedizened, bearing the name of _Bessy_. There was also a fool, in fantastic attire. In some parts of the country morris-dancers attended the procession; occasionally, too, some reproduction of the ancient Scandinavian sword-dance added to the means of persuading money out of the pockets of the lieges.--_Book of Days_, vol. i. p. 94. In Tusser’s _Five Hundred Points of Husbandry_, under the account of the Ploughman’s Feast Days, are the following lines: “Plough Munday, next after that twelf-tide is past, Bids out with the plough: the worst husband is last. If plowman get hatchet or whip to the skrene, Maids loseth their cocke, if no water be seen.”