Talk:Spurtle

Dubious Physics

The article suggests the spurtle has changed shape because a wide flat spurtle would exert enough force to tear cooked porridge apart. Surely the opposite is true: a narrow modern spurtle would exert the same force over a smaller area, making it more likely to cut. To give an analogy, given the choice to cut vegetables with either the cutting edge of a knife or the side, would you really choose the side? I don't think we have the real reason for the spurtle's metamorphosis here. Melaena (talk) 13:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Y Personally, I find a wooden spoon is better - both for stirring and for serving. Anyway, I have rewritten this section to resolve the matter. Colonel Warden (talk) 21:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments

First off, I must declare a conflict of interest. I am a handcrafter of spurtles and have done a good bit of online research in old book and newspaper references for my website and a leaflet that accompanies my spurtles, so I do not plan to contribute directly to this article, but I will make the following observations based on my interpretation of the sources I have found.

The word spurtle has been used to refer to both a bread flipper (made of iron or wood) and a pot stick. The only references I can recall for the flipper use come from around the mid 1900's and seem to be restricted to Angus where they refer to the porridge stick as a thieval, and it goes onto suggest that the flipper is more commonly called a bannock spade in other areas of Scotland. The situation is further muddied in my opinion by the popularization of the word spurtle to mean what most would perhaps call a spatula; celebrity chefs such as Graham Kerr and Martha Stewart have both marketed wooden spatulas under the name 'spurtle'. In my opinion this was based on poor research or done as a gimmick; the only pictures I have seen of the 'bannock spade' has a much wider and shorter blade than either of the products they marketed.

With regard to the type of wood used, I doubt that maple was the only wood used since according to this reference it is not very common in Scotland.

In general I would say there is a lot of poorly researched material about spurtles on the internet, and possibly even in contemporary 'reliable' media which have just reiterated these sources, so I would recommend going back to sources from before the mid 1900's and bearing in mind that this a vernacular term with regional and spelling variants.--Derek Andrews (talk) 23:09, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Derek Andrews: thanks for the comments. I've only just come across this article myself, but I agree that it needs work. Wikipedia articles are at their best when they're well-supported by good references - would you be able to provide some pointers to relevant references here, please? I'd be happy to then use them to expand the current article. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:24, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: I just emailed you a pdf of my publication which includes all the references I used. I hope they are of some use. Derek Andrews (talk) 15:15, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @Derek Andrews: PDF received. It doesn't look like I can access the references in your publication through the British Newspaper Archive, though, as they are registration/paying subscriber only. Is your publication available online - if so, we could use that as an indirect ref to the originals? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:04, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: No, sorry, its not online. You could try the wikipedia library for a sub to BNA, though last time I looked they had none left.Derek Andrews (talk) 22:25, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Try these books The Domestic Cat p.67

OK. I've added a couple of refs (perhaps not the best ones, but a start). The DSL link works for me, but the other two don't, perhaps because I'm in the UK rather than Canada. I'll continue adding pieces to the article as I can. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:07, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

BTW, what's the relation between this and a theevil - are they one and the same, or different concepts? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:10, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: Odd, but try these from Google UK for The Domestic Cat, page 67, by William Gordon Stables; and this for the dictionary (Scoor-oot: A Dictionary of Scots Words and Phrases in Current Use, James A.C. Stevenson, Iseabail Macleod, Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec 17, 2015). As for the theevil / thieval and various other spelling variants, as far as I can make out, this is an alternative name for the same thing and seems to originate from the area in Scotland where spurtle meant a bannock flipper (see the second ref for this). Derek Andrews (talk) 10:12, 7 October 2016 (UTC)