Sweet and sour: Frank McNally on how Russian brutality brought the Mary cake to Ireland

Seventy years ago this Friday, October 23rd, 1956, thousands of protesters gathered at a square in Budapest to demand the end of communist rule.

It was the start of the Hungarian uprising, which lasted for 15 days until brutally crushed by Soviet tanks and troops under the direction of Moscow.

The events have many resonances today, and not just because this was a Russian invasion of a European neighbour. It also resulted in an international refugee crisis, including the first mass influx of asylum seekers to independent Ireland.

Of the more than 200,000 who fled Hungary, 548 were given emergency accommodation at an Army camp in Knocknalisheen, Co Clare.

And even in an impoverished Ireland, where enforced emigration was a reality for many, the Catholic Hungarians were broadly welcomed.

The feeling was reciprocated too. An RTÉ archive report from the period includes grateful children at the camp singing a hymn in Irish: “Céad míle fáilte romhat, a Íosa.”

But it was not an entirely happy experience. As Bryan Fanning wrote in this newspaper some years ago, Ireland had just ratified a UN convention that gave such refugees a right to work. Even so, “considerable efforts were made to prevent the Hungarians seeking employment”.

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There also soon developed a struggle for control of the camp between the Hungarians, who elected a representative committee, and the Red Cross administrators, who sought to suppress it.

The latter complained to Government about “agitators” among the refugees, including a man who had survived a Siberian prison camp.

Allegations included the supposed invitation to his hut one night of “an undesirable woman”. In fact, as Sheehan wrote, she was a respectable lady from Limerick “attempting to recruit refugee musicians to play in a band”.

Conditions at Knocknalisheen were so far from luxury it was likened to “internment”. And the Hungarians’ protests culminated in that great Irish tradition – a hunger strike – until their demands to meet senior civil servants were met.

For most, in any case, Ireland was just a staging post. After a two-year stay, the great majority moved on to Canada. But some remained, including a few who found work the Quaker-owned Bewley’s Cafés in Dublin, a subject to which we’ll return.

As the current Hungarian ambassador to Ireland, Gergely Bánhegyi, reminded guests at a commemoration earlier this week, fellow feeling between his country and this one goes back several centuries.

In 1649, fleeing Cromwellian persecution, the Catholic bishop of Clonfert, Walter Lynch, made a new home in the Hungarian city of Gyor.

He brought with him a painting of the Madonna and Child. And when he died, his remains and the picture both took up permanent residence in the local cathedral.

There, some years later, the painting became the focus of apparently miraculous events. On St Patrick’s Day in 1697, a year in which all priests were banished from Ireland, the Madonna was seen to weep tears of blood, over several hours.

Reports of the phenomenon are said to have been signed by hundreds of eyewitnesses, including local “Calvinist and Lutheran ministers, and a Jewish rabbi”.

Ever since, the “Irish Madonna of Gyor” has attracted pilgrims, while a copy of the original painting now hangs in St Brenda’s Cathedral in Loughrea, Co Galway.

But getting back to Bewley’s, as the ambassador also mentioned, the Hungarians who found work there in the late 1950s included a man named Henry Spelter.

And among Henry’s contributions was a local version of a dessert popular in his home country as the “Marika Cake”.

A drum-shaped chocolate, sponge, and marzipan confection, it became known in Ireland as the “Mary cake” and was for many years a staple of the Bewley’s menu.

It was never perhaps as famous as the sticky bun or almond roll, with which the cafes were synonymous.

But I see, for example, that during coverage of the threatened closure of Bewley’s Grafton Street in 2004, nostalgic former customers quoted in a newspaper feature include the writer Liz Ryan lamenting: “It had everything – real fires, warm decor, good coffee, those lovely Mary cakes.”

Alas, during one of the cafe’s refurbishments, the recipe was lost. And since Henry Spelter was long gone by now – he had re-emigrated at some point – it looked like it would stay lost.

Then, two decades later, Bewley’s food detective Hazel Carmichael got on the case. She tracked Spelter to the US, only to find he had just died there, aged 95.

But via the obituaries, she found one of his grandchildren. And with some assistance from old Bewley’s ledger books – they were together able to bring the storied dessert back to life last year.

The cake was a star feature at the embassy’s commemoration on Monday, where guests included current Bishop of Clonfert Michael Duignan and historian Vera Sheridan, whose 2023 book Suitable Strangers tells the story of the 1956 refugees.

Another notable feature of the event were the miniature Hungarian Tricolours, each with a hole cut in the middle. This replicated the action of protesters 70 years ago when they edited the flag of its postwar communist insignia.