The Potato Famine

2nd January 2022

(music)

Liz: Hello, and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love making things, and history, and the history of making things, and we normally like to start by talking about what we are currently making. So, what are you up to?

Liz: I’m so happy

Hazel: Wherefore?

Liz: I finished the Knives Out jumper

Hazel: Oh, amazing!

Liz: Just in time to go and see my grandparents, so I could show it off to my Grandma

Hazel: Amazing! Was in admired

Liz: Oh it was

Hazel: Yes! I saw your last picture of that, with all of the cables, and oof

Liz: So many cables

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: It came to a kilo of yarn

Hazel: Oh my gosh

Liz: For a Nick-size jumper

Hazel: That is gonna be cosy af

Liz: Yeah, they said it’s kind of like wearing a weighted blanket

Hazel: Sounds quite nice

Liz: And I also finished the snail rug

Hazel: (gasps) Ok, I am looking at a picture of this snail rug right now, and it is glorious. Oh my gosh

Liz: Is it effervescent?

Hazel: It is effervescent. You had better put this on the twitter, ‘cause the people need to see this

Liz: I will put it on the twitter

Hazel: It’s amazing, I love it

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: It looks really…it looks like the kind of rug that you can properly wriggle your toes into as well

Liz: Oh yeah, punch needle rugs are deep

Hazel: Mmm. Deep snail

Liz: But I also kind of don’t want to use it was a rug, ‘cause what if it gets dirty?

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: ‘Cause I worked so hard on it for so long

Hazel: Oh man, yeah, I know that feel with the handmade things

Liz: I might just put it next to the bed as a nice feeling when I wake up

Hazel: Yeah. If it’s not woollen, you can wash it easily. Or you should be able to

Liz: I think I should be able to hand-wash it

Hazel: Yeah, hand-carpet-shampoo it or something

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: But hopefully you don’t need to worry about that for a while

Liz: So, what have you been up to?

Hazel: Not a lot, because I had flu for the past two weeks (laughs)

Liz: Oh no!

Hazel: Yeah, it hasn’t been a fun time. The obligatory “it’s not covid”, I did a PCR test, I was just really unlucky and caught the flu on Christmas, but fortunately I got over the worst of it just before Christmas, but yeah, basically I had no energy to do anything fun. I was going to make St Lucia buns, little saffron Scandinavian Christmas buns

Liz: Ooh

Hazel: But I did not do that, because I couldn’t do anything except stay in bed and be grumpy, but I will do a local larder on them, probably next time, and then…so yeah, there was stuff I was gonna do, but I didn’t really do any of it, I’m afraid, but

Liz: You sound so apologetic. Don’t feel bad that you felt bad

Hazel: (laughs) You know, I just feel like I should contribute something to this podcast

Liz: You’re contributing a whole episode right now

Hazel: I am, I am, but I don’t know if you’ll thank me for it, because it’s pretty grim, but it deserves to be known

Liz: It does

Hazel: So, this episode we’re gonna talk about what is commonly known as the Irish Potato Famine. So we did touch on this in our previous episode about the potato, but we thought this event in history deserves its own episode, because there is a lot at play here, and it is, well, it’s almost not that potato related, because while it is a potato famine, it…a lot of…most of what I’m gonna talk about is going to be political and social, so yeah, it’s a whole episode kind of thing, and I’m gonna warn you, this isn’t going to be a very lighthearted episode, it’s pretty sad and anger-inducing so

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: Yeah, there’s not going to be a lot of jokes and wisecracks in this one, but there are some more positive things that do come out of it as well. I’ll be talking a little bit about the international aid that came from some quite interesting places, and some more lighter things. And also, I wanna say that this is a very complex subject, as well, and this is not gonna be a comprehensive history. There are lots of people who have written lots of books on this, and there’s a lot of information out there. This isn’t gonna be “this is everything that happened in the history of the Great Famine”, I’m gonna go through a short history of it, and, but it’s mainly gonna be looking into the social aspects, because, again, we are a domestic history podcast. It’s gonna be more of a series of impressions, I guess

Liz: Yeah, I mean we don’t do the entire history of X

Hazel: Yeah, I mean that’s our whole thing, we’re not picking up…we’re not coming out with that much new information, it’s more, our vibe is a couple of decently-informed nerds discussing stuff, right?

Liz: Yep. That’s the tagline

Hazel: Yeah (laughs) I’ll take that, that is, that label is good enough for me. So, yeah, this episode I’m going to be talking about what is commonly known outside of Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, but is described also as the Great Famine, or in Irish an Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger, so there’s various ways of describing it, but…so what happened, was…there’s a bit of controversy about the word famine, as well, because it did start off with the failure of the potato crop, but it turned into a seven year famine, mainly because of what can be termed at best gross mismanagement, and at worst deliberate malice, on the part of the British Government. So that’s another reason there’s various ways of describing or titling it

Liz: I mean, there is the argument to be made that most famines are in some way manufactured, either through incompetence or malice

Hazel: Mmm

Liz: The big ones in history it’s generally one or the other

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: It’s not just the crops not growing, at least in modern history

Hazel: Yeah, I’ve absolutely heard that too. And also the argument that, in many places where there is a famine, it may be genuinely difficult to distribute food aid because of a war, or things like that, whereas in this case that wasn’t happening, so there’s not really an excuse, so yeah, that is

Liz: I’m not defending anyone

Hazel: Yeah, no, that was an add-on, but yeah, your comparison to modern famines made me think of that, because it is still one of the worst famines in history, even compared to things that have happened since, and there are many reasons for this. So, as we touched on in the potato episode, in 1845 the potato crop failed across Europe, and can you remind me what it was that the potato blight was called, and why it’s not a fungus?

Liz: An oomecyte

Hazel: That’s the one, an oomecyte

Liz: Sorry, oomycete

Hazel: It’s a good little word. So, the potato crop failed, actually across Europe to varying degrees, but when it hit Ireland there are various reasons why it created this massive gap in the food supply. One of them is that potato, the potato was a massive part of the Irish food supply, and another one was that it was basically one variety of potato, so that meant that they all got the blight, but there were other, more political, reasons as well. So, Ireland had been under occupation by Great Britain pretty much for several centuries at this point, and one of the reasons that the land system in Ireland was distributed the way it was was because of this group of laws called the Penal Laws, which were imposed by the British government, and these were a series of laws that restricted Catholics as to what they could do, what land they could own, which had been very restrictive since the 17th century, when there had been a rebellion which was pretty brutally crushed by Oliver Cromwell, who did some pretty horrible things in Ireland

Liz: I would go as far as to say atrocities

Hazel: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And so then these Penal Laws were brought in, and they restricted how Catholics would be part of public life. They weren’t allowed to vote, or to hold certain positions. They weren’t allowed to own property above a certain lease of number of years, not allowed to own a horse above the value of £5

Liz: Didn’t know about the horse one

Hazel: Yeah, apparently it was to prevent the Catholic majority from having horses that could be used for military purposes

Liz: I see where they were coming from, but also that’s wild

Hazel: It’s a very specific restriction, yeah, and also, if you did own property, you weren’t allowed to pass it on intact to your eldest child, you had to distribute it equally to all the children, so that basically meant that over the generations Catholic land owners would because less and less powerful, and it also meant that the plots of land would become smaller and smaller and smaller, and so people were trying to get more out of their plot of land by growing the most efficient crop, which was the potato. And also the system of land owning. So, a lot of the, a lot of the absentee landlords, so those that lived in England or elsewhere, but owned the land in Ireland, but basically would never be there, who may have received land. Also, a lot of the rent money, which was being funnelled back to England, because a lot of the landowners would be English landlords, who would be termed absentee landlords, who were living in England or elsewhere but owning the land in Ireland which they basically never saw, would be employing middlemen to administrate their tenants, and they would impose quite high rents, and then people would sublet and stuff, so the whole land system meant that there were a lot of these tiny tiny farms, and so when the potato blight hit Ireland it hit really hard, because people…it was the staple food

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: And often it was, people were really relying on it, because they were trying to get the most out of their small area of farmland, and the traditional Irish life was structured around the village community, and so that was one of the reasons that the failure of the potato crop hit really hard. Initially the British government actually did do something about it

Liz: What?

Hazel: I know, I know. Robert Peel, who was the Prime Minister at the time, famous for other things, such as forming the British police force

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: So he actually did kind of recognise that it was going to be a problem. When the potato blight reached Ireland it was reported in newspapers, and it was kind of a mixed reaction. Some people were really worried, some people thought that it wasn’t gonna be that bad, and Robert Peel actually sent a commission of scientific investigators to go to Ireland and review the situation, and see how bad it gonna be, and they came back saying “this is basically really bad news, and you’re going to have a terrible situation on your hands if things continue this way”, and unfortunately he was still…he was a Tory Prime Minister, so his party were very much not in favour of him spending money on doing anything to avert this brewing catastrophe. Not that the Whig government was any better, as we will see later, but he ended up having to covertly do this scheme where he brought in maize, and tried to distribute that, not really for people to eat, but more so that it would bring down inflation of food prices that was happening because of this huge gap in the market left by the potato. It was this really convoluted system which didn’t really work, and then the government found out about it anyway, and, yeah, a whole thing. So initially

Liz: He was trying to do covert food aid?

Hazel: Kind of, but it was…yeah, very badly thought out, and not enough, and so, yeah, something was done, but

Liz: That’s bizarre

Hazel: It wasn’t…yeah, it was badly thought and and it wasn’t enough, and then in 1846 the failure of the potato crop was much worse, and that basically led to it being a huge huge disaster, and, in fact, 1847 was known as Black 47 for how terrible the conditions were that year. As a little footnote, I found out that Frederick Douglass, who was a famous American abolitionist

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: Who escaped enslavement and went on to campaign for the abolition of slavery, he, having just publised his memoirs, had to get out of America, because he was at risk of recapture, and came to tour Europe and meet lots of abolitionists in Europe, and he stayed in Ireland at the very beginning of the potato famine, and noted down some of the things that he saw, and he wrote not very much specifically about the potato famine, but he wrote about the conditions in Ireland at the time, and the way that people were oppressed in this sort of land system, that really trapped people in poverty, and so he could see that the conditions were ripe for a disaster to happen. So I’m now gonna come on to possibly one of the most hated figures in politics ever, who is Sir Charles Trevelyan

Liz: I haven’t heard of him, but I already hate him

Hazel: Yeah, you’re definitely going to by the end of this, trust me. So, he was a British civil servant, who was in charge of managing the Irish situation at the time, and he was kind of a terrible person. So, I’ve mentioned that…some of the reasons that the failure of the potato crop turned into this massive, the Great Hunger, and one of the other main ones is that it was not only heavily mismanaged by the British government, but they also, there was a big push to not do anything

Liz: Ok

Hazel: Yeah (exasperated sigh) So, the attitude…the policy towards it was very influenced by that kind of Victorian moralism

Liz: I think I see where this is going, and I don’t like it

Hazel: And laissez-faire economics. So after Robert Peel actually lost his Prime Ministership, the Whig government came into power, and they’re kind of popularly known for being the more liberal side of the two-party government system at the time, but they kind of also weren’t, and in this case they were definitely not in support of sending aid to Ireland. Yeah, so Sir Charles Trevelyan, who was working for the Whig government, he basically saw this catastrophe as a massive opportunity

Liz: Oh, Charles, no

Hazel: To, yeah, as a massive opportunity to reform the Irish economy. He, in his book The Irish Crisis, which was published in 1848, he described the famine as, this is really bad, as “a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful providence, the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be affected. God grant that the generation to which this opportunity has been granted may rightly perform its part”

Liz: No

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: No!

Hazel: (uncomfortable noise) Yeah, this is one of the most un-fun bits. So there was a pretty ingrained prejudice towards the Irish in Britain at the time, which was reinforced by the newspapers and the media, and they were characterised…oh, also, mainly because of the prejudice against Catholics as well, they were characterised as lazy and drunken and there was this stereotype of an Irish Catholic that was really pervasive in the British media. Another classic colonial tactic. And this really played on the response to the famine. So, the government thought that if they were to just send aid, then the Irish would become reliant on handouts and wouldn’t want to work anymore. Does not sound familiar at all

Liz: Hmm

Hazel: Yeah, I mean we’re still dealing with this attitude to this day but…so when it finally came in 1847, things were gonna get pretty bad if no response, nothing to intervene was done, and the government finally recognised that they were gonna have a full-on rebellion on their hands if nothing happened, and so they did eventually send some aid, but it was pretty…it came with conditions. So, one of them was that any aid received had to be in return for labour or something. In accordance with the Poor Laws of the time, some of which also applied in the rest of Great Britain, but were slightly different in Ireland, they, to be eligible for public assistance, people had to either be willing to work on public works, so the government commissioned these public works that people would be paid to work on

Liz: So it wasn’t even working on existing stuff

Hazel: No, it was

Liz: It was just busywork to punish them for having a famine

Hazel: Yeah, essentially. So, they were known as famine roads, a lot of these public works, they would just get people to build a road that came out of nowhere and didn’t really go to anywhere, but they would just have to build it, because you have to do work in order to receive assistance, and obviously this was quite labour-intensive work, so if people were already weak from hunger it wasn’t going to be easy to do, and these had also been put in place earlier in the famine as well, but the ones Trevelyan brought in, you weren’t paid a fixed fee for the day, you were paid based on your performance

Liz: (whispered) Oh god

Hazel: So, yeah, and the wages weren’t even enough to afford the food prices. So, yeah, that, as you can imagine, that was…there were reports of people basically dying while at work on public works. I found some eyewitness accounts from the Irish memorial website, and I’ll put up the link to this page on the twitter, in case anyone wants to read all of these. Most of them I’m not gonna read, ‘cause they are very distressing, but I would recommend, if you wanna read them, to have a look. I’m just trying to find the one about the roads. Yeah, here we go. James Tuke, member of the Society of Friends, a Quaker, actually, in 1846, wrote “A man employed on the public works became sick, his wife had an infant on her breast. His son, who was 15 years of age, was put in his place upon the works.” So for the family to continue to receive aid there had to be somebody working on it. And there’s another one from a letter to the Cork Examiner, in November 1847, “will you believe me when I have to inform you that a poor woman from the parish of Inniscarra, who, from hunger, happened to pluck up a single turnip in the noon-day from one of the fields of Sir George Colthurst of Ardrum, was summoned to appear before the bench of magistrates at the Petty Sessions at Blarney Tuesday last, and fined for such trifling offence the sum of 20 shillings by the worthy magistrates

Liz: For a turnip

Hazel: For one turnip, yeah. During 1847, when the famine was at its newest and worst

Liz: That’s like a week’s wages, more than a week’s wages, for most people

Hazel: Yeah, it’s pretty…it’s…

Liz: Bad

Hazel: Yeah. And then there’s a lot of descriptions of people witnessing what was happening in the villages, and people dying from starvation, but also, more than that, from diseases that would spread from malnutrition, so fevers. So, it’s estimated that over a million people died in the 7 years, and a million more emigrated, which I’ll talk about a little bit more later, but yeah. So there was the serious of…the seriousness of the Great Famine is not exaggerated

Liz: Didn’t the population only hit what it was in the last decade or something?

Hazel: Yes, apparently approximately 25% of the population was gone at the end of the famine, either from death or immigration, and yeah, it basically didn’t recover until very recently, and it pretty much decimated the Irish language speaking areas as well, so before the famine Irish was quite widely spoken in the west and the south, but a lot of the people, those were also the areas that were hardest hit by the famine, and

Liz: Guessing those were the more Catholic areas

Hazel: Yeah, so apparently that was one of the major factors in the decline of the Irish language as well, although they’ve done a pretty good job rebuilding that. So I also haven’t mentioned the Corn Laws yet, and those were a very controversial set of laws that restricted the import of foreign grain, so they were meant to protect British farmers by blocking the import of cheap grain from North America, but what they also did was block the import of cheap grain for aid to Ireland, and they were actually repealed during the course of this, 1856 I believe, and the Great Famine was one of the major motivations for the repeal of the Corn Laws, which, there had also been

Liz: That’s something I guess?

Hazel: Yeah, there had also been major opposition to it in Great Britain as well, because it meant that the price of bread was artificially inflated. So, once the Corn Laws were repealed, there was also more importation of grain, and of maize, and of other food, into Ireland, but during this time also the government still continued exports from Ireland, so the Irish grain, and other produce, were continued to be exported in this time

Liz: That makes sense. That’s gonna help

Hazel: Yeah, exactly. As you can imagine, that was not very popular, and people took things into their own hands in some cases

Liz: Good, I support all of them

Hazel: Yeah, unfortunately the police and the army were sent in to protect these exports, and that resulted in a lot of violence as well. As you can imagine, people also were not able to pay their rent at this time, and due to centuries long disenfranchisement of Catholics, which these laws were gradually repealed, and in 1829 they were mostly repealed for good, but there was still this legacy of Catholic disenfranchisement, and that meant that most of the Irish Catholic population, especially the rural population, were tenant farmers, and didn’t own their houses, so they were not able to pay the rent, and the landowners, who were also looking for ways that they could modernise their farming, and combine all of these tiny farms into one, kind of saw this as an opportunity, and some had been doing this beforehand as well, moving people out for herds of cattle or different crops, but this

Liz: So sort of similar to Highland clearances?

Hazel: Yes. And this was an opportunity for people, for the landowners, to carry out mass evictions which, again, when I say mass evictions…

Liz: Really helpful

Hazel: Yeah. So, like I say, mass evictions, that could be whole villages. There’s a report of 700 people being evicted on one night, in the winter, so causing mass displacement as well, although that one does have a bit of a sting in the tail at the end, which I do like. So, there was another famine in 1879, or another potato blight rather, but it didn’t turn into a full blown famine, because of various reasons. The blight wasn’t as bad as in 1846, and the response from the government was actually a lot better, plus the railways allowed food to be distributed more easily. But also, during this time, people remembered who those landlords were, and the most notorious ones were boycotted, and also when people tried to evict their tenants, the whole neighbourhood would come and basically block the eviction

Liz: That’s amazing

Hazel: And I like that. Yep. Yeah, so that’s kind of a whole…I’m sorry about the whole string of just really bleak and terrible things happening, but that’s it, that’s what happened. But after the Corn Laws were repealed there was a lot of foreign aid that was able to come into the country, and there was actually international outcry about the way this government response was being handled, and a lot of international aid was sent to Ireland, from lots of different countries, from America, there was a substantial donation from Turkey, and actually it’s said that some of the Irish port towns have a crescent moon on their coat of arms, still, in reference to that, and also, and you might have heard about this, ‘cause it’s been around the news in recent years. The Choctaw nation

Liz: Oh yes

Hazel: Donated $170 in aid to a particular town in Ireland, Middleton in Ireland, which is apparently about $5000 in today’s money, and they had actually only recently survived a traumatic event in their own history, and they took up this donation, they collected $170 to send to the town of Middleton, and that has not been forgotten by Ireland. In fact, there is a memorial, a statue, in the town of Middleton, which commemorates the gift of the Choctaw nation. It’s titled Kindred Spirits

Liz: Nice

Hazel: Yeah, and that was erected in 2017, and it remains there. There’s also a scholarship arrangement whereby Choctaw students are funded to study in Ireland, and in 2020, during the pandemic, when the hardships were particularly bad in certain communities, including the Navaho nation and the Hopi reservation, the Irish nation gave a large donation, so it wasn’t back to the Choctaws, but that was their inspiration for making that donation, was to remember the help that they had received in 1847

Liz: I really like that

Hazel: Yeah, so (trips over words) that is a really nice act of solidarity between nations, and that was a somewhat more lighthearted thing to come out of this, and actually Ireland is now one of the world leaders in foreign aid, so yeah, it’s never been forgotten, this event, and it’s actually, it’s kind of agreed by historians that the Great Famine led to, eventually, to the Easter Rising and the push for Irish home rule, because obviously at that time it was still within living memory

Liz: That makes a lot of sense, because we were talking in the potato episode, weren’t we, about the Hungry 40s, the Europe-wide potato blight, basically leading to most of the countries kicking off

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: Including the establishment of more than one actual national constitution

Hazel: Yeah, and there actually was a push for a revolution in Ireland at that time. In fact, an Irish nationalist group went to Paris in that year to learn about what had happened and how to make it happen in Ireland, and this was real hope that that could happen, and that’s actually where the present-day Irish flag came from, I found out today. So, it’s based on the French tricolour, but with the green representing Catholics, and the white representing, sorry, the orange representing Protestants, and the white representing truce

Liz: That’s really lovely

Hazel: Yeah. But yeah, there of course wasn’t a revolution at the time, and that’s attributed to it was a massive famine and people did not have the energy, sadly

Liz: Understandable

Hazel: Yeah, but, as we know, things were a different story in the next century. Yeah, so thinking about the folk culture, and how this is a huge part of Irish folk memory, and I was looking for folk songs dealing with this period in Irish history, and of course Ireland having a really world famous musical tradition, I thought there would be more songs about this, but there actually aren’t that many, and the theory behind that is that it was such a dark time people didn’t really want to talk about it or make songs about it, which is understandable

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: There are a few, mostly in Irish, of course, but the most famous Irish song about the Great Famine is The Fields of Athenry, and that is kind of a surprising one, because it’s not a traditional song, it was written in 1979. So, you, as far as I know, you’ve not done The Fields of Athenry on your folk song history

Liz: No. I mean, I haven’t done any folk song history videos in a while

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: But I haven’t done that one

Hazel: Yeah, it’s the one that goes (singing) “low lie the fields of Athenry”. The folk group that Liz and I are part of have often sung this, actually, but I didn’t know…I didn’t get a lot of the references in it until I did the research for this episode, because it contains the line “you stole Trevelyan’s corn/so the young might see the morn”, and that of course is a reference to Sir Charles Trevelyan, and his plan to introduce corn into the Irish market, but people still had to pay for it, and it didn’t go very well, but

Liz: Yeah, this is one of those episodes where it’s really hard not to swear, isn’t it

Hazel: It really is, it really is. Yeah, so he did send food, but it was

Liz: Doesn’t count

Hazel: Yeah. People couldn’t afford it and he continued these exports of corn as well, so that’s a reference to when people would get together in these gangs and go and take the food, and of course there was a crackdown by the government on that, so the song is about a young man who has a family, and he goes and steals this corn to feed his children, and then he gets taken away to Australia on a prison ship. So yeah, so this is actually not a traditional song, it was written in 1979, but it’s one of those songs that has entered the folk tradition

Liz: Yeah, when this episode goes up I’ll post a link to, probably, the Dubliners’ version

Hazel: Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, it’s very very famous internationally, actually, and I will also post…I found a lovely video of the 2012 Euros, when Ireland was knocked out 4-0 by Spain, and for the last part, the last few minutes of the game, all the Irish fans started singing The Fields of Athenry, and it is very moving, actually, I’ll post a link to that video, but yeah, that is actually the most famous folk depiction of the Great Famine. So I think that’s pretty much everything I wanted to say. My apologies for presenting it in quite a mixed-up manner, I did feel a bit of pressure on this episode, it’s been quite different to a lot of the other things we talk about. I know we have talked about things involving colonialism and atrocities and disasters before on the podcast, I think this is the first time we’ve delved into it in such a specific way

Liz: I think so, yeah

Hazel: Yeah, so I’ve done my best, and I hope that it has been informative for people who may not have known about this period in history before

Liz: So, we’re going a little bit lighter with the local larder. Apologies for my voice, I’ve been coughing. I thought I would talk about fairy bread

Hazel: Ok, yeah, that does sound enjoyable

Liz: So it’s gonna be a fairly short one, but I think there was quite a lot to say about the main topic. So, fairy bread is incredibly straightforward, it is bread and butter with sprinkles on

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: Normally rainbow ones

Hazel: Aww

Liz: It’s a popular children’s party thing in Australia and New Zealand

Hazel: Ok. That sounds quite nice

Liz: It is nice, the pictures of it…I feel like it would be far too sweet for me

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: But also, it is for children, who love sugar in all its forms

Hazel: That is true

Liz: So, the name doesn’t show up until 1929, in a Tasmanian newspaper, which talks about children in a tuberculosis hospital having a party with “fairy bread and butter, with hundred and thousands, and cakes, tarts, and homemade cakes”

Hazel: Aww

Liz: I don’t know why it differentiates cake and homemade cakes

Hazel: Yeah, I don’t know what’s the difference

Liz: But yeah, it’s thought that the title comes from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, which

Hazel: Oh, what about?

Liz: I’ll read it, ‘cause it’s fairly short. “Come up here, O dusty feet!/Here is fairy bread to eat./Here in my retiring room,/Children ,you may dine/On the golden smell of broom/And the shade of pine;/And when you have eaten well,/Fairy stories hear and tell.”

Hazel: Aww

Liz: Which is just very nice

Hazel: That sounds like a nice time where you might potentially get kidnapped

Liz: I mean, I feel like if you’re already in the fairy realm at this point

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: It’s thought that the name fairy bread actually originally referred to just thin toast, and people started putting butter and sprinkles on it as a treat for children, and then the name became that specific preparation

Hazel: I see, ok

Liz: ‘Cause there’s, in 1913 there’s a recipe for fairy bread which is essentially a teacake

Hazel: Ok

Liz: And I just think it’s a very cute snack

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: But yeah, in April 2021 an Australian satyrical comedy group called The Chaser created a fake online petition to rename it, because the name, the word fairy is in some places, including Australia, also used as a homophobic slur

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: And it got picked up by Newcorp

Hazel: Oh of course it did

Liz: As an actual thing that they thought was a real petition, even though the website said that it was a fake petition actually on there

Hazel: Oh well done journalism

Liz: They basically wanted to point out how little fact checking outraged right-wing newspapers do

Hazel: Ok, and the bait was taken handsomely

Liz: It was. And in November of this year there was apparently a google doodle celebrating it

Hazel: Oh

Liz: Not everywhere, but in Australia, and it’s very cute, it’s the word google on some slices of fairy bread

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: Doing a little dance

Hazel: That’s cool

Liz: So yeah, like I said, very short, but that is

Hazel: But nice

Liz: Fairy bread, that I thought would be a nice contrast to the first part of the episode

Hazel: Definitely. That is a tonic, and I appreciate it

Liz: So yeah, so happy new year, because this goes out, I believe, on the 2nd of January

Hazel: It does

Liz: 2022, which is not a real year, that is a far future year

Hazel: (laughs) That is true, it is still March 2020, but happy new year everybody

Liz: If you want to support us, you can go to patreon.com/breadandthread, where you can get access to recipes, including my version of Danish sugar cookies

Hazel: Mmm

Liz: As well as a patreon discord server, where we chat about food and crafts and all sorts of things

Hazel: You can also email us at breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com if there’s anything that you would like us to know about, or anything you’d like to suggest for an episode

Liz: Yes. The person that suggested an episode on sugar, it is coming, probably in February

Hazel: Excellent

Liz: There’s a lot of research to do, it’s a bit topic

Hazel: You can find us at twitter on…on twitter, at breadandthread, where you’ll find teasers for upcoming episodes, links to things we talk about on the podcast, and any other things we are interested in

Liz: We also have a tumblr, breadandthread, where we post the same stuff, occasionally reblog history things that I come across on tumblr

Hazel: And we are on youtube, where you can also listen to the podcast there, also bread and thread

Liz: So yeah, again, happy new year, sorry for the bleak, but it needed covering, and right after potatoes seemed like the time

Hazel: Yeah, I think it was best not to lose the momentum, and it’s something that needs to be talked about

Liz: Yeah, the next episode is a bio episode, so I’ll find someone fun

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: I have a couple of ideas

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But yeah, thank you for listening, and we will see you next time