Spanish Sunday

A local name for Palm Sunday, after a special drink made on the day by children in the Midlands and parts of Yorkshire until about the 1920s. They took broken pieces of Spanish liquorice, lemon, or peppermint, mixed it with brown sugar and water from a local well (after solemnly walking round it) and shook it vigorously (Hole, 1975: 36-7). Similar customs, with different names, existed elsewhere. ‘Sugar Cupping’, near Tideswell in Derbyshire, involved mixing sugar and water from a spring at Dropping Tar (reported in 1831). Elsewhere in Derbyshire, ‘rinsing’ meant mixing well water with broken sweetmeats on Easter Sunday and Monday. At Castleton and Bradwell, Easter Monday was called ‘Shakking Monday’. Children filled bottles with well water and pieces of special coloured peppermint (reported 1907) (Wright and Lones, 1936: i. 100-1, 112).