THE HOT CROSS BUN.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 774, 24 March 1910, Page 5

THE HOT CROSS BUN.

ANCIENT CUSTOMS AND LECENDS. England is peculiarly rich in alluring edibles, closely associated with her Church festivals. There is St. Michael's Bannock for Michaelmas, the Carvis, or seed-cake, for All Hallows' Eve, the plum pudding for Christmas, the sugared cake for Twelfth Night, pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, and the tansy-cake for Lent in general. Cakes of some kind, indeed, have been used in worship by all peoples, ancient and modern. The Jews had sacred Shewbread in the Temple, of which David partook when he was an hungered. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Rom.-.ns bad also their holy bread, with which they appeased the wrath of their respective deities. The Hindu god, Ganesha, the elephant-headed, is frequently represented as holding in his hands a bowl filled with small cakes, on which • he is supposed to feed, and the chupatties, of bitter memory to this country since the Indian Mutiny, are connected with the worship of Krishna. In England the. hot cross bun is encircled with a sort of mystic, halo, and in the minds of most people is dimly connected , with the Crusades. It is a distinctly national institution, being quite unknown on the Continent. Even in England,' it u local rather than universal, being confined mainly to the southern part of the island, and totally unknowi. in the remote districts of the north. In the counties of Hert-. ford and Cambridge it has a more than common vogue, and this is accounted for in" some quarters by a theory advanced as a probable explanation oi the origin of the hot cross bun. It was adjacent to those counties that the Roman roads Ikeneld Street' and Arniynge Street crossed each other and buns were made in honour of Diana, of; tho Cross .vays was undoubtedly erected, at the time of the Roman occupation of Britain. Here, long before the fast of the-Romish priest, hot cross bunu we're made in honour of Diana, the festival of the "Sweet Queen of the Night" boing held soon after the vernal equinox. It is, lnwever, doubted if even the Romans introduced the custom to Britain, as it is , more than likely that the priests of the Phoenicians, who came trading to Britain in amber and tin, long before the days of Julius Caesar, were the first to bako cakes in honour of the pagan goddess Diana. A learned President of the British Association some years ago placed tho appearance of the not cross bun in England as coeval with the introduction of Christianity in Apostolic Ages, and suggested that with the early Eastern missionaries it was symbolic of the biead broken by our Lord at the Last Supper. There is ample evidence,that the worship of the mccn (Diana) held a conspicuous place in the Druidic ceremonial, and that a sacrificial cake formed part of every offering. These cakes were made in two ways. One was round and sweet, marked with a cross dividing it into four, to indicate the four quarters of'the moon; the other' was horned, and might have been intended to represent the crescent rather than the full moon. It will be seen, therefee, that the weight of evidence is ui favour of the pagan origin of the hot cross bun. The legends connected with the hot cross bun are endless, and for tho most part trivial. The well-known raucous declaration of the etreet vendor— . "Hot crjss buns! One a penny. Two a penny. ; Hot cross buns!" ..,-.- 'is only a remnant of the ancient version, which ran— ' . ; "Hot cross buns I Hot cross buns I If yon have no daughters, , Give them to your 50n5,.....' And if you have neither, Then eat them all yourselves I" followed the refrain quoted above. In olden times it was thought that for two persons to break a Good Friday bun between them, was not only a pledge of friendship, bnt a potent charm against future disagreement. The-act or breaking was always accompanied by the words:— . "Half for you, and half for me, ' • Between us two goodwill shall he." : The ceremony was, therefore, very popular with lovers. ' There is still a belief in some parts of the country that buns kept from one Good Friday to another pieserve bread in the house from going "reamy." The bun was also a sure safeguard from fire, and a cure for certain diseases, such as sore throat In Brixtbn, at ho very distant date, buns were strung on a cord above the door of a- room in the belief that they would,scare away evil spirits.