Does anyone know: Growlers

[Cedreena]

Why a pork pie is called a "Growler" in Yorkshire???

Edited February 29, 2008 by Cedreena (log)

[malcolmwilliamson]

Googling didn't help. The same question as posed on this thread was raised about half a dozen times on the first couple of pages in forums or articles with no definitive answers given.

The exercise was not wasted though. It yielded this gem from 'The alternative A-Z of Yorkshire':

"The Yorkshire Post once celebrated the growler by asking journalists to take into the office their favourite pie, the offerings to be judged for listing in an article by those well-used to the liquefied jelly running down their chin as their teeth sank into pink filling. The result was unanimous; the winner was a small shop on Kirkstall Road in Leeds. Weeks later the self-same shop was closed down by public health inspectors."

[BertieWooster]

Simple answer is that there's not really an answer. As with much dialect and folklore, there's unlikely ever to have been a simple linear process--explanation/event leads directly to new text. The search for such linear origins has dogged folklore research for decades, leading to the simplistic 'everything is based on memories of pagan ritual/hidden history/race memory' explanations that see 'Ring o'roses' attributed to the Great Plague, 'Twelve Days of Christmas' to the persecution of heretics under Elizabeth 1, and shrove tuesday football games to whatever pagan invention happens to be the flavour of the month.

So there's two possibilities, both of which might be true, or neither or somewhere in between. One is the one you'll see quoted often, that 'growler' refers to dog, which refers to dogmeat, which refers to the 'unsavoury' meat thats likely to have gone into many of the pies.

And the other thats far far more likely, that 'growler' refers to the sound the stomach makes either when hungry or when very full, suggesting the pie was a satisfying (and cheap) meal. And was originally a name for anything big and bulky that satisfied hunger and later became just attached to the pie. Mind, I've heard Deedars call chip butties growlers, so...

[Peter the eater]

I have never heard a pork pie called a growler - very interesting.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, a growler is an unstable iceberg - one that has a low profile in the water and is particularly dangerous because is can fracture and roll at any time.

[fisherman]

Why a pork pie is called a "Growler" in Yorkshire???

←

It isn't

[Tim Hayward]

In Bristol a 'Growler' was, what Londoners refer to as a 'Richard'.

It's pronounced with the full sonorous benefit of the West Country hard R and usually describes a specimen of considerable size and a certain textural rigidity.

"Yer. This dropped a roit Growler there, moy luv. You wanss 'ollow that out an paddlit 'ome".

Are the pork pies unappetising? Might visiting Bristolians have named them so after unfavourable comparison to their adopted favourite, the magisterial Clark's Pie?