The Plough Jag

Plough Monday is held on the first Monday after Epiphany (which this year was Sunday 6th January). In the past ploughs were taken into the parish churches to be blessed in a special “God speed the plough” ceremony. This is still kept up in a few villages in the county (see order of service above) but mostly it has lapsed, mainly due to the replacement of horse-drawn ploughs with mechanised equipment (occasionally you come across ploughs kept inside churches - there used to be one at Scarning in Norfolk).



Above: At 11 o’clock the mummers appeared.

Also associated with Plough Monday are the Plough Jags - mummers plays formerly performed by the plough boys. Very few of these plays are still performed, but I managed to track one down last Saturday, in a town to the north-west of the county. I got there early as the play is only performed once and lasts about twenty minutes, so if you miss it you have to wait another twelve months until it comes round again (or try and follow the mummers on the subsequent pub crawl).

The day was cold and damp, but with some sunshine. The play was held in the Market Square, a small and rather claustrophobic space, surrounded by three-story buildings (some were 19th century, others were post-war but built in a traditional style). The market consisted of a few stalls selling cheap clothes, cheap DVDs, fresh fruit and vegetables. The square was very busy with shoppers passing through (hardly anyone stopping at the stalls). Remnants of Christmas decorations were still applied to various buildings, looking a bit forlorn. There was a very light sprinkling of litter underfoot, and the cold air had a lardy smell to it (possibly coming from various cafés and chip shops).

At 11 o’clock the mummers appeared in front of the central Christmas tree. There were twelve of them, all men apart from one woman (obviously they are no longer plough boys - I would guess these were the members of a local folk group). Mummers plays follow a fairly standard format with traditional costumes (blacked faces) and characters. They arrived in a procession, and each gave a speech in rhyme. A fiddle-player and an accordianist provided music and some of the characters danced about (when a song about sowing barley was sung several of the audience joined in). The woman did not act in the play but brought round a pail to collect money from the on-lookers.



Mummers plays always include a duel, followed by the death of the central character and his revival by the “Doctor” (the man in the black hat and frock coat, carrying a leather bag). Sir James Fraser, writing in The Golden Bough, traces the origin of these plays to the fertility of the soil and security of the food supply. As well as the Plough Jags, mummers plays were performed at all the festivals of the year, including Christmas (there is a fictionalised account of a mummers play in Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native - in the film version Catherine Zeta-Jones disguises herself as one of the mummers).

There were several modern touches in this Plough Jag. For instance, one of the soldiers has gone off to “Afghanistany”. And when Beelzebub appeared to one of the female characters (played by a man) she launched into a Catherine Tate “Am I bovvered?” speech.



After the performing the Plough Jag the plough boys would take the money they had collected and go to a pub. When they had drunk the takings they would perform the play again to obtain funds for the next session, and then move on to a new pub. With each round of drinks the Plough Jag would become more boisterous and irreverent.



This pub sign shows a plough boy dressed in a sheepskin, leading the horses.



A plow-wright was a maker of ploughs. This marriage of a ploughman dates from the 1920s - the fact that the surname matched the man's occupation suggests a strong family connection going back generations. Because of the importance of ploughing in the agricultural cycle, ploughmen had a fairly high status in village life. In the medieval period they would be members of the Plow Guild, one of the great trade guilds of the middle ages. These quasi-religious societies would have their own section of the parish church and meet once a year for a religious service and feast. As well as overseeing the rituals and ceremonies associated with ploughing, they would also register apprentices, and act as a self-help friendly society.



I took this photo at the end of autumn last year (the soil is so rich in the county that you can get at least two crops a year). Farmers are famously taciturn, and are impossible to “interview” in any formal way. You have to get to know them really well and then ask your questions in a very conversational and understated way. Often however, I have managed to get them into an almost mystical mood when talking about the land, especially the uncovering of the earth during ploughing. The consistency and texture of the soil would be noticed, and the appearance of earth worms etc. The medieval poem The Vision of Piers Plowman is an indication of the sacred link that formerly existed between “earth” and heaven.

More on the Vision of Piers Plowman: http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/langland.html