Shrove Tuesday

Well, it's not really shrove Tuesday any more, but I wanted to write about it anyway so here's your dose of trivia, four days late.

Shrovetide, or Shrove Tuesday, is a feast celebrated across Europe and called “Carnival” in Southern regions from the latin “carne levare” (taking away of flesh) which heralded the beginning of the Lenten fast. The importance of this day in the relgious calendar is emphasised c. 1000 by Abbot Aelfric’s  who in his Ecclesiastical Institutes states that:

"In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him as he then may hear by his deeds what he is to do [in the way of penance]".

   

It was a very important religious day then, so where do the pancakes come in? Well, traditionally making pancakes enables you to use up your remaining eggs and fat, freeing your kitchen from their temptation during lent. Pancakes were not the only tradition however, and plays, football games and general festivities accompanied the day. 

The tradition of games continues to the present day with annual pancake races taking place across the country which are said to have originated in 1445 in the village of Olney. A woman, according to legend, was making pancakes that morning and running late ran out of the house still clutching the frying pan upon hearing the church bells. How you go about providing evidence for this custom is beyond me so I present it to you as a charming myth that may, or may not, have any truth to it.

On the subject of plays, these have largely fallen out of modern practice but were alive and well in the sixteenth century and Shakespeare’s “As you like it” was performed at Richmond on the 20^th February 1599. The play was accompanied by the Elizabethan version of pancakes (which were stuffed with meat), and the following quote from the play has been argued to have been either an improvisation by the actor, or a nod to the occasion by the playwright.

“Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes and swore by his honour themustard was naught: now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.” 

-  Touchstone, As you like it, Act I, scene i

Notes

BL Harley 3448 f. 2v Two men eating
BL Royal 10 E IV f. 94v Men playing a game
BL Yates Thompson 31 f. 167v A priest absolving a penitent sinne

Dusinberre, J. Pancakes and a Date for "As You like It" in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 371-405

Nilles, Calendarium Manuale Utriusque Ecclessiae, II (Innsbruck, 1897) pp/ 55-70

Olney pankcake race:

http://olneypancakerace.org/

Thurston, H. (1912).“Shrovetide” in The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved February 17, 2015 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13763a.htm