Yorkshire Almanac 2025

Unedited excerpt

The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

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.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• All Saints’ Day (3) W/G ·
• All Souls’ Day (1) W/G ·
• Allhallowtide (1) W/G ·
• Blackface (5) W/G ·
• Bolsterstone (2) W/G ·
• Dies irae (1) W/G ·
• Dungworth (1) W/G ·
• English folklore (17) W/G ·
• Folk music (10) W/G ·
• Halloween (1) W/G ·
• Loxley, South Yorkshire (1) W/G ·
• Oughtibridge (1) W/G ·
• 📌Sheffield (80) W/G ·
• Song (20) W/G ·
• Soul cake (1) W/G ·
• South Yorkshire (10) W/G ·
• Stannington, Sheffield (1) W/G ·
• Stocksbridge (1) W/G ·
• The Watersons (1) W/G ·
• Wharncliffe Side (3) W/G ·

All tags.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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!”):

Something to say? Get in touch

Similar

15 August 1805: The Sheffield volunteer infantry depart to fight Napoleon on the beaches

27 January 1830: William Cobbett rides from Leeds to black Sheffield

15 December 1888: Leeds’s most popular wassailing song, according to Frank Kidson

10 April 1877: Echoing Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe”, John Collier tells a meeting at Walkley (Sheffield) that local Normans and Anglo-Saxons initially lived apart

11 March 1864: An inhabitant of Bacon Island survives the Great Sheffield Flood

15 August 1781: The ineffably peripatetic John Wesley discovers a movable pulpit in Sheffield

11 May 1985: A fire at the Bradford City stadium kills 56

21 July 1666: A white ghost army is seen by the Don near Sheffield

3 February 1825: The last great festival at Bradford for Bishop Blaize, the wool-combers’ patron

4 September 1947: Conflicting hopes for the future of the nationalised coal industry, as a wildcat strike against increased hours at Grimethorpe spreads through the South Yorkshire coalfield

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Re this wave of unofficial strikes:

Major-General Sir Noel Holmes, chairman of the north-eastern division of the National Coal Board, in a statement yesterday on the strike at Grimethorpe Colliery, said that 140 coal-face workers, out of 2,682 employed at the pit, were not doing a fair day’s work. A committee representing management and workmen had decided that the stint for the 140 workers should be increased by 2ft., but they refused to accept its findings and came out on strike. The other coal-face workers came out in sympathy. “As much as I dislike mentioning this fact,” said Sir Noel Holmes, “it is only right to recall that at Grimethorpe since January 1, 1947, and before the present strike, there have been 26 sectional unofficial stoppages, which have lost 33,000 tons of coal to the nation. The present stoppage up to date represents a further loss of more than 40,000 tons.” (Times 1947/08/27)

Holmes’s Wikipedia article curiously doesn’t mention this phase of his career.

I’m guessing that the Welsh ex-Puritan authoritarian Communist Arthur Horner is the voice of the NUM in the above – see e.g. the Times for 9 September.

Interesting comments on the wartime coal boards by T.S. Charlton, colliery manager at Cortonwood:

The management of the collieries is in the hands of men trained primarily in management of mines and miners. They have a working knowledge of all the machinery available and how best it can be used, but the details of this side are left to the mechanical and electrical engineer. Labour costs are two-thirds of production costs, and therefore the handling and the best use of men are of the greatest importance to managers. Why it should have been decided that labour leaders should be good labour directors is, apart from the political issue, difficult to understand, unless it is on the old adage of “poacher turned gamekeeper.” Unless and until the production director has control of his labour side, I can see little hope of his schemes proving effective.

The miners have put forward suggestions to improve output, but they appear to do no more than improve the position of the miner. Can it be said that any suggestion already put forward by the men has put up the output figure? Why should it be assumed the men’s side of the pit production committees should be able to improve output in any way? Their training, inclinations, and very job depend upon their obtaining the best for their electors rather than for production.
(Charlton 1943/12/01)

Charlton was clearly a clever and capable man – it would be good to know more about him.

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