Common Ground

M A R C H

This page will change from month to month - perhaps you can help us with information on seasonal fruit and vegetables, seasonal dishes, observations of customs and the natural world. Contact us - e-mail: info [at] commonground . org . uk.

Bellicose March

Mars takes its name from Mars, the Roman God of War. It was the first month of the Roman year - the time when battle could start again. Perhaps its capricious and sometimes turbulent weather also suggested the influence of the warrior god?

What's happening in March?
What's in Season?

What's happening in March?

- indicates an extract from England In Particular

Mothering Sunday (fourth Sunday in Lent). BAKE A CAKE!
Originally refers to the time when honour had to be paid to the Mother of the Gods, which evolved into the Christian custom of people returning to the parish of their birth to pray in their Mother Church. More recently it became a holiday for apprentices and servants so they could visit their mothers and take them gifts of Simnel cakes and posies of violets and primroses collected on the journey. Now it is regarded as a moment for spending time with our own mothers.

Carling Sunday
"On the Sunday before Mother’s Day it is the custom to eat a type of pea called a Carling (normally these are pigeon food). The peas are soaked overnight and brought to the boil and simmered with bacon for at least one hour. Some pubs and clubs still supply the food free on that day." Allan Graham, Carlisle, Cumbria, 2002.

Mothering Sunday is 2nd March in 2008, but in the North-East, Carling Sunday is traditionally the fifth Sunday in Lent, so a week later than Mothering Sunday "The first Sunday in Lent has no name but the other six are designated by the following couplet: ‘Tid, Mid, Miseray / Carling, Palm and Paste Egg Day’ - Tid, Mid, and Miseray have been named from the beginning of Psalms and Hymns, viz., Te Deum, Mi Deus and Misereri mei. The origin of eating fried peas or carlings on the fifth Sunday in Lent or, as it is known in Bishop Auckland, Carling Sunday, seems to be wrapped in complete obscurity but local tradition, however, gives a possible origin to this old and still prevailing custom. A famine was raging in Newcastle and a ship laden with food foundered on the north east coast, losing its cargo of peas. This was washed up and greatly appreciated by the communities, so the custom was perpetuated in commemoration of that event. The carlings are soaked overnight in water, boiled well then fried in butter and served with vinegar and bread and butter." (from the Bishop Auckland Discovery Centre web-site, link below).

To add to the confusion, Carling Sunday was once synonymous with Passion Sunday, which the Christian church has combined with Palm Sunday since the 1970s, with the result that Carling Sunday is regarded as being the sixth Sunday in Lent.
Bishop Auckland Discovery Centre : www.communigate.co.uk/ne/thediscoverycentre

Vernal / Spring Equinoxes
The Vernal equinox on 20th March at 05.48 GMT (times from the National Maritime Museum), is the moment when the sun crosses the equator and the North Pole sees the sun for the first time in six months. This has long marked the formal start of spring (though the Met Office and others insist on March 1st). On the following day, the centre of the sun spends equal amounts of time above and below the equator, some call this the Spring equinox (for others, vernal and spring are synonymous, and their locating on 20th or 21st - or as early as the 19th - a matter of conjecture); equinox is from the Latin for 'equal' and 'night'.
National Maritime Museum : http://www.nmm.ac.uk

Good Friday

Uppies and Downies, 6pm at the Cloffocks.
This is an anarchic mass participation football game, played at Workington in Cumberland. As the local paper, the Times and Star puts it: "The Workington Uppies and Downies game is unique, in that it has survived without organisation or rules." There are three games, the first on Good Friday then two more, one on the following Tuesday and one on Easter Saturday; a 'best of three' result dictates the winning end of town (if there is much left of it).
www.uppiesanddownies.info

Egg Rolling
Paint a hard-boiled egg and enter the annual egg-rolling competitions at Shotover Park, Headington, Oxford, 10.30am-1.00pm. For further details contact Park Ranger, +44(0)1865 715830.

 

Easter Saturday

Coconut Day
The Britannia Coco-nut Dancers, eight white-skirted male dancers with blackened faces, set off at 9am from the Travellers Rest pub near Bacup (Lancs) and end up at the Glen at 8pm. This tradition - said to have originated from Cornish miners seeking work in the North and bringing with them Moorish or sailor's dances - was once widespread in Rossendale, but is now unique to Bacup. The first of the town's annual appearances by the Bacup Nutters was in 1857.
www.coconutters.co.uk

Holi
The Hindu Festival of Colours that marks the coming of Spring, celebrated with much merriment and a riot of colour with participants smearing paint on each other and throwing clouds of brightly coloured powder.

 

Easter Day
"Eostre, goddess of dawn and spring, gave her name to Easter. Although we seem to know little about her, she was clearly an important pagan deity. Tied to the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox, this 'moveable feast' falls between 21 March and 25 April. It is one of the most important festivals in the Christian calendar.

The common practice of giving Easter eggs may seem a recent commercial enterprise, but in many parts of the world eggs have been used in spring to celebrate the continuity of life for thousands of years. Early Christians adopted them to symbolise Christ's resurrection."
(From 'Easter Customs', p.143)

See our calendar customs pages for some of the many traditional events which take place over the easter period.

Easter Monday
Eggs are the sign of fertility and thus the spring season. Chickens are begging to lay again … they have their seasons too.

"Pre-dating the introduction of chocolate eggs in the mid-1800s, chicken, duck and goose eggs are still hard-boiled and painted or dyed using vegetable dyes, such as onion skins, gorse, spinach leaves and the petals of the pasque flower. in Lancashire and elsewhere children with blackened faces, coats turned inside out and decked with ribbons, would beg for eggs, or money to buy them, by singing pace-egging songs. The decorated eggs would be put on display on windowsills until egg-rolling time."
(From 'Easter Customs', p.143)

Paste or Pace egging
"Paste (Pasch/Pasque means Easter in Scots/French) or pace egging, the rolling of eggs down a steep slope, is mysterious. It was probably a solar right, a rite of spring or a custom associated with divination. Eventually the sport accrued the Christian explanation of symbolising the rolling away of the stone from Christ's tomb."
(From 'Easter Customs', p.143)

Lancashire has its own Pace Egg Plays, mumming plays which are performed, notably in the Furness area, over the Easter period. Read more on our calendar customs pages. Usually, on Good Friday, Midgley Pace-Egg Play visits Heptonstall, Midgley & Hebden Bridge, W.Yorkshire (for information contact David Burnop, +44 (0) 161 877944 day or +44 (0) 1422 846277 eve). On Easter Sunday and Monday, Furness Morris Men perform the Pasche-egg-play - a composite of plays collected from the Furness Villages in Cumbria, performed by the Furness Morris Men in the villages at Easter. They perform in Broughton, Coniston, Elterwater, Hawkeshead and Near Sawrey on Easter Saturday and at the Market Cross, Ulverston, in Baycliff, Broughton, Cartmel and (again) Ulverston on Easter Monday. Contact Bruce Wilson, Furness Morris Men +44 (0)1229 582969 or the Town office +44(0)1229 588499. These events are arranged and promoted locally; times & places may change - do check that they are taking place before you travel.

Bottle Kicking and Hare Pie Scramble, Hallaton, Leics
Another Easter Monday custom, beginning with the Scramble (the villages process to Hare Pie Bank and fight for bits of a pie - now more often a beef one rather than hare) and followed by a riotous football match between Hallaton and neighbouring Medbourne, attempting to kick small beer casks ("bottles") over their village's boundaries.

"Although the origins of the hare pie scramble and bottle-kicking are unknown, the rector of Hallaton has paid for the making of two hare pies and provision of ales and penny loaves for the Easter Monday celebrations since 1771 - a condition imposed with the gift of a piece of land."
(From 'Hare Pie Scramble', p.217)

Contact chairman Phil Allan on allanaccess [at] aol . com . Do check that this event is taking place before you travel.

The Boat Race, 5.15pm.
The light and dark blues do battle in the 154th university boat race along the four and a quarter mile stretch of the Thames from Putney to Mortlake.
www.theboatrace.org

British Summertime begins
Put your clocks forward one hour at 1am on the last Sunday in March.

What's in SEASON?

Fruit & Vegetables
Jerusalem artichokes, beetroot, purple sprouting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, spring greens, carrots, winter cauliflower, chard, chicory, endive, kale, leeks, parsnips, seakale, (celariac, swede, turnips, garlic, onions, potatoes, apples, pears in store). Field -grown rhubarb available later in the month.

Some herbs such as parsley and sorrel are available, and young, tender nettles can be picked from the hedgerows to be eaten as spinach or in soups. Winter cauliflowers from Cornwall will be ending this month, as will purple sprouting broccoli.

March is Veggie Month, organised by Animal Aid, its annual promotion of vegetarianism. "If you really care about animals, the best way you can help is to stop eating them!"
www.animalaid.org.uk

Signs of Spring

The nesting season for birds has begun in earnest. Hedgehogs will be coming out of hibernation. Their populations seem to be declining fast, and need all the slugs they can find, so don’t put down slug pellets (or similar) as they can kill them. If you wish to give them additional food, try non-fish cat/dog food, but not bread and milk as it gives them diarrhoea.

Most toads will have started spawning by now (but take care when you turn your compost heap as they like to hibernate in them), their eggs are laid in long strings as opposed to the great gelatinous cauliflower-like clumps that frogs produce. Herons lay their eggs early so that their young can benefit from the accumulation of single-minded, amorous frogs that are gathering in their ancestral and garden ponds.

Look out for the first spring flowers – wood anemone / wind flower, celandines, primroses, violets dog’s mercury, cuckoo flowers…

March hares
Watch out for ‘boxing’ hares, a sure sign of their mating season. This often indicates that a doe isn’t ready for the buck’s advances.

Daffodils
Their Gloucestershire name ‘Lent lilies’ indicates their moment. There are many organised walks to see wild daffodils in fields and woods. The Wildlife Trusts organise walks by the River Teign in Devon, in the Dove Valley in North Yorkshire, and many more. In the Lake District, Glencoyne Bay the daffodils are conserved as a ‘historic feature of Ullswater' by the National Trust. (see March in Particular for more information).

Blossom Trail
The Blossom trail in the Vale of Evesham is well worth a visit. Fruit trees, especially if grown in the traditional way with tall, well-spaced standard trees, are beautiful at all times of the year, but especially so in the spring. Why aren’t they planted more widely in, way, town and country parks and gardens? For more information contact Angela Tidmarsh at Wychavon District Council +44(0)1386 565373 or Evesham TIC +44(0)1386 446944.

Skylarks
Skylarks start to sing their liquid songs as early as late January. Mark Cocker writes in "Birds Britannica" "Skylarks have inspired a huge cultural legacy and in the realm of poetry only one or two species have generated the same historical depth and volume of reference."

Skylark

Suddenly above the fields you’re pouring
Pure joy in a shower of bubbles,
Lacing the spring with the blue thread of summer.
You’re the warmth of the sun in a song.

You’re the light spun to a fine filament;
Sun on a spider-thread –
That delicate.

You’re the lift and balance the soul feels,
The terrible, tremulous, uncertain thrill of it –
You’re all the music the heart needs,
Full of its sudden fall, silent fields."

Katrina Porteous
From: The Lost Music, Bloodaxe Books, 1996.

This poem is available as a postcard from Common Ground (see the image at top of this page) - look at our MARKET PLACE for more information.

Bumble bees
Queen bumblebees (already mated) come out of hibernation in early spring (although some species are increasingly active all winter now) and feed on early flowers such as dandelions before searching for nesting place - old mouse nests in sunny banks are favourite spots.

Of the 21 species of bumble bees, 6 regularly visit gardens. These important pollinators are declining, mainly due to the intensification of farming resulting in loss of habitat and wild flowers on which to feed. Gardeners can help by growing wild flowers such as comfrey, red clover, white dead nettles, buttercups and foxgloves, and garden plants like lavender, catmint, sage, rosemary and lupins. We can also leave areas garden to become wild where thistles and dandelions thrive and log piles are left. Buy or make nesting boxes for bumble and other kinds of bees.

‘A Field Guide to Bumblebees of Great Britain and Ireland’ by Mike Edwards & Martin Jenner, published by Ocelli. Available at £9.99 + £1.25 p&p. www . ocelli . co . uk

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Notes

Birds Britannica by Mark Cocker & Richard Mabey, Chatto & Windus, 2005 at £35.00 and worth every penny. See also: Stewart Beer’s anthology of poetry, ‘An Exaltation of Skylarks, published in 1995 by SMH Books.