This is the funeral day of Saint Martin of Tours. The feast was widely seen as the preferred time for the butchering of “Martinmas beef” from prime, fattened cattle. geese, other livestock and the ending of the the toil of autumn wheat seeding. Hiring fair were more abundant that usual, where farm labourers could choose, or others had, to seek new posts. Saint Martin of Tours himself was a Roman soldier who was baptised as an adult and became a bishop in a French town. The most notable of his saintly acts was he had cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save him from the cold as then that night, he dreamt of Jesus, wearing the half-cloak and saying to the angels “here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is now baptised; he has clothed me” He died on 8th November 397, and was buried three days later.
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