UK: Egg Saturday, Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day

I asked Anthony Smith, president of Magdalen College, Oxford, if Egg Saturday, once celebrated in Oxfordshire, is still observed. He replied: " It is surely the case that Egg Saturday (the Saturday before Shrove Tuesday) is no longer celebrated in Oxford, nor anywhere else so far as I know, is this day dedicated to the consumption of eggs. But Shrove Tuesday is of course still celebrated throughout the UK as Pancake Day. There are many villages which continue to hold Pancake Races and there are other surviving pre-Reformation rituals involving pancakes. These do, of course, contain those eggs, consumed for the last time prior to the commencement of Lent. Eggs represent creation, flour is the staff of life, while salt and milk represent, I am told, wholesomeness and purity. I suppose hens, ducks and geese can all find other uses for their eggs during the six weeks concerned. But I wonder whether there is also an echo here of another pre-Lenten festivity: Shrove Tuesday was once also the great annual day for cock-fighting".

RH: Now we have Shrove Tide, Shrove Monday, Shrove Tuesday, about which the OED says: "[Of obscure origin. The first element is undoubtedly related to SHRIVE and refers to the custom of being shriven in preparation for Lent. An OE. *scráf shriving, confession, f. scrífan to SHRIVE, would account phonologically for shrove-, but, if the form actually existed, the absence of evidence for this group of words until the 15th c. is remarkable. (Other early names for the season were FASTENS-EEN, FAST-GONG, FASTINGONG.)] The period comprising Quinquagesima Sunday and the two following days, ‘Shrove’ Monday and Tuesday". I shrive I am lost and confused. We must now ask the hens, ducks and geese what they do with their eggs during Lent. Quite a storage problem.

Ronald Hilton - 4/19/03