The merry foods of Michaelmas — SECONDS

Merry Michalmas, ya filthy animal.

What’s Michaelmas?

If you don’t know what Michaelmas is, it’s the Christian feast of St Michael and All Angels. While it’s declined in importance in modern times, Michaelmas was a pretty big deal back in the day.

Michaelmas was one of the four quarter days of the medieval financial year, when servants were hired and rents were due. It was said that the harvest should be completed by this date as it marked the turning of the seasons. It’s worth noting that Old Michaelmas Day fell on the 10th or 11th of October, but moved to the 29th September when England changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.

Who’s St Michael anyway?

St Michael is the leader of the heavenly armies and it was he who kicked Satan out of Heaven - in way he’s God’s celestial bouncer. Alongside this, he’s the Christian psychopomp, carrying the souls of the dead to Heaven. On arrival at the pearly gates, it’s Michael who holds the scales of divine justice, weighing souls to decide whether they go to Heaven or hell.

With his important duties, Michael is the most important of the three archangels - the other two being Gabriel and Raphael - and was the most popular in medieval England and Wales. In fact, it’s been suggested he was among the most popular saints, second only to St Peter and the Virgin Mary.

But we’re not concerned with any of that. We’re here for the food.

Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB, KA 16, Folio 76r Source: The Medieval Bestiary

Duck, duck... Michaelmas goose!

There’s one food above all others that’s associated with Michaelmas - the goose.

On the Michaelmas of 1588, according to one legend, Elizabeth I was chowing down on some roast goose, one her favourite meals, when she was brought news of England’s victory over the Spanish Armada. Ecstatic at what she heard, the Queen decreed that goose should be eaten on the holiday every year.

As nice as this story is, it’s unlikely the tradition of eating goose at Michaelmas originated here. Some suggest the custom traces its roots to the ancient Celtic rite where of sacrificing a fowl to increase the fertility of next year’s crops. Another theory maintains that, as the day marked the time rent had to be paid, tenants would offer a well-fed goose to their landlord in the hopes he would be more lenient about payment.

“He who eats goose on Michaelmas day,
shan’t money lack or debts to pay.”

Regardless of where the tradition started, eating goose on Michaelmas was so prevalent it came to be known as Goose Day, and was also considered financially lucky. As the old English rhyme explains: ‘He who eats goose on Michaelmas day / shan’t money lack or debts to pay.’

In wealthier families, eating a goose at this time of year was a kind of quality test for the meat that would be eaten during winter. Housewives and cooks would use the opportunity to work on their recipes for Christmas, when geese were roasted or added to pies.

The word ‘gossamer’ (a fine, filmy substance consisting of cobwebs spun by small spiders, seen especially in autumn) comes from the Middle English word ‘goose-summer’ because so many geese were plucked around Michaelmas that the air hung heavy with their feathers.

Thorny Devil: Satan and the blackberry

From at least the mid-1700s, it was widely believed in England that after Satan was thrown out of Heaven by St Michael, he landed in a thorny blackberry bush. Annoyed, and probably a little bruised, he cursed and spat on the bush. (In more graphic versions of the tale, ‘he defiles [the blackberries] in more earthy ways’, as one author puts it.) Due to this curse, the English were warned not to pick and eat blackberries after Michaelmas.

From a scientific perspective, Old Michaelmas Day fell late in the blackberry season when bitter tannins would have accumulated in the berry, so it makes sense people would have stopped eating them around this time, as the delicious fruit unexpectedly turned bitter.

In Galloway, Scotland during the 1820s, children were warned that if they failed to follow this rule, ‘worms will eat their ingangs’. (‘Ingangs’ means entrance way and so probably refers to their mouths and insides. Lovely.)

Crack Nut Sunday

A strange Michaelmas tradition was found in Kingston-upon-Thames up until the early 19th century. In the local church, nuts would be cracked during the Sunday service before St Michael’s Day. All ages indulged in the practice, and according to one contemporary, ‘the cracking noise was often so powerful, that the minister was obliged to suspend his reading, or discourse, until greater quietness was obtained.’ This tradition came to be known as Crack Nut Sunday.

No solid explanation has been given for this practice. It might have had something to do with the election of the local bailiffs, which would have happened around this time. In other communities around this time, strange behaviours coincided with the elections of local officials, which came to be known as the ‘Lawless Hour’. Kidderminster, in Staffordshire, for example, saw respectable families fling apples at newly appointed constables. Some therefore suggest that Crack Nut Sunday grew out of the local ‘Lawless Hour’. Or maybe it’s just that this time was traditionally the beginning of the nutting season. Whatever the case, it’s nuts.

Do you carrot all?

In the Hebrides, Scotland, women and girls would go out to collect wild carrots, in what was known as ‘Carrot Sunday’. They would sing as they harvested the carrots, such as Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica: