_harlotrye_ means scurrility; Wyclif (Eph. v. 4) so translates Lat.
_scurrilitas_.
562. 'Besides the usual payment in money for grinding corn, millers are
always allowed what is called "toll," amounting to 4 lbs. out of every sack
of flour.'--Bell. But it can hardly be doubted that, in old times, the toll
was wholly in corn, not in money at all. It amounted, in fact, to the
twentieth or twenty-fourth part of the corn ground, according to the
strength of the water-course; see Strutt, Manners and Customs, ii. 82, and
Nares, s. v. _Toll-dish_. At Berwick, the miller's share was reckoned as
'the thirteenth part for grain, and the twenty-fourth part for malt.' Eng.
Gilds, p. 342. When the miller 'tolled thrice,' he took thrice the legal
allowance. Cf. A. 3939, 3940.
563. _a thombe of gold._ An explanation of this proverb is given on the
authority of Mr. Constable, the Royal Academician, by Mr. Yarrell in his
History of British Fishes, who, when speaking of the Bullhead or _Miller's
Thumb_, explains that a miller's thumb acquires a peculiar shape by
continually feeling samples of corn whilst it is being ground; and that
such a thumb is called _golden_, with reference to the profit that is the
reward of the experienced miller's skill.
'When millers toll not with a golden thumbe.'
Gascoigne's Steel Glass, l. 1080.
Ray's Proverbs give us--'An honest miller has a golden thumb'; ed. 1768, p.
136; taken satirically, this means that there are _no_ honest millers.
Brand, in his Pop. Antiquities, ed. Ellis, iii. 387, quotes from an old
play--'Oh the mooter dish, _the miller's Thumbe_!'
The simplest explanation is to take the words just as they stand, i. e. 'he
used to steal corn, and take his toll thrice; yet he had a golden thumb
such as all honest millers are said to have.'
565. W. Thorpe, when examined by Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, in
1407, complains of the pilgrims, saying--'they will ordain to have with
them both men and women that can well sing wanton songs; and some other
pilgrims will have with them _bagpipes_; so that every town that they come
through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their
piping, and with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and with the
barking out of dogs after them, they make more noise than if the king came
there away, with all his clarions and many other minstrels.'--Arber's Eng.
Garner, vi. 84; Wordsworth, Eccl. Biography, 4th ed. i. 312; Cutts, Scenes
and Characters, p. 179.