With Bowels lank and Head of Mallet
The Joiner longs to taste a sallad.
Old Nosegay quite alert and busy
Has one to sell and asks a tizzey*.
— “Implements Animated – Dedicated to the Carpenters and Gardeners of
Great Britain” by Charles Williams (1797-1830). Dug up by our favorite and saucy indexer, Suzanne Ellison, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
* “Tizzey” means “sixpence,” you roughnecks.
This is kind of like when people dress dogs up in little Halloween costumes. They hate that, too.
Does this mean I shouldn’t name my tools??? Awww! Shucks! But naming my little oil can Squirt is just so .. well .. you know .. cute! ;o)
Hey! You taught me a new word!
Um, tool?
I learned many connotations of that one years ago (about 8 years).
Tizzey.
I see what you did there.
Shhhhh! I’m bidding on a black velvet painting of a mallet and chisel playing poker.
The one where the mallet is cheating? Because that one’s mine, I’m prepared to go high on it.
Tommy Toolbox was just telling me this morning how much the tools hate their names…
My two sided tongue and groover, Tweedle Dum/Tweedle Dee, keeps singing “you say potayto, I say potatto…”.
Ah, so this is where Tim Burton gets his ideas from.
As soon as my 3/4 Everlasting and my Stanley 4 1/2 stop arguing about who is my favorite I’m gonna get there take on this. I’ll get back to you.
Chris
“Spalding! It’s time for the Billy Baroo. Oh Billy Billy Billy.”
Manuel Garcia along with Stretch (the tape measure), Felipe (the Philips head screwdriver), Turner (the flat head), Dusty (the saw) and Pat (the hammer) may beg to differ.
Anthropomorphic hammer:
http://www.google.com/patents/USD28942
Tizzey, eh? Well, you learn summat every day. When I was nobbut a lad, sixpence was a ‘tanner’.
David, you are correct. Tanner is the more common term for sixpence. Of course he could have gone with, “Old Nosegay alert and brisk of manner, Has one to sell and asks a tanner.” The artist was probably too busy working on his scabrous etchings of Napoleon to worry about his rhyming.
It’s great this woodworking, isn’t it? Technology, techniques, social history, philosophy…..
Makes me think of a Victorian age Maximum Overdrive.
Cf. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/sgas16frm.htm
St. Roy’s performance of this epic poem was the best ever!
Morty the mortise chisel says that your entitled to your opinions (wrong as they might be) so long as I continue to leave a mint on hois pillow each night before tucking him in.