Spread The Butter

We buy it, we spread it — but how often do we think about the history and traditions attached to the making of butter?

Well, this Friday, as part of Culture Night, historian Regina Sexton and author Alice Taylor will serve up a traditional “Station Breakfast” at the Cork Butter Museum, just off Shandon Street.

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The final event in the museum’s ‘Museum Lates’ schedule will celebrate the importance of butter in the fast-fading rural ritual of the Station.

Visitors to the museum often share memories of ordering butter curls from the creamery and making butter balls at home. This special event will take a moment to pause and remember the Station as an important social occasion, recreating the visual spectacle of the Mass and the breakfast table that followed.

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Reflecting on the event, Regina Sexton said:

“The connection with the ‘Station Mass’, while still alive in memory and still practised, though declining, was integral to the social cohesion of Irish rural communities. It was central to bringing communities together in both sacred and social realms.

“The focal point was the Mass, followed by the Station Breakfast, prepared by the women for the celebrants. It is important that we remember this important social phenomenon, and our event on Friday evening goes a little way towards capturing those memories. That task will be made all the easier in the company of the brilliant Alice Taylor.”

Alice Taylor said:

“The rural community worked together all year — they made hay together, they went to the bog together, they cut the corn together and threshed together.

“The Station was a way of bringing the community together in another way — in a celebration of the natural, the human and the divine.”

The Butter Museum will host a ‘Station Breakfast Table’ on Culture Night this Friday, September 18th, from 5.30pm to 9pm.

There will be readings and conversations with Regina Sexton and Alice Taylor at 6.30pm, followed by traditional music from 7.30pm.