PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

You could call it the Bannock Mystery.

The common word for the most commonly-made kind of bread in the more northerly Insular Celtic languages—Gaelic bannach, Scots Gaelic bonnach, Manx bonnag—all derive from the Latin word panis, “bread.”

That the name of such a common foodstuff should be a foreign word is odd in human linguistic history. Languages tend to retain old words for basic concepts; likewise, when you borrow a new food, you tend to borrow the new name for it as well.

So what gives?

Q: What is the most common definition of “the right way to do things”?

A: Well, the way I do it, of course.

It seems to be a basic element of human psychology that we despise other people for what they eat.

Frogs.

Krauts.

Beaners. (Gods.)

Afghans, I am told, look down on the peoples of the Subcontinent as “Lentil-eaters.”

Real men, of course, eat meat.

The most famous Briton of his day was Pelagius (c. 354-418), hated by Latin churchmen for his heretical views.

Augustine of Hippo, for one—like many so-called saints, not really a very nice person—couldn't say enough bad about the man that he belittled as “that porridge-eating Briton.”

Aha.

Apparently, Romans—the conquerors—disparaged Britons—the conquered—as “Porridge-eaters.”

Real people, of course, eat bread.

The Romans, of course, ate porridge of various sorts, as well as bread. It's hard to believe that the Insular Celts didn't eat bread—probably some sort of griddle-cake—as well as porridge.

But back in the old Dobunni days—those being the original (so say some) Celtic Tribe of Witches, porridge was apparently our staple food.

The smell of baking bread is incredibly seductive. Try it and you’ll soon see.

Makes one large or two regular loaves.

Supposedly the word “pretzel” derives from Latin brachiatellum, “little arms.”*

During the German Middle Ages, pretzels—made from flour, salt, and yeast only—were considered a Lenten food, their signature shape said to represent arms crossed in penitential prayer.

Witches, of course, tell it somewhat differently.

Of all the Sagewoman blogs I have written, this one, Bake Your Lunasa Loaf For Peace,  hit a chord.

( http://www.witchesandpagans.com/sagewoman-blogs/away-with-the-fairies/bake-your-lunasagh-loaf-for-peace.html)

In Ireland we have already had a chilly intimation of autumn. Last weekend was spent at a Bards By the Hearth event, since the weather was too abysmal for going out, even to walk John's lovely Tree Labyrinth. But being so close to Lammas, and since it was a Bring and Share event, I made my standard soda bread. It is technically a Northern Irish 'wheaten' loaf, except I make it with spelt. Like so many in Ireland, if I can't get organic wheat flour or buy an artisan loaf in a Farmer's Market, my gut pleads with me to stick with spelt.  Even one of the owner's of Ireland's big bread companies has just announced that he is gluten intolerant.

But I digress from Lunasa. You need to celebrate the harvest and baking bread is the best way I know.  It seems cheating if you resort to the bread machine, which I often do during busy weeks to make sure that I have a decent loaf in the house. Baking yeast bread can be tricky and takes time and patience to get the knack. But Irish soda bread is a sinch.  Our ancestors made it on an open fire. Indeed, a Belcoo woman still goes up to her ancestral cottage to make her 'fadge' (as thy call it in Fermanagh) on the open hearth, just as women down the centuries have done. It tastes better according to Margaret.

 Let us recall the kings who died for corn:

 red bread and red drink at Lúnasa of the harvest. 

We were discussing the previous night's old-style witches' sabbat. (“Old Style” as in “just like the woodcuts.”)

Of the housel*—the feasting on the god's flesh and blood—someone suggested provision of a gluten-free option next time around.

Sometimes, I think, we need to be wise enough to listen to the wisdom of other traditions.

In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas poses the question: If the body of Christ is present in the consecrated host, just what part of Christ's body is present there? The head? The heart? The phallus?

In her 2004 novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke cites a proverb of her alternate-history 19th-century, Napoleonic Era England:

The priest plants wheat, the witch plants rye.

Clarke reads this as meaning that "Some people just can't agree on anything." But I think there's more to it than that.