Spinning and weaving in early modern Essex

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). 

Here are six terms from spinning and weaving that seem not to have been recorded in dictionaries: three kinds of loom and three kinds of wheel. As I know very little about these crafts, I can only offer them as contributions to the history of textile manufacture.

bastard loom

 Presumably ‘bastard’ in this term is the OED’s bastard adj. 6 ‘Of abnormal shape or irregular (esp. unusually large) size’. These are some occurrences in the Essex Wills:

1568 (II. 173) bastard loom

1574 (III.  415) the bastard loom standing next the great yard with the latch shuttle

1583 (V. 229) bastard loom

Elsewhere we find:

1498 Will of Robert Dacres of Beverley, Weaver in Testamenta Eboracensia (1869) IV. 137 Johanni Williamson, cognato meo, unum wollen-lome, et unum bastard-lome cum iiij heyldes et slayes pro panno lato et iiij heyldes et slais pro carsey. Antonio Awburgh, apprenticio meo, unum bastard-lome, illud proxime infra ostium, cum iiij heyldes et sleys pro panno lineo, et iiij pro panno canabeo.

1878 T. North Church Bells Northamptonshire  356 To one person he left ‘3 geere viz. a flaxen, harden, & a woolen’, to another ‘a bastard’s loom’, and to a third ‘a broad loom’.

[date?] in Archaeologia Cantiana (1923) 36 51 John Colman my servant have one implement called a bastard loom with all thereto.

1987 M. G. Andrews Men & Mills 187 These mills are the group organized a long time ago by Sam Patterson, who thought of the idea of a beautiful mattress covering and made it on a bastard loom created for him by Crompton & Knowles and Draper.

1996 J. Jones Family Life in Shakespeare’s Time 78 Besides a pair of looms, two kersey looms and a bastard loom, there were two warping bars and two troughs.

There seem to be no examples in Early English Books Online.

So the term is by no means limited to Essex: it was probably country-wide. And the 1987 example suggests that it is still a familiar term to those in the craft.

broad loom

Essex in the sixteenth century was evidently full of these:

1560 (I. 41) broad loom

1560 (I. 207) my least broad loom..my other broad loom

1568 (II.  144) 2 broad looms and one narrow loom

1574 (III.  407), 1581 (X. 42), 1584 (IV. 181) broad loom.

Surprisingly, given the existence of the adjective (broadloom adj. at broad adj., n.¹, and adv. Compounds 2, 1925–1963) there is no entry for the noun in the OED and only one example of it (body carpet at body n. Compounds 2)—but this is from the twentieth century, so such looms, though doubtless now very different, must still exist:

1963 Which? Mar. 71/1 This..carpet..is made on a broad loom (6 ft. wide or more) instead of the usual ‘body’ carpet which is in rolls 18–54 in. wide.

Given that broadloom as an adjective describing carpets is an everyday term, you really would expect the dictionaries to have picked up the noun. The term occurs passim in the nineteenth century. 

Earlier and later examples include:

1537 in N. W. Alcock People at Home: Living in a Warwickshire Village, 1500–1800 (1993) 31 In the Schop A brodlom and all sych geres that longyth to the sam.

1610 R. Vaughan Most Approued, and Long-experienced Water-workes (STC 24603) sig. E4^v, All which be appointed Attendants to maintaine and furnish twenty broad Loomes for the finest cloth; tenne narrow Loomes for courser Wooll, Flax, Hemp, and Hurds. Tenne Fustian Loomes, with such Silk-loomes as necessity shall require.

1683 E. Chamberlayne Present State England [Wing C1844] Because of the  Broad- Looms wherein it was wrought.

1779 Extracts from the Diary, Meditations, and Letters of Mr. Joseph Williams of Kidderminster [page] In my sixteenth year I began to weave in the clothier’s broad loom.

1996 The William and Mary Quarterly (Third Series) 53), pp. 43-66 55 Andrew Snider, who died in 1783, had one broad and one narrow loom, and the 1805 inventory of Samuel Sellers notes he had two looms with very specialized functions.

narrow loom

Clearly contrasted with the broad loom, for weaving narrower textiles. In the Essex Wills:

1560 (II.  117) narrow looms

1568 (II.  144) 3 broad looms and one narrow loom

1574 (III. 407), 1584 (IV.  181), 1589 (XI. 37), 1594 (VI. 170) narrow loom

Earlier and later examples:

1537 in N. W. Alcock People at Home: Living in a Warwickshire Village, 1500–1800 (1993) 31 In the Schop... 3 Narrow lomys and that belongyth to them. 

[a1565] in E. Ralph Cal. Bristol Apprentice Bk. Part III, 1552–1565 66 [Modernized text] To have at end one narrow loom.

1599 Will of John Coocke, weaver, St Mary Redcliffe in S. Lang & M. McGregor Tudor Wills Proved in Bristol 1546–1603 (1993) 53 To Reginald Newes a narrow loom and a flock bed.

1780 Descr. Tunbridge Wells 121 In the year 1727, a Mr. Henry Tricker made worsted and stocking yarn, and kept four narrow looms wherein was wove Calamanco’s, Camblets, Cloth-Serges, Stuffs for Gowns, &c. &c.

1849 Plough, Loom, & Anvil Oct. 229 This was a narrow loom, for cassimeres, made at the Oneida factory, in 1818, and started by William Graham, an accomplished weaver and excellent man, who, I believe, is yet living in the northern part of this county.

Dutch wheel

Obviously a kind of spinning wheel, but I don't know whether the design came from, or was thought to come from Germany (‘Dutch’ formerly = ‘German’), or whether ‘Dutch’ was used in the familiar semi-derogatory way for something felt to be outlandish.

From the Essex Wills:

1582 (IV.  173) 1 little Dutch wheel

1584 (V. 181) 2 Dutch chairs, a Dutch wheel, a great wheel

1584 (X. 61), 1588 (XI. 14), 1590 (XI. 106) Dutch wheel

More can be deduced from some of the following:

1712 Inventory William John of Gwynedd in H. M. Jenkins Hist. Rec. Gwynedd Pennsylvania (date?) xxiv. 339 2 Dutch wheels, and 2 other spinning wheels.

1764 Rep. & Observations Robert Stephenson to Trustees Linen Manufacture 52 Her Doulass was spun on what is called an Irish Wheel, with a Hoop Rim, and comes at Half the Price of the Dutch Wheel, and answers every purpose of the Dutch Wheel.

1788 Annals Agriculture 10 312 Our women spinners of wool [in Lusatia], with the Dutch wheel, (a great spinning-wheel introduced a few years since), if they spin kette, (chain-thread), earn, per diem, 4 groschen, 6 pfennings, to 5 groschen, (about 6d. English).

1848 Mechanics’ Mag. 14 Oct. 377/1 John Butterworth [1774–1845]..was sent at six years of age to work at a Dutch wheel in the neighbouring village of Royton, by which he was able to earn about 1s. 4d. per week.

2001 L. Ulrich Age of Homespun ii. 101 Although eighteenth-century inventory-takers continued to use these terms, ‘Dutch wheel’ gradually edged out ‘linen wheel’ in western Connecticut and some parts of Massachusetts.

2005 W. H. Crawford Impact of Domestic Linen Ind. Ulster 52 Spinning was done [in the eighteenth century] on the Dutch wheel, kept in motion by a treadle. By two separate cords the wheel turned both the bobbin on which the spun yarn collected and the flyer which spins and distributes that yarn along the bobbin.

Is it possible that the Dutch wheel was in fact the now familiar spinning wheel design?

long wheel

A different kind of wheel, perhaps? Examples in the Essex Wills:

1589 (V. 261), 1589 (V. 291), 1589 (VI. 215) long wheel

Later examples:

1688 R. Holme Acad. Armory [Wing H2531]  Spinning Wheele, called a  long Wheele, or a going Wheele, or a Woollen Wheele.

1726 Dictionarium Rusticum (ed. 3) II. LONG-WHEEL, Going-Wheel, large Spinning-Wheel, or Woollen Wheel, is so called because Wooll is only spun with it, and at none of the other sorts of Wheels; it consists of the following Parts. 1. The Stock, standing on the four Feet. 2. The Standard, that bears the Wheel. 3. The Axle-tree on which the Wheel turns. 4. The Wheel wherein  are the Nave, the Spokes, and the Rim. 5. The Head-standard, or two Pillars that bear the Spool. 6. The Spool, on which the Wheel-string is put. 7. The Spindle,whereon the Yarn is turned. 8. The Wheel-String that turns the Spool and Spindle, 9. And lastly, The Wheel-Finger, by which the Wheel is turned.

1760 Ann. Reg. 1759 162/1 To be knit from two threads of soft worsted, spun on the short wheel, called the Canterbury or Leicester wheel, 20 l… For causing to be knit, on the above conditions, the best and largest quantity of the like worsted hose, of the same size, and about the same weight, but knit from three threads, the long wheel spinning, 15 l.

1995 T. Hersh Cloth & Costume, 1750–1800, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania 29 Occasionally the terms ‘large wheel’ and ‘long wheel’ were used to indicate wool wheels. Altogether 713 inventories had some type of wheel for spinning.

The term is widely evidenced in historical sources.

woollen wheel

The same as a long wheel; perhaps the earlier term. In the Essex Wills:

1559 (I. 274) woollen wheel

1561 (I. 53) woollen wheel

Outside Essex Wills:

1585 Inventory in J. Wallace Hist. Blyth (1869) 7 Two old bills, and one woollen wheel.

1610 Inventory of Isabel Wharton of Gedney Lincs. in P. Crawford & L. Gowing Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth Cent. Eng. (2000) iv. 121 Item a linen wheel and a woollen wheel.

1675 in N. W. Alcock People at Home: Living in a Warwickshire Village, 1500–1800 (1993) 48, 1 wolinge wheel and 1 linnine wheel. 

1688 R. Holme Acad. Armory [Wing H2531]  Spinning Wheele, called a long Wheele, or a going Wheele, or a Woollen Wheele.

1789 Inventory in G. Anjou Ulster County, N.Y. Probate Rec. (1906) 43 A Woollen Wheel…A Spinning do.

1858 Rep. Select Committee Destitution (Gweedore & Cloughaneely) (House of Commons) 359 That man had a very comfortable house; he had three bedsteads and beds in ticks; good bedclothes, dressers, chairs, a table, boxes, a woollen wheel, two sacks of oatmeal.

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.