Earthenware Piggin
Earthenware Piggin
The word piggin is the diminutive of pig" or pigkin," terms used in medieval days for small pitchers made of pigskin from which beer, wine and cider were often quaffed direct.
In one old manuscript we are told that there were four degrees of drunkenness, the worst degree being pig drunk.
In Heywood's Philocothonistra or the Drunkard Opened, Dissected and Anatomized, published in 1635. we have an illuminating description given us of drinking vessels of the period. Of drinking cups, divers and sundry sorts we have, some of them elme, some of box, some of maple., some of holly &c; Mazers, broadmouthed Dishes, Noggins, Whiskins, Piggins, Crinzes, Ale - bowls, Wassal Bowls, Court dishes, Tankards, Kannes from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are mostly used amongst the shepheards and harvest people of the countrey; small jacks we have in many ale - houses of the Citie and suburbs, tip'd with silver, besides the great Black Jacks and Bombards at the Court, which when Frenchmen first saw, they reported, at their returne into their countrey, that Englishmen used to drink out of their bootes .. We have besides, cups made out of horns of beasts, of cocker - nuts, of goords, of the eggs of ostriches; others made of the shells of divers fishes. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers ; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feast to entertain their friends, can furnish their cup boards with flagons, tankards, beare cups, wine bowles, some white, some purcell gilt, some gilt all over, some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities.
The Noggin, to which the historian refers is of Gaelic origin: meaning a small mug of wood or a similar vessel of any material and it is still used to this day as a spirit measure in public houses, the contents being reckoned as a quarter of a pint. The Crinze is more difficult to define and is very rarely mentioned in old documents, but apparently it was a stumpy earthenware vessel, a sort of cross between an open tankard and a small bowl. The word purcell is equivalent to our porcelain.
One does not hear very much of a whiskin ' or for what particular purpose it was used ; the word, however, occasionally crops up, for instance in Two Lancashire Lovers, a literary production dated 1640, on page 19 we read, An, we will han a whiskin at every rush - bearing (an annual country feast similar to a harvest home in other counties) ; a wassail cup at yule;
seed cake at fastens the last refers to the church ale and cakes, an old English custom now quite obsolete.
The Prounet or Prunet cup was the term used for the vessel: which a strong liqueur was served called Prunet, a drink made from wild plums which had been soaked in spirit and sugar for months or perhaps years, before the liquor was strained off from the fruit Prunet was similar to the sloe gin of the present day - only stronger.
A Flagon is a vessel made in gold, silver, pewter or glass with a spout, a handle and usually a lid, and is a term used from the earliest days to denote an article from which beverages at table were served. We find it in the Bible, All vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups to all the vessels of flagons (Isaiah xxii. 24) ; the word is also used by Shakespeare in Hamlet: A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! He poured a flagon of Rhenish wine on my head once.
An alloy of two or more metals, called Pewter, found great favour as a material with which drinking vessels could be constructed in the early days and continued to hold its position for several centuries, but as it was customary in the Medieval ages to melt down and re - cast pewter utensils as soon as signs of wear and tear appeared, there is unfortunately very little left for us to judge in what manner our forebears turned out their drinking vessels made from pewter. The Romans used pewter to a considerable extent, and we have, even now, evidence of plates and dishes made by them, as well as a few specimens of their cups, which are occasionally to be seen in provincial museums. The Saxons, however, were not by any means keen pewterers, neither were the early Normans, so we hear little of it until we reach the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and even then we must turn to an ecclesiastical fount for our early examples. In the year 1427 we find the then late Vicar of Ripon leaving in his will domestic drinking cups of pewter, which were stored in his kytchine. The said John Ely, the vicar, used the word, a Garnish, which is an early English term for a complete set of pewter vessels comprising one dozen platters, twelve cups, and twelve small dishes. We also find a pewter drinking cup mentioned in church inventories called a Goddard from the French "godet," meaning a tankard. In Gayton's notes off Don Quixote we read of A Goddard, or an anniversary spice bowl, Drank off by the Gossips.
In London, the early existence of a Company of Pewterers is proved by a reference in 1347 to the will of Nicholas le Peautrer, who mentions this Corporation; and in the fifteenth century, York was the principal town in the North of England for the manufacture of pewter; further, it is recorded that in 1419 the regulations of the York Pewterers were formulated. About the middle of the fifteenth century it would appear that the Gild of Pewterers of London had a religious turn of mind, for they referred to their gild as the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Assumption of the Pewterer's Craft, and in the year 1473, King Edward IV conferred upon them the formal Charter of Corporation. Their seal bearing ye ymage of the assumption of our blessed ladye gravyn theryn of silver. Pewter, pewtre, peautre, pewdre, pewder, pewtir, or peuther as it is variously spelt with delightful inconsistency in old documents, is one of the few artificial compositions from which drinking vessels have been made is thoroughly English. The original word was spelter, then the Dutch borrowed it and changed it to "peauter, the French made it peutre, the Spanish peltre" and the Italians peltro" It was made from lead and tin.. with an occasional mixture of copper or silver. The proportion of these metals ranged from 71.8 % of tin and 28.2 % of lead, to 78.3 % of tin and 27.7 % lead. On analysis of some old pewter we roughly find the following proportions, 80 %. of tin, 5 % lead, 7 % antimony, 5 % copper and 3 % silver, and another sample of poor quality pewter, 56 parts of tin, 8 of lead, 6 of copper, and 2 of zinc.
In the Household Book (1615) of Lord William Howard of Naworth, published by the Surtees Society, we read that "XXXIXs IXd, i.e. 39s. 9., was paid for two pewter flaggons weighing 25 pounds and a half, so it is no wonder that they were shortly replaced by leather bombards on account of cost, as well as for their weight.
These Bombards of the Middle Ages are of, such historical interest that they deserve notice at some length. Coming from the same family as the Black jacks and Leather Bottles, they are constructed of leather in the same manner as the former only on a more generous scale, so generous that Shakespeare in his Tempest, Act i, Scene 2, makes Trinculo say, when fearing a storm, I hear it sing i` the wind; yond' same black cloud, yond' huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor, and again in Henry IV, Prince Henry describes Falstaff as that swol'n parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of Sack.
The bombard takes its name from a piece of ordnance known by the same name, which was used for the defence of fortresses in the Middle Ages. A very typical specimen is in the possession of Lord Walsingham, which was part of Queen Elizabeth's effects; it is 26 inches high, 10, inches by 7 1/2 inches at the mouth, 35 inches round the middle and 13 1/2 inches diameter at the base. These vessels were made, perhaps as a result of a lightning strike in the lower domestic regions, because the old pewter jugs were of such a vast weight; a comparison between the weight of a pewter jug and a bombard can be gauged from the tact that one of the former, holding two gallons, weighed as much as 23 3/4 lbs., whereas a leather bombard belonging to Sir M. Boileau., holding seven gallons and two quarts, weighed only seven and a half pounds.
Some large bombards, having typical characteristics, are in the collection of Mr. H. Dent - Brocklehurst, of Sudeley Castle, several of them being used during the Commonwealth in the household of Oliver Cromwell when he held the high position of Protector. Two of these are, 22 inches high and are embellished with silver rims bearing the inscription " Oliver Cromwell 1653, The Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland " with the arms of the Commonwealth on a silver plate in the centre of the front part of the vessel.
Lord Fitzwilliam, at Wentworth Woodhouse, has also two large leather bombards, one being 21 1/2 inches high and 24 1/2 inches round the middle, and the other, 21 inches high and 30 1/2 inches round the belly, but so far as can be gathered they have no historical interest beyond the fact that they were made in the sixteenth century and have been in the family service since then to quite recent times, which is a record in itself.
A kind of cousin to the bombard was called a gispin or gaspin, being in capacity half - way between a leather black jack and a bombard. They were in use at Winchester in 1569, the Bursar, in his Computus, spelling them gyspyns, and they were certainly employed a hundred years later, for in a song, dated 1665, entitled The King of Good Fellows, or the Merry Toper's advice, in the Roxburghe Ballads, we have the following lines, which prove, if nothing else, that poets are born and not made.
"Twas I that lately drunk a Pint Pot
Filled with Sack unto the Brim
And to my Friend, and he drank his Pot
So merrily we went about the Whim.
Two Gaspins at a draught I poured down
my throat,
But hang such trifling things as these."
Reproduced from the book: Drinking Vessels of Bygone Days by G. J. MONSON-FITZJOHN, B.Sc.,F.R.Hist.S.
author of Quaint Signs of Olde Inns, etc.