[Anon.], ‘The Lancashire Wakes’, Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal (1842)

Wakes are merry-makings which occur annually in various parts of rural England, sometimes on Sunday, sometimes on one or several of the ordinary days of the week, and are much like fairs in Scotland, excepting that no business is transacted at them. Originally, they were religious festivals, appropriate in each case to the eve of the day of that saint to whom the parish church was dedicated; but they have long lost all trace of their pristine character, excepting their occurrence on the same day as in ancient times. The practice of gathering rushes, and conveying them in rustic pomp through the village, had a religious origin. In earlier times, the churches being as destitute of wood or stone floors as they were of pews, it was usual to strew them with rushes; and the providing of these, in the decline of the year, was regarded as a sacred duty.