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Foraging through Folklore
from The Soft Issue
Proverbs, prosperity and porridge
Ella Leith
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(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.
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 supernatural beings that help with house- and farm-work (Daniels and Stevans, 1903:1400). These include the Scandinavian nis or tomte, a ‘small but powerful subterranean creature’ who helps with manual labour (Hughes, 2018), and, in Scotland, the hairy household Brownie.
Even fairies made house visits in return for porridge. Unlike other human-fairy interactions, these visits were benign and lucky, so it was important to make the porridge to the fairy’s taste by avoiding salt, which repels magic. In a 1982 interview, Scottish Traveller Maggie Stewart (1903-1983) tells of a woman on a dairy farm who had a regular visitor: Now, a wee fairy come to the woman’s hoose, comin for the milk, aye? An the woman aye gave it parritch an milk. But nae salt in it. Then wan day she was in a hurry and she’d parritch for the menfolk, an the woman gave it a platie o parritch but it wor the parritch she’d made for the men. An there was salt in it. She never seed it efter that. It gaed awa. Carelessness is bad enough; disrespect is worse. In a Norwegian tale, a girl is tasked with giving the farm’s nis a bowl of rich cream porridge, but: She thought that it would be a shame to waste such good food on the nis, so she ate it up herself, and drank the fat, too; and went out to the barn with porridge oats and soured milk in a pig trough. ‘There’s your trough, ugly!’ she said. (Asbjørnsen, 1843:11-12) The insulted nis forces her to dance a halling with him— a fast-paced and acrobatic Norwegian folkdance —while singing: Oh, you have eaten the porridge for the tomte, have you? Oh, then you shall dance with the tomte, you shall. The dance lasted all night, and in the morning ‘she was more dead than alive’ (ibid).
As Oats were a staple crop, there are many rituals and superstitions connected with cultivating them. Oats should be sown early in the season, and in some places on prescribed days. In Ceredigion, Wales, the cut-off date was Caron Fair on 15th March (Williams- Davies, 1983:229); in the colder uplands, Oats could be sown later, on ‘the three days of the blackbird, and the two eyes of April’— that is, the last three days of March and the first two of April Old Style, or 10–15 th April in the Gregorian calendar (ibid). Across the British Isles, tradition held that Oats sown after the first call of the cuckoo had been sown too late and would be no good; these were called Cuckoo or Gowk Oats. The proverb— Cuckoo Oats and Woodcock Hay Make a farmer run away —refers to the belief that, if laziness or bad weather caused Oats to be sown late in the season and harvested late in the autumn, ‘the farmer is sure to suffer great loss’ (Hardy, 1879:57-8). Other customs defend against the catastrophe of a bad harvest: in a 1960 interview, Ertie Irvine (1905-1995) described an old man from Yell, Shetland, who ‘used to put a hen’s egg in his kishie [basket] out of which he was sowing his Oats’. At night he would very carefully hang the kishie up and preserve the egg, the idea being, if he broke the egg, he would get a poor crop. As long as the egg was kept safe and whole, then he would be sure of a good crop of Oats. A Hebridean ritual associated with this time of year is recorded by Martin (1716). On the second of February— Imbolc or St Bride’s Day, the first day of Spring in the Celtic calendar —women in Islay would take a sheaf of Oats from the store and: dress it up in women's apparel, put it in a large basket, and lay a wooden club by it, and this they call Briid'sbed; and then the mistress and servants cry three times, Briid is come, Briid is welcome. ... When they rise in the morning they look among the ashes, expecting to see the impression of Briid's club there; which, if they do, they reckon it a true presage of a good crop and prosperous year, and the contrary they take as an ill omen. (p. 119)
Indeed, come harvest time, Oat sheafs could be lucky or magical objects— specifically, the last (and sometimes the first) sheaf reaped. This would be fashioned into what is often called a Corn Dolly, Corn being the generic name for any cereal grain; local populations would make use of their dominant crop. These bundles, which appear across Europe and have numerous names (Peate, 1971), might be shaped into an intricate braid, an animal (a ‘Corn Mare’ or an ‘Oat Goat’, for example) or, most typically, a woman— whether young (‘Corn Maiden’ or, in Gaelic, ‘An Maighdean’) or old (‘the Hag’, ‘An Cailleach’). Maclagan (1895) describes the Cailleach in Bernera, Lewis: The last sheaf is dressed up and made to look as like an old woman as possible. It has on a white cap (curachd), a dress, a little shawl over the shoulders fastened with a sprig of heather, an apron turned up to form a pocket, which pocket is stuffed with bread and cheese, and a hook (sickle) is stuck in the string of the apron at the back, the idea being that in this attitude and costume she is ready to join in the harvest toil. At the feast which follows, the Cailleach ... is placed at the head of the table, and as the whiskey goes round each of the company drinks to her, saying, “Here's to the one that has helped us with the harvest.” When the table is cleared and dancing commenced, she is taken out by one of the lads present, who dances with her, and should the night favour it the party may go outside and march in a body a considerable distance, singing harvest songs, the old wife ... carried on the back of one of the men. (p150) Afterwards, it would be hung up on a wall until plough-time, at which point it would be divided up between all the ploughmen and taken to either feed to the plough-horses or be ploughed back into the soil to ‘secure luck for the following harvest’ (Ibid:151); elsewhere, it would be kept until the final sheaf of the next harvest was cut (Peate, 1971:178). In other— and, arguably, more individualistic —communities, each farm produced its own Corn dolly, which would be thrown into the field of a neighbour who had not yet finished reaping as ‘an indication of the...farmer's criticism of their tardiness’ (Ibid:179); it was a source of shame to be the last.
Harvesting in plenty of time and with care makes good farming sense; trying to rush it or treating the labour lightly can bring about ill consequences, as described in the 1678 tract ‘The Mowing-Devil, or strange news out of Hertfordshire’ (in Newman, 1945:288). A farmer, getting nowhere in beating down a mower’s asking price for reaping his Oats, ‘swore that the Devil should mow it rather than he’. The Devil took him up on the offer: That very Night the Crop of Oats showed as if it had been all of a Flame, but next Morning appeared so neatly mow'd by the Devil, or some Infernal Spirit, that no Mortal Man was able to do the like. The Oat sheafs were laid out in a strange, diabolical pattern, ‘as if the Devil had a mind to show his dexterity in the art of Husbandry’: He cut them in round circles and placed every straw with that exactness that it would have taken above an Age for any Man to perform what he did that one night. The farmer was too afraid to carry away his harvest, and lost the crop entirely (ibid). As in The Magic Porridge Pot, being flippant with the familiar carries a risk. After all, we reap what we sow.
References
Asbjørnsen, P.C. (1843) An Old-Fashioned Christmas Eve. Trans. Simon Hughes, 2015. Available at: norwegianfolktales.blogspot.com/2015/12 [accessed 10/01/21]
Daniels, C.L. and Stevans, C.M. (1903 [2003]) Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Vol. 3, The Minerva Group: London
Doyle, C.C. (1977) ‘Laboring the obvious: sarcastic interrogative affirmatives and negatives’ in Maledicta 1, 77-82
Doyle, C.C. (2008) ‘Archer Taylor Memorial Lecture 2006: Is the Pope still Catholic? Historical observations on sarcastic interrogatives’ in Western Folklore 67:1, 5-33 Hardy, J. (1879) ‘Popular history of the cuckoo’ in The Folk-Lore Record, Vol. 2, 47-91 Hughes, S. (2018) ‘Trolls, Hulders and Nisses: the preternatural creatures of Norwegian folklore’ on Folklore Thursday (24 May), folklorethursday.com/folktales/6576/ [accessed 10/01/21]
Maclagan, R.C. (1895) ‘Notes on Folklore Objects Collected in Argyleshire’ in Folklore, 6:2, 144-161
Martin, M. (1716) A Description of the Western Islands. A. Bell: London Newman, L.F. (1945) ‘Some notes on the folklore of Cambridgeshire and the Eastern Counties’ in Folklore, 56:3, 287-293
Peate, I.C. (1971) ‘Corn Ornaments’ in Folklore, 82:3, 177-184
Williams-Davies, J. (1983) ‘‘A time to sow and a time to reap’: The Welsh Farmer's Calendar’ in Folklore, 94:2, 229-234
Interviews available from the Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o Riches website, www.tobarandualchais.co.uk: Brucie Henderson: Track 31973 Ertie Irvine: 35396 Maggie Stewart: 57597
