Bean’s Bread, Pease Loaf, And Lammastide.

Illustration: MEDIEVAL HISTORIES

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Lammastide means the time has come for "hlafmaesse",

or "Loaf-Mass", the ancient offering to God

of The First Bread of The Season.

What went before was a meagre time.

Hunger in haste then

seized Waste by the maw

And wrung him so by the belly

that both his eyes watered;

The Breton he buffeted

about the cheeks

That he looked lantern-jawed

all his life after.

He beat them so both

that he near burst their ribs;

Had not Piers with a Pease-Loaf

Prayed Hunger to cease

They had been buried both

believe thou none other !

`Suffer them to live,’ he said

let them eat with the hogs

Or else beans and bran

baked up together,

Or else milk and mean ale’

thus Prayed Piers for them.

Loungers for fear thereof

fled into barns

And flapped on with flails

from morning till eve,

So that Hunger less hardily

looked upon them,

For a potful of pease

that Piers had made.

 

(From Piers the Plowman,

Passus VI by William Langland

circa 1332 – circa 1400)

Labourer with a spade,

from Piers Plowman.

Source: Bodleian Library,

MSDouce 104, f 039r/wikipedia.

Illustration: MEDIEVAL HISTORIES

The following Text is from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia.

In some English-speaking Countries in The Northern Hemisphere, 1 August is Lammas Day (Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mas, "Loaf-Mass"), the Festival of The Wheat Harvest, and is the first Harvest Festival of the year. On this day, it was customary to bring to Church a loaf made from the new crop, which began to be harvested at Lammastide.

The loaf was Blessed, and in Anglo-Saxon England, it might be employed afterwards to work magic; a book of Anglo-Saxon charms directed that the "lammas bread" be broken into four bits, which were to be placed at the four corners of the barn, to protect the garnered grain.

In many parts of England, tenants were bound to present freshly-harvested wheat to their landlords on or before the first day of August. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is referred to regularly, it is called "The Feast of First Fruits". The Blessing of First Fruits was performed annually in both The Eastern and Western Churches on the first or the sixth of August (the latter being The Feast of The Transfiguration of Christ).

Lammas has coincided with The Feast of Saint Peter in Chains, Commemorating Saint Peter's miraculous deliverance from prison, but, in The Liturgical reform of 1969, The Feast of Saint Alphonsus Liguori was Transferred to this day, the day of Saint Alphonsus' death.