Your browser (Internet Explorer 7 or lower) is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites. Learn how to update your browser.

X

MENU

Bobbing for Apples

When I think of autumn and the Regency, I think of harvest fairs and harvest balls, brisk October winds, and lots of apples. But did you know that bobbing for apples was another of those romantic games where future romance was predicted? I didn’t, until I read this entertaining and thorough article about the origins of Halloween. Apparently, one variation was played the same way as it is now, except that names were carved into the apples so that whichever name was on the apple you seized was that of your future true love. Fortunately, the variation called “Snap-apple,” where a player had to seize the apple while it swung around on a pole with a burning candle at the other end of the pole, died out, or we’d not be enjoying trying to grab those apples quite so much!

Ballads

This has nothing to do with lipedema, but What Happens in the Ballroom (presently available on Kindle Unlimited, among other retail spots) has a scene where widow Eliza Harper Pierce sings several songs to entertain an audience. One of those, “The Suffolk Miracle,” is a ballad that Eliza uses to torment her papa (also in the audience) about a father who disapproves of his daughter marrying a man of a lower station. You can read the lyrics here, but I chose it by accident while looking for the ballad, “The Holland Handkerchief,” which I have on my folk albums. The two tell a nearly identical story, but “The Suffolk Miracle” is the title Eliza is likely to have heard for it. I happen to love ballads, and I learned long ago that most period ballads have multiple renditions, with variations in wording, title, and even ending. I only wish there was a version for this one with a happy ending!

St. Andrews Day

Although the Brits don’t celebrate Thanksgiving (obviously), the Scots do celebrate St. Andrews Day around that time (November 30). In fact, it’s also enjoyed with great fanfare by Eton College every year and there was at one time a Society of Scots Gentlemen in London that always held a feast on the day. But by the Regency, it was primarily a Scottish holiday, when the Saltire (St. Andrew’s Cross—a diagonal cross) was shown everywhere. I can’t confirm this, but supposedly, one superstition was that you could ward off witches if you drew a Saltire on your fireplace. I think somebody has St. Andrew’s Day mixed up with Halloween. 😊

Bath Chair

I hope my knee gets fixed before I have to resort to the Bath chair, I swear. Did you know that the Bath chair (not to be confused with the sedan chair, which was carried by two men) was an early form of wheelchair designed by John Dawson in 1783 to aid elderly visitors who came to take the waters in Bath, England? While wheelchairs were invented in China many centuries before (and paraplegic clockmaker Stephan Farfler invented a self-propelled one that was a forerunner to the bicycle), they didn’t show up in England until the 16th century, and weren’t widely used until the Bath chair came along. All of them, however, still required attendants to push the chairs. Self-propelled ones didn’t really come into use until the early 20th century. For these and other facts (and pics) about wheelchair history, be sure to visit The Science Museum’s blog.

Mussels

Speaking of living things in the wild, one of Rafe’s favorite dishes is mussel and onion stew. Just so you know, I’m not fond of mussels myself (I prefer clams, oysters, and crabs), but this recipe does sound good. A creamy seafood soup? Yum! The recipe is from my new favorite food site: http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/. The dish originated in “the West country” and that’s where I had Rafe grow up, so I figured that fit. Anyway, if you visit the site, you can find all sorts of recipes for English dishes and can even search the site by county. I could spend days on there, I swear!

Puzzles

I hesitate to mention any links, because shortly after my last newsletter, that Foods of England site I mentioned apparently went away. I wish I’d known it was going to do so, because I would have copied a few of the recipes. Sigh. This month’s subject is puzzles. I still haven’t put one in a book (that I remember). I can’t call them jigsaw puzzles (the jig saw wasn’t invented until the late Victorian age), but they did exist, cut out with marquetry saws. They were called “dissected maps.” Here’s an image of one. Apparently, puzzles go back to the 1700’s, when they were primarily maps cut along the borders of the countries/counties, etc. You can read all about the history of puzzles on a site called “Bob Armstrong’s Old Jigsaw Puzzles,” so I won’t bore you with it, but so help me, if that link disappears, I’m going to be convinced that my Regency tidbits are a jinx!!

At the Seaside

People in the Regency time period also liked to travel, and, as with now, they often went to the beach. For Accidentally His, I enjoyed researching and writing about a Regency seaside experience (it certainly made for good sensual scenes). Plenty of men swam in the nude and some women, too, which was facilitated by the fact that men and women had separate beaches. For the more modest, there were bathing gowns and the machines in which to change into them. I honestly don’t know why they called them “machines.” There’s nothing machine-like about them. They’re simply boxes/covered wagons that had openings at either end. You went in on one end, changed your clothes as the “machine” was being towed into the water, and then climbed down into the water on the other end. You can see pics of the bathing machines at Jane Austen’s World and my Pinterest page about the book.

Pumpkin Pies

To be honest, Regency folk weren’t baking pumpkin pies of the kind we’re used to. Pumpkin pies then were either like apple pies with roast pumpkin mixed in or pumpkins with a hole cut in them that were filled with apples, etc. and baked whole. They sound very different from what we eat now, although the spices seem similar (except I suspect none of us would put thyme, rosemary, and marjoram in our pumpkin pies). Pumpkin pie as we know it was an American dish, although it has now been incorporated into English holidays, too. I could find very few references to pumpkin pie in cookbooks of the period, although the English did use pumpkin in stews and soups. The Scottish, on the other hand, did cook pumpkin in ways similar to ours—like a custard or pudding. Perhaps that’s where we got it from—plenty of Scots emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1800’s. If you’d like to read a Scottish recipe, there’s one here for Pumpkin Pudding.