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fryttor-pome, which by the way will serve as a connecting link—verbally at least if 
no farther—between our present subject and that of a more strictly pomological 
character. 
Cakes, in connection with religious ceremonies, are of great antiquity. In 
the Levitical Law of the Jews we find (Lev. ii. 4) that they were enjoined that if 
they brought an oblation of a meat offering baken in the oven it should be of 
unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed 
with oil ; and when this people fell into idolatry in subsequent times, we find the 
prophet Jeremiah rebuking them, amongst other practices (Jer. vii. 18) that their 
women kneaded dough to make cakes to the Queen, i.e., the frame or workman- 
ship of heaven, in allusion to the idolatrous adoration of the heavenly bodies which 
the Jews had copied from their heathen neighbours. 
Pliny observes that Numa taught the Romans to offer fruits to the gods, 
and to make supplication before them, bringing salt cakes and parched corn, as 
grain in this state was considered most wholesome ; and the Romans did not deem 
grain as pure and proper for divine service that had not been previously parched. 
Ovid intimates that these bread offerings originated with agriculture, that 
when men sowed their fields they dedicated the first fruits of their harvest to 
Ceres, to whom the ancients attributed the art of agriculture, and in honour of 
whom they made burnt offerings of corn. 
Cakes appear to have been the association of a variety of festive seasons. 
They were valued among the Classical Ancients in sacrifices, for presents and 
other rejoicings ; and in our own country, in the middle ages, were given away 
amongst friends, which the Puritans endeavoured to abolish as savouring of a 
relic of superstition. We have, however, remaining in the present day the twelfth- 
cake on Epiphany night, the Easter cake, and in Herefordshire and Gloucester- 
shire that so well known as the ‘‘ mothering” cake on Midlent Sunday, in addition 
to the more general Shrove Tuesday pancake. 
Such was the importance attached to this Shrove Tuesday Pancake festival, 
that amongst the various kinds of bells in use in early times, as for instance the 
passing bell for the dead, the curfew bell against fire, the mot bell to assemble the 
people, and some others, there was the pancake bell, which was rung on Shrove 
Tuesday to remind of the important prandial custom of that indulgent day, 
previously to the long and stringent abstinence preparatory to the greater festival 
at Easter—the most important in the Ecclesiastical Calendar. We may then 
summarise our remarks thus :— 
1, That Shrove Tuesday means Confession Tuesday, preparatory to the 
Quadragesimal Fast of Lent. 
2. That the Pancake was a continuationin the Church, or rather a transfer 
and compromise of the earlier pagan custom of the Fornacalia Festival of the 
Roman Mythology. And now apologising for these rough notes on our subject, I 
would thank each listener for a patient hearing of these very imperfect remarks on 
Shrove Tuesday with its Pancakes and Apple Fritters, 
