Archive for the 'Little House' Category

May 23, 2006 @ 7:23 am | Filed under: Little House

A young Highlands reader requested a recipe for bannocks. I just happen to have a good one…there are many variations, of course, but the basic recipe is very simple and has endured for centuries: mix uncooked oatmeal with a little melted fat, a dash of salt, and just enough water to make a thick dough, and form into flattened balls. Fry ‘em on a hot griddle like pancakes. Yum.

That’s the bare-bones version. (I’m doing a lot of bare-bones versions of things this week, aren’t I?) Here’s the good recipe I mentioned, a teensy bit more sophisticated, but still the simple, traditional, basic bannock. It comes from Rampant Scotland, which has an extensive collection of authentic Scottish recipes, including cock-a-leekie soup, shortbread, and (shudder) haggis.

Scottish Bannocks (Oatcakes)

Ingredients
4 oz (125g) medium oatmeal
2 teaspoons melted fat (bacon fat, if available)
2 pinches of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
Pinch of salt
3/4 tablespoons hot water
Additional oatmeal for kneading

Method
Mix the oatmeal, salt and bicarbonate and pour in the melted fat into the centre of the mixture. Stir well, using a porridge stick if you have one and add enough water to make into a stiff paste. Cover a surface in oatmeal and turn the mixture onto this. Work quickly as the paste is difficult to work if it cools. Divide into two and roll one half into a ball and knead with hands covered in oatmeal to stop it sticking. Roll out to around quarter inch thick. Put a plate which is slightly smaller than the size of your pan over the flattened mixture and cut round to leave a circular oatcake. Cut into quarters (also called farls) and place in a heated pan which has been lightly greased. Cook for about 3 minutes until the edges curl slightly, turn, and cook the other side. Get ready with another oatcake while the first is being cooked.

An alternative method of cooking is to bake them in an oven at Gas5/375F/190C for about 30 minutes or until brown at the edges. The quantities above will be enough for two bannocks about the size of a dessert plate. If you want more, do them in batches rather than making larger quantities of mixture. Store in a tin and reheat in a moderate oven when required.

Catholic Culture records one old Scottish tradition involving bannocks:

Bannocks were baked before daybreak on Christmas morning. One was given to each member of the family. They were often flavored with caraway. The cake was marked in quarters by the cross, but, thin as it was, each person had to keep his cake whole through all of Christmas day. If, when the evening feast came, the cake were broken, bad fortune would fall on the careless one’s head. If the cake were still Christ’s bread, whole and entire, then joy and prosperity would be forthcoming.

Then of course there is the May Day custom I wrote about in Highlands: marking bannocks with a cross before they are baked and rolling them down a hill on the first of May, hoping one’s own oatcake made it to the bottom in one piece. A bannock that broke on the way down boded no good for its owner…

I will add this recipe to the Martha page.

April 13, 2006 @ 3:33 am | Filed under: Books, Charlotte Research, History, Little House

I am still adding to the list of Martha/Scotland-related resources, but I thought I’d get started on the Charlotte resource page as well. Expect this one to get off to a slow start and grow gradually…

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s maternal grandmother, Charlotte Tucker Quiner Holbrook, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1809. We have birth and death records for all of Charlotte’s siblings, including the several small brothers and sisters who died in infancy. All we know as fact about Martha comes from a letter written by Laura’s youngest sister, Grace Ingalls Dow, who wrote that her great-grandmother, Martha Morse, was the daughter of a Scottish laird and married a man, Lewis Tucker, who was considered to be beneath her station. All the rest of Martha’s story as I have told it is fiction (though the details of her family’s lifestyle are historically accurate).

Charlotte left more of a paper trail, including a newspaper advertisement for seamstress services, listing a location at the intersection of Union and Warren Streets in Roxbury. Readers of Puddingstone Dam may recall that this is the location of the house the Tucker family moves to after the dam construction renders their Tide Mill Lane house a less favorable site to live.

The history of Roxbury, Massachusetts, is a fascinating example of the advantages and casualties of American urban progress. Originally, the geographical area that became the city of Boston was a bulbous peninsula connected to the mainland by only a narrow strip of land known as “The Neck.” Roxbury, founded in 1630, was the village at the other end of the neck, and so the only land route into Boston was through Roxbury, as seen in this map of:

(Compare with a map of the Boston area today.)

Gradually, the wetlands surrounding Boston to the west and south—an area known as the Back Bay—were filled in and built over. I tell a part of this story in Puddingstone Dam. Nowadays, the landscape of Boston is so drastically different from its original shape that it is hard to imagine it was ever a lonely spur of land jutting into the Atlantic. Roxbury, along with many other neighboring villages, was eventually swallowed up by Boston and is now simply a neighborhood in the great urban center.

I have loads of links relating to Roxbury, and I’ll get those entered as quickly as I can. (Although, as you know, the great event we are anxiously awaiting means that isn’t likely to be too quickly.) Here are a few to get us started:

The historic Shirley-Eustis House, former home of Royal Governor William Shirley.
Discover Roxbury.
Boston Family History’s Roxbury section.

Still to come—resources about:

• Embroidery samplers
• Weaving
• School in Charlotte’s day
• Toys and games
• War of 1812
• Early 1800s cookery

Such as: The Old Sturbridge Village Cookbook: Authentic Early American Recipes for the Modern Kitchen—if your library has this book, you’re in for a treat. The “string-roasted chicken” recipe appears in Little House by Boston Bay

• Lydia Marie Child, author of The American Frugal Housewife and other books
• Living history museums and villages relating to Charlotte’s time period
• What made the news in Charlotte’s day (I have many period newspaper articles to scan in)
• Clothing and fashion
• Blacksmithing
• Poetry and literature
• Music
• Holidays and celebrations
• And more!

April 4, 2006 @ 3:41 am | Filed under: Books, History, Little House

Angela writes:

My daughter is currently in love with all things Scottish, and we have just ordered your Martha Books. (and LOVES that a homeschooling mom wrote them!!!) Can you recommend any websites/ book lists for upper elementary, so I could put together a little unit for her?

Happy to!

(Consider this a work in progress, and I’ll update as I am able. I’ll also put together a resource list for the Charlotte books, as soon as I get a chance. Suggestions from other Bonny Glen readers are welcome!)

Spinning and Weaving
In Martha’s day (late 1700s Scotland), every woman in the household, from the laird’s wife to the lowliest kitchenmaid, was expected to spend every spare minute spinning wool or flax into thread. The spun wool and linen thread was taken to a nearby weaver (weaving was a man’s trade, at this time), who would weave the fabric to order. As a housewife in early-nineteenth-century Massachusetts, however, Martha would have done her own weaving.

Here are some picture books about spinning, weaving, wool, and such.

Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall, illustrated by Barbara Cooney.
A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Zeifert.
The Rag Coat by Lauren A. Mills.
Warm as Wool by Scott Russell Sanders.
Pelle’s New Suit by Elsa Beskow.

If, like Martha, your child has a hankering to try his or her hand at spinning with a drop spindle, Halcyon Yarn has a very nice beginner’s kit. (Unlike Martha, I never did get the hang of it, though!)

UPDATE: Jane begs to differ about Halcyon’s kit being “very nice.” She agrees that the Harrisville drop spindle and the colored, combed wool are quite satisfactory, “But Mom, the instruction booklet was terrible, don’t you remember? Impossible to follow!” I stand corrected. Fortunately, a kind reader has just emailed me a link to this informative site: The Joy of Handspinning. Many thanks to Christine for the suggestion, and to my ever-vigilant junior editor, Jane.

Music
Gi’me Elbow Room: Folk Songs of a Scottish Childhood and other albums by Bonnie Rideout. (Gi’Me Elbow Room is a favorite with my children. Several of the songs are Robert Louis Stevenson poems set to music with a Celtic flair. Others are traditional Scottish tunes. Lots of fun.)

Folk Songs Index—click on Scotland and listen to dozens of songs, all for free! (This is how I selected many of the songs I quote in the Martha books.)

Poetry and Literature
Robert Burns, whose work was just becoming popular in Martha’s day.

Sir Walter Scott. Rob Roy takes place not far from the fictional valley where Martha’s family lives.

Fairy tales by Sorche nic Leodhas. Wonderful collections of traditional Scottish stories, including versions of some of the tales I adapted for retelling in the Martha books. (Other stories, like the Water Fairy’s tale and the tale of the Fairy’s Spindle, I made up from scratch.)

Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland—her journal of a trip she took with her brother William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A fascinating account of her travels. I found this book invaluable during the writing of Highlands.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. The classic Scottish adventure book.

The King’s Swift Rider: A Novel on Robert the Bruce by Mollie Hunter. This is on my shelf for a future read-aloud—I haven’t reviewed it yet.

(More Scotland-themed middle-grade and YA novels to come.)

UPDATE: How did I forget? The Scottish author George MacDonald is one of my lifelong favorite writers, ever since I read The Wise Woman at the age of nine. Also delicious: The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, and The Light Princess. Many thanks to the Deputy Headmistress for the reminder.

The DHM also suggests The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter.

Useful Websites
EdinPhoto Archive—printouts of old engravings from this site are taped up all over my office wall.

Costumer’s Manifesto—all about period clothing. (Check the “ethnic costumes” section.)

All about tartans. (Specific clan tartans, as we know them today, did not come into fashion until the Victorian era, when Walter Scott’s books brought all things Scots into vogue. In Martha’s day, a hundred years earlier, families would wear whatever tartan plaid pleased them—or the weaver.)

Scottish scenery.

Scottish history.

here’s another!

More to come!

February 7, 2006 @ 2:46 am | Filed under: Chesterton & Dickens, Little House

You just know I had to mention this today! It’s Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birthday. She was born on February 7, 1867, in that famous little house in the Big Woods near Pepin, Wisconsin.

As it happens, Charles Dickens was born on the same day, 55 years earlier, just a few months before the U.S. reached its boiling point and declared war on Great Britain, launching the War of 1812. Laura’s maternal grandmother, Charlotte Tucker, was not quite three years old when Dickens was born. Dickens died in 1870, when Laura was three. Jane finds this to be an interesting symmetry.

Click here for more famous folks born on February 7th. Among them are John Deere of tractor fame (1804), the German composer Ernst Franck (1847), novelist Sinclair Lewis (1885), and Hrafnhildur Hafsteinsdottir, Iceland’s 1996 Miss Universe winner (1976). (Okay, so I’ve never heard of her before. Who could resist that name!)