Our Old Town

Thomas, Miller, 1807-1874

Description

Colecciones : SC. 1800-1950
Fecha de publicación : 1857
[ES]Descripción de Gainsborough y sus costumbres que incluye información sobre el dialecto de Lincolnshire.
[EN]A description of Gainsborough and its customs that includes information about the dialect of Lincolnshire.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Salamanca
• Nombre de lectures: 14
• Licence : En savoir +
  Paternité, pas d'utilisation commerciale, partage des conditions initiales à l'identique
• Langue: Español
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 15 Mo

Extrait

The Salamanca Corpus: Our Old Town (1857)
Author: Thomas Miller (1807-1874)
Text type: Prose
Date of composition: 1857
Editions: 1857, 1858, 1899, 1982
Source text:
Miller, Thomas. 1857. Our Old Town. London: J. C. Brown and Co.
e-text
Access and transcription: May 2011
Number of words: 65,075
Dialect represented: Lincolnshire
Produced by Sara Redondo Terleira
Revised by María F. García-Bermejo Giner
Copyright © 2011- DING, The Salamanca Corpus, Universidad de Salamanca
O U R O L D T O W N
[ N P ]
L O N D O N : P R I N T E D B Y W . C L O W S A N D
S O N S , S T A M F O R D S T R E E T .
[ N P ]
O U R O L D T O W N .
B Y
T H O M A S M I L L E R ,
L O N D O N :
J. C. BROWN & CO., 8, AVE-MARIA LANE

The Salamanca Corpus: Our Old Town (1857)
[NP]
INTRODUCTION.
I have attempted to write this work, respected reader, just as I should have talked to
thee, had we been intimate friends, and thou hadst asked me to tell thee all I knew about
Our Old Town:—the only difference being this, hadst thou taken down all I had said in
short hand, I should have gone as carefully over every word afterwards, as I have now
done, before intrusting the matter to the press.
With but few exceptions, what is here written I have beheld with mine own eyes, or
heard with mine own ears, for the traditions that make up the oral history of Our Old
Town, have been handed down from generation to generation through years that are
now hoary; and they still live, though the names of those who first heard them, when
they were but work-a-day gossip, have long since been forgotten.
But most of all have I depended upon the little pictures, that, almost unaware,
photographed them-
[VIII]
selves on my ‘inward eye,' and which I could call up, and look at, at any hour, as they
ever hung in the picture-gallery of the mind—that gallery in which Memory so much
loves to exercise herself.
I have, kind reader, brought Our Old Town before thee, as it was in my younger years,
before its sleepy old river had ever been disturbed by the splash of a steamer's paddle, or
the silence of its green solitudes broken by the startling scream of a railway-whistle. It
was then stamped with the impress of a past century, which modern improvements have
now nearly obliterated.
Thomas Miller.
Rose Cottage,
London, 1857.
[NP]
CONTENTS

The Salamanca Corpus: Our Old Town (1857)
CHAPTER I.
Our Old Town 1
CHAPTER II.
Old and Modern Houses—Courts and Quarrels 29
CHAPTER III.
Walks, Wooings, Weddings, and Love-birds 57
CHAPTER IV.
Market-day 82
CHAPTER V.
Old Warehouses, Ships, Water-side Characters, and The Old Waterworks 109
CHAPTER VI.
Friend John,' Beck-lane, the Wanderers, and Poor Old Joe 135
[X]
CHAPTER VII.
Robbers—A Never-do-well—The Flood—Moving Accidents 163
CHAPTER VIII.
Old Shops, Old Houses, and Old Inhabitants 184
CHAPTER IX.
Queer Characters in Our Old Town 202
CHAPTER X.
Queer Characters in Our Old Town 216
CHAPTER XI.
Old Customs, Superstitions, and Old-fashioned People 241
CHAPTER XII.
Old Ship-yard, The Pinder, Old Scratch, and The Haunted Rope-walk 261
CHAPTER XIII.
Our Itinerants—Sots' Hole—the Sweep—Our Old Church—the Old Hall 281
CHAPTER XIV.
Rambles around the Suburbs of Our Old Town 301

The Salamanca Corpus: Our Old Town (1857)
[NP]
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Frontispiece.
Chap. I. The Old River Staithes.
Tail Piece. The Old Bellman.
Chap. II. The Dressmaker.
Tail Piece. The Lamplighter.
Chap. III. Throwing a Shoe at the Wedding.
Tail Piece. The Old Fortune-teller.
Chap. IV. The Old Market-place.
Tail Piece The Pretty Butter-seller.
Chap V. River-side Scenery
Tail Piece. The Sailor-milkman.
Chap. VI. ‘Friend John ‘in Love.
Tail Piece. 'Poor Old Joe' and his Cook.
Chap. VII. Our Old Town Flooded.
Tail Piece. A Winter Scene.
Chap. VIII. 'Riding the Stang.'
Tail Piece. Reading the Letter.
[XII]
Chap. IX. Long Tommy and the Old Nurse.
Tail Piece. Little Black Tommy.
Chap. X. The Opposition Coaches.
Tail Piece. Old Landmarks.
Chap. XI. The Ghost Seer.
Tail Piece. The Old Doctor.
Chap. XII. The Old Shipyard.
Tail Piece. The Shopkeeper.

The Salamanca Corpus: Our Old Town (1857)
Chap. XIII. Our Old Church.
Tail Piece. The Water-sellers.
Chap. XIV. The Market-boat.
Tail Piece. Past and Present.
[NP]
CHAPTER I.
Our Old Town is a strange, rambling, twisting, dreamy-looking place: portions of it are
very ancient, and the principal streets are built in the form of a cross—a sure sign of
great antiquity. A beautiful navigable river flows beside it, and runs for
[2]
Miles through a rich pastoral country, then empties itself into an arm of the sea. Behind,
it is hemmed in by green breezy hills, looking as if, undated centuries ago, its first
inhabitants had erected their huts at the foot of the hills for shelter, while they pastured
their flocks in the valley. Beyond the town, along the river banks, the black bulrush still
nods beside the wild water-flag, while the tufted plover goes wailing over the hedgeless
marshes, giving to the landscape, in many places, the same primitive features it wore
when the river was mast-less—before the blue smoke that pointed" out the dwelling of
man had curled above the overhanging foliage. Within, Our Old Town is filled with
gates and yards, courts and alleys, hollow-sounding archways and windowless
'twitchells,' lanes and passages, and staithes that go bending in and out, like a maze.
Without, all around it, lie little fields, which are called holts, holms, garths, glebes, cars,
crofts, closes, ings, paddocks, and other such old-fashioned names as are now only
found in ancient deeds and charters. It is mentioned as a burgh in the earliest Saxon
records, and bore the same name then that it bears now. As there is not another market
within
[ Page 3]

The Salamanca Corpus: Our Old Town (1857)
several miles of Our Old Town, its principal visitors are the inhabitants of the
neighbouring villages, who supply the place with their rural produce, and take back in
return such articles as do not abound in the hamlets; and so the exchange goes on as it
has done for centuries—the living generation dealing at the same shops which their
forefathers used in years that have departed. Ships of heavy tonnage ever come and go,
laden with valuable cargoes, and perform the same good offices between Our Old Town
and far-off countries as transpire between it and the surrounding villages.
A stranger on first alighting in its sleepy-looking streets, would have thought that
weddings, births, deaths, feasts, frays, robberies, the fair, a ship-launch, or market-day,
were the only events that occurred Worth recording, and the only changes that took
place which could be at all interesting in our dreamy Old Town. Time and a long
residence amongst its inhabitants would be required before he concluded otherwise; and
then he would discover that all the hopes and fears, loves and hatreds, jealousies and
doubts, joys and sorrows, and every passion, feeling, and motive, by which mankind are
[4]
actuated, were all at work in that apparent' still-life!' and that all the elements which
make up the great human world might be found within the narrow precincts of Our Old
Town. He would then have found out who had fallen in love, who had fallen in debt,
who had fallen through drink; how this one got up and the other one went down, while a
third went nowhere at all, but remained in the same hopeless stick-fast state from year
unto year.
One portion of Our Old Town, which spreads along the shore of the busy river, was
occupied by sailors' families; and, as the men who lived so close together when at home,
had berths in the same ships, went to sea, and returned to the same streets, endured the
same hardships, and shared the same perils, there was a strong sympathy amongst the
women, who were often severed for a long time together from their husbands—a feeling
of dependence on one another, not arising from selfish motives so much as from a
knowledge that those who were dear to them, and far away on the uncertain sea, were

The Salamanca Corpus: Our Old Town (1857)
all alike exposed to the same unceasing danger. Who might be the first to need
assistance and consolation
[5]
they could never tell until the hour of trial came—until one foot less never again
trod the pavement of that little court, no more for ever.
They ever felt that those who had gone to sea so hearty and cheerful, ruddy with
manly health, and full of hope in the future, they might never, in this life, look
upon again. The washing of a wave over the deck, the missing of a rope, the flap
of a sail, a slip of the hand or foot, might leave one less in those river-side streets,
one desolate in those little houses; and He only who giveth and taketh away could
tell who would be the first to perish. On the morning that followed a terrible and
tempestuous night, those whose husbands or kindred were out on the ever-gaping
sea, would hurry into one another's houses—their pale faces and heavy eyelids
proclaiming that they had never slept. Then one with uplifted hands would