Drumbling, the Halifax Gibbet , Mummer Murders and more.

It's that time again!!!
Welcome to Tudor Trivia Tuesday!!!

1) A “stang” is a cowl-staff; the cowl is a water-vessel, borne by two persons on a cowl-staff, a sturdy pole whereon the vessel hangs.[1]

In the famous scene from The Merry Wives of Windsor, Mrs. Ford calls for a cowl-staff so her servants can lift the laundry basket with Falstaff hiding inside. The cowl-staff was also passed through loop-handles in order to carry heavy baskets, boxes, etc..

Go take up these clothes here quickly. — Where 's the cowl-staff? look, how you drumble! — Carry them to the laundress in Datchet-mead; quickly, come.

To drumble is to dawdle.

 

2) Brand’s Faiths and Folklore gives us Elderton's Ballad of Lenten Stuffe, 1570.

 

Then Jake a Lent comes justlinge in

With the hedpeece of a herynge,

And saythe, repent yowe of yower syn,

For shame, syrs, leve yower swerynge ;

And to Palme Sunday doethe he ryde,

And sprots and herryngs by hys syde,

And makes an ende of Lenton tyde!

 

3) In the churchwarden's accounts of St. Mary at Hill, in the city of London, the following account appears for Lady’s Day celebrations: "Of the Sumcyon of our Lady's Day, which is our church holyday, for drinkyng over-night at Mr. Hayward's, at the King's Head, with certen of the parish and certen of the chapel and other singing men, in wyne, pears, and sugar, and other chargis, viiis. jd. For a dynner for our Lady's Day, for all the synging men & syngyng children, il. For a pounde and halfe of sugar at dinner, is. vijd. ob.”[2]

4) Our Lady’s Day — a.k.a. Lady’s Day — fell on March 25. In other Catholic regions it was called “The Feast of the Annunciation”. The day was the first day of the calendar year, in England, until 1752 when it was changed to January 1^st.

 

5) According to William Hone, in his Every-day Book,  woodcuts of the Halifax Gibbet appear in books as early as 1510. The Gibbet was revived in revolutionary France under the name of the “guillotine”.

 

6) ‘In Coates's History of Reading, p. 227, among the entries In the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Laurence Parish for 1602, we have : "Paid for flowers and rushes for the churche when the Queene was in town, xxd."’[3]

 

7) In 1555, the Bishop of London declared: “A mydwyfe (of the diocese and jurisdiction of London) shal not use or exercise any witchecrafte, charmes, sorcerye, invocations or praiers, other then suche as be allowable and may stand with the lawes and ordinances of the Catholike Churche.”

8) February 2^nd is Candlemas Day in the Catholic and Anglican churches. The day gets its name for being the day set aside for the blessing of the candles of a church for the coming year.

 

9) The candlelight procession on Candlemas Day was coopted by the early Catholic Church from the candle light procession at the beginning of the Roman festival of the Lupercalia.

 

10) 3 Hen. VIII, c. 9 (1511-12), henceforth forbids mummers and other masked revelers. The reason for the Act was that “murders, felony, rape, and other great hurts and inconveniences have aforetime grown and hereafter be like to come by the colour thereof,” at the hands of criminals who used the masking to cover their identities.

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[1] Hone’s Every-day Book, I.12.

[2] Brand’s Popular Antiquities (1900), II.4.

[3] Brand’s Popular Antiquities (1900), II.13.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Excerpts from Letters about the Origin of the 1563 Plague. January 17, 2021.  “on the progress of the conflict between Queen Elizabeth I’s forces and those of the French Regent, the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici.”
• On Shakespeare and Drinking Smoke. January 4, 2021. “The debate raged for some time: Had Shakespeare smoked pot? Tobacco? Both?”
• The Medieval Chimney: Not What You Might Think.  May 19, 2019.  “The famous Royal antiquary, John Leland, source of a great deal of detailed information about the towns and countryside of England during the reign of Henry VIII, stood awestruck before a full-length vertical chimney as if he were standing before the Hagia Sophia.”
• A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603.  April 28, 2019.  “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
• What Hamlet’s Gravedigger Teaches Us.  July 01, 2018. “The William Shakspere of the monument proudly presented a bag of grain to the world, the source, together with usury, real estate, and theater shares, of most of his considerable wealth and of his right to a grave within the chancel.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.