Our viands

t At the Congress of the Folk Lore Society, held in October last at Burlington House, a great number of local feasten cakes were exhibited, and among them simnels, differing greatly in form, from Lancashire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire. CAKES AND PUDDINGS 57 Probably the best known cake of religious significance is the hot cross bun, sold everywhere in England on Good Friday. The number of these cakes consumed yearly must be reckoned by many millions. It has also been a custom in Scottish towns for the last forty years. ' One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns,' is the one street cry on Good Friday, and whilst all other shops are closed, the bakers and confectioners drive a thriving trade. The cross marked upon these buns has now, of course, a reference to the solemn event commemorated on the day ; but the cake itself has a very ancient history, and is supposed to be the lineal descendant of those cakes offered in worship to the queen of heaven, as denounced by the prophet Jeremiah : — ' The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven,' which cakes, according to antiquaries, were also marked with a cross. In the Museo Borbonico at Rome there is a sculpture repre- senting the miracle of the five barley loaves in which the loaves are marked by a cross. Consecrated cakes, probably all similarly marked, were offered to the gods on different occasions in many countries, as in China, Egypt, and Mexico; and the Saxons, before they were converted to Christianity, ate them in honour of the goddess Eastre. In Egypt these cakes were made in the shape of horns in honour of Isis, and their name — bons or boun — is supposed to be the origin of our word bun. A curious survival of these offerings to heathen gods existed not many years ago in the Isle of Man, when a herdsman, representing a Druid, on May-Day took a piece of bread, covered with a custard of eggs, milk, and butter, 58 OUR VIANDS and breaking it, threw pieces over his shoulder, exclaiming, 1 This I give to thee, O Fox, and this to thee, O Eagle, spare thou my lambs,' etc., etc. A similar ceremony existed, I believe, in Sicily, whilst in Sardinia a quantity of raisin- bread, Pane di zappa, is hidden in three cart-loads of wood, which are drawn round the village by oxen specially fattened, after which the wood is piled up and burnt before the churches. Honey-cakes were offered in Rome to the serpent represent- ing the god Esculapius, and the shew-bread of the Jews, con- sisting of unleavened cakes composed of fine flour and oil, was an offering to the Deity, afterwards consumed by the priests. We read of a Roman Catholic ceremony on Good Friday in Pre-Reformation days, in which the figure of Christ being deposited in a tomb the people came to worship and present gifts of corn or eggs, after which there was a ceremonial burial of the image, and with it the ' singing-bread,' but what this singing-bread was is not specified ; it was, however, probably a cake marked with a cross — apropos of which must be recorded the old superstition that bread baked on Good Friday would never get mouldy, and formerly a piece of Good Friday bread was kept in every house, and a little of it grated was supposed to be a sovereign remedy for many ailments, but especially for diarrhoea.