Lore - Legends 20: Food & Folklore

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Food and folklore. They go together like peanut butter and chocolate, or arsenic and lace. Throughout history, cultures around the world have paired the favorite meals with specific rituals, cooking up some amazing stories in the process. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Aaron Mahnke and Harry Marks and research by Alex Robinson.   Sponsors: Stamps: Never go to the Post Office again. Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at Stamps.com/LORE. Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ©2024 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books. So if you're ready, let's begin. It's one of the few things we all have in common. All of us need food, and we have for as long as we've been walking around on this planet. Of course, food can serve all sorts of purposes. For a lot of folks, it can be a source of comfort, offering an oasis at the end of a difficult day like a messy plate of tacos or soothing our aching

bodies like a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup. But food isn't always sugar and spice and everything nice, it can have a sinister side as well. All throughout the pages of history are alternate examples of the stuff we eat where items usually seen as positive have been transformed into something darker. Just look at the story of Hansel and Gretel, where two young children are abandoned in the woods and stumble upon a house, but one that isn't exactly a shelter.

It's a trap, where food is used by an old witch to lure children in and fatten them up so that she can cook and eat them. Then there's the poison apple that puts snow white into what can only be described as a glass-enclosed coma. And there's more, from the gingerbread man to Goldilocks and the three bears. It seems that food has always been a key ingredient in so many of the legends and lore we know so well. And like I said before, that makes sense.

Food has the power to unite us, but it can also tear us apart. Food can give, and it can take away. In fact, if the legends are true, that's where the darkest stories can be found. Because it seems that whenever food is stolen, bad things are just around the corner. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore Legends. As I said earlier, eating is a necessary part of life. For many, food is associated with positive thoughts and experiences. We might eat turkey at Thanksgiving, and remember a time when the family was once altogether. A certain flavor of birthday cake might take us all the way back to our childhood.

Family recipes, favorite meals, you get the idea. But food in folklore, specifically fairy folklore, is quite different. It doesn't always bring comfort or joy. In fact, many stories throughout history have portrayed food as something painful or punishing, such as the Irish legend of the fairy dance. According to the tale, a beautiful young Irish girl slipped and fell. When she looked up at her surroundings, she realized that she had been transported to someplace else entirely.

She noticed several people gathered around a bonfire in the distance, so she stood up and hurried off to investigate. Upon her arrival, an equally attractive young prince approached her and asked her to dance. Now if this had been a movie, the music would have suddenly crescendoed around them as they circled the fire, lighter than air. They danced for what seemed like forever, until everyone and everything disappeared around them.

Afterward, the Prince asked the young woman to supper, leaving her down a flight of stairs that took them underground. The steps ended at a beautiful ornate hall with a large table in the center covered in delicious foods and wine. The woman took a seat at the table, then everyone else who was there encouraged her to eat and drink her fill. It was also tasty and satisfying. The Prince even handed her a golden cup of wine, which she accepted and lifted to her

lips. But just as she was about to take a sip, a man walked by and whispered in her ear, Eat no food and drink no wine, or you will never reach your home again. The girl immediately placed the cup back on the table, watching as her host demeanor shifted around her. Their party attitudes quickly curdled as one man stood up, furious, and told her that anyone who joined them had no choice but to drink with them. As they tried to force the wine down her throat, a red-headed man grabbed her hand and quickly pulled her out of the banquet hall.

Then he gave her a sprig of ivy, telling her that she would be safe as long as she held onto it. After that, the girl ran, the sounds of pursuits growing closer behind her. But she didn't look back. She kept running and running until she finally made it home and then barred the door shut before her assailants could capture her. Unsurprisingly though, at least to any woman who exists or has existed at any point in history, these men refused to accept no as an answer.

They told her that they would dance outside her home until she finally caved in and joined them. But she held tightly onto that ivy and the partiers were never able to bother her again. Unfortunately, not all stories about stolen maidens end quite so happily. Take for example the tale of a man named Mr. Neu. He was from the civil parish of St. Berrien in Cornwall. There was in fact a William Noy who lived there, according to our research, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He served as an English jurist and eventually attorney general. But whether this tale concerns that real guy is up for debate. The way it's told, a first name is never given. One day, Mr. Noy was helping his neighbors with their harvest.

It got late, and after the sun had set, he packed up and headed home. Unfortunately, he never made it. No one saw Mr. Noy for several days, and as the community grew increasingly worried, they began organizing search parties to try and find him. Some luck was had on the third day, though, when his horse and his dogs were discovered, but Mr. Noy himself was nowhere to be found. But those dogs led the search party on a trek through ancient brambles, until they reached a cluster of old trees and a set of ruins that none of them had ever laid eyes on before.

And it didn't take long before they found their missing man. Mr. Noy was there, among the brambles, where he'd been sleeping for three whole days. When they woke him, he was unaware of how long he'd been dozing. He didn't believe his neighbors when they told him that he had been out for so long, at least not until he saw that the harvest was completed, but his recollection of how he got there was even more incredible. He told them that he had gotten lost on his way home, and that his horse had been insistent on taking him in a different direction. At some point, he caught the sound of music in the distance, so he tethered his horse and walked toward it, until he came upon a party in the woods.

There he witnessed a gathering of hundreds, eating, drinking, and dancing merrily. But one detail stood out. Mr. Noy said that the people there were much smaller than him, too small to be normal humans, he said. Only one person was of average size, a woman playing the part of a damsel. As he got closer, he recognized the woman. It was a farmer's daughter named Grace Hutchins. She and Mr. Neu had been in a relationship together until her untimely death several years earlier. As it turned out, Grace wasn't really gone after all. She now lived among the fairies.

When he tried to kiss her, she stopped him. Warning him that touching her, or eating or drinking anything at the party would curse him to the same fate as hers. It seems that she had eaten a plum from a beautiful garden that had caused her to faint, and when she woke up, she was surrounded by fairy folk who kept her as a servant. Hoping to rescue her and bring her home, Mr. Noy tried to scare the fairies away by using an inside-out glove. Which sounds odd, I know, but it's a fairly common fairy repellent in a lot of the old stories, and for him, it worked, causing them all to

disappear. Sadly, though, they took grace with them when they did, and then someone knocked him over the head. After being found and revived by his neighbors, Mr. Noy refused to speak about anything else after that. At night, he would venture back to the Moors, hoping to see his lost love again, and yet she never reappeared. Soon his farm died out, he no longer hunted wild game, and he died before the next harvest. At least, that's what some people think. Others, however,

believe that he found what he was looking for, and disappeared one last time, to live among the fairies. When it's not acting as a trap, food can be a blessing. In many cultures, that's a feature that's meant to be experienced in a group by sharing with loved ones. But what happens when those family members and friends are no longer with us? After all, the dead can't eat, can they? Many of us, especially those of us with kids who love Disney movies, are familiar with Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

But I don't think a lot of people understand just how ancient it really is. It's a tradition that started life in Mexico and South America as an indigenous pre-Hispanic death ritual. In fact, a number of indigenous groups, including the Aztec and the Maya, honor their dead on certain days. Then after the Spanish conquest of Latin America, those traditions slowly combined with the Catholic All Saints Day, which takes place on November 1st, and All Souls Day, which takes place on November 2nd.

Over the centuries, those two days have become treasured holidays for Latin Americans all around the world. But it's important to remember that this is a celebration of life, not death. Dia de los Muertos is a way for the spirits of those who have been lost to visit the living. They are welcomed with open arms and an open kitchen. After all, the fastest way to a spirit's heart is through their stomach. I think. Maybe.

Families build altars called ofrendas in honor of the spirits of the deceased. These ofrendas are adorned with photos of loved ones who have passed on, along with items that are personally or spiritually significant. And food. Always food. Now the most traditional treat left on the ofrenda is known as Pante Muerto, or the Bread of the Dead. It's a sweet bread, flavored with orange and anise that's often decorated with bone-shaped

pieces of dough. It's symbolic of a few things, too. It represents the living family's generosity, and it acts as a gift from the earth itself. But Pante Muerto is only one type of offering. Others can include bottles of alcohol, tamales, and dishes once loved by the dead. Much of the time the food and drink is consumed by the living as a gesture to honor them. Although, for those who believe that the spirits consume the food first, that meal is thought to contain no real nutritional value.

But Latin America isn't the only place where the dead dine among the living. If you were to travel a ways north during the 19th century, you might have found people sipping wine and enjoying meals in cemeteries all over North America. In fact, cemetery picnics were a hot trend. But the reasons were not all that macabre. For one, many American cities lacked public parks. Cemetery were about as close as folks could get to enjoying nature, just, you know, with dead bodies resting six feet below.

Couples there could promenade arm in arm and socialize with others they bumped into as well. Of course, cemeteries became social gathering places for other reasons that were darker than a simple day outside. Illness took a lot of lives back then, including yellow fever, tuberculosis, and just the general results of poor medical knowledge. Women often tragically died while giving birth, and many of those children who survived would never live to see adulthood.

Because of all that loss, cemeteries weren't just serene places. They held special meaning for families who had lost loved ones unexpectedly. In fact, it wasn't uncommon to see Thanksgiving dinner being held at the grave of a departed relative. And while some people considered cemetery picnics to be uncivilized and gruesome, that didn't stop the trend from picking up steam. The truth was, a whole lot of people were looking for ways to honor lost loved ones in a manner that brought everyone together and celebrated their lives. As the years progressed, though, things started to change for the better. For one, mortality rates dropped, medical care improved, and both mothers and their

children lived much longer. And the number of public parks also grew, so many towns and cities soon had specific areas for people to get out and enjoy nature. No longer did people have to spread out a blanket beside a gravestone if they wanted to enjoy lunch in public. By the 1920s, the trend of cemetery picnics, if you'll pardon the pun, had simply died out. Today, many cemeteries actually prohibit picnicking on their grounds, claiming that they're worried

about litter and other nuisances. But there are still burial grounds out there today that allow a person to crack open a bottle of wine and a basket of sandwiches if a traditional picnic seems a bit too vanilla for them. As long as folks are respectful, I don't see how the dead would mind breaking bread with the living. Try it sometime. I often took my kids to the local graveyard when they were little, and we sometimes brought food for a summer meal. It can be relaxing to eat under those large trees, and the quiet is almost therapeutic. Try it sometime for yourself. Just be sure to bring enough to share.

Most of these traditions make sense. Food as a magical meal that traps or lures a victim into danger still fits the practical aspect of eating, and so to a degree does the concept of dining with the dead, but one bit of folklore shifts food in a whole different direction. It acted as a fortune teller. Food was part of many rituals, including one that would reveal the identity of a person's future spouse. This ceremony was practiced all across the British Isles and the United States, although

for the latter it mainly showed up in the rural south and Appalachia. It was called a Dumb Supper. Now sadly, when these events were created around the 16th century, the concept of ableist language was not yet understood. Dumb in this context meant silent, not stupid, but the word is problematic regardless of how it is used. They were called Dumb Suppers because they were meant to be carried out in complete silence. To make an event like this possible, people had to find a venue that was devoid of interruptions.

Oftentimes, this would be an abandoned house or some other empty building where participants could gather without being disturbed. A good example was documented in a 1959 article in the journal Midwest Folklore. In it, a pair of teenage girls in Kentucky tried their hands at a dump supper, and silence was only part of the recipe. For such a meal to be a success, the girls, and I quote, prepared a supper backwards in every aspect. The tables were set as wrongly as possible, the chairs were turned backwards, the meal was to be served dessert first. And you can kind of think of these events as sort of a

dinner party meets magical ritual. The moment someone spoke at all, just one syllable even, the whole thing would fall apart. According to that article, when everything was prepared exactly right, then at midnight, the spirits of the husbands to be walk through the door or even arrive in person. Now in America, preparing a dumb supper backwards was quite common, typically at Halloween, but methods varied elsewhere around the world. For example, in Britain, the meal was prepared with a single cake. It was known unsurprisingly as a dumb cake, and it could be served at Halloween, St. Agnes

Eve, Midsummer's Eve, or even Christmas Eve. It was known unsurprisingly as a dumb cake, and it could be served at Halloween, St. Agnes Eve, Midsummer's Eve, or even Christmas Eve. The idea behind the single cake was similar to the supper, but instead of putting on a whole meal, it was scaled back quite a bit. Two young girls would fast the entire day in total silence, and if they succeeded, they would then start to make the cake. Each of them were responsible for adding ingredients too, like a team effort of sorts. In fact, every step of the process had to be carried out in equal measure by both of

them, from mixing to baking and even removing it from the oven. Then it had to be cut into two identical halves, with each girl carrying it backwards to their bedrooms. Then they would eat the cake and go to sleep. If they pulled it off successfully, the girls would dream that night of their future husbands. Now, in some places it was believed that the future spouse did not appear in a dream. Instead, they showed up at the front door in the middle of the night. The other regions held that the object of one's affection would turn the cake over

while it was still baking in the oven or carve their initials into its surface. These dumbcakes eventually proved so popular they even started attracting critics. Publications soon started to rail against them with claims that the fickle food was foolish and evil. Sadly, dumbcakes also proved deadly every now and then. If the people baking them were not careful about what they added into the mix. Three young servant girls in England back in 1813 made the grave mistake of including a poisonous plant when they made their dumb cake. We're not sure what led them to make such a terrible decision,

but the reason doesn't really matter at this point. The girls ate the cake and not long after began screaming and retching in their beds. The owners of the estate where they worked ran to their rooms to see what was the matter and found the girls in excruciating pain. One died shortly after ingesting the cake, while the two others barely survived. Americans on the other hand didn't place much emphasis on the cake itself. To them, how the table was set made all the difference, but performing each task backwards was only half the equation. Some people were so committed to the act of preparing a dumb meal, a meal mind you that

they would often never eat, that they did so with their arms behind their backs. Now the dumb supper was not all about romance. Sure, a future partner or lover might appear in one's dream or even in a mirror's reflection, but that wasn't all that might be revealed after its completion. It could also give insight into one's death, and a great example of this use took place one night long ago in Missouri. According to the legend, two young women had prepared a dump supper of their own to get a glimpse at their future spouses. They had met inside an abandoned house with everything they needed and worked to make sure that everything was just right. Hours later, at midnight, a terrible wind blew open the front door of the house.

A man carrying a knife entered, followed by an empty coffin that seemed to move with the mind of its own. Suddenly, the man dropped the knife, and so one of the girls picked it up and placed it inside the pocket of her apron. The mysterious man then sat beside her, while the coffin parked itself beside the other girl. And this vision seemed to have served as an omen of things to come. Several years later, the one who had been closest to the coffin died without ever marrying,

and the woman who had picked up the knife eventually married the man who had dropped it. As the story goes, one day, many months after their wedding, the woman was going through the trunk full of her old things when she happened across that knife. She presented it to her husband, who remembered the night he lost it. Without warning, he snatched it from her hand and then stabbed her in the throat and chest, killing her instantly. It's hard to deny the power of food. From life-giving sustenance to markers of significant events, it's been a companion to humanity since the dawn of time,

so it's honestly no surprise at all that the things we eat have attracted some folklore of their own. Of course, the branches of stories that highlight food's flexibility the most is probably the fortune-telling aspect. Then while England and America seems to have loved their backward meals and special cakes, folks in Ireland had a much more simple way of dividing the future with food. All it took was an apple and a mirror. Here's how it worked. At midnight on Halloween, a young man or woman would peel an apple while looking at their

reflection in the mirror, and sure enough, they would see their future spouse peering over their shoulder. It sounds innocent enough, right? Well, as you've probably guessed by now, this little custom did not always yield such fortunate results. According to one story, a young lady named Macdonald, hoping to see her future husband, took an apple into a darkened room at the appointed time. She stood before the mirror inside and peeled the fruit, expecting to see the man that she would marry one day in its reflection.

And she did. All was well, until one day about two months later, as McDonough was on her way home from town. She looked up and there he was, the man from the mirror, now standing before her. But the sight of him frightened her. Not him exactly, but his arrival. It seems that the stories had been true. She had actually caught a glimpse of her future husband and now here he was, as though fate

had destined them to be together. But the shock was enough to cause her to faint. She fell unconscious in the middle of the road and, as the legend goes, she never woke up. McDonough died three months later, without so much as a hello from the man of her dreams. Another story out of Ireland involved two women named Pegg and Etna. They wanted to see who they'd eventually marry, so they peeled an apple in front of a mirror.

But their individual personalities played a role in what happened next. Etna, you see, was a gentle soul, while Pegg was something of a wild child. When Pegg demanded to go first, kind Etna gladly led her. And as expected, the man's face soon appeared in the reflection, a face that was accompanied by wicked laughter. The next day, when the owner of that face appeared on their doorstep, Peg didn't think twice and jumped into his arms. They decided they would get married immediately and then run away to start new lives together.

That night, the man returned to their home and knocked on the door. Peg was still preparing for her big day, so Etna answered the door instead. She greeted him before pointing her gaze toward the floor. And that's when Etna noticed something odd. Her friend's new suitor wasn't wearing any shoes. In fact, he lacked feet entirely. All she saw was a pair of cloven hooves. Peg's new man was the devil himself.

Etna quickly ran to her friend and told her what she had seen. And just like that, the wedding was off. But the damage of starting a relationship with the devil was already done because Peg's situation never truly recovered. She got sick soon after that night and then went on to lead a quiet, lonely life.

And of course, she became a cautionary tale for other girls and boys looking to have some fun on Halloween night. It seems that if the legend is true, an apple a day won't keep the devil away. way. Food and folklore. They go together like peanut butter and chocolate, or arsenic and lace. Throughout history, cultures around the world have paired their favorite meals with specific rituals, cooking up some amazing stories in the process. But I haven't emptied the pantry just yet.

I've got one more helping a folklore on the table that I think you're going to enjoy. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode was made possible by Stamps.com. Things come and go, but time proven stories are what we love to hear about. Over the past 25 years, Stamps.com has been helping businesses save time and money. Think less about logistics and more about the story of your growth with Stamps.com. I have been using Stamps.com for shipping merchandise for nearly a decade and I can't understate how much time and money I've saved as a result.

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Build something beautiful. Most folklore regarding food covers the what and the why. It explains the reason for eating that special food and prescribes the exact ingredients and dinner setting. But one avenue we haven't explored yet is where. According to one story there, once was a man from Louisiana named Pierre-Antoine Jourdan. He wanted nothing more than a beautiful place to live in with his family, so he bought a house around 1788 that needed a lot of work and slowly turned it into a home. This shell of a dwelling eventually became Jordan's own palace and the one possession he valued above all others.

Unfortunately, he also had a terrible gambling addiction, and those urges were too strong to fight. He wound up losing his prized home in a poker game in 1814. Unwilling to part ways with his beloved house, Pierre instead took his own life within its walls. Over time, the building passed through numerous hands until 2001 when it became a restaurant named Myrials Jackson Square. But Myrials was no ordinary restaurant. The owners wanted to do something special with the second floor, the same floor where Pierre Jourdan had ended his life hundreds of years earlier. They turned it into a séance lounge. This room is lined with comfortable couches and bathed in a glow of atmospheric lighting.

It's a place where visitors can feel a little closer to the restaurant's guest of honor, Mr. Pierre Jourdan himself. According to the venue's website, and I quote, patrons and employees of Muriel's have reported seeing the sudden shattering of glasses and objects moving around the room and hearing unidentified voices on the second floor. And while Pierre isn't the only spirit present at Muriel's, he's certainly the most famous. Those who have seen him have noticed a sparkling light floating around the lounge. Heck, he's such a celebrity there that he even has his own table complete with a glass

of wine and some bread, laid out fresh each night. As for the other ghosts, one has been known to occasionally throw glasses across the room. The reason is a mystery, but perhaps the spirit is upset they haven't been given the same red carpet treatment as Pierre. Over the years, paranormal investigators have noted female voices emanating from nowhere, even when no other people were around. And another common experience is the sound of knocking on the lounges' brick wall. It seems the restaurant is active, whether it's open for business or not, but despite

the clear presence of restless spirits, one bit of good news is that no one has ever felt threatened at Muriel's. It's a similar situation to those cemetery picnics of old. It's just another way for the living and the dead to sit down and share a meal. Oh, and for the brave few of you who might be interested in dining with Pierre's ghost, his table is apparently available for a small fee. Just make sure you wait for him to finish before you sit down. This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by me and Harry Marks and research by Alex Robinson.

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