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stop the mouth of this land-wheale, Shrove Tuesday, at whose entrance in the morning all the whole kingdome is in quiet, but by the time the clocke strikes elevenwhich 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 thinge cal'd wheaten flowre, which the sulphory, necromanticke cookes doe mingle with water, eggs, spice, and other tragicall, magicall inchantments, and then they put it by little and little into a frying pan of boyling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing-like the Lernean snakes in the reeds of Acheron, Stix, or Phlegeton, -until at last by the skill of the cooke it is transformed into the forme of a Flap-jack, which in our translation is call'd a pancake, which ominous incantation the ignorant people doe devoure very greedily-having for the most part well dined before-but they have no sooner swallowed that sweet candied baite, but straight their wits forsake them, and they runne starke mad, assembling in routs and throngs numberlesse of ungovernable numbers, with uncivill civill commotions.

Then Tim Tatters - a most valiant villaine-with an ensign made of a piece of a baker's maukin fixed upon a broome-staffe, he displaies his dreadful colours, and calling the ragged regiment together, makes an illiterate oration, stuft with most plentiful want of discretion, the conclusion whereof is, that somewhat they will doe, but what they know not; until at last comes marching up another troupe of tatterdemalions, proclayming wars against no matter who, so they may be doing. Then these youths arm'd with cudgels, stones, hammers, rules, trowels, and handsawes, put play-houses to the sacke, and to the spoyle, in the quarrel breaking a thousand quarrels of glasse, I meane-making ambitious brickbats breake their neckes, tumbling from the tops of lofty chimnies, terribly untyling houses, ripping up the bowels of feather beds, to the inriching of upholsters, the profit of plaisterers and dirtdawbers, the gaine of glasiers, joyners, carpenters, tylers, and bricklayers; and, which is worse, to the contempt of justice; for what avails it for a constable with an army of

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reverend rusty bill-men to command peace to these beastes, for they with their pockets, instead of pistols, well charged with stone-shot, discharge against the image of authority whole volleys as thicke as hayle, which robustious repulse puts the better sort to the worser part, making the band of unscowred halberdiers retyre faster than ever they come on, and show exceeding discretion in proving tall men of their heeles. So much for Shrove Tuesday, Jacke-a-Lent's gentleman usher; these have beene his humours in former times, but I have some better hope of reformation in him hereafter and indeed I wrote this before his coming this yeere 1617, not knowing how hee would behave himselfe; but tottering betwixt despaire and hope I leave him."

Besides pancake-eating in the olden time, Shrove Tuesday was made merry by foot-ball games, in which sometimes one parish would take the field against another.

After the amiable day of St. Valentine, and at the close of the merry carnival time of Catholic countries, comes Lent; and here we cannot do better than quote old Herrick's excellent directions for

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ASH WEDNESDAY, the first day of Lent, puts an end for a time to these wild doings, substituting a fast, in imitation of our Saviour's miraculous abstinence for forty days. Originally the fast commenced on that which is now the first Sunday in Lent, and ended on Easter Day, but as this left only thirty-six days when the Sundays were deducted (upon the principle that no Sunday can ever be a fast-day,) Pope Gregory added four days from the previous week, beginning with Ash Wednesday. The name of Ash Wednesday was derived from the ancient ceremony of blessing ashes at this season, with which the priest signed the people on the forehead in the form of a cross, affording them withal this wholesome admonition, "Memento, homo, quòd pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris,"-Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and to 'dust shalt return.-The ashes thus used were made of the palms consecrated the Sunday twelvemonth before, and this ceremony, though in a modified form, survived the first shock of the Reformation, not being abandoned till about the year 1547-8, when, as Stow tells us, "the Wednesday following, commonly called AshWednesday, the use of giving ashes in the church was also left throughout the whole citie of London." Prior to that time it had formed one of the ordinances of the Reformed Church.

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