“In Salop the die õnium Animarum (All Soules-day, Novemb. 2d) there is
sett on the Board a high heap of soule-cakes lyeing one upon another
like the picture of the Sew-bread in the old Bibles. They are about
the bignesse of 2d cakes, and n’ly all the visitors that day takes
one; and there is an old Rhythm or saying--
‘A soule-cake, a soule-cake,
Have mercy on all Christian soules for a soule-cake.’”
“The late Mrs. Gill, of Hopton, near Hodnet, had _soul-cakes_ made in
her house to give away to souling children every year up to her death
in 1884. They were flat round, (or sometimes oval) cakes, made of very
light dough, spiced and sweetened.”[60]
[60] Burne-Jackson’s _Shropshire Folk-Lore_, p. 382 _et seq._ Mr. Wirt
Sykes, in his _British Goblins_, quotes this, and also the information
about Tenby, but adds nothing to our knowledge.
We find some of the words of the “Souling Song” in nearly every
itinerant begging custom. In Montgomeryshire a New Year’s rhyme is:--
“The road is very dirty,
My shoes are very thin;
Please give me a penny
To put some nails in.”
Several of the verses are found in a “Wessel-cup Hymn”--a carol popular
in Shropshire thirty years ago--and in customs in Worcestershire and
Yorkshire.