Yesterday I cooked for tea an old favourite. a sort of puff pastry wrap around a mixed filling of vegetables and my daughter said what is in it then and it reminded me of the tale years ago of a German student teacher had told me. The story goes thus, a group of weary travellers had arrived in a village and had nothing to eat. So they took out their cooking pot filled it with water and dropped a stone in it. As it heated on the fire they told the villagers that it would be a very good soup but that it just needed a few 'extras'. So the villagers brought vegetables and then chicken, pork, and other things, the stone was removed, and it turned into a delicious soup that everyone ate.
I think I had been discussing with the teacher how I started soups, she said a potato, I said an onion. She was into the Bach Remedies, I wonder if they still exist. She was taking all the little bottles of magic back to Germany, worrying of course that she would get them past customs.
I have been consulting my fairy books about names, our Folklore centre is looking for a name to call the tea cafe that will run in the building, I have thought of Spriggan and Boggart Holes, the temptation of the wicked creatures of the nether world.
I had planned to give these books to the centre, along with Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market'. A strange book for a prim Victorian girl to write with its hidden undercurrents of repressed sexual feelings.
At the moment I am listening 'The Book of Trespass' by Nick Hayes, a historical gathering of facts about how land occupancy came into being. So it starts with the Kilder Pass and bumps gently along till we get to the land enclosures of the 18th century.
I thought the German soup story might have gone more like this, about one of our native birds, "Dear Bufus -Your friend who says galah is too rough to eat, evidently does not know how to cook them. The proper way is to put the bird in a billycan with a medium-sized stone, and fill with water, and bring to the boil. When a fork will go easily into the stone, and come out clean, the bird is done, and will be found tender and tasty. This is an old bush recipe, and I am surprised that your friend did not know it.”
ReplyDeleteFunny Andrew. I am surprised you knew any cookery stories given your attempts at cooking fettuccini. Your story is interesting though, both stories relate to a stupidity on the part of the people.
ReplyDeleteSome kind of pun on Goblin should prove irresistible as a name for the cafe.
ReplyDeleteCould be John though only 'Gobbling' comes to mind and everyone is trying to fit in 'tea'. The building will be a bit like a museum for folklore, though it does a lot of other stuff, like 'weirdo' films on a Friday. Talks on UFOs, Satanic stuff, etc.
DeleteThe stone soup story reminds me of a successful trick I played on a group of people at a 1970s party. Everyone was sitting around on the floor and a young Iranian (who became a good friend) was passing round big, fat joints which never made it as far as my little group. We had no hash, but I pretended to roll one up, crumbling some non-existent dope into it, lit it and took it over to the Iranian. He smoked some and said it was very good. The next real joint came our way as did all the rest. He laughed when I told him the trick.
ReplyDeleteI expect the Iranian fellow saw the joke. My daughter's cousin Marc was for a time bought up on an oil camp out in the desert in Iran - his German father worked there. Marc came back with plenty of scary stories to frighten my young daughter.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how stories pull up other people's memories.
Nice reminder of a valued old tale.
ReplyDeleteHi Tabor, it is also nice to see how far the story travels.
DeleteI remember the stone soup story from my days working in the elementary school library. It was a favorite book to share for story time with the children!
ReplyDeleteReading stories to children is lovely Ellen and I actually like a lot of the older children's fiction.
DeleteHow funny, Thelma. I was thinking about Stone Soup the other day as I worked. I remember listening to it in kindergarten, and we actually made stone soup! I am not sure that would be allowed today, but what a wonderful adventure it was, and we were all very thrilled with our soup, each child assigned to bring a carrot or an onion, or a potato, etc. I wonder whether children still hear that little story today. Such a strange synchronicity.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we forget about the endless wars in Europe, when people and soldiers wandered around starving, so I suppose the story is one of charity. My first mother-in-law would always make soup from what was left over from the meal the night before. She would stand by the stove, stirring and stirring with a cigarette in her mouth, the ash getting longer and longer till sometimes it fell in the soup.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was the infant teacher in a two-room Cotswold village school. She told the story of stone soup, but it began with a single soldier returning from the war who arrived in a village and had all the doors shut in his face when he asked for something to eat, so he set up his campfire and cooking pot on the village green and began cooking the stone soup. She told it to her grandchildren and when they were grown, I set it as a play during one of our festivals and my middle son played the soldier and all the visiting children had a part with the various vegetables. I check with my younger piano pupils if they know the story and most of them do, so someone is passing it on. I think it comes from the same collection as the Soldier who met the three dogs who guarded the bronze silver and gold collections and the soldier who met the innkeeper's family who were all terrified of the axe hanging on the wall above the cellar steps (my favourite). I met them in the Victorian collection of Children's Encyclopaedias.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about children's books. And realised I had read the Grimms Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen and then Andrew Lang when older. Many of the stories are European with different interpretations, I think the stone soup story has many different appearances.
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