204 Collectanea.
Another local dainty was "parkin," or oatmeal gingerbread, which was made for the Fifth of November, and which my grand- mother continued to have made within my own memory, long after she had moved away from Lancashire. This is the recipe she used :
"3 lbs. of sifted meal, i lb. of butter, i| lb. of treacle, | lb. of brown sugar, I oz. ginger, a few caraway seeds, and a little candied lemon. Bake in a shallow tin, and, when cold, cut into narrow oblong pieces."
My mother used often to speak of the Bury Pace-eggers, or mummers at Easter, and she also had an indistinct recollection of the rush-bearing, but only spoke of it as "a cart of rushes, which came through the town, with a man and woman sitting on it, and some men dancing." It had not interested her, evidently. But my youngest aunt, who saw it about 1830, when she was a very little child, gave me the following account of it, which I took down from her lips on July 27th, 1900 : —
" I remember going to stay at Radcliffe [about three miles from Bury] to see the rush-bearing. I never saw it at Bury. If my sister saw it there, it must have been done away with before I can remember. We were taken to Radcliffe to see it. We stood out-of-doors to watch the procession coming up the road. The morris-dancers came along dancing, both men and women, and I think there was a clown. They were decked up with ribbons and things ; the men had ribbons flying from their caps or hats and their shoulders. The cart, (or I think it was a waggon), came after them. On the driving-seat, as I may call it, sat a man and a woman, Robin Hood and Maid Marian, in a green bower arching over their heads. Behind and above this was a tall erection, with straight sides and a pointed gable- ended top, all made of rushes, and against the flat front of it were hung large silver spoons and tankards, shining, — no doubt prizes the people had won at shows or matches. What there was behind this front I don't know. I suppose it was the load of rushes.- What I remember is seeing it come towards us up the road, with the dangUng silver things shining over the heads of the man and woman who rode in the green bower."
^The "front" was evidently the gable end of a stack of rushes, made like a haystack, and carried on the cart or waggon.
