Mothering Sunday
I wrote last year of Mothering Sunday, the antecedent to Mother’s Day. Mothering Day is Sunday 2 March 2008. Here is an excerpt from a recent email by the delightful Persephone Books:
‘Mothering Sunday? I never heard tell of that.’
Anna smiled at the intent look on his face.
‘”Those who go a-mothering find violets in the lane.” That’s a very old saying. I believe the custom dates from the days when the children went away to work at a terrible age, poor little things, especially the girls into service. On mid-Lent Sunday they visited their mothers and on the way picked her a bunch of violets and the mother made them a cake. The cake was half boiled and half baked and was called a simnel cake. You must remember simnel cakes, Mr Pickering; delicious they were, usually with little birds on them.’
–from Noel Streatfeild’s 1950 novel Mothering Sunday
There is a recipe for Simnel Cake in Florence White’s Good Things in England, Persephone Book No.10 Order three Persephone books this week by Friday 29 February and receive Good Things in England for free.