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Pancake Day - just a bit late
Feb. 22nd, 2007 09:28 amWe actually had pancakes on Tuesday (buckwheat, with roe - the local Sainsbury does not do caviar per se, sour cream, chopped onion and smoked salmon) but I didn't get around to this until today. Sorry. Shuffles feet. On the radio show each week, I do a folklore slot, and this appeared on this week's:
"...but by that time that the clock strikes eleven, which (by the help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before nine, then there is a bell rung, called the Pancake-bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted, and forgetful either of manners or of humanity: then there is a thing called wheaten flour, which the sulphury Necromantic cooks do mingle with water, eggs, spice and other tragical, magical enchantments, and then they put it little by little into a frying-pan of boiling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing (like the Lemean snakes in the reeds of Acheron, Styx or Phlegeton) until at last, by the skill of the cooks it is transformed into the form of a Flap-jack, which in our translation is called a Pancake, which ominous incantation the ignorant peple do devour very greedily." John Taylor, 1621
There's also a tradition in Scotland wherein you add a pinch of soot to bannocks, thus turning them into 'dreaming bannocks' and giving you the power of divination, temporarily.
"...but by that time that the clock strikes eleven, which (by the help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before nine, then there is a bell rung, called the Pancake-bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted, and forgetful either of manners or of humanity: then there is a thing called wheaten flour, which the sulphury Necromantic cooks do mingle with water, eggs, spice and other tragical, magical enchantments, and then they put it little by little into a frying-pan of boiling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing (like the Lemean snakes in the reeds of Acheron, Styx or Phlegeton) until at last, by the skill of the cooks it is transformed into the form of a Flap-jack, which in our translation is called a Pancake, which ominous incantation the ignorant peple do devour very greedily." John Taylor, 1621
There's also a tradition in Scotland wherein you add a pinch of soot to bannocks, thus turning them into 'dreaming bannocks' and giving you the power of divination, temporarily.
