Roscoff and its johnnies: when onions crossed the Channel
And also
The tops
What’s this?
The onion from Roscoff (Brittany, Western France) has a lovely pinkish colour inside and outside, and a mellow and sweet taste.
The little history
Story of onions
French people cultivated onions since a long time! In the Middle Ages, we found onions from Corbeil, mentioned since the 13th century.
But we also found the yellow onion from Mulhouse, the onion from Cambrai, the pale one from Niort, the blond one from Aubervilliers…
What about Brittany? They cultivated onions since the 17th century in Roscoff.
French author Alexandre Dumas came in Roscoff in 1869, when he started to write his Grand dictionnaire de cuisine (″Cooking dictionary″), published in 1872.
He drew his inspiration from the sea, spume… and onions! He wrote about the ″johnnies″, who sent 30 or 40 boats full of onions in England…
What about those johnnies?
The Johnnies, Brittany... and England
People called johnnies ″Little John″, ar Johnniged in Breton: they were traveling onions merchants in Roscoff, who went in England to sell their goods.
English loved Breton onions!
But a man named Henry Ollivier decided to go on the spot, in England, to sell onions. We were in 1828.
François Ménez explained in his book Promenades en Cornouaille that a ″master″ recruited 12 johnnies (they started as cabin boys at the age of 12) in Finistère.
Then they embarked in a schooner and went in Cornwall or Wales.
1300 Johnniged sold about 9000 onions per year, before World War II. They left every year in July with their onions hanging to big staff.
Johnniged had to be pretty tough, because they had to pace the roads up and down, all day long…
And they had to speak English! A little bit... even though in Wales, the typical Celtic land, Breton men and Welshmen perfectly understood themselves!
Johnnies only came back home when all their onions were sold.
They came back in winter, with some English customs: they took tea at 5PM and put portrait of queen Victoria everywhere in their houses!
And those onions sellers became ″men from England″, paotr Bro-Saoz, because they spoke more English than Breton!