[Sca-cooks] Littiu was 12th Night 2007 Stories
Johnna Holloway
johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu
Mon Jan 8 10:17:17 PST 2007
The Littiu as described on the website
http://www.geocities.com/ranvaig/medieval/kitchen.htmlas
"The dish is described in books of monastic rules, and is prescribed in
the Brehon law as the appropriate food with which noble hostages and
foster sons are nourished by right."
Are we sure that this is correct?
The reason I ask is that Brid Mahon's Land of Milk and Honey
repeats this passage (I think it is the same one)
as
“The children of inferior grades are to be fed on porridge or stirabout
made of oatmeal on buttermilk or water taken with stale butter and are
to be given a bare sufficiency; the sons of chieftains are to be fed to
satiety on porridge made of barley meal upon new milk, taken with fresh
butter, while the sons of kings and princes are to be fed on porridge
made of wheaten meal, upon new milk, taken with honey.“ page 64
The source is given as Ancient Laws of Ireland, volume 2 pp 148-151.
So wouldn't oats have been served to the lower class fosterings while
the sons of
the upper classes would have eaten either barley or wheat?
Johnnae
ranvaig at columbus.rr.com wrote:
> It is the Early Irish word for porridge and this
> was for the Irish Living History group, therefore
> the Irish name.
> Ranvaig
>
> http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb24.html
> lit
> porridge, Middle Irish lité, Early Irish littiu,
> g. litten, Welsh llith, mash: *littiôn- (Stokes),
> *pl at .t-tiô, from pelt, polt, Greek @Gpóltos,
> porridge, Latin puls, pultis, pottage.
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