Celtic – Page 2 – Mark Bere Peterson’s Hauntings, Urban Legends, Paganism & Witchcraft

Thor Cake

Apparently oats were originally a weed found in wheat and barley crops that eventually became a crop on its own. The Greeks and Romans of classical times regarded oats as coarse and used them mostly as animal fodder. The Romans called it avena, and considered them only fit to feed barbarians.

Their neighbors, the Celtic and Germanic peoples, took an entirely different view and used oats extensively. In the northern and upland regions of Europe, oats are the only cereal which will ripen in the cold wet climate. Oats were first cultivated around 1000 B.C.E. in Central Europe. The first record of the cultivation of oats in England is a location called athyll (“on oat hill”) in Anglo Saxon records from 779 CE. There is a record of the bishop of Worcester’s oat lands mentioned in a boundary charter dated 984 CE. Ground oats mixed with milk, cream or water was a very common meal for working people. It was not until the fifteenth century that flour made from oats was first referred to as oatmeal.

1 1/2 cups oatmeal

3 cups all purpose flour

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1/2 cup golden syrup

3 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or lard

1 teaspoon allspice

1/8 teaspoon mace

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

3 teaspoons cinnamon

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C).

Soak the oats in the milk in a small bowl for a half hour.

Whisk together the rest of the dry ingredients in a larger bowl. Stir the brown sugar and the egg together in another large bowl. In a small saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and stir in the molasses and golden syrup. Mix the butter/syrup mixture to the brown sugar mixture. Stir in the dry ingredients until just blended. Place in a greased 9 X 11 inch pan. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the cake starts to come away from the sides of the pan. A toothpick inserted into the middle should come out clean and the cake should spring back when touched.

Alternatively you can roll the batter into small balls, roll them in oatmeal, and bake them on a cookie sheet until brown.

Sidhe are the more modern versions of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the fairy race of Old Ireland who were great masters of magic and appeared in early Celtic mythic tales such as Tochmarc Étaíne. After being conquered by the Sons of Mil (ancestors of the Irish people), the Tuatha Dé Danann retreated underground and dwindled into the still unearthly beautiful (but diminished) sidhe. The word “sidhe” originally referred to the fairy mounds where these beings lived. Tad Williams’s Sithi race from his epic fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, is akin to the sidhe.

In folk belief and practice, the sidhe are often appeased with offerings, and care is taken to avoid angering or insulting them. Often they are not named directly, but rather spoken of as “The Good Neighbors”, “The Fair Folk”, or simply “The Folk”. The most common names for them, aos sí, aes sídhe, daoine sídhe (singular duine sídhe) and daoine sìth mean, literally, “people of the mounds” (referring to the sídhe). The sidhe are generally described as stunningly beautiful, though they can also be terrible and hideous.

Sidhe are seen as fierce guardians of their abodes—whether a fairy hill, a fairy ring, a special tree (often a hawthorn) or a particular loch or wood. It is believed that infringing on these spaces will cause the sidhe to retaliate in an effort to remove the people or objects that invaded their homes. Many of these tales contribute to the changeling myth in west European folklore, with the sidhe kidnapping trespassers or replacing their children with changelings as a punishment for transgressing.

The sidhe are often connected to certain times of year and hours; as the Gaelic Otherworld is believed to come closer to the mortal world at the times of dusk and dawn, the sidhe correspondingly become easier to encounter. Some festivals such as Samhain, Beltane and Midsummer are also associated with the sidhe.