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Ross K. Tangedal on Hemingway in 1926 -The Hemingway Society

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Ross K. Tangedal on Hemingway in 1926

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January 01, 2026

Happy New Year from One True Podcast! We look forward to a rich, exciting 2026 by looking back to 1926.

In our first show of the year, we ask an esteemed guest to take us back exactly one hundred years to see what was happening in Hemingway’s life, work, and world. So, to guide us through Hemingway’s 1926 — his travels, his relationships, his publishing, and his writing – we welcome the great Hemingway scholar Ross K. Tangedal.

For Hemingway, 1926 was a colossally important year that saw his transition from Hadley to his second wife, Pauline; the transition from Boni & Liveright to Scribner’s; and the publication of The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises, both crucially important for different reasons. Tangedal guides us through this remarkable year in Hemingway’s life and his writing. We have previously begun calendar years with flashback episodes featuring: Mary Dearborn on 1922; James M. Hutchisson on 1923; Verna Kale on 1924; and J. Gerald Kennedy on 1925. We encourage you to check out those past shows to get up to date!

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Ross K. Tangedal on Hemingway in 1926 | The Hemingway Society

It Never Did: the thread about “why did Edinburgh become the home of Hogmanay?”

HOGMANAY, n.
[hɔgmə′ne:]

The 31st December, the last day of the year, New Year’s Eve.
Generic Scots, origin much disputed, the only satisfactory etymology is the derivation from northern French dialect hoginane etc. from 16th c. French aguillanneuf, a gift given at the New Year, a children’s cry for such a gift, the second element of which appears to be l’an neuf, the New Year. In Scotland the word is probably due to the French Alliance and had been borrowed before 1560

Dictionaries of the Scots Language

In a news article the other day, the BBC’s Edinburgh and East Reporter sought to answer the age old question of “Why did Edinburgh become the home of Hogmanay?” It’s not a bad little piece by any account, but doesn’t really get under the bonnet of how the city came to consider itself the “official” home of these festivities and it reminded me that this is something I have previously peered into without writing it up. So with just under nine hours to go until The Bells, let’s finish off the Threadinburgh year by

The “official” Edinburgh’s Hogmanay™ festivities are an ancient tradition dating back to the last century, to the year 1993 to be precise. This three-day event was dreamed up by Unique Events Ltd. and the quasi-autonomous agency Edinburgh Marketing to “[package] Edinburgh more effectively” and thus “improve the visitor experience” at this time of year. All the bones of the now established programme were there; a torchlight procession, a concert in Princes Street Gardens and a street party with “fireworks spectacular” on Princes Street.

Prior to this, the officially unofficial locus of Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh was on the High Street, outside the Tron Kirk. By the early 1990s, crowds of up to 20,000 were in regular attendance here but a particularly violent 1992, with 1,900 drink-related injuries treated at the Royal Infirmary and three separate sex attacks reported to the police, saw an official rethink.

In stepped the marketing and events types, buoyed by the success of the closing celebration of the city’s European Council Summit in 1992 which marked the end of the UK’s presidency and start of the Single Market. At the same time as trouble was kicking off outside the Tron, the Beacon Europe event was being started from Edinburgh Castle, the beginning of a chain of 700 beacons that stretched from John O’ Groats to Lands End with 300 more lit on the continent, the Greek Prime Minister lighting one at the chain’s far end in Athens to coincide with its start in Edinburgh.

The beacon was lit at the stroke of midnight after musician Fish led a free (but ticketed) sing-along in Princes Street Gardens, followed by a “children’s eco-anthem for Europe.” A laser fired from the Ross Bandstand then ignited a 30ft gas flame on the Castle’s Half Moon Battery.

Official support quickly materialised behind the Hogmanay™ idea, the District Council were particularly keen, being somewhat embarrassed by the traditional public displays of lasciviousness, drunkenness and urination outside the Tron – and therefore also their own doorstep at City Chambers. Their support extended to helping financed the scheme to the tune of £200,000, along with Lothian Regional Council, Edinburgh and Lothians Enterprise and the Scottish Tourist Board. This meant that most of the outdoor events could be made free to the public. Not everyone was happy though – the scheme was branded “three days of hell” by Conservative councillor Ian Hoy and in the Evening News, then Labour councillor George Kerevan labelled it as “Come to Edinburgh and get smashed“.

The council and events types were also keen to do something about the traditional Hogmanay being a local event for local people, a mass blow-out which resulted in a 2-day public holiday and hangover with most businesses and much hospitality closed down. Pete Irvine of Unique Events told the ‘News “it’s a myth that New Year is a ‘great time’… there is nothing for the many people who are on holiday“. The stated founding aim was not just the “biggest and best Hogmanay party” in Scotland – a title Glasgow traditional claimed – but in the World. There was of course an irony that in order to do this, the traditional Scottish long New Year public holiday had to be eroded.

With official support and substantial public and corporate funding, Hogmanay™ proved a huge success. But an infamous 1996 street party where an estimated 400,000 people crammed the city centre in appalling weather, resulting in crush injuries and hypothermia, saw restrictions brought in. Initially this was by means of free wrist-bands (four per person) but it soon pivoted to becoming an ever-pricier ticket only event. The organisers had an eye on the long game from the beginning and had told the ‘News they had booked the pipe bands for the Millennium street party before the first one had even taken place.

Another cornerstone of Hogmanay™ is Ye Olde Tochlicht Processione, also an invention of 1993. This was co-opted from a mix of long established Scottish rural traditions like the Comrie Flambeaux, Biggar Ne’erday Bonfire, Stonehaven Fireballs and the Masonic processions of the Borders which mark the Feast of St. John the Evangelist.

The event has continued to grow in its scale – and the volume of debate and criticism it generates – ever since and is a substantial industry in itself. The rest, as they say, is history, and the answer to the question “Why did Edinburgh become the home of Hogmanay” is of course because it deliberately set out do so and has spent a huge amount of public and private money in pursuit of that goal over the last three decades. The other answer to the same question is that the city is not the “home of Hogmanay” at all, and has no authority to claim itself as so. Hogmanay is an ungovernable, spontaneous celebration that is owned by nobody and belongs to all of Scotland. Edinburgh just happens to have commercialised the idea, declared itself as brand owner, and in the process totally lost the whole point of it.

And on that slightly snarky note I shall thank you for reading this far, for sticking with Threadinburgh and that you have a very Happy New Year when it comes and a 2026 full of local history. If you’re still in need of a further fix of appropriate reading material for the time of year, I can suggest this culinary thread about the history of the New Year Day steak pie.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Health care proposal floated by White House runs into familiar GOP divisions – PBS News

By — Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press

Health care proposal floated by White House runs into familiar GOP divisions – PBS News

Politics, Nov 26, 2025 1:48 PM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — A health care proposal circulated by the White House in recent days is running into the reality of Republican divisions on the issue — a familiar struggle for a party that has been trying to scrap or overhaul the Affordable Care Act for the past 15 years.

The tentative proposal from President Donald Trump would extend expiring ACA subsidies for two years while adjusting eligibility requirements for recipients. The plan has so far been met with a stony silence on Capitol Hill as Republicans debate among themselves whether to overhaul the law, tweak it or simply let the subsidies expire.

It’s unclear now when the White House plan might be released, or if it will be released at all.

The Republican indecision comes as the COVID-era tax credits are set to expire Jan. 1, creating sharp premium increases for millions of Americans. Democrats who shut down the government for six weeks over the issue are demanding a straight extension with no changes, though some indicated they could support a plan similar to the one circulated by the White House.

But support may be harder to find in the GOP conference, where many lawmakers say costs are still too high and have been eager to make another run at repealing the ACA. The last effort in 2017 failed when Republicans couldn’t decide on how to provide coverage to millions of Americans who depend on government-run marketplaces for their health care. It’s a dilemma that persists for the party after record numbers signed up for coverage this year.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., promised a group of moderate Democrats a vote on the ACA tax credits by mid-December in exchange for their votes to end the government shutdown. But it’s unclear, so far, whether that arrangement will lead to a solution.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Health care proposal floated by White House runs into familiar GOP divisions | PBS News

#2026 #aca #affordableCareAct #gop #gopDivisions #healthCare #january1 #january12026 #letSubsidiesExpire #mikeJohnson #overhaul #pbsNews #replace #republicans #speakerOfTheHouse #trump #tweakLaw #whiteHouse

#FactCheck:

#US. Did NOT Impose Mandatory #DNATesting Before Discharge From #Hospital Starting #January1 2026

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2025/10/fact-check-us-did-not-allow-mandatory-dna-testing-before-discharge-from-hospital-starting-jan-1-2026.html

The dawn of BBC radio in Edinburgh: the thread about the centenary of the first Scottish Hogmanay programming

A fact that passed me by until this morning (January 1st, 2025); yesterday marked the 100th anniversary (in Edinburgh at least) of the tradition of special Hogmanay programming from BBC Scotland. I think the fact possibly also passed the Beeb by too, even though they were very aware of celebrating the centenary of the general launch in 2023… So follow me now on a brief thread that explores the early history of BBC Radio in the capital and the city’s claim to being the home of the now ubiquitous annual Hogmanay broadcasting extravaganza.

The BBC’s first and principal Scottish transmitter was named 5SC, was based in Glasgow and started transmission in March 1923. It had a power of 1.5kw and a notional range of 75 miles; but only if you had the right sort of valve wireless set at home; in Edinburgh, 75% of homes with sets didn’t, they used cheaper, crystal sets. This fact allied with the wavelengths used and Edinburgh’s particular topography meant that the BBC was largely unreceivable across the capital.

To make up for 5SC‘s lack of coverage the BBC planned small repeater stations for the main cities in Scotland. Aberdeen got 2BD in October 1923 and the following year Edinburgh would get 2EH in May and Dundee 2DE in November. However, broadcasting from a transmitter within Edinburgh posed the early radio engineers a pair of unique geographical problems. Firstly, at the wavelengths the station operated at (328m), the city’s hills were a challenge to get the signal to go either around or over, leaving a shadow of no or poor reception behind them. Secondly it proved very difficult to properly earth the transmitter owing to the geology beneath the city centre. As a result, even at just 2 miles distance from 2EH, it required home users to fit a 100ft long outdoor aerial to pick up the signal on the prevalant crystal receiver sets and the City Corporation were reluctant to permit antennae to be strung across the streets between tenements.

After searching for the best possible broadcast spot the men from the BBC installed the technological marvel of 2EH‘s transmitter equipment in a wooden shed behind the University’s medical school at Teviot Place, the 150 foot (46m) aerial strung from the chimney stack. The studio and control room was at 79 George Street initially.

2EH was commissioned on May Day 1924 with a special live broadcast and concert from the Usher Hall. It commenced at 730PM with the callsign “2EH Calling. 2EH Calling” being the first words heard by any listeners. Music was provided by the band of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and an organ recital was played by Dr W. B. Ross. Speeches began at 9PM when the Lord Provost, Sir William Lowrie Sleigh, officially announced the opening, followed by a speech by J. C. W. (later Lord) Reith. After 10 more minutes of military piping at 930 the relay from London was plugged in and “2LO Calling” (London’s callsign) was announced to the listening public in Edinburgh – which probably amounted to no more than 800 at this time. 2EH then took over again and Mr G. K. Marshall, station director, read the local news from George St., bringing the small audience of lucky listeners an update on a fire in South Bridge and “other interesting intelligence” such as the escape of the Zoo’s sealions. The evening then settled down to the London broadcast of the opera Faust.

2EH‘s main job was as a broadcast relay for 2LO in London and Scottish content from 5SC in Glasgow, but it did put out a small volume of local programming and outside broadcasts from its tiny 20sq ft studio on George Street. These premises were rented from Townsend & Thomson’s music shop and proved totally inadequate (the “offices” were merely a through corridor, the studio the proprietor’s living room) so they were soon moved to more commodious and efficient space along the road at 87 George Street. The transmitter also proved rather hopeless and complaints were numerous in the Evening News and so it too was soon replaced. In October 1924, the BBC sent up the now surplus transmitter it had installed to broadcast live from that summer’s British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium.

A heavy rivalry existed between 2EH and its nominal parent at 5SC in Glasgow and as a result listeners in Edinburgh were treated to more than their fair share of relayed content from 2LO in London instead.

This brings us to Hogmanay broadcasting. Listeners in the reception range of 5SC in Glasgow were treated to some of Scotland’s first BBC Hogmanay programming in 1923, but it was a basic schedule from 5PM onwards, with a mixed content (although interestingly it included some Gaelic language singing) and handed over to London at 10PM for the rest of the night.

Most listeners in Edinburgh would have to wait a whole other year for the privilege of allowing Auntie into their living rooms and 2EH pulled out the stops to put on its own, special Hogmanay show for them. There were something like ten to twenty thousand wireless licenses issued by the Post Office in Edinburgh at this time, giving you an idea of the potential audience. Highlighting the rivalry with 5SC in the west, the Evening News reported that station’s schedule as a passive aggressive footnote under 2EH subtitled “Glasgow Fare“.

So if you’d strung your 100ft wireless antennae, got the crystals warmed up, pulled up your armchair and tuned in on Hogmanay 1924, what would you have heard?

The show began at 3PM with an hour of piano music live from George Street, followed by an hour’s intermission and then an hour of children’s programmes. The stories, half of which were specifically Scottish, told by “Uncle Leslie” and “Auntie Mollie” (an early example of the anthropomorphising of the BBC into a benevolent relative in the wooden box in the corner of the room?) After another intermission, at 7PM the bells of Big Ben were broadcast from London (I believe SB in the schedules stands for syndicated broadcast), followed by a weather forecast and news bulletin. Mr C. H. B. Quennell then gave a lecture from London to fill up the rest of the half hour slot on “Every Day Life in Stuart and Georgian Times“. With everyone warmed up by that, at 730PM the Hogmanay “Scottish Night” special started proper, with the pipers of the 4/5th Battalion, The Royal Scots, introduced by announcer Miss Rosaline Masson, a well known local novelist. The pipers, a vocal octet and varous other musicians then took turns playing and singing a programme of largely traditional Scots music until the 930PM news and weather from London. The heavy part that a variety of Trad music has to play in the BBC’s Hogmanay scheduling is something that continues to this day.

Auntie in London then got folk really in the mood for the biggest night of the year with a 30 minute lecture on Horticulture by Mr J. S. Chisolm before everyone must have breathed a collective sigh of relief and woken up from their snoozes as the switch was once again thrown back to Edinburgh. More popular music now followed when a live outside broadcast was switched on from the Palais de Dance at Fountainbridge and The Romany Revellers band, “Scotland’s Finest Dance Band” and a regular at the establishment which could lay claim to being Scotland’s premier night spot at this time. This must have been quite a revolutionary event at the time. Music, live from a dance hall! Again, the incorporation of popular contemporary music and artists remains in the BBC’s Hogmanay template to this day, as does the “lounge” studio atmosphere with guests drawn from members of the public arrayed at table and chairs. One key difference was however that the Palais was a dry venue at this time and the strongest drink served by its cocktail bar was fruit juice!

With just 15 minutes until the bells, the party in full swing and fever pitch building to a crescendo, the broadcast switch was thrown once again. This time it took the home listeners to St. Columba’s Church of Scotland in London for a blessing from the Rev. Archibald Fleming followed by the hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow“. Just before midnight, that great tradition of Auld Lang Syne being sung was broadcast from St. Columba’s followed by the bells of Big Ben one final time and the message “A Happy New Year to All” crackled over the airwaves from London. Finally the plugboard was rewired one last time in George Street and the “Romany Revellers” returned to the wireless sets of Edinburgh live from the Palais for a final hour of the latest hits.

That is except, to paraphrase the old Scottish joke about BBC programming, except for listeners in Glasgow. Listeners of 5SC got no such local treat that year, from 930PM they only got the London broadcast, with music from the Savoy Hotel Orpheans and Havana bands, and come midnight the plug was pulled and it closed down just after midnight after the Rev. Fleming’s and Big Ben’s chimes. I’m sure readers from the west will be quick to point out that Glaswegians did not need the BBC on the wireless to keep the music and the party going after midnight! But on this basis, Edinburgh has a pretty strong claim for producing the first full BBC Scotland Hogmanay show 100 years ago, and in a format we would largely recognise today. And the rest, as they say, is, history and various artists have been butchering Auld Lang Syne just before the bells, every year hither!

For a fuller history of the 2EH Edinburgh station of the BBC, please head on over to the excellent page on the subject at Scotland on Air.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

In 1914, the world's first airline started operation in St. Petersburg, Florida. Called the "St. Petersburg Tampa Airboat Line". The somewhat appropriately named Tony Jannus was the pilot.

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on January 1st

https://topicaltens.blogspot.com/2021/12/1-january.html

#ThisDayInHistory #otd #OnThisDate #OnThisDay #1January #January1

My blog is 11 years old today. Here's the very first post:

https://topicaltens.blogspot.com/2014/01/10things-celebrated-on-january-1-st.html

Things other than the New Year which are celebrated on this date.

#1January #January1 #NewYear

It's 5 a.m. on January 1.

We seem to be starting the year with some fireworks.

#Sunrise #Photography #January1

A seasonal treat for the urban poor: the thread about Scotland’s New Years steak pie tradition

With the filling for the obligatory Ne’erday steak pie doing its thing in the slow cooker, it inevitably leads to the question of how such a pie should properly be flavoured. Should it have any herbs and spices beyond salt and pepper? A bit red wine or ale perhaps? A few drops of Worcester sauce? And more intriguing for me than the finer points of the recipe, what are the origins of this seasonal pie tradition in Scotland? Let’s try and find out, shall we?

There’s a syndicated short story entitled How Shall I hold New-Year’s Day which was printed across Scottish newspapers on the Boxing Day 1851 which discusses new year traditions and in which a “beef steak pie” features. The story takes the form of a conversation between two working class men – Jock and Bob – on their plans for the season and it’s quite obviously the work of the Temperance movement. Jock, the man with the pie, intends not to drink any whisky and instead to spend his time with his family enjoying the fruits of his abstemiousness. Instead of his usual parritch (porrdige) he is having a feast of ham, eggs, hot rolls, cheese, currant buns and “tea along with the elders” for Hogmanay. Bob’s plans, in contrast, mainly involve whisky. Come the morning of the 1st, Bob will have argued with his family and be left with his hangover. But canny Jock has the benefit of his “rest and sobriety of the previous night” and will take his children out to the toy shop, then come home to his pie, followed by a sing-along with invited friends and the treat of fresh fruit. All very sober! An interesting point noted by Jock is that while his wife has “made” the pie, it was “covered and baked by the baker the previous night“; most people would not have had a home oven that could have baked such a pie, so they would take their filling in a dish to their baker who would cook it in the bread oven. The pie could then be reheated atop the range on the girdle (griddle).

This was the earliest mention of steak pie at New Year that I could find in Scottish newspapers. However the phrase comes up again and again (and again!) over the next 60 or so years of press in one specific context; feeding the poor at new years and (later) Christmas. In January 1863, the Glasgow Herald reported that the inmates of the Paisley Abbey Poorhouse had been treated to an “excellent beef-steak pie” and oranges by the benevolent committee of the parish poor board. In 1876, the Edinburgh Evening News similarly describes the inmates of the City Poorhouse at Craiglockhart had gotten their “usual new year’s treat” of “excellent soup, beef-steak pie and pudding“. Those in St. Cuthbert’s Poorhouse were in contrast served a mutton pie, plum pudding, currant loaf and jugs of beer.

Craiglockhart was still serving New Year steak pie in 1893, but the soup had by this time been downgraded from excellent to mere potato. In 1898, the Evening News reported that an injunction of the Local Government Board had prevented the Parish Board from financing any “special entertainments during the festive season” at the poorhouses from their own funds and these instead had to be met by private benevolence. Fortunately £70 was provided by Alexander Oliver Riddle (or Riddell) of neighbouring Craiglockhart House, a whisky magnate in the distilling firm of Usher & Co. and the inmates of the poorhouses still got their roast beef and mutton “along with a steak pie and fruit“. The men were provided with a treat of an ounce of tobacco, the women got a similar weight in snuff and the children the same but in sweets. A. Oliver Riddle continued to fund the Craiglockhart New Year steak pie dinner thereafter and in 1902 645 mouths were fed. By 1907 times had changed slightly and the women were being provided with sweets instead of snuff. Craigleith seems to have lacked such a sponsor however and the inmates instead were getting a dinner of coffee, bread and butter, soup and mince – all washed down by a visit from local councillors.

It wasn’t just the poorhouses providing New Year steak pie; The Scotsman in 1896 reported that it was the custom in Glasgow for the merchants of the Royal Exchange to fund a steak pie and potato dinner for the poor, held at the City Chambers. This dinner had by 1905 shifted to Christmas Day at which time 3,000 people got their lunch, but had in turn to suffer a lecture from Lord Provost Bilsland about knowing their place and being grateful for philanthropy. It was noted at this time that the tradition was now 36 years old. Similarly in Edinburgh, in 1904 Lord Provost Sir Robert Cranston (noted champion of Temperance) put on a New Year steak pie dinner for 1,000 of the city’s poor at the Grassmarket Corn Exchange; but it had to be held on January 2nd as a bird show had the venue booked on the 1st!

In 1910, the Home for Aged Women in Portobello served a Christmas Day dinner – provided by a Mrs Sellar – of steak pie, plum pudding and fruit, and a New Year’s Day “godly repast” of roast mutton, pudding, jellies, meringues and sweets provided by Mrs Durham and Miss Scott Moncrieff. When Edinburgh wine importer William Crambe Reid died in February 1922, £68,000 of his £184,000 fortune was left to good causes in the city. The interest on one benefaction went to providing an annual Christmas meal for 4-500 of the city’s poor; the “William Crambe Reid Dinner“. The inaugural menu had soup, haggis and mashed potatoes, steak pie, vegetables, more potatoes, plum pudding and fruit. In North Leith Parish, a bequest of property by a Mr Neill paid a £51 annual profit on rents that was still providing such a meal on New Year’s Day as late as 1938.

But what of the actual pies themselves? What were people being actually eating ? We can get an early recipe for a Scottish steak pie from the book “Cookery and Pastry as taught and practised by Mrs Maciver, Teacher of those Arts in Edinburgh“. Susanna Maciver was one of Scotland’s first cookery teachers and published a cookery manual in Edinburgh around 1777. Her steak pie is very different to what we might have today; it was made from alternating strips of lean and fatty beef that had been cut into thin slices and then beaten thinner, much like a schnitzel before it was “seasoned with salt and spices” (she doesn’t say what spices, sadly.) These strips were rolled up into “ollops” (or collops, i.e. like beef olives), packed into a dish with some water, covered in puff pastry and baked.

The Cook and Housewife’s Manual etc. by Margaret Dods (actually a pseudonymous collaboration between Isobel Christian Johnston and Walter Scott) of 1826 gives fundamentally the same collop-style pie but adds gravy instead of water and the optional taste of some onions. What is much more interesting is that the book also suggests you can add a catsup (a preserved mushroom sauce), cut pickles, “other seasonings“, oysters and/or forcemeat balls (balls of minced offal and breadcrumbs). In February 1882, a Lady Correspondent submitted a recipe to the Dundee Evening Telegraph for a steak pie. It was made with 1lb of fillet steak which was cut thin, layered with oysters and flavoured with mace, walnut ketchup, port, lemon peel, gravy, salt and pepper. The same paper provided a different recipe in 1884, which was made with shoulder steak and included two kidneys “to enrich the sauce“. No mention was made of spices or other flavourings. The most unusual aspect of this pier was that it was served along with a side dish of macaroni cheese (which was actually made with spaghetti!). In 1892, the Aberdeen People’s Journal gives a recipe by a correspondent called Wiganer made from 2lb steak, 1/4lb kidney, salt and pepper with the meat diced up into chunks (rather than strips or collops) as would be recognisable now. The filling was cooked in the dish then covered in a lard shortcrust pastry and returned to the oven.

Economy steak pie recipes were published in the papers in WW1; the Dundee People’s Journal has one made from much cheaper meat – 1½lb of beef hough (shin) – which had to be boiled for 90 minutes before mixing with an instant gravy and boiled again with salt and pepper before it could be topped with pastry. And in 1917, as a reflection of how bad the food supply situation was getting, the Arbroath Herald has a recipe where sliced potatoes are used to bulk out the meat (which was itself a 2:1 ratio of beef and kidneys) and which was topped with a pastry that was ¾ mashed potatoes. This recipe used margarine or butter in the pastry – but things were so dire in January 1918 that the Food Control Committee published a recipe in newspapers for “potato butter“. This awful-sounding ersatz butter was fundamentally real butter that was stretched out by mixing it with boiled and sieved potatoes, dying it with butter colouring, preserving it with butter preservatives and setting it again in pats.

There are an infinite number of genuine and authentic and traditional Scottish steak pie recipes that you can find in cookery books and blogs. In the book “A Scottish feast : an anthology of food and eating” published in 1996, the food writer Catherine Brown gives a recipe for such a pie that attempts to meet the steak pie yardstick of Mr Glasgow (writer, broadcaster, bon viveur and foot critic Jack House) – which was the steak pie served in the Boulevard Hotel in Clydebank! This is an intersting hybrid of older pie recipe techniques, with the meat again beaten thin, but wrapped around pieces of kidney and sausage. It was thoroughly modernised however with the addition of ground clove, chopped parsley and marjoram and mushrooms. The addition of mushrooms was not just for flavouring purposes, but to form a barrier to hold the pastry off of the filling and prevent a “soggy bottom” forming on the pastry lid (which is personally my favourite part of the pie!). In reality, there is no one, authentic Scottish New Years steak pie recipe, beyond the one that you choose to enjoy on that day.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

So, how many of you have received "Happy Birthday" greetings today, on 1/1, from websites that asked you for personal details when you signed up?

#NobodyKnowsYoureADogOnTheInternet #HappyBirthday #PII #DOB #January1 #January1st

In 1660, Samuel Pepys recorded the first entry in his Diary: "This morning (we lying lately in the garret) I rose, put on my suit with great skirts, having not lately worn any other clothes but them."

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 1 January:

https://topicaltens.blogspot.com/2021/12/1-january.html

#ThisDayInHistory #otd #onthisday #OnThisDate #1January #January1

The thread about the Eight Day of Christmas; who were the Maids of the Maiden Castle?

This thread was originally written and published in January 2020.

This part in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas thread is preceded by a post about Swanston.

On the eight day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; the Maiden(s, a milking). This, perhaps surprisingly, is the first documented name applied to Edinburgh Castle, in a Charter of King David I in 1142; Castellum Puellarum – the Castle of Maidens. It was not until a century later in the time of King Alexander III, 1265, that it is referred to as Castrum de Edynburgh or Castle of Edinburgh. The oldest remaining structure in the castle, St. Margaret’s Chapel, was built in David I’s time in the middle of the 12th century.

No clear explanation exists for the Maiden reference. There are a number of Maiden Castles in England, all except one of which are Iron Age hill forts. This might be a descriptive tame for a “fortification that looks impregnable” or a euphemism implying that it has never been taken in battle. It may also be the evolution of a Brythyonic language term Mai Dun, meaning a “great hill”. Stuart Harris, the man who wrote the book on Edinburgh place names, discounts this theory for Edinburgh; “there is nothing whatsoever to suggests that this was a translation of some[thing] earlier“. He points out that the original references is the Latin – Puellarum – which was translated in the 13th century to its English and French equivalents – Maidens and Pucelles.

Some of the more improbable tales include an early 14th century reference in the Chronicles of Lanercost to a community of nuns who lived here in the 6th century under the Irish Saint Moninne or Modwenna, before being ejected, or to it being a safekeeping place for Pictish princesses. More likely is that it was a romantic term taken from Arthurian legend, one that may have been applied by David I himself. In Arthurian lore, the Land, Island or Castle of Maidens, is a place visited by a man in his dreams where only women live.

In the 12th century, the Welsh chronicler Geoffrey de Monmouth – who was one of the prominent figures in popularising the Cult of Arthur at the time – wrote in his History of the the Kings of Britain of the Castellum Puellarum as “facing Albany” i.e. looking towards the Lands of the Picts and Scots. At this time, these would have been north across the Forth from Edinburgh. He is also credited with the invention of the Duke of Loth – husband to a sister of Arthur – and from where Lothian takes its name. Geoffrey de Monmouth’s chief patron was a nephew of David I and it is probable that David had met him. The sixteenth century Scottish historian and intellectual George Buchanan and the 20th century Arthurian scholar Roger Sherman Loomis both lend credence to this theory.

In Edinburgh lore, the term Maiden also has a much more grisly connotation; it was an early modern device of public execution, a form of guillotine.

The Maiden was introduced to Edinburgh in 1564 to replace the town’s sword, which was worn out and needed replaced. The Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh ordered its construction by the carpenters Adam and Patrick Schang and George Tod. The whole contraption could be disassembled for storage, only being moved to the point of execution and erected as required. It was returned afterwards, and this is referred to in the town records as “careying of the Maiden ther and hame agin”.

The Scottish machine is made of oak and consists of a sole beam 5 feet in length into which are fixed two upright posts 10 feet in height, 4 inches broad and 12 inches apart from each other, and 3½ inches in thickness, with bevelled corners. These posts are kept steady by a brace at each side which springs from the end of the sole and is fastened to the uprights 4 feet from the bottom. The tops of the posts are fixed into a cross rail 2 feet in length. The block is a transverse bar 3¼ feet from the bottom, 8 inches in breadth and 4½ inches in thickness, and a hollow on the upper edge of this bar is filled with lead…

The axe consists of a plate of iron faced with steel; it measures 13 inches in length and 10½ inches in breadth. On the upper edge of the plate was fixed a mass of lead 75 lbs in weight. This blade works in grooves cut on the inner edges of the uprights, which are lined with copper…

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquities of Scotland, Vol.III, 1886-8

Notable victims of the Maiden include James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, one time Regent of Scotland and the man reputed to have introduced its concept to the country, Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll and his son Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll. The Maiden was last used in 1716 to execute John Hamilton at the Mercat Cross for the murder of the landlord of a tavern during a brawl. It was again taken down and carried hame agin but was thereafter forgotten about. The original was rediscovered over a century later and is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland.

The Edinburgh and Leith-themed twelve days of Christmas thread continues with a post about Lady Fife, her house, well and “brae”

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Double birthday today: my grandfather Hendrik Paulus (about 18 years old in this picture) and Geisha (about 7 in the picture). One a great example, the other one of the lights of our lives.

#birthday #January1 #genealogy #cat #cats

January Idea: Create a “joy jar” and write down the funny, happy, memorable experiences that happen throughout 2023. Big or small, trivial or monumental. You can add to the jar daily, weekly, or spontaneously, whatever suits you.

Next December 31st, empty the jar and read about the amazing year you had!

#HisAndHearsePress #JoyJar #Memories #NewYear #NewYearsEve #Remember #LoveNotesToYourself #January1 #December31