With Slyngethryfte Fleshemonger.
But if not in the common mouth, yet in our rolls there were two other names of this craft, which we must not pass over unrecorded. They were those of ‘Carnifex’ and ‘Massacrer,’ both representing the slaughter-house, I doubt not. The existence of the former would lead us to suppose that the old Roman hangsman was settled in our midst, but it was merely a mediæval Latinism for a butcher.[[380]] After the fashion of the time nicknames were affixed upon everybody, and our ‘Butchers’ and ‘Slaughters’ did not escape. The Hundred Rolls alone register the names of ‘Reginald Cullebol,’ ‘Henry Cullebulloc,’ ‘William Cullehare,’ and ‘William Culle-hog,’ or in more modern parlance ‘Kill-bull,’ ‘Kill-bullock,’ Kill-hare,’ and ‘Kill-hog.’ The original and more correct ‘poulter,’ he who dealt in ‘poults’ or poultry, as we now term it, has bequeathed his name to our ‘Poulters’ and ‘Pulters.’ Such names as ‘Adam le Puleter,’ or ‘Bernard le Poleter,’ or ‘William le Pulter,’ by the frequency with which we come across them, show how much did the farmyard help to provide in these days for the supply of the dining-table.
I have no peny,
Poletes to bugge (buy),
says Langland, showing that in his time they were commonly exhibited for sale. Indeed, the fact that in the York Festival of 1415 the ‘bouchers’ and ‘pulterers’ walked in procession together clearly proves their importance at the period in which the surname arose.
We have already mentioned the fishmonger, or what was practically the fishmonger, the fisherman, in our last chapter while surveying rural occupations. Our rare ‘Pessoners’[[381]] as representative of the Norman, and common ‘Fishers’ of the Saxon, lived in a day when under Roman ecclesiastic influences fish was of infinitely more importance than it is in this nineteenth century, when it is merely used as a go-between or mediator to soothe down the differences betwixt soup and beef. Then the year was dotted with days of abstinence, or strongly indented with seasons like Lent. Among the higher circles it mattered but little. So much had the culinary art excelled in respect of fish that such periods as they came round only brought to the epicurean mind visions of gastronomic skill that put the sterner and weightier joints utterly in the background for the time being. Pasties of herrings, congers, or lampreys were especially popular, and, judging from the lists of courses contained in some of our records, that only one of our mediæval monarchs should have succumbed to the latter is simply an historic marvel! Dishes too were prepared from the whale, the porpoise, the grampus, and the sea-wolf. ‘It is lamentable,’ says, facetiously, a writer in ‘Chambers’s Book of Days,’ referring to these viands as Lent repasts, ‘to think how much sin they thus occasioned among our forefathers, before they were discovered to be mammalian.’
A curious name is found in the Hundred Rolls, that of ‘Symon Haryngbredere.’ In what particular way he carried on his occupation I do not know. ‘Richard le Harenger’ is more explicable. Our ‘Conders’ were partners in the fishing excursions of the above. A full account of their duties may be found in Cowel’s ‘Interpreter,’ published in 1658. The conder stood upon the higher cliffs by the sea coast in the time of herring fishing, and with a staff or branch of a tree made signs to the boatmen which way the shoal was going. It seems there is a certain discoloured aspect of the water as they pass along, which is more apparent from an elevation than from the level of the sea.[[382]] In mediæval times the plaice was a very favourite dish. The term it usually went by was that of ‘but.’ Thus it is, I doubt not, we meet with such entries, as ‘William le Butor’ or ‘Hugh Butmonger.’ From some fancied resemblance to this fish, too, it would be that such humorous sobriquets as ‘Walter le But’ or ‘John le But’ would arise.
But while good and solid food could thus be purchased on every hand, we must not forget drink, for our forefathers were great tipplers. I have already mentioned our ‘William le Viners’ or ‘Roger le Vinours,’ in most cases, I doubt not, strictly cultivators of that plant on English soil. None the less certain, however, is it that our many early ‘John le Vineturs’ or ‘Alexander le Vineters’ were also, as merchants, employed in the importation of the varied wines of the Continent into our land. How abundant and how diverse they were an old poem shall tell us—
Ye shall have Spayneshe wyne and Gascoyne,
Rose colure, whyt, claret, rampyon,