Speed the Plough

Today is Plough Monday, which at one time was a popular celebration all over Britain. Held on the first Monday after Epiphany (6th January), it marked the end of the Christmas break for those working on farms and the start of the farming year. 

In some parts of the country, it was usual for farm workers to dress up and drag a plough around their communities. This plough was sometimes highly decorated with colourful ribbons. 

Plough Monday was a popular time for guise dancing. For traditional guise dancing, people dressed up in disguise, with masks or veils covering their faces. These dancers would then go from house to house and often to the local pub, to entertain the locals with music, dance and drama. In some places, a specially produced play would be performed, often based on stories like St George and the Turkish Knight. Guise dancers usually disguised their voices to make sure that people could not guess who they were. In fact, if the identity of a guise dancer was discovered it was thought to be very bad luck. Some people found the guise dancers frightening and would hide from them, while others let them into their homes and treated them with a drink and cake. One of the strangest customs associated with guise dancers is turning the furniture in people’s homes upside down. 

Speed the Plough.

Of course, ploughing is a subject of much debate these days as the industrialisation of the practice is gradually ruining our soils (I wrote about it here and here). But the image of the farmer and the horse turning the sod before planting is a timeless one.