Welcome

By Ben Gazur

Food folklore is a tantalising subject but also, given the nature of its ingredients, an ephemeral one. If the material evidence of food folklore is not eaten during the performance of ritual, or simply because it is delicious, then it tends to rot away. There are however some morsels of food folklore that have stood the test of both time and hunger, resisted the work of weevils and fungi, and can now be found in museum collections.

Witch cakes have a long history. At the Salem witch trials it was revealed that a method of identifying the witches was used that involved the baking of a special cake. It was in January of 1692 when several of the young girls of the Parris household began to behave oddly. Bewitchment was soon thought to be involved. 

Luckily a neighbour, Mary Sibley, suggested a way to find the culprit. She ordered her slave Tituba to bake a witch cake. The key ingredient was to be the ‘water’ of the young girls. The cake containing their urine was baked and then fed to a dog. The reaction of the dog to this treat is not known, but no indication of the witch was forthcoming.

Where the idea of a witch cake came from is unknown but it is possible that it was an old tradition imported from England by the Salem inhabitants. A contemporaneous almanac describes a way of curing ague by feeding a cake containing a patient’s urine to a dog. If the dog shook then the disease would be cured. The witch cake as used in Salem could have been a repurposing of an old folk cure.

What is known that there was a folk custom of crafting witch cakes in Britain that continued into the 19th century, though most bakers forgo adding their own body fluids to the dough.

Witch cakes of Britain operated more as charms and amulets than as methods of uncovering witches. The reports of witch cakes say that they were baked between the 1st and 6th of April each year. Made of a simple dough made from flour, salt, and water they are shaped into a ring with several spikes projecting out. Once baked to a rock-like hardness they were hung in homes as a charm against witches and all manner of other bad spirits. After a year a new cake was baked to replace the old one.

In the Pitt Rivers museum there is a well preserved witch cake collected in Flamborough in Yorkshire that was collected at some point before 1933. 

[Image Link: http://objects.prm.ox.ac.uk/pages/PRMUID222156.html]

Scarborough Museums also contains an example of a witch cake said to have been baked in 1850. While several cracks have appeared on it the witch cake is surprisingly well preserved. [Image Link: https://folklorethursday.com/material-culture/superstitious-charmed-life-william-james-clarke/ ]

Collecting pieces of food folklore is something that has appealed to many collectors throughout history but most collections of charms have been broken up and disposed of. Some like that folklorist Edward Lovett however have been preserved and offer an insight into the material culture of folklore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Among the huge number of charms and amulets collected by Lovett can be found three rather unlovely crumbs of bread. Despite being collected around 1915 the fragments of white bread have held up surprisingly well. Currently held in the Cuming Collection these pieces of bread are catalogued as a curative charm. A strange piece of folk magic is referenced in their catalogue in relation to them. To cure a child of whooping cough a lock of hair was taken from the back of the child’s head and put between two pieces of bread. This hirsute sandwich was then fed to the first dog that was seen. By eating the bread and hair it was thought that the dog would take on the whooping cough. One must wonder why, if this was the supposed use for this bread, it was not digested by a dog with a sudden chesty cough?

Some food folklore however is supposed to last. One tradition has it that any bread baked on Good Friday will never go mouldy. Such bread was prized not only because it would never go “ropey” but because it was able to cure many diseases. By grating the bread into drinks it was thought to cure whooping cough. It was even grated into animal feed sometimes as a treatment for farm animals.

In Norfolk Good Friday bread was particularly trusted. An old lady reported that her neighbour was sure to die when an illness stubbornly refused to go away – “for she had already given her two doses of Good Friday bread without any benefit.” 

Because Good Friday bread was supposed to be immune against the passage of time it is not surprising that at least one loaf made its way into a museum collection. Baked in 1919, the loaf in the Cambridge Folk Museum was examined decades later and found to be somewhat stale but free of mould. I’m currently trying to locate this loaf to see if it remains un-ropey.

Ben Gazur is an author and writer currently working on a book about food folklore. You can support his book by clicking here. If you know of any food folklore items lurking in museum collections then feel free to contact him at feastoffolklore@gmail.com. 

The Folklore Museums Network, Historic Environment Scotland, and Museums Galleries Scotland will present an exciting conference on folklore, material culture, intangible culture, heritage and museums on Thursday December 16, 2021. The day will bring together speakers of international standing, case studies of projects, inspiring perspectives on collections and the archaeological/heritage landscape, to drive forward the ways in which museums and heritage organisations deal with folklore and related fields.

Folklore and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Scotland and the UK

Thursday, December 16

10.30 am

Welcome & Introductions

Peter Hewitt (Folklore Museums Network)

Ben Thomas and Laura Harrison (Historic Environment Scotland)

Jacob O’Sullivan (Museums Galleries Scotland)

Keynote Speaker:

10.35 Hugh Cheape– Taking forward Material Culture and Folklore: our engagement with people, place and regional ethnology

11.20 Q&A (15 mins)

11.35 Break (15 mins)

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1st Session

11.50 Tina Paphitis - The Place of Folklore in Archaeological Landscapes: Plurality, Participation and Practice

12.10 Jeremy Harte - These boots were made for walking: haunted objects in museums

12.30 Rhona Ramsey - Nacken chaetrie: finding the material culture of Gypsy/Travellers in Scottish museums

12.50 Q&A (15 mins)

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13.05 Lunch (55 mins, reconvene at 14.00)

2nd Session

14.00 Miriam Morris - Talking Statues Case study: Archives, Walks and Talks

14.20 Gauri Raje - Passing down stories: Working across generations with migrant stories

14.40 Valentina Bold - 'The Kinmont Willie Sword and other Tales of Mettle'

15.00 Q&A (15 mins)

15.15 Break (15 mins)

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15.30 Round Table Discussion

16.00  End

To book your free place please go to:  Museums Galleries Scotland | Folklore and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Scotland 

A quick post to highlight a great programme of speakers to be enjoyed from the comfort of your own home this September.  The conference (organised by the Society of Folk Life Studies) has a distinct museum component this year, with themes connecting music, dance, song, story and related artefacts and Vernacular buildings and interiors. There will also be a (virtual) tour of Galway City Museum.

More details and booking instructions can be found here:   Conference – online 2021 – Folk Life Studies 

By Kate Hill

In 1959, Molly Harrison, curator of what was then the Geffrye Museum, wrote to Andrew Jewell, curator of the Museum of English Rural Life, ‘I am not completely sure what is and what is not folk material!’ – and he replied ‘I am not sure that I understand what folk material is either’. This was a little strange as the correspondence concerned the gathering of material for a Directory of Folk Collections, which he was undertaking for the Royal Anthropological Institute. The responses to his survey showed that a large number of museums around the UK held material which they considered to be ‘folk’. However, it’s clear that this was a broad and flexible category, used to describe everything from local history of any kind, to ‘Victoriana’ of any kind – it’s not surprising that there was some uncertainty about what was being investigated.

This is partly because of the way folk material emerged into museums earlier. Around 1900 a major change started to emerge in museum collections – whereas before this point museum collections had focused on classical material, natural history, and increasingly applied art and anthropology, ‘ordinary’ local historical material came, relatively suddenly, to be collected. Rapid change and urbanisation meant old ways of life seemed to be disappearing fast, and older things were increasingly aesthetically appreciated. Initially people such as Gertrude Jekyll, the garden designer, and a group of teachers, craftspeople and artists in Haslemere in Surrey, focused on the peasant - a rural figure untouched by the present whose life would be represented. In the interwar period, though, folk collections came much more to represent a broader idea of ‘everyday life’ in the past – encompassing domestic collections, craft, industry and much more. This was in many ways a response to the democratisation taking place in wider society, especially in education.

The other key innovation associated with folk museums is in display. Folk museums pioneered reconstruction displays, building on natural history dioramas, and on the display practices of international exhibitions in the last decades of the 19th century. Even before the arrival of open air museums, folk material had broken through the idea of displaying material just in relation to other examples of the same kind of thing, in glass cases, and had moved to displaying assemblages of things as they might have been encountered in the past – the fireside being an absolute classic of the interwar period. Such display methods show a desire to make the past more immediate, more intimate and more accessible – curators said they were hoping to make their museums interesting to ‘ordinary’ people and children – but there’s also evidence to suggest museum staff themselves enjoyed a certain amount of imaginative immersion through their playful engagement with museum material, dressing up, demonstrating skills, and even keeping livestock.

I’m currently undertaking research into the growth of folk collections, displays and museums between about 1920 and 1970 – some museums have been the subject of historical research, such as St Fagans National Museum, and the Museum of Cambridge. Yet, as my map above shows, this was a much more widespread phenomenon, from an earlier date, than has maybe been realised as yet, and I want to study it in a more holistic fashion, and think about how it has underlain the approaches to social and local history which we see in museums today. I will be making research trips to key places, but I also want to capture the breadth of the mid-twentieth-century museum trend towards the ‘folk’. 

My key interests are in collections and display, as well as in the motivations of those making such innovations at the time, and if possible (unlikely I know!) any material relating to what visitors thought of folk material displays. I’m keen to hear from curators who may have collections of this kind from the period, especially if they know how those collections were displayed at the time, who collected them, and why. I’m also keen to hear how curators see and use these collections now. I’ve been surprised to find instances where all of collections like this are in storage – how do they relate to contemporary priorities in social history? How can/should they be used? Do they represent the historical sensibilities of the period when they were collected? What sort of display are they suited to? Please get in touch with me at khill@lincoln.ac.uk if you have anything you’d like to share with me!

Title Image: Map of self-identified ‘folk’ collections at museums, 1945 and 1959. Data for 1945 from M. M. Banks, ‘Folk Museums and Collections in England’, Folklore 56: 1 (1945); data for 1959 from survey material held at the Museum of English Rural Life. Many thanks to Dr Ollie Douglas for drawing this material to my attention.

Dr. Kate Hill is Associate Professor of History and Deputy Head, School of History and Heritage, at the University of Lincoln  khill@lincoln.ac.uk 

The pioneering research/music collective, Folklore Tapes, whose work explores the arcana and folklore of the UK, is celebrating 10 years of amazing output since their first release 'Two Witches' back in 2011.

FT hope to release a new audiophile press of their 'Theo Brown and the Folklore of Dartmoor'; and are looking for backers to help them get the ball rolling. Please pledge whatever you can afford here:  Folklore Tapes Ten Year Anniversary Editions by Folklore Tapes — Kickstarter 

The Kickstarter campaign seeks to fund two releases in celebration of the tenth anniversary of Folklore Tapes. The first is an audiophile-grade reissue of one of the label's most sought after editions, Theo Brown and the Folklore of Dartmoor. The second is a new Ten Year Anniversary Book featuring essays and hitherto unseen photography from the collective's many fieldtrips, recording sessions and live performances. 

www.folkloretapes.co.uk

Jonny Hannah is the lead artist on Museums Northumberland's Northumberland Folk project. 

I was commissioned by Museums Northumberland in July 2019 to create four exhibitions inspired by folklore in the fair county of Northumberland. I’d made many artworks in the past inspired by folk heroes, folk devils, folk songs & ballads. It’s an area I’ve loved for a long time. In our google-saturated world of the 21st century, Folk has always been an antidote to this. So many of the stories & tales are unanswered, inconclusive. Does Nessie exist? Of course she does, but the delicious uncertainty is every bit as exciting as the question.

One of the key parts of Northumberland Folk, as it quickly became known, was community participation. I didn’t really want a hundred of versions of the Bamburgh worm tale, great story that it is. So I began working out how to gather tales that for me, come under the category of ‘Urban Folklore’. Folk, is often perceived as something that happened a long time ago, in a deep, dark wood, as the peasants milled around, clueless. But I knew even growing up in Fife in Scotland, how folk was ever changing, growing & being added to. Mike Wilkie, known as Moog, lived a few streets away from me, then one day, he was gone. As far as I know he’s never turned up. What happened to him? This, I firmly believe is folk. The scary big house, just near our secondary school had all sorts of tales attached to it. There was talk of orgies. But we’d go there to play the collection of broken pianos housed in one of its outbuildings. And Dunfermline was a prominent place for folk music, with a legendary club called the Howf, where a young Billy Connolly & Gerry Rafferty would perform. But then when punk cam along, our town gave birth to the Skids, which I would happily also call Folk; the music of the people, played by them.

So I began trying to get the ‘urban folk’ stories from the good folks of Northumberland. I devised story cards for them to fill out, went busking in the streets with my special, customised guitar & started to hand them out. And the tales I got back were great. From stolen & resold milk bottles to make a few pence on the side, to a recipe for a cocktail celebrating a (fairly) local football hero (the slice of lime pulled all the other ingredients, like cheap cider & old whisky, together brilliantly). One story told of a certain public phone box (remember them?) in Bamburgh, where a call from a failing marriage gave birth to another successful one. So, romance, intrigue, the odd ghost, and a man called ‘Sticky’, & much more besides.

These stories are not in the books, until I make the book, or in my case… newspaper. So, as well as having many of these stories in my exhibitions, alongside more obvious tales such as the brave hero Lizzie Storey, & the amazing muscles of Jimmy Strength, a new newspaper (title undecided, possibly The Northumberland Folk Courier), will be published to mark the public start of the project next spring. Who knows, there may have to be two editions of the paper, as the stories keep coming. During the bleakness of lockdown, a true folk hero, Jack Charlton passed away. I know almost nothing about football, but I know Big Jack is well worth featuring. There will also be a separate publication celebrating the women from the area. As can often happen, the history books cut the women out. So, I’m going to do the opposite. From historical characters like the strong Josephine Butler, to women I’ve met along the way. I sat down with Marjorie Mountain, at the The Old School gallery in Alnmouth, one afternoon, at a time when I was having doubts about the project, & the way I was gathering information. But that conversation, by the ex-school mistress, sorted me out. Marjorie described the folks of Northumberland, having gone through more than their fair share of industrial upheaval, as ‘stoic & brave’. And then in an equally poetic manner, saw the landscape of this part of England, as ‘handsome, wild & free’. And there I had it, almost a sub-title for my entire project; Northumberland Folk; stoic, brave, handsome wild & free.

And more recently, I’ve gone right back to the start, & been obsessively drawing the dragon & brave knight from the ancient tale of the Bamborough Worm. But it’ll sit well with stories of found WWII Luftwaffe mascots & a giant ringworm… I hope. Even if it is all incongruous, & more akin to a car-boot sale, that’s what Folk can often be. Try as we might to control & curate it, it’s by the people, for them, & I’m delighted to say there’s no telling where that’ll end up. But four museums in Northumberland is a good place to start…

https://www.northumberlandfolk.info/

https://museumsnorthumberland.org.uk/project/northumberland-folk/exhibitions/

The Peacocks were a distinguished family of scholars who lived at Bottesford Manor and worked in North Lincolnshire during the later 19th and early 20thcentury. They were Edward Peacock (above left), and his seven children: Adrian, Edith, Florence, Julian, Mabel (above right), Maximillian and Ralf. Although a farmer, Edward was primarily an historian, who published numerous works from serious academic studies to popular novels.  He educated and passed on his enthusiasm to his children. 

Although based on studies of this area, most of the Peacocks’ work is of national importance. Edward’s two dictionaries of local dialect terms were ground breaking. A third volume compiled by Mabel and Maximilian, was eventually pieced together by Eileen Elder. Adrian wrote widely on agriculture and natural history, Florence was an historian and poet, Julian a genealogist, and Mabel the most widely recognised writer in Lincolnshire dialect. Maximilian was a collector of dialect and natural history observations.

The Peacock Family Archive is now part of the North Lincolnshire Museums collections. It consists of agricultural records, domestic records, common-place books, lesson books, drawings, photographs, diaries, personal correspondence and Lincolnshire dialect cards. An incredibly rich resource, it shines a light on the views and lives of people who lived in the local area from the early 18th century to the early 20th century. 

The photographs here show Edward and his daughter Mabel, two of the people we have to thank for recording the local dialect.

The Coorg Battle Talisman. This object was created in India to protect the wearer in combat. The attendant stories about the item, gleaned from contemporary newspaper accounts, family tradition, and the museum accession register illustrate, with bloody immediacy, the circumstances in which many objects in UK museums were collected during the British occupation in India.  

On April 3, 1834, Captain Robert Gordon from Kirkcudbright marched with a division of British and Indian troops into Coorg, southern India. Their objective was to depose Chikka Veera Rajendra, the ruler of that kingdom, who had ceased – according to the British – to be ‘a dependent ally of the East India Company’. 

6000 men armed with rifles and Howitzers marched on Coorg. The Coorg resistance was brave but in vain. With minimal casualties the British forces routed the Rajah’s strongholds. Hundreds of Coorgs were killed. One of the dead carried this talisman with a Persian charm inscribed into the bronze:

‘He [the wearer of the talisman] is the Victorious, O Holy and Almighty God, the confirmation of Thy glorious command hath sent this wretched and insignificant person to make war against the enemy, but apart from the aid and favour of the Holiest and Most High I have no father. Therefore my sustenance depends wholly upon Him.’

This talisman or kavacha was probably bought from a sadhu or holy man. When carried into war the proper way to wear a protective talisman was over the heart or over the buttocks. The talisman addresses Madheva or Shiva. Robert Gordon picked it off the corpse of the soldier and later donated it to the Stewartry Museum in his home town.

Chikka Veera Rajendra was defeated, but he marched out of Coorg alive and very wealthy. His lands were forfeit but he received a monthly pension of £6000. In 1852 he and his daughter sailed to England. He pursued a case in the English courts to recover his fortune, but in vain. His daughter, Gowramma, was baptized by the Archbishop of Canterbury with Queen Victoria as her godmother.