Foods of England - Lumpy Tums

Lumpy Tums

Accompaniments
Historic
Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria, Durham, Northumberland

(or Lumpy Jumms, Lumpytums, Lumpytumms, or Tumms)

Image: thepastisaforeignpantry.com
“The texture was more interesting than the taste.”

“A dish made of oatmeal, sprinkled with water, and boiled in lumps of about the size of a nut, which, when eaten, are found to be dry meal in the inside.” (Wright 1857). Described in the antiquarian journal ‘The Reliquary‘ of 1866, as “a ‘hasty-pudding‘ made by dropping oatmeal slightly squozen by the hand, into boiling water; the “lumps” when taken out are eaten in milk.” Said to be “ideal for breakfast on a cold winter’s day, or as a milky dessert.”

Exeter and Plymouth Gazette Daily Telegrams – Tuesday 20 September 1881: “The porridge of our forefathers, or ” lumpytums,” as it was sometimes called, was a grand institution. It is not too much to say that we should not have subdued India, or peopled the Colonies, or destroyed the Armada, or won Gibraltar, or conquered Napoleon, charged at Balaclava, or stormed the gates of Delhi, but for porridge!”

There is a song about them:

Potatoes are a windy meat
Tripe and onions are a treat
Pudding’s good when stuffed with plums
But let us have some Lumpy Tums.

Chorus:
From barley we get home-brewed ale
From malt are whiskey comes
But from the oats in Staffordshire
Do come our Lumpy Tums

Would you your offspring render weak
Feeding pap that’s made of wheat?
Suffer them not to suck their thumbs
Give mother love and Lumpy Tums.

That breadknock man Jim Shaw who slew
Ten valiant French at Waterloo
His fateful one gave them their doom
For he was raised on Lumpty Tums.

When I have reached my finite day
Grant me that for which I pray
I crave not wealth’s uncounted sums
But peace, and health and Lumpy Tums.

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