OATMEAL. 509 
home-made bread, your bakers’ bread, your baps, rolls, scones, 
muffins, crumpets, and cookies, your Bath buns, and your Sally 
lunns, your tea cakes, and slim cakes, your saffron cakes, and 
girdle cakes, your shortbread, and sinning hinnies ; we swear by 
the Oat cake, and the Parritch, the bannock, and the brose.”” 
Scotch beef brose is concocted by boiling Oatmeal in meat-liquor, 
and kail brose by cooking Oatmeal in cabbage-water. In the 
Border-forays of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries all the 
provision carried by the Scotch warriors was simply a bag of 
Oatmeal. 
** My blessing on the happy man 
Who first rode in his carriage ; 
And double blessing on the man 
Who first invented parritch. 
I'd build him up a monument 
As high as any steeple, 
His praise in future should be sung 
By all good honest people. 
Look round, and tell me where’s the land 
That flourishes sae weel 
As where they duly fill the mouth 
With Scotia’s fragrant meal! 
Whatever shape it may assume, 
In scone, or havercake, 
Or haggis, it is welcome, aye, 
For dear auld Scotland’s sake. 
It nerves the heart, it nerves the arm 
For deeds of noble darin’ ; 
When Boney met the kilted lads 
*Twas then he got his farin’.” 
In the social life of Queen Anne’s time, porridge was the 
Charity meat, which liberally-disposed persons sent for distri- 
bution on each Thursday, ‘“ when earthen dishes, porringers, 
pans, wooden spoons, and cabbage nets were stirring about 
against dinner-time.” The porringer, or porridge dish, was a 
small vessel deeper than a plate, or a saucer, usually having 
upright sides, and a nearly flat bottom, also one or two ears. A 
familiar nursery rhyme relates that :— : 
“There was an old Bishop of Norwich 
Who always ate beans with his porridge. 
By the Danes “ Fruit Porridge” is made: “ Take one pound 
of red currants, and one pound of raspberries, or two pounds of 
the jam; put these into a saucepan, with one quart of water, 
” 
