Observations on Popular Antiquities Author:John Brand General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1877 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: ASH WEDNESDAY. THIS, which is the first day of Lent, is called Ash Wednesday (as we read in the Festa Anglo-Romana) from the ancient ceremony of blessing ashes on that day, and therewith the priest signeth the people on the forehead in the form of a cross, affording them withal this wholesome admonition: "Remember, man, thou art dust, and shalt return to dust." The ashes used this day in the Church of Rome are made of the palms consecrated the Sunday twelve months before ; or rather, the ashes which they use this day are made of the palms blessed the Palm Sunday before. In a Convocation held in the time of Henry VIII. mentioned in Fuller's Church History, "Giving of ashes on Ash Wednesday, to put in remembrance every Christian man in the beginning of Lent and Penance, that he is but ashes and earth, and thereto shall return,"« less