Beccles.—Responds to Wright’s article on the word ‘bouter’ in Notes and Queries, referring to domestic arrangements at his grandfather’s kitchen at Snettingham and his uncle's farmhouse at Redenhall.
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Transcript
Beccles
2 July 1887
My dear doctor
I observe your “Bouter” note in N & Q {1}.
Are you sure that the word is “no longer used”?.
It appears, in divers shapes, (as I dare say you know as well as I do) in the dictionaries {2}.
Cole—
Bouter—sieve
Walker—
Bolter—a sieve to separate meal from bran
Bailey—
Bolting-hutch }
Bunting-hutch } a chest or trough to sift meal in
Johnson—
Bolter—a sieve to separate meal from bran or husks or finer from coarser parts
Nuttall—
Bolting-hutch—a tub[?] {3} for bolted flour.
Bolting-mill—a machine for sifting meal.
Bolting-tub—a tub to sift meal in.
A bolter I always understood was a common, if not essential, appendage to a corn-mill. In its domestic form it became a ‘hutch’—and its top might serve as a table. Hence, naturally enough, ‘bolter-table’, or bolter,—boulter—bouter in that sense.
In the scene described by Mr Crabbe I take the men stood in the scullery waiting till the female servants at the bouter had finished their repast, either for want of room or from motives of delicacy & politeness!.
I well remember the bolting hutch in my grandfather’s kitchen at Snettingham—where it was confined to its primary use. In my uncle’s farm house at ‘Pied bridge’, Redenhall, {4} the arrangements were more bucolic. Dinner was served in the spacious kitchen—for the family at a plain walnut-tree table in the centre, & for ye farm men on a long heavy oak table placed under a side window. This was about 1812.
I do not think the maid-servants dined with the men,—I sho[ul]d say, after them. [There follows a plan of the room in question.]
All this is merely an excuse for bothering you with a letter, because we are anxious to know—if you can spare five minutes to tell us—that your convalescence is complete or progressing quite satisfactorily,—your left thumb all right & prison fare no longer requisite.
Excuse bad writing.
Ever very truly yours
S. Wilton Rix
W. Aldis Wright Esq LLD.
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Black-edged paper. The missing letters of a word abbreviated by a superscript letter have been supplied in square brackets.
{1} Notes and Queries, 2 July 1887, pp. 5-6. The note concerns a passage in the Life of Crabbe (cf. Everyman ed., pp. 137-8).
{2} The arrangement of the succeeding list has been adjusted slightly.
{3} The square brackets are in the MS.
{4} Comma supplied.