Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/222

198 the bride sat before the marriage ceremony began) waiting the coming of the bridegroom. (Pitsligo, Peterhead.)

7. A cake should not be turned twice on the girdle, and the baker is always most careful in lifting a corner of it and examining whether it is sufficiently "fired" (baked) before she cuts and turns it. (Pitsligo.) If an unmarried woman did so, she would become the mother of an illegitimate child. (Pitsligo.) If a woman great with child did so, her child would become "cake-grown," i.e. the child would become bent up, and the belly would rest on the thighs. (Aberdour.) Told by an old woman who, when a girl, has heard her mother and others speaking of it.

8. If the cakes are burnt in the baking, the baker will shed tears before they are eaten. (Peterhead.) In Pitsligo, burnt cakes mean that the baker will get something to cause anger before they are all used.

9. To break off "the croon (crown, i.e. top) o' the quarter," when first beginning to eat bread, was set down as a breach of good manners. One must begin with the broad end. (Keith, personal.) In other parts of the country (Inverurie, Corgarff) it was accounted unlucky to do so. The feeling still lingers in many places and with many I have spoken to on the subject, and I confess I have it strong myself.

10. In baking, the baker has to take carefully out of the "bossie" all the leaven of each cake. Unless this is done the leaven accumulates round its sides and contracts its size. Hence the saying, "Ye're baken' oot o' the bossie," which is applied in various ways, e.g. to one who leaves too little room to work in, commonly to one who has little skill and energy, or to one who surrounds himself or herself with so many things as to hinder free play for work.

11. When children were putting aside the small pieces of bread on the trencher, the reproof was, "Broken brehd (or breed) macks hale bairns."

12. The trencher on which the bread was placed was made of wood and called "the man," or "the breed man." (Pitsligo.)