FOLKLORE ON FRIDAY - A Traditional Winter Warmer

As some of you are aware, around this time every year I start making a little drink to enjoy over the Christmas season - ginger whisky. It's a gorgeous winter warmer that doesn't take very long to prepare, but does need a fair bit of time to make, for it is a drink that needs to sit and mature for some time. So then, every year at some point in September, as the first signs of autumn are appearing, I gather the ingredients together and make a batch or two. 

This traditional winter warmer is very simple to make, and the trickiest bit is having a little patience! But breaking with the modern way of giving out a recipe online, I'm not going to lumber you with sixty paragraphs of pointless blather that you have to scroll through to get to the ruddy recipe. So here we go! 

First of all, let's gather everything we need together! 

INGREDIENTS

• 1 litre of whisky (any cheap whisky will do)
• 2 jars of stem ginger in syrup (about 600g to 700g in total)
• Fresh ginger (approx. 1 to 2 inches of root)
• A cinnamon stick or powdered cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons of brown sugar

As jars of stem ginger can be pricey and sometimes hard to find, I have found that you can replace the stem ginger with around 5 to 6 inches of ginger root and about 300g of a good quality honey (or 500g of a cheaper one). 

Also, if you prefer, you can switch the whisky for brandy, and get an equally delicious winter warmer. Indeed since first experimenting with making a ginger brandy, I normally whip up a batch of both. 

EQUIPMENT

• A 1.5 litre Kilner jar or similar sealable air tight container
• A sharp knife (careful now!)
• A sieve
• Some empty bottles
• A sheet of muslin and/or coffee filter paper
• Patience

1) Firstly - and this is very important - scald your jars with boiling hot water and make sure they are thoroughly clean. And if you are using an old jar, do remember to check the seal is still in good working order, for we need the container to be airtight. To ensure they are completely sterilised, remove the seals and place them onto a baking tray. Then pop them into an oven preheated to 140C/120C Fan/Gas 1 for 20 minutes. For the rubber seals, place them in a pan of boiling water and boil for 3 minutes to sterilise. Afterwards, thoroughly dry them and they are good to go! 

2) Next, using a little sieve, strain off the syrup from the stem ginger into your jar. Handy hint - once you have taken the ginger out ready for step 3), screw the lids back on the jar and leave them upside down for a while. This will allow the syrup coating the insides of the jars to collect in the lids. You can often get another couple of tablespoons-worth of syrup by doing this! 

 3) Chop up the stem ginger into small pieces of roughly 1 cm square, and add to the jar. Now you can skip this bit, but I have found over the years, chopping the ginger into small pieces adds more flavour to the finished drink. Do take care when doing this, as the syrup coating the ginger does make it slippery! This recipe is NOT improved by the addition of blood and severed fingers. 

4) Peel your fresh ginger. Handy hint - using the back of a spoon is often better than a knife or peeler! Then slice the ginger into small chunks of about 1 cm square. Then add them to the jar too. 

5) Sprinkle in two teaspoons of brown sugar

6) Then pour in your whisky. And I will stress again here, that most bargain basement whisky will work just fine for this recipe. For heaven's sakes, don't use a proper malt for this! 

7) Break up a small cinnamon stick and put it into the jar. Or alternatively add a dash of powdered cinnamon, But be warned, using powdered cinnamon does make the later straining of the drink a bit trickier! 

8) Seal the jar, and give the mixture a good shake to mix everything together. 

9) Finally - and this is the really tricky bit - leave it for at least six weeks! Occasionally give it a shake, but otherwise leave it alone! Generally I make my ginger whisky around the Autumn Equinox and only open it around the Winter Solstice, just in time for Christmas! 

10) When you open it, place a piece of muslin or a paper coffee filter (for the best results, or both) into a sieve and drain the ginger whisky into a jug. If after straining and filtering it remains slightly cloudy, this is perfectly normal. However if it remains a bit too cloudy, strain it again. Then decant your winter warmer into bottles. 

11) Finally drink and enjoy! Ginger whisky may be drunk neat. Or it's very nice on the rocks too. Alternatively it may be added to coffee or hot chocolate to add an extra warming glow to your drink!

FOLKLORE ON FRIDAY - Autumn Leaves

In 1939, noted poet Louis MacNeice wrote a long work entitled Autumn Journal, a snap shot in verse of life in London on the eve of the Second World War. MacNeice's poetry very much reflected the times he lived in, as Philip Larkin put it "his was the poetry of our everyday life, of shop-windows, traffic policemen, ice-cream soda, lawn-mowers, and an uneasy awareness of what the news-boys were shouting". However a few particular lines have often puzzled readers - 

  

The plane-tree leaves come sidling down

            (Catch my guineas, catch my guineas)

And the sun caresses Camden Town,

               The barrels of oranges and apples. 

Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice 

Many have thought that the odd refrain of "Catch my guineas, catch my guineas" is perhaps meant to echo of an old nursery rhyme, just as the following lines about oranges and apples recall "Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clements". However, while it does allude to a very old source, we must look a little further than the nursery for its inspiration. 

While these lines don't appear to be an allusion to any older traditional rhyme or verse, it would seem to be an allusion to a widespread folk belief about falling leaves, and one that many generations of children have been familiar with. In Copsford (1952), author WJC Murray recalled that - 

As a small boy I had whimsically been taught that there was a magic in a falling leaf if you caught it before it touched the ground

Now this is somewhat vague, but undoubtedly it does make for a fun game in a sunny autumn afternoon. Delving into the annals of folklore, I discovered that in Cheshire it was said that to catch a falling leaf before it hit the ground on Halloween night entitled the catcher to make a wish. However there are many other versions of this little piece of autumnal lore. Most commonly, in many areas, it is simply considered lucky to catch a falling autumn leaf, and certainly this was the version that I was familiar with as a child growing up in the 1970s in the North of England. It is therefore not a huge leap of logic to suggest that Mr MacNeice's refrain recalls a similar tradition, in which it was said that to catch a falling leaf would ensure money and good fortune, and seemingly recalls a forgotten chant that accompanied the leaf catching. 

In 1878, the Folklore Society was founded to study such matters, and indeed to preserve these kinds of traditions, songs and rhymes. And in their first year of operations their official journal records the common folk belief that - 

If you catch a falling leaf, you will have twelve months of the happiness 

from Folk-Lore Record (1878)

But not all versions of this tradition were as quite as generous. It was said in Northampton, as late as the 1980s, that  if you catch twelve falling leaves during the autumn, you'll have a happy year; presumably each leaf caught ensures one month of good fortune. However childrens' author Alison Uttley, in her memoir A Year in the Country (1957), recalls a more exacting version - 

We try to catch a dancing leaf, for every leaf caught is a 'happy day', but how elusive they are, these fluttering alive things, which slip through the fingers and evade pursuit!

Now these variations in number perhaps are the result of this superstition spawning a game for children, with the increased goals making this autumnal activity something more of a challenge. In the 1950s, folklorist Iona Opie conducted a nationwide survey on superstitions, and a Welsh schoolboy in Bucknell, Radnorshire informed her that one needed to catch a whopping 365 falling leaves to ensure a lucky year - one can almost hear his breathless excitement at undertaking such a challenge! 

However the catching of falling leaves had other variations, and what's more were popular with grown-ups too. In The Encyclopedia of Superstitions (1949), Edwin Radford reports -

The peculiar belief mentioned in the first of the above superstitions was forcibly brought to the mind of the author one day in Hyde Park, London, in the autumn of 1946. A man and woman pretty well advanced in years stood looking up at an oak tree from which leaves were being blown by the wind. After making several attempts to catch a leaf, they at last managed to do so, the man first and the lady subsequently. They then walked away, apparently satisfied with the game. 

  A question to them elicited the fact that they expected to be free from colds in the head by reason of their performance. The author quoted to them the superstition in which they apparently believed. To this and a further question they announced that they were country bred, from the shires, and that since coming to London more than 20 years ago they had regularly caught falling leaves in the autumn. 'And we've never had a cold yet,' they concluded.

Whether there is any truth to this I do not know, but certainly the exercise involved in the task of catching those tricksy falling leaves certainly will help in warding off the coughs and colds of winter! 

FOLKLORE ON FRIDAY - Soul of the Fields

At harvest time across northern Europe as the grain and wheat was reaped, it was traditional to make corn dollies from the stalks, with many regions having their own traditional patterns for these curious pieces of folk art.

However the corn dolly was more than just a seasonal craft pastime - it dates back to pagan times, when it was believed that the spirit of the fields needed an idol or avatar to reside in for the winter, hence the farmers made these dollies which where taken into their home to shelter the Spirit of the fields over the winter, and come spring the it was returned to the earth by ploughing the dolly into the first furrow...

The dollies in this photo are (from left to right) a Cambridgeshire Handbell, an Essex Ring Terret and a Yorkshire Spiral