Dansk Revisited

In my blog of 12 April 2016 A Danish Chest? Evidence from the Essex Wills, I discussed the likely meaning of the epithet Dansk,  applied to chests in early modern wills and inventories. The material below, taken from correspondence donated to the OED project by the editor of the Essex Wills, F. G. Emmison, shows the latter conducting enquiries into the likely meaning of the word back in 1975.

 

The letters.

1. 

The British Library
29th April 1975

Dear Mr. Emmison,

Dr. Wallis has passed your letter of 21st April 1975 to me for attention.

Although it might be helpful to see it in context, I have no doubt that at the time the letter was written “in Danske” refers to Denmark. I base this on the following:—

(i) In Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1 Polonius says to Reynaldo, “Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris.” The edition of the play by H. H. Furness refers to Danske meaning Denmark; this usage also occurs often in William Warner Albion’s England (complete edition, 1612).

(ii) The Oxford English Dictionary gives several examples circa 1600 in which Dansk stands for Danish, including the one in Hamlet. Hence a Dansker means a Dane.

I am afraid there has not been time to look into the historical forms of the place-name, but it seems probable that as it was a Hansa town the German form would have been preferred. There is not much mid-sixteenth century cartography that is really useful. Ortelius Theatrum (1570) gives greater prominence to the Polish form and adds the German below it: Gedanum / Dantzick. Mercator (1595) gives the German only.

Yours sincerely,

E. J. Huddy

2.

Victoria and Albert Museum
1 May 1975

Dear Mr. Emmison,

I am delighted to know that you are pressing on with the publication of the Elizabethan Wills. I have long been an ardent admirer of your work and look forward to the publication of your Volume 3. I am afraid I can say nothing at all helpful about the term ‘ship chest’, but I do know something about ‘Danske chests’ which came, not from Denmark, but from Danzig (Gdansk in Polish). I wrote a little article about the latter, of which I am able to send you a copy. I am only too aware that it is inconclusive but I believe it sums up our knowledge as it stands at present. I am wondering whether the ship chests might be a verison of the cypress chests, some of which were embellished with galleons in full sail of with Venetian galleys. The patterns used for their decoration were somewhat standard and it may be that a version decorated with ships was favoured in this country. I do not know and maybe this is an over-fanciful guess.

Might I beg you to return the offprint when you have finished with it as I seem to have no other copy.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Thornton
Keeper
Department of Furniture

3.

5 May 1975

Dear Mr Huddy,

I am most grateful for your letter [ref] of 29 April.

Strangely enough, by the same post, I put a query to the Dept. of Furniture, V & A Museum, as to the meaning of a “ship chest”, which occurs frequently in Elizabethan wills but is not defined in O.E.D. I enclose the kind answer, which puts me in a quandary about the port from which my letter was written—“From Dansk”. Oh dear, Mr Huddy, what shall I do?! If, at your leisure (because the book does not go to the printer for another month) you can find this spelling in any English edition of a European atlas of late 16th century I should be most obliged for a further note. I enclose a xerox of the V & A letter.

Yours sincerely

F. G. Emmison

4.

5 May 1975

Dear Mr Thornton

It is extremely good of you to have written with such helpful information in your letter of 1 May. Thank you also for your encouraging remarks: Vo. 3 will be published about April 1976.

Strangely enough, by the same post, I asked Dr Helen Wallis, Supt. of the British Museuk Map Room and an old friend, about the identification of the port from which a letter was written back to England from an Essex sailor who was sick there. It ends “From Danske”. The reply, though a little guarded, plumped for Denmark, not Dansk, relying chiefly on O.E.D., which I own and had used, but ‘Dansk’ in the Dict. merely refers to the adjective, which is much better known.

I am most grateful for the temporary loan of your only remaining offprint, which I will return shortly after reading what looks like a stimulating article.

Yours sincerely

F. G. Emmison

5.

The British Library
13th May 1975

Dear Mr. Emmison,

Thank you for your letter of 5th May 1975.

I am very interested indeed to read Mr. Thornton's remarks about “Danske chests”, and I must confess it shakes my earlier conviction about the explanation of the place name in your original enquiry. Unfortunately Mr. Thornton's article is not available here at present. Clearly more information is required about the Elizabeth [sic] customs in respect of Baltic place names, but the problem seems less likely to be solved in the printed maps available here. The atlases and maps printed about 1565 were European and these appear to have used the German form “Dantzick” or the Latin “Gedanum”. The only English edition of Ortelius’s Theatrum was published in 1606.

So I should suggest that other examples must be found, possibly in the state papers and in the records of trade with the Baltic countries. I will certainly let you know if anything useful turns up.

Yours sincerely,

E. J. Huddy

6.

The British Library
16th May 1975

Dear Mr. Emmison,

I asked a colleague in the Reading Room to look into your enquiry about Dansk, and the result has further weakened the case for explaining the name as Denmark. It seems that literary critics are not all in agreement either.

The references in Hakluyt are significant in the present context, I think. I am enclosing several extracts. Danske in these examples tends to confirm Mr. Thornton's thesis, but those Elizabethan merchants trading in the Baltic perhaps used the Polish or German forms according to personal preference.

The sixteenth century printed maps used the German form, but I have found an interesting hybrid, DANTZK, on Blaeu's maps of Poland and Prussia in the Theatre du monde (Amsterdam, 1635).

As for Polonius, he did get a bit confused sometimes; and the comment on Danskers, “Right or wrong, the result is very pleasing to British ears…” puts the case for poetic licence nicely.

Yours sincerely,

E. J. Huddy

7.

1 June1975

Dear Mr Huddy,

Danske

I very much appreciate your kindness in giving me further information in your letter of 13 May.

The problem remains, so I must be cautious in the identification.

Yours sincerely

F. G. Emmison


8.

The British Library

5 June 1975

Dear Mr Emmison,

Thank you for your letter of 1 June in reply to mine of 13 May. I am wondering whether you received my letter of 16 May also, with the enclosures. I should be very interested to know your opinion regarding the references in Hakluyt as these probably represent contemporary usage. I doubt whether the argument in “Notes and queries” covers sufficient evidence; and it would follow that the O.E.D.'s definition is not adequate.

Yours sincerely,

E. J. Huddy

The photocopies 

[the headings to nos. 5 and 6 were accidentally exchanged]

1. Richard Hakluyt The Voyages, Vol. II (ed. MacLehose, Glasgow 1903)

p. 396

A letter of Thomas Alcocke to the worshipfull Richard Gray, and Henrie Lane Agents in Moscouia from Tirwill in Polonia, written in Tirwill the 26. of Aprill 1558.
My duety premised unto your worships, with commendations &c. It may please you to be advertised, yt my last I sent from Smolensco, which I trust you haue receiued wt other letters to diuers of our English men, wherein I certified you of my long retayning there, as also of my departure from thence, and howe that I had hired a Totar to bring mee to Danske. We came to a certaine village on Satterday the sixe and twentieth of Februarie, and there remained that night and Sunday to refresh our horses, intending to haue gone away on Munday earely.

2. Richard Hakluyt The Voyages, Index (ed. MacLehose, Glasgow 1905)

p. 204/2

Danske, cable market at (1557) II. 382; Leonard Brian at, 387; wax market at, 389; Thomas Alcock at 396–399; and the Narva navigation, 485
Dantiske, Robert Elson at (1555) II. 296.

p. 205/1

Danzig, II. 8; Wolstan’s voyage to, I. 15; or Gdanum, II. 10; English merchants and goods seized in, 15–18; mercantile differences settled in, 22; ships of, despoiled by Hanse merchants, 70; Sir Jerome Horsey at (1584), III. 345; burgomaster of, and William Harborne (1588) VI. 58; customs in, 59; hulk with Spanish goods, captured by the English (1589) VI. 510.

3. Louis Zettersten, ‘Danskers in “Hamlet”.’ in Notes and Queries 6 February, 1926

p. 99/1

[States that according to Dr. Gosta Langenfelt, Shakespeare's "dansker" is the medieval name of Danzig; Shakespeare meant Danes but got hold of the wrong word.]

4. G. A. Gibbs,  ‘Danskers in “Hamlet”.’ in Notes and Queries 27 February, 1926

p. 157/2–158/2

[Aims to rebut the preceding. Points to Jamieson, Scottish Dictionary: Danskeine. Danskene, s. Denmark.]

5. Nares, Glossary of words…in Shakespeare (1905)

pp. 224/2–225/1

DANSKE, Denmark; and DANSKERS, Danes.

By chance one Curan, son unto
A prince in Danske, did see 

The maid, with whom he fell in love, 

As much as man might be.

Reliques of Anc. Engl. Poetry, 240.


Them at the last on Dansk their lingring fortunes drave,
Where Holst unto their troops sufficient harbour gave.

 
Drayt. Polyolb., xi, p. 864.



Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris, 

And how, and who, what means, and where they keep, 

What company, at what expence.

Haml., ii, 1.

The author of the Glossary to Lyndsay considers this as an erroneous interpretation, and says that it means Dantzickers; but, if he had looked at the context, he would have seen that Polonius's speech would have been nonsense with that interpretation; for how were they to find out Hamlet by inquiring for Dantzickers? Also Danish:

It is the king of Denmark doth your prince his daughter crave,
And note, it is no little thing with us allie to have;

By league or leigure, Danske can fence or front you,
friend or foe.

Alb. Engl., iii, 16, p. 70.

So that he makes a noise when he’s on horseback,

Like a Danske drummer. O, ’tis excellent.

White Devil, O. Pl, vi, 264.

In that work, indeed, it is printed Dantzic, by mistake, or by way of correction to the text; but the true reading is Danske, as indeed the metre shows it should be.

6. Jamieson Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, Vol. 2 (1880)

p. 14/2

DANSKEINE, DANSKENE, s. Denmark.

“At this feild the erle of Bothuell fled away with all hes company, and passed out of Scotland to Danskeine, where he deceissit miserablie.” Marioreybanks’ Annals, p. 19.

Formed, perhaps, without sufficient reason, by mariners, from the name which an inhabitant of that country takes to himself, Danske.

It is used, however, by Skene.

“The merchandis vsis to pay fraucht for their guds to Flanders be the sek [sack], to France, Spayne, and England be the tun: and to Danskene, and the Easter Seas, be the serplath.” De Verb. Sign. vo. Serplaith.

Archdeacon Nares has satisfactorily proved that Mr. Chalmers, in the Gl. to Lyndsay, has given “an erroneous interpretation” of the term Danskers, as used by Shakspeare, as if it meant Dantzickers; adding; “If he had looked at the context, he would have seen that Polonius’s speech would have been nonsense with that interpretation, for how were they to find out Hamlet by inquiring for Dantzicker’s?” After all, Mr. Chalmers, who is never at a loss to prove what he has once imagined, may be able to shew that Danskeine, mentioned above as the place to which Bothwell fled, was no other than Dantzic.

7. Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, Volume 2.

p. 11/1–2

[Two entries are relevant: a small entry, ‘Dansk, n….= DANSKIN a.’, with one 1681 quotation, and a much larger one, ‘Danskin, -ene, a. and n…. f. Polish Gdansk Danzig, with adjectival ending…1. adj. Connected with, made in, bought from Dantzig.’ There follows a list of the nouns with which it is used, including kist, and quotations from 1492 onwards. Examples with kist: ‘Ane Danskin kist with ane sey kist; 1596 Fraser P. 228; Ane Danskyne kist in the nether chamber; 1630 Bamff Chart. 223; My meikill trunk or schyryn kist, being ane Danskein kist; 1627 Edinb. Test. LIV. 106’. ‘2. n. The town of Dantzig’, with examples from the 15th to the early 17th century.

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.

Etymology of—and as—a tool

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.

After three blogs about the Essex Wills that gently critique the Oxford English Dictionary’s treatment of three extremely obscure words, it is time to reaffirm the good philological thinking of its first editors.

Names of tools are particularly common in early wills and inventories. In some cases we can’t identify the tool denoted. Other occurrences cast welcome additional light on tools we know about. This is one of these happy instances.

In the OED froe, frow, n. 1 is defined as ‘a wedge-shaped tool used for cleaving and riving staves, shingles, etc.’ This is not an everyday term among DIY enthusiasts in Britain, but ask an American with rural connections and they will recognize it.

I couldn’t find an uncopyrighted image of a froe, so here’s a link to the Wikipedia article ‘Froe’.

In the OED’s earliest example (1573 Tusser) the word is spelt frower, with an extra syllable. OED’s etymological explanation runs as follows:

‘the synonymous FROMWARD n. suggests that the earliest form frower represents a substantival use of  FROWARD a. in the literal sense “turned away”, the reference being to the position of the handle’. 

To explain: the synonymous noun fromward is presumed to be derived in its turn from the adjective and adverb fromward, which means ‘turned from or away’. fromward could also be used as a preposition; Thomas Hobbes, in the Leviathan, wrote ‘When the Endeavour is fromward something, it is generally called Aversion.’

So the OED guessed, without evidence, that frower is from  froward, the idea behind the name being that the handle is turned away.

The Essex Wills provide us with the missing link, just a few years older than OED’s first example:

 ‘a shovel, 2 “frawwardes”, a little wimble, a pickaxe’ (1567 VIII. 185)

This word frawwardes is in a very suitable context, together with other rather heavy tools: shovel, wimble, pickaxe. It could easily denote this tool, the froe. It has the right spelling to be a form of the word froward. And if it is, it confirms OED’s surmise that the name of the tool was originally a noun use of froward ‘turned away’.

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.

The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man

For the time being I have no further material on Tolkien to post. Instead, something rather different: word studies based on the extensive materials of the twelve volumes of sixteenth-century Essex Wills, which shed interesting light on the history of the English vocabulary.

What are the Essex Wills?

The work entitled The Essex Wills is an edition in twelve volumes by F. G. Emmison of approximately 13,000 wills from the various ecclesiastical jurisdictions of Essex dating from the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603). These wills are now located in the Essex Record Office in Chelmsford, Dr Emmison having himself been a very distinguished County Archivist of Essex (1938-1969). The volumes were published between 1982 and 2000. The last two appeared (thanks to the work of Mr Ken Neale and Mr Tony Burton) after Dr Emmison’s death in 1995, though the essential abstraction and basic editing up to the end of the series had already been carried out by Dr Emmison.

Abstracts of the wills of nearly all the Essex gentry and some yeomen and merchants, amounting to some 646 wills, had previously been published in Emmison’s work Elizabethan Life, Volumes IV (1978) and V (1980). An American researcher, John B. Threlfall of Madison, Wisconsin, then proposed to Dr Emmison that he should publish all the remaining wills of the middle and lower classes housed in the Essex Record Office (according to the original proposal, all those up to 1640). Publication of the first three volumes was undertaken by the National Genealogical Society of Washington D.C. with considerable financial support from Mr Threlfall (which continued for the remaining volumes). The remaining volumes were published by the Essex Record Office in collaboration with The Friends of Historic Essex.

Editorial method

The wills are organized into two groups. Those from the Archdeaconry courts, arranged chronologically, occupy the first seven volumes, each of which is divided into three sections for each archdeaconry. Those from the Commissary courts, also arranged chronologically, occupy the other five volumes.

Two major methodologies are followed. The wills are abstracted, not printed verbatim, so that predictable and repetitive formulae are skipped or abbreviated and repetitions removed. They are also modernized, so that the spelling is that of modern English. A number of words, however, are left in their original form and enclosed within quotation marks (of which more is said below).

Each volume has an introduction discussing the important historical, economic, and social features of the wills and indexes of persons, places, and subjects. Significantly from the linguistic point of view ‘words, rare, archaic, obsolete, local, or with different meaning from present use’ are also indexed in each volume, and Volumes 6 to 12 also have a glossary.

Reliability of the text for linguistic purposes

The fact that the texts are abstracted and the spelling modernized raises questions about their reliability and usefulness as a source of Elizabethan vocabulary and linguistic usage. We have, in fact, a number of pointers to the considerable reliability of the texts.

In the first place, the Editorial Method is set out in detail in each volume, making clear what omissions and changes have been made. Although these are extensive, for the most part they affect only predictable parts of each will; and most of the changes are straightforward omissions. New text does not seem to have been manufactured to summarize any passages.

Several volumes contain reproductions of individual wills which can be compared with their abstract in order to gain an impression of the kinds of abbreviation that has been carried out. In one volume a number of wills are duplicates of wills already published in a previous volume, and here again comparison yields a good idea of what sorts of change have been made.

Finally it is clear from examining the text itself that the language has not been interfered with, apart from the modernization of the spelling. Many words that are of interest have been left in a form which is clearly not the spelling they would have if they existed in modern English, which testifies to the conservatism of the abstractor.

There are very many words enclosed in quotation marks. Some of these are glossed or in other ways made the subject of comment, but many others have been left without remark. These quite evidently reproduce the original written form.

The importance of the Essex Wills to the lexical history of English

There are four main ways in which the Essex Wills are of importance for the lexical history of English. Specifically, but not exclusively, these contribute to the revision of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Essex Wills contain a considerable body of words, compounds, and word meanings that are not recorded (except in a few scattered instances) in dictionaries, including the current OED, but are recognizable as genuine lexical items rather than potential errors (scribal or editorial). These show that there is still much to be discovered about the vocabulary of the past. They suggest that similar analysis might profitably be done on comparable records, published and unpublished, from other parts of the country.

The Essex Wills contain a number of word forms which do not appear to be readily analysable. They may be known words that have been miswritten or miscopied, or they may really be hitherto unknown words, to which, from the context, no meaning can at present be assigned. Evidently these are not readily usable in any systematic description, but if and when more materials are gathered, they may have a contribution to make.

The Essex Wills contain examples of words and meanings that are first recorded only later in the OED (antedatings), others whose coverage in the OED ends significantly earlier (postdatings), and a third group which fill a gap in the OED’s record (interdatings). Of these, the antedatings are of the greatest general interest, since they extend the history of many words further back in time and help to complete the historical picture of the English language. Needless to say these are being incorporated into the OED when the entries affected are revised.

The Essex Wills contain much material of a miscellaneous nature that contributes to the refinement of our knowledge of the English vocabulary, specifically as described in the OED. This includes modifications or extensions to particular definitions, the alteration of regional labelling (frequently from ‘Northern’ and/or ‘Scots’, which is unexpected), and new light on word origins (etymologies). The Essex Wills also contain a number of word forms, preserved by the editor as written in the manuscripts, and nearly all enclosed in quotation marks, which are unrecorded variant spellings of known words; some of these are relatively trivial variants and others shed new light on the regional pronunciation of the word.

Now read on...

This is an introduction. The plan is to post a series of studies on some of the aspects of the vocabulary of the Essex Wills outlined above. The first studies will deal with significant changes to the history of lexical items that are already recorded in dictionaries.