viii: Foraging through Folklore
Proverbs, prosperity and porridge Ella Leith Is thy pot empty, Colin? Do goats eat ivy? Mares eat oats? Is thy cock like ours? (in Doyle, 2008)
Appearing in a fifteenth-century manuscript, this couplet may be the oldest recorded example of what Doyle (1977) terms ‘sarcastic interrogative proverbs’— that is, rhetorical state-the-obvious questions, the medieval equivalent of ‘is the Pope Catholic?’ As Doyle (2008:5) explains, ‘ask a stupid question, and you'll get...a stupid question’; one that reiterates ‘the obvious and the changeless...in a deceptive and mutable world’ (Doyle 1977:80). That mares eat Oats was obvious and changeless, and Oats themselves have been a reassuringly mundane crop for centuries. Hardy enough to grow in areas inhospitable to other cereals, Oats were used as fodder and bedding for livestock, as thatch, and in dishes like stews, haggis, oatcakes and porridge. Their everydayness is their defining feature; in folklore, they tend to evoke a humble but secure domesticity— and one that should not be taken for granted. In The Three Bears, the bears’ comfortable home is illustrated with steaming bowls of porridge— and then disrupted by Goldilocks. In The Magic Porridge Pot, hunger and poverty are alleviated by warm, sweet porridge on command, but greed and carelessness cause the town to be flooded with it, proving that it is possible to have too much of a good thing. 42
If Oats illustrate domestic life, then no surprise that they appear in folklore designed to maintain its equilibrium. Shetlander Brucie Henderson (1891-1977) recounted in a 1955 interview that a cure for children who had fallen into the fire (a common household accident) was for a local healer to make a cross using a piece of straw from the three main crops— Barley (Hordeum vulgare), Oats (Avena sativa) and Shetland Oats (Avena strigosa) —and touch it three times under the cradle where the child lay and three times at the head of the cradle. Going to the fire, he would recite: From the fire he leap't Inta da cradle he crept Ta heal da bairn brunt I’ Guid's name. He would then touch the child’s sores with the straw, which ‘was supposed to cause greet cure’. Oats were also incorporated into luckbringing rituals: on the twelfth day of Christmas, many Irish households would ‘set up a sieve of oats as high as they can and in it a dozen candles. In the centre is a larger one, all lighted, so as to have luck all the year’ (Daniels and Stevans, 1903:1524). Additionally, it is with Oats— specifically, porridge —that one should pay the
