Forgotten English: April 18th - April 23rd
Monday's forgotten word:
Clashmaclavers (pl. noun) - Low, idle, scandalous tales.
--John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
The Canterbury Pilgrims Depart
On about this date in 1387, twenty-nine fictional travelers invented by Geoffrey Chaucer gathered in Southwark's Tabard Inn, across the Thames from London, for their sixty-mile pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket in Kent. Many contributed stories along the way - the Canterbury Tales. Six centuries later, Chaucer's Middle English is still enjoyable, as in this passage from the prologue describing the company:
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At night was come in-to that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye.
Although these accounts would later be regarded as literary treasures, in the 16th century the term "Canterbury tale" became synonymous with a tedious or unbelievable story. According to James Greenough's Words and Their Ways in English Speech (1902), the equestrian term "cantering" came about as a shortened form of "Canterbury gallop" - an easy horse's pace. William Caxton's engraving of the dining pilgrims (reproduced here) was included in his 1484 edition of the Tales.
Tuesday's:
Chair-days (pl. noun) - (1) Old age, spent to a considerable extent resting in a chair.
--Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
(2) In thy Reverence, and thy Chaire-dayes, thus to die in Ruffian battel.
--William Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI, 1593
(3) Drooping chair, chair fit for old age; 1 Henry VI.
--C. Herford's Works of Shakespeare, 1902
A Sedan on the Open Road
John Timbs' Romance of London (1865) mentioned what must have been an uncomfortable trip for servants and passenger alike, even in good weather: "Perhaps the longest journey ever performed in a sedan was the princess Amelia being carried by eight chairmen from St. James's [Palace] to Bath, between April 13 and April 19, 1728. The chairmen were relieved in their turns, a coach and six horses attending to carry the men when not on service."
Writing in 1702, Daniel Defoe dispelled the misconception that these conveyances were largely for the well-to-do: "We are carried to these places [the coffeehouses of Pall Mall] in sedan chairs, which are here very cheap, a guinea a week, or a shilling per hour - and your chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice."
Wednesday's:
Tide (noun) - Time or season; the divisions of the 24 hours. From an ancient book in the old German dialect, Speygel der Leyen, or the Mirrour of Laymen, it appears that the 24 hours were divided into prime, tierce, sext, none, vesper, fall of night, and metten (nightly mass). Our ancestors also had certain divisions of the artificial day, as undertide, &c.
--William Toone's Etymological Dictionary of Obsolete Words, 1832
Bellringer Sought
Henry Edwards' Collection of Old English Customs, and Curious Bequests and Charities (1842) reported this quaint endowment: "John Beddoes, by indenture dated 20th April, 1565, conveyed premises to feoffees in trust, that they should, amongst other matters, out of the rents, keep and find an able person to ring a bell in the parish church of Presteign [Radnorshire, Scotland], every morning forever, between the feasts of All Saints and the Purification of Our Lady, by the space of one half hour, which should be called the Day Bell; and also should nightly forever ring one other peal with the same bell at eight o'clock in the afternoon, as well in summer as wintertime, by the space of one half hour, which should be called Curfew; and that, if the ringing of the said bell should be discontinued for one year, unless the plague was in the said town of Presteign, or other reasonable cause, then the said premises to revert to his heirs."
Thursday's:
Faffering (adjective) - (1) Of the wind, blowing with cold chilly gusts.
--G. Story's Dictionary of Newfoundland English, 1982
(2) Faff, to blow in sudden gusts; Scotland, English North Country. Hence faffment, nonsense, balderdash; Lancashire.
--Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
Barnstaple Fair Weather
was defined in Wright's English Dialect Dictionary as "cold, wet, windy weather." This Devonshire term was explained in Devon's Daily Graphic on April 21, 1893: "Yesterday the clerk of the weather made a desperate effort to restore what is understood to be the normal balance of proportion between fine days and thunderstorms in this county. He has still a good deal of lee-way to make up, but he has plenty of time to do it in. According to Dr. Falb, the eminent Austrian meteorologist, the months of July, August, and September are to be devoted to this unpleasant process. Throughout all this period - and particularly in September - what Devonians out of their experience call 'Barnstaple fair weather' is to prevail in England." Resident Sarah Hewett's unpublished 19th-century list of Devon words contained this note: "A stormy, cold, foggy day is usually spoken of as Barum-fair-weather, Barum being the local name for Barnstaple."
Friday's:
Motch (verb) - To eat little, slowly, quietly and secretly; to consume or waste imperceptibly. Hence, motching, fond of dainties, with the idea of eating in secret. Slow, quiet eating, with the idea of fondness for good living. Banffshire.
--Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
Demise of London's Chelsea Bun House,
a popular descendant of which still serves meals in South Kensington. In Good Cheer: The Romance of Food and Feasting (1911), Frederick Hackwood wrote, "Chelsea was famous for its buns two centuries ago . . . On Good Friday mornings, their popularity was certainly extraordinary, and the Chelsea Bun House always presented a scene of great bustle on this day of the year [with] as many as fifty thousand[!] persons assembling there and buying these tasty wares to the extent of £250 worth.
"In 1793, a notice was posted on the 'Royal' Bun House that in consequence of the disturbances which had occurred by the assembling of such a great concourse on the previous Good Friday, no [Hot] Cross Buns would be sold on that day, but only the Chelsea Buns, as usual. A few years later, this once famous rendezvous had been cleared away, and the Bun House collection of pictures and curiosities dispersed. A new Bun House was erected in its place, but the glory of Chelsea's Royal Bun House was departed forever."
Saturday's:
Equivoke (noun) - An ambiguous expression; a quibble; from Latin œquivocus, ambiguous.
--Joseph Worcester's Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language, 1881
Birthday and Death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
When he published a collection of Shakespeare's plays in 1765, Samuel Johnson was careful to include these sobering introductory disclaimers about the Bard: "He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than instruct that he seems to write without any moral purpose . . . He makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate, for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better."
And Johnson did not stop there, asserting harshly, "A quibble [pun] is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind . . . A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it."
All text © 2010 Jeffrey Kacirk