"This being GOOD FRIDAY, the morn hath been vocal from five of the clock with pious children squeaking at the top of their small voices 'Hot cross buns, one-a-penny two-a-penny hot cross buns' so that the poor have this solemn memento of the holy day brought home to their doors in commemorative form, reduced in the cost thereof to the means of the most slender finances.
"It will greatly rejoice the Puseyites to see the dear little children with what avidity they catch at the buns - with what relish they eat them, all for the sake of the holy emblem of the cross with which they are adorned. Not that either Puseyites or prattlers have made the cross subservient to the belly - but it doth so happen that in the case before us, unless regarded in its mystical sense, there is an intimate connection between the cross and the fleshly appetites and the sign of the one hath been the means of satisfying the wants of the other."
It is hard to imagine little children already on the streets of Exeter at five in the morning of an April day but it must have been the case. The Western Times says so. We get a rare glimpse of a Victorian Good Friday morning and of poor, but not too poor, Exonians throwing hot(?) buns from their doors to watch the local urchins catch and eat them.
Naturally The Times had to have a dig at the Puseyites who were reintroducing the cross, together with metaphysical allusions to it, into some churches. The Anglican tradition had been to limit all statues and images and crosses in churches but the crosses on the pious buns had survived since the Middle Ages.
The meaning of the last sentence would seem to be that the sign of the cross, both on buns and in practice - a very high church performance - served, in the case of Puseyite priests and by way of their stipend, to still the fleshly appetites.
Source: The Western Morning News, 15th April, 1843.
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