‘Walker,’ claiming as it does an almost unrivalled position in the rolls of our nomenclature, reminds us of the early fashion of treading out the cloth before the adaptations of machinery were brought to bear on this phase of the craft. In Wicklyffe’s version of the story of Christ’s transfiguration he speaks of his clothes shining so as no ‘fullere or walkere of cloth’ may make white upon earth.[[325]] Reference is made to the same practice by Langland also when, using this whole process of cloth-making as an illustration, he says:—
Cloth that cometh fro the wevyng
Is nought comely to wear
Til it be fulled under foot,
Or in fullying stokkes,
Washen wel with water,
And with taseles cracched
Y-touked, and y-teynted,
And under taillours hande.
We are here not merely furnished with the entire process itself, but the terms themselves employed harmonize well with the names I have mentioned. ‘Walker’ and ‘Tucker’ or ‘Towkare’ or ‘Toker,’ as it was variously spelt, together with ‘Tuckerman,’ have, however, disappeared as terms of this trade; and it is in our directories alone we can find them declaring these forgotten mysteries of a more uncouth manufacture.