Monday

Monday (in O.E. Monandaeg, the moon's day, a translation of the Late Lat. Lunae dies, from which the French lundi is taken), the second day of the week (see Calendar). The day has been humorously canonized as St Monday, the festival of cobblers, who seldom work on Mondays, and were supposed not to know exactly on which day St Crispin's (their patron saint) festival fell, save that it should be a Monday, and thus celebrated each Monday in the year as a holiday so as to be certain to honour the day. In some parts of Yorkshire any holiday is called Cobblers' Monday. Collop Monday, in the north of England, is the Monday before Shrove Tuesday, so called in allusion to the dish of fried eggs and bacon, and slices of salted, dried meat, called collops, taken on that day preparatory to the Lenten fast. Plough Monday in England is the Monday after Twelfth Day, the first Monday after Epiphany, in allusion to the fact that in medieval times the ploughmen had their fete-day and went around the villages begging ploughmoney. The lord mayor of London holds a Grand Court of Wardmote at the Guildhall on Plough Monday of each year, to receive returns from the wards of the election of common councilmen and to hear petitions against such returns.