Care Sunday Lyrics
A two-line reminder of where we are in the weeks before Easter, with a second rhyme from Nottinghamshire that names each Sunday of the run-up to Easter.
Care Sunday
Care Sunday, care away,
Palm Sunday and Easter-day.
Tid, Mid, Misera,
Carling, Palm, Paste-egg day.
More verses from the original
Care Sunday, care away,
Palm Sunday and Easter-day.
Tid, Mid, Misera,
Carling, Palm, Paste-egg day.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/care-sunday/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Spoken or chanted
- Best for ages
- 5 to 10 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| Care Sunday, care away | Wave your hands as though shooing a worry away. |
| Palm Sunday and Easter-day | Hold up two fingers, then three, counting the next stops. |
What Does Care Sunday Mean?
This is a counting-the-calendar rhyme. Care Sunday is the fifth Sunday of Lent, the Sunday before Palm Sunday, and the second before Easter. The first line plays with the word care: it sounds like a wish for worries to go away, and it also names the day. After it come Palm Sunday and then Easter-day, so the rhyme works as a quick map of the next two weeks.
The second pair of lines, from Nottinghamshire, lists the days in the same way and uses names that few people know today: Tid, Mid, Misera, Carling, Palm, Paste-egg. Each is the name of a Sunday in the run-up to Easter, ending with "Paste-egg day", which is Easter, the day for dyed eggs.
History and Origin
James Orchard Halliwell prints both couplets in Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales (1849). He explains that Care-Sunday is the Sabbath next before Palm Sunday and the second before Easter, and that it was also called Carling-Sunday, which is where the Nottinghamshire couplet comes from. He adds that experts disagreed about where the name Care came from.
The rhymes are a good example of how people used verse as a memory aid when most households had no printed calendar. They are still a good way to teach the order of the Sundays.
Learning Activities
- Calendar chart: draw a row of Sundays leading to Easter and label them with these names.
- Egg dyeing: dye eggs with onion skins or beetroot, a paste-egg custom.
- Chant it: clap the two beats of each line and say the rhymes together.