This name, given to the last few days before Lent, is from its being the custom for the people to go to the priest to be _shriven_, _i.e._, to make their confession, before entering on the great fast of Lent, which begins on Ash-Wednesday. _Tide_ is the old Anglo-Saxon word for time, and it is still retained in Whitsuntide. 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 Latin and continental name _Carnaval_,--literally "Carne, vale," "Flesh, farewell." In Lancashire and other Northern counties, three days in this week had their peculiar dishes, viz.: "Collop Monday," "Pancake Tuesday," and "Fritters Wednesday." Originally, collops were simply slices of bread, but these were long ago discarded for slices or rashers of bacon. Fritters were thick, soft cakes, made from flour batter, with or without sliced apples intermixed. Shrovetide was anciently a great time for cock-throwing and cock-fighting, and indeed of many other loose and cruel diversions, arising from the indulgences formerly granted by the church, to compensate for the long season of fasting and humiliation which commenced on Ash-Wednesday. As Selden observes--"What the church debars us on one day, she gives us leave to take on another; first we feast, and then we fast; there is a carnival, and then a Lent." SHROVE-TUESDAY, OR PANCAKE TUESDAY. The tossing of pancakes (and in some places fritters) on this day was a source of harmless mirth, and is still practised in the rural parts of Lancashire and Cheshire, with its ancient accompaniments:-- "It is the day whereon the rich and poor, Are chiefly feasted on the self-same dish, When every paunch till it can hold no more, Is fritter-filled, as well as heart can wish; And every man and maid do take their turn And toss their pancakes up for fear they burn, And all the kitchen doth with laughter sound, To see the pancakes fall upon the ground."[148] Another writer gives this injunction:-- "Maids, fritters and pancakes enow see ye make, Let Slut have one pancake for company's sake."[149] COCK-THROWING AND COCK-FIGHTING.