Soul cake
A small cake given on All Souls’ Day to poor people who went door to door “a souling”, begging for it in return for prayers for the dead. It is often named as a forerunner of trick-or-treating.
Meaning
Soul cakes belong to the Christian days for the dead: All Saints’ Day on 1 November and All Souls’ Day on 2 November. Brand’s Popular Antiquities (1853) records that in Staffordshire poor people went “from parish to parish a souling”, begging and singing “Soul, soul, for a soul cake, / Pray you, good mistress, a soul cake.” Regina Hansen of Boston University describes soul cakes as small currant biscuits “offered in exchange for prayers.” Hunter’s Hallamshire Glossary, quoted by Brand, describes the soul-mass cake as a sweet cake made on 2 November, “always in a triangular form”.
Origin and history
John Aubrey recorded that in his time a high heap of soul cakes was set on the table in Shropshire, and every visitor that day took one, to the rhyme “A soule-cake, a soule-cake, have mercy on all Christen soules for a soule-cake.” A deposition of 1574, cited by Hunter, mentions a woman who as a child gathered soul cakes at a castle of the Earl of Warren on All Souls’ Day. In North Wales soul cakes were handed out on All Souls’ Day and the poor who received them prayed God to bless the next crop of wheat (Brand, from Pennant’s manuscript). Some households kept a soul-mass cake for luck: Young’s History of Whitby tells of a lady in Whitby whose soul-mass loaf was nearly a hundred years old.
Souling and trick-or-treat
The folklorist Jack Santino, in a 1982 Library of Congress lecture, traced trick-or-treating to mumming, people in disguise performing “antics in exchange for food and drink”, and the historian Nick Rogers of York University told CBC News that it “goes right back to Hallow Mass” and souling. The National Museum of Ireland derives it from Irish guisers, who went from house to house in masks and costumes and entertained for a treat. Lisa Bitel writes that guisers in medieval Scotland begged for soul cakes on All Souls’ Day and “probably became the costumed children” of later Halloween. Hansen is more careful: she calls the link part of popular belief, and says not every scholar accepts it.
The words “trick or treat” are recent. In 2016 Rogers called a report from Blackie, Alberta, in the Lethbridge Herald of 4 November 1927 the earliest use he had seen: the “youthful tormentors” went to back and front doors “demanding edible plunder by the word ‘trick or treat’”. He had once thought the first was in The American Magazine of 1947. Belinda Crowson, president of the Lethbridge Historical Society, later said that further research had found an earlier printing, somewhere in western Canada she believed, though she could not recall where. For the dead the cakes were baked for, see Ghost.
See also
Ghost, Apple (apple bobbing), Jack-o’-lantern, Black cat, Witch’s hat and broom, Bat.
Sources
- Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 1 (John Brand, ed. Henry Ellis, 1853), John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, arranged and revised by Sir Henry Ellis, vol. 1 (London: Bohn, 1853), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), Allhallow Even, pp. 390 and 393–394
- Tricking and treating has a history (Regina Hansen, 2017), Regina Hansen, Boston University; The Conversation, 25 October 2017, The Conversation, paragraph on soul cakes
- Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows (Jack Santino, 1982; updated 2009), Jack Santino, lecture at the Library of Congress, 29 October 1982, published by the American Folklife Center; web version as archived January 2016, Library of Congress, American Folklife Center (Internet Archive copy), section on All Hallows
- The ancient Irish get far too much credit for Halloween (Lisa Bitel, 2024), Lisa Bitel, Dean's Professor of Religion and Professor of History, University of Southern California; The Conversation, 29 October 2024, The Conversation, paragraph on guisers
- Ghost turnips, the púca, fortune-telling and evil abductions (Clodagh Doyle, National Museum of Ireland), Clodagh Doyle, Keeper of the National Folklife Collection, National Museum of Ireland news (2023; list first published October 2020), National Museum of Ireland, 3. Guising
- Albertans may have been 1st to say 'trick or treat' (Danielle Nerman, CBC News, 2016), Danielle Nerman, CBC News, 31 October 2016, CBC News, article text
- Lethbridge no longer linked to the first "trick or treat" in print (My Lethbridge Now), My Lethbridge Now, news report quoting Belinda Crowson, President of the Lethbridge Historical Society, My Lethbridge Now, article text
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research