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.
—————
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.
—————
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.
read less
