THE HOT CROSS BUN

There are many tales about the origin of the Hot Cross Bun, writes Andrew Unsworth

Amid much cheerful drinking, every Good Friday a Royal Navy sailor adds a hot cross bun to a net of old buns from previous years hanging above the bar. Legend has it that in the 1820s a widow lived in a cottage which had stood on the site of the pub in the East End of London. When her son, a sailor, wrote home asking to have a hot cross bun ready when he arrived home over Easter, she did. But he never arrived home, so she kept a bun for him and added one every year for the rest of her life.

A pub was built on the site of her cottage in 1848 and it carried on the tradition. The sad widow may have been simply keeping her yearly buns in a basket to follow the medieval belief that if you hung one hot cross bun up in the kitchen it would ward off evil spirits as they were holy and would never go stale. The buns were also believed to prevent house fires and even cure the sick if they were given a bite of one.

For devout Christians, the cross of course represented the cross of Christ, and the spices in them were a reminder of those used to embalm his body. The first-ever reference to “hot” cross buns in the Poor Robin’s Almanac (1733) also linked them to old women.

“Good Friday come this month, the old woman runs, With one or two a penny hot cross buns”.

Traditionally, a monk at St Alban’s Abbey north of London, Brother Thomas Rodecliffe, started making buns spiced with cinnamon and marked with a cross in 1361 and handed them out to the poor. These Catholic traditions meant that Elizabethan Protestants disapproved of them.

The buns were too popular to ban outright but in 1592 the London Clerk of Markets limited their use to Good Friday, Christmas and at funerals. Anyone baking or selling them outside of those days would be forced to give them all to the poor.

The decree soon fell away and it unfortunately does not apply to modern supermarkets, which sell them all year. The price has also risen somewhat since the nursery rhyme first published in 1798:

“One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns!

If you have no daughters, give them to your sons,

‘One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns!”

For those uncomfortable with the religious affiliations of a little bun, there are options because the buns are probably far older than Christianity. Ancient Greeks and Romans made buns in honour of Diana, the goddess of the hunt.

Pagan Saxons baked crossed buns in spring to celebrate the fertility goddess, Eostre. Eostre was a beautiful young blonde woman fond of birds, spring flowers and young animals, including rabbits. But no, neither hot cross buns nor Easter bunnies make you pregnant. So, enjoy.