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.

Forgotten Words: the Essex Wills as Witness

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). 

Furniture: terms relating to beds

bedsteadle 

There are numerous instances of this word from 1558 onwards. Typical cases are:

1559 (I. 87) To John a bedstead. To Agnes my daughter a bedsteadle. 

1575 (III. 165) my joined bedsteadle, a bedstead. 

The approximate meaning is the framework on which a bed is made, but differing in some unspecified manner from a bedstead. 

The second element does not appear to be a derivative (such as a diminutive) of stead, i.e. of the second element of bedstead (OED STEAD n. 8, recorded from a1475 onwards). 

Rather, steadle seems to be a variant of  OED STADDLE n., of which steddle is recorded as a variant, and which has a sense ‘a supporting framework’ (3d). This is attested only from a1800; but the word steadle is used both alone and in a compound with trundle, which means a ‘truckle bed’:

Essex Wills (1582, X. 229) my bed standing on the sollar with the steadles.

Essex Wills (1591, VI. 130) a flockbed and a pair of trundle steadles belonging.

The word also occurs in the edited volumes of Essex gentry wills:

1566 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 276 a posted bedsteadle.

1585 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 88, 2 of the best bedsteadles with 2 of the best testers belonging.

We get some confirmation for this from the Middle English Dictionary at stathel (n.) (which is the Middle English equivalent of  OED’s staddle n.). MED has the variants: ‘Also .. stedel(e, stedil, stedul(le; pl. stedel(l)es’ and gives, at sense (b): ‘bed ~, the framework of a bed, a bedstead’, with the sole illustrative example:

(1483) in M. R. James The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Emmanuel College: A Descriptive Catalogue (1904) 11 Item, yn the grette chambur ii bede stedellys..Item, in the lytyll chambyr a bedde stedyll.

The provenance of this text, and indeed its identity, is unclear, but its being preserved in a Cambridge library make it possible that it is an East Anglian MS.

This evidence can be supplemented by a number of other documents, all from south-eastern England:

1582 Inventory of James Benchkin’s goods, 30 November in Constance Brown Kuriyama Christopher Marlowe: a Renaissance Life (2002) Appendix 191 Item one joyned bedstedell. (There is also an instance on p. 193, from Canterbury.)

1605 Inventory of John Marlow’s goods, 21 February in Constance Brown Kuriyama Christopher Marlowe: a Renaissance Life (2002) Appendix 191 235 Item a playne bedstedle, matt and rope, and a flocke bed and a fether bed.

The English Dialect Dictionary, at bed n., has ‘bed-steddle, a bedstead’ with two Essex citations (1814 Monthly Mag. I. 498) and two Kent citations, one of 1793 (Pluckley Poorhouse Accounts)  and Memorials of Eastry (870) 224. 

1893 Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc. 4 15 Bedsteadle occurs in 1705, a dialectical form of ‘bedstead’, which is still localized in N. Essex, and which I have seen in a Sible Hedingham will of rather earlier date than this instance. Neither Dr. Murray nor Forby mentions it.

Finally we find the twentieth-century dialect dictionary of Essex testifying to the fact that this is a genuine Essex word:

1923 E. Gepp Essex Dialect Dictionary (ed. 2) 19 Bedsteadle: a bedstead. Apparently a peculiar Essex form. See Staddle. Ibid. 108 Steadle: for  bedsteadle. It is a form of staddle, a foundation, stand (9th c.), q.v. 

Only the Essex Wills suggest, by using the two words in the same contexts, that there was a distinction between a bedsteadle and a bedstead. No evidence seems to be available on EEBO. 

Bedsteadle is an unentered word with a history stretching from 1483 to 1923.

girt, girted

An adjective describing a bedstead, bedsteadle, or trundle bed. With the exception of the example below, I have found it only in the Essex Wills, and the meaning is unclear. OED’s GIRT adj., sense 1, is given the definition ‘in sense of the verb’, presumably GIRD v.1 of which it is the old past participle. This verb, as we know, means ‘to surround or encircle’, but there seem not to be any senses specifically with beds as the object, or anything closer than sense 4c ‘to put (a cord, etc.) round something’ (only in Swift’s Gulliver). 

Although the apparently ‘double’ past participle form girted is notionally covered by the fact that girt can be a variant of the main form of the verb gird, there is also a verb GIRT v., of which sense 2 is ‘to secure with a girth’ (1663, 1841).

1587 (X. 79) gyrt bedsteadle

1595 (XI. 135) girte bedstead

1560 (I. 11) 1 trundlebed girted with 2 little old featherbeds

1571 (III. 19) girted bedstead

1581 (X. 231) girted bedstead

The only other example found is considerably later. Somewhat surprisingly it occurs in a translation, raising the implication that there existed an equivalent in French. Moreover the text itself is ordinary ‘standard’ English.

1715 tr. C. de Renneville French Inquisition 77 At length, on Friday the 8th of September, I was much surpriz’d to hear the Tower open’d before Four in the Morning, and to see Ru coming into my Room, bringing a Girt Bedstead, then he brought a Straw Bed, a Quilt, a Boulster, a Blanket, and a deep Rush Chair, all quite new.

It is distinctly possible that the term is equivalent to a trussed bed or trussed bedstead (OED TRUSSED adj. 1), which is the same as a trussing bed or trussing bedstead. None of these are directly defined, but an 1861 quotations tells us:

Portable beds were often called ‘trussing’ beds.

So probably a girted bedstead was a portable one.

half-head, half-headed 

These terms relating to styles of bed are common in the Essex Wills, the former as noun and premodifier, the latter as adjective. As one might expect, the derived adjective half-headed appears later than the noun half-head.

half-head:

1563 (VIII. 74)  a bedsteadle with a half head

1572 (III. 62)  bedsteadle..the other with a half head;

1574 (III. 423)  a joined bed with a half head

1584 (X. 3)  the bedstead with the half head

1591 (VI. 196)  a bedsteadle joined with a half head

1591 (XI. 150)  1 joined bed with a half-head

1592 (XI. 278)   a standing bed with a half-head and featherbed

1600 (XII. 216)  1 posted bedstead..with a half-head

1602 (VII. 142)  2 flock beds with half-heads

note also half a head:

1573 (III. 298) a posted bedsteadle with half a head

That this is not a specifically Essex term is shown by:

1597 Will of Hugh Cicill, carpenter, St Philip in S. Lang M. & McGregor Tudor Wills Proved in Bristol 1546–1603 (1993) 25 Or ells at that time to buye for her one newe Bedsteede withe a halfe hea[d] at his choice.

half-headed:

1582 (IV. 158) half-headed bed

1587 (X. 254) half-headed bedsteadle

1590 (XI. 120), 1594 (XI. 244), 1591 (XI. 35) half-headed bedstead

The terms are used of beds that are recorded as having a tester, and so presumably describe a bed whose tester (in the later sense of the canopy over the bed) that covers only the upper end, as opposed to the traditional ‘four-poster’ with a canopy covering the full length of the bed. Yaxley (2003: 12) explains half-headed bed as ‘bed with canopy covering only top half of bed, supported only by the posts of the bedhead’. This would be borne out by an apparent contrast with whole-headed:

1585 (V. 294) whole-headed joined bed

Historians have given other explanations, namely that the terms refer to the vertical part at the head of the bed (tester in its earlier meaning), but the evidence seems to fit this better. (Note also the contrast with ceiled bed in quotation 1751 below.)

It is not an unusual term, and certainly ought to be in the OED. The examples listed above are all earlier than those (all from the seventeenth century) listed in Weiner 1997: 242. The term was still in use in the 19th century:

1721 Particular & Inventory Sir John Blunt 44, 4 square Stools, a half headed Bedstead, a Feather Bed and Bolster. 

1728 Catalogue Household Furniture Thomas Coke 4 A half-headed Bedstead, blue Curtains, a Feather Bed.

1732 Inventory Richard Woolley 10 In the Garrets. A Bedstead and Bedding, a Mat, a half headed Curtain Rod.

1751 Inventory of Andrew Revill of Ecclesfield Parish in Agricultural Hist. Rev. (1969) 17 115 Near Chamber: 2 half headed Beds and 2 Ceild Beds £1.5.0.

1830 Belle Assemblée Sept. 114/2 Two rooms; in one was a half-headed bedstead, with a flock or straw bed—I know not which.

1871 Exchange & Mart 8 March 303/2 Wanted, an Arabian half-headed bedstead, iron or otherwise, plain, but in good condition.

Note also half a headed bedstead:

1600 Will of Nicholas Woulfe, carpenter, St Philip in S. Lang & M. McGregor Tudor Wills Proved in Bristol 1546–1603 (1993) 73 Halfe a headded bedsteed with a flock bedd.

Half-headed is entered in the OED (unrevised entry) only in the sense ‘half-intelligent’. No evidence seems to be available on EEBO.

post bed, post bedsteadle

OED’s POST n.1 has been revised, but this item was probably too rare to find its way into the entry. It is not common in the Essex Wills, but there are a few later examples. The meaning is presumably the same as four-posted bed.

1564 (VIII. 144) my postbed that I lie in

1569 (II.  238), 1582 (IV. 148) post bed

Also:

1570 (IX. 89) post bedsteadle

1582 (IV. 212) postern bedstead

The later examples are:

1846 C. MacFarlane Romance of Travel I. vii. 158 What the worthy monk calls a bed was probably much the same piece of furniture still used as a seat by the Turkish sultan when he gives an audience of ceremony, and which is something between a post-bed and a sofa.

1847 J. D. Lang Cooksland iv. 122 This bed-room, in which I found a Colonial cedar post-bed.

1891 Harper’s Mag. 83 824 Joe led Penelope towards the old storehouse chamber in which the Irish traveller was quietly sleeping under the parted curtain a of the ancient post bed.