Tip Tip Toe

Shrove Tuesday Customs of the Southwest, music video, 04:45

As part of the Alan James Creative Bursary 2021-2022 supported by the English Folk Song & Dance Society

An exploration of the Ritual Folk Year of England, within an audiovisual context. Special thanks to Jacqueline Patten.

There are many variations of ‘Pancake Day’ festivities across the UK, springing from rituals & habits that would take place in the run up to Lent, traditionally a time of subdues fasting. This music incorporates elemenst of Lent Crocking & Shrove Saturday with nods to general Shrovetide customs, as still practised in South West England. It includes the rituals of Tip Toeing (Gittisham, Devon) & Egg Shackling (Shepton Beauchamp & Stoke St. Gregory, Somerset) as recorded by Cecil Sharp in the early 1900s, alongsid a setting of Flish, Flash! (noted by Sabine Baring Gould, 1916).

‘Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday’ audio, 1983, Mrs Louisa Norma, from the Bob & Jacqueline Patten Collection, with thanks to the British Library Sound Archive.