_Mothering Sunday._--In many parts of England it was formerly customary for servants, apprentices, and others to carry presents to their parents on this day. This practice was called Going a-Mothering, and originated in the offerings made on this day at the mother-church. In the _Gent. Mag._ (vol. liv. p. 98) a correspondent tells us that whilst he was an apprentice the custom was to visit his mother on Mid-Lent Sunday (thence called Mothering Sunday) for a regale of excellent furmety.[21] [21] Furmenty, Furmity, or Frumity; still a favourite dish in the north, consisting of hulled wheat boiled in milk and seasoned. It was especially a Christmas dish. In the _True Gentlewoman’s Delight_, 1676, p. 17, the following receipt is given for making furmity: Take a quart of sweet cream, two or three sprigs of mace, and a nutmeg cut in half, put it into your cream, so let it boil; then take your French barley or rice, being first washed clean in fair water three times and picked clean, then boil it in sweet milk till it be tender, then put it into your cream, and boil it well, and when it hath boiled a good while, take the yoke of six or seven eggs, beat them very well to thicken on a soft fire, boil it, and stir it, for it will quickly burn; when you think it is boiled enough sweeten it to your taste, and so serve it in with rosewater and musk-sugar, in the same manner you make it with wheat.--Nares’ _Glossary_ (Halliwell and Wright), 1859, vol. i. p. 340. Another correspondent of the same journal for May (vol. liv. p. 343) says, “I happened to reside last year near Chepstow, in Monmouthshire; and there, for the first time, heard of _Mothering Sunday_. My inquiries into the origin and meaning of it were fruitless; but the practice thereabouts was for servants and apprentices on Mid-Lent Sunday to _visit their parents_, and _make them a present of money_, _a trinket_, or _some nice eatable_; and they are anxious not to fail in this custom.” A mothering-cake is alluded to in Collins’s _Miscellanies_, 1762, p. 114: “Why, rot thee, Dick! see Dundry’s Peak Lucks like a shuggard motherin’-cake.” A sort of spiced ale called Braggot, Bragget, or Braggat, was used in many parts of Lancashire on these visits of relations, whence the day was called _Braggot Sunday_. In Nares’ _Glossary_ (Halliwell and Wright, 1859, vol. i. p. 102) the following receipt for making _bragget_ is given from the _Haven of Health_, chap. 239, p. 268: