Minor Queries Answered.
Welsh Women's Hats.
—What was the origin of the peculiar hat so universally worn by women of the lower orders in Wales; and at what period did it come into use?
TREBOR.
[A gentleman who has resided for the last half century in the Principality, and to whom we submitted our correspondent's Query, has kindly forwarded the following reply:—"I have consulted bards, Welsh scholars, &c., and am sorry that I cannot forward any satisfactory account of the custom alluded to by TREBOR. Some say, we remember the time when the women wore ordinary felt hats manufactured from their own wool: one or two travelling hatters occasionally settled at Bangor, who made and sold beaver hats. We do not think that the women here intended to adopt any particular costume; but retained the hat as agreeing with the peculiar close cap, and projecting border, which it leaves in view, and in possession of its own uprightness! The fashion is going out; all our young people adopt the English bonnet with the English language. The flat hat, with a broad brim, is still retained in the mountain regions.">[
Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.
—Perhaps some of your readers will kindly inform the Pancake Eating Public as to the period "when," and the reason "why" such a custom grew into existence?
I have frequently heard the question mooted upon this anniversary, without ever hearing, or being able to give, a satisfactory elucidation of it; but it is to be hoped that "N. & Q." will supply the desideratum ere long, and confer a favour on
A LOVER OF PANCAKES AND AN UPHOLDER OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS.
Temple, Shrove Tuesday, 1852.
[Fosbrooke, in his Encyclopædia of Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 572., informs us that "Pancakes, the Norman Crispellæ, are taken from the Fornacalia, on Feb. 18, in memory of the practice in use before the goddess Fornax invented ovens." The Saxons called February "Solmonath," which Dr. Frank Sayers, in his Disquisitions, says is explained by Bede "Mensis placentarum," and rendered by Spelman, in an inedited manuscript, "Pancake Month," because in the course of it cakes were offered by the Pagan Saxons to the sun. So much for the "when:" now for the reason "why" the custom was adopted by the Christian church.
Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Tuesday, as it is sometimes called, from being the vigil of Ash Wednesday, was a day when every one was bound to confess, and be shrove or shriven. That none might plead forgetfulness of this duty, the great bell was rung at an early hour in every parish, called the Pancake Bell, for the following reasons given by Taylor, the Water Poet, in his Jacke-a-Lent (Works, p. 115. fol. 1630). He tells us, "On Shrove Tuesday there is a bell rung, called the Pancake Bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted, and forgetful either of manner or humanitie. Then there is a thinge called wheaten floure, which the sulphory, necromanticke cookes doe mingle with water, egges, spice, and other tragicall, magicall inchantments, and then they put it by little and little into a frying-pan of boyling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing, like the Lernean snakes in the reeds of Acheron, Stix, or Phlegeton, until at last by the skill of the cooke it is transformed into the forme of a Flap-Jack, which in our translation is called a Pancake, which ominous incantation the ignorant people doe devoure very greedily, having for the most part well dined before; but they have no sooner swallowed that sweet-candied baite, but straight their wits forsake them, and they runne starke mad, assembling in routs and throngs numberlesse of ungovernable numbers, with uncivill civill commotions." In the "Forme of Cury," published with other cookery in Warner's Antiquitates Culinariæ, p. 33., and written in 1390, we find a kind of fried cakes called "comadore," composed of figs, raisins, and other fruits, steeped in wine, and folded up in paste, to be fried in oil. This suggests another savoury Query, Whether this is not an improvement on our apple fritters?]
Shakspeare, Tennyson, and Claudian.—
"Lay her i' the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!"
Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.
"'Tis well; 'tis something we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land."
In Memoriam, XVIII.
I remember having seen quoted, à propos of the lines of Shakspeare, a passage from some Latin poet (Claudian, I think) which contained the same idea. Can you, or any of your correspondents, favour me with it; as also where they are to be found? And can they give me the origin and reason of the idea.
H. JOHNSTON.
Liverpool.
[The passage to which our correspondent refers is most probably that already quoted by Steevens, from Persius, Sat. I.
"—— e tumulo, fortunataque favilla
Nascentur violæ?">[