Folk Songs

Notes

When the singer (b. 1899) was a boy in the Sarn area this rhyme was chanted at the doors by local children on Shrove Tuesday (a moveable festival which falls between approximately the first week of February and the second week of March).

Shrove Tuesday, immediately preceding Lent (and known in both Wales and England as 'Pancake Day'), was traditionally the day for eating pancakes and children would go around to collect them, or the flour and fat for making them. The latter ritual survived in parts of north Wales (particularly Anglesey and Caernarvonshire, it would seem) into the present century, but is now extinct. It was equally well–known outside of Wales: England, for example, had its 'shroving'. Cf. 'Cân y Grempog' with the following rhyme formerly sung on Shrove Tuesday by the children of Sunningwell, Berkshire:

'Pitt a patt, a pan's hott
l am come to scroving (shroving)
Lard's scarce and flour's dear
I cannot sing no longer,
My throat is so dry'

(A. R. Wright and T. E. Lones, British Calendar Customs: England, i, 16).

Upon the custom in Wales see WFC, 72–5. Cf. the text and tune of the Sarn example with those given in JWFSS, iii; 25–7.