Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/243

 Collectanea. 203

Plates XII. and XIII. have been prepared from lantern slides lent by Mr. Henry Slater, Master of the Council School, Whittlesey, through the good offices of Mr. Bowker Weldon, Whittlesey.

Reminiscences of Lancashire and Cheshire WHEN George IV. was King.

My mother was one of the five daughters of Mr. William Goodlad, a surgeon of considerable local note, living at Bury, Lancashire, where she was born in 1820 and where her childish days were spent. The house in which the family lived belonged to the Earl of Derby, and one of the conditions of the lease was that the tenant should keep a game-cock and a greyhound for the landlord's use (in cock-fighting and coursing). Whether the game-cock was actually kept I do not know, but the greyhound certainly was. My mother had a vivid childish memory of " Fly," the greyhound of the period, walking over the "simnel-cakes" which had been laid on the hearth to "rise" before baking, and leaving footmarks on every cake. " Bury simnels," I believe, are still famous. They are flat round plum-cakes, thicker in the centre than at the circumference, having the edges turned up and folded into a sort of scallop-pattern, and are made every year for " Mothering Sunday," the fourth Sunday in Lent. Here is the recipe for them, copied from my grandmother's book of recipes, and doubtless inherited by her from her mother and grandmother, both of whom were inhabitants of Bury.

" To 3 lbs. of flour add 3 lbs. of currants, \ lb. of butter rubbed into the flour, 2 oz. of candied lemon, i oz. and a half of bitter almonds, \ oz. of cinnamon, f lb. of loaf sugar, the rinds of 2 large lemons, \ lb. of yeast, 5 ^Sgs, the whites and yolks beaten separately, and a pint of cream. Mix it together and make it up immediately into simnels \i.e. in the shape •described above]. Let them stand to rise well on the tins, and bake in a moderate oven."^

^The description of Bury simnels in Harland and Wilkinson's Lancashire J^olklore, p. 224, is more like the Shre>vsbury variety. My mother wrote "Nonsense, they are no such thing ! " against it, in my copy of the book.