It was an especially dreary Thursday morning. The fog was clinging to the valley floor, making everything damp. Gathering grey clouds overhead signaled that the damp would soon give way to actual wet. Alan woke up, rubbed his eyes, surveyed the landscape, noticed the weather, and muttered something under his breath about it not being as nice here as it used to be. Alan stood up, took in a deep breath, and promptly died.
John lay next to the dwindling fire. The logs from last night, now reduced to embers and ash, gave off virtually no heat. If the rains did come soon, any hope of resurrecting the fire to cook breakfast would be dashed. John was very much asleep, his arm draped over Maureen. Maureen was nestled tightly, small spoon–style, blanketed in the warmth of John’s embrace.
John and Maureen, who would later discover that they had both been dreaming about aurochs, bolted upright as they heard Alan’s body hitting the ground, and immediately realized that something had gone terribly wrong. Springing into action, they shook Alan’s lifeless body, called out his name, and then, when it was clear Alan wasn’t going to answer, sat back down and had a good cry. They covered Alan’s body in his favourite hide, put his hunting spear in his left hand, arranged a small display of flint spearheads by his right hand in case he broke his spearhead during his hunt, and left a sizeable chunk of meat for him, wrapped tightly in leaves, in case he got hungry.
Seven hundred thousand years later, give or take a couple thousand years, Alan’s story would be retold, albeit with a few more facts and words like “carbon dating” and “Lower Paleolithic period” being thrown about very liberally, by a particularly learned doctoral candidate, coincidentally also named Maureen.
While the exact details of Alan’s story are a bit exaggerated—okay, completely a work of fiction—this is near enough to how the history of the British Isles began. The earliest remains of humankind in Britain were excavated in Suffolk, and their tools do date to seven hundred thousand years ago. One hundred thirty thousand years ago found Britain home to bands of Neanderthal. Twenty-seven thousand years ago it got extremely cold in Britain, as the Ice Age started and then lasted as a bit of a cold snap for the next thirteen thousand years. Roughly eight thousand years ago, Britain officially became an island, and six thousand years ago people began farming, raising pigs, planting crops, and domesticating cattle, sheep, and goats. It’s possible that those were indigenous Britons who had managed to survive the Ice Age, but it’s more than likely that they were travelers from Europe who decided to settle. It would be another two thousand years before someone had the bright idea to build Stonehenge and confuse us all for millennia to come. The Celts arrived about twenty-five hundred years ago, and the Romans stopped by for a nice spot of Pax Romana just about two thousand years ago. Four hundred years or so after arriving, the Romans up and left, and the Dark Ages began.
A Dark Age for Cuisine
Virginia Woolf said, “What passes for cookery in England is an abomination. It is putting cabbages in water. It is roasting meat till it is like leather.” 23 This is not an uncommon opinion of British food, but is it deserved? Well, yes and no. There has always been a lot of boiling going on in Britain, and the Dark Ages were no exception.
The Dark Ages weren’t any darker than any other time in the history of the British Isles. Typically, the period right after the Romans left (400 CE) until the beginning of the Italian Renaissance (1500 CE) is called the Dark Ages, or more politely, the Middle Ages. For our purposes, we’re going to focus on the times of the Anglo-Saxons, which lasted from about 400 CE to roughly 750 CE.
There was one big fight going on in Britain at the time, namely, consolidating all the tribes into one unified Britain. Two opposing forces were vying for supremacy over Britain: the native Pagan tribal leaders and the priests from the new religion that was sweeping all over Europe. And while chieftains and kings and missionaries fought for the souls of the inhabitants (oh, and their land), the ordinary people still had to eat. And eat they did. Mostly boiled things, like cabbages, no thanks to Virginia Woolf.
The typical diet consisted of breads, porridges of barley and oats, beer, vegetables, fruits, rabbit, birds, shellfish, and fish. On a rare occasion there would be pork; rarer still would be mutton or beef. The types of fruits, vegetables, and greens found in Britain at the time were crabapples, plums, gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries, turnips, peas, beans, onions, leeks, cabbages, parsnips, ramps, dandelions, and various wheats and grains. What meat there was to eat was either grilled immediately over open fires or preserved for later use. Smoking and drying meat was a common way to extend the usefulness of meat, as was salt preserving. Breads were simple, made from whole wheat or rye, flavoured with herbs, and tasting a lot like today’s sourdough breads. Larger villages would have had a bakery, a small dwelling with a big brick oven that served the entire village.
The two most common cooking tools were the griddle and the cauldron. The griddle was a flat piece of iron or clay that was placed over a heat source. The heat could be provided by an outdoor fire, much the same way we might cook over a campfire today. For inside cooking, a small fire would be built in the middle of the home and a clay pot would be turned upside down and placed over the fire. There was a cut-out to let oxygen in and where more fuel could be added, and the flat, circular bottom of the pot was used as the cooking surface. The cauldron was, by far, the most important kitchen implement. Cauldrons of all sizes were used. They were typically made of copper and iron, but ceramic cauldrons have been found too. Handles were later added, allowing the cauldron to be suspended over a fire with hooks and chains. Freestanding cauldrons with three feet have been found, but were far less common. Often, what was brewed in these cauldrons was pottage, or stew.
Pottage is thick. The oats were a substitute for meat and give the stew body. I could imagine foraging along hedgerows and using whatever I had on hand to make pottage.
|
Serves 8 |
Prep Time: |
Cooking Time: |
|
8 cups water or vegetable stock |
1 teaspoon dried thyme |
|
1 cup cabbage, shredded |
1 teaspoon dried sage |
|
1 leek, sliced (white parts only) |
1 teaspoon dried savoury |
|
1 turnip, cubed |
3 tablespoons lovage, chopped (celery leaves or parsley will do too) |
|
1 large carrot, sliced into coins |
Salt to taste |
|
1 parsnip |
1 cup rolled oats |
If you have a cauldron and a tripod and want to cook this over an open flame, I highly recommend it. To turn the heat up or down, you can either raise the cauldron or manage the fire accordingly. A stock pot and an oven work perfectly well too. The instructions are easy. Fill the cauldron with the water (or stock) and bring to a simmer. Add all the other ingredients, except the oats. Crank up the heat and boil for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are soft. Reduce the heat and add the oats, then simmer for another 30 minutes. You can leave this over a low heat for as long as you want at this point.
Serve in rustic bowls right from the cauldron or ladle from the stock pot. This is particularly good with a nice crusty piece of sourdough bread. Pepper wasn’t available to the average fifth-century peasant, but salt was. If you want to try this recipe as a noble person might have enjoyed it, add 1 tablespoon of turmeric and 2 teaspoons of fresh ground pepper when you add the other ingredients. If you’re an omnivore, add a cup of chicken or rabbit. If there are leftovers, you can keep the pottage in the fridge for up to three days and just reheat. I doubt there will be leftovers though.
The Importance of Feasting
Being an Anglo-Saxon chieftain came with perks. There was access to hunting lands, which included wild boar, venison, elk, partridges, pheasants, quail, and pigeons. Locals farmed the chieftain’s lands, which in turn the chieftain gave out as tributes to their favourite warriors. The warriors were grateful to have a nice bit of land to farm and hunt on and would, at the drop of a hat, come running to the chieftain’s aid when the trumpet of war sounded.
The local chieftains measured their wealth in land and the resources their lands could produce. The best way to show how much wealth was available in the kingdom was to throw a gigantic feast. This achieved a few important goals. First, it showed everyone in the area—friends and potential enemies—that there was plenty of food available. Well-fed soldiers and villagers can wage war with more voracity and withstand sieges for longer periods of time. A generous chief with happy villagers was a lot less worried about their subjects running off to fight for a rival faction. Secondly, banquets and feasts served as community gatherings, celebrating victories, the turn of the seasons, funerals, marriages, and religious holy days. After all, it was a combination of the chief’s skills as a strategist, community backing, and the will of the gods that kept the community thriving. Lastly, much like the proverbial lunch meeting on the golf course, feasts were a place to do business, cement alliances, and discuss the vital matters of the day.
Can you imagine coming into the hall of your chieftain? Furs and hides line the walls. A fire burns steadily in a long pit in the center of the hall. Outside, people are preparing venison and boar, roasting them on spits. Cauldrons of pottage flavoured with exotic spices like pepper and cinnamon are bubbling away. There are more loaves of bread than you can count, and not just the brown rye bread you’re used to, but the good, soft white bread too. There are barrels of beer and mead, and if the trading has gone well, maybe even a jug or two of wine. All the best warriors are home. The Saxon gods, Woden and Frigg, have shown great favour to your chieftain and your village. Thunor, the god of thunder, has scared your enemies away. Craftspeople have forged raven brooches, swords are etched with runes, there are decorative cauldrons with the faces of the gods hammered inside and out. Everywhere there is food. So very much food.
A Table for the Gods
You know, it’s not that different today. Think about the feasts you have with your family and/or friends. There are feasts to celebrate abundance and to mourn the loss of loved ones. There are community gatherings to mark the turn of the seasons and to root on your favourite warriors (okay, sports teams).
Tables are filled with roasted birds and grilled vegetables and heaping bowls of mashed potatoes and huge salads and piles of bread. The best plates are used. Family relics, like Grandma Lillian’s favourite lace tablecloth, are pulled out of the cedar chest. If you’re lucky there will be much talk and laughter and singing and Uncle Fred won’t start banging on about the state of politics today and how the young kids don’t know how good they’ve got it. Back in his day, he only had one cauldron and had to make his own pottage without pepper!
In my house, and perhaps your house too, these big family feasts include an acknowledgment of the gods or ancestors we hold dear. The cook, the matriarch, and the provider of the feast are all honoured, and there’s usually some family business that gets handled. A common trope in the US during election season talks about “dinner table” issues, meaning political questions that impact real people all the time, wherever they live and eat. Dinner table issues are the everyday concerns we all have. The Anglo-Saxons of Britain had these same conversations; they just invited all of their neighbours to one big dinner to air everything out. And of course, they invited the gods along to listen as well.
I’m proposing you gather with your beloved ones, those you provide for, those that provide for you, your ancestors, and your gods in the style of an Anglo-Saxon feast. If it’s just you, invite your gods and ancestors or the spirits of the place you live. No matter what your budget is (or isn’t), create a feast (two Twinkies and a Gatorade constitutes a feast if it’s all you have, so go for it).
Set the most lavish table you can. Cook outside if your space allows for it. While the meal is cooking and you’re chopping food and sautéing vegetables and prepping a mountain of delectables, give thanks for your abundance. I find making food to be a wonderful way to bring myself to center and feel grounded. Connecting with life, ancestors, the gods, and the very planet we walk on every day is pretty easy with a big bunch of carrots in your hand.
Light candles in every room (I do use a couple of the LED ones in certain rooms, you know, just for safety). Bring light into areas where there are shadows. Give thanks for the light and the shadow. And at some point during the meal, say what and whom you are grateful for in this moment, even if you’re enduring hard and uncertain times. Each guest should share something that they are grateful for. Taking note of a full table and the faces that are present and not present, remind yourself of what you are thankful for. Remember those that have paved the way, sometimes by their suffering, for you to be here. There’s no rush or time limit to this part of the ritual. Perhaps as your meal draws to a close you can recite these phrases:
May we never hunger.
May we never thirst.
Let us always remember those who
went before and honour them.
Let us always offer thanks.
What’s That Witch Cooking?
I have some bad news for you. From the times of the Roman occupation of Britain through the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Vikings, and Normans, right up through the mid-twentieth century, the word witch wasn’t ever said in a nice way to anyone. The Old English word for witch, wicce, was a common enough term, and it’s where the word Wiccan derives from. The Old English term for a magickal action was scinn-lac. One who practiced scinn-lac was said to have scinn-craeft, or magickal skill. A person who could enchant another person was known to practice galdor-craeft, which quite literally means “enchanting skills.” The term wiccecraeft meant the skill of witchery and was usually applied to the notion that one was working for themselves or their client, rather than the for the good of the community. There were specific names for diviners, plant-based magick workers, sorcerers and evildoers, and astrologers.24
Much of what we know about the practices of witchcraft, or any of the crafts listed, we know not because there are secret grimoires detailing all the lost spells, but because the new religion of the Christ and the church associated with those practices wrote laws and edicts forbidding Pagan practices. The early church and its missionaries, like Augustine, were responsible for converting the kings and chieftains of Britain, and by about 750 CE, the last Pagan rulers of Britain were gone. There were rumours of Pagan revivals for the next thousand years, but it wasn’t until the repeal of the witchcraft act in 1951 that a substantial revival began. But the church had a bit of a public relations problem. You see, the folk practices, celebrations, and feast days were so popular and hard to dislodge that the church just overlaid Christian feast days right on top of the Pagan ones. So, the Pagan practices kept going.
Crops and livestock made up a good part of the diet and fortunes of the landowners. If something went wrong with the crops or the land, the church would go looking for a reason. The specter of “the old ways” was always looming, because the new religion hadn’t been around for very long and people were suspicious of it. Church officials met up and said, “Look, those folk ways that involve taking waters from wells and doing things under a full moon and mentioning Wotan every five minutes aren’t Christian. If the crops do well, the villagers will think their old ways are still working and their gods are still listening. We can’t have that. So, let’s outlaw those things, or better yet, let our priests do the same exact things but in the name of our god.” And with that, the old ways began to disappear. Sort of.
You see, the new church edicts didn’t say that people couldn’t eat herbs to heal themselves, or bless new babies, or cure the sick. What they said was you couldn’t gather herbs from crossroads or sacred groves or wells that were once associated with the old gods. If you were caught doing those things, then of course you were in league with the demons (which equated to false gods) and that was something you could get in trouble for. The most common punishments were atonement fasts and prayers.
What does this all have to do with food? Witches were supposed to be able to turn good milk sour, and stop goats and cows from giving milk, and blight crops, and make poisons. Essentially, witches were really good at understanding how foods, herbs, spices, vegetables, and meats impacted the health and well-being of their fellow villagers and they traded on that knowledge. That doesn’t mean they understood molecular biology or how germs worked, but it did mean they saw a connection between the land, the gods, and the power of a good ritual, especially one done in the privacy of one’s own kitchen.