CHAPTER IV.

SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION (COUNTRY).

I now come to the consideration of occupations generally, and to this I

think it will be advisable to devote two chapters. One reason for so

doing, the main one in fact, is that they seem naturally to divide

themselves into two classes—those of a rural character, very numerous at

that time on account of agricultural pursuits being so general, and

those of a more diverse and I may say civilized kind, bearing upon the

community’s life—literature and art, dress, with all its varied

paraphernalia, the boudoir and the kitchen. In considering the former,

the character of our surnames will give us, I imagine, by no means a bad

or ineffective picture of the simplicity of our early rural life, its

retirement, and even calm. In shadowing forth the latter, we shall be

enabled to see what were the available means of that age, and by the

very absence of certain names to realise how numberless have been the

resources that discovery has added at a more recent period. It will be

well, too, to give two entire chapters to these surnames, as being

worthy of somewhat further particularity than the others. They betray

much more of our English life that has become obsolete. Local names, as

I have said already, while they must ever denote much of change, denote

the changes more especially of Nature herself, which are slow in

general, and require more than the test of four or five centuries to

make their transitions apparent. Personal or Christian names vary almost

less than these. The Western European system is set upon the same

foundation, and whatever has been peculiar to separate countries has

long since, by the intermingling of nations, whether peaceful or

revolutionary, been added to the one common stock. Some indeed have

fallen into disuse through crises of various kinds. A certain number,

too, of a fanciful kind, as we have already seen, have been added within

the last two centuries, but these latter have not of course affected our

surnames. Nicknames, which form so large a proportion of our

nomenclature, remain much the same; for a nation’s tongue, while

receiving a constant deposit and throwing off ever a redundant

phraseology, still, as a rule, does not touch these; they are taken from

the deeper channel of a people’s speech. But the fashion and custom of

living is ever changing. New wants spring up, and old requirements

become unneeded; fresh resources come to hand, and the more antique are

at once despised and thrown aside. In a word, invention and discovery

cast their shafts at the very heart of usage. Thus it is that we shall

have such a large number of obsolete occupations to recount—occupations

which but for our rolls even the oldest and most reliable of our less

formal writings would have failed to preserve to us.

It is quite possible for the eye to light upon hamlets in the more

retired nooks and crannies of England that have undergone but little

change during even the last six centuries, hamlets of which we could say

with Goldsmith:—

How often have I paused on every charm,

The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,

The never-failing brook, the busy mill,

The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,

For talking age and whispering lovers made.

I have seen, or I at least imagined I have seen, such a picture as this;

but if there be, this of all times is that in which we must be prepared

for a revolution. Our railways are every day but connecting us with the

more inaccessible districts, following as they do the curves of our

valleys, winding alongside our streams, like nature and art in parallel.

As they thus increase they bear with them equally increased facilities

for carrying the modernized surroundings and accessories of life on

this, on that, and on every hand. Thus usage is everywhere fast giving

way before utility, and thus in proportion as art and invention get

elbow-room, so does the primitive poetry of our existence fade from

view. We can remember villages—there are still such—around which time

had flung a halo of so simple aspect, villages whose steads were grouped

with so exquisite a quaintness, so utterly and beautifully irregular, so

full of unexpected joints and curves, and all so thatched, and

embrowned, and trellised, that with the loss of them we have lost a

pastoral. There may be indeed a certain poetry in model villas of

undeviating line and exact altitude; there may be a beauty in an

erection which reminds you in perpetuity of the great Euclidian truth

that a straight line is that which lies evenly between its extreme

points, but at times it puts one in sober mood to think all the touches

of a past time are to fade away, and these be in their stead. How

different the tale nomenclature tells us of former rusticity and simpler

tastes.

The early husbandman required but little decorative refinement for his

homestead. To keep out the cold blast and the driving rain, to have a

niche by the fireside comfortable and warm, this was all he asked or

wished for. His roof was all but invariably composed of thack or thatch,

and every village had its ‘thatcher.’ Busy indeed would he be as the

late autumn drew nigh, and stack and stead must be shielded from the

keen and chilling winter. The Hundred Roll forms of the surname are

‘Joan le Thaccher’ and ‘Thomas le Thechare;’ the Parliamentary Writs

‘John le Thacher;’ while the more modern directory furnishes us with

such changes rung upon the same as ‘Thatcher,’ ‘Thacker’[235] (still a

common provincialism for the occupation), and ‘Thackery,’ or

‘Thackeray,’ or Thackwray.’[236] These latter are of course but akin to

the old ‘John le Fermery,’ or ‘Richard le Vicary,’ the termination added

being the result of popular whim or caprice. Our ‘Readers’ had less to

do with book lore than we might have supposed, being but descendants of

the mediæval ‘William le Redere,’[237] another term for the same kind of

labour. The old ‘Hellier,’ or ‘Helier,’ carries us back to a once

well-known root. To ‘hill,’ or ‘hele,’ was to cover, and a ‘hilyer’ was

a roofer.[238] Sir John Maundville says with regard to the Tartars, ‘the

helynge of their houses, and ... the dores ben alle of woode;’ and John

of Trevisa speaks of the English ‘whyt cley and red’ as useful ‘for to

make crokkes and other vessels, and barned tyyl to _hele_ with houses

and churches.’ Gower, too, uses the word prettily, but perfectly

naturally, when he says—

She took up turves (turfs) of the lond,

Withouten help of mannes hond,

All heled with the grene grass.[239]

Amongst other of the many forms that still survive surnominally we have

‘Hillyer,’ ‘Hillier,’ ‘Hellier,’ ‘Hellyer,’ and the somewhat unpleasant

‘Helman’ and ‘Hellman.’ Earlier instances may be found in the Hundred

Rolls in such entries as ‘Robert le Heliere’ or ‘Will. Heleman.’ Our

‘Tylers’ are well and quaintly represented in the early rolls. One

mediæval spelling of this good old-fashioned name is ‘Tyghelere’ (Adam

le Tyghelere, P.W.), while such forms as ‘le Tuglur,’ ‘le Tuler,’ or ‘le

Tewler,’ as representatives of the Norman-French vocabulary, meet us on

every hand. Whether any of their descendants have had the courage to

reproduce any of these renderings I cannot say. I do not find any in our

directories. Our ‘Smiths’ have not been quite so qualmish. With the

tylers we may fitly introduce our ‘Shinglers,’ they who used the stout

oaken wood in the place of burnt clay. Churches were oftentimes so

covered. Mr. Halliwell quotes the following somewhat sarcastic couplet:—

Flouren cakes beth the schingles alle

Of cherche, cloister, boure, and halle.

Piers Plowman, too, speaks similarly of Noah’s Ark as the ‘shyngled

ship.’[240] All these names have, occupatively speaking, now become

obsolete, or nearly so; our ‘Slaters,’ or ‘Sclaters,’ or ‘Slatters,’

having usurped the entire position they were formerly content to share

with their humbler brethren.[241]

In the majority of the above names we shall find the Saxon to be in all

but whole possession of the field. The fact is, the roof and its

appurtenances were little regarded for a long period by our early

architects, if we may give such a grand term to those who set up the

ordinary homestead of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. There

were no chimneys even in the residences of the rich and noble. A hole in

the roof, or the window, or the door, one of these, whether in the homes

of the peer or the peasant, was the outlet for all obnoxious vapours.

With the Normans, however, came a great increase of refinement in the

masonry and wooden framework of which our houses are composed. Such

names as ‘Adam le Quarreur,’ or ‘Hugh le Quareur,’ ‘Walter le Marbiler,’

or ‘Geoffrey le Merberer,’ ‘Gotte le Mazoun,’ or ‘Walter le Masun,’ or

‘Osbert le Machun’ represent a cultivation of which the earlier settled

race, if they knew something, did not avail themselves in their merely

domestic architecture. Two of these occupations are referred to by

‘Cocke Lorelle,’ when he speaks of—

Masones, male-makers, and merbelers.[242]

‘Henry le Wallere,’ whose sobriquet was ennobled later on by one of our

poets, is the only entry I can set by these as belonging to the Saxon

tongue.[243] It is the same with the Norman ‘Amice le Charpenter’ and

‘Alan le Joygnour.’ While the former framed the more solid essentials,

the very name of the latter infers a careful supervision of minutiæ, of

which only a more refined taste would take cognizance. The descendants

of such settlers as these still hold the place they then obtained, and

are unchanged otherwise than in the fashion of spelling their name.

Of the plaster work we have a goodly array of memorials, the majority of

which, of course, are connected with a higher class work than the mere

cottager required. The ordinary term in use at present for a maker of

lime is ‘limeburner.’ It is quite possible that in our ‘Limebears’ or

‘Limebeers’ we have but a corruption of this. Such sobriquets as ‘Hugh

le Limwryte’ and ‘John le Limer’ give us, however, the more general

mediæval forms. The latter is still to be met with among our surnames.

But these are not all. We have in our ‘Dawbers’ the descendants of the

old ‘Thomas le Daubour,’ or ‘Roger le Daubere,’ of the thirteenth

century. ‘Cocke Lorelle,’ whom I have but just quoted, mentions among

other workmen—

Tylers, bryckeleyers, hardehewers;

Parys-plasterers, daubers, and lymeborners.

Our ‘Authorised Version’ when it speaks of ‘the wall daubed with

untempered mortar,’ still preserves their memorial, and our ‘Plasters’

and ‘Plaisters’ are but sturdy scions of many an early registered ‘Adam

le Plastier,’ ‘Joanna le Plaisterer,’ or ‘John le Cementarius.’ The last

of this class I would mention is ‘Robert Pargeter’ or ‘William

Pergiter,’ a name inherited by our ‘Pargiters’ and ‘Pargeters.’ This was

an artisan of a higher order. He laboured, in fact, at the more

ornamental plaster work. In the accounts of Sir John Howard, A.D. 1467,

is the following entry:—‘Item, the vj day of Aprylle my master made a

covenaunt with Saunsam the tylere, that he schalle pergete, and whighte

and bemefelle all the new byldynge, and he schalle have for his labore

xiijs. ivd.’[244] It is used metaphorically, but I cannot add very

happily, in an old translation of Ovid—

Thus having where they stood in vaine complained of their wo,

When night drew neare they bad adue, and eche gave kisses sweete

Unto the parget on their side, the which did never meete.

‘Roger le Peynture’ or ‘Henry le Peintur,’ ‘Ralph le Gilder’ and ‘Robert

le Stainer,’ were engaged, I imagine, in the equally careful work of

decorating passage and hall within, and all have left offspring enough

to keep up their perpetual memorial. Thus, within and without, the house

itself has afforded room for little change in our nomenclature, though

the artisans themselves have now a very different work to perform to

that of their mediæval prototypes. The increase of wealth and a

progressive culture have not merely taught but demanded a more careful

and refined workmanship in the details of ordinary housebuilding. We may

readily imagine, however, even in this early day, how little the simple

bondsman, or freer husbandman, had to do with such artisans as even then

existed. I do not find, at least the exceptions are of the rarest, that

these workmen dwelt in the more rural districts at all. Their names are

to be met with in the towns, where the richer tradespeople and burgesses

were already beginning to copy the fashions and habits of life of the

higher aristocracy.

We have already noticed the ‘town’—how it originally denoted but the

simple farmstead with its immediate surroundings, then its gradual

enlargement of sense as other steads increased and multiplied around it.

We have also seen how the old ‘ham’ or home gathered about it such

accessions of human abodes as converted it in time into one of those

village communities, so many of which we still find in the outer

districts, almost, as I have said, unaltered from their early

foundation. It was in these various homesteads dwelt the peasantry.

There might be seen our ‘Cotmans’ and ‘Cotters’ (‘Richard Coteman,’ A.,

‘Simon le Cotere,’ F.F.), the descendants, doubtless, of the ‘cotmanni’

of Domesday Book. Similar in origin and as humble in degree would be our

now numerous ‘Cotterels’ or ‘Cottrels’ (‘William Coterel,’ M., ‘Joice

Cotterill,’ Z.), till a comparatively recent period an ordinary

sobriquet of that class of our country population. A curious memorial of

a past state of life abides with us in our ‘Boardmans,’ ‘Boarders,’

‘Bordmans,’ and ‘Borders.’ They were the tenants of lands which their

lord kept expressly for the maintenance of his table, the rental being

paid in kind. Hence our old English law-books speak familiarly of

bord-service, or bord-load, or bord-land. The term board in this same

sense still lingers on the common tongue, for we are yet wont to use

such phrases as bed and board, or a frugal board, or a board plentifully

spread. A determinate, as distinct from an unfixed service, has left its

mark in our ‘Sockermans,’ ‘Suckermans,’ and ‘Sockmans,’ they who held by

socage, or socmanry, as the old law-books have it. Under this tenure, as

a condition of the meagre rental, the stout-hearted, thick-limbed rustic

was to be ready, as his lord’s adherent, to stand by him in every

assault, either as archer, or arbalister, or pikeman—that is, fealty was

to eke out the remaining sum which would otherwise have been due. But

there were of these Saxon husbandmen some under no such thraldom,

however honourable, as this, and of these freeholders we must set as the

highest our ‘Yomans’ and ‘Yeomans.’ This term, however, became an

official one, and it is doubtful to which aspect of the word we are to

refer the present owners of the name. It is possible both features may

have had something to do with its origination. How anxious they who had

been redeemed, or who had been born free, though of humble

circumstances, were to preserve themselves from a doubtful or suspected

position such names as ‘Walter le Free’ or ‘John le Freman’ will fully

show. We find even such appellatives as ‘Matilda Frewoman’ or ‘Agnes

Frewyfe,’ in the latter case the husband possibly being yet in bondage.

In our ‘Frys,’ a sobriquet that has acquired much honour of late years

and represented in mediæval rolls by such entries as ‘Thomas le Frye’ or

‘Walter le Frie,’ we have but an obsolete rendering of ‘free.’[245]

These, as we see, are all Saxon—but Norman equivalents are not wanting.

Our ‘Francoms’ or ‘Francombs’ and ‘Frankhams,’ names by no means

uncommon in our existing registers, are but Anglicised dresses worn by

the posterity of such registered folk as ‘Henry le Franchome,’ or

‘Reginald le Fraunchome,’ or ‘Hugh le Fraunch-humme.’ ‘William le

Fraunk,’ too, or ‘Fulco le Franc,’ can boast many a hale descendant in

our ‘Franks;’ and ‘Roger le Franklyn’ or ‘John le Fraunkelyn’ in our

‘Franklins,’ a name from henceforth endeared to Englishmen as that of

our gallant but lost Arctic hero. From Chaucer’s description of one such

we should deem the ‘franklin’ to have been of decidedly comfortable

position, a well-to-do householder, in fact.

Withouten bake mete never was his house,

Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous,

It snowed in his hous of mete and drinke

Of all deintees that men coud of thinke:

After the sondry sesons of the yere,

So changed he his mete and soupere.

But we are not without vestiges of the baser servitudes of the time, and

in this category we must set the great bulk of the agricultural classes

of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The descendants of the old ‘Ivo

le Bondes’ and ‘Richard le Bondes’ are still in our midst, and to judge

merely from their number then and now enrolled, we see what a familiar

position must that of personal bondage have been.

Of alle men in londe

Most toileth the bonde,

says an old rhyme.[246] Still more general terms for those who lay under

this miserable serfdom were those of ‘Knave’ or ‘Villein.’ ‘Walter le

Knave’ or ‘Lambert le Vilein’ or ‘Philip le Vylayn’ are names registered

at the time of which we are speaking. The odium, however, that has

gradually gathered around these sobriquets has caused them to be thrown

off by the posterity of those who first acquired them as simple bondmen.

Indeed, there was the time when, as I shall have occasion to show in a

succeeding chapter, our forefathers could speak of ‘Goodknaves’ and

‘Goodvilleins.’ Feudal disdain of all that lay beneath chivalric

service, however, has done its work, and we all now speak, not merely as

if these terms implied that which was mean and despicable in outward

condition, but that which also was morally depraved and vile. ‘Geoffrey

le Sweyn’ or ‘Hugh le Sweyn,’ however, by becoming the exponent of

honest rusticity, has rescued his sobriquet from such an ill-merited

destiny, and has left in many of our ‘Swains’ a token of his mediæval

gallantry. ‘John le Hyne’ or ‘William le Hyne’ (found also as Hind), as

representative of the country labourer, is equally sure of perpetuity,

as the most cursory survey of our directories will prove.[247] Of the

‘Reve’ in the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ we are told:—

There was no bailif, nor herd, nor other hine

That he nor knew his sleight, and his covine.

In the ‘Townley Mysteries,’ too, the word occurs. In the account of the

reconciliation betwixt Jacob and Esau the former is made to say:—

God yeld you, brother, that it so is,

That thou thy hyne so would kiss.

In the rural habitations we have mentioned, then dwelt these various

members of the lower class community.

The sobriquets we have just briefly surveyed, however, are of a more

general character. We must now, and as briefly, scan some of those which

in themselves imply the particular service which as rustic labourers

their first owners performed, and by which the titles were got. This

class is well represented by such a name as ‘Plowman.’ Langland, when he

would take from a peasant point of view a sarcastic survey of the low

morality of his time, as exemplified in the English Church ere yet she

was reformed, could fix upon no better sobriquet than that of ‘Piers

Plowman,’ and has thus given a prominence to the name it can never lose.

What visions of homely and frugal content we discern in the utterance of

such a surname as this; what thoughts of healthy life, such as are

becoming rarer with each returning year—

For times are altered—trade’s unfeeling train

Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain.

It was with him at early dawn would issue forth our ‘Tillyers’ or

‘Tillmans,’ to help him cleave the furrow. A little later on we might

have seen our ‘Mowers’ and ‘Croppers’[248] hanging up their scythes and

sickles, as the autumn, in richly clad garb, passed slowly by. Then

again in due season busy enough would be the ‘Dyker,’ now spelt

‘Dicker,’[249] and the ‘Dykeman’ or ‘Dickman.’ With what an enviable

appetite would these eat up to the last relic their rasher of bacon and

black bread, and quaff their home-brewed ale, a princely feast after the

hard toil of draining the field. To dike was merely to dig, the root

being the same. Of the kindly plowman Chaucer says—

He would thresh, and thereto dike and delve,

For Christ’s sake, for every poor wight,

Withouten hire, if it lay in his might.

The Malvern dreamer, too, speaks in the same fashion of ‘dikeres and

delvers,’ and among other characters introduces to our notice ‘Daw the

Dykere,’ ‘Daw’ being, as I have already shown, but the shorter David.

Our ‘Drayners,’ I need not add, were but his compeers in the same

labour. Perhaps one of the most beautiful features that help to make up

a truly English rural landscape is the hedgerows, following the windings

of our lanes, and mazy bypaths skirting our meadows. England is

eminently a land of enclosures. Still all this has been the result of

progressing time. If our pinder be now an obsolete officership it is

because the lines of appropriation have become more clearly marked. It

is only thus we can understand the importance of his position in every

rural community four or five hundred years ago. No wonder, then, our

‘Hedgers’ and ‘Hedgmans’ are to be found whose ancestors were once

occupied in setting up these pretty barriers. An old song of James I.’s

day says:—

Come all you farmers out of the country,

Carters, ploughmen, _hedgers_, and all;

Tom, Dick, and Will, Ralph, Roger, and Humphrey,

Leave off your gestures rusticall.[250]

If stakes or pales were used, it is to our ‘Pallisers’ and obsolete

‘Herdleres’ our forefathers looked to set them up. The former term I

have but come across once as an absolute surname, but such entries as

‘Robert Redman, palayser,’ or ‘James Foster, palycer,’ are to be met

with occasionally, and at once testify to the origin of the term as

found in our existing registers. ‘Pallister,’ too, is not obsolete;

strictly speaking, the feminine form of the above. I find it written

‘Pallyster’ and ‘Palyster’ in an old Yorkshire inventory. But there is

one more term belonging to this group which I am afraid has disappeared

from our family nomenclature—that of ‘Tiner,’ he who tined or mended

hedges. A ‘John le Tynere’ occurs in the Parliamentary Writs. We are

reminded by Verstigan’s book on ‘Decayed Intelligence’ that ‘hedging and

tining’ was a phrase in vogue not more than 200 years ago. Mr. Taylor,

in his ‘Words and Places,’ connects our ‘tine’ in the ‘tines of a stag’s

horns’ or ‘the tines of a fork,’ with the same root implying a ‘twig.’

In our old English forest law a ‘tineman’ was an officer very similar to

the ‘hayward,’ the only apparent difference being that he served by

night. The two terms are exactly similar in sense. We are not without

relics, too, of our former means and methods of enriching the glebe.

Even here several interesting memorials are preserved to us.

‘Marler,’[251] ‘Clayer,’ and ‘Chalker’ (‘Alice le Marlere,’ A., ‘Thomas

le Chalker,’ A., ‘Simon le Clayere,’ A.), still existing, remind us how

commonly the land was manured with marl and other substances of a

calcareous nature. Trevisa, writing upon this very subject, says—‘Also

in this land (England), under the turf of the land, is good marl found.

The thrift of the fatness drieth himself (itself) therein, so that even

the thicker the field is marled, the better corn will it bear.’[252] An

old rhyme says:—

He that marles sand may buy land;

He that marles moss shall suffer no loss;

But he that marles clay throws all away.

An interesting surname of this class is that of ‘Acreman,’ or, as it is

now generally spelt, ‘Acherman,’ ‘Akerman,’ or ‘Aikman,’ for it is far

from being of modern German introduction, as some have supposed. In the

Hundred Rolls and elsewhere it appears in such entries as ‘Alexander le

Acherman,’ ‘Roger le Acreman,’ ‘Peter le Akerman,’ and ‘John le

Akurman.’ His was indeed a common and familiar sobriquet, and we are but

once more reminded by it of the day when the _acre_ was what it really

denoted—the ager, or land open to tillage, without thought of definite

or statute measure. Indeed, it is quite possible the term was at first

strictly applied thus, for a contemporaneous poem has the following

couplet:—

The foules up, and song on bough,

And acremen yede to the plough.

If this be the case the surname is but synonymous with ‘Plowman’ and

‘Tillman,’ already referred to.

A curious name is found in the writs of this period, and one well worthy

of mention, that of ‘Adam le Imper.’ An ‘imp,’ I need scarcely remind

the reader, was originally a ‘scion’ or ‘offshoot,’ whether of plants or

animals, the former seemingly most common, to judge from instances. That

nothing more than this was intended by it we may prove by Archbishop

Trench’s quotation from Bacon, where he speaks of ‘those most virtuous

and goodly young imps, the Duke of Suffolk and his brother.’[253]

Chaucer says that of

feble trees their comen wretched imps—

and ‘Piers Plowman’ uses the word still more explicitly—

I was some tyme a frere

And the conventes gardyner

For to graffen impes,

he says. This latter quotation explains the surname. ‘Imper,’ doubtless,

simply differed from ‘Gardiner’ or ‘Gardner’ in that he was more

particularly engaged in the grafting of young shoots.

From the consideration of the last we may fitly turn to the subject of

fruits. There can be no doubt that in early days, so far at least as the

south, and more particularly the south-west of England was concerned,

the vine was very generally cultivated by the peasantry, and the wine

made therefrom, however poor it might be, used by them. So early as

Domesday Survey a ‘Walter Vinitor’ lived in Surrey, and a century or two

later such names as ‘Symon le Vynur,’ or ‘William le Viner,’ or ‘Roger

le Vynour,’ the ancestry of our ‘Viners,’ show that the vine-dresser’s

occupation was not yet extinct. We have long left the production of this

beverage, however, to the sunnier champaign lands of the Continent, and

are content by paying a higher price to get a richer and fuller juice.

Our ‘Dressers’ may either belong to this or the curriers’ fraternity. An

old poem, which I have already had occasion to quote, says—

In tyme of harvest merry it is enough,

Pears and apples hangeth on bough,

The hayward bloweth merry his horne,

In every felde ripe is corne,

The grapes hongen on the vyne,

Swete is trewe love and fyne.

We have here the mention of pears and apples. The cultivation of these

by our ‘Orcharders,’ or ‘de la Orchards,’ or ‘de la Apelyards,’ was a

familiar occupation, and ‘le Cyderer,’[254] and ‘le Perriman,’ or

‘Pearman,’ and ‘le Perrer,’ testify readily as to the use to which they

were put. The home-made drinks of these early days were almost all

sweet. Such decoctions as mead, piment, or hippocras, in the absence of

sugar, were mingled with honey. We can at once understand, therefore,

what an important pursuit would that be of the bee-keeper.[255] Not

merely did the occasional husbandman possess his two or three hives, but

there were those who gave themselves up wholly to the tendence of bees,

and who made for themselves a comfortable livelihood in the sale of

their produce. Many of our surnames still bear testimony to this.

‘Beman,’ or ‘Beeman,’ or ‘Beaman,’ will be familiar to all, and

‘Honeyman’ is scarcely less common. In an old roll of 1183 we have the

name Latinised in such an entry as ‘Ralph Custosapium.’ But not merely

honey, but spices of all kinds were also infused into these various

drinks, whether of wine or ale. We have a well-drawn picture of this in

Piers Plowman’s vision where ‘Glutton’ comes across Beton the Brewstere,

and the latter bidding him good-morrow, says—

‘I have good ale, gossib,’ quoth she,

‘Glutton, wilt thou assaye?’

‘Hast thou aught in thy purse,’ quoth he;

‘Any hote spices?’

‘I have pepir, and peonies,’ quoth she,

‘And a pound of garleck,

And a farthing-worth of fenel-seed

For fastyng dayes.’

Such an array of hot ingredients as this poor Glutton could not resist,

and instead of going to Mass he turned into the tavern, and having

supped

A galon and a gille,

of course got uproariously drunk. Thus we see how natural it is we

should come across such names as ‘Balmer,’ or ‘le Oyncterer,’ or ‘le

Hoincter,’ as it is also registered, or ‘le Garlyckmonger,’ in our early

records. The first still exists. The second does not, but the cumbersome

and ungainly appearance of the last affords sufficient excuse for its

absence. It is quite possible, however, that our ‘Garlicks’ are but a

curtailment of it, and this is the more likely, as such forms as ‘Henry

le Garleckmonger,’ or ‘Thomas le Garlykmonger,’ are commonly found, and

evidently represented an important occupation. The Normans, like the

Saxons, loved a highly stimulative dish, and garlic sauce went to

everything; bird, beast, fish, all alike found their seasoning in a

concoction of which this acrid and pungent herb was the chief

ingredient. ‘Roger le Gaderer,’ or as we should now say ‘Gatherer,’ has

left no descendant, but he may be mentioned as representing a more

general term for many of the above.

In the woodlands and its open glades and devious windings, where several

of these herbalists I have mentioned would be often found, we shall see,

too, other frequenters. It would be here, subject to the condition of

agistment and pannage, our ‘Swinnarts,’ or swineherds, tended their

hogs. It would be here by the hazel bank and deeper forest pathways our

‘Nutters’ and ‘Nutmans’ would be found, as the autumn began to set in,

and browner and more golden tints to fleck the trees and hedgerows. It

would be here, as the chills of early winter drew on, and the fallen

leaves lay strewn around, our ‘Bushers’ or ‘Boshers’ (relics of the old

‘John le Busscher’ or ‘Reginald le Buscher’), and our more Saxon ‘Thomas

le Woderes,’ ‘Robert Wudemongers,’ and ‘Alan le Wodemans’ (now

‘Woodyers’ and ‘Woodmans’), would be occupied in gathering the refuse

branches for firing purposes—here our ‘Hewers’ (once found as ‘Ralph le

Heuer’) and more specific ‘Robert le Wodehewers,’[256] our ‘Hackers’ and

‘Hackmans,’ would be engaged in chopping timber, perchance for building

purposes, perchance for our ‘Ashburners,’[257] to procure their potash

from. Oftentimes, no doubt, would these various frequenters of the

woodland boscage be roused from their rude labours to watch as the

hornblower (now ‘Hornblow’) awoke the shrill echoes, the lordly chase

sweep through the glade till it was hidden by the embrasures of the

forest, or the darkening twilight, or the bending hill.

One single glance backward over the names we have so far recorded in

this chapter, and one thing will be obvious—their all but entirely Saxon

character. Our agriculture terms, whether with regard to the work itself

or the labourer, belong to the earlier tongue. There is nothing

surprising in this. While in the nomenclature of trade we find the

superior force and energy of the Norman temperament struggling with and

oftentimes overcoming the more sober humour of the conquered race, in

the country and all the pursuits of the country the latter was far ahead

of its rival. It was better versed in agricultural pursuits, and ever

retained them in its own hands. At the same time, as we well know, this

very detention was but the mark of its defeat and the badge of its

slavery. It was a victory where, nevertheless, all is lost. Wamba the

jester, in ‘Ivanhoe,’ if I may be excused such a trite illustration,

reminds us that our cattle, while in the field, and under the

guardianship of the enslaved Saxon, were called by the Saxon terms of

‘ox,’ ‘sheep,’ and ‘calf,’ but served upon the tables of their lords

became Norman ‘beef,’ ‘mutton,’ and ‘veal’—that is, while the former

_fed them_, the latter it was that _fed on them_. Thus in the same way,

if those homely pursuits which attached to the tilling of the soil, the

breeding of cattle, the gathering in and the storing of the harvest—if

these maintained the terms which belonged to them ere the Conquest, they

are so many marks of serfdom. Provided the supply on his board was only

profuse enough, the proud baron troubled himself little as to the

supplier, or how or under what names it was procured. See how true this

is from our nomenclature. There is a little word which has dropped from

our lips which once played an important part in our vocabulary—I mean

that of ‘herd’—not as applied to the flock, but the keeper. We still use

it familiarly in compounds, such as _swineherd_ or _shepherd_, but that

it once had a separate existence of its own is proved by the many

‘Heards,’ or ‘Herds,’ or ‘Hurds,’ that still abound surnominally in our

midst; relics as they are of the ‘John le Hirdes,’ or ‘Alice la Herdes,’

or ‘Robert le Hyrdes,’ of our olden records. Chaucer so uses it. We now

speak of our Lord as the ‘Good Shepherd.’ He, however, gives us the

simpler form where St. Urban is made to say—

‘Almighty Lord, O Jesu Christ,’ quoth he,

‘Sower of chaste counsel, herd of us all.’

Thus again, in the ‘Townley Mysteries’ the angel who visited the

shepherds as they kept their flocks by night is represented as arousing

them by saying—

Herkyn, hyrdes, awake!

See now the many compounds of which this purely Saxon word is the root.

Are we in the low-lying pastures. In our ‘Stotherds’ and ‘Stothards,’

our ‘Stoddarts’ and ‘Stoddards,’ still clings the remembrance of the old

_stot_ or bullock-herd; in our ‘Yeatherds’ (as in our ‘Yeatmans’), the

heifer herd; and in our ‘Cowards,’ far from being so pusillanimous as

they look, the homely ‘cowherd.’ In ‘William and the Werfolf’ we are

told—

It bifel in that forest

There fast byside,

There woned (dwelt) a wel old churl

That was a couherde.

Nor are these all. In our ‘Calverts’ and ‘Calverds’ we are reminded of

the once well-known ‘Warin le Calveherd,’ or ‘William le Calverd,’ as I

find him recorded; in our ‘Nuttards’ the more general but now faded

‘neteherd’ or ‘noutherd,’[258] and in our obsolete ‘John Oxenhyrds’ and

‘Peter Oxherds,’ the familiar ox. Are we in the grazing paddock. In our

‘Coultherds,’ ‘Coulthards,’ and ‘Coultards’ (‘John Colthird,’ W. 9), not

to mention our ‘Coultmans’ and ‘Coltmans,’ we have ample trace of their

presence. Are we again on the bleak hill-side. The sheep have given us

our ‘Shepherds,’ the rams our ‘Wetherherds’ (now generally written

‘Weatherheads’), the kids our ‘Gottards,’ not to say some of our

‘Goddards,’ memorials of the once common goatherd. Are we under the

woodland pathways where the beech-nuts abound. There, too, the herd was

to be found, for in our ‘Swinnarts,’ ‘Hoggarts,’ and ‘Sowards’ we are

not without a further token of his usefulness. In three instances I have

found ‘herd’ connected with the winged creation. In the _Parliamentary

Writs_ occurs ‘William le Swonherde,’ in the _Corpus Christi Guild_

(Surt. Soc.), ‘Agnes Gusehyrd’ and ‘Joan Gusehyrd,’ and in the _Hundred

Rolls_ ‘Henry le Rocherde,’ _i.e._, rook-herd.[259] ‘Swanherd’ reminds

us that swans were an important article of diet in early times. In 1482

an Act was passed forbidding any but freeholders (and they only if they

had lands of the annual value of five marks) to have marks or games of

swans. (‘Stat. Realm,’ vol. ii. p. 447.)

It will have already become clear to the reader that this term ‘herd’

played no unimportant part in the vocabulary of the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries. But even now we have not done. For instance, our

‘Stobbarts’ and ‘Stubbards’ are manifestly descendants of such a name as

‘Alice Stobhyrd’ or ‘Thomas Stobart,’ the owners of both of which are

set down in the Black Book of Hexham Priory in company with ‘John

Stodard,’ ‘William Oxhyrd,’ and ‘Thomas Schipherde.’[260] I should have

been in some difficulty in regard to the meaning of this ‘stob’ or

‘stub’ had not Mr. Halliwell in his dictionary of archaic words given it

as an old rural term for a bull. This surname, therefore, is

satisfactorily accounted for. I cannot be quite so positive with regard

to our ‘Geldards’ and ‘Geldarts,’ but I strongly suspect their early

ancestor was but a _confrère_ of the swineherd or hogherd, ‘gelt,’ or

‘geld,’ as a porcine title, being a familiar word to our forefathers of

that date. Our ‘Gattards’ and ‘Gathards,’ too, may be mentioned as but

mediævalisms for the goatherd, ‘Gateard’ and ‘Gatherd’ being met with in

North English records contemporaneously with the above. Such a sobriquet

as ‘Adam le Gayt,’ while it may be but a form of the old ‘wayt’ or

watchman, is, I imagine, but representative of this northern

provincialism. It occurs locally in ‘William de Gatesden’ or ‘John de

Gatesden,’ both found in the Parliamentary Writs. With two more

instances I will conclude. In our ‘Hunnards’ still lives the memory of

‘Helyas le Hunderd,’ the old houndsman, while in ‘Richard le Wodehirde’

or ‘William le Wodehirde’ we have but another, though more general,

sobriquet of one of those many denizens of the forest I have already

hinted at. How purely Saxon are all these names! What a freshness seems

to breathe about them! What a fragrance as of the wild heather and

thyme, and all that is sweet and fresh and free! And yet they are but so

many marks of serfdom.

I have just incidentally referred to the swineherd. It is difficult for

us, in this nineteenth century of ours, to conceive the vast importance

of this occupation in the days of which we are writing. Few avocations

have so much changed as this. Hog-tending as a distinct livelihood is

well-nigh extinct. Time was, however, when the rustic community lived

upon bacon, when the surveillance of swine was a lazy, maybe, but

nevertheless an all-important care. We still speak of a ‘flitch of

bacon,’ a term which, while etymologically the same as ‘flesh,’ shows

how to the early popular mind that article represented the sum total of

_carnal_ luxuries. Our use of the word ‘brawn’ is of an equally

tell-tale character. Every one knows what we mean by brawn. Originally,

however, it was the flesh of any animal. Chaucer says—

The Miller was a stout carl for the nones,

Full big he was of brawn, and eke of bones.

When, however, the wild boar had been brought down, and salted, and put

aside for winter use, how natural that to the housewife it should

engross this general sense. It is to the importance this

unsavoury-looking animal held in the eyes of early rustics we must

attribute the fact of so many names coming down to us connected with its

keep. As I have just hinted, such sobriquets as ‘John le Swineherd’ or

‘Nicholas le Hogherd’ were common enough in the country parts, our

‘Swinnarts’ and ‘Hoggarts’ being witnesses. The sowherd remains in our

‘Sowards,’ and is as Saxon as the others. The same tongue is strong

again in our ‘Pigmans’ ‘Sowmans,’ ‘Hogmans,’ and still more secluded

‘Denyers’ and ‘Denmans.’ The Norman, however, is to be accredited with

our many ‘Gilbert le Porchers’ and ‘Thomas le Porkeres,’ by which we may

see that when daintily served up under the name of ‘pork’ it was not

disdained on the baron’s table. Lastly, we may mention our early ‘Philip

le Lardiners’ and ‘Hugh le Lardiners,’ names that in themselves suggest

to us the one purpose of the herdsman, the fattening of his charge. They

would be found generally, therefore, neath the fastnesses of the forest,

where the

Oak with his nuts larded many a swine,

and where the mast and beech-nuts abounded, the chief pannage, it would

seem, of that day.[261] Higher up, as far indeed as the bleak and barren

wolds, the shepherd cared for and tended his flock. His was a common

occupation, too, as our nomenclature shows. Evidently he was as prone in

those days to the oaten reed as the poets of all ages have loved to

depict him, for it is to his Norman-introduced name of ‘Berger’ we owe

the ‘bergeret,’ or pastoral ode. The song indeed, so called, has died

away from our ears, but ‘Berger,’ or ‘Bercher,’ as it was often written,

still lives, and may carry us back for a moment to these wholesomer

times.

Nor, if we approach more closely to the farmyard enclosure, are we

without memorials. The _farm_ of old, as applied to the soil, was of

course that piece of land which was rented for agricultural purposes,

and I doubt not the chief of the old ‘Robert le Fermers’ and ‘Matilda le

Fermeres’ represent this more confined sense. ‘Farmer,’ whether

colloquially or in our registers, is the modern form. Udal, however,

maintains the more antique dress, when he says, ‘And that the thyng

should so be, Chryst Hymself had signyfied to fore by the parable of the

husbandmen or fermers.’

While ‘herd,’ as a root-word, implied the tendance of cattle in the

meadows and woods and on the hillsides, ‘man,’ I suspect, was equally

significative of their guardianship in the stable and the yard. Thus if

the ‘_cowherd_’ was in the field, the ‘_cowman_’ would be in the stall.

We may here, therefore, set our familiar ‘Cowmans,’ ‘Bullmans,’

‘Heiffermans,’ and ‘Steermans,’ or ‘Stiermans.’[262] One or two

provincialisms, I imagine, have added also to this stock. Mr. Lower

thinks our ‘Twentymans’ to be derived from ‘Vintenarius,’ a captain of

twenty. This may be so, but I suspect the more correct origin will be

found in ‘twenterman’ or ‘twinterman,’ he who tended the ‘_twenters_’ or

‘_twinters_,’ the old and once familiar ‘two-winter,’ or, as we now

generally say, ‘two-year-old.’ If the ‘steer,’ the ‘heifer,’ the ‘cow,’

and the ‘bull’ gave a sobriquet to the farm labourer, why not this? As a

farmyard term it occurs in every provincial record of the fifteenth and

even sixteenth century. Thus, to quote but one instance, I find in a

will dated 1556 mention made of ‘6 oxen, item, 18 sterres (steers),

item, 11 heifers, item, 21 twenters, item, 23 stirks.’ (Richmondshire

Wills, p. 93.) An inventory of the same date includes ‘3 kye, item, one

whye.’ This latter term was equally commonly used at this period for a

‘heifer.’ Our ‘Whymans’ and ‘Wymans’ will, we may fairly surmise, be

their present memorial. ‘Cowman,’ mentioned above, was met by the Norman

‘Vacher,’ such entries as ‘John le Vacher’ or ‘Walter le Vacher’ being

common, and as ‘Vacher,’ or more corruptly ‘Vatcher,’ it still abides in

our midst. ‘Thomas le Stabeler,’ or ‘William le Stabler,’ too, are yet

with us; but descendants for ‘Thomas le Milkar’ or ‘William le Melker’

are, I fear, wanting. A Norman representative for these latter is found

in the Parliamentary Writs in the case of ‘John le Lacter.’ There is the

smack of a kindred labour in the registered ‘Thomas le Charner,’ for I

doubt not his must have been but an antique dress of ‘Churner.’ Another

form is found in an old Richmondshire will dated 1592, where mention is

made of ‘Robert Chirner’ and his sister ‘Jane Chirner.’ As an additional

proof that his occupation was such as I have surmised, I may add that in

the same record in the valuation of household property the _churn_ is

spelt _chirne_. (Richmondshire Wills, p. 235, note.) The most

interesting sobriquet of this class, and the one which has left the most

memorials, is found in such mediæval names as ‘Cecilia le Day,’ or

‘Christiana la Daye,’ or ‘Stephen le Dagh.’ A ‘day’ was a dairyman, of

which word it is but another form. Chaucer, in one of the most charming

of his descriptions, tells us of a poor widow, how that she—

Since that day that she was last a wife

In patience led a ful simple life,

For litel was her cattle, and her rent:

By husbandry of such as God her sent

She found herself and eke her doughtren two.

————

Her board was served most with white and black,

Milk and brown bread, in which she found no lack,

Singed bacon, and sometimes an egg or twey,

For she was as it were a maner _dey_.[263]

The present representatives of this name are met with in the several

forms of ‘Deye,’ ‘Daye,’ ‘Day,’ ‘Dayman,’ and the more unpleasantly

corrupted ‘Deman.’

It is quite evident, judging from the places of abode in which we find

our early ‘Fishers’ and ‘Fishermans,’ that it is to followers, though

professional, of the quaint and gentle-minded Izaac Walton we owe our

many possessors of these names, rather than to the dwellers upon the

coast, although both, doubtless, are represented. Such entries as

‘Margaret le Fischere,’ or ‘Henry le Fissere,’ or ‘Robert le Fiscere’

are very common. This latter seems a sort of medium between the others

and such a more hard form as ‘Laurence le Fisker.’ The finny species

themselves gave us such sobriquets as ‘John le Fysche’ or ‘William

Fyske,’ and both ‘Fish’ and ‘Fisk’ still exist amongst us. The Norman

angler is seen in ‘Godard le Pescher’ or ‘Walter le Pecheur,’ while

‘Agnes le Pecheresse’ bespeaks the fact that even women did not disdain

the gentle art.

But the moment we hint of the village streamlet we are thrown upon a

subject vast indeed—the mill and the miller. He was emphatically, you

see, _the_ miller. Even now, in these busy grasping days, when we have

cotton mills and saw mills, silk mills and powder mills, mills for this

and mills for that, still it never occurs to us, when we talk of the

miller, that any one could possibly mistake our meaning. And well may it

be so, for it is with him we entwine pleasant remembrances of the

country, the wheel, the stream, the lusty dimpled trout; with him we

associate all of comfortable, peaceful content. A white jacket and a

white cap, with a black coat for Sundays—how black it would look to be

sure—a bluff, good-humoured face, a friendly nod, and a blithe

good-morrow, up early and to bed betimes, and his memoir is written, and

a very pleasant memoir, too, with a moral to boot for discontented folk,

would they but see it. The old word for mill was ‘milne,’ hence we still

have the earlier form, ‘Milnes’ and ‘Milner’ being nearly as familiar to

us in that respect as ‘Mills’ and ‘Miller.’ Besides these we have

‘Milman’ and ‘Milward,’ who once, no doubt, acted as custodian, the

modern ‘man on the premises,’ in fact.[264] The ancestry of all these is

proved by such registered forms as ‘John le Mellere,’ ‘William le

Melner,’ ‘Robert le Milleward,’[265] ‘John del Mill,’ or ‘Thomas atte

Milne,’ all of which are found scattered over our earlier rolls.[266]

Our ‘Threshers’ and ‘Taskers’ (Benedict le Tasker,’ H.R.) busied

themselves in urging the flail. I have only lit upon the latter term

once as in ordinary colloquial use. Burton in the preface to his

‘Anatomy’ says—‘many poor country-vicars, for want of other means, are

driven to their shifts,’ and ‘as Paul did, at last turn taskers,

maltsters, costermongers, graziers, etc.’[267] Our ‘Winners,’ shortened

from ‘Winnower,’ winnowed the grain with the fan; our ‘Boulters’ or

‘Bulters,’[268] ‘Siviers’ and ‘Riddlers,’ (‘Geoffrey le Boltere,’ A.,

‘William Rydler,’ Z., ‘Ralph le Siviere,’ A.), still more carefully

separated the flour from the bran. How beautifully Shakespeare presses

this into his imagery many will remember, where Florizel speaks of—

The fanned snow that’s bolted

By the northern blasts twice o’er.

Our Bible translators, too, must have yet been familiar with the simpler

process of this earlier time when they rendered one of the prophet’s

happier foretellings into the beautiful Saxon we still possess:—‘The

oxen likewise, and the young asses that ear the ground shall eat clean

provender, which hath been winnowed with the shovel and with the fan.’

The manufacture or use of the fan wherewith to purge the flour made our

‘Walter le Vanners,’ ‘Simon le Fanneres,’ ‘Richard atte Vannes,’ or

‘William atte Fannes,’ familiar names at this time. In Cocke Lorelle’s

Bote, we find among other craftsmen—

Barbers, bokebynders, and lymners;

Repers, _faners_, and horners.

We must not forget, too, our ‘Shovellers’ and more common ‘Showlers,’

‘showl’ being ever the vulgar form. It was for no purpose of rhyme, only

the word is so used where we are asked—

‘Who’ll dig his grave?’

‘I,’ said the owl; ‘with my spade and showl

I’ll dig his grave.’

With these many reminders, it is not likely that either the miller or

his men are likely to become soon forgotten.

The smithy, of course, was an inseparable adjunct to the small

community. The smith, unlike the wright, was engaged upon the harder

metals, the latter being incidentally described to us by Chaucer when he

says of one of his personages in the Reeves Story, that—

He was a well good wright, a carpenter.

Looking at the many compounds formed from these two roots, we find that

in the main this distinction is maintained. Let us take the wright

first. We have but just mentioned ‘Ralph le Siviere,’ or ‘Peter le

Syvyere.’ For him our ‘Sivewrights’ were manifestly occupied, to say

nothing of the farmer’s wife. The farmer himself would need the services

of our ‘Plowwrights’ (‘William le Plowritte,’ A., ‘William le

Ploughwryte,’ M.), and would he carry his produce safely to the distant

market or fair he must needs have a good stout wain, for the track

athwart the hillside was rough and uneven, and here therefore he must

call into requisition the skill of our many ‘Wheelwrights,’ or

‘Wheelers,’ ‘Cartwrights’ and their synonymous ‘Wainwrights.’[269]

Adding to these ‘Boatwright,’ or ‘Botwright,’ ‘Shipwright,’ and the

obsolete ‘Slaywright,’ the old loom manufacturer, we see wood to have

been the chief object at least of the wright’s attention. But we have

other names of a different character. ‘Limewright’ or ‘Limer’ (‘Hugh le

Limwryte,’ A., ‘John le Limer,’ A.) ceases to maintain this distinction,

so do our ‘Glasswrights,’ equivalent to our ‘Glaziers’ or ‘Glaishers’

(‘Thomas le Glaswryghte,’ X., ‘Walter Glasenwryht,’ W. ii., ‘William

Glaseer,’ Z.).[270] ‘Le Cheesewright,’ or ‘Chesswright,’ like

‘Firminger’ and ‘Casier,’ brings us once more into the scullery, and

‘Breadwright’ into the kitchen. ‘Alwright’ is doubtless but the old

‘alewright,’ and ‘Goodwright,’ which Mr. Lower deems to be a maker of

goads, I cannot but imagine to be simply complimentary, after the

fashion of many others which I shall mention in another chapter. Our

‘Tellwrights’ or ‘Telwrights’ have given me much trouble, and though at

first I did not like it, I think Mr. Lower’s suggestion that they have

arisen from the Pauline occupation of tent-making is a natural one.

‘Teld’ was the old English word for a tent. In the metrical Anglo-Saxon

Psalter the fourteenth psalm thus commences—

Lord, in thi teld wha sal wone (dwell)?

In thi hali hille or wha reste mone (shall)?

We still speak of a ‘tilt’ when referring to the cover of a cart or

wagon, or to any small awning of a boat. It is quite possible,

therefore, that the name has originated in the manufacture of such

canopies as these. Admitting this, I would merely suggest ‘Tilewright’

as requiring but little corruptive influence to bring it into the forms

in which we at present find the word.[271] Should this be the case, we

must place it with ‘le Tyler,’ of whom we have but recently spoken.

‘Arkwright’ I mention last as being worthy of more extended notice. In

this is preserved the memory of a once familiar and all-important piece

of cabinet furniture—that of the old-fashioned ark. Much store was set

by this long years ago by the north-country folk, as is shown by the

position it occupies in antique wills, often being found as the first

legacy bequeathed.[272] Shaped exactly like the child’s Noah’s ark, it

seems to have had a twofold character. In one it was simply a meal-bin.

Thus in the ‘Tale of a Usurer’ we are told:—

When this corn to the kniht was sold,

He did it in an arc to hold,

And opened this arc the third day.

In the other it was more carefully put together. The trick of its secret

spring, known only to the housewife and her lord—sometimes I dare say,

only to the latter—it contained all the treasure the family could boast.

Here were kept what parchments they possessed; here lay stored up fold

on fold of household linen, venerated by the female inmates nearly as

much as the grandmothers themselves, whose thrifty fingers had woven it

in days long past and gone. We see thus that upon the whole the wright

_wrought_ his manufacture out of his own more specific material, seldom,

at any rate, poaching upon the preserves of his friend the smith. The

smith worked in iron and the metals. This good old Saxon name, with the

many quaint changes that have been rung upon it, deserves a whole

chapter to itself. How then can we hope to do justice to it in a few

sentences? We do not know where to begin, and having once begun, the

difficulty at once arises as to where we can end. How few of us reflect

upon the close connexion that exists between the anvil and the smith

himself, and yet it is because he _smote_ thereupon that he got his

name. As old Verstigan has it:—

From whence comes Smith, all be he knight or squire,

But from the smith that forgeth at the fire?

Putting in all the needs which in this agricultural age his occupation

would be necessary to supply, still we could scarcely account for the

enormous preponderance he has attained over other artisans, did we not

remember that his services would also be required in the production of

warlike implements. Sword and ploughshare alike would be to his hands.

Chaucer speaks of:—

The smith

That forgeth sharpe swords on the stith.

Between and including the years 1838 and 1854 there were registered as

born, or married, or dead, no less than 286,307 Smiths. Were we indeed

to put into one community the persons who bear this name in our land, we

should have a town larger than Leeds, and scarcely inferior in size and

importance to that of the capital of the midland counties.

The smith is often spoken of colloquially as the blacksmith, a title

which, while it has not itself a place in our nomenclature, reminds us

of others that have, and of a peculiar custom of earlier days. The word

‘blacksmith’ dates from the days of ‘Cocke Lorelle’s Bote,’ and it is

quite evident that at that time it was customary for the smith to have

his name compounded with sobriquets according to the colour of the metal

upon which he spent his energies. Thus the former ‘Thomas Brownesmythe’

evidently worked in copper and brass, ‘William le Whytesmyth’ in

tinplate, ‘John Redesmith’ in gold, a ‘Goldsmith’ in fact; ‘Richard

Grensmythe’ in I am not sure what, unless it be lead; and ‘John

Blackesmythe’ in iron. The last is the only one I fail to discover as

now existing among our surnames—a circumstance, however, easily

accounted for from the settled position the simple ‘Smith’ himself had

obtained as an artificer of that metal. But these are not the only

compounds. Our ‘Smiths’ are surrounded with connexions of not merely

every hue, but every type. Thus ‘Arrowsmith,’ already alluded to with

its contracted ‘Arsmith,’ tells its own tale of archery service;

‘Billsmith’ and ‘Spearsmith’ remind us of the lances, or rather lance

heads, that did such duty in the golden days of Agincourt and Poictiers.

Of a more peaceful nature would be the work of our ‘Nasmyths,’ like our

‘Naylors,’ mere relics of the old nailsmith. Closely connected with

them, therefore, we may set our ‘Shoosmiths,’[273] but Saxon

representatives of the Norman-introduced ‘Farrier.’ The surname still

clings chiefly to the north of England, where the Saxon, retaining so

much more of its strength and vigour than in the south, preserved it as

the occupative term for centuries. Springtide and the approach of

sheep-washing would see our ‘Sheersmiths’ busy, while the later autumn

would have its due effect upon the trade of our ‘Sixsmiths’ and

‘Sucksmiths,’ pleasant though curiously corrupted memorials of the old

sicklesmith, or ‘Sykelsmith,’ as I find the name spelt. The bucklesmith

(‘John le Bokelsmythe,’ X.), whose name is referred to in the poem I

have but recently quoted, has similarly and as naturally curtailed

himself to ‘Bucksmith.’[274] Our ‘Bladesmiths’ fashioned swords, being

found generally in fellowship with our ‘Cutlers’ and obsolete

‘Knyfesmythes.’ Our ‘Locksmiths,’ of course, looked to the security of

door, and closet, and cupboard;[275] while our ‘Minsmiths’ (‘John le

Mynsmuth,’ M.), for I believe they are not as yet quite obsolete, hard

at work in the mint smithy, forged the coin for the early community. As,

however, I shall have occasion to refer to him again I shall merely cite

him, and pass on.[276] But we may see from the little I have said that

the smith never need fear obsoletism. Apart from his own immediate

circle, he is surrounded by many, if not needy, yet closely attached

relatives. We must not forget, however, that the Norman had his smith,

too, and though the Saxon, as we have thus seen, has ever maintained his

dignity and position, still our early rolls are not without a goodly

number of ‘Adam le Fevres,’ ‘Richard le Fevers,’ or ‘Reginald le

Feures,’ and their cognate ‘Alan le Ferons’ and ‘Roger le Feruns.’

Representatives of all these, minus the article, may be readily met with

to-day in any of the large towns of our country.

We may take this opportunity of saying a word about lead, inasmuch as

the uses to which it was put made the manufacturer therein familiar to

rural society. The leadbeater, in fact, was all-important to the

farmer’s wife and the dairy, for the vessels which held the milk, as it

underwent its various processes until it was turned out into butter,

were commonly his handiwork. Such names as ‘Gonnilda le Leadbetre,’ or

‘Reginald le Ledbeter,’ we find in every considerable roll, and our

modern ‘Leadbeaters,’ ‘Ledbetters,’ ‘Leadbitters,’ ‘Lidbetters,’ and

probably ‘Libertys,’ are but their descendants. That mixture of lead

with brass or copper which went by the term of ‘latten’ or ‘laton’ has

left in our ‘Latoners’ and ‘Latners’ a memorial of the metal of which

our old country churchyard tablets were made, not to say some of the

household utensils just referred to. We find even more costly and

ornamental ware manufactured of this, for among other relics preserved

by the pardoner, Chaucer tells us:—

He had a gobbet (piece) of the sail

That seint Peter had, when that he went

Upon the sea, till Jesu Christ him hent.

He had a cross of laton, full of stones,

And in a glass he had pig’s bones.

Such a name then as ‘Thomas le Latoner’ or ‘Richard le Latoner’ would be

well understood by our forefathers.

But we must not wander. In nothing does our nomenclature bequeath us a

more significant record than in that which relates to the isolation of

primitive life. We who live in such remarkable days of locomotive

appliance cannot possibly enter into the difficulties our forefathers

had to encounter in regard to intercommunication. An all but impassable

barrier separated our villages from the larger and distant towns. The

roads, or rather, not to dignify them by such a term, the tracks,[277]

were sometimes scarce to be recognised, everywhere rough and dangerous.

Streams, oftentimes much swollen, must be forded. Where bridges existed

our ‘Bridgers’ and ‘Bridgemans’ took the king’s levy; where none were to

be found our ‘Ferrimans’ rendered their necessary aid. The consequent

difficulties with regard to conveyance were great. The larger of the

county towns carried on but an uncertain and irregular communication,

while the remoter villages were wholly dependent either on the

travelling trader or peddler, or on the great fair, as it came round in

its annual course. What a stock of goods would be laid in by the

bustling wife, and the farmer himself on this latter occasion! Imagine

them starting forth to lay in a supply for a whole year’s wants. No

wonder the good, sound cob and the stout wagon it drew are remembered in

our surnames. Of the importance of the former such names as ‘Horsman,’

if it be not official, and ‘Palfreyman,’ or ‘Palfriman,’ not to mention

‘Asseman,’ are good witnesses. Such entries as ‘Agnes le Horsman,’ or

‘Roger le Palefreyour,’ or ‘John le Palfreyman’ are familiar to every

early register. Our ‘Tranters’ and ‘Traunters’ are but relics of the old

‘Traventer,’ he who let out posthorses. In process of time, however, he

got numbered among the many itinerant peddlers or carriers, of whom I

shall speak shortly. Bishop Hall, in one of his Satires, says—

And had some traunting chapman to his sire,

That trafficked both by water and by fire,

Our ‘Corsers’[278] or ‘Cossers,’ too, little altered from the former ‘le

Corsour,’ represent, as did the obsolete ‘Horsmonger,’ the dealer in

horseflesh. Another branch of this occupation is represented by our

‘Runchemans,’ ‘Runcimans,’ or ‘Runchmans.’ They dealt in hackney-horses,

‘rounce’ or ‘rouncie’ being the then general term for such. Chaucer’s

‘Shipman’ was mounted upon one—

For aught I wot, he was of Dertemouth,

He rode upon a rouncie, as he couthe.

It was, however, a term applied in common to all manner of horses, and

it is quite possible the names given above must be classed simply with

‘Horseman’ and such like. Brunne, in describing Arthur’s Coronation,

mentions among other his gifts—

Good palfreys he gave to clerks

Bows and arrows he gave archers,

Runces good unto squiers.[279]

In such grand-looking entries as ‘William le Charreter,’ or ‘John le

Caretter,’ or ‘Andrew le Chareter,’[280] we should now scarce recognise

the humble ‘Carter,’ but so is he commonly set down in the thirteenth

century, our ‘cart’ itself being nothing more than the old Norman-French

‘charette,’ so familiarized to us by our present Bible version as

‘chariot.’ This in the edition of 1611 even was spelt after the old

fashion as ‘charet.’ Our ‘Charters’ are evidently but relics of the

fuller form, a ‘John le Charter’ appearing in the Parliamentary

Writs.[281] ‘Char,’ the root of ‘charet,’ still remains with us as

‘car.’ In ‘Cursor Mundi’ it is said—

Nay, sir, but ye must to him fare,

He hath sent after thee his chare.

Gower, too, has the word—

With that she looked and was war,

Doun fro’ the sky ther cam a char,

The which dragons aboute drew.

This was used by people of rank as a fashionable vehicle for purposes of

pleasure; oftentimes, too, by ladies.[282] Corresponding with the other,

the driver of such was ‘John le Charer’ or ‘Richard le Charrer,’ the

present existing forms in our directories being ‘Charman’ and

‘Carman.’[283] ‘Cartman,’ I need not add, is also found as well as

‘Carter.’ All these terms, however, are from the Norman vocabulary. The

Saxon word in general use was ‘wagon’ or ‘wain,’ the conductor of which

now dwells in our midst as ‘Wagoner’ or ‘Wagner,’ and ‘Wainman’ or

‘Wenman.’ ‘Charles Wain’ or the ‘Churls Wain’ is the name that

constellation still bears, and which has clung to it, in spite of the

Norman, since the day, a thousand years and more, that the Saxon so

likened it. As in the case of so many other double words representative

of our twofold language, these two separate terms have come now to

denote their own specialty of vehicle, and it is even possible that so

early as the day in which ‘le Wainwright’ and ‘le Cartwright’ took their

rise this distinction had already begun to exist. It is thus our English

language has become so rich, this sheep-and-mutton redundancy of which

Walter Scott in his ‘Ivanhoe’ has so well reminded us. ‘Richard le

Drivere’ or ‘John le Drivere’ of course must be placed here, not to

mention an ‘Alice le Driveress,’ who figures in the Hundred Rolls.

Of such consequence was it that the horse-gear should be carefully put

together that it occupied the full attention of several different

artisans. Such names as ‘Benedict le Sporier,’ or ‘Alan le Lorymer,’ or

‘Nicholas le Lorimer,’ are found in every considerable roll of the

period, and they still exist. The one of course looked to the rowel, the

other to the bit. ‘John le Sadeler’ needs little explanation, his

posterity being still alive to speak in his behalf. The old

Norman-introduced word for a saddle was ‘sell,’ and that it lingered on

for a considerable period is shown by Spenser’s use of it, where he

says—

And turning to that place, in which whyleare

He left his loftie steed with golden sell,

And goodly gorgeous barbes.

Every mediæval roll has its ‘Warin le Seler’ or ‘Thomas le Seller.’[284]

The pack-saddle was of such importance that it required a special

manufacturer, and this it had in our now somewhat rare ‘Fusters’ or

‘Fewsters.’[285] In his ‘Memorials of London,’ Mr. Riley mentions a

‘Walter Polyt, fuyster’ (p. xxii.). A fuster was, strictly speaking, a

joiner employed in the manufacture of the saddle-bow, that is, the

wooden framework of the old saddle. It is derived from the French

‘fust,’ wood, and that from the late Latin ‘fustis.’ Our ‘Shoosmiths,’

as I have before hinted, made the horseshoe, while ‘John le Mareshall,’

or ‘Ranulph le Marescal,’ or ‘Osbert le Ferrur,’ or ‘Peter le Ferrour,’

fitted it to the foot. The modern forms are simple ‘Marshall,’ and

‘Ferrier,’ or ‘Ferrer.’ In the ‘Boke of Curtasye’ it is said—

For eche a hors that ferroure schalle scho,

An halpeny on day he takes hym to.

Nothing could be more natural than that the shoeing-forge should become

associated with the doctoring of horseflesh, but it is somewhat strange

that when we now speak of a farrier we recognise in this old term[286]

simply and only the horse-leech. So full of changes are the lives of

words, as well as places and people.

A curious insight into mediæval travel is presented to our notice in our

‘Ostlers’ and ‘Oastlers’ and ‘Oslers,’ relics of such old registries as

‘Ralph le Hostiler’ or ‘William le Ostiller.’ This term, once applied,

as it rightly should, to the ‘host’ or ‘hosteller’ himself, has now

become confined to the stableman, thus incidentally reminding us how

important this part of the hostel duties would be at such a time as I am

endeavouring to describe. The idea of the hosteller being one whose

especial office it was to tend that which was their sole means of

locomotion, thus in time resolved itself into a distinct name for that

branch of his occupation.[287] The old ‘Herberjour’ gave lodging, whence

it is we get our ‘arbour.’ Our kings and barons in their journeys always

kept an officer so termed, whose duty it was to go before and prepare

and make ready for their coming. Owing to the large number of household

attendants for whom lodging was required, this was an important and

responsible duty. Thus has arisen our ‘harbinger,’ so often poetically

applied to the sun as heralding the approach of day. The older spelling

is preserved in the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ where it is said—

The fame anon throughout the town is born,

How Alla King shal come on pilgrimage,

By herbergeours that wenten him beforn.

It is, however, as applied to lodging-house keepers our many enrolled

‘Herbert le Herberjurs,’ ‘Roger le Herberers,’ ‘William le Herbers,’ or

‘Richard le Harebers,’ are met with, and I doubt not our ‘Harbers’ and

‘Harbours’ are their offspring. In this sense the word is used by our

mediæval writers in all its forms, whether verb, or adjective, or

substantive. Tyndale’s version of Romans xii. 13 is, ‘Be ready to

harbour,’ where we now have it ‘given to hospitality.’ Bishop Coverdale,

speaking of the grave, says—‘_There_ is the harborough of all flesh;

there lie the rich and the poor in one bed’ (_Fruitful Lessons_). He

adds also, in another place, that Abraham was ‘liberal, merciful, and

harborous’—_i.e._, ready to entertain strangers (_The Old Faith_).

Bradford, too, to give but one more quotation, prays God may ‘sweep the

houses of our hearts, and make them clean, that they may be a worthy

harborough and lodging for the Lord’ (_Bradford’s Works_). Market

Harborough still preserves this old word and its true sense from being

forgotten. With the bearers, therefore, of the above names we may ally

our ‘Inmans’ and ‘Taverners.’ The latter term is frequently found in

early writings, and was evidently in ordinary use for the occupation—

Ryght as of a tavernere

The grene busche that hangeth out

Is a sygne, it is no dowte,

Outward folkys for to telle

That within is wyne to selle.

While, however, the tavern has undergone but little change, the inn has.

With our present Bible an inn is ever a lodging, and this was once the

sole idea the term conveyed. It was not for casual callers by day, but

for lodgers by night. Thus Chaucer in his ‘Knight’s Tale’ uses the verb—

This Theseus, this duk, this worthy knight,

When he had brought them into his cite,

And ynned them, everich (each) at his degre

He festeth them.

Until the fair or wake came on, as I have said, the community in the

more retired nooks and corners of the country depended entirely on the

mounted merchant. He it was who conveyed to them the gossip of the time.

He it was, or one of his _confrères_, that brought them everything which

in those days went under the category of small luxuries. The more lonely

parts of the highway were infested by robbers. Hence the pack-horsemen

and other mounted traders generally travelled in company, with jingling

bell and belted sword—a warning to evil-minded roadsters. This was all

the more necessary as they but seldom kept to the main thoroughfare. A

straight line between the adjacent hamlets best describes their course.

Such local terms as ‘Pedlar’s Way,’ or ‘Pedder’s Way,’ or ‘Copmansford,’

still found in various parts of the country, are but interesting

memorials of the direct and then lonely route these itinerant traders

took in passing from one village to another. The number of these

roadsters we cannot otherwise speak of than as that of a small army.

Many of them, so far as our nomenclature is concerned, are now obsolete,

but not a few still survive. Amongst those of a more general character

we find ‘Sellman’ or ‘Selman.’[288] From the old verb ‘to pad,’ which is

still used colloquially in many districts, for the sober and staid pace

the pack-horsemen preserved, we get our ‘Padmans’ and ‘Pedlers,’ or

‘Pedlars,’ once inscribed as ‘William le Pedeleure’ or ‘Thomas le

Pedeler.’ It is of kin to ‘path.’ We still talk of a ‘footpad,’ who not

more than two centuries ago would also have been spoken of as a

‘padder.’ So late as 1726 Gay, in one of his ballads, says—

Will-a-wisp leads the traveller a-gadding

Through ditch and through quagmire and bog,

No light can e’er set me a-padding

But the eyes of my sweet Molly Mogg.

Perchance of similar origin, but more probably from the old ‘ped,’ the

basket they carried, are our ‘Pedders,’ ‘Peddars,’ and ‘Pedmans.’

‘Martin le Peddere’ or ‘Hugh le Pedder’ or ‘William Pedman’ was a common

entry at this time. On many parts of the English coast a fish-basket is

still familiarly known as a ‘ped,’ and Mr. Halliwell, I see, quotes from

another writer a statement to the effect that in Norwich, up to a recent

day, or even now, an assemblage whither women bring their small wares of

eggs, chickens, and other farm produce for sale, is called a

‘ped-market.’ It is likely, therefore, that with these we must ally

‘Godewyn le Hodere’ or ‘John le Hottere,’ who derived their sobriquets,

I doubt not, from the fact of their carrying their _hods_ or panyers on

their backs, just as masons do now those wooden trays for mortar which

bear the same name.[289] Their very titles remind us that our ‘Huckers,’

‘Hawkers,’ and ‘Hucksters,’ relics of the old ‘William le Huckere,’

‘Simon le Hauckere,’ or ‘Peter le Huckster,’ were from the first good at

haggling and chaffering wherever a bargain was concerned. Our ‘Kidders,’

the ‘William le Kyderes’ of the fourteenth century, were of a similar

type, whatever their origin, which is doubtful. Probably, however, we

must refer them to the ‘kid’ or ‘kit,’ the rush-plaited basket they

carried their goods in. We still speak of ‘the whole kit of them,’

meaning thereby the collective mass of any set of articles.[290] This

view is strengthened—we might almost say proved—by the fact of a ‘Robert

Butrekyde’ being found in the Hundred Rolls of this period. This would

be a sobriquet given to some one from the basket he was wont to bear to

and from the country market where he carried on his calling. Later on we

find it used for a large mug or bowl. In the ‘Farming Book of Henry

Best,’ written in 1641, we find it said—‘Some will cutte their cake and

putte (it) into the creame, and this feast is called the creame-potte or

creame-kitte’ (p. 93). The kidder’s usual _confrère_ was the ‘Badger’—up

to the seventeenth century an ordinary term for one who had a special

licence to purchase corn from farmers at the provincial markets and

fairs, and then dispose of it again elsewhere without the penalties of

engrossing. It is generally said the sobriquet arose from the habits of

the four-legged animal of that name in stealing and storing up the

grain. The more probable solution, however, is that it is but a

corruption of ‘baggager,’ from his method of carriage.

But we must not forget in our list of early English strolling merchants

that the wandering friars themselves were oftentimes to be met with

bearing treasure wherewith to tempt the housewife, and no bad

bargainers, if we may accept the statement made against them by an old

political song:—

There is no pedler that pak can bere,

That half so dere can selle his gere,

Than a frere can do;

For if he give a wyfe a knyfe

That cost but penys two,

Worthe ten knyves, so may I thrive,

He wyl have ere he go.[291]

Our ‘Tinklers’ and ‘Tinkers,’ like our more northern ‘Cairds,’ seem to

have been scarcely removed in degree from the strolling gipsies. They

acquired their name from the plan they adopted of heralding their coming

by striking a kettle, a plan of attracting attention more euphoniously

practised by our bellmen, with whom we are still familiar. Such names as

‘Alice Tynkeller’ in the fourteenth century, or ‘Peter le Teneker’ found

in the thirteenth century, show how early had this method been adopted

and the sobriquet given.[292] Last, but not least, come our ‘Chapman’ or

‘Copeman’[293] and ‘Packman.’[294] The former is sometimes met with as

‘Walter’ or ‘John le Chepman,’ which at once reminds us of his origin,

that of the ‘cheap-man,’ or ‘cheap-jack,’ as we should now style him.

The old ‘cheaping,’ or ‘chipping,’ a market-place, still lingers locally

in such place-names as ‘Chipping-Norton,’ or ‘Chipping-Camden,’ or the

local surname ‘Chippendale;’ and the verb ‘to chop’—_i.e._, to purchase,

I believe, is not yet extinct amongst us. The once common phrase for

selling and exchanging was ‘chopping and changing.’ Coverdale uses it.

Speaking of Christ driving out the money-changers from the Temple, he

says, ‘The Temple was ordained for general prayer, thanksgiving, and

preaching, and not for chopping and changing, or other such like things’

(_The Old Faith_). Thus the term ‘chapman’ would be no unmeaning one to

our forefathers. But we must give him a paragraph to himself.

The chapman, you must know, was a great man. According to more modern

usage, he had a fixed residence, but we may still see him at times,

after the olden fashion, travelling about in a large booth-like

conveyance or rumble. This vehicular mode of transit set him far above

the rank of ordinary footpads. He was a sort of pedlar in high life, in

fact, and if his position was lofty, his abilities were generally equal

to a performance of its duties. O the sensation his arrival caused! The

village green was instantly instinct with life. From impossible nooks

and crannies surged forth a small army of all ages. Hoarded pennies or

twopennies were drawn forth from cherished hiding-places, and flinty

maternal pockets were for the nonce assailed with comparative success.

To the young folks it was the next best thing to Punchinello, the

chapman was so funny. Besides, he had so many things wherewith to tempt

their juvenile fancy. What was there he had not? Everything that could

under any lax code of fancy possibly or impossibly come under the

all-expansive term of hardware was crowded within the magic recesses of

that chapman’s van. Dolls and dishes, scissors and hats, cornplasters

and cosmetics, lollipops in the shape of soldiers, and lollipops in the

shape of windmills issued forth in a succession as insinuating to the

purse as it was tempting to the imagination. And what a man was Jack

himself; he had a joke for everyone, a frown for none. His face was an

ever-changing picture, bluffed by the wind and burnt by the sun; still

it was ever cheery withal, now demure, half waggish, half impudent, anon

all benevolence as he details the merits of his latest painless

corn-suppressing plaster, and assures the gaping swains that his sole

object in life, since the happy moment when he first became acquainted

with its virtues, has been to carry through the world the blissful

tidings to suffering man. All this, he adds, with reckless impudence,

has been done at a great personal pecuniary sacrifice; but an approving

conscience, and the blessings showered upon his head by the recipients

of his generosity, have been his ample reward. Of course they sell like

wildfire, and the profits are enormous.[295]

Our ‘Packmans,’ ‘Paxmans,’ and perhaps ‘Packers,’ were, as a rule, the

village commissioners.[296] What a simple and homely state of life do

their names suggest. No half-hourly omnibus, or still more frequent

train, whisked off the bustling housewife to the big town—now some

sleepy old place with grass-grown streets, and half a century behind the

times, where ‘news much older than the ale goes round’—but then the

thrifty emporium of cheese and butter and such like stores, and great in

the eyes of country bumpkins. No; if you visited the town in those days

you must make a day of it. And the mistress knew better than do this.

Leave her dairy, forsooth—what would become of the cream if she left

Malkin to forget her work, and talk with Giles the cowboy behind the

stable door all morning? She leave, indeed! Of course she could not, so

there was the pack-horseman, who for a trifling commission went to and

from the market for her and her neighbours. As he returned in the cool

of the evening, when the sun was low and work over, you might see him

pausing awhile at the door of the farmsteads, long after he has given

the mistress her store, and, more slily, Malkin her ribbon. He is in no

hurry now, for he is telling the country folk all the news; how the

great world is wagging, and how there has been a great battle with the

Frenchers some six or eight weeks ago (news, good or bad, did not travel

fast in those days). The Frenchmen are looked upon by the simple rustics

as the very impersonification of iniquity, they being under a sort of

impression that a Frenchman is a being who defies God and man alike, and

would think no bones of eating you up. At once the packman is plied for

a full, true, and particular account of the battle, and he, there being

none to gainsay his description, and with an eye probably to the good

wife’s best ale, which, as he well knows from experience, will be

brought forth with a freedom of hospitality proportionate to the horror

of the details, fills up a bloody tale with sundry touches of a most

tragic character, while the country folk gape in wide-mouthed terror,

and the old grandmother cries ‘Lord, ha’ mercy on us!’ His face is lost

to sight once more in the ale jug, and then he passes on to other

steads, where a similar scene and a similar reward await his thirsty

soul. Another name in evident use for the packman was that of ‘Sumpter,’

‘Martin le Someter’ or ‘William le Sumeter’ being common entries at this

time. We are still familiar with the term as applied to the mule or

horse that carried the baggage, but in a personal sense it has long been

extinct,[297] saving in our directories, where as ‘Sumpter’ and ‘Sumter’

it is by no means seldom met with. How large a load these animals were

required to bear we may picture to ourselves from a verse found in

‘Percy’s Reliques’—

But, for you have not furniture

Beseeming such a guest,

I bring his owne, and come myselfe,

To see his lodging drest.

With that two sumpters were discharged,

In which were hangings brave,

Silke coverings, curteins, carpets, plate,

And all such turn should have.

But useful as were all these various itinerants, it was at the great

yearly wakes or fairs, held in commemoration of the church dedication,

that the housekeepers round laid in their greatest store. The term

‘wake’ denotes ‘a watching,’ because of the vigil observed during the

night preceding the festival itself. Indeed ‘wake’ and ‘watch’ were for

centuries synonymous words.[298] Wicklyffe translates Mark xii.

37—‘Forsooth, that that I say to you, I say to all, Wake ye.’[299] Thus

it is that our ‘Wakemans’ are but memorials of the old village guardian

or night watchman, while our ‘Wakes’ can boast a title dating so far

back as the time when ‘Hereward the Wake,’ or Watchful, was fighting the

last battle of the down-trodden and oppressed Saxon.[300] These fairs

were by no means for mere pleasure-seekers, as we might imagine from

such a term as ‘church-ale,’ or judging by the aspect of such festivals

in the present day. They had an end to answer, and an important end, and

in early times they fulfilled it. It was here the farmers round brought

their produce, ready to sell their wool for good sound money, or to

exchange it for commodities of which they stood in need. It was here the

foreign trader came to purchase sheep-fells and other skins, soon, by

transmission abroad, to be worked up by Flemish hands into good

broadcloth, and retransmitted again to London or provincial marts.

Edward the Confessor obtained a sum of 70_l._, an immense amount at such

a time as this, from the tollage at a fair held in Bedfordshire. Of many

celebrated fairs, those of Smithfield on St. Bartholomew’s Day (which

still exists as a kind of perpetual one), York, Winchester, and Ely seem

to have been the most frequented. That in the Isle of Ely was kept up on

and for some days after the feast of St. Awdrey, or Audrey, the

corrupted name of St. Etheldreda, which as a surname our ‘Awdreys’ still

preserve. This seems to have become specially noted for its sale of

trinkets, toys, and cheap and gay laces—so much so that in course of

time ‘tawdry,’ or St.-Awdry, ware became the colloquial and general term

for such. Drayton we even find using the word substantively when he

says:—

Of which the Naiads and blue Nereids make

Them tawdries for their neck.[301]

Of the still greater one held at Winchester, we find Piers the Plowman

speaking:—

To Wye and to Winchester

I went to the fair,

With many manner merchandise,

As my master me hight:

But it had been unsold

These seven years,

So God me help,

Had there not gone

The grace of guile

Among my chaffer.

The ‘Wife of Bath,’ too, has a word to say upon this subject. Says she:—

I governed them so wel after my lawe,

That eche of them ful blissful was and fawe

To bringen me gay thinges fro the feyre.

What a picture does all this present to our eye. We can see the circular

stand of booths belting the rails of the quaint belfried edifice,

sometimes, I am afraid, the sacred precincts within.[302] Behind these

we may note how busy are our ‘le Stallers’ and ‘le Stallmans,’ now found

also as ‘Stalman;’ not to say our ‘Stallards,’ that is, stall-wards, and

obsolete ‘le Vendours.’ No infliction too severe can be made upon their

readiness to please. Elbowing and chaffering and good-humoured haggling

are the order of the day. Here the stupid, happy swain, with his

be-ribboned sweetheart tucked under his arm, is buying their little

stock wherewith to start life; here the child is made blissful with a

trumpet, and the hoary-headed rustic gets a warmer cap for his crown.

Here, too, it is that the chapman and other of his _confrères_, as I

have already hinted, are buying in their varied commodities. All alike

are well catered for. When we talk of ‘packing up our duds,’ few of us,

I imagine, are aware that we are using a word of most familiar import in

long generations gone by. A ‘dud’ then was a coarse, patched linen gown,

gaudy in colour, made up in fact of variegated pieces of this material.

Hence he who sold such cheap, flashy goods at a fair, any old fripperer

in truth, was styled a ‘dudder’ up to comparatively recent times, and

the booth itself a ‘duddery.’ ‘Duderman’ and ‘Dudder’ (now obsolete),

‘Dudman’ and ‘Dodman,’ are all, I doubt not, but interesting memorials

of this once flourishing lower class trade. Such names as ‘Thomas

Dudman’ or ‘Ralph Deuderman’ greet us occasionally in the olden rolls.

‘William Fairman,’[303] found in the Parliamentary Writs, would be, I

suppose, a more general vendor. He has not a few descendants.

But while bartering and the purchase and sale of these varied household

commodities occupied no small amount of attention, such a sober mode of

passing the fairtide was very far from being the intention of the

younger and gayer portion of the assemblage; nor was there, indeed, any

lack of that which could feed or give zest to their relish for

amusement, though it was not always of the most innocent nature. Our

‘Champions’ and ‘Campions’ are but relics of the old ‘William le

Champion,’[304] or ‘Katerine le Chaumpion,’ a sobriquet which would

easily affix itself to some sturdy and swarthy rustic who had thrown his

adversary in the wrestling ground. This has ever been a popular sport

amid our more rural communities. The Miller, Chaucer says:—

Was a stout carl for the nones,

Ful bigge he was of braun, and eke of bones,

That proved wel, for over all ther he came,

At wrestling he would bear away the ram.

In an old poem I have already quoted, the mother warns her daughter:—

Go not to the wrestling, nor shooting the cock,

As it were a strumpet or a giglot.[305]

Doubtless such a sobriquet as ‘Richard le Fytur,’ that is ‘Fighter,’

would be but representative of the same. The country folks were not

slow, too, to copy their masters, and in the friendly joust the former,

‘Thomas le Justere’ or ‘Robert le Justure,’ would brace himself amid the

excited ring to unseat his fellow-swain, affording much sport to the

on-looking wags.

By the maypole you may see the conjuror, or ‘Wiseman,’ as he was

generally termed, battening himself upon the superstitious minds of the

assembled hinds. In the Hundred Rolls he figures as ‘Wysman’ and

‘Wyseman.’ A little further on our ‘Players’ would be enacting their

mummery. The great crowd there in the corner are watching the showman

with his dancing bear, a yearly treat the younger holiday-seekers always

appreciated. What a change has come over our English habits with regard

to this animal. Dancing was the least cruel of the sports connected with

it. Time was when every noble of position had his bears and his

bearward, when even royalty could boast a master of the king’s bears,

and when as a pastime the bear-baiting took an easy pre-eminence in the

eyes of all holiday folk. A skit on the Earl of Warwick, banished to the

Isle of Man, written 1399, says:—

A bereward found a rag:

Of this rag he made a bag:

He dude in gode entent.

Thorwe the bag the bereward is taken;

All his beres have hym forsaken.

Thus is the berewarde schent.[306]

In one of our earlier rolls I find several names that bear relation to

this familiar sport. Of such are ‘Geoffrey Bearbaste’ and ‘Alexander

Bearbait.’ More common to us in the present day, however, are the

descendants of the more simple ‘Berward’ (‘Michael le Berward,’ H.R.)

and ‘Bearman,’ or ‘Berman’ (‘Ralph Bareman,’ H.R.). In ‘Cocke Lorelle’s

Bote’ mention is made of—

Jenkyne Berwarde of Barwyche.

Whether ‘Jenkyne’ was a mythic personage, or whether any of our present

‘Berwards’ are his lineal issue, I cannot pretend to say.[307] Any way,

however, the name would be common enough then. Bull as well as bear

baiting, I need not say, was a popular pastime with our forefathers. We

still talk of bulldogs. Probably our ‘Bullards’ could formerly have told

us something about this. Fit rival to these latter, you may see the

‘Cockman,’ or, as he was more generally termed, the ‘Cocker,’ matching

his birds in the adjacent pit. The author of the ‘Townley Mysteries’

does not give the cocker a good character—at least he places him in very

bad company—

These dysars, and these hullars,

These cokkers, and these bullars,

And alle purse cuttars,

Be welle ware of these men.

Among other instances the Hundred Rolls furnish us with ‘Simon le

Cockere’ and ‘William le Koker.’

Professional dancers, I need scarcely say, were seldom absent from the

mediæval festival. Tripping it lightly to some Moorish round, we may see

such folk as ‘Harvey le Danser’ or ‘Geoffrey le Hoppere,’ inciting the

younger villagers to follow their example. The latter name, which occurs

frequently at this time, reminds us that our modern slang term ‘hop’ has

but restored the ancient use of this word. Our Prayer-Book version of

the Psalms still employs the verb in the verse, ‘Why hop ye so, ye high

hills?’[308]—and Chaucer, in picturing the merry ’prentice, says—

At every bridale would he sing and hoppe;

He loved bet the taverne than the shoppe.

The feminine ‘hoppestere,’ which he also uses, does not sound quite so

euphonious. In the ‘Pardoner’s Tale,’ among other of the dissolute folk

in Flanders, are mentioned ‘tombesteres’—

And right anon in comen tombesteres

Fetis and smale, and yonge fruitesteres.

These, I doubt not, were female dancers, and performers of such bodily

gyrations and flexions as mountebanks are still skilled in. The

masculine form is found in such an entry as ‘William le Tumbere,’ whom

we should now, so far as his professional tricks were concerned, term a

tumbler.

All this time the mirth of music is at its loudest, though it is

somewhat hard to separate the tones of the various rival minstrels.

There is a trio in one corner by the tavern door there, discoursing

sounds which are certainly equal, if not superior, to the Teutonic bands

of more modern days. Indeed, with regard to the latter, I am beginning

to suspect the conjecture of a friend of mine to be perfectly true—that

they are German convicts shipped off, with cracked and second-hand

trumpets, by the Commissioners of Police to save their keep. It is,

however, right perhaps that the country which sends us the best should

also have the option of sending us the worst music in the world. The

trio we may see here, at any rate, have one advantage—that of their

poetic mediæval costume. The first we may notice is the ‘Fiddler,’

represented by such men as ‘Robert Fyffudlere,’ or ‘John le Fythelere,’

or the Latinized ‘Rulard Vidulator.’ This last reminds us that it is now

also written ‘Vidler.’ He of course played on the violin, for I must not

say ‘fiddle,’ it is far too Saxon, for modern cultivated days. The Clerk

of Oxenforde seems to have been superior to the generality of later

university men, for he had—

Liefer have at his beddes head

A twenty bokes, clothed in black or red,

Of Aristotle and his philosophie,

Than robes riche, or fidel, or sautrie.

Certainly time effects wonderful changes. But I doubt whether even he

would have found much profit, not to say pleasure, in the study of

Aristotle, or any other philosopher, had he been subjected to the daily

practice of a well-scraped viol in an adjacent dormitory,[309] the

author of which could boast but one tune in his repertoire, and was

determined that every one should know it. After the Fiddler—Saxon or no

Saxon, I’ll stick to it for the nonce—comes the ‘Piper’ with his reedy

stop, and next to him the ‘Taborer’ beating his drum with such rare

effect as to make him the very idol of the youngsters. Spenser calls him

the ‘tabrere,’ which form, as well as ‘Tabrar,’ Tabberer,’ ‘Tabor,’ and

‘Taber,’ still exists in our nomenclature.

I saw a shole of shepherds out go,

Before them yode a lusty tabrere,

That to the merry hornpipe plaid,

Whereto they danced.

Such entries as ‘Arnold le Pyper,’ or ‘Robert le Pipere,’ or ‘William le

Tabourer,’ or ‘John le Taburer,’ are of frequent occurrence in mediæval

rolls.

The pipe, the tabor, and the trembling crowd,

is the order of the gentle author of the ‘Faerie Queen;’ so having

disposed of the two former, the ‘Crowder’ with his six-stringed viol

duly engages our attention next, though he ought more correctly to have

been yoked with the ‘Fiddler.’ ‘Crouth’ was but another form of the same

word. An old Saxon Psalter thus renders Psalm cl. 4—

Loves him in crouth and timpane,

Loves him in stringes and organe.

Wicklyffe, too, translates Luke xv. 25 as follows:—‘But his eldre sone

was in the feeld, and whaune he cam and neighede to the hous he herde a

symfonye and a crowde.’[310] Like our ‘Harpers’ and more northern

‘Bairds,’ the ‘Crowder’ or ‘Crowther’ (for as surnames both forms exist)

was oftentimes blind, and thus gained the ear of an audience, if not

appreciative, at least sympathetic. Seldom, indeed, did he leave

cottage, or hall festival, or fair, without a guerdon, and a kind word

to boot; for while customs fade out and die, pity, thank God, knows

neither change of season nor chance of time. Mediæval forms of the above

may be found in ‘Richard le Cruder’ or ‘Thomas le Crowder.’ But we have

yet several more surnames to mention which prove the once great

popularity of this latter class of instrument. ‘German le Lutrere’ and

‘John le Leuter’ have left no descendants, I think.[311] The more common

term was lutanist, but of this I have found no instance. While the lute

had generally ten strings, and was struck by the hand, the viele or viol

had six, was of stronger make, and was played with a bow. It seems to

have been a favourite instrument in the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries, for such registrations as ‘Benedict le Viler,’ ‘Nicholas le

Vylour,’ ‘Wyot le Vilur,’ or ‘Jacob le Vielur,’ occur with tolerable

frequency at that period. Another Norman-introduced word was that of

‘gigue,’ or ‘gig.’ This, however, seems to have differed from the others

in being of the very roughest manufacture, and made specially for

professional dancers. These ‘giguers’ were extremely popular at rural

festivals of any kind. At one and the same instant they would be

tripping it round on the ‘light fantastic toe,’ singing some not too

select verses, accompanying themselves on their sturdy instrument, and

yet would have a hand to spare for a trifle if you should offer it. If

you doubted it you had but to try them. It is thus we have got our

‘jig,’ our ‘gigot,’ or leg of mutton, too, being so called from its

resemblance thereto. The surnominal form is found in such entries as

‘Walter le Gigur,’ or ‘Alexander le Gygur,’ but I doubt whether either

is represented now. The last of this class of instrumentalists we may

mention is ‘William le Sautreour,’ he who struck the ‘gay sawtrye,’ as

Chaucer terms it. The more correct form of the word was ‘psaltery.’ It

was specially used as an accompaniment for the voice, hence it is freely

used in this sense in the Authorized Version. I do not doubt myself that

some of our ‘Salters’ are but a change rung on the mediæval ‘Sawtrer.’

The ‘Fluter,’ I believe, has left no descendants, but in ‘Nicholas le

Floutere’ he was to be met with at this date, and, I need not say, would

be as familiar as he would be acceptable on such an occasion as this.

The lusty young Squire was so musical that—

Singing he was, or floyting alle the day,

He was as freshe as is the month of May.

There is one name I must mention here, that of ‘Peter le Organer,’[312]

perhaps connected with ‘Orger’ of the same date. The owner of this more

modern-looking term may either have been organist at some monastery or

abbey-church, or he may have played upon the portable regal, in which

latter case he too might possibly have been seen here. But ‘organ’ was a

very general term. In the old psalters it seems to have been used for

nearly every species of instrument. We should scarcely speak now of

‘hanging up our “organs” upon the willows,’ but so an old version of the

Psalms has it. Did we not know they were a modern invention we might

have been inclined to suspect ‘le Organer’ to have been but a strolling

performer upon the ‘hurdy-gurdy.’ That, however, was an infliction

mercifully spared to our forefathers. In concluding this brief survey of

mediæval music, I cannot, I think, do better than quote, as I have done

partially once before, Robert de Brunne’s account of the coronation of

King Arthur, wherein we shall find many, if not most, of the

professional characters I have been mentioning familiarly spoken of. He

says—

Jogelours weren there enow

That their quaintise forthe drew:

Minstrels many with divers glew (glee)

Sounds of bemes (trumps) that men blew,

Harpes, pipes, and tabours,

Fithols (fiddles), citolles (cymbals), sautreours,

Belles, chimès and synfan

Other enow and some I cannot name.

Songsters that merry sung,

Sound of glee over all rung;

Disours enow telled fables:

And some played with dice at tables.

But we are not without traces of the troubadour. The simple vocalist, a

strolling professionalist, too, in many instances, remains hale and

hearty in our ‘Glemans,’ ‘Gleemans,’ and ‘Glemmans,’ not to mention our

‘Sangsters.’ Amid such lulls as might intervene, we should hear them at

the popular festivals bidding for favour with their old-fashioned

stories of ‘hawk and hound,’ and ‘my ladyes bower,’ set, no doubt, to

airs equally _à la mode_. A contemporary poet tells us their song

Hath been sung at festivals

On ember eves, and holy-ales.

The recitation of these stories seems to have been a peculiarly popular

profession. Our ‘Rhymers’ oftentimes showed their skill in the art of

rhythmical narration by weaving the exploits they described into

extempore verse.[313] The ‘Juggler’ or ‘Joculator,’ originally a

minstrel or ‘jester,’ something akin to the clown of later days, became

by-and-by more celebrated for his skill in legerdemain than loquacity,

and now little else is understood by the word. Almost every baron, and

even the king himself, had his favourite jester; but it was an art put

to the most corrupt purposes, and ‘Jagge the Jogelour’ is set in very

low company by Piers Plowman. Certainly his jokes were of the lewdest

description, even for the rough times in which he lived. His voice, too,

was sufficiently elevated, if we may trust the account given in the

‘Romance of Alexander,’ for—

No scholde mon have herd the thondur,

For the noise of the taboures,

And the trumpours, and the jangelours.

The ‘Dissour,’ the old Norman ‘diseur,’ similar in character to the

rhymer and the juggler, seems to have left no memorial, saving it be in

our ‘Dissers;’[314] neither can I trace ‘le Tregetour’ later than the

fifteenth century. Every footprint of his professional existence,

indeed, is now faded from our view. And yet there was the day when none

could be more familiar than he. The Hundred Rolls record not merely

‘Symon le Tregetor,’ but ‘William le Tregetur’ also, while ‘Maister John

Rykele’ is spoken of by Lydgate as ‘sometime Tregitour of noble Henrie,

King of Engleland.’ Chaucer, too, mentions sciences

By which men maken divers apparences,

Such as these subtil tregetoures play.

For oft at feasts have I wel heard say

That tragetoures, within an halle large

Have made come in a water and a barge

And in the halle rowen up and down:

while in another place he speaks of seeing

Coll Tragetour

Upon a table of sicamour

Play an uncouth thing to tell;

I saw him carry a wind-mill

Under a walnut-shell;

with other equally marvellous feats. Thus we see that the art of

legerdemain was not neglected at this time.

I doubt whether any relics we possess so completely convey to our minds

the radical changes which have swept across the face of our English

Commonwealth as do these lingering surnames. They remind us of the

invention of printing, of the spread of literature, and of the slow

decay thereby of the professions they represented. They tell us of a

changed society, they tell us of a day of rougher cast and looser

trammels; they tell us of a life around which the lapse of intervening

years has thrown a halo of so quaint aspect that we all but long, in our

more sentimental moods, to be thrown back upon it again. Placing these

tell-tale names by the life of the present, we see what a change has

passed over all. Let us hope this change denotes progress. In some

respects it assuredly does: progress in the settlement of our common

rights and duties, progress in civilization and order, progress in

mental culture, progress in decorum. Still we may yet ask, with all this

has there been any true progress? The juggler, ’tis true, with his

licentious story, and the dissolute tragetour, both are gone—they would

be handcuffed now, and put in gaol. This speaks something for a higher

cultivation. But, after all, may not this be a mere outside refinement—a

refinement to meet the requirements of an age in which the head is

educated more than the heart—a refinement which may be had in our

shops—the refinement, in fact, of the lowest of God’s endowed creatures,

that of the exquisite? This is, indeed, an artificial age, and it warns

us to see to it whether we are hypocrites or no; whether our life is

entirely external or the reverse; whether it is all shell and no kernel,

all the outside cup and platter, and within naught save extortion and

excess. That mortal shall have attained the highest wisdom who, in the

light of the world to come, shall have seen to the cleansing of that

which is within, and if that, if the heart be cleansed, then the

external life will as naturally, as it will of necessity, be pure.

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