Plough Monday

Plough Monday is the traditional start of the English agricultural year. It is the first Monday after Epiphany, 6 January. References to Plough Monday date back to the late 15th century. The day before Plough Monday is Plough Sunday, on which a ploughshare is brought into the local Christian church with prayers for the blessing of human labour, tools, as well as the land.
Plough Monday was celebrated on the first Monday after Twelfth Night, and marked the beginning of the ploughing season and the start of the agricultural year in England. Customs associated with the beginning of the ploughing season are known from the medieval period – for example a plough race on 7 January was held at Carlton in Lindrick in Nottinghamshire in the late thirteenth century. By the mid-fifteenth century, these celebrations were generally observed on Plough Monday.
In the fifteenth century, churches lit candles called "plough lights" to bless farmworkers. Some parishes kept a plough in the church for those who did not own one, and in some parishes, the plough was paraded around the village to raise money for the church. This practice seems to have died out after the Reformation.
While religious Plough Monday celebrations were suppressed, private observances continued. The most common custom involved dragging a plough and collecting money. The Plough Monday celebrants were known by a variety of regional names, including Plough Boys, Bullocks, Lads, Jacks, Stots, and Witches. The Plough Boys usually dressed in costume, often with one or more in female clothing.
Though mostly associated with the east of England, Plough Monday celebrations are also known elsewhere in the country, for instance in Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Cornwall. The customs observed on Plough Monday varied by region, but a common feature to a lesser or greater extent was for a plough (known variously as the "fond plough", "fool plough", "stot plough", or "white plough") to be hauled from house to house in a procession, collecting money. They were often accompanied by musicians, an old woman or a boy dressed as an old woman, called the "Bessy," and a man in the role of the "fool." 'Plough Pudding' is a boiled suet pudding, containing meat and onions. It is from Norfolk and is eaten on Plough Monday. In Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Rutland, a kind of Mummers' play called a Plough Play was performed.
Plough Monday customs declined in the 19th century. The advent of mechanised farming meant that agricultural workers were less numerous and relatively better paid, and thus did not have to beg for money in the winter. Additionally, the rowdy and threatening behaviour of the plough gangs was increasingly controversial in this period, and there was pressure from authorities to stop, or moderate their excesses. Though some Plough Monday customs continued into the 1930s, they did not continue past the beginning of the Second World War.
From the 1960s, Plough Monday customs began to be revived following the second British folk revival. In 1972, the tradition of traveling around the village with a plough to collect money was revived at Balsham in Cambridgeshire. Subsequently, the Cambridge Morris Men revived the practice of Plough Monday molly dancing in 1977.
In the Cambridgeshire villages of Ramsey and Whittlesey during the nineteenth century, on Plough Monday or Tuesday men or boys would dress in a layer of straw and were known as straw bears, who went door to door dancing for money. The tradition, which died out around the time of the First World War, was revived in 1980 at Whittlesey. The revived tradition is practiced annually on the Saturday before Plough Monday, when a straw bear is paraded through the village's streets.
In the village of Goathland in North Yorkshire, Plough Monday was traditionally celebrated with a plough procession, mummers' play, and sword dancing. In 1913 Cecil Sharp visited Goathland but was unable to find anyone who remembered the sword dance, last performed around 1868. Inspired by Sharp's work, the dance was revived for Plough Monday in 1923. Since the revival the sword dance has become the main feature of the tradition, and continues to be performed on the Saturday following Plough Monday. Money collected by the sword dancers at Goathland was originally used to buy food and drink for the "finish-up feast" at the end of the celebration; more recently it has been donated to the local hospital and lifeboat station.