'I'll to thee a simnel bring 'Gainst thou go a-mothering; So that when she blesses thee, Half that blessing thou'lt give me.'

These simnels were usually marked with the figure of Christ or the Virgin Mary, showing that they had some religious significance. The poem quoted above places the origin of the simnel legend at Girlith, on Morecambe Bay; but Shrewsbury has long been famous for the cakes, although until lately they were hardly known except in the western counties, now, however, they can be bought in London, and not only at Mid-Lent but at Christmas.+

* See Chambers's 'Book of Days,' p. 336.

+At the Congress of the Folk Lore Society, held in October last at Burlington House, a great number of local feasten cakes were exhibited, and among them simnels, differing greatly in form, from Lancashire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire.

Probably the best known cake of religious significance is the hot cross bun, sold everywhere in England on Good Friday. The number of these cakes consumed yearly must be reckoned by many millions. It has also been a custom in Scottish towns for the last forty years.

'One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns,' is the one street cry on Good Friday, and whilst all other shops are closed, the bakers and confectioners drive a thriving trade. The cross marked upon these buns has now, of course, a reference to the solemn event commemorated on the day; but the cake itself has a very ancient history, and is supposed to be the lineal descendant of those cakes offered in worship to the queen of heaven, as denounced by the prophet Jeremiah: - 'The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven,' which cakes, according to antiquaries, were also marked with a cross. In the Museo Borbonico at Rome there is a sculpture representing the miracle of the five barley loaves in which the loaves are marked by a cross.

Consecrated cakes, probably all similarly marked, were offered to the gods on different occasions in many countries, as in China, Egypt, and Mexico; and the Saxons, before they were converted to Christianity, ate them in honour of the goddess Eastre. In Egypt these cakes were made in the shape of horns in honour of Isis, and their name - bons or boun - is supposed to be the origin of our word bun.

A curious survival of these offerings to heathen gods existed not many years ago in the Isle of Man, when a herdsman, representing a Druid, on May-Day took a piece of bread, covered with a custard of eggs, milk, and butter, and breaking it, threw pieces over his shoulder, exclaiming, 'This I give to thee, O Fox, and this to thee, O Eagle, spare thou my lambs,' etc., etc. A similar ceremony existed, I believe, in Sicily, whilst in Sardinia a quantity of raisin-bread, Pane di zappa, is hidden in three cart-loads of wood, which are drawn round the village by oxen specially fattened, after which the wood is piled up and burnt before the churches.

Honey-cakes were offered in Rome to the serpent representing the god Esculapius, and the shew-bread of the Jews, consisting of unleavened cakes composed of fine flour and oil, was an offering to the Deity, afterwards consumed by the priests.

We read of a Roman Catholic ceremony on Good Friday in Pre-Reformation days, in which the figure of Christ being deposited in a tomb the people came to worship and present gifts of corn or eggs, after which there was a ceremonial burial of the image, and with it the 'singing-bread,' but what this singing-bread was is not specified; it was, however, probably a cake marked with a cross - apropos of which must be recorded the old superstition that bread baked on Good Friday would never get mouldy, and formerly a piece of Good Friday bread was kept in every house, and a little of it grated was supposed to be a sovereign remedy for many ailments, but especially for diarrhoea.

In modern times the bun appears to have become an almost exclusively English cake, and in the last century there were special houses to which the elite resorted to consume this delicacy. Two of these are historically famous, the Chelsea bun-house and its rival the Royal.

At Easter cakes of a different kind appear; they are generally very thin and sweet, and have a certain affinity with the unleavened Passover cakes of the Jews, but they vary considerably in different counties. In Dorsetshire the Easter cakes contain currants and spices, and are sprinkled with white sugar. These were formerly carried round by the clerk of the parish, who expected for them a small Easter offering. In Durham at one time the clergy and laity used to play ball in the churches at Easter for tansy cakes, which are still esteemed in some parts.

In many places endowments exist for the distribution of cakes at Easter. There is one of these at Biddenden, in Kent, consisting of twenty acres of land, to provide cakes for all attending the parish church on Easter Sunday, the parishioners each receiving, in addition, a loaf of bread and a pound and a half of cheese. All the boys of the Blue-Coat School receive a bun and a new shilling from a fund of this kind, and probably endowments of a similar character exist also on the Continent, for in some churches on certain days huge baskets of small cakes are carried round and distributed to the congregation.

To turn from cakes of a semi-consecrated character to those of festal use, the first place must be given to the twelfth cake, formerly everywhere seen, of gigantic size and elaborate decoration on every festal board on Twelfth Day, and which was used as a sort of lottery or medium of divination, a bean being concealed in it. The one to whom this fell was ' King of the Bean,' and was considered especially lucky, and sometimes we read that this 'King of the Bean' was lifted up, in order that he might mark crosses on the rafters to preserve the house from evil spirits. This custom of choosing a 'King of the Bean' seems to have descended to us from pagan times, and is not peculiar to England, for in France the proverb exists for a peculiarly lucky fellow - ii a trouve la feve au gateau.