Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

Joanne, aged eleven, went caking in Stannington with a friend on October 30th. Dressed as clowns, they knocked on about twenty doors along her road, said the traditional caking rhyme (“Cake, cake, copper, copper”), and received about ten pence from each householder. She learned the rhyme from her mother and father and does not know what “cake” or “caking” refers to. “We just say it,” she says. Michelle, eleven, of Wharncliffe Side, near Oughtibridge, went caking (she calls it “singing”) with fifteen friends, also on October 30th. She was not disguised, but a few of her friends wore masks and costumes. They sang the song, “Build a Bonfire”, and received about ten pence from each house. Dressed in his ordinary clothes, Carl, twelve, went with some friends to about fifteen houses in Loxley on October 30th, sang no songs, said, “Can we have some money, please?” and received about five pounds in total. He does not know what “caking” means either; he “just adopted it” from his parents.

Comment

Comment

What do the three children, and their contemporaries, make of it now? Does it still happen, in this cashless, Covid age?

Here is a marvellous caking photo by Homer Sykes taken at Dungworth in 1974. Read the details. If I can find someone to ask, I’ll try to get permission to display it here.

And here’s a recording by The Watersons (Hull) of the souling song, which shares its first four notes with Dies irae (“Day of wrath! O day of mourning!/See fulfilled the prophets’ warning,/Heaven and earth in ashes burning!”):

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Original

If mischief marks the dark, sinister side of the Halloween season, then the tradition of caking (or “kaking” as it is spelled in Stannington) embodies its bright, sociable side. In its early form, of course, caking consisted of families in house-to-house visitation, undisguised, singing the caking or “souling” song and then expecting gifts of food or money from home-owners. “Soul cakes” were given to the visitors for their promising, in turn, to say prayers for the souls of the dead, as commemorated by the church on All Souls Day, November 2nd. Caking occurred either on November 2nd or during the evening of November 1st. In later years, the tradition was taken over by children, who sometimes donned disguise or went around in blackface.

Although this tradition was apparently not typical of most of Sheffield forty years ago, it was present in some villages to the north and north-west of the city, such as Stocksbridge, Bolsterstone, Stannington, Dungworth and Loxley. Some children there still follow the custom and go caking or “kay-kaying.” Three examples will indicate the present form of caking among children from different villages.

Joanne, aged eleven, went caking in Stannington with a friend on October 30th. Dressed as clowns, they knocked on about twenty doors along her road, said the traditional caking rhyme (“Cake, cake, copper, copper”), and received about ten pence from each householder. She learned the rhyme from her mother and father and does not know what “cake” or “caking” refers to. “We just say it,” she says. Michelle, eleven, of Wharncliffe Side, near Oughtibridge, went caking (she calls it “singing”) with fifteen friends, also on October 30th. She was not disguised, but a few of her friends wore masks and costumes. They sang the song, “Build a Bonfire”, and received about ten pence from each house. Dressed in his ordinary clothes, Carl, twelve, went with some friends to about fifteen houses in Loxley on October 30th, sang no songs, said, “Can we have some money, please?” and received about five pounds in total. He does not know what “caking” means either; he “just adopted it” from his parents.

This is the tradition, then, that, combined with the mischief tradition, resembles the trick-or-treat now dominating the Halloween activities of the children sampled. The combination, of course, actually creates a new convention that differs in some important ways from its two prototypes.

403 words.

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• All Saints’ Day (3) ·
• All Souls’ Day (1) ·
• Allhallowtide (1) ·
• Blackface (5) ·
• Bolsterstone (2) ·
• Dies irae (1) ·
• Dungworth (1) ·
• English folklore (17) ·
• Folk music (10) ·
• Halloween (1) ·
• Loxley, South Yorkshire (1) ·
• Oughtibridge (1) ·
• 📌Sheffield (72) ·
• Song (20) ·
• Soul cake (1) ·
• South Yorkshire (9) ·
• Stannington, Sheffield (1) ·
• Stocksbridge (1) ·
• The Watersons (1) ·
• Wharncliffe Side (2) ·

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