Plough Monday, the first Monday after Epiphany, marked the time when agricultural labourers would return to work after Christmas and begin to plough the fields, to make them ready for sowing. In England on this day a plough would be decorated and paraded through the towns or villages, and money collected for the parish. In East Anglia the plough was accompanied by mummers and Molly Dancers (local farm labourers dressed in black with faces covered in soot) who would dance for money or plough up the gardens of those who refused to pay up.
Before the arrival of tractors – when wooden and, later, iron ploughs were pulled by oxen or horses – a plough would be kept in the local church during the ploughing season, and could be borrowed by those villagers who could not afford their own. On Plough Monday candles were lit and kept burning as long as ploughing continued, in order to bring the Lord’s blessing on the hard work of those who ploughed the fields. In most rural towns and villages on Plough Monday, a decorated plough would be processed led by an old woman (or boy dressed up as an old woman) known as ‘Bessy’, and money would be collected.
