900g/2lb best end and middle neck British lamb, sliced into chops
1 tbsp groundnut oil
butter
4 lamb's kidneys, skinned, cored and cut into bite-sized pieces
3 onions, sliced into 1cm/½in wedges
1 tbsp plain flour
570ml/20fl oz freshly boiled water
½ tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 fresh bay leaf
2 thyme sprigs
900g/2lb potatoes, cut into 2cm slices
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3.
2. Trim the lamb of any excess fat and pat dry with paper towel.
3. Heat the oil and a small knob of butter in a large heavy-based frying pan until very hot. Add the lamb, two or three pieces at a time, and fry until brown, turning once. Once browned, put them in a wide 3.5-litre casserole. Brown the pieces of kidney.
4. Once the meat and kidney are in the casserole, add the onions to the pan. Fry over medium heat, adding a little more butter to the pan if necessary, for about ten minutes until browned at the edges.
5. Stir in the flour then gradually add the hot water and Worcestershire sauce, stirring until the flour and liquid are smoothly blended. Season with salt and pepper and bring to simmering point. Pour over the meat in the casserole.
6. Add the bay leaf and thyme, then arrange the potato slices on top in an overlapping pattern. Season the potatoes and dot the surface with a few dabs of butter.
7. Cover with a tight-fitting lid and put in the oven. Cook for 1 hour 30 minutes. Towards the end of cooking time, remove the lid and brush the potatoes with a little more butter. Then place under the grill to crisp up. Alternatively, remove the lid and increase the heat to 200C/400F/Gas 6 for the last 15 minutes of cooking.
8. Remove the bay leaf and thyme before serving.
Pace Egging: A Lancashire Tradition
by John Ravenscroft
When I first heard the term Pace Egging I thought it probably had something to do with drunken villagers rolling eggs down steep English hillsides -- we Brits do things like that with all kinds of items, including cheeses, barrels of beer and significant others -- but I was wrong. Apparently the word "Pace" is nothing to do with the relative speeds of competitive egg-rollers. The truth is far more mundane. "Pace" comes from the Latin "Pacha" which means Easter, and Pace Egging is just one more of our many and varied Easter Traditions.
Pace Egging
It dates back hundreds of years, perhaps as far as The Crusades, and has been recorded in several counties, including Lancashire, Yorkshire and Northumberland. It does indeed involve eggs: special Pace Eggs that are decorated for the Easter festival. In the past these eggs were wrapped in onionskins and carefully boiled (a practice that gave their shells an appearance of mottled gold) but in more recent times they're simply hard-boiled and then painted. The William Wordsworth Museum at Grasmere displays a small collection of Pace Eggs that were originally decorated for William's children -- but don't just go for the eggs. You'll find plenty of daffodil-related material there, too.
Pace EggingTraditionally -- before paint replaced onionskin -- Pace Eggs were part of the Easter Sunday breakfast, but if they weren't eaten they might be used as household ornaments, in various egg-games, or given to bands of performers known as Pace Eggers, who were once a common sight in northern English villages. Like many traditions, Pace Egging suffered a decline in popularity and at one point was on the brink of extinction -- but in recent years it has been revived. Happily, the Pace Eggers are back!
In previous centuries, Pace Eggers were groups of locals who toured the villages at Easter enacting The Pace Egging Play. This was a drama that usually involved a character representing St. George, a battle, and an interesting individual known as Old Tosspot. It invariably detailed someone's unfortunate death (in some versions it's St. George, in others it's a Turkish Knight called Bold Slasher) and his subsequent revival by a comic doctor.
The Pace Eggers (alternatively known as Jolly Boys) were variously disguised. Old Tosspot would blacken his face with soot (a practice that in more recent times has been copied by other characters), and some players wore masks. All had decorated costumes.
Pace EggingOld Tosspot's job was to collect gifts from the crowd. He carried a woven basket over one arm, and had a long straw tail that was full of sharp pins. He would swing this about, and anyone who tried to grab it would be painfully pricked by the pins. Old Tosspot would encourage the wounded (and any other onlookers) to toss gifts into his basket. Pace Eggs, coins, food, Old Tosspot didn't much care.
When the basket was full enough, the Pace Eggers would begin their Easter Play.
There were several versions of it, and different villages added different elements. The banter with the crowd was also incorporated, so every performance was slightly different. However, the core of the play always centred around some aspect of death and rebirth.
If the Pace Eggers were performing outside the village pub (which they often were) they could look forward to an extra payment in the form of a free pint of beer and a kiss from the barmaid.
Old Tosspot was an interesting chap, but of course there were other characters in the Pace Egging Play. They varied from year to year and decade to decade, but might include The Lady Gay, the Soldier Brave, The Noble Youth, The Doctor, Betty Brownbags, Bold Slasher, The Fool, and (later) Lord Nelson.
The Pace Eggers would perform their play at several points throughout the village, generally concluding each performance with one version or another of the Pace Egging Song:
Here's one or two Jolly Boys, all of one mind
We've come a Pace-Egging, and hope you'll prove kind
We hope you'll prove kind with your eggs and strong beer
And we'll come no more nigh you until next year.
Sometimes more than one band of Pace Eggers toured the same village, and if they were to meet the watching crowd might be treated to an extra spectacle - the trading of a few ripe insults, a wooden sword fight or two, and (in the worst of these encounters) low and cowardly attempts to steal the rival group's Pace Eggs! It's been suggested that the trading of insults on these occasions may be where the expression "to egg someone on" originated.
Pace Egging Today
Pace EggingAlthough it was noted as early as 1842 that the Pace Egging Play was being performed less and less frequently, the revival of interest in English folk customs after the Second World War helped to rekindle enthusiasm.
Midgley School (and later Calder Valley High School) in West Yorkshire played an important part in saving the tradition of Pace Egging, and Calder Valley High still puts on performances of the play every Good Friday.
The costumes worn by some modern-day groups of Pace Eggers are traditional and local, but during the 1960s folk festivals became popular, and members of the English Folk Revival Movement ran a number of drama workshops that used time-honoured scripts and themes to bring Mummers Plays back to life. These workshops appear to have had an influence on what some well-dressed Pace Eggers now wear during their performances.
There are groups of Pace Eggers scattered throughout the UK, so anyone interested in seeing a performance has a choice of locations.
Heptonstall in West Yorkshire is a popular venue, but be warned, the tiny village can get very crowded. The landlords of the two local pubs don't complain, though. They do rather well out of Heptonstall's Pace Egging Day!
There are also performances at Brighouse, Broughton in Furness (Cumbria), and Bury in Lancashire. See the further information links for dates, times and venues.
Egg Rolling
I said in my introduction that Pace Egging has nothing to do with egg-rolling, but I was wrong. In the course of researching this article I discovered that Pace Eggs are still rolled down quite a few English hillsides. At Avenham Park in Preston there's an annual egg-rolling contest that attracts large crowds. Children compete to see who owns the sturdy Pace Egg that can roll the furthest without cracking. If your children take part, however, make sure they're aware of the dangers. Legend has it that empty Pace Egg shells must be carefully destroyed by crushing. It seems that, if they're left in a half-decent state of repair, Lancashire witches will steal them and use them as boats!
The Cheyenne Indians- Tribe of Algonkian linguistic stock, whose name means "red talker", or "people of a different speech", lived, and hunted on the hills and prairies alongside the Missouri and Red rivers.
In the 1700s, after acquiring horses from the Spanish like the Comanche Indians before them, the once sedentary Cheyenne became expert buffalo hunters. The tribe usually moved their encampments according to the location of the buffalo herd they were following. Like other plains Indians, The Cheyenne had become very dependent on the buffalo for food, clothing, and other other items such as tools and jewelry. Buffalo hearts, brains, liver and kidneys were best eaten warm, as the Cheyenne celebrated a successful hunt.
Aside from warm winter robes, Cheyenne clothes were not made from buffalo skins; hip-leggings, jackets, dresses, shirts, and moccasins were made from buckskin, which was softer than the thick buffalo hides which were more suited to making winter clothes, blankets and tipi coverings.
One Cheyenne legend tells us that the buffalo used to eat humans, and that a race between animals and humans had been set up to decide whether it would be the animals who would eat the humans, or the humans who would eat the animals. The magpie and the eagle, who were on the same side as the humans had won the race, causing the buffalo to tell their young to hide from humans, who would soon be hunting them. The buffalo also told their young to take with them some human flesh as provisions, which they stuck in front of their chests. It was according to this legend that the Cheyenne did not consume the flesh beneath the throat of the buffalo, as it was believed to be made from human flesh.
The Cheyenne creation myth is also interesting, as it offers a story similar to Christianity's Old Testament and God's creation of Adam and Eve, in which we are told that Haemmawihio had created man from his right rib, and woman from his left. After Heammawehio had created man and woman, he placed the woman in the north to control of Hoimaha, who in turn controlled storms, snow, and cold, and was also responsible for illness and death. Heammawehio placed the man in the south to control the heat, and the thunder. Twice a year, the two battle for control of the earth, creating the seasons. Another important figure in Cheyenne mythology is that of Sweet Medicine, a deity responsible for giving the Cheyenne four arrows, two bestowing them with power over men, two giving them power over the buffalo.
The Pawnee, who are sometimes called Paneassa, historically lived along the Platte River in what is now Nebraska. The name is probably derived from the word "parika," meaning "horn," a term used to designate the peculiar manner of dressing the scalp-lock, by which the hair was stiffened with paint and fat, and made to stand erect and curved like a horn. The Pawnee called themselves Chahiksichahiks, meaning "men of men."
Descended from Caddoan linguistic stock, the Pawnee were unlike most of the Plains Indians as their villages tended to be permanent. Originally, they were an agricultural people, growing maize, beans, pumpkins and squash. With the coming of the horse, they did begin to hunt buffalo, but it always remained secondary to agriculture.
The Pawnee Confederacy was divided into the following four bands:
* Pawnee Warriors
* Pawnee Warriors, photo by John Carbutt, 1866.
* Chaui - Grand
* Kitkehaki - Republican Pawnees
* Pitahauerat - Tapage Pawnees
* Skidi - Loup or Wolf Pawnees
The Chaui are generally recognized as being the leading band although each band was autonomous, seeing to its own until outside pressures from the Europeans and neighboring tribes saw the Pawnee drawing closer together.
Living in large oval lodges formed of posts, willow branches, grass and earth, as many as 30-50 people would live in the same lodge. Each village would consist of about 10-15 lodges.
Twice a year the tribe went on a buffalo hunt and on their return the inhabitants of the lodges would often move into another lodge, although they generally remained within the village. The Pawnee were a matriarchal people with descent recognized through the mother. When a young couple married, they would traditionally move into the bride's parents' lodge. Women were active in political life although men would take decision making responsibilities.
The Pawnee were a spiritual people, placing great significance on Sacred Bundles, which formed the basis of many religious ceremonies maintaining the balance of nature and the relationship with the gods and spirits. The Pawnee were not however followers of the Sun Dance although they did fall victim to the Ghost Dance phenomenon of the 1890s. They equated the stars with the gods and planted their crops according to the position of the stars. Like many tribal units they sacrificed maize and other crops.
There are also references of human sacrifice right up until the mid eighteenth century, where a book refers to a Lakota captive who was tied to a tree and shot with arrows. She was thought to be the last human sacrifice performed by the Pawnee.
The first European to see a Pawnee was Francisco Vásquez de Coronado while visiting the neighboring Wichita Indians in 1541. There, he encountered a Pawnee chief from Harahey, a place located north of Kansas or Nebraska. Little more is known about the Pawnees until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when successive expeditions of Spanish, French and English settlers attempted to enlarge their territory. It was at this time that Pawnee hunters first saw horses, racing back to camp, eager to describe the tall, bizarre "man-beasts" they had seen creatures with four legs, long tails, hairy faces, and clothing that gleamed like sun on the water.
While expanding their territories, the first Europeans traded with the Pawnees in present-day Kansas and Nebraska and the various Pawnee bands established loyalties to the different colonial powers according to each band's best interest.
By the early 19th century, the Pawnee were thought to have numbered between 10,000 and 12,000. In 1818 the Pawnee agreed to the first in a long series of treaties that would eventually culminate in land cessions and placement of the Pawnee on Nebraska reservations in 1857 and in Indian Territory (Oklahoma ) in 1875. In spite of governmental control on the reservations, the Pawnees tried to maintain their tribal structure and traditions.
Many Pawnee men joined the US cavalry as scouts rather than face life on the reservations and the inevitable loss of their freedom and culture. By the year 1900, Christianity had replaced the Pawnee's older religion and smallpox, cholera, warfare and devastating reservation conditions had reduced their number to only about 600.
The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936 established the Pawnee Business Council, the Nasharo (Chiefs) Council, and a tribal constitution, bylaws, and charter. An out of court settlement in 1964 awarded the Pawnee Nation $7,316,096.55 for undervalued ceded land from the previous century.
Today the Pawnee are still celebrating their culture and meet twice a year for the inter-tribal gathering with their kinsmen the Wichita Indians and the four day Pawnee Homecoming for Pawnee veterans in July. Many Pawnee return to their traditional lands to visit relatives, craft shows and take part in powwows. As of 2002, there are approximately 2500 Pawnee, most of them located in Pawnee County, Oklahoma .
