8 Transactions. 



II. — Shortbread at the Lord's Supper. By Rev. JoHN H. 

 Thomson. 

 In November, 1888, I was assisting at the disi^ensation of 

 the Lords' Supper in the Free Church congregation, Portpatrick. 

 When the time came to remove the cloth that covered the bread 

 for the Communion service, I was startled to notice that it was 

 not the bread of a quarter loaf such as I had hitherto seen at the 

 dispensation of the Lord's Supper, but shortbread, made up into 

 round thin cakes of half-an-inch or less in thickness, cut into eight 

 sections, what, in Scotland, we call " Petticoat Tails." My 

 curiosity was excited, and I have been led to make inquiries as to 

 past practice in the South of Scotland. The result of my inciuirics 

 is that, according to the late Rev. Mr Urquhart, of Portpatrick, it 

 had been in use in Portpatrick from time immemorial. In Stran- 

 raer, in the Free Church congregation, shortbread has only been 

 given up within the last few years, and loaf bread adopted in its 

 place. About fifty years ago, according to the late Mr George 

 Henderson of Nunholm, it was in use in St. Mary's, Dumfries. In 

 the parish of Newabbey a lady, the daughter of a former minister 

 of the pt.rish, tells me that she well remembers seeing the short- 

 bread come from Dumfries on the Saturday before the Communion 

 Sabbath. On asking a well-known baker in Dumfries if he had 

 ever seen shortbread used at the dispensation of the Lord's Supper, 

 his reply was that he had never seen anything else in the country 

 in his younger days. It was only when he came as a young man 

 to the town that he had seen anything rilse. So far as I have been 

 able to inquire, the use of shortbread at the Lord's Supper is quite 

 unknown in Edinburgh. I never heard of its use in the forty 

 congregations of the Reformed Presbyterian Church that united 

 with the Free Church in 1876. But the Rev. Mr Andson tells me 

 that he has heard of its use in Arbroath ; an Irish friend 

 tells me that he has seen it used in Londonderry. Dean Stanley, 

 in his " Christian Institutions," fourth edition, page 61, has a note 

 in which he refers to the use of " shortbread " in the Lord's Supper 

 in Galloway. The note is appended to a discussion on the wafer, 

 whether or not its form is derived from the large, round, thin 

 biscuit of the Passover, the Paschal Cake. The Dean has doubts 

 about this derivation, because the Greek Church, so tenacious of 

 ancient customs, does not use the wafer ; and, secondly, because the 

 round form is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that the bread 



