Shrove Tuesday derives its distinctive epithet in English, from the custom of the people in applying to the priest to _shrive_ them, or hear their confessions, before entering on the great fast of Lent the following day. Its Latin and Continental names have all a reference to the last time of eating flesh. After the people had made the confession required by the ancient discipline of the Church, they were permitted to indulge in festive amusements, though restricted from partaking of any repasts beyond the usual substitutes for flesh; hence the name _carnaval_, etymologically signifying, _Flesh, fare thee well_. From this cause originated the custom of eating pancakes at Shrovetide, which began on the Sunday before the first in Lent.--_Med. Ævi Kalend._ vol. i. p. 158. That none, however, might plead forgetfulness of the ceremony of confessing and being _shriven_, 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_. Taylor, the water poet (in his _Jacke-a-Lent Workes_, 1630, vol. i. p. 115), gives the following curious account as to the way in which Shrove Tuesday was celebrated in olden times: “Always before Lent there comes waddling a fat, grosse groome, called _Shrove Tuesday_, one whose manners show 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 fourteene houres than this old kingdom doth (or at 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 months’ 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 marrow-bones, marquesses of the mutton, lords high regents of the spit and 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 the land-wheale, _Shrove-Tuesday_, at whose entrance in the morning all the whole kingdome is in quiet, but by the time the clocke strikes eleven--which 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 thing cal’d wheat’n flowre, which the sulphory, necromanticke cookes doe mingle with