Saint David

Today's the feast day of the patron saint of Wales - a day for the nationalists of Plaid Cymru to come up with a patriotic news story. Details of the saint's life are sketchy - his first biography, written by Rhygyfarch was produced in the eleventh century. This is some 500 years after the saint is supposed to have lived and the construction of a virtuous bishop-saint is a pretty transparent attempt to raise the status of the church in Wales in relation to Canterbury.

In England, Saint David's day is notable for having been a focal point for anti-Welsh prejudice for some considerable period of time. Tudor England saw a significant increase of Welsh immigration to London - the apparent celebration of Welsh culture (such as the wearing of leeks as national emblems on 1 March) was countered with some fairly standard anti-immigrant feeling. Particularly visible under the Stuarts, the native residents of London took to abusing - and even burning - effigies of their Welsh neighbours, which were also hung up, having been marked as 'Taffies' with leeks attached to their heads. By the late seventeenth century, fights between Welsh and Cockneys appear to have been fairly regular occurrences. As Ronald Hutton observes, 'Londoners continued to abuse the Welsh in effigy on 1 March, until the large-scale immigration of Irish and Jews in the nineteenth century provided other targets for xenophobia'.

Later traditions are a little more benign than these examples of community tensions. Girls of Stepney in east London are said to have searched for reddish blades of grass on the morning of 1 March - if they found one they would be assured of a good husband within the month. More widespread throughout England, today was a day to keep your windows shut if you didn't want to end up with an infestation of fleas. If this has any basis in observed events, I guess it's most likely a way of marking the proximity to the beginning of the flea season, as the weather warmed.

It's not so warm here today - although it's a lovely sunny morning. It feels like the kind of day for something nice and warming like potato and leek soup (which is so easy to cook, it doesn't really need a recipe! Use chicken stock instead of water for a richer flavour). Another favourite way of cooking leeks is, after washing them, to split them lengthways and then braise them in a covered frying-pan, sprinkled with salt and in a splash or three of dry vermouth or dry sherry. This works best with little, young leeks that are a bit sweeter.