L, luis, the mountain ash in the Ogham. Confers ... - Rodney Mackay

woman, to day an impetuous or fiery-tempered woman. This
was a moveable feast originally called Fastern's (fasting)
Tuesday, but now Shrove Tuesday. In Scotland this was the
day of the Fastyn, Feisty or Fitless Cock. This holiday,
following Ash Wednesday by one week, usually came in
March. In the eighteenth century, cock-fights were held in
the parish schools and the day was sometimes called Fastyn
Cock, the Feisty Cock, or Fitless Cock Day.
An antique dish, bearing the same name, used to be
put together using onions, suet, oatmeal, and seasoning,
bound with egg and moulded in the form of a fowl, and was
eaten during this day. In its earliest form, the Feisty Cock,
which was called the Dry Goose in the south, was composed
of a handful of meal, close pressed, dipped in water and
roasted in the ashes at the edge of the sacrificial fire. We
suspect that the use of the day as the commencement for
Lent was an attempt to suppress pagan rites, notably that
having to do with carrying off winter or sacrificing death.
In Scotland, the daft days were said to belong to the Winter
Hag and it was her spirit which was burned, either
figuratively or in a human representative, at the Night of
the Bane. Elsewhere in Europe, this "carnival" occupied the
Lenten season, the fourth Sunday in Lent having once been
called the Dead Sunday. The British activities, which
centred on Fastern, probably came with the Anglo-Saxons
from southern Germany. In one province, two men
impersonating summer and winter used to travel from
house-to-house on this day. Summer was clad in white and
carried a sickle, while his companion had a fur cap on his
head, arms and legs swathed in straw, and carried a flail.
At every house, these visitors sang alternate verses of an
old ballad. Elsewhere this was called Ruprecht's Day, which
terminated with the burning of a straw man dressed after
the fashion of Father Winter or Father Christmas. In this
ceremony, called "the burying of Death", villagers snatched
blazing fragments of the straw-man which they fastened to
the highest tree in their garden believing this would make
the crops grow more effectively. At Coben, this effigy was
put on trial for all thefts committed during the year.