Phil Wall was a very old man when I met him in his home near Carnsore, Co Wexford, in 1970. I believe he was over 90 at the time but he would have passed for 70. He took a great interest in my business of collecting words in the Barony of Forth, that linguistically fascinating part of Ireland, influenced as it was by Vikings, Anglo-Normans and, to a lesser extent, by the native Irish. He gave me many good words, not found elsewhere in Ireland, and I took note of his past participle of the verb to bake, baken.

My notes show that Phil didn't think much of "the shop bread baken in Wexford town". The only other place this past participle has been found in the modern dialects is in Lanarkshire, in Scotland, where in a little book by Procter, called Barber's Shop, published in 1856, has the following: "God be praised, I've found it! I've found it! my bread's baken! my bread's baken!"

But baken was in literature long before Proctor's day: the King James Bible refers to "a cake baken on the coals", found in Kings xix; and The Complaynt of Scotland (1549) has: "The bakyn stane vald thole the fyir." The centuries-older Piers Plowman has: "Banes and baken apples thei brouhte in here lappes."

Baken is from the Old English (ge)baken, past participle of bacan, to bake.

A Staffordshire glossary of 1894 says that baker was a pottery term for a pie-dish; in Cornwall a baker was a shallow utensil used for baking on turf fires. And in Worcestershire a baker was a small pebble placed in an oven to indicate when it is sufficiently heated. This is shown by the stone then presenting a floury-white appearance, according to the English Dialect Dictionary.

Baker's dozen is an interesting phrase, still in general use. It means 13 of anything. John Florio, in his 1611 dictionary, has: "Serqua, a dozen, namely of egges, or as we say a baker's dozen, that is thirteen to the dozen." This is the first written use of the phrase, as far as I know. In Cleaveland's poems of 1651, there is the line, "Hercules' labours were a baker's dozen."

In 1859 Riley in Liber Albus has: "These dealers [hucksters] on purchasing their bread from the bakers, were privileged by law to receive thirteen batches for twelve, and this would seem to have been the extent of their profits. Hence the expression, still in use, a baker's dozen."