Category Archives: Carnival Countdown

Carnival Countdown: Season of Love, Lust & Marriage

Posted on by
Reply

The next day being Shroue-tuesday, a day of pleasure, and jollitie by custome, but farre more delightfull by reason of this magnificent mariage, which moued many occasions of mirth in his Highnes court…

The mariage of Prince Fredericke, and the Kings daughter, the Lady Elizabeth, vpon Shrouesunday last (1613)

Princess Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V, Elector Palatine married on 14th February 1613 (pictured above), staging their diplomatic pairing during the communal celebrations of St Valentine’s Day and Shrovetide. The choice of occasion was strategic, but also rooted in tradition, as Shrovetide and the ‘coupling month’ of February were strongly associated with love and marriage.

Indeed, Shrovetide was perhaps the most popular festival for weddings during the early modern period. It was the last chance before Lent, when marriage was strictly forbidden, and the season’s competing themes of lust and chastity could be resolved in a ceremony of mutual love.

Technically, however, marriage was forbidden during Shrovetide as well. Without special ecclesiastical dispensation, weddings could not be celebrated from Septuagesima Sunday, the ninth Sunday before Easter,  until eight days after Easter. This did not seem to stop the eager betrothed: statistical evidence from marriage registers shows that the Shrovetide ban was frequently ignored or circumvented, while the Lenten ban was closely observed. Princess Elizabeth Stuart’s grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots, hosted court weddings during four out of the six Shrovetides of her short personal rule (1561-1567). A letter written by Sir W. Knox in 1685 likewise conveys the association with acerbic wit:

Thy dear Sister is to be Married on Shrove-Tuesday, and at Night to be laid upon her back as flat as a Pancake, and no doubt will give and receive a curious time on’t.

With births and weddings abounding, Valentines exchanged, and the Lenten ban on marriage and conjugal relations looming, fertility stood front and center during the Shrovetide season. But this went beyond simple association, or vague fertility rites. Many early moderns believed they could pair festive time and custom to actively influence their own lives. This verse from Poor Robin’s Almanac (1682), although comical in tone, illustrates the medicinal purposes to which Shrovetide foods were put to use:

The Month with Shrove-tide out doth go,
When as the Boys at Cocks do throw,
The Broth of whom (the flesh being boild)
For them can’t get their wives with Child,
Physicians say is very good
To raise new viogour in their blood,
And so by using of this trade
Keep them from being Cuckolds made

Read more on Shrovetide customs here, and stay tuned for more anecdotes of Mardi Gras history.

Carnival Countdown is a series of brief blog posts sharing stories from the medieval and early history of Carnival, as we count down the final days of the season.

Carnival Countdown: Shrovetide Sots in the Southwest

Posted on by
Reply

Shroft Twesday was a day of great glottonie, surffeting, & dronkennes…

William’s Kethe’s dismissive quip, from A sermon made at Blanford Forum in the countie of Dorset (1571), makes quite clear the Puritan opinion on Shrovetide and its traditions of rowdy revelry. It wasn’t a good one. But while we may doubt the veracity of Puritan rants against the festive customs they deemed papist or uncouth, there’s a certain truth to Kethe’s words, borne out in the historical record.

Alcohol was a fundamental pillar of medieval and early modern celebrations, but Shrovetide was a particularly boozy festival. No Shrove Tuesday was complete without a hearty cup of wine… and beer, and ale, and sherry. In 1407, the Bishop of Salisbury hosted 140 guests at his Shrove Tuesday feast, including prominent figures such as magistrates, clergymen and a local mayor. Purchasing over 500 bottles of beer in preparation, the household expenditures on alcohol outstripped those of either Christmas or Epiphany.

Some 200 years later, Shrovetide drink assisted one notorious denizen of Compton Bishop, Somerset in running afoul of his neighbours, the authorities, and pretty much everyone:

…there is a fame alsoe that hee the said Peter Graie hath otherwise behaued himselfe vnseemelie in the presence of his neighbairs, and others that haue taken offence at the same in the Inn at Crosse by putting off his cloathes and dauncinge in his shirte on Shrove sondae last, and vsed verie vnseemelie gesture in his said dauncinge before diuers people that were ashamed thereof.

Compton Bishop, 1634
Archbishop’s Visitation Book

Records of Early English Drama: Somerset including Bath 1: The Records, ed. James Stokes and Robert J. Alexander (Toronto, 1996), p. 80.

Read more on Shrovetide feasting and drinking here, and stay tuned for more anecdotes of Mardi Gras history.

Carnival Countdown is a series of brief blog posts sharing anecdotes from the medieval and early history of Carnival, as we count down the final days of the season.

 

Carnival Countdown: Shrove Tuesday Sports in 12th Century London

Posted on by
1

Annually on the day which is called Shrove Tuesday [Carnivora]…after dinner, all the young men of the city [London] go out into the fields to play at the famous game of ball. The scholars belonging to the several schools have each their ball; and the city tradesmen, according to their respective crafts; have theirs. The more aged men, the fathers of the players, and the wealthy citizens, come on horseback to see the contests of the young men, with whom, after their manner, they participate, their natural heat seeming to be aroused by the sight of so much agility, and by their participation in the amusements of unrestrained youth…

William Fitzstephen, Descriptio Nobilissimi Civitatis Londoniae (circa 1170-1182 AD). Tr. John Stow, The Survey of London ed. H. B. Wheatley (London, 1987), p. 507.

The above account, written by a twelfth-century London cleric and biographer of Thomas Becket, provides one of the earliest descriptions of Carnival celebration in Europe. Although the word football (in Latin pila pedali) is never used, scholars have long considered Fitzstephen’s ball game to be one of the first references to football in England. Perhaps the best evidence for this is that Shrovetide/Carnival was the primary festive season for football matches from the medieval period through the nineteenth century in communities of Britain, France and Italy.

Read more on Shrovetide sports and football here, and stay tuned for more anecdotes of Mardi Gras history.

Carnival Countdown is a series of brief blog posts sharing anecdotes from the medieval and early history of Carnival, as we count down the final days of the season.