HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H02016 2/17/02 "PRONOUNCIATION & FARMING QUESTIONS" ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 06:42:23 -0500 From: Thomas Law <114603.13@compuserve.com> Subject: Dialect pronunciation and farming questions.. Another exploitation of the list's compendious collective knowledge.. in the interests of my production of TESS. In one of his novels I feel that Hardy describes the dialect as a general sound of 'ur' from which certain voices stand out... Can anyone give me 'novel and chapter' on this if indeed it exists?. To the agricultural specialists among you... Does anyone know what the swede hacker ('a kind of forked hook') as used at Flintcombe Ash in TESS actually looked like. Was it a long handled tool usable from an upright posture, a spade lengthed affair or a short handled tool requiring the women to be bent double? Any pictures or info gratefully received. Does anyone know the action used with a billhook to top and tail swedes ready for the slicer? I imagine it rather like those West Indian gentlemen you see in Brixton decapitating a green coconut with 3 slices for passersby to drink the milk, a back handed swing across the body with the machete to slice the object held at the full extent of the left arm... Any pictures of an actual period milk skimmer gratefully received. I imagine a beaten metal flat ladle on the end of a long pole. What would a butter churn in a Dairy the size of Talbothays have been like. It must have been big enought for Jack Dollop to hide in and rattle around in. I imagine something like a large top loading industrial washing machine, a drum with paddles sticking out from the side. But perhaps the drum or barrel spun on a horizontal axis and had its 'trapdoor' (for Jack Dollop to enter by) in the side.. The only butter churns I have seen have been small household ones of the plunger type or the barrel on a spidle at its fattest part, spun end over end, neither appropriate to this use. We will not have it on stage but if we know what it was we can design a better sound effect and the actors can all visualise it for us. Would they have used a mop in the dairy? Esoterickly yours Duncan Law PS. The show will be on at the LANDOR THEATRE, 70 Landor Rd, London SW9 (Clapham North tube is 2 minutes walk away) from 14 March until 6 April, Tuesday to Saturday except Good Friday at 7.30pm. Tickets are £9 (£7 concs) and the box office number is; 020 7737 7276. Hope to see some of you there... ========== Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 19:50:27 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Dialect pronunciation and farming questions.. The UR sound: "The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school; the characteristic intonation of that dialect, for this district, being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after a word." (TD, ch II) (The syllable sexy? -- only Hardy!) As to the vegetable hackers, I imagine them the way you do -- a short-handled machete of a kind. Am I thinking of "mangle-worzels" (mango-worzels) in my dim memory of my grandfather's farm-workers hacking, with curved-blade machetes, at large, greyish, turnip-type objects to be fed to the pigs or cattle? I only recall being very impressed, and not a little scared, at the precise split the great swinging blade made in the flesh of the worzel. Butter churns? We had oak-barrel churns with paddles branching from a central rotator but how a Jack Dollop would get into one through the milk hatch I wouldn't know. I've only just thought how marvellous Hardy's name is! One of the most frustrating things about churning butter is the paltry smallness of the dollop of butter you get after hours and hours of churning gallons of milk. We skimmed our cream with large ceramic plates. I hope somebody comes up with something far better than these meanderings! Best, Rosemarie ========== From: NORSTOKE@aol.com Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 04:52:45 EST Subject: Re: Dialect pronunciation and farming questions.. A swede hacker is a short-handled machete-like instrument with a slightly-curved blade. At its end, and as an extension of the casting, are two short prongs about 2 inches long. It was apparently thus designed so that the user could impale the swede after cutting and toss it into the cart/barrow without having to down tool and slow down. Not an easy task but a very well chosen one for Tess. Roger Williams Under The Greenwood Tree Garden Design ========== From: "K Eldron" Subject: Re: farming questions (imitate the action of a billhook).. Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 15:08:37 -0000 > Does anyone know the action used with a billhook to top and tail swedes. A very cautious one, I should think, given the relatively small size of a swede, the sharpness of the billhook and the numbness of cold fingers on early autumn/winter mornings! Certainly a lot less flamboyantly than your Brixton street trader uses.... I guess these are swedes being processed for feeding livestock? This seems to have been an operation that was subject to rudimentary mechanisation from the 1820s on, presumably because cutting one swede at a time was not only dangerous but very slow. Not that mechanisation was necessarily safer: my father-in-law can remember processing mangel wurzels for cattle in the 1950s with a sort of pedal driven rotating knife fed by a hopper - he remembers it because it took off the top of his thumb! > > Any pictures of an actual period milk skimmer gratefully received. There's a company called Shire Publications which produces a huge range of small, profusely illustrated books (Shire Albums) each covering a particualr historical topic. In "The Victorian Farmer" there's a photo of an old milk skimmer which is very much as you have imagined it: a 17 inch iron handle and a 7 inch diameter shallow brass ladle with three concentric circles of holes. Looks like a cross between a warming pan cover and a chestnut roasting pan! On the same page there's a photo taken inside a large Victorian cheesemaking dairy, which includes some kind of churning device: imagine a very large barrel turned on its side and mounted between crank arms that fit what would normally be its top and bottom. It has a largish hole cut out of one side (it looks as if a lid could be screwed down to cover the hole when the barrel was in use). It certain doesn't look as if it goes end over end like the small butter churns, but churns with an eccentric movement brought about by the crank arms. If you have time, there is a Shire Album called Dairying Bygones which may well have pictures of exactly what you are looking for. They're a brilliant series, widely available and blessedly cheap! I used two or three as reference books (for cidermaking equipment, laundry bits and pieces, and shepherds crooks) when producing a community play set in the 1830s. Good luck with the play! K Eldron kaffi@onetel.net.uk ========== Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 11:54:21 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re:Churning butter Back to butter churns in TD: while searching for something else I just came across the Dollop episode in TD and noticed (for the first time) that the butter churn is rotated by horse-power (XXI; a "boy kept the horse going outside"). The narrator also points out that in the case of Dollop, who was being hunted down by the enraged mother of his (jilted) sweetheart, the flight of the fugitive into the butter churn was effected by means of a trapdoor in the cylinder and that, in those days, this was "turned by hand-power" -- and in this particular instance by the fury of a parent who swings it round and round until Dollop screams for mercy. With every good wish, Rosemarie Morgan ========== From: "Michael Barry" Subject: Re: Re:Churning butter Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 18:54:56 -0000 Status: Just to add to the Jack Dollop incident - this story makes a hilarious act-drop on stage. We used it in 1993 and last year for our productions of Hardy's own script - and used a combination of the two letters of Clare from abroad as an act-drop between acts 3 and 4. Michael ========== Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 19:06:54 -0500 From: Thomas Law <114603.13@compuserve.com> Subject: Re: Dialect pronunciation and farming questions.. Dear Rosemarie, Thank you. Excellent and useful. All grist to the mill. Every bit brings me nearer. Our company, the Lions part, (www.thelionpart.co.uk) did a show this autumn about Land Girls and some of their experiences are so useful. One was even a 'band cutter' in a threshing scene that might have been lifted directly from Tess. I got a reply from the Museum of Rural Life at Glastonbury - worth a visit if you haven't. I attach for your interest. Interestingly, in the light of the below, the Land Girls referred to Swede Bashing which I took to be a reference to dull repetitive rythmic work rather like Square Bashing but perhaps it derived from something more literally like bashing. "I'll do what I can:- Swede hacking - I think the tool referred to has two prongs (shaped roughly like a horse-shoe) at right angles to the shaft, which would be a single pole about 4ft long. Sheep would graze the tops when the swedes were still in the ground and then somebody would go along and prize the half-eaten swedes completely out of the ground for them to have another go at. The ground could be frozen at that time of year. Skimming - Cream skimmers are different from curd skimmers. Both are used in cheese-making. A cream skimmer is used first to take off cream from a low wide container in which milk has been left to stand overnight. It has a short handle and a shallow ladle, almost round in plan. Curd skimmers are used to take off cheese curds from a bigger container in which cream and rennet have been put. It has a handle about 5ft long. I imagine cream skimming is what you have in mind. Beet chopping - Commonly done with a tool with two crossed blades configured like the feathers of a dart or fins of a rocket, again on a single shaft about 4ft long. This would be pounded up and down onto the mangles/beet. Bill hook - as you describe. I would think there were library books which would help - 'Old Farm Implements' by Vince, or one of the Shire Albums. Best wishes David Walker, Keeper - Social History, Museum of Rural Life, Glastonbury" I think the slicer was more like a chaff cutter or chipper with blades and a rotary handle - that made the 'swish' that Hardy refers to rather than a mushy bash which the chopper would have made. I spoke to a Land Girl recently who referred to just such a machine. Thanks again. Duncan ========== Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 19:44:30 -0500 From: Thomas Law <114603.13@compuserve.com> Subject: Tools info (and Shakespeare speculation) For those interested thought this was too good not to forward. For other apologies. I think the hacker would have been tool heads 1323 or 1324 on attachment 4. They look like they had slightly lighter, say 4' handles. Hardy describe the women looking like flies on the landscape ('flies to wanton boys: they kill us for their sport' - 'The president of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess'.... Incidentally, on Shakespearean references, I wonder if the numbers of tomorrows lining up one behind the other warning Tess 'Beware' isn't a composite image from a reading of Macbeth: 'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.. etc' combined with the images of the future kings of Scotland, a line which he fears will stretch out ' to th' cracke of Doome'. Two of the early apparitions conjured by the Witches are children.. This is idle and pointless speculation but the dread of the future and the pointlessness of living a fruitless existence of creeping petty paces and plodding drudgery in the knowledge of, as Tess says, what she might have been is common to both protagonists. Duncan -------------Forwarded Message----------------- From: "Cookworthy museum", INTERNET:wcookworthy@talk21.com To: "Thomas Law", [114603,13] Date: 2/20/2002 2:03 PM RE: Re: Tools query Dear Duncan, Apologies for the delay in replying, but we have found some information for you. Enclosed are scans (hopefully) of some illustrations which might be helpful. The drawing of a mattock is by Hubert Snowdon a retired local farmer who advises the Cookworthy Museum about farm tools. He suggests that a mattock would have been used for grubbing up turnips in Devon, in the manner he has drawn, although less experienced workers (women?) would probably stoop more. He described the mattock as "a single bladed digger, 3" wide narrowing up 9" above the neck with a ring on it. Ring 2" wide to hold a long handle about 4-5' long". He does not know of a tool called a hacker being used in Devon, and also says that beets would not have been grown here. Billhook photo from J Brown, Farm Tools and Techniques, a pictorial history BT Batsford Ltd 1993. Skimmers - 957, 958, 959, 960, 962, 963 and 964 are all skimmers. Turnip tool - 1324 a digging mattock, 'said to be used for digging turnips'. 1325 and 1326 are 'stubbers' - 1326 is said to be for digging out roots, but its true provenance is uncertain. Both taken from P Brears, The Old Devon Farmhouse Devon Books 1998 As most of the practices you enquired about were not common in Devon, you may find more information from the Dorset County Museum (01305) 262735, dorsetcountymuseum@dor-mus.demon.co.uk Hope this is of help to you, Sharon Wellington ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Law" <114603.13@compuserve.com> To: Sent: 13 February 2002 00:45 Subject: Tools query Dear Museum of Rural Life, I am directing a production of Tess of teh D'Urbervilles and have failed to find out exactly what a swede hacking hook looks like for grubbing up half eaten swedes to be sliced for animal fodder. Hardy describes it as 'a hooked fork called a hacker'. Was it long handled or short. Did the women work bent or straight backed or (unlikely) on their knees. If you have an illustration or know where I can get one I would be most grateful to hear >from you. I would also like to know about skimming tools. I imagine a flat ladle made of beaten metal on a long wooden handle. We imagine a beet cutter was similar to a chaff cutter but heavier as it had to do a heavier job. We think a bill-hook is like a machete with a downward pointing hook. A similar tool is sometimes used for splitting wood. The play is set in the 1880s but I imagine if the job was still being done by hand between the wars the tools hadn't greatly changed. BTW did they have mops in dairies in the 1880s. I sound anal I know but I like to know the gospel truth so that I can disregard it if it suits the drama.. Any info gratefully received and acknowledged in the programme. Sincerely Duncan Law ========== ----------------------- Internet Header -------------------------------- Sender: wcookworthy@talk21.com Received: from wmpmta02-app.mail-store.com ([194.73.242.4]) by siaag2af.compuserve.com (8.9.3/8.9.3/SUN-1.12) with ESMTP id JAA24723 for <114603.13@compuserve.com>; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 09:03:20 -0500 (EST) Received: from pixel ([62.7.149.124]) by wmpmta02-app.mail-store.com (InterMail vM.5.01.02.00 201-253-122-103-101-20001108) with SMTP id <20020220140105.BASE11740.wmpmta02-app.mail-store.com@pixel> for <114603.13@compuserve.com>; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 14:01:05 +0000 Message-ID: <001101c1ba17$419b5e80$0200000a@pixel> From: "Cookworthy museum" To: "Thomas Law" <114603.13@compuserve.com> References: <200202121945_MC3-F1C4-8412@compuserve.com> Subject: Re: Tools query Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 14:02:00 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000D_01C1BA17.2AE2B800" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 <<< MIME ATTACHMENT STRIPPED >>>