The opening of Preface
Before remarking on the work terminating with this volume, some notice should be taken of its Frontispiece.
I. The “Clog” or “Perpetual Almanack” having been in common use with our ancient ancestors, a representation and explanation of it seemed requisite among the various accounts of manners and customs related in the order of the calendar.
Of the word “clog,” there is no satisfactory etymology in the sense here used, which signifies an almanack made upon a square stick. Dr. Robert Plot, who published the “History of Staffordshire,” in 1686, instances a variety of these old almanacks then in use in that county. Some he calls “public,” because they were of a large size, and commonly hung at one end of the mantle-tree of the chimney; others he calls “private,” because they were smaller, and carried in the pocket. For the better understanding of the figures on these clogs, he caused a family clog “to be represented in plano, each angle of the square stick, with the moiety of each of the flat sides belonging to it, being expressed apart.” From this clog, so represented in Dr.