Country Life
PLOUGH MONDAY.
A rather unhappy symbol of the transition in agriculture may be found in the final extinction—at least in some Midland parishes—of the ritual of Plough Monday. This old and picturesque country festival, celebrating the return to work on the land afier the Christmas holiday and Twelfth Night celebrations/had degenerated into a rather unlovely begging function. A small group of rural youth, with blackened faces, came round with money-box tins. These they shook relentlessly with a dreary recitative of " half-penny or a penny ;, penny or a half-penny." This year even that purely economic ceremony is omitted, and the date is likely 'to be wholly forgotten. It has fallen clean out of the country calendar, as the more picturesque part, the procession with 'the plough, fell out long ago. Yet, though the plough itself is used less and less on English lands, the date keeps its importance. In the sugar-beet industry the " hundred days campaign " that covers the harvesting of the crop and its conversion into sugar, is completed ; and the fields become ready for the plough whenever the weather is suitable.
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