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From: Elizabeth Agar <>
Subject: [YKS] Plough Monday
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 22:12:26 +1100

My great grandmother Agnes, aged 18, noted in her diary for Monday 8th
January 1866:
"Plough Monday in all its absurdities."

Agnes was living in Leicestershire at the time.

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (not specific to any county) says:
"The first Monday after Twelfth Night is so called because it was the end of
the Christmas Holidays when men returned to their plough or daily work.
It was customary for farm labourers to draw a plough from door to door
and to solicit 'plough money' to spend in a frolic. The queen of the banquet
was called Bessy. The plough itself was called the white, fond or fool
plough; 'white', because the mummers were dressed in white, gaudily
trimmed with flowers and ribbons, 'fond' of 'fool'. because the procession is
fond or foolish, i.e. not serious or of a business character."

Arnold Kellet in his Yorkshire Dictionary says that a plough was blessed in
the Church on the Sunday and on the Monday was drawn by a team of
Plough Stots (colourfully clad male dancers) round the villages. The
custom was revived in 1923 in Goathland and in 1983 by the Claro Sword
and Morris Men at Knaresborough on Plough Sunday.

In Goathland the dancers are led by Isaac and Betty (close to Bessy above)
while at Knaresborough the plough is pulled by Dobbin, a dancer dressed
as a black horse.

There seem to be several Morris groups in Yorkshire. Do any others
of them celebrate Plough Monday?

Liz in Melbourne

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• [YKS] Plough Monday by Elizabeth Agar <>