In the North of
England there is a longstanding tradition of eating gingerbread on the
anniversary of the attempt in 1605 to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The
version of gingerbread which is best known in association with the night of the
Gunpowder Plot is made with oatmeal, and is called ‘parkin’. On a previous
Bonfire Night (as it is also called) I wrote about parkin (see the links after
this post) but today I want to explore the tradition a little further.
The roots of the
tradition appear to go back to ancient times, and likely have pagan origins. A
Victorian text suggests that parkin has evolved from an ancient ‘bread’ called
tharcake which has a connection with Norse mythology.
From Old English Customs Extant at the Present
Time (1896):
In Lancashire, in the
neighbourhood of Oldham, it is still the custom at the beginning of November to
make what is called Harcake. The origin of this custom is lost in the mists of
antiquity. It is probably a relic of an ancient pagan festival. Har was one of the names of Odin, and
the word appears in many place-names in the neighbourhood, e.g. Harrof,
Hargrave, Hargate, &c. In this making of harcake there is doubtless
preserved the memorial of an old Norse festival.
In Nodal and Milner*s "Lancashire
Glossary” the word is given as Tharcake ; but this need not sever its
connection with Northern mythology, as Tharcake or Thor-cake suggests the name
of the deity in whose honour the special cake was eaten. It is a kind of oatmeal
gingerbread, made of meal, treacle, and butter, and is sometimes called
parkins.
The word ‘tharf’
is said by the Oxford English Dictionary
to mean ‘unleavened, unsoured’ and written usage is recorded from the tenth
century.
On tharf-cake,
the OED says:
A cake of
unleavened bread; now spec. a flat circular cake of oat-, rye-, or barley-meal,
unleavened, and sometimes flavoured with butter and treacle; in the latter case
= parkin n.
The first written
reference to tharf-cake is given as appearing in Piers Plowman (c. 1362)
A þerf Cake, And a
lof of Benes and Bren I-Bake for my Children
So far we have
two theories as to the origin of tharf-cake: it was named for the Norse god
Thor, or it simply means unleavened. There are a couple of other theories in
relation to associated words:
-
Tharf is an old Saxon word meaning ‘need, necessity’ (OED):
written reference from the ninth century.
-
Tharf-cake is a corruption of hearth-cake (several references, but
no evidence that I can find.)
Well, I think we
have established the antiquity of tharf-cake, although we are a long way from establishing
the process by which a cake of unleavened bread became sweet, treacly, oatmeal
gingerbread.
I give you a
couple of recipes for ginger nuts as a change from parkin for your November 5th
celebrations:
Gingerbread Nuts
– The Yorkshire Receipt.
Mix half a pound
of flour, the same quantity of butter and of brown sugar, with three ounces of
ginger, with as much treacle as will make it into a paste. Roll it out thin,
and bake for about twenty minutes in a slow oven.
Gingerbread Nuts
– the Suffolk Receipt.
Put a pound of
brown sugar, and a pound of honey, with half the rind of a lemon grated, into a
saucepan, and simmer them well together; then add four ounces of good fresh
butter and one ounce of ginger; mix the whole with two pounds of flour.
N.B These
receipts come with extraordinary recommendations.
A new system of domestic cookery ... By M. E. Rundell (66e., London,1843)
Previous ‘Guy
Fawkes Night’ posts:
No comments:
Post a Comment