Plough Monday

[6] Though mostly associated with the East of England, Plough Monday celebrations are also known elsewhere in the country, for instance in Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Cornwall.

[8] In the fifteenth century, churches lit candles called "plough lights" to bless farmworkers.

[11] William Hone made use of Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Including the Whole of Mr. Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares (1777) by the antiquary John Brand.

Brand's work (with additions by Henry Ellis) mentions a northern English Plough Monday custom also observed in the beginning of Lent.

[12] The FOOL PLOUGH goes about: a pageant consisting of a number of sword dancers dragging a plough, with music; one, sometimes two, in very strange attire; the Bessy, in the grotesque habit of an old woman, and the Fool, almost covered with skins, a hairy cap on, and the tail of some animal hanging from his back.

The advent of mechanised farming meant that agricultural workers were less numerous and relatively better paid, and thus did not have to beg for money in the winter.

[16] Subsequently, the Cambridge Morris Men revived the practice of Plough Monday molly dancing in 1977.

Plough Monday, from George Walker's The Costume of Yorkshire , 1814
A plough being pulled through the streets of Whittlesey as part of the Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival procession. Ploughs were traditionally taken around by Plough Monday mummers and molly dancers in parts of Eastern England and in some places were used as a threat: if householders refused to donate to the participants their front path would be ploughed up. [ 5 ]
Whittlesey Straw Bear