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Children are taught the story where Alfred is on the run from the Vikings, taking refuge in the home of a peasant woman. She asks him to watch her cakes – small loaves of bread – baking by the fire, but distracted by his problems, he lets the cakes burn and is roundly scolded by the woman.
Oct 25, 2018 · King Alfred Burns the Cakes. It’s a story familiar to most of us: King Alfred, exhausted and lost in the woods after beating the Danes in a vicious pitched battle, stumbles, bedraggled, upon a herdsman’s hut.
Jul 19, 2007 · In stripping away the myths, historians have left an Alfred whose place in the popular imagination has all but vanished. This book attempts to recover a popular Alfred, understanding how he came to be 'Great' and how much myth had to do with that.
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- David Horspool
May 11, 2006 · This book shows how the Alfred of myth and the Alfred of history have become inextricably linked. For a long time, the legend of the burnt cakes was one of dozens of stories that were associated with the King and his time, from disguising himself as a minstrel to introducing the jury system.
- David Horspool
- Main
- Hardback
Oct 30, 2019 · When a statue of Alfred was unveiled at Winchester in 1901, 2000 local schoolchildren were given pieces of cake to celebrate! Many old history books for children even relate this story as fact – asserting that it really happened.
Nov 30, 2006 · King Alfred: Burnt Cakes and Other Legends. David Horspool. 3.26. 53 ratings9 reviews. When the BBC ran a poll in 2001 to name the greatest Briton, Alfred, a ninth-century monarch, was the only king to make the top 20.
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Why did King Alfred accept the beating?
Ideas and ideals of Anglo-Saxon kingship permeate this folk-tale of King Alfred and the cakes. Alfred is assumed by many modern scholars to have ignored the burning cakes because he was preoccupied with affairs of state. But no such statement is made or implied in this earliest version of the tale.
