bannock - From Ulster to America
Source: From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English
Author: Michael Montgomery
Comments: From Ulster to America recounts the lasting impact eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster have made on the development of the English language of the United States. The book documents over 500 vocabulary items contributed to American English by these ‘Scotch-Irish’ settlers. Each ‘shared’ term with its meaning is authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. This searchable online version of his book takes its text from the dictionary part of the second edition published by the Ullans Press in 2017.
bannock, bonnick, bonnock n In Ulster originally an oatmeal cake baked on a griddle, now a home-baked cake of any kind. In the U.S., a thin bread, usually made of cornmeal and cooked on a griddle; also a hard bread made from flour and fried in a pan. [related to Irish bannóg/bannach/bonnóg, Scottish Gaelic bannoch, and Old English bannuc, all ultimately possibly < Latin paniculum ‘little bread’; dost bannok n 1 ‘a flat round of cake, usually of barley, oat, or pease meal, and baked on a girdle or “back”’ 16th century→; snd bannock 1 ‘a round, flat, thickish cake of oatmeal, barley, pease or flour, baked on a girdle’; dare chiefly North, especially New England]
Ulst.:
1804 Orr Poems 33 Wives baket bonnocks for their men, / Wi’ tears instead o’ water.
1880 Patterson Antrim/Down Glossary 5 bannock, bonnock = a cake baked on a griddle.
c1910 Byers Glossary = a cake composed of oatmeal or less commonly of barley, mixed with water and baked on a griddle.
1919 MacGill Glenmornan 196 In one hand he carried a strong ash-plant, in another a bundle of bannocks wrapped in a dotted hankerchief.
1942 Bangor Words 5 = a circular piece of soda bread, baked on a griddle.
1945 Murphy Gullion’s Foot 24 It is this crane, and crooks, which have been so responsible for the famous Irish griddle-cakes. The bread can be seen as it bakes, and can be lowered or raised as the woman of the house deems necessary. Round bonnicks are seldom made on a griddle; the bread is cut in four parts known as farls.
1975 Murphy You’re Talking 101 His wife was making a bonnick of bread at the time, and she lifted off the fire and put it in the middle of the bonnick and threw the cake of bread in a scouder across the tongs of the fire when the Scotch giant walks in.
1980 McClean Ulster Words I 3 bonnicks = griddle scones.
1993 Montgomery Barnish 7 bannock = bread baked on a griddle.
U.S.:
1859 Bartlett Americanisms 21 = In Scotland, a cake of oatmeal, baked on an iron plate … In New England, cakes of Indian meal, fried in lard, are called bannocks.
1872 Schele de Vere Americanisms 439 bannock = in Scotland, a round cake of oatmeal, kneaded in water only, and baked against a stone, called bannock-stone, while the same cake is called a girdle-cake if baked on an iron plate, means in America a cake of Indian meal, fried in lard.
1982 Smokies Heritage 37 A special camp bread of flour and sugar, bannock bread, was most often baked in Dutch ovens.
