[643] Cf. "As You Like It" (i. 2). Touchstone alludes to a "certain knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes."
It was a holiday and a day of license for apprentices, laboring persons, and others.[644]
[644] See Hone's "Every Day Book," 1836, vol. i. p. 258; "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 239; see, also, Dekker's "Seven Deadly Sins," 1606, p. 35; "British Popular Customs," pp. 62-91.
_Lent._ This season was at one time marked by a custom now fallen into disuse. A figure, made up of straw and cast-off clothes, was drawn or carried through the streets amid much noise and merriment; after which it was either burned, shot at, or thrown down a chimney. This image was called a "Jack-a-Lent," and was, according to some, intended to represent Judas Iscariot. It occurs twice in the "Merry Wives of Windsor;" once merely as a jocular appellation (iii. 3), where Mrs. Page says to Robin, "You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?" and once (v. 5) as a butt, or object of satire and attack, Falstaff remarking, "How wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill employment!" It is alluded to by Ben Jonson in his "Tale of a Tub" (iv. 2):
"Thou cam'st but half a thing into the world, And wast made up of patches, parings, shreds; Thou, that when last thou wert put out of service, Travell'd to Hamstead Heath on an Ash Wednesday, Where thou didst stand six weeks the Jack of Lent, For boys to hurl three throws a penny at thee, To make thee a purse."
Elderton, in a ballad called "Lenton Stuff," in a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum, thus concludes his account of Lent:[645]
"When Jakke a' Lent comes justlynge in, With the hedpeece of a herynge, And saythe, repent yowe of yower syn, For shame, syrs, leve yowre swerynge: And to Palme Sonday doethe he ryde, With sprots and herryngs by his syde, And makes an end of Lenton tyde!"[646]
[645] "Notes and Queries," 1st series, vol. xii. p. 297.
[646] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 443; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. i. p. 101. Taylor, the Water-Poet, has a tract entitled "_Jack-a-Lent_, his Beginning and Entertainment, with the mad Prankes of Gentlemen-Usher, Shrove Tuesday."
In the reign of Elizabeth butchers were strictly enjoined not to sell fleshmeat in Lent, not with a religious view, but for the double purpose[647] of diminishing the consumption of fleshmeat during that period, and so making it more plentiful during the rest of the year, and of encouraging the fisheries and augmenting the number of seamen. Butchers, however, who had an interest at court frequently obtained a dispensation to kill a certain number of beasts a week during Lent; of which indulgence the wants of invalids, who could not subsist without animal food, was made the pretence. It is to this practice that Cade refers in "2 Henry VI." (iv. 3), where he tells Dick, the butcher of Ashford: "Therefore, thus will I reward thee,--the Lent shall be as long again as it is; and thou shalt have a license to kill for a hundred lacking one."