Note 20 — March 1.] SIMNEL SUNDAY.
Reading edition
Alderman Wilkinson of Burnley, a well known able Lancashire antiquary, some time since stated that it “originally meant the very finest bread. Pain demain is another term for it, on account of its having been used as Sunday bread.”
In Wright’s Vocabularies it appears thus:—‘Hic artæcopus, a symnylle.’ This form was in use during the fifteenth century.
In the Dictionarius of John de Garlande, compiled at Paris in the thirteenth century, it appears thus:—“Simeneus = placentæ = simnels.” Such cakes were signed with the figure of Christ, or of the Virgin.