We may conjecture
that the cake with knobs was formerly used for the purpose of
determining who should be the "Beltane carline" or victim doomed to
the flames. A trace of this custom survived, perhaps, in the custom
of baking oatmeal cakes of a special kind and rolling them down hill
about noon on the first of May; for it was thought that the person
whose cake broke as it rolled would die or be unfortunate within the
year. These cakes, or bannocks as we call them in Scotland, were
baked in the usual way, but they were washed over with a thin batter
composed of whipped egg, milk or cream, and a little oatmeal. This
custom appears to have prevailed at or near Kingussie in
Inverness-shire.
In the north-east of Scotland the Beltane fires were still kindled
in the latter half of the eighteenth century; the herdsmen of
several farms used to gather dry wood, kindle it, and dance three
times "southways" about the burning pile. But in this region,
according to a later authority, the Beltane fires were lit not on
the first but on the second of May, Old Style.
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