Skip to main content

2024 Week 46: Cultural Tradition #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 In Scotland, Hogmanay, the 31st of December, is synonymous with bringing in the New Year. As a child, I can remember staying up until midnight for 'the bells', getting a small glass of non-alcoholic raspberry 'wine' and a piece of sultana cake, waiting to see who would be our 'first foot' (the first person to come over the threshold of the house in the New Year, hopefully someone tall, dark and handsome for good luck!) before being hustled off to bed. And that would be the end of my evening.

Earlier on that day/evening, my mum would have been busy. She was a great baker and would have made sultana cake and cherry cake, which she would have cut up into fingers. She bought in shortbread and also a sticky dark fruit cake called 'Black Bun', which I hated but which was my dad's favourite. The raspeberry 'wine' that I mentioned earlier would have been made by her too from a bottle of raspberry cordial, which was only sold in the shops in the run up to the end of the year,  and then bottled in old lemonade bottles. She also made a similar ginger 'wine'. Both of those were loved by my dad, who was a tea-totaller (non-drinker of alcohol), as were all his family.

That did not stop my dad being a good Hogmanay host. He always had bottles of whisky in the house, as well as sherry and advocaat for the ladies, perhaps even little bottles of Babycham! After the bells at midnight, neighbours would pop round for a drink and a bit of cake and chat. Even on the years no-one popped round, mum was always well prepared, just in case.

Before I was hustled off to bed, we would have sat and watched TV. A programme called 'The White Heather Club' hosted by Scottish singer Andy Stewart was compulsory viewing, featuring other well known singers of Scottish songs such as Kenneth McKellar and Moira Anderson and of course, the highland dancers. All the men were kilted up and the ladies wore tartan dresses with white sashes. At the end of the programme, Andy Stewart always sang:

Haste ye back, we loue you dearly,
Call again you're welcome here.
May your days be free from sorrow,
And your friends be ever near.

May the paths o'er which you wander,
Be to you a joy each day.
Haste ye back we loue you dearly,
Haste ye back on friendship's way.

Andy Stewart on The White Heather Club Source: bbc.co.uk

And of course, no New Year would have been complete without a rendering of Auld Lang Syne, the poem written by Robert Burns.

Have I carried on these traditions? Yes and no. The TV programmes have changed, though there is usually still a very Scottish feel to them, but I certainly don't watch them from beginning to end. I have no raspberry or ginger wine for any guests who may drop by, but I usually have plenty cake and alcohol available! And I can't remember the last time we had a 'first foot' after midnight. Nowadays 'tall, dark and handsome' has to be our black cat Bertie! 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Week 43: Lost contact #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 When we research our ancestors and their families, it is all to easy to become a collector of names, dates and places. After all, we want to 'know' who they were and where they lived and when, in order to get a glimpse into what their life was like. We look for photographs of our most recent ancestors to see what they looked like. We trawl censuses, Poor Law Applications, Wills and Testaments to get some detail about their rank in society, their jobs, their financial circumstances. We discover their families, the children they had, the children they lost. We may read their obituaries and gravestones and scan their death certificates for cause of death. Through research, we can slowly start to build up a picture of them, a notion that we know 'who they were'. But something will usually elude us - we will never truly know their feelings/emotions, even if we know the key moments in their lives. Take my grandmother, Christina, who lost her first four children and then anot...
4 comments
Read more

2024 Week 14: Favourite recipe #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

So, despite the heading, I'm not going to write about a favourite recipe that an ancestor has passed down to me, simply because there isn't one. What or rather whom I'm going to write about is my mum, Helen Anderson, who absolutely loved baking. And it is this love of baking that has been passed on to me. My mum. My mum was always baking. Like most children, I got allowed to 'lick the spoon' and taste the raw cake mixture. I got to learn to how to make crispie cakes. I watched how to make pancakes and enjoyed getting the first ones off the pan. I took in helpful baking hints like 'half fat to flour' for pastry or ' 4 4 4 plus 2' for the measurements of flour, sugar,  butter and eggs needed for a sponge cake or little butterfly cakes.  She had learned how to bake from her mother, as many women in her generation had done. There was always something 'in the tin' should a friend or neighbour pop in for a cup of tea. But she didn't just bake f...
Post a Comment
Read more

2024: Week 41: Most #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

Looking at my DNA matches over various platforms and my family tree research, it is obvious to me that my paternal grandmother's line - the Walkers - are the line which have the most descendants (or at least the most descendants who have tested) and who have spread out furthest over the world. My great great grandparents James Walker (1777-1862) and Ellen Muir (1790-1866) from Linlithgow in Scotland had ten children - eight boys and two girls. Such large families were not uncommon in those times. Two of the boys never married, but between them the other eight siblings produced at least 52 grandchildren! The eldest of the siblings, George Walker was, however,  the only one of the children to ever leave Scotland and that was later in life, when he followed his son John, a miner, over to the USA. It is, however, many of the grandchildren of James and Ellen who decide to leave their homeland for the USA and for Australia. Their USA destinations included Kansas, Colorado, Ohio and Maryl...
Post a Comment
Read more