SC - "bog butter"

[snowfire at mail.snet.net]

- -Poster: Jean Holtom <Snowfire at mail.snet.net>

>> Has anyone heard of this before?

>Yes, I've heard of it before. A couple of comments:

>1) The fact that butter has been found in bogs doesn't prove burying it
>in bogs was a typical thing to do with butter. Many bog bodies have been
>found; it wasn't something that was done to everyone. The reason for
>doing so seems to be pretty unclear, but possibilities might include
>some kind of sacrifice, an attempt to preserve the butter in a cool,
>relatively airless place, and an attempt to preserve the butter with
>various chemicals the bog water has in solution (tannic acid for one).
>The butter may have been believed to have (and may have, in fact)
>undergone some kind of chemical change making it medicinally useful.
>Centuries later, many European recipe books for medicines and foods
>would speak of May butter, which appears to be butter that has been left
>in a sunny meadow for several days, in May. The modern explanation seems
>to be that some vitamin is either created or stored in the butter upon
>exposure to sunlight (I forget which).

Very interesting!  Do you have any more on the medicinal qualities of butter 
M'lord?  My great uncle suffered a bad burn once and the burn was coated in 
butter.  I'm wondering if there was more to that than met the eye then!

>Personally I think some of that butter found in Irish bog sites may have
>been sunk to appease the hungry spirits of Elizabethan cavalrymen at
>teatime...;  ) fun things to do with heavy cavalry in a swampy land,
>#106: make them chase you into the bog you know like the back of your
>hand. Splort!

I can just imagine it! 

>2) Highland Scottish cattle breeds (such as one would find in the
>Orkneys) were and are generally rather log-haired.

Ye olde Aberdeen Angus again - don't know which others.

Elysant
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