You don’t see people using cauldrons in society as much as you used to. Our popular view of this vital cooking utensil is generally of some scheming Witches hunched over one plotting the downfall of some Scottish King or other but there was a time when the humble cauldron was seen as the lifeblood and provider of a village or settlement. As they were made from thick wrought iron they were incredibly expensive and well beyond the means of most. We now have a much more subtle, but more complicated system of heating water in the shape of the gas boiler and a Boiler Installation Gloucester based firm like https://redbridgeandsons.co.uk/heating-systems-gloucestershire/boiler-installation-gloucester/ are on hand to make sure that you’ve got that piece of mind. If you did have to go back to using the cauldron as a way of heating water and food you’d probably want one of these famous examples from myth and folklore.
- The Holy Grail. It’s traditional to think of the Grail as being a cup that King Arthur needed to find but in some of the earlier versions of the tale it was a cauldron that the famous King and Knights were after. A cauldron would have had more meaning to the people of the medieval period as the cauldron played a hugely important part of their daily lives in providing for them. The writer Bernard Cornwell in his Warlord Chronicles “The Enemy of God”, based on a “historical fiction” of Arthur, uses a cauldron as the subject of a quest rather than the cup of Christ.
- The Cauldron of Dyrnwch the Giant. One of the thirteen treasures of Britain this was a handy way of telling you whom was a coward and whom was brave. Useful if you wanted to send someone on a suicidal quest or you needed them to fight beside you in a big battle. It was a pretty simple power, if you put in some meat for the “hero” and it didn’t cook then you knew that you you had a coward on your hands, however if it did cook then you were fine and your hero was good to go.
- Dagnas Cauldron. This is one of the four great Irish treasures and it is famous for having the ability to never leave anyone who has eaten from it unsatisfied plus it was bottomless. How popular would this be in a restaurant? It’s certainly going to get some star reviews.
- Pair Dadeni. This is a Welsh myth that states that anyone, alive or dead is cured by its magical restorative powers. Neat addition if you’re in a battle and running out of soldiers, just get them into the bath and they’re good to go.
- The Macbeth Witches. These three Wyrd sisters really put cauldrons as a mythical constant.
