Mythology

13 humour of the day, although possibly in the earlier days of the Church such festivities were not so pronounced. Still, they could never have been entirely absent, for Brand informs us that the luxury and intemperance which prevailed were vestiges of the Roman Carnival. The modern pancake, translated from the history of the past, seems to suggest the old saying, Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. TOSSING THE PANCAKE. The custom of tossing the pancake on Shrove Tuesday is still kept up at Westminster School. It is interesting to compare the difference in details between the celebration in 1790 and 1910. Thus a writer in The Gentleman s Magazine 1790 says: The under clerk in the College enters the school, and, preceded by the beadle and other officers, throws a large pancake over the bar which divides the upper from the under school. A gentleman, who was formerly one of the masters of that school, confirmed the ancedote to me, with this alteration, that the cook of the seminary brought it into the school, and threw it over the curtain which separated the forms of the upper from those of the under scholars. I have heard of a similar custom at Eton school. In Sir Benjamin Stone s Pictures of National Life and History we read: The ceremony on Shrove Tuesday, though it has been modified slightly from time to time, has remained substantially unaltered for centuries. In the morning one of the vergers from the Abbey, bearing a silver mace, conducts the cook, who carries the pancake in a frying pan, into the great hall where all the boys are assembled. When the room was divided by a curtain, this was then drawn aside, and the cook threw the pancake over the bar towards the door, whereupon all the boys scrambled for it. Of late years only a few one representing each form chosen by the scholars themselves have taken part in the scramble. Going forward, the cook hurls the pancake aloft in the direction of the bar. If it goes clean over, the selected boys make a wild rush for it in an endeavour to catch it whole, and usually failing, then struggle for it on the floor. The one who secures it, or the biggest portion, is entitled to a guinea. The scrimmage is known as the greeze. To all appearance there is no great difference in the ceremony as contrasted with that of 1790, but the advent of an Abbey functionary is somewhat peculiar. The Eton custom is thus referred to by Sir Henry Ellis: The manuscript in the British Museum, Status Scholae Etonensis, A.D. 1560, mentions a custom of that school on Shrove Tuesday, of the boys being allowed to play from eight o clock for the whole day; and of the cook s coming in and fastening a pancake to a crow, which the young crows are calling upon, near it, at the school door. Die Martis Carnis-privii luditur ad horam octavam in totum diem: venit Coquus, affigit laganum Cornici, juxta illud pullis Corvorum invocantibus eum, ad ostium scholae. The crows generally have hatched their young at this season. A modern writer claims that pancakes as a food were first made in Catholic days to use up the eggs and lard that were interdicted during Lent; and because pancakes were an excellent stay to the appetite while the faithful had to wait long hours in church to be shrived by the priest in the confessional. Food made from stale eggs and interdicted lard was no doubt of a quality more useful for sport than digestion, but we shall have to look elsewhere for the origin of the throwing. Is it not to be found in the other sports which marked the old-time Pancake Tuesday? the cock-throwing, the chasing, the general horse play? Here is a picture of the festivities over 170 years ago:

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