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“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread...by Linda
Munson Peth”
In Timpson's Country Churches, there is a photograph of a stone on which was carved what looked like either a sheaf of wheat, a piece of
rope that was unraveling, or the stylized figure of a man. This stone is kept at St. Andrew's Church, Steyning, England. A description of the photograph explains that “The name of the village
comes from the Saxon word Stenningas meaning 'the people of the stone' - and this could be the stone” (Timpson,
97).
John Timpson
John Timpson
Timpson's Country Churches
In a "modern statue of Cuthmann by Penny Reeves", there is a facsimile
of the church stone on the ground next to a seated Cuthmann.
Cuthmann of Steyning
Cuthmann's Dell and The Sheep Circle
Cuthmann as a child
The Boy With a Cart, a play about St. Cuthmann
It is the stone that is most intriguing. Modern day residents of Steyning claim
not to know its original meaning. Sheaves were often bundled and tied and left standing in the field. Today, wreaths
and floral swags are often fashioned in a pastoral fashion as a reminder of harvests in times past.
| A Wheatleaf Spiral wreath |
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The text explaining the origin of St. Andrew's, Steyning, formerly St. Cuthmann's,
tells the legend of St. Cuthmann who reputedly pulled his mother in a home-made handcart with a rope fashioned into
a yoke around his neck. When the cart and rope broke, St. Cuthmann decided that this was God's way of saying he had arrived
at the place where he could build his church.
Realistically, the yoke would be fashioned in a way that most of the weight
would be born on his shoulders and chest, however strong his neck might have been.
The wording of this legend suggests a connection to the pre-Christian pagan
cult of Odin, in which the 'hanging god' is obliquely mentioned. In Cuthmann's case, the rope broke. In the case of a condemned
man in those days, a broken rope meant the condemned was allowed to live.
Legend of St. Cuthmann
Cuthmann made a “handle” of elder branch to pull the cart, but that
also broke. Perhaps the broken rope and elder branch meant that the situation
had gone far enough.
As for the carving on the stone in the church, it was no doubt symbolic of important
ideas of the makers, in this case the Saxon people who founded the village, or perhaps an even earlier settlement of people
from whom the Saxons borrowed their symbolism. Does the fact that Stenningas means the people
of the stone indicate that particular stone or refer to some older and deeper meaning? Even if it refers to that particular
stone, what about the carving upon the stone?
The Saxons, having converted to Christianity, may have been referring
to Jesus' quote to St. Peter, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”, this is commonly believed
to be a pun on Peter's name that is linked to the word petros, rock, meaning “you are Peter (stalwart as a rock), and you will be the foundation
of my church.” This quote can be compared with Jesus' parable about the man who built his house upon the rock which
survived the flood waters that destroyed all other houses. So, the Saxons might have been referring to the fact that they
belonged to the Christian Church founded on St. Peter.
What was the significance of storing the stone inside St. Andrew's?
Many of the English churches in Timpson's book feature art that is distinctly pagan, incorporated into a Christian context.
For example, St. Mary's church, Happisburg contains, “The fifteenth-century
font with its club-wielding wodehouses, traditional wild men” and is linked to legendary wild men of the forest
who were part of the cult of Odin or Wodin.
These motifs were familiar symbols of the stone masons and woodcarvers
who helped build the early church buildings. The name Happisburg contains the meaning of the apis village, or bee village,
beehives being an ancient motif. There were ovens built in the shape of large beehives.
The honeycomb structure by its very geometry is conducive to chemical bonds.
Honeycomb Structure and Chemical Bond
Fliker photograph of UK beehive oven
Stave churches in Scandinavia provide a possible link between this cultural
group and the wodehouses or wild men found carved in English churches:
Braided rope was a symbol of
Odin's cult. The pagan symbols and customs of harvest time were carried over and used by the converted Christians. Bread,
corn, sheaves, and harvesting implements figured in lore so old that people eventually forgot the origin of the custom or
legend even though they continued to celebrate the custom with forgotten symbol, as in the case of Halloween, which was
once a time of superstition and dread, but now is seen as a frolic for children and adults alike.
The appearance of the figure on the stone at St. Andrew's is somewhat rune-like
and could be mistaken for a stick-figure of a man, the center section of the figure being the torso and the top and bottom
sections being the arms and legs respectively. The figure is headless. It might also being seen as a braided piece of work
of two strands, or as a sheaf of wheat.
A photograph from the book Timpson's Country Churches, page
97, shows the stone. It is kept as an antiquity at St. Andrew's Church, Steyning, England. The wire around the top does not
appear to be holding the stone to the wall but merely looped around the place where the head of a figure might be.
In the book Baking with Julia, written by Dorie Greenspan, I might
have found an answer as to what the figure on the stone represented. In the chapter titled "Artisanal Breads Crusty and Rustic",
the photographs of braided bread and the shaping of the braid for Braid and-Wheat-Stalk Pain de Campaign, risen and ready
for shaping, closely resemble the carving on the Steynning stone in St. Andrew's.
There is a photograph from the book Baking
with Julia, page 133, and it is an illustration of how to form the braid of the Braid-and-Wheat Pain de Campagne. The
finished bread has a braided corona ( couronne or crown) around the perimeter of the
round loaf and a pattern of wheat stalks on the top of the bread. The braid is formed by lining up parallel elongated pieces
of dough and starting the braid in the center.
On page 128, the author describes Pain
de Campagne, “this loaf is made by the centuries-old chef-levain method,
which depends on capturing and nurturing airborn wild yeast...To straighten out terminology, the chef, or chief, is a mixture
primarily of flour and water that is allowed to ferment over a period of two days, after which it is 'fed' with more flour
and water...the Pain de Compagne can be made using the fountain method...The large
round loaf can sport an outer braid and a decorative bouquet of wheat stalks...or the grape cluster and star-shaped breads...”
Many
terminologies of bread making involve actions similar to harvesting corn and grain in the days before modern farm machinery.
They sometimes sound violent, such as “slashing the batard...hold the razor almost parallel to the loaf and make three
cuts..Slash the others and get them into the oven as soon as possible.”
The bread from Baking with Julia,
page 71, showing the completed Braid and Wheat Country Bread.
Page 21 shows a collection of rolling pins for related chores like
“butter bashing”. It admonishes cooks to choose the French pin if only one can be had because it has no handles.
(Remember that St. Cuthmann made a handle from an elder branch for his handcart.)
The couronne or crown is a ring-shaped bread reminiscent of the halo in both Christian and pre-Christian symbolism.
The bread has a hole in the center and resembles the ring-shaped rocks called logans
that children were passed through to heal them in pagan times. Oddly enough, the book shows a technique for putting a hole
in the dough: “Plunge your elbow into the center of the dough to make a hole.”
They actually plunged in
their elbows. There is a photograph.
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