Irish dish of mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale. Irish historian Patrick Weston Joyce defined it as “potatoes mashed with butter and milk, with chopped up cabbage and pot herbs”. An Irish Halloween tradition is to serve colcannon with a ring honey pickled apples a thimble hidden in the dish. Prizes of small coins such as threepenny or sixpenny bits were also concealed inside the dish.

Other items could include a stick indicating an unhappy marriage, and a rag denoting a life of poverty. The origin of the word is unclear. The first syllable ‘col’ is likely to be derived from the Irish ‘cál’ meaning cabbage. Irish name for a coot, a white-headed bird known as ‘cearc cheannan’, or ‘white-head hen’. The song “Colcannon”, also called “The Skillet Pot”, is a traditional Irish song that has been recorded by numerous artists, including Mary Black. Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?

With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream. Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make? Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I. And the more I think about it sure the nearer I’m to cry.