FORGET THE EGGS – HAND ROUND THE EASTER CAKE!

 

Today we'll be observing another ancient custom with a slice of Simnel cake.

 

The name 'simnel' comes from simila, the Latin word for fine, wheaten flour, and it is a fruit cake – not unlike a Christmas cake – covered in a thick coating of marzipan and, sometimes, with another layer of marzipan or almond paste baked into the middle of the cake. Yummy!

The cake is decorated, around the top, with eleven marzipan balls representing the true disciples of Jesus (Judas being excluded) and, in some cases, with single, larger, ball of marzipan placed in the centre of the cake to represent Christ. Today, they could well feature a few fluffy chicks and be dotted with mini-chocolate eggs, but there are many kinds of variations on the Simnel cake tradition.

Although the cake is now an Easter treat (and, so, is often just called 'Easter Cake'), but in the 18th and 19th Centuries, it was associated with Mothering Sunday (or, as we now more commonly refer to it, 'Mother's Day') which falls a few weeks earlier than Easter, on the fourth Sunday in Lent – a day which has been known by many other old names, among them 'Refreshment Sunday' so called because it was marked by a relaxation of the Lenten fast and was the day in the year when people made the pilgrimage to their 'mother church' where they had received the sacrament of baptism. 

Since it was often the same church as the one in which their family had been baptized, it meant that children who were working away from home as domestic servants or apprentices, had an opportunity to be with their parents and pay their respects to their earthly – along with their spiritual – mother. Many girls working as maids and kitchen staff in the 'big houses' would often take their mothers a homemade Simnel cake, baked in their employers' kitchens.

Lesson over; now, just cut a slice –– and tuck in!

DAY FOR KNIGHT

HAPPY 

St GEORGE'S DAY!

Image : Bleu Turrell

WHEN'S A HOT CROSS BUN NOT A BUN?

When it's a loaf!

To my mind (and I'm someone one for whom one HCB is never enough!) this ingenious offering from Asda seemed a bit extreme, but apparently not...

Last April, bakers at Hovis created – or, perhaps, built would be a better word – an HCB that was 9 foot by 5 foot: a total area of 45 square feet or the equivalent of 2,000 regular buns!

The ingredients? "48 kg of British Wheat flour, 4 kg mixed fruit, 68 whole eggs, 6 kg sugar, 6 kg butter; plus litres of milk & water and mixed spice." But how many litres and how much mixed spice? Vital information missing there for all budding home bakers, I fear!

Anyway, here's what it (or part of it) looked like...


You can read the whole(meal) story, along with some interesting facts about the history of the HCB, here.

BUON NATALE!

Have you got any Christmas cake left? I know: silly question! I remember, as a little kid, being intrigued by the fact that as the cake got eaten and the acreage of icing got smaller, the decorative personnel: Santas, snowmen, Eskimos, fir-trees and robins all began to huddle together like dispossessed citizens!

In Venice (where we hope, belatedly, to arrive today) the cake-top residents tend to be of a rather more religious disposition and are usually made of marzipan.

Now I really like marzipan, but I honestly don't somehow think I could bring myself to eat Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus. Perhaps they are always given to any atheist who happens to be present at tea-time...

Photograph: © Brian Sibley 2009

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

HAPPY HANUKKAH!

REMEMBER, REMEMBER...

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent

To blow up the King and Parli'ment.

Three-score barrels of powder below

To prove old England's overthrow;

By God's mercy he was catch'd

With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring!

Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

And what should we do with him?

Burn him!

WHATSUNDAY?

Today is what used to be called Whitsunday and tomorrow would have been Whit Monday, if they hadn't nicked that holiday, back in 1970, and traded it in for what is now the Bank Holiday Monday at the end of the month.

So, what is Whitsun? Well, its the English name for the Christian festival otherwise called Pentecost and held on the seventh Sunday after Easter to mark the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles with a rushing wind and tongues of living fire.

The first mention of the word 'Whitsun' in English is, apparently, to be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1067, where it appears as ‘hwitan sunnan daeg’. The derivation of the word has been much debated, but is generally thought that 'whit' is a contraction of 'white' (rather than anything to do with 'wit') and refers to a popularity for holding adult baptisms on that day which traditionally required those being admitted into the church to wear white.

It became a popular convention for folk to wear new clothes on Whit Sunday and the religious observation of the day was coupled with all kinds of secular merrymaking beginning in the Middle Ages with morris dancing (involving representations of our recent blog-friends Robin of Sherwood, Maid Marian and Friar Tuck), outings, picnics, fětes and fairs to which were later added a range of sporting events on the Monday.

One curious superstition was that any child born on Whit Sunday was doomed either to kill or be killed. Such a fate could, however, be averted by holding a mock funeral for the child -- or, alternatively, by squashing an insect in the child's hand.

Not then a good day on which to be born and most certainly not a good day on which to be a bug!

A good day, however, for this blog to clock up the following interesting number of hits!!



Image: Detail of stained glass window in the former St Mary's-at-Lambeth, London, now home of The Garden Museum by Brian Sibley © 2010, uploaded via my flickr Photostream.

TURKEY TIME

For my friends on the other side of the Atlantic, today is, of course, Thanksgiving Day and if you'd like to know a bit more about this festival observed by Britain's former colonists, you can read more about its origins on former post.

Not for the first time on this blog, I am reproducing the following iconic image of the American family thanksgiving by the great Norman Rockwell...


I love Rockwell's wonderful composition – back-lit from the window with the light bouncing off the white tablecloth and crockery – and, in particular, the way in which the senior couple are focused on the placing of the turkey and maintaining the order and ritual of the table.

I also enjoy the way in which the family circle is so intimate and tightly knit that the rest of the diners are only partially glimpsed. it is genius on Rockwell's part that they are are all learning forward in animated conversation with one another – with the one exception of the guy in the bottom right hand corner who is looking directly at the artist and, therefore, the viewer, and so makes us a guest at the table.

It also gives me an excuse to blog a delightful pastiche of Rockwell's painting by a gifted Disney artist and illustrator, Charles Boyer, whom I had the pleasure of meeting some years ago...


Like Rockwell's original, Boyer's Disney painting is, of course, kitsch - but it is, surely, down-home-honest-to-goodness kitsch! And - on a day like today - I don't really need any excuse for juxtaposing the work of two of America's greatest popular artists.

And staying with Disney, here, for your amusement, is that comic triumvirate of Mickey, Donald and Goofy on the trail of the Thanksgiving turkey...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

MERRY MAY-KING

I grew up in what was - in my youth - a rural village (now a semi-suburban dormitory of London) where ancient rituals such as the crowning of a May Queen were still observed. As part of the ceremony, held on the village green, the youngsters would dance round the Maypole - a custom that dates back hundreds of years.

So, today, we usher-in the month of May with this wonderful old window...

Click image to enlarge

Showing a Maypole and various merrie-makers, it was once part of Betley Court, an 18th century manor house in the ancient village of Betley, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.

The window, which can now be seen in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, is a fine example of enamelled glass and is, possibly, the oldest representation of (possibly) Morris dancers to be found in this country.

Read more of the fascinating the history of the Betley window and the intriguing origins of the figures depicted on the window.

However you celebrate the arrival of May (with or without the involvement of Maypoles and Morris dancing) here, to help get you fully into the mood, is Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Guinevere in the 1967 movie version of Lerner and Loewe's musical, Camelot, extolling the lascivious virtues (if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms) of 'The Lusty Month of May'...

Image: David Weeks © 2009

By the way, there are many more windows to look at - or through - on my blog Window Gazing.

DRAGON AROUND

Patriotic
Greetings
on

St George's
Day

And for anyone not familiar with the legend of England's patron saint, here's a version as penned by Bert Lee and R P Weston in 1935 and told by the incomparable Stanley Holloway...

Image: St George and the Dragon by Peter Paul Rubens

HOLY LOAF

I'm sure that many of you were enjoying your Hot Cross Buns yesterday - not that there's anything too special about that since, nowadays, they're available virtually 365 days a year.

Of course HXBs have been around for a long time (I wrote about them in a post and the subsequent comments a couple of years ago) but now someone - Warburton's bakery to be precise - has come up with something new...

The HOT CROSS BUN LOAF!


What's more, it's another example of the marketer's craze for 'Limited Edition' foodstuffs...


Signed and numbered editions will no doubt be next!

MUM'S THE WORD

It's Mother's Day, or as my Mum and David's Mum always insisted on calling it...

MOTHERING SUNDAY

Unlike Father's Day, Mothering Sunday is a very old custom preceding - by many centuries - the current annual bonanza for choc-makers and florists.

In fact, a religious event celebrating motherhood has existed in Europe since around 250 BCE, when the Romans had a mid-March festival in honour of Cybele (right), the Magna Mater, or mother of the gods.

As the Roman Empire and Europe converted to Christianity, Mothering Sunday celebrations became part of the church's calendar with the fourth Sunday in Lent being set aside to the honouring of the Virgin Mary and 'mother church'. On this day, during the sixteenth century, people used to attend a service in the church where they were baptized and folks who did this were commonly said to have gone 'a-mothering'.

Other names given to this festival include Refreshment Sunday (because, being half way through the 40 days of Lent, the fast was relaxed for a day) and Simnel Sunday, from the custom of baking Simnel cakes.

Simnel cake (the name probably comes from simila, the Latin word for fine, wheaten flour) is a fruit cake, not unlike a Christmas cake, covered in marzipan and, sometimes, with another layer of marzipan or almond paste baked into the middle of the cake. Yummy!

Around the top of the cake are eleven marzipan balls representing the true disciples of Jesus (Judas being excluded) and, in some cases, with single, larger, ball of marzipan placed in the centre of the cake to represent Christ. Today, they will probably also feature a few fluffy chicks and be dotted with mini-chocolate eggs, but there are all kinds of variations on the Simnel cake tradition.

In the 18th and 19th Centuries, Mothering Sunday was the one day in the year when domestic servants were given a day off in order to visit their mothers and families, often taking with them a home-made Simnel cake, baked in their employers' kitchens.

If Valentine's Day is one of the least popular dates in the calendar for the unattached, then, I guess, Mother's Day is the equivalent for the motherless son or daughter.

It's almost ten years since the death of my Mum, Doris.

She was great worrier, my mother - a trait she passed on to me in spades (thanks, Mum!) - so there are some things that I'm glad she didn't survive long enough to worry about, such as seeing me walking with a stick and affected by a similar arthritic disease to the one that so painfully crippled the last years of her life.

But there are many other things that I really wish she had lived to see - like David and I getting legally hitched, because she and my Dad (along with David's parents) not only accepted, but lovingly embraced, our relationship.

And I'm so thankful that she saw me achieve some of my best work and justify the support and encouragement that she and my Dad gave me when I embarked on the career of a freelance.

But -- and, oh, it is such a big 'but' -- even after so many years, I still miss my mother (irritating and frustrating through she could sometimes be - unlike me, of course!), and I'd give anything to be able to pick up the phone to her today and have a chat...

Fortunately, in the years since first I, and then David, were 'orphaned', we've been lucky enough to have a couple of Honorary Mums which is the next best thing.

Today, for instance, our good friend Sophie will be sharing her Mum, Wendy, with us and if I tell you that Wendy makes one of the meanest trifles in Christendom, then you'll see why anyone would be happy to have her as a surrogate mum!


For all Mums everywhere (and to the memory of Mums who are no longer with us) here's is Anita Renfroe's hilarious 'Momsense' song...

TOP O' THE MORNIN'

Today is Lá Fhéile Pádraig... Otherwise known as...

St Patrick's Day!

And guess what I've just discovered? It's hard to believe, but it turns out that Patrick (who lived 387-461, or thereabouts) wasn't actually Irish at all but --- WELSH!

Said to have been born 'Maewyn Succat', he was captured in his native Wales when he was about 16 by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he worked as a herdsman.

The young lad came from a religious family (his grandfather was a priest) and he managed kept his faith in exile. Six years later - having been told by a Voice that he would soon go home - Patrick managed to escape his captivity, return to his family and entered the church.

Now in his twenties Patrick, apparently, received a vision as he later recounted in a letter written in Latin...

I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: "The Voice of the Irish".

As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea—and they cried out, as with one voice: "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.

Patrick answered that call and whilst little is known about his missionary work in the Emerald Isle - other than through legends (such as driving the snakes out of Ireland and using the shamrock as a visual aid to teaching the doctrine of the Trinity) by the eighth century he had become the patron saint of Ireland.

St Patrick's Day, traditionally celebrated on 17 March is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland and a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland and Montserrat.

"Montserrat?" you ask, "The British territory in the Leeward Islands?" (You did ask that, didn't you?) Well, yes! Montserrat is known as the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean, partly because its coastline approximates that of Ireland and partly because the majority of residents are of Irish descent. Appropriately, the island's national flag incorporates the a coat of arms featuring a lady in green with a harp.


Elsewhere in the world, St Patrick's Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated by the imbibing of those two beverages beloved of the Irish: Jameson's and Guinness.

In America there's been considerable lobbying for it to be made into a national day of celebration, alongside the other official holidays as can be seen from these Guinness advertisements, featuring interviews with spokesmen for Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day and Presidents Day...

But why not? After all, as the old saying puts it: "On March 17, everyone is Irish!"

One of the quaintest (or to put another way, 'most bizarre') traditions marking St Patrick's Day is that of dyeing the Chicago River green.

According to Bill King, the administrator of Chicago's St. Patrick's Day committee, "the idea of dyeing the Chicago River green originally came about by accident when a group of plumbers were using fluorescein dye to trace illegal substances that were polluting the river".

The United States Environmental Protection Agency outlawed the use of fluorescein, since when a vegetable based dye has been used that is reputedly non-harmful to the various living organisms inhabiting the Chicago river, including a population of several thousand goldfish.

Anyway this is what it looks it...

It is, as they say, a great day for the Irish. But whether you are or not... Have a great day!

LANGUAGE OF LOVE

A VALENTINE'S DAY greeting, courtesy (again) of Engrish.com...


Whatever lies in store for you today, I do hope you don't come up against too many hard hearts!

HAVE A GOOD DAY!

HAPPY FRIDAY 13th

SIGNORA SANTA

Today is Epiphany, the ancient Christian feast day that commemorates the visit of the Wise Men to the new born Christ Child, bearing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.


Epiphany - depicted, above, on a seasonal greeting from Sibleyblog regular, Eudora - is the origin of our tradition of giving Christmas presents.

Here in Venice, as in all Italy, Epiphany is still commemorated and a vital part of the celebrations (at least as far as the children are concerned) is the anticipated arrival of La Befana - a female counterpart of those Santa Claus/Father Christmas/St Nicholas characters who feature in the Northern European and American Christmas festivities.

Click on images to enlarge

An old woman riding a broomstick through the air at night, La Befana, wears a black shawl and carries a sack of sweets and gifts which she leaves in the stockings that the children hang up for her. She is covered in soot because - like Santa - she enters the children's houses via the chimney.

Children who have not been good during the year, receive - instead of sweets - a lump of coal (or, nowadays, black sugar-candy) and because she is a good housekeeper, she'll always use her broom to sweep the floor before leaving. It is polite to leaves out a small glass of wine for La Befana, together with and something to eat - just as Santa gets all those glasses of milk and mince pies...

One Christian legend tells how La Befana was visited by the three Wise Men, seeking directions as to where Jesus had been born. The old woman did not know, but - being a homely, house-proud soul - she gave the travellers shelter for the night.

The following day, the Wise Men invited La Befana to join them on their quest, but she refused saying that she was far too busy with her housework. Then, too late, she charged her mind and went off in search the the Wise Men and the Christ Child but was unable to find them. So it was that - to this very day - La Befana is searching for them still and, on her travels, leaves toys and candy for all the good children she finds and coal or bags of ashes for any who've been bad.

Italian children are warned that if they ever see La Befana they'll receive a thwack from her broomstick: a typical adult ruse to keep youngsters in their beds on Epiphany Eve while parents are distributing sweets - or coal - and sweeping the floor.


There is, however, an alternative legend of a somewhat darker nature in which La Befana was a woman who on the death of her dearly-loved child went mad from grief. Hearing of the birth of Jesus - and thinking, in her deranged state of mind, that it must be her dead baby - she set out to find him. On eventually meeting Jesus she gave him gifts and, in return, Jesus gave La Befana a gift of his own: that she would be, for all time, the mother of every child in Italy.

To mark Epiphany - and the arrival of La Befana - a regatta is held in Venice every 6 January, with veteran gondoliers (in witchy drag), rowing up the Grand Canal to a finishing line at the Rialto Bridge.


Traffic on the Grand Canal comes to a halt and everyone crowds the fondamenta on either side of the Canal. A giant stocking hangs down from the bridge to mark the winning post and great excitement attends the race and the presentation of the special Befana-emblazoned pennants that are the prizes!


Then everyone (especially little old Italian ladies) gets on with the really serious business of enjoying hot chocolate, mulled wine and sweet flaky biscuits called (in the Venetian dialect) galani...


And here's this year's winner, Giovanni Rossi...


Here in Venice there is another special Epiphany attraction: on only two days of the year (today and the Feast of the Ascension), the historic clock tower (Torre dell'Orolgio) in the Piazza loses its rolling Roman numerals and features, instead, a procession of automata: a trumpeting angel followed by the Magi who reverently tip their crowns as they pass the statue of the Virgin and child...


As this feature of the clock only happens twice a year, things can go wrong --- check out last year's performance!

Being Epiphany means, of course, that it it also Twelfth Night and the season of Christmas (or Twelve-tide as it was once known) is officially over for another year.

Oh, well, here's to the next one!

Images: The Adoration of the Magi (detail) by Gentile da Fabriano, 1423, from Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze; Befanas and regatta by Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2008/9

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

CITY IN DISGUISE

I remember the very first time, eleven years ago, that we walked along a shopping street in Venice.

"Oh, look!" I said, "Masks!" Two shops further on there was another mask shop and then another and another...

Lest I be thought to exaggerate, I should say that only every other shop in Venice sells masks: the shops in between invariably being given over to selling glass -- although, even then, they may well be selling a few masks as well!

You simply cannot move through Venice without seeing masks but - except for Carnevale (the frolicsome celebrations preceding the beginning of Lent) they are almost always only displayed in shop windows and hardly ever worn!

Originally, masks was not limited to the period of Carnival, but would have been used on numerous occasions as a device to hide the wearer's identity and, possibly, his or her social status: thus allowing a freer interaction with others who might well be of a social - or marital - status that would normally be prohibited by convention. The lover, the thief, the spy might all don the anonymity, license and safety of the mask.

This origin has since been subverted into (at best) a highly attractive and decorative art-form and (at worst) an excuse for peddling cheap tourist-tat.

The masks that were once a common feature of daily life in the grande caffès of the Piazza San Marco were styled after characters from the 16th Century Italian tradition of improvisational theatre, the Commedia dell'Arte ('The Comedy of Artists'); today they are exotic confections of feathers, lace, beads, sequins and other fripperies and can assume the likeness of anyone or anything in the natural (or unnatural) world or, indeed, any region whatsoever within the limitless territory of the human imagination...





You can read more about the history of the Venetian mask - and buy one for yourself (thus saving the bother and expense of having to go to Venice!) at The Venetian Mask Shop.


Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2006/8 Click on images to enlarge

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

GIVING THANKS

To all my American readers

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Post Script: LISAH asks (see comments below), "Does anyone know why Thanksgiving is held on a Thursday?" The answer is a little on the long side, but you'll find it on the website of The Belcher Foundation.

Any American readers (with time to kill while the turkey roasts - or digests!) are welcome to add to our sum total of knowledge on this Thursday holiday-thing which, to me, just seems like an excuse for an extra-long weekend!

Main image: © Norman Rockwell

THE GUY IN QUESTION

November 5th is - or was in the days of my youth - Guy Fawkes Day.

Overseas and New Readers (and, frankly, anyone under the Age of Thirty) who asks "Whose Day?" might care to bone up on Mr Fawkes and his famous Gunpowder Plot by reading last year's November 5th Sibley-blog.

Having done so, you can then join the rest of us in smiling at this cartoon by the brilliant Simon Pearsall...

Of course, in the case of the real Master Fawkes, having been identified he came to a nasty end, but, true to the code of the martyrs (and forgive me for making a traitor into a bit of a hero) he valiantly made his exit, managing to cheat the axeman of the pleasures of drawing and quartering his body -- at least according to William Harrison Ainsworth's 'historical romance' (how much of each being open to conjecture) Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder Treason...

Guy Fawkes now alone remained, and he slowly mounted the scaffold. His foot slipped on the blood-stained boards, and he would have fallen if Topcliffe [the man responsible for torturing Fawkes], who stood near him, had not caught his hand.

A deep silence prevailed as he looked around, and uttered the following words in a clear and distinct voice: "I ask forgiveness of the King and the state for my criminal intention, and trust that my death will wash out my offence."

He then crossed himself and knelt down to pray, after which his cloak and doublet were removed by the executioner's assistant and placed with those of the other conspirators. He made an effort to mount the ladder, but his stiffened limbs refused their office. "Your courage fails you, sneered Topcliffe," laying his hand upon his shoulder. "My strength does," replied Fawkes, sternly regarding him. "Help me up the ladder, and you shall see whether I am afraid to die."

Seeing how matters stood, the executioner who stood by leaning upon his chopper, tendered him his blood stained hand, but Fawkes rejected it with disgust, and exerting all his strength, forced himself up the ladder.


As the hangman adjusted the rope, he observed a singular smile illuminate the features of his victim. "You seem happy," he said. "I am so," replied Fawkes, earnestly, "I see the form of her I loved beckoning me to unfading happiness."

With this, he stretched out his arms and sprang from the ladder. Before his frame was exposed to the executioner's knife life was totally extinct.

On reflection, of course, it does seem rather regrettable that it took such a barbaric event to give the English an excuse to let off a few fireworks once a year...

Images: Cartoon by © Simon Pearsall; Execution of Guy Fawkes by George Cruickshank.

TRICKY TREATS

Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve.

Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades.

From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.

Ray Bradbury - The Halloween Tree

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Consult the following (foregoing) Sibley-blogs to read about...

Halloween, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day

Halloween and Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes

Linus Van Pelt, The Great Pumpkin and Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree

Ray Bradbury's The Next in Line