Category Archives: Cheshire Proverbs

Cheshire Proverbs 9: “A face like a Buckley Panmug”

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“A face like a Buckley panmug”

Bridge, J.S., no.6, p.2

I love this proverb, although Bridge, in irritatingly understated mode, comments simply “Buckley in Flintshire, a few miles from Chester, produces a good deal of coarse red earthenware.”

Buckley wares in the Grosvenor Museum collection

Buckley wares in the Grosvenor Museum collection

This is the sixth of Bridge’s proverbs, on only the second page of his collection, and although it clearly failed to impress Bridge with any sense of historical depth and interest, the Buckley ceramic potteries near Mold in north Wales were major producers of a number of different types of pottery, nearly all coarseware, produced in great volume.  There is not a field or garden in the area that does not produce at least a few sherds of Buckley ware, and many of them produce a great deal.  I have unearthed tons of it in the form of sherds from my garden.

The earliest potteries were established in the Middle Ages and continued to produce coarsewares well into the 20th century.  Nearly all of the potteries have been lost, as the Buckley area has been expanded via large housing developments, although archaeological excavations have been carried out in recent decades that have helped to supplement documentary information.

Different examples of Buckley pottery. Source: CPAT Report no.1246.

The Buckley potteries were established to take advantage of the underlying on Westphalian (Coal Measure) clays where crops of Ruabon Marl appear on the surface, comprising mudstones, siltstones and sandstones that formed from waterlogged alluvial floodplain silts and provided the fireclays used in the potteries.

First, what on earth is a “panmug” when it escapes from domestic captivity?  I could not find a picture of one but thankfully, amongst other sources, here’s a description from Egerton-Leigh’s 1877 glossary of Cheshire dialect, which makes it quite clear that it was indeed made of the Buckley coarse red pottery, that it was used primarily for dairy products, and goes on to explain the “face like a panmug” reference:

Panmug, s. – (pronounced paanmoog) . . .  The coarse red crockery  used in family operations for cheese milk, butter, &c., and any rough use. A girl who was taken to see Capesthorne Hall, which contains (or contained before the fire), amongst many curiosities, a valuable collection of Etruscan vases, described to her mother on her return how beautiful everything was, but that she had been surprised to see “the paanmoogs kept in the house place” i.e. the best sitting room).  Our Cheshire panmugs are manufactured mostly at Buckley, in the neighbouring county of Flint. A man with a red, coarse, blotchy countenance (not unfrequently the result of hard drinking) is said to have “a feace like a Buckley paanmug.” [Leigh 1877]

Beehive kiln base Lewis Pottery

The base of the beehive kiln at Lewis’s Pottery during excavations in 2000. Source: Earthworks Archaeology, via CPAT Report 1246.

Although established in the Middle Ages, the Buckley industry began to expand significantly in the 18th century, becoming a major producer in the 19th century.  Well-known travel writer Thomas Pennant visited in 1786 and described 14 potteries that produced coarse earthenware “such as pans, jugs, great pots for butter, plates, dishes, ovens, flower pots, etc,” with a significant export trade to Ireland and the Welsh coast.  Research since then has identified at least 31 potential potteries, all small family industries.  The range of items produced was considerable.  As well as household and garden items, specialized products were also manufactured, like door handles, as well as items for the tourist industry, such as teapots and novelty items specific to particular resorts showing placenames and phrases in Welsh.  Industrial output included heat-resistant refractory bricks which could be used in kilns, crucibles and blast furnace linings.

Other areas made very similar coarse wares, including Stoke-on- Trent, South Lancashire (including Liverpool), Whitehaven, and the Glasgow. Each of these produced black-glazed, red-bodied earthenwares using very similar clays and techniques to those at Buckley.  Although when found locally it can be confidently assigned to Buckley, when found further afield it may be difficult to distinguish from pottery made by these other centres.  A classic example is the richly glazed dark coarseware decorated with curving lines of yellow slip, often referred to as “Staffordshire ware” but, in this area, much more likely to be Buckley ware.

Although Buckley ware was commonplace, many types are now collected, and it may be found in museum collections and can reach fairly high prices in antique shops and at auction.

For more about J.C. Bridge and this Cheshire Proverbs series,
see Cheshire Proverbs 1.

For the other proverbs in the series, click on the Cheshire Proverbs label
in the right hand margin, or see the end of the Archaeology, Heritage and Art page, where they are listed.

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Sources:

Books and papers

Bridge, J.C. 1917.  Cheshire Proverbs and Other Sayings and Rhymes Connected with the City an County Palatine of Chester.  Phillipson and Golder (Chester)

Jones, Nigel, W. 2019. The Buckley Potteries Recent Research and Excavation. Archaeopress

Leigh, Lt-Col Egerton M.P 1877. A glossary of words used in the dialect of Cheshire founded on a similar attempt by Roger Wilbraham F.R.S. and F.S.A. Contributed to the Society of Antiquaries.  Minshull and Hughes
ia801204.us.archive.org/0/items/glossaryofwordsu00leigrich/glossaryofwordsu00leigrich.pdf

Websites

Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT)
CPAT report No. 1246 The Buckley Potteries: an assessment of survival and potential
https://coflein.gov.uk/media/263/618/652220.pdf
CPAT Report No. 1476 Brookhill Pottery, Buckley
https://coflein.gov.uk/media/291/13/652259.pdf

People’s Collection Wales
Buckley Pottery
https://www.peoplescollection.wales/collections/376938

Pilgrims and Posies blog
The Cheshire Prophet
https://pilgrimsandposies.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-cheshire-prophet.html

 

Cheshire Proverbs 8: “As Bare as the Bishop of Chester” (15th Century)

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“As Bare as the Bishop of Chester”

J.C. Bridge, no.33, p.9

 

This comes from a poem that Bridge believes dates to the time of Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483), and he suggests that it may belong to the period between the 1460s and 70s.  There are two versions of it surviving in contemporary manuscripts (which I have massaged into modern English).

Hearken to my tale that I shall show
For of such marvels I have heard four
If any of them be  a lie that I tell after
I would I were as bare as the Bishop of Chester

The second version reads as follows:

Hearken to my message that I shall to you show
For of such marvels you have heard but few
If any of them be untrue that I shall tell you after,
Then become I as poor as the Bishop of Chester

As Bridge points out, this refers to the first Chester Bishopric at St John the Baptist’s, not the one founded by Henry VIII in 1541 that converted the dissolved Benedictine Abbey of St Werburgh to become Chester’s new cathedral.

 

A bit of background

Lead seal of Peter, Bishop of Chester

Lead seal mould of Peter, Bishop of Chester 1075-1085 (Chester Archaeology). Source: The Medieval Period Resource Assessment 2007

In the 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury Lanfranc decreed that bishops should locate themselves in the largest and most impressive provincial centre within their area of responsibility (called a see).  Accordingly, in 1075 the Bishop Peter of Lichfield moved his power base to Chester and began to build a new cathedral commensurate with the importance of his status in his newly adopted town in a monumental Romanesque style, dedicated to St John the Baptist.  Quite why he decided to build outside the walls could be explained in a number of ways, but may have had something to do with Hugh d’Avranches, the first Earl of Chester, who may already have had plans for an ecclesiastical institution within the city walls on an existing church site (St Werburgh’s Abbey, founded in 1093);  or it may have been something to do with a shortage of space for such a large project.  Whatever the reason, by establishing it where he did, on the site of a church that is thought to have been established in the 7th century, he provided his own foundation with a sense of longstanding religious heritage that reinforced its validity as a primary Christian house.

On the death of Bishop Peter in 1095, the role passed to Robert de Limsey.  Bishop Robert abandoned the Chester cathedral in 1102, shifting the see to Coventry, probably to take advantage of the considerable wealth of the Priory of St Mary, which became a new cathedral.  Work foundered on Chester’s St John’s Cathedral which, in spite of no incumbent bishop, retained its role, with subsequent bishops of Coventry and Lichfield terming themselves, when convenient, Bishop of Chester at least into the 16th century.

Work resumed on St John’s a century after the death of Bishop Peter, and was completed sometime in the late 1200s, becoming a successful collegiate church.  It is to this period that the upper storeys belong.  Today’s tower replaces the one that partially collapsed in 1881 after a lightning strike.  The cathedral was included in the local pilgrimage route, along with the Abbey of St Werburgh, when it acquired what was claimed to be a relic of the true cross during the Crusades.
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Back to the proverb

The glorious Romanesque interior of St John's, Chester

The glorious Romanesque interior of St John’s, Chester

There are four possible interpretations of the poem.  The first is that posed by Bridge himself, which is that it was a “sarcastic” reference to the sheer wealth of the Bishops of Coventry and Lichfield.  Douglas Jones highlights how the livings earned by those appointed to different roles at St John’s were doing very nicely, and were far more wealthy than all local churches other than the Rectory of St Mary’s.  Between 1300 and 1430 six out of ninety-one canons of St John’s were presented by the King and three by the Prince of Wales, with twelve by the Pope. Twenty-seven were arranged by the Bishop, and when he was free to make his own choices, he “seems often to have regarded the prebendal status of the collegiate church as providing a source of additional pocket money for his relatives, his friends and his clerks” (Jones, p.17).  Some of those appointed to St John’s rose to positions of great regional and national influence.

In a second possible scenario, the word “bare” could equate to “threadbare,” referring to the fact that the title of “Bishop of Chester” was no more than nominal, nothing more than the smoke and mirrors promoted by the bishopric of Coventry and Litchfield which, having abandoned Chester in favour of more profitable regions, had retained its rights over title to it, and had left St John’s as nothing more than a sinecure.

In a third possible interpretation, it is distinctly possible that it was a matter of considerable amusement within Chester that there was an ongoing quarrel between St John’s and St Werburgh’s, both wealthy institutions that stood above and over the general populace.  In general, monastic institutions were obliged to pay an annual sum to the Bishopric, by whom they were overseen, and to whom they had to account for themselves.  It was the ambition of many monasteries to escape both the financial obligation and the ongoing interference, and Chester had petitioned the pope for just such a relief.  It was granted an exemption in 1363, but nothing at St Werburgh’s ever ran smoothly, and the ongoing fight to retain independence was always at odds with the interests of the Bishops, still nominally of St John’s, to resume its position of influence.  This ongoing failure to entirely subdue St Werburgh’s and bring it back into the financial fold may also have been a source of amusement and comment amongst Chester’s populace about both St John’s and St Werburgh’s.

St John's Chester 1881 after tower collapse

The cathedral in 1881 after the collapse of the top of the 16th century tower. Now in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. Artist unknown.

The final possible interpretation (unless someone else has other ideas) could also refer to a loss of financial income for St John’s in the 15th century.  Jones says that Owen Glyndŵr’s rebellion had had a considerable impact on ecclesiastical finances after 1430.  It is again pure speculation, but it is possible that St John’s, like other ecclesiastical institutions in Chester, was suffering an unaccustomed shortage of funds, and that this was a source of some amusement in the local community.

In any one of these scenarios, the Bishop of Chester could be said to be “bare,” either in tones of irony due to his extreme wealth, or actually reflecting a documented change in the financial fortunes of Chester’s St John’s that was responded to in Chester with a distinct sense of schadenfreude.
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Final Comments

I particularly like two aspects of this proverb.  The first is that it recalls a part of Chester’s history that is often forgotten, which is that St John’s was not only established as a cathedral but continued to perform the role into the 16th century.  Secondly, I love that this proverb is fundamentally embedded in what must have been a topic of real controversy in Chester:  a bishopric that provided its various incumbents and administrators with a high wage, but whose leaders were absent, claiming rights over Chester and drawing status from it without being any part of the city.  When St John’s and its employees went through less profitable times, there was probably very little sympathy in the city.  In fact, there was almost certainly a distinct sense of justice having been served.  Whether the proverb refers to greater or less profitable times, there is a distinct sense that the relationship between the St John’s and the City was often far from harmonious and that the bishops themselves were bare of any form of substance.  However it may be interpreted, this proverb captures the fact that Chester’s ecclesiastical past was not merely a barely remarked upon fact of life, but something that was noticed and discussed, not always in favourable terms.

 

For more about J.C. Bridge and this Cheshire Proverbs series,
see Cheshire Proverbs 1.

For the other proverbs in the series, click on the Cheshire Proverbs label
in the right hand margin, or see the end of the Archaeology, Heritage and Art page, where they are listed.

 

The east end of St John's, walled off from the main church after the Dissolution

The east end of St John’s, walled off from the main church after the Dissolution

 

Sources:

Books and papers

Boughton, Peter 1997.  Picturesque Chester. The City in Art. Chester City Council and Phillimore

Bridge, J.C. 1917.  Cheshire Proverbs and Other Sayings and Rhymes Connected with the City an County Palatine of Chester.  Phillipson and Golder (Chester)

Carrington, Peter 1994.  Book of Chester.  B.T. Batsford / English Heritage

Jones, Douglas 1957.  The Church in Chester 1300-1540. Chetham Society

Pevsner, Nikolaus and Edward Hubbard 1971. The Buildings of England: Cheshire. Penguin Books

Websites

St John the Baptist
A History of St John’s
https://stjohnschester.uk/history-of-st-johns-chester/

 

 

Cheshire Proverbs 7: “Rain has such narrow shoulders . . . “

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Rain in Churton

Rain in Churton

 

Rain has such narrow shoulders it will get everywhere

J.C. Bridge no.274, page 105

 

Beeston hill, seen from Churton, under a very black cloud

Beeston hill, seen from Churton, under a very black cloud

And oh boy.  When it rains around here one is left in no doubt on the subject.  It comes down in  dense sheets of uncompromising verticality, bouncing when it hits pavements, roads and patios and it pools morosely wherever it gets the opportunity, seeping into every nook and cranny. The river Dee builds ominously between its banks, eventually overflowing into its floodplain, drenching footpaths and edging its way ominously towards the little hairdresser at the foot of Holt and isolating the new house above the footpath on the Farndon side of the bridge.

I lived in Aberdyfi on the mid-Welsh coast for two years immediately prior to coming to West Cheshire after leaving London, and I thought that I would never see such thoroughly determined rainfall ever again.  But most Aberdyfi houses are on the side of a steep hill, mine included, and all the rainwater had the courtesy to run downhill and deposit itself into the sea.  Cheshire, being flat and often poorly drained, is different.  The wellington boots that I bought for mudlarking on the Thames foreshore when I lived in London have come into their own for use on what I once thought of as dry land.  In west Cheshire, dry land is a very movable feast.

Joseph Bridge offers no comments about this proverb, presumably believing, very justifiably, that this one speaks for itself.  Not all of them do, even when Bridge seems to think that they are perfectly transparent, but this one is completely unambiguous to a resident on the Welsh borders.

I started this series on Cheshire Proverbs a couple of years ago and then, during a big rearrangement, lost the Joseph Bridge book on which it was based: Cheshire Proverbs and other Sayings and Rhymes Connected with the City and County Palatine of Chester.  I found it the other day, and even though there has been a big gap between the previous proverb in the series and this one, it seemed worth reviving.  If you would like to know about his proverbs, sayings and rhymes, you can see the Introduction to the series here. Other proverbs in the series are listed here, at the very end of the Archaeology, Heritage and Art page.

 

Cheshire Proverbs 6: Tied by the Tooth / Llyffethr wellt

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Tied by the Tooth /
Llyffethr wellt

Bridge’s number 324, page 124

Dairy cattle relaxing at 4am on a misty morning in a Churton field in June 2021

 

Sheep on Craig yr Aderyn in midwest Wales

Bridge explains that this proverb refers to the fact that “sheep and cattle will not break through fences or try to wander if the pasture of the field in which they are grazing is very good.”  He had obviously not run into any pigs, which are extreme escape artists.

Bridge wonders which came first – the English or the Welsh version of the proverb, but both Cheshire and north Wales are prominent areas for the grazing of livestock, so it could have come from either.  Certainly around many areas of the Cheshire Plain the fields are full of rich pasture favoured by cattle, and the Welsh foothills and highlands are much better for sheep that graze on much sparser vegetation.

It sounds very much like the better known proverb in which the route to the male heart is reputed to be via his stomach.

Cattle grazing below Beeston Castle

A similar proverb in Bridge is “Hanged hay never does cattle” (Bridge 159, page 64).  The word “does” in this context derives from doesome, which means “thriving,” and hanged hay for is feed bought from a supplier and will probably be supplied very meanly to the cattle because of the cost, to the detriment to the cattle.

Both proverbs also resemble another of Bridge’s Cheshire proverbs (no. 208 on p.80, and no.159, p.64):  “A doesome child paises its pasture,” meaning that the health and wellbeing of a thriving child is credit to his or her food, and perhaps, by extension, to the care of the parents that provide the food.  The word “paise” comes from late Middle English and means to be “balanced” or “poised,” but in this context it may be a mistaken reading of “praise.”

For more about J.C. Bridge and this Cheshire Proverbs series, see Cheshire Proverbs 1.

For the other proverbs in the series, click on the Cheshire Proverbs label in the right hand margin, or see the end of the Archaeology, Heritage and Art page, where they are listed.

Dairy cows grazing in a field in Churton

Cheshire Proverbs 5: We shall live till we die if the pigs don’t eat us

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“We shall live till we die if the pigs don’t eat us”

J.C. Bridge no.382, page 149


J.C. Bridge does not say why this proverb is supposed to be characteristic of Cheshire, and nor is he at all helpful as to its origins and meaning.  One of the puzzles in the proverb is the idea implicit in the phrasing that being eaten by a pig does not necessarily result in instant death. Alternatively, the phrase might be interpreted as suggesting that we will live until we are supposed to die unless the pigs get to us first, suggesting an interruption to the divine plan that would otherwise see us die on a certain date.  How to get nearer to the actual meaning?

Tantrabobus

Bridge, apparently in an attempt to elucidate the situation, makes the sole comment “We shall live till we die like Tantrabobus” and leaves us to make of that what we may.  I remained unenlightened.  I had no idea what or who a Tantrobobus might be, and the matter is still more than a little opaque.  The word was certainly a late 18th century colloquial term used in the U.S. state of Vermont.  The Only in Arkansas website describes it as follows:

A modern interpretation of the Tantrabobus. Source: Oxford University Press blog

A Tantrabobus, or ‘Haint’ was an evil monster rumored to live inside wells. According to Philip Steele’s book Ozark Tales and Superstitions, children were encouraged to never look inside wells lest the monsters place a spell on them and draw them down into the darkness forever.
[Ozark is an area shared between neighbouring Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma]

This story is echoed in various Arkansas-related websites and books, and was clearly a widespread legend, perhaps dreamed up and disseminated by parents to warn children against the dangers of deep wells.  Painting the ceiling of a house porch blue was supposed to scare off the haint.

Unless the origins of the well-inhabiting monster were in England, it’s difficult to see how it relates to a Cheshire proverb.  A slightly different word, however, does originate in England. “Tantarabobs” was apparently a Devonshire name for the devil, and the Oxford University Press’s blog offers another devil-related version:

Tantrumbobus is a relative of Flibbertigibbet, Hoberdidance, and Obidicut (also known as Haberdicut), the fiends mentioned in King Lear. I wonder whether English dander “to walk around; to talk inherently” and especially Old High German tantaron “to be out of one’s mind” are kin of the British devils, and, if so, whether those devils were also known on the continent.

All very interesting, but I still had no idea why anyone might be eaten by a pig before the date in Death’s personal organizer.

The country of the Gadarenes

Part of Newberry’s 1928 analysis of Seth as a black pig

In ancient Egypt, the pig is associated with Seth, the ambivalent but mainly trouble-making deity, in direct opposition to the good god Osiris, who Seth killed and dismembered, scattering his remains in the Nile (but don’t panic; he was re-assembled and resurrected by the goddess Isis). Following the Egyptian idea of evil and pigs being identified with one another, I had a look around and sure enough, the Christian devil is sometimes equated to a pig.  According to the Open Bible website, there are numerous verses that concern themselves with pigs.  One in particular, in Matthew 8:28-32, tells a story of transmogrification, whereby humans are converted into pigs (English Standard Version):

And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” And he said to them, “Go.” So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters.

Fascinating and horrifying, but not an explanation of being eaten, unless “eat” is a metaphor for being transmogrified / transmigrated.  This is what Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) inferred in the late 19th Century.  His longer version of the proverb is “Ah well, we shall live till we die, if the pigs don’t eat us, and then we shall go acorning.”  He writes that the proverb is “a clear survival of the belief in transmigration, for he who is eaten by a pig becomes a pig, and goeth with the swine to eat acorns.” 

The story Jeffries recounts to illustrate this is the nearest I have found to an explanation of the proverb.  He tells the tale of a village elder who had been generous to everyone around him, but had suffered persecution.  He magnanimously ignored the offenses against him, but his rather less forgiving family consoled themselves with this proverb.  I take it from this that the family thought that the perpetrators would suffer some form of retribution roughly comparable to being consumed by pigs and forced to eat acorns. 

In other words, what goes around comes around.

All of that offers some sort of answer about the connection between the Tantrabobus, the pig and the devil, and also gets close to what the proverb may mean, but it doesn’t get us anywhere near to explaining why this proverb was considered by Bridge to have some peculiar connection to Cheshire.  So my final question concerned the role of pig in Cheshire farming through the centuries prior to Bridge’s 1917 book.

Pigs in Cheshire

Generically, because pigs are omnivorous, will eat agricultural and household waste and will happily forage in woodland, and because they have big litters of piglets that can be eaten or sold, they offer a useful complement to the big three livestock breeds: cattle, sheep and goat.  The big three give birth to only one or two infants at a time, and although these too can be eaten or traded, their great value lies in the fact that the females can be milked and used to produce dairy products.  In terms of both meat and dairy, livestock represents storage on the hoof.  If disease hits any of the big three herds, the recovery time can take many, many years.  The big three are therefore curated with great care, whilst pigs, being both easier to feed and producing multiple offspring, are inherently much more disposable.

Men knocking down acorns to feed swine, from the 14th century English Queen Mary Psalter, MS. Royal 2 B VII f.81v. Source: British Library via Wikipedia

During the Anglo-Saxon period, the pannage system involved the seasonal driving of pigs into woodland to feed upon acorns, nuts, rhizomes and roots.  In some areas this persisted well into the Medieval period.  Cheshire, once full of rich forests, was ideal pig territory, offering shade, food and shelter, because pigs, in their natural environment, are woodland dwellers.  Although often seen in Britain today in open fields, in their preferred habitat they forage with their leathery snouts for roots and nuts under trees, and they nest in hollowed-out depressions.  They cannot perspire, so they wallow in woodland mud and pools of water to keep cool in the summer.  Sociable creatures, they tend to form communities.

Image from the Hunterian Psalter folio 6r. Gathering acorns for pigs in November. Source: Glasgow University Library

In the later Middle Ages, there is plenty of evidence that pigs were increasingly managed as a resource, making use of their singularly indiscriminating appetites to trim down agricultural stubble, devour household waste (including food leftovers and household rubbish) and the by-products of dairying, and in Cheshire this was particularly related to cheese-making.   Many became enclosed in fields, gardens and even sheds.  A single pig could be kept by even the poorest householder, and the owner of several pigs could generate a good income by selling both piglets and fattened pigs for slaughter.  As late as 1550 it is recorded that pigs still roamed the streets in Chester, and they were probably even more prominent in everyday village life.

In the latter part of the 18th Century, pig keeping was usually an essential part of farming practise, even on farms dedicated to cheese-making.  Geoffrey Scard gives the example of a 25 acre dairy farm majoring on cheese, which had the following holding of livestock in the latter part of the 18th Century:

 9 crossbred Cheshire shorthorns, 2 yearling heifers, 2 heifer calves, 10 pigs and 20 hens.

Pigs were clearly an essential part of the economic profile of the farm.  Scard next gives the example of the much larger 243 acre dairy farm at Cholmondeley in the 19th Century.  The following animals were kept:

2 ponies, 3 carthorses, 51 milking cows, 16 two-year heifers, 17 yearling heifers, 15 heifer calves, 1 bull, 66 Shropshire ewes and lambs, 55 half-breed withers and 100 pigs.

Piglets of the Welsh pig breed. Source: British Pig Association

In simple numbers, pigs dominated, but as a balance to cattle and sheep.  In the late 19th Century, a breed known as the Welsh became popular.  A very pale pink-white, with big lop-ears, it was first mentioned in the 1870s when, according to the British Pig Association, there was a considerable trade in Welsh and Shropshire pigs into Cheshire, specifically for fattening on milk by-products, from cattle (and possibly sheep).  The milk by-products would have had to be disposed of and wasted if not consumed, so it was essentially free to feed pigs who became fatter and more valuable and were handy waste disposal units to boot.  By contrast, the feeding of cattle was expensive, so using milk by-products to feed pigs helped to pay for the upkeep of cattle.

From this we can conclude that the pig had an important role in Cheshire, and that this may account for why Bridge considered the proverb to be peculiarly appropriate in a book of Cheshire proverbs.

All of this is pure speculation, but what an awful lot of fun 🙂

For more about J.C. Bridge and this Cheshire Proverbs series, see Cheshire Proverbs 1.

An index of all posts in the Cheshire Proverbs series can be found
on the Archaeology, Heritage and Art page

Sources:

Books and papers

Bridge, J.C. 1917,  Cheshire Proverbs and Other Sayings and Rhymes Connected with the City an County Palatine of Chester Phillipson and Golder (Chester)

Hamilton, J.  and Thomas, R. 2012.  Pannage, Pulses and Pigs: Isotopic and Zooarchaeological Evidence for Changing Pig Management Practices in Later Medieval England.  Medieval Archaeology 56(1), p.234-259
https://www.academia.edu/15571794/Pannage_Pulses_and_Pigs_Isotopic_and_Zooarchaeological_Evidence_for_Changing_Pig_Management_Practices_in_Later_Medieval_England

Jeffries, R. 1948. Field and Hedgerow: Being the Last Essays of Richard Jefferies.  Lutterworth Press
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7030

Newberry, P.E. 1928. The Pig and the Cult-Animal of Set. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
Vol. 14, No. 3/4 (Nov., 1928), p.211-225

Scard, G. 1981.  Squire and Tenant:  Rural Life in Cheshire 1760-1900.  Cheshire Community Council

Websites

British History Online
Later medieval Chester 1230-1550: Economy and society, 1350-1550
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/ches/vol5/pt1/pp64-80

The British Pig Association
The Welsh
https://www.britishpigs.org.uk/welsh

Only In Arkansas.com
Arkansas Superstitions: The Tantrabobus in Grandpa’s Well by Liz Harrell
https://onlyinark.com/culture/arkansas-superstitions-tantrabobus/

OpenBible.info
Pigs
https://www.openbible.info/topics/pigs

Oxford University Press blog
A few bogus etymologies: “tantrum,” “dander,” “dandruff,” and “dunderhead,” along with “getting one’s goat” by Anatoly Liberman
https://blog.oup.com/2017/09/tantrum-dandruff-dander-etymology/

Wordfoolery blog
The history of the word “bogus”
https://wordfoolery.wordpress.com/tag/word-origin/

 

Cheshire Proverbs 4: “When the daughter is stolen, shut the Pepper Gate”

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“When the daughter is stolen, shut the Pepper Gate”

J.C. Bridge no.387, page 151

 

Source: Ballads and Legends of Chester by Egerton Leigh, 1867 (full book available online)

This proverb refers specifically to Pepper Street in Chester.  Pepper Gate was presumably located exactly where Newgate was built, along the line of the Roman walls.

Bridge devotes three and a half pages to the proverb, and there is a complete account of one version of the story in Egerton Leigh’s Ballads and Legends of Cheshire.  As Bridge says, the proverb is a local (and more amusing) version of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.  In this case, it was a girl rather than a horse.  There are two versions of the story, one that claims that she was actually stolen (i.e. kidnapped) and the other that she engineered her own departure through the gate.  In the latter context, the word “stolen” perhaps refers to her lover’s persuasions, convincing her to leave her home and run away with him.  Bridge gives the latter version first:

A daughter of a certain Mayor of Chester was playing at ball – Nausicaa like – with other maidens one fine summer’s day in Pepper Street.  The Gate of the street was shut, but there was a small postern open, and through this the maid threw the ball – no doubt by design though it seemed at the time by accident.  She ran through the postern to get it, and found herself in the arms of her lover who was waiting.  he threw her on his horse, rode off with her and married her.  Hence the Gate was afterwards kept entirely shut. [Bridge, pages 151-152]

A postern is a secondary door or gate to the side of a much larger one, common in castle and church architecture.  Bridge’s reference to Nausicaa refers to a young woman in Homer’s Odyssey.  The daughter of King Alcinous and Queen Arete of Phaeacia is playing ball with her handmaidens whilst waiting for laundry to dry at the water’s edge, unaware that Odysseus has been shipwrecked on their island.  A ball landing in the water wakens Odysseus and although the handmaidens flee in fear, Nausicaa stands her ground.  However, unlike our Pepper Street girl, she never gets together with Odysseus, although there was obviously a lot of meaningful eye-contact going on.

A detail of the delightful (and useful) Chester 1599 map by Braun & Hogenberg, annotated to show Pepper Street and the gate. Source: Sanderus Antique Maps and Books

A thirteenth century story , quoted by Canon Morris, bears a resemblance to the proverb, but involves the daughter being taken by a young man, rather than her running away to him:  “A younge man in the somer season toke a Mayres daughter and bere hur out of Pepur strete as she was playnge at the baule amongst other maydens and youd wyth her awaye and after he maryed the same mayde.”

The identity of the Mayor, the girl and her lover take up much of Bridge’s text.  Again quoting Canon Morris, Bridge repeats a similar story relating to the 1570s in which the father was in fact an alderman, Rauff Aldersey, the daughter Ellen Aldersey and the lover Rauff Jaman, a draper, to whom she was married “by an unlawful minister.”  Both of the men accused of “enticing and stealing away” were said to have been punished with fines.  In both the 13th and 16th Century versions the gate was closed completely at first following this offense, and then, apparently following objections, was open during the day but closed at night.  In Morris’s version the gate is described as “Wolfe-gate or New-gate.”  All three names for the gate are recorded.

Looking around for more on this proverb, I found an online version of the book Ballads and Legends of Cheshire by Egerton Leigh, 1867, which you can download here.  In this version, rhyming and hugely entertaining, the girl is called Rose.  The full story is five small pages long in Leigh’s book.  The opening lines of the tale are shown right, which gives an excellent flavour of it.  I love the bit about girls being prone, at a certain age, to exchanging their dolls for a man with a beard.  A superb insight into teenagers of every era.  The ballad goes on to describe her as a very beautiful young woman:

Her long curling tresses, though dark as the night,
When kissed by the sunbeam shone golden with light.
Her eyes of that sort, should she once glance at you,
You’d forever to all peace of mind wish adieu

Her lover was no less attractive:

He was not the man for whom fair maids might say
That most disagreeable of short words Nay.
Young, noble and handsome and devil-may-care
With the brain to conceive and brave heart to dare
Amongst men a lion; with ladies a lamb;
A look that said, laughing, ‘Refuse me who can!’

According to the ballad, Rose’s father was seriously unimpressed by her suitor’s lack of wealth and was prejudiced against the match, hence the requirement for the ball-game elopement:

Backwards and forwards bounds the ball,
Pursued by nymphs it leaps the wall ;
Through Pepper Gate in crowds they run ;
Back to the street the ball is flung ;
Hotter and hotter grows the fun

And here, Rose is swept up onto her lover’s horse, Lochinvar-style, and the couple ride away into the distance.  Rose’s father was distraught:

Bad news flies fast, and Chester’s mayor
At once began his locks to tear,
Bustled for nothing here and there.
Swore his daughter he’d ne’er forgive;
Vowed her lover should never live !
Declared his wealth he’d leave the poor,
Nor Rose should never cross his door.

The Pepper Gate is blamed by Rose’s father, the mayor, for Rose’s departure, and measures are accordingly taken:

The case is put; it seemed quite clear
That the mayor’s daughter (Rosy dear)
Could not through Pepper Gate have run
Had not the bars been left undone.
They pass a law to close the gate
Through which the wild Rose sought her mate.

The residents of Chester, however, know that this measure is redundant, because Rose has already gone, never to return. It is done anyway, but is derided by the towns-folk:

The townsmen smile : say they, “What for,
“when steed is gone, close stable door ?
When stolen the daughter, all too late
It is to close the Pepper Gate.

In all of the different versions, the girl, whether Ellen or Rose, is long gone, and it’s a bit late to slam shut the gate through which she vanished.

The ballad describes Rose’s lover as Welsh.  Bridge also considers “the original Chester ‘Lochinvar’ ” to be Welsh, basing his suggestion on a Welsh proverb “Gurru, gurru, gurru i’ Caer I briodi merch y Maer” (Trotting, trotting, trotting to Chester to marry the Mayor’s daughter.”

Newgate (formerly, in previous guises, Peppergate and Wolfgate) in 1925. Source: The impressive “Chester: A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls” website (the Newgate page)

Proverbs are time-twisted and tangled, but the themes that emerge from the spaghetti become well-honed and much-tested forms of vernacular wisdom, and are always worth some pondering.  The bolting daughter has not survived in common parlance, but the bolting horse has become a shorthand for (for example) buying a burglar alarm only after the thief has stolen the family jewels.  Such phrases have become so embedded into language that only the first half of the proverb is usually needed to make the required point.  The phrase “shutting the stable door” is nowadays quite sufficient for anyone to know that something was done too late to prevent an undesirable outcome, be it a daughter eloping, a horse bolting, or the family heirlooms being whisked away for nefarious profit.

For more about J.C. Bridge and this Cheshire Proverbs series, see Cheshire Proverbs 1.

 

Cheshire Proverbs 3: “To grin like a Cheshire cat chewing green gravel”

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“To Grin Like a Cheshire Cat Chewing Green Gravel”


J.C. Bridge no. 342, p.125

 

John tenniel’s illustration of the Cheshire Cat, for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, (published 1865).  Source of photograph:  Wikipedia

Bridge’s version of this proverb is the one that I always knew, quite simply stating “To grin like a Cheshire cat.”   Bridge adds that variants of the proverb regarding the familiar grinning cat involved it chewing gravel or green gravel, which is the version that I’ve included in the header, merely for its novelty value, although Bridge is dubious regarding the authenticity of either variant.

Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898), who lived in Daresbury in east Cheshire, was responsible for the popularity of this particular proverb, and it was made famous by John Tenniel’s illustrations in Carroll’s 1865 book Alice in Wonderland.  Carroll, however, did not invent the grinning Cheshire cat proverb.

During my short time looking at proverbs, I have learned that although their meanings sometimes survive, in many other cases the origins of the proverbs are long-lost in the quagmire of oral history, itself a tale of Chinese whispers.  Proverbs fascinate people not merely because they are striking, but because they are multi-layered.  As well as meaning, they have history, and as well as history, they capture a tone of the oral vernacular past that has been largely lost. Carroll’s entertaining appropriation of the Cheshire cat in 1865 presumably had very little to do with the proverb itself, but acquired an energy and life all of its own.  As time passes and Alice in Wonderland fades from the reading lists of current and future generations, Carroll’s reinvention of the Cheshire cat may also fade, much like the cat itself, which slowly vanishes to leave behind nothing but the grin itself.  That would be a shame.

Bridge is rather severe about the proverb.  He says that it is must be made clear that it is not an old saying “and no old writer or old collection of Proverb gives it” (Bridge’s italics).  He says that the oldest example is in the works of Peter Pindar dating to c.1794/1801:  “Lo! like a Cheshire cat our court will grin.”  He points out that it is not “and never has been” a very common saying in the Cheshire county.  Finally, he says that to date (and his date was 1917) none of the numerous attempts to elucidate it had been successful.

Bridge devotes another two and a half pages to this lack of success.  He begins with the unsubstantiated story of an unskilled sign-painter whose attempt to depict a lion-rampant looked more like a grinning cat, and the rest runs along similar lines.  It is a highly entertaining discourse between different writers on the possible origins of the proverb, but none of it is, as Bridge points out, verifiable or even plausible.  I particularly like the idea posed in 1850 that some Cheshire cheeses were sold in the form of a cat with bristles inserted to represent whiskers.  An indignant Bridge comments “I feel sure that the writer was mistaken.  Good Cheshire Cheese could not be made, and certainly never was made in the shape of Cats, or it would have ceased to be high class and to command the market.”  In the end Bridge thinks that a theory put forward by one Egerton Leigh is most likely to represent the reality:  “one need not go far to account for a Cheshire cat grinning.  A cat’s paradise must naturally be placed in a County like Cheshire, flowing with milk.”

Heat sensitive Cheshire cat-themed mug. Source: Amazon.

Carroll’s imaginative revival of the proverb has been incorporated into many popular contexts.  My family lived in Nantwich for a couple of years, and there was a very famous pub there called The Cheshire Cat, a half-timbered building that was originally built in the 17th Century. It had gone out of business when I was last there a few years ago, but there’s a website that indicates that it is back up and running, which is good news.

I was amused to see that the concept of the Cheshire cat has infiltrated itself into scientific lore.  Wikipedia has a list of examples, and a nice one from quantum mechanics has a phenomenon named “The Cheshire Cat,” in which a particle and its property behave as if they are separated.  Just as much fun, although infinitely less sophisticated, is the heat-sensitive mug that I found on Amazon, where the John Tenniel illustration of the cat vanishes as the mug warms through, leaving just the grin behind.

For more about J.C. Bridge and this Cheshire Proverbs series, see Cheshire Proverbs 1.

Sources:

Carroll, L. 1865. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Wikipedia: Cheshire Cat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire_Cat

 

Cheshire Proverbs 2: “Holt Lions, Farndon Bears, Churton Greyhounds and Alford Hares”

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“Holt lions, Farndon bears
Churton greyhounds and Aldford hares”

J.C. Bridge  no.190, page 73

Joseph Bridge devotes over a page to the content of this very local proverb, but he focuses exclusively on the Holt lions and by the end of it neither he or I are any the wiser about what the bears, greyhounds and hares refer to, or what the overall meaning might be.

Title page of Ray’s “A Collection of English Proverbs.” Source: Royal Society.

Holt was originally in Cheshire, an English borough in Wales, so although it was the only of the villages to the west of the Dee, it was not entirely the odd one out in this list of local place-names. 

Previous writers suggested that the Holt Lions might refer to Roman tile and pottery works to the north of Holt.  John Ray’s A Collection of English Proverbs (1670), quoted in Bridge (p.x) provides a plausible if completely unverifiable example:  “I conjecture that the Roman name had been Castra Legionis, and the Welsh Castell Lleon, or the Castle of the Legion;  Because it was garrisoned by a detachment of the Legion at Chester.  The English borderers might easily mistake Lleon for the plural of Llew, which signifies a lion, and so call it the Castle of Lions.”  Bridge provides a convincing list of references that associate the two during the Middle Ages. The Reverend R.H. Morris’s The Diocesan  of History 1895 reinforces this message, saying that as late as the Elizabethan period the alternative name, Castrum Leonum or Castle of Lions was in general use and that its seal incorporated a Lion Rampant, suggesting that there was a heraldic link between Holt and lions.

None of this, however, accounts for the greyhounds, bears and hares, although Latham speculates that these too might have been associated with family coats of arms, now lost.  I originally wondered if the Churton greyhounds might refer to the hounds shown on Aldford road and house signs, but only a few of those are in Churton and are, anyway, much later in date.  Latham adds “It can be said in support of this suggestion however that the base of the font in Holt church, which dates from 1490, includes what appear to be carvings of all these
creatures.  This was examined by Mr. E. E. Dorling in 1908, and his findings were published in Vol. 24 of the Transactions of the Historical Soc. of Lanes. & Cheshire. He mentions a hart’s (not a hares) head with reference to the house of Stanley, and considers that the collared hound sitting in a panel on the font is ‘none other but the greyhound badge of King Henry VII’.”

Any ideas?  If you have more information, please get in touch.

For more about this Cheshire Proverbs series, see Cheshire Proverbs 1.

 

Sources:

Bridge, J.C. 1917. Proverbs, sayings and rhymes connected with the city and county palatine of Chester. Phillipson and Golder.

Latham, F.A.  1981. Farndon. The History of a Cheshire Village. Local History Group

 

Cheshire Proverbs 1, Introduction: “Old proverbs are the children of truth”

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Frank Latham’s 1981 book Farndon mentions a Cheshire proverb about local place-names that he said was quoted in Joseph C. Bridge’s Cheshire Proverbs and Other Sayings and Rhymes Connected with the City an County Palatine of Chester, published by Phillipson and Golder (Chester) 1917.   That sounded like a great book  to have on hand, so I checked online.  It cost next to nothing, so I ordered one.  It has been a lot of fun since it arrived, although I continue to puzzle over what some of the proverbs and sayings actually mean.  Most of the proverbs are English, but as Bridge points out, the border along the Welsh Marches was fluid, and language, including proverbs and sayings, passed seamlessly between England and Wales in both directions.

Most of the proverbs have nothing to do with the Churton/Farndon/Holt/Aldford area, of course, but they are all fascinating and I thought that it would be fun to include some of them here from time to time.  In the subject heading I will number them in the order in which I post them but I will also include Bridge’s numbering and the page numbers on which they appear.   

Joseph C. Bridges was a conscientious researcher.  Professor of music at the University of Durham and organist of Chester Cathedral, he was anxious to preserve traditional aspects of rural language in Cheshire: 

“The spread of education in our country districts is very rapid, and the rustic population is undoubtedly ceasing to use homely dialect and wise saws.  It seems to me, therefore, that it is desirable, before it is too late, to collect together in handy form the concentrated shrewdness and sit of old Cheshire, especially as many of the sayings are merely colloquial, while others are scattered among books, some of which are out of print and difficult to obtain.”

He not only worked rigorously through previous books of English and Cheshire proverbs and glossaries to find local words and terms, but reviewed them in detail in the introduction to Cheshire Proverbs and Other Sayings, giving appreciative credit where it was due, while annihilating others.  Of the four main glossaries that he uses, he comments approvingly that they are “a perfect crescendo of good things” but of Robert Nixon’s Sayings and Prophecies he states curtly “I do not believe in them, and we have no proof that any such person ever existed.”  Some of his sources are remarkably early, including Heywood’s Dialogue of 1562 and Camden’s Britannia of 1586, both broadly contemporary with the very earliest buildings in Churton and Farndon.  Throughout the book Bridge refers back to those sources in which he has confidence for additional details and clarification.  At the end of the book the proverbs are listed in alphabetical order, by first word.  There is also an index of place names at the end.

The saying in the title of the post, “Old proverbs are the children of truth,” is from the Welsh “Plant gwirionedd yw hen diarebion“, and appears on one of the title pages, page viii.  The saying is one of those that is thankfully fully self-explanatory.  It is a rather nice one to start with here, particularly as Bridge used it to kick off his book. 

In another publication, an edition of the 19th Century journal Cambro-Briton dating to 1820, an anonymous author used the same proverb as a title for his thoughts on the role of proverbs:

Among the literary stores, so various and interesting, with which the Welsh language abounds, it cannot be deemed surprising that it should contain a valuable collection of proverbs.  This is a species of learning, which must have taken early root in most countries;  and it may be considered as embodying the most approved and current wisdom of the various nations, where it is found to prevail.  Its concise and sententious method of conveying instruction was also peculiarly adapted to that channel of oral tradition, by which it was anciently retained.

The study of proverbs is paremiology, a field of endeavour that was a new one on me:

The problem of defining a proverb appears to be as old as man’s interest in them. People who consciously used them or began to collect them in antiquity obviously needed to differentiate proverbs from other gnomic devices such as apothegms, maxims, aphorisms, quotations, etc. Not only did such great minds as Aristotle and Plato occupy themselves with the question of what constitutes a proverb, but early Greek paremiographers in particular wrestled with this seemingly insurmountable task as well. (Wolfgang Mieder).

Bridge clearly believes that some of the proverbs and sayings speak for themselves, but I really cannot make any sense at all of some of them.  I am hoping that others out there will have something to offer on the origin and meaning of some of these sayings when I post them.

To see the other proverbs in the series, which will be ongoing, you can click on the Cheshire Proverbs category in the right-hand margin.

Sources

Anonymous, 1820.  Plant gwirionedd yw hen diarebion. Welsh Proverbs.  The Cambro-Briton and General Celtic Repository, volume 1, p.130-131

Bridge, J.C. 1917,  Cheshire Proverbs and Other Sayings and Rhymes Connected with the City an County Palatine of Chester Phillipson and Golder (Chester)

Latham, F.A.  1981.  Farndon. The History of a Cheshire Village. Local History Group

Mieder, W. Popular Views of the Proverb. De Proverbio
https://deproverbio.com/popular-views-of-the-proverb/