Similar almanacks were used by our Saxon ancestors, who no doubt borrowed the idea from the Scandinavians. One side was kept for the summer and the other for the winter, and notches for the days were made across the edges.
Fig. 4.—Staffordshire clog almanack.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth a modification of the Scandinavian Rune staves was largely used in England, chiefly in Staffordshire, but not exclusively. These are known as “clog almanacks,” and Dr. Plott says that “Clogg may mean Logg, or that they are like the cloggs with which we restrain our doggs.”
English clog almanacks are squared pieces of wood, measuring from about two feet to nine or ten inches in length, and the larger ones are sometimes as much as three inches square. They are notched along the angles, small notches without ornamentation indicating week days, big notches stand for Sundays, and Saints days have all kinds of ornamental flourishes, which now and then show familiar forms such as Saint Catherine’s wheel and Saint Lawrence’s gridiron.
Fig. 5.—Modern hop-tally of wood.
Some of the clogs show a hole at the lower end, evidently so that they could stand upright upon a peg, others, and these are the most usual, have a flat pierced handle so that they can be suspended by a loop. They were commonly kept in churches. Details of several well known examples of clog almanacks will be found figured in The Reliquary for January, 1865, in illustration of an excellent article on the subject by Mr. John Harland. Exchequer and other wooden tallies were common in England in the 14th century, and in modern days a certain survival of them exists in the form of hop-tallies. These are two strips of wood which fit closely together with a tongue, and when in contact notches are made across the two edges in apposition, so that when the two pieces are apart, neither party can falsify the notches without it being at once apparent when the slips are finally brought together. The principle is exactly the same as that utilised in the old legal “indentures,” by virtue of which a piece of vellum was cut in two by an indentured, or toothed line, and if these did not exactly fit whenever they were brought together it became evident that they had been tampered with. In parts of France tallies like these are still used by bakers.
Wooden tallies are also found among the inhabitants of Torres Straits, where they use them made of short sticks tied together at their tops.
Curious inscriptions, as yet undecipherable, have been found at Easter Island; they are cut in thick slabs of wood and are ideographic.