In the ‘Townley Mysteries,’ too, the word occurs. In the account of the reconciliation betwixt Jacob and Esau the former is made to say:—
God yeld you, brother, that it so is,
That thou thy hyne so would kiss.
In the rural habitations we have mentioned, then dwelt these various members of the lower class community.
The sobriquets we have just briefly surveyed, however, are of a more general character. We must now, and as briefly, scan some of those which in themselves imply the particular service which as rustic labourers their first owners performed, and by which the titles were got. This class is well represented by such a name as ‘Plowman.’ Langland, when he would take from a peasant point of view a sarcastic survey of the low morality of his time, as exemplified in the English Church ere yet she was reformed, could fix upon no better sobriquet than that of ‘Piers Plowman,’ and has thus given a prominence to the name it can never lose. What visions of homely and frugal content we discern in the utterance of such a surname as this; what thoughts of healthy life, such as are becoming rarer with each returning year—
For times are altered—trade’s unfeeling train
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain.
It was with him at early dawn would issue forth our ‘Tillyers’ or ‘Tillmans,’ to help him cleave the furrow. A little later on we might have seen our ‘Mowers’ and ‘Croppers’[[248]] hanging up their scythes and sickles, as the autumn, in richly clad garb, passed slowly by. Then again in due season busy enough would be the ‘Dyker,’ now spelt ‘Dicker,’[[249]] and the ‘Dykeman’ or ‘Dickman.’ With what an enviable appetite would these eat up to the last relic their rasher of bacon and black bread, and quaff their home-brewed ale, a princely feast after the hard toil of draining the field. To dike was merely to dig, the root being the same. Of the kindly plowman Chaucer says—
He would thresh, and thereto dike and delve,
For Christ’s sake, for every poor wight,