The nursery rhyme
incidentally recorded the fact that the steps at the base of the Cross
at Banbury were formerly used as a convenience to people in mounting on
the backs of their horses, and reminded us of the many isolated flights
of three or four stone steps we had seen on our travels, chiefly near
churches and public-houses and corners of streets, which had been used
for the same purpose, and pointed back to those remote times when people
rode on horseback across fields and swampy moors and along the
pack-horse roads so common in the country long before wheeled vehicles
came into common use.
We had eaten Eccles cakes in Lancashire, and Shrewsbury cakes in
Shropshire, and had walked through Scotland, which Robbie Burns had
described as--
The Land o' Cakes and brither Scots,
but we had never heard of Banbury cakes until we walked through the
streets of that town, and found that the making of these cakes formed
one of its leading industries. The cakes in Scotland were of a sterner,
plainer character than those farther south, the cakes at Banbury being
described as a mixture between a tart and a mince-pie. We purchased
some, and found them uncommonly good, so we stowed a few in our bags for
use on our way towards Oxford.
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