February 3 is the feast of Bishop Blaze, the patron saint of woolcombers — and for centuries any woman found using her distaff on that day did so under the threat of having it confiscated and burned. As early as 1222, the Synod of Oxford, held at Osney Abbey, not only pronounced that St George should be the patron saint of England, but also that all woolcombers should not work on St Blaze’s day — an edict which, in pre-industrial-revolution Oxfordshire, was soon translated as a meaning a holiday for every wool worker who could take the day off. And since wool was the area’s main product, that meant a huge proportion of the rural population.

Dr Plot, in his Natural History of Oxfordshire (1677), wrote: “When country women went about and made good cheer, and if they found any of their neighbour women a Spinning, set their Distaff on fire; that feast being celebrated on the third of February.”

I sometimes wonder how, during the Middle Ages, anyone ever found time to do anything much in the way of boring old work — so thick and fast did holidays and feast days come along. For instance, hardly had wool workers finished celebrating Christmas on Twelfth Night when it was time for most of them to down tools again for Bishop Blaise’s Day. And talking of Twelfth Night, the back-to-work day that came after it was called St Distaff’s Day.

There never was a St Distaff, but it was so called because on January 7 spinsters again took up their work — and young men would jokingly try to steal their yarn; and girls would retaliate by soaking them with water.

St Blaze, or Blaise (or Bishop Blaze as he was usually called) became popular in England from about the seventh century. He was Bishop of Sebaste, in fourth-century Armenia, and was tortured to death with metal combs — which later became his recognised symbol. The story goes that while hiding from persecutors in a cave he managed to find time to miraculously heal sick animals and people, saving the life of a boy with a fishbone stuck in his throat.

This last miracle brought him fame. Even now, in some Roman Catholic churches, including some in Oxford, you can still have your throat blessed on his feast day. The priest holds two lighted candles tied with a ribbon to your throat and says something along the lines of: “May the lord deliver you from the evils of the throat.”

His name also lives on in the dedication of the 14th-century church of St Blaise in Milton, near Abingdon (where there is a mitred head depicted in a piece of stained glass, which might be him) and in the name of the Bishop Blaize pub in Burdrop, near Banbury. He is also represented, in mulberry robes, in a stained glass window, dated about 1330, in the cathedral at Christ Church. But the presence of candles in the throat-blessing procedure suggests that his feast day got muddled up with Candlemas — which falls today (February 2). Until the Reformation this was a hugely important festival, celebrating the presentation of Christ in the Temple 40 days after his birth, and the purification of his mother Mary. Candles, representing Christ as the light of the world, were blessed and paraded around parishes, and some were taken home to be lit if anyone became ill.

After the Industrial Revolution, when such money-earning activities as spinning and combing became mechanised, the cult of St Blaze seems to have all but died out in Oxfordshire — even in blanket-making Witney. This is in contrast to what happened in the weaving towns of the north where huge processions were staged in his name, most of which managed to celebrate patriotism, local pride and the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece all mixed up together.