Ploo Stots

PLOO STOTS (stot: a staggering, clumsy person), plough stots, farm servants, having patched dresses and ribbon ends on hats and clothes, a blowing cows’ horns, going round begging on Plough Monday (the first after Twelfth Night), with a plough-frame steered by the last married man, the two youngest lads being drivers, two of the eldest being the beggars, and the rest taking place of horses. The practice is almost gone out now, though one party, without plough, came into Wakefield in 1865, but on the wrong Monday – namely, a week too soon.

William Stott Banks, 1865, quoted in Richard Bell’s illustrated ‘Wakefield Words’, 2011

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