In the medieval world, spring/summer was full of hope, hard work, feasts, and festivals. These festivals would also carry on into the Autumn and Winter.
As supplies from the year before began to run out, spring’s hard labors would help to bring forth bountiful harvests in the months to come. Summer would also bring further harvests, as people began to celebrate their harvests with festivals! People would go on pilgrimages all over the country and abroad. Chaucer wrote in the prologue to The Canterbury Tales, “When April has penetrated March’s drought to the root with its sweet showers…people long to go on pilgrimages, and palmers long to visit foreign shores and distant shrines, famous all over the world.” Such journeys were dangerous, though there were harsh penalties inflicted on those who attacked pilgrims.
The medieval year was often split up into different festival periods abnd it was also a way of keeping up with the dates and which month it actually was (no such thing as clocks and paper calender’s in those days). The various labors of the year would help set out the year, expecally for labours.
A 15th century rhyme shows this:
January – By this fire I warm my hands,
February – And with my spade I delve my lands.
March – Here I set my things to spring,
April – And here I hear the birds sing.
May – I am light as a bird on bough,
June – And I weed my corn well enow.
July – With my scythe my mead I mow,
August – And here I shear my corn full low.
September – With my flail I earn my bread,
October – And here I sow my wheat so red.
November – At Martinmas I kill my swine,
December – And at Christmas I drink red wine.
This rhyme is a great example of how people would celebrate and look for tell tale signs of the changing weather. Rituals would play a large role in the calendar which each month having its own separate routine and positions of the moon.
Can you name a few things we carry out in certain months?
England's History 