Lancashire Folk-lore: Illustrative of the Superstitious Beliefs and Practices, Local Customs and Usages of the People of the County PalatineHarland, John
History
Lancashire Folk-lore: Illustrative of the Superstitious Beliefs and Practices, Local Customs and Usages of the People of the County Palatine
Harland, John
Folklore -- England -- Lancashire; Lancashire (England) -- Social life and customs
Blount, in his _Glossographia_, says that "in Lancashire the husbandmen
claim it as a due to have a goose-intentos on the sixteenth Sunday after
Pentecost: which custom takes its origin from the last word of the old
Church prayer of that day:--'Tua nos Domine, quæ sumus, gratia semper et
præveniat et sequatur; ac bonis operibus jugiter præstet esse
_intentos_.' The vulgar people called it 'a goose with ten toes.'"
Beckwith, in his new edition of Blount's _Fragmenta Antiquitatis_
(London, 4to, 1815, p. 413), after quoting this passage, remarks:--"But
besides that the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, or after Trinity
rather, being movable, and seldom falling upon Michaelmas Day, which is
an immovable feast, the service for that day could very rarely be used
at Michaelmas, there does not appear to be the most distant allusion to
a goose in the words of that prayer. Probably no other reason can be
given for this custom, but that Michaelmas Day was a great festival, and
geese at that time most plentiful. In Denmark, where the harvest is
later, every family has a roasted goose for supper on St. Martin's Eve
[Nov. 10]." It must be borne in mind that the term _husbandman_ was
formerly applied to persons of a somewhat higher position in life than
an agricultural labourer, as for instance to the occupier and holder of
the land. In ancient grants from landlords of manors to their free
tenants, among other reserved rents, boons, and services, the landlord
frequently laid claim to a good stubble goose at Michaelmas. After all,
the connexion between the goose and the collect is not apparent.[178]
ALL SOULS' DAY.--NOV. 2.
So named, because in the Church of Rome prayers are offered on this
day for "all the faithful deceased."
There is a singular custom still kept up at Great Marton, in the Fylde
district, on this day. In some places it is called "soul-caking," but
there it is named "psalm-caking,"--from their reciting psalms for which
they receive cakes. The custom is changing its character also--for in
place of collecting cakes from house to house, as in the old time, they
now beg for money. The term "psalm" is evidently a corruption of the old
word "sal," for soul; the mass or requiem for the dead was called
"Sal-mas," as late as the reign of Henry VI.
GUNPOWDER PLOT AND GUY FAWKES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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