But Were Afraid To Ask:Carnival is from the Latin carnivale, loosely translated as “Farewell to flesh”. It dates back to ancient Egypt and later spread to Greece, Rome, France, and England.
Mardi Gras, which is French for “Fat Tuesday”, ends at midnight on the last day of the carnival season. This is 40 days before Easter, which is the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the beginning of spring. Therefore it changes every year.
The French brought a form of Mardi Gras to Mobile on March 3, 1699. In 1711, a carnival parade called “Boeuf Gras”, a fatted bull symbolic of the last meat eaten before the Lenten Feast, was paraded through the streets. Once a live version, now it's made of paper mache.
In 1780, the Spanish brought “Flambeaux.”, a parade of lighted torches. This was being done at the same time the French were celebrating “Boeuf Gras”, and this is where the idea of Mardi Gras was derived.
In 1830, on New Years Eve, a group of young men were celebrating by visiting the steamboats up and down the Mobile river front. They would stop and drink with all the Captains of the boats. That night, while going home, they passed a hardware store. They saw rakes, hoes, shovels, and cow bells. The young men went in and grabbed these items and proceeded through town shaking the tools and ringing the bells. This continued every year, and after two or three years they decided to give themselves a name. They came up with the name “Cowbellion de Rakins Society.” Michael Krafft was the founder of what was the first Mardi Gras Society and Parade.
The Cowbellions refused to take in new members. This made the other young men of Mobile angry, so they formed their own Society and called themselves the “Independent Strikers Society.” This name came from the local cotton brokers' business. That’s the type work these young men did, “Striking Cotton.”
In 1857, members of the Cowbellions and Strikers went to New Orleans to help them form their first Society and Parade. They took floats and costumes to loan the New Orleanians and called their group the “Comus Society.”
Along came the Civil War and ended all Mardi Gras activities. At the conclusion of the war, the Union occupied Mobile. In 1866, Joseph Stillwool Cain, “Joe Cain”, realized that since the South lost the war Mobilians were sad and needed something to cheer them up. He would revive Mardi Gras. He dressed as a Chickasaw Indian Chief named Slacabamorinico, or “Old Slac.” The reason this outfit was chosen was because the Chickasaw Indians had never been defeated in battle. He and six buddies paraded through Mobile in a wagon on Mardi Gras Day, taunting the Union Soldiers, bringing Mobilians from their homes into the streets for the first time since the beginning of the war, therefore starting the tradition of Mardi Gras once again.
Every year there is a Joe Cain parade on Fat Tuesday in Mobile. At the conclusion of the parade a group of women known as Joe Cain's Widows gather at his gravesite, wailing and moaning, in an attempt to "Raise Cain".
http://www.thepharaohs.org/mardi_gras
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
