Clotted Cream - Literature and Folklore

Literature and Folklore

It was mentioned in The Shepheardes Calendar, a poem by Edmund Spenser in 1579:

"Ne would she scorn the simple shepherd swain,
For she would call him often heam,
And give him curds and clouted cream."

As with many Cornish and Devonian icons, clotted cream has become entrenched in local folklore. For example, one myth tells of Jenny who enticed the giant Blunderbore (sometimes called Moran) by feeding him clotted cream. He eventually fell in love with her and made her his fourth wife. Another myth, from Dartmoor, tells of a princess who wanted to marry an elven prince, but according to tradition had to bathe in pure cream first. Unfortunately, a witch who wanted the prince for her daughter kept souring the cream. Eventually, the prince offered the princess clotted cream, which the witch was unable to sour.

Read more about this topic:  Clotted Cream

Famous quotes containing the words literature and, literature and/or folklore:

    The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and given them an idea of something better. A better state of one’s feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one’s self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    Someday soon, we hope that all middle and high school will have required courses in child rearing for girls and boys to help prepare them for one of the most important and rewarding tasks of their adulthood: being a parent. Most of us become parents in our lifetime and it is not acceptable for young people to be steeped in ignorance or questionable folklore when they begin their critical journey as mothers and fathers.
    James P. Comer (20th century)