Old Essex Housewares

Continuing my posts on the vocabulary of the Essex Wills and its place in English lexical history, an introduction to which can be found here.

The Essex Wills are naturally full of words for household goods. The majority are words that are still used, though the things to which they are applied may now be different in design or appearance. A large majority are words, or meanings of words, that are no longer used, but are carefully recorded in dictionaries, and especially in the Oxford English Dictionary. But a significant number have escaped notice by lexicographers and yet can be found, often in large numbers, in wills, inventories, and other non-literary documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and sometimes in earlier and later documents). 

bail kettle, bailed kettle

These items occur at least five times in the Essex Wills:

1561 (I. 116), 1590 (V. 165) bail kettle 

1561 (II. 124), 1569 (II.  72), 1572 (IX. 15) bailed kettle

Surprisingly, both can be found in very recent and quite ordinary, non-regional sources:

1871 Ann. Rep. Commissioner of Patents 1869 I. 528/1 With the bail-kettle, formed after the fashion of a common tea-kettle. 

1952 Hospital Management 73 69 Bail kettles 4 sizes. 

1918 Department Store Merchandise Manuals 99 Dutch ovens are cast iron bailed kettles with a tightly fitting cover. 

1938 Bull. Business Hist. Soc. 12 63 We consign none but bailed kettles.

What is a bail? It’s the curved and hinged handle that traditional kettles used to have; OED’s bail n.² sense 2 (attested from 1463):

The hoop-handle of a kettle or similar vessel.

This OED entry does not include bail kettle or any other compounds, while bailed adj.² (1548, 1603) has only the sense ‘hooped (and covered) as a wagon’.

The Essex Wills also have:

1581 (X. 43) bailless kettle

And again, surprisingly, we can find a modern example of this:

1980 J. P. Brain Tunica Treasure 139/3 Undoubtedly, most, if not all, of these bails came from some of the bail-less kettles in the collection.

basting ladle 

I have noticed only two examples of this in the Essex Wills:

1582 (IV. 170); 1592 (VI. 33) basting ladle

There is indeed a quotation in the OED illustrating this at basting n.² 1a:

1822 W. Kitchiner Cook’s Oracle (ed. 4) 187 Put a little bit of butter into your basting-ladle.

But it is not acknowledged with a ‘lemma’ (subordinate or nested headword). It really should, as the basting ladle was an item with a certain cultural significance, often referred to:

1613 Alcilia Philoparthens louing folly [STC 4275] And with the  basting ladle did him beate.

1633 T. Heywood Eng. Traveller [STC 13315] About went his Basting-Ladle.

1638 Hocus Pocus Junior [STC 13544] Halfe hollow, like a basting-Ladle.

1639 in F. W. Steer Farm & Cottage Inventories Mid-Essex (1950) 80 In the buttery 2 basting ladles.

1649 Mercurius Brittanicus No. 4 26 Harke, harke, what a noise is here with frying pans and scummers, and basting ladels, and dripping pans.

1650 10 Dec. in G. F. Dow Probate Rec. Essex County, Mass. (1916) I. 127 A skimer & a basting ladell.

1656 S. Holland Don Zara del Fogo (Wing H2437) Butter in a Basting-ladle.

[There are four more examples in EEBO down to 1683.]

1676 Probate Rec. Essex County, Mass. (1920) III. 49 Basting ladle, 1s. 6d.

1719 in F. W. Steer Farm & Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex 1635–1749 (1969) 247 A basting ladle of brass.

1772 F. Gentleman Cupid’s Revenge i. i. 15 When she talked of the dripping-pan, the basting ladle could not be far off.

1793 Gentleman’s Mag. Feb. 127/2 She seized the basting-ladle, and with it gave the king a severe blow on the back.

The basting ladle was both the sceptre and the weapon of the cook. He used it to beat his subordinates (and enemies) and it symbolized his supremacy in the kitchen. The term was common down to about 1870. The item, and its name, still exist of course, but the cultural connections have probably got lost.

bell

A familiar word used in a way that is difficult to interpret. It occurs in the Essex Wills as a ‘premodifier’ (a subordinate word standing before a noun so as to describe it) to characterize various  household items: bell candlestick occurs at least 8 times; e.g. 

1561 (I. 214) 2 bell candlesticks of latten

1577 (IX. 48) 1 of my best latten bell candlesticks 

bell chafer occurs once (reference unavailable) and two examples occur with pan:

1566 (II. 225) her bell brass pan

1567 (VIII. 126) a brass bell pan. 

One might guess that this has some relationship with OED’s bell-metal n. meaning ‘an alloy of copper and tin’. But in our examples, bell co-occurs with brass and latten (an alloy similar to brass), which would seem to rule that out. Perhaps it refers not to material, but to shape, style, or method of manufacture.  There seems to be no evidence on EEBO, but the following earlier and later examples are found:

1554 in E. Peacock Eng. Church Furniture (1866) App. 187 Item too bell candillstickes. Item one lesse candillstick of bell fasshion.


1590 Will of Helen Ford, widow, St Nicholas in S. Lang & M. McGregor Tudor Wills Proved in Bristol 1546–1603 (1993) 17 [modernized text] To her daughter Joan one platter and one bell candlestick.

chine

Some part of a manufactured article. There are five examples of chine in the Essex Wills: 

1559 (VIII. 138) a dozen of pewter or broad chines

1559 (VIII. 139) a dozen of broad chines pewter

1574 (III. 113) 1 bedsteadle..hath a broad chine

1575 (IV. 39) my brass pan with the broad chines

1597 (VI. 98) the best of my two brass pots with the broken chine.

Evidently this is not OED’s chine n.¹ ‘fissure’ or chine n.² ‘backbone’. It might be connected in some way with chine n.³ sense 1 ‘the projecting rim at the heads of casks, etc., formed by the ends of the staves’ (dating from before 1475) in that it clearly refers to some material object that may or may not form part of a larger whole. The objections to this view are that (a) the context is domestic rather than coopery, (b) the material involved seems to be metal, except in the case of the ‘bedsteadle’, and (c) the OED’s chine is a rim formed by the ends of the staves rather than a continuous surface.

Compare also these examples of the derivative adjective chined:

1562 (I. 152) 1 broad chined [platter]

1567 (II. 49), 1569 (II.  89) broad chined

1602 (VII. 58) broken-chined candlestick

It does look as if the thing referred to is the rim of a plate or pot, or the base of a candlestick. But why are Essex Wills’ chines only either ‘broad’ or ‘broken’?

colefatte

This item occurs only once:

1582 (V. 13) the ‘colefatte’ in the brewhouse

Since fat was an earlier form of the now standard vat, perhaps this is coal vat. We normally think of a vat as a container for liquid, but OED’s vat n.¹, sense 3a, is ‘a cask, barrel, or other vessel for holding or storing dry goods’ and sense 3b is ‘formerly used as a measure of capacity for coal’. These correspond to fat n.¹, senses 3 ‘a cask or barrel to contain dry things’ (1540 onwards) and 4 ‘used as a measure of capacity’ (1413 onwards).

A few examples from outside the Essex Wills lend support to this idea:

[date?] in Pre-Reformation Rec. All Saints’ Church, Bristol (2004) 259 Item for nails and for hauling the bars to the cole fate [?coal vat] - 20d. Item for clamps of iron to the cole fate - 7d. Item for 9 studs to the cole fate.

1700 C. Povey A discovery of indirect practices in the coal-trade [Wing P3040] Every  Coal Fat Containing Sixty six Gallons.

1858 P. L. Simmonds Dict. Trade Products 398/1 Vat, a large wooden or metal cistern or tub;..The old London coal vat contained 9 bushels.

cragg 

cragg seems to be a word of incredibly limited distribution, and hence it’s not in the OED. The Essex Wills contain as many examples as are to be found elsewhere:

1582 (X. 177) crages

1596 (VI. 188) 1 hand basket, 1 cragg, a brewing tub

1602 (VII. 142) 3 milk bowls, 1 ‘crage’, 1 biggest brewing tub

The English Dialect Dictionary has an entry for cragge, sb. It tells us that it is obsolete, found in Essex and southern counties, is also written cragg, and means ‘a small beer-vessel’. Previous lexicographers who recorded it are Ray (1691) and Grose (1790). The latter means Francis Grose’s Glossary of Provincial and Local Words, which gives exactly the same definition. He may well have simply borrowed it from:

1691 J. Ray A Collection of Words not generally Used [Wing R 389] 94 (South and East Country Words) A Cragge; a small Beer-Vessel.

The etymology is not established.

cup dish

This looks like a fairly obvious compound of cup and dish. What could it have meant? My first guess was that the cup dish was the partner of the cup before the word saucer had that application, which, according to the OED, it acquired only around 1700 (and if you think about it, it’s an odd use of a word which originally meant ‘a receptacle for condiments’). Alternatively, cup in this compound could be cup n. 1b ‘a hollow vessel of wood or metal, used for drinking’, in which case cup dish would be a kind of tautological compound. It occurs at least three times in the Essex Wills:

1585 (V. 51), 1585 (X. 201) cupdish

1598 (XII. 44) a cupdish, 2 dishes, 1/2 dozen trenchers

It is also found in these works (via Early English Books Online):

1648 J. Goodwin Neophytopresbyteros [Wing G1183] 133 What mighty waves are here raised in a  cup dish of water?

a1646 J. Gregory Gregorii Posthuma (1649) [Wing G1926] The Pæonians adored the Sun under the form of a Cup-dish.

1657 E. Wright Certain Errors Navigation [Wing W3689] chapter xvii, This pin must be made of lattin, with a very sharp point, and is to be fastned upright in a round box of wood, which must be of the fashion of a great  cup-dish, containing the rose within it, being covered above with a clear round glasse.

This last quotation describes the making of a sea-compass. Since the rose was round, and could swivel in any direction on the pin, I suspect that the box was roughly hemispherical, in which case the second interpretation of cup dish may be correct.

curble, curbled 

There are several examples in the Essex Wills:

1560 (I. 257) a cauldron (that for Joan with a curble)

1591 (XI. 150) 1 brass ‘curble’ as it hangeth in the kitchen

[no date] (I. 180) a cauldron with a ‘cerbbell’

1596 (XII. 201) 1 great brass pan hanged with a kirble

1601 (XII. 179) 1 curbled pan and my best copper kettle

OED’s curble n. has two senses.

sense 1: = curb n. 1, which is ‘a chain or strap passing under the lower jaw of a horse’ (1598) 

sense 2: = curb n. 8, which is ‘a frame round the top of a well’ (?1780)

The sense of the word in the Essex Wills is not in the OED and is unclear, and the examples are earlier than the senses in the OED. It must refer to some kind of attachment to a kitchen implement by which it hangs: compare OED’s curb n. 8b ‘a framing round the top of a brewer’s copper’. Possibly it referred to the apparatus for raising and lowering a cauldron or pan over the fire; compare:

1857 T. Wright Dict. Obs. & Provincial Eng., Kirble, the windlass of a well.

I have found one other example from the eastern counties:

[date?] in East Anglian (1900) 8–9 383 Item I give to Agnes my wief the cownter table in the hall the cupborde in the hall and the great panne with the curble and also all the beds and bedding.

There seems to be nothing relevant in Early English Books Online.

kettle brass

Presumably a kind of brass from which kettles are made. Four examples occur in the Essex Wills:

1569 (II.  242) kettle brass

1576 (III. 208) kettle brass pot

1581 (X. 3) kettle brass

1584 (V. 51) 1 posnet of kettlebrass

Additionally we find:

1655 E. Terry Voy. to East-India (1777) 14 These Boos and Baas, as they call them, were formerly bought in great plenty, for small quantities of kettle-brass, and iron hoops taken off our empty casks, which were all for this long voyage hoop’d with iron.

1913 M. Bell Old Pewter vii. 12 Harrison, in a ‘Description of England in Shakespeare’s Youth’, when eulogising English pewterers and pewter, says: ‘I have also been informed that it consisteth of a composition which hath 30 lbs. of kettle-brass to 1000 lbs. of tin, whereunto they add 3 or 4 lbs. of tin-gloss (in modern parlance, bismuth)’.

pottle 

Used several times in the Essex Wills as a premodifier with the names of kitchen containers (kettle, skillet). The OED has a section of compounds that covers this use ‘with the sense “having the capacity of one pottle”’, i.e. (sense 1b) half a gallon or 2.3 litres; but OED does not have these compounds:

1558 (VIII. 111) pottle skillet

1575 (IX. 5), 1584 (V. 5), 1553? (II. 143) pottle kettle

stample

There are three examples of stample in the Essex Wills:

1563 (I. 221) 1 brazen mortar with the ‘stample’ thereof

1572 (III. 281) a latten mortar with the ‘stampell’

1578 (IV. 191) my spice mortar and the ‘stampell’

Evidently this means ‘pestle’. Equally obviously it must be a derivative of stamp, with the -le ending found in the names of devices.

But there seem to be no other examples of this noun elsewhere. Only a verb stample is traceable, but it has a corresponding sense:

a1500 MS Balliol College 354 f. cvii in S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson The Index of Middle English Prose. Handlist VIII: Manuscripts containing Middle English Prose in Oxford College Libraries (1991) 10/2 Take a quantitie of vineger as mvche of the iuse of rue a quantitie of grenes and a quantytie of sowre bucade stample them well together.

1597 W. Langham Garden of Health [STC 15195] Stample it and apply it warme.

1599 R. Perceval Dict. Spanish & Eng. [STC 19620] Machucàr, to stample with pestle.

1630 T. Bonham The Chyrugians Closet [STC 3279] Boyle them in the broath of flesh, then stample and straine them... Boyle the hearbes in aq: q.s. vnto tendernesse, then stample them.

1896 W. W. Skeat Nine Specimens of Eng. Dialects Vol. 32 40 ’A striv’th vor stample ’e abroad. [Glossed as ‘tread upon’.]

tinker’s kettle

Perhaps this is a variety of kettle obtainable from a tinker (as opposed to a blacksmith, say?). Judging by the last example below, it was a superior kind. These are some of the examples in the Essex Wills:

1569 (II. 89)  a latten chafing dish, a tinker’s kettle

1575 (IV. 39) a brass kettle called a tinker’s kettle

1588 (XI. 203)  the greatest kettle, a tinker’s kettle, a smaller kettle

1588 (XI. 203) an old tinker’s kettle of a pottle

1592 (XI. 42)  a great kettle, a tinker’s kettle, a posnet

1596 (XI. 53) tinker’s posnet

1600 (XII. 94) my best kettle called the tinker’s kettle

There is a discussion of its meaning in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Morals and the Church Courts (1976), page 27, which says that a clause in a will ‘“The tinker’s kettle commonly used to wash vessels in” tells of other uses’. It shows that this must have been a reasonable large open vessel. Similarly the expression is defined in Southampton Records Series (1992) 35, page 477 as ‘a pot or cauldron’.

It is possible to find various proverbial and allusive uses of the expression, e.g. ‘to sound worse than a tinker’s kettle’ or ‘the coin may mend a tinker’s kettle’; but these seem to depend on a literal meaning ‘a kettle owned or used by a tinker’ and not to indicate a particular kind of kettle.

Yeting and yoting

Wills and inventories from many areas mention yeting vats and yoting vats, and the Essex Wills are no exception. There are at least five mentions of yoting vat: 

1560 (I. 280) from Harlow 

1569 (II. 238) from Great Dunmow 

1577 (IV. 10) (yauthing vat) from Great Waltham 

1581 (IV. 76) from High Laver 

1586 (XI. 244) from High Easter 

Also:

1563 (VIII. 123) yotting tub 

There are at least three mentions of yeting vat:

1559 (VIII. 15) (yetting vat) from Ugley, 1579 (IV. 204) from Toppesfield, also 1564 (I. 301), 1586 (X. 33) 

1587 (V. 259) (yeating vat) from Stebbing

The Editor of the Essex Wills has glossed several occurrences with an explanation that this was a vat for soaking barley, and there is no doubt that, despite the difference in the shape of yeting and yoting, they are the same word. 

The OED enters yoting, giving an example of the compound yowtyng faate from 1583, as a derivative under the verb yote, whose basic sense is ‘to pour’. Sense 2 is ‘to pour liquid upon; to soak’, clearly the sense of our compound: two of OED’s quotations mention ‘yoted wheat’ and brewer’s grains being ‘yoted’. The etymology states that it is a ‘local development’ (chiefly west and south-west) of Old English gēotan, explaining the latter by means of a cross-reference to the verb yet. 

Similarly OED has an entry for yeting which is referred back to the parent verb yet, also derived from Old English gēotan. 

Yote and yet are therefore dialectal doublets. The process which produced them must be the same that gave rise to such doublets as Chaucer’s forms to chese and to shete, beside modern English to choose and to shoot, and closely parallel to that which produced the doublets yelk and yolk. In more technical terms, the Old English diphthong ēo normally developed in Middle English into a long ē /e:/ which became modern English long e /i:/ or, if shortened, ĕ /ɛ/; but after a palatal consonant such as y /j/ or ch /tʃ/ the stress could shift to the second element and the first element then disappeared, giving Middle English long ō /o:/ and modern English oo /u:/ or Middle English long ǭ /ɔ:/, modern English /əʊ/, or if shortened ŏ /ɔ/.

OED, though it recognizes the ‘soak’ sense of yote and yoting and gives a single mention to yoting vat, makes no mention of the equivalent uses of yet and yeting at all; apart from the basic senses ‘pour, flow, gush’, etc., mostly with regard to water, the only extended senses have to do with molten metal. The Essex Wills together with several other collections of wills and inventories provide an important corrective to OED’s picture of the word. 

Moreover the Essex Wills show that yote was not chiefly a western and south-western variant. Both forms existed in 16th-century Essex within a few miles of each other. Our yet forms occur in a triangle to the north and north-east of the rough quadrilateral formed by our yote forms. This might be evidence of some kind of regional dialect boundary. 

There seems to be no evidence available from the chiefly literary texts on EEBO. Mainly south-western documentation is shown by the English Dialect Dictionary, which has yote v. from Glos. (also yeot), Wilts. (also yaught, yaut, yawt), Somerset (also yoat, yeot), and ‘West Country’; [jo:t, jɔ:t]. Sense 1 is ‘to pour; to water’; the example given is ‘the brewer’s grains must be well yoted for the pigs’ (Grose, 1790).

By contrast, non-literary documents, mainly wills and inventories, published in the last century or so, show multitudinous examples of yeting and (more commonly) yoting, from Berkshire, Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Somerset, and Wiltshire, as the following (which have not been directly consulted and therefore mostly lack exact documentary dates) demonstrate:

1587 in D. M. Herridge Surrey Probate Inventories, 1558–1603 (Surrey Record Society, Vo. 39) (2005) 237 The grynstone and all that bee long to it A yettynge trofe All the brasc. (also p. 438 yotinge fatte)

M. A. Havinden Household & Farm Inventories in Oxfordshire, 1550–1590 (1965) 50 A molding Bord and A poudering trowghe 1 0 0 A yotyng vate & three olde vates 4 0.

Sussex Notes & Queries (1944) Vol. 9 130 i ladefate, 2 stollages, i yotyng fate, i ost here, feble, for the ost there, i yelefate, i new ladder to the ost, i furneys. 

Surrey Record Society (2005) Vol. 39 298 one busshell, 8 tubbs, syxe kevers, one yotynge fate 13 4 

Berkshire probate accounts, 1583-1712 (1999) 33 one boltinge huche, three firkines, a yotinge fatte, one bushill. 

Devon & Cornwall Record Society (1997) Vol. 40 p. 40 Itm two yotinge vats & one olde hogshead. 

Hampshire Studies: Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society (1996) Vol. 51 128 The malt howse a hogeshed, ii barelles, iii virkyns & a tubbe & a ester heare, iii wayshe vates 3. 4 ii shep skynes 8 iiii grat yotinge vates & ii litle yotinge vates.

1602 in Collectanea Archæologica (1871) 2 111One yotinge vate and frame . . xxs 

Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries (1903) Vol. 2 135 A yotinge ffate. A chese wrynge.

Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society (1937) Vols. 19-20 71 In the mault house — two kyll haires, 12s; a yottinge fat, a boultinge hutche. 

L. Williams & S. Thomson Marlborough probate inventories, 1591-1775 (2007) 52
On yotting vate, on wishtub, on chespres, on renseve, on spad, on ruder 6s. 

Medieval Wills from Wells (Publications of the Somerset Record Society) (1925) 40 239 a great  ‘broche’, a ‘yowting’ tub, a kneeding ‘cowle’. 

F. G. Standfield Hist. East Meon (1984) 30 It. one yowtynge vate a keve a kever a cowle. 

Evidently yoting vats or tubs were everyday household items throughout southern England, and possibly further afield, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The fact that literary sources are silent about them just shows how much of the ordinary English language remained off the radar of ‘standard’ English.

Shakespeare and the Essex Wills

This post is part of a series on the vocabulary of the sixteenth-century Essex Wills. For an introductory overview, see The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man.

You are quite right. There is no special connection. Except as regards furnishing the OED with early examples of words and meanings. And the fact that this weekend marks the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death.

It’s pretty well known that the OED gives the mistaken impression that Shakespeare coined a great many more words and meanings than he did in reality, simply because his works were extremely well-known and had been concordanced—so you could look up any word for which you needed a sixteenth or early seventeenth century example, and, with luck, there’d be one in his works somewhere.

The Shakespeare scholar Jürgen Schäfer (Documentation in the O.E.D, 1980) showed that you only had to mine other leading writers of the period, such as Thomas Nashe (1567–c1601), in the same way and you could come up with earlier examples that removed Shakespeare’s spurious primacy. This sounds rather brutal, but of course no one ever imagined that, for example, Shakespeare invented the name of a piece of furniture, the court cupboard, and then made Juliet’s father get his servants to move one. Every comfortably off household had a court cupboard in the sixteenth century as countless wills and inventories testify.

Schäfer’s work is all the more commendable because it came before the era of online databases. We now have Early English Books Online and can replicate—and vastly extend—his searches with relative ease. We can find plentiful examples from the printed literature of the early modern period of words and senses hitherto not even known to have existed then, as well as examples earlier than Shakespeare first uses.

In the 1990s the OED made another step forward. We realized that non-literary documents, such as wills, inventories, and accounts, dating from this period, which have been and continue to be printed in large quantities, are full of yet more documentation, much of it earlier than the literary documentation that antedates Shakespeare.

Not the least among such sources are the Essex Wills, which you can read about in my introductory blog, The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man. So here are seven words for which there is an example in a will from Essex earlier than in Shakespeare. In all but one, there is also an example on EEBO, usually also from a literary text. In two cases the EEBO example is the earliest.

OED barred adj. 1: 1597 Shakespeare Richard II i. i. 180   A ten times bard vp chest.

Essex Wills: (II. 199) 1567 my barred chest in my study

EEBO : 1580 J. Lyly Euphues & his Eng. [STC 17070] The key of yonder great  barred chest.

OED beer barrel at beer n.¹ Compounds 1d: 1603 Shakespeare Hamlet v. i. 207   Why might not time bring to passe, that he might stopp the bounghole of a beere barrell

Essex Wills:  (IV. 32) 1578? beer barrel

EEBO (earlier than both): 1551 The second volume conteinyng those statutes vvhiche haue ben made in the tyme of the most victoriouse reigne of Kyng Henrie the Eight [STC 9303.7] Table sig. A.ii/2 Beere barrell and kilderkin.

OED fail v. 3d ‘To die’: 1623 Shakespeare & J. Fletcher Henry VIII i. ii. 185 Had the King in his last Sicknesse faild. 

Essex Wills: (II. 92) 1569 If all my children fail before 20 

EEBO: nothing earlier found. This is a use which you might expect to have been a literary creation; but no, OED also has an 1878 example from Cumberland.

OED fellow n. 4b: 1600 Shakespeare Henry V iv. viii. 41 Let me see thy gloue. Looke you, This is the fellow of it.

Essex Wills: (III. 388) 1571 a framed hutch (the fellow to Agnes’ hutch) 

EEBO: apparently nothing older than the Shakespeare example. 

OED gleaned adj.: a1616 Shakespeare Henry V (1623) i. ii. 151 The Scot..Came pouring like the Tyde..Galling the gleaned Land with hot Assayes.

Essex Wills: (VII. 28) 1599 gleaned [corn]

EEBO (earlier than both): 1581 J. Keltridge Two godlie and learned sermons [STC 14921] his gleaned and piked vp corne. 

OED half-kirtle at half- comb. form 2m (not defined): 1600 Shakespeare Henry IV, Pt. 2 v. iv. 21 If you be not swingde, Ile forsweare halfe kirtles.

Essex Wills: (VIII. 36) 1565 half-kirtle

EEBO: the Shakespeare example seems to be the only one. It is the only example in the OED, so you might have thought it was his invention.

OED sanded adj. 1 ‘of a sandy colour’: 1600 Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream iv. i. 119 My hounds are bred out of the Spartane kinde: So flew’d, so sanded.

Essex Wills: (I. 210) 1558 a red sanded barrow hog with black spots, a red sanded weaning pig; (I. 252) 1558 sanded barrow hog; (I. 71) 1559 sanded pig

EEBO: 1575 G. Gascoigne Noble Arte of Venerie [STC 24328] Whereas oures are whyte, sanded, and of all coloures. 

In two of the above cases the alternative literary example (from EEBO) is earlier than Shakespeare’s but later than the Essex Wills. In three, Essex Wills are again earlier but EEBO seems to have nothing earlier than Shakespeare. In two cases, EEBO’s examples are earlier than both. There is nothing very special about the Essex Wills here; many other sets of wills or inventories could offer similar material. But it reminds us just how much more extensive, and how hidden, the actual ordinary spoken language is, in contrast to the highly visibility but minority status of the literary language.


Finally, how about dobbin n.? OED (sense 1) defines this as ‘an ordinary draught or farm horse; sometimes contemptuously, an old horse, a jade’; the earliest example is from Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (dated by OED3 1600) 

‘thou hast got more haire on thy chin, then Dobbin my philhorse has on his taile’.  

There is evidence for Dobyn as a personal name from Middle English literature. But did people call their horses Dobbin before Shakespeare? The Essex Wills tell us that they did (and EEBO has nothing earlier):

Essex Wills (1560, I. 76) have ‘a horse called Dobyne’ (as well as ‘a gelding called Dobb’ (1588, V. 103)).

Hebbing in Hessex or Ebbing in Essex?

This post is part of a series on the vocabulary of the sixteenth-century Essex Wills. For an introductory overview, see The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man.

I don’t want any readers of this blog to think that its entire purpose is to criticize the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED is my livelihood and my aim is to make it even better than it already is. And the fact is that some lexical items from the past are so scantily recorded that scholarship has been hard put to it to get a grip on them. And this is where non-literary documents like the Essex Wills are so helpful. 

The OED has an entry for a word ebbing n., the main sense of which is defined as ‘the action of flowing back or retiring’; no problem with this: several quotations pair the word with ‘flowing’ and we are clearly dealing with the verbal noun from the verb to ebb, describing what the receding tide does.

But I want to focus on the two compounds listed at the bottom of the entry,  ebbing-lock and ebbing-weir, defined as ‘a lock for detaining fish at the ebb-tide’ and ‘a weir for detaining fish at the ebb-tide’. I want to argue that like Dansk in my earlier post, the entry is a fusion of two unconnected words.

Despite the apparently obvious connection with the word ebb, there are good reasons to think that these compounds are not related to it at all. I think that it is very significant that, unlike any examples of the uncompounded ebbing, all examples of these words begin with h-: 

1539   Will of Thomas Samson (P.R.O.: PROB. 11/27) f. 253,   My Tyde bote..my Hebbing cocke [prob. read locke].
1590   Cal. State Papers, Domest. Ser. 692   Regulations for hooks, lamperne rods, and hebbing nets.
1472   Act 12 Edw. IV vii,   Ascuns..tielx..milledammez estankez de molyns lokkez hebbyngwerez, etc.
1475   Rolls Parl. VI. 159/1   Fishgarthes..Lokkes, Hebbyng weeres..and dyvers other ympedyments dayly been made.
1531–2   Act 23 Hen. VIII v. §2   Myldammes lokkes hebbynge weres heckes and fludgates.
a1642   R. Callis Reading of Statute of Sewers (1647) iv. 211   Locks and Hebbing weres.
1715   J. Kersey Dict. Anglo-Britannicum (ed. 2)    Hebbing-wears, nets or devices laid for fish at ebbing water.
1721–90   in N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict.  [the text, not given in OED, is: Hebbing-Wears, Devices or Nets laid for Fish at ebbing Water.]

Now, it is true that OED gives the verb ebb a sense (3a) ‘to hem in (fish) with stakes so that they cannot go back to the sea with the ebb-tide’; but it provides no examples, simply referring the reader to the entry EBBING n. which we are considering. It looks very likely that the editors inferred this sense of the verb from the verbal noun. 

The Middle English Dictionary gives an entry for ebbinge (ger.); like OED, it places under it the compound ebbing wer, ‘a weir for trapping fish at ebb tide’, where the headword has no h but the two examples have it (one of which is almost identical with one of OED’s):

(1472) Statutes Realm   2.441:  Fishgarthez, molyns, milledammez..lokkez, hebbyngwerez.
(1472-5) RParl.  6.159a:  Dyvers and many Weeres, Fisshgarthes..Lokkes, Hebbyng weeres.  

The OED also has an entry for ebberman n. Again, the quotations all show h- in the headword:

1689   in J. Stow Survey of London (1720) II. v. xxviii. 383/2   No..Hebberman, shall..fish for Smelts between Good Friday and, [etc.].
1715   J. Kersey Dict. Anglo-Britannicum (ed. 2)    Hebberman, one that fishes below Bridge, commonly at ebbing Water, etc.
1720   J. Strype Stow's Survey of London (rev. ed.) I. i. vii. 33/2   A Number of Fishermen belonging to the..Thames, some stiled..Hebbermen.
1721–90   in N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict. [the text, not given in OED, is:  Hebberman, a Fisherman below London-Bridge, who fishes at ebbing Water. L.T.]

The etymology is given as from the distinctly fishy h-less agent-noun ebber, for which no evidence is forthcoming: it is said to be a derivative of ebb v. sense 3, which, as we have already seen, is probably artificial.

The OED also gives an entry hebberman n. ‘Variant of EBBERMAN n.’ with four examples:

1630   Order in R. Griffiths Ess. Jurisdict. Thames (1746) 75   No Hebberman shall fish for Smelts before the twenty-fourth Day of August.
1630   Order in R. Griffiths Ess. Jurisdict. Thames (1746) 76   No Hebberman shall work any higher for Whitings than Dartford Creek.
1670   T. Blount Νομο-λεξικον: Law-dict.   Hebber-man, a Fisherman below London-bridge, who fishes for Whitings, Smelts, &c. commonly at Ebbing-water, and therefore so called.
1839–40   Thackeray Catherine xiv,   The ferries across the river, and..the pirates who infest the same—namely tinklermen, petermen, hebbermen, trawlermen.

From the dictionary evidence, the word seems to belong especially to the Thames estuary. In complete accord with this, all four examples in the Essex Wills are either from Barking or Leigh-on-Sea, which lie on that waterway. 

Also in conformity with the OED evidence, the Essex Wills examples all begin with h-. They too chiefly include compounds, some new: 

hebbing cock 1558, 1589 (which two uses make OED’s  emendation of its 1539 quotation from cocke to locke unnecessary) 

hebbing boat 1587 

hebbing net 1588. 

But what is especially striking is that one example also contains the verb: 

‘my part of the boat that is to heb in’ (1588, XI. 213)

Here ‘to heb’ must be an activity that a person does from within a boat. This seems conclusively to disconnect the activity of hebbing from the action of the tide in ebbing. 

The idea that the two words were connected probably starts in Blount’s Law Dictionary (the 1670 quotation at HEBBERMAN), from which all the other sources which talk about fishermen fishing at ebbing water may well derive their information.

Early English Books Online provides two examples of the compound hebber-boat:

1577 J. Dee General and rare memorials pertayning to the perfect arte of nauigation [STC 6459] Wherin, the  Hebber-Boats, only, might sufficiently…

 1698 Jovis duodecimo die Maii 1698, annoque regni Regis Willielmi ... this day an order and report made by the Committee for Letting the Cities Lands, touching several duties taken by several officers and others at Billingsgate  [Wing  L2865F] Every Hebber-Boat or Smack 00 00 01.

This is very likely a boat from which hebbing is done, which makes it less likely to be the hemming in of fish with stakes.

So what is heb-? What is its etymology? My suggestion is that it represents a regional preservation of the former alternative present stem of the verb ‘to heave’, Old English hebban. MED shows heb- forms from Layamon, the Nero MS of Ancrene Wisse in the thirteenth century, and the Pepys MS of the South English Legendary (Gloucestershire), Sir Firumbras (Devon), and William of Shoreham (Kent) in the fourteenth century: the form receded to small areas of the south in later Middle English. The verb has ME senses to do with lifting things up, though nothing as specific as fishing.

Some support for this suggestion may be found in OED’s entry for heaving n. Here there is an item heaving-net cited from a 1584 quotation relating to Thames fishery: 

‘No Fishermen, Garthmen, Petermen..shall avaunce or set up any Wears, Engines..Heaving Nets, except they be 2 Inches in the Meish’

In order to elucidate this, OED cross-refers to quot. 1805 at sense a, which explains that 

‘A..mode of fishing, called heaving or hauling, is standing in the stream..with a bag or net fixed to a kind of frame... Whenever a fish strikes against the net, they..instantly haul up the mouth of the net above water’ 

It’s true that this is taken from a source dealing with Scotland, and that it doesn’t envisage the use of a boat, but it explains how the operation combines static nets or weir-like apparatus with immediately ensuing action on the part of the fisherman.