Open Writing

In the past there would have been a jar of Neat’s-foot oil in many houses, and I remember hearing it mentioned without having any clear idea of what the oil was used for. A book on household and country crafts tells me that it was originally supplied by the butcher, and that farm workers daubed it over their boots in order to keep out the wet. Apparently the smell could be very unpleasant, especially if the boots were placed near the open fire.

According to the English Dialect Dictionary, the word ‘neat’ was formerly in general use for animals ‘of the ox tribe’; it was usually singular and the term neat-cattle could include heifers, oxen, bullocks and cows. However, like ‘sheep’ the word could also have a plural sense. For example, in 1512, when Guy Wilstrop was accused of destroying ancient arable and common land in Moor Monkton, by enclosure, one of the specific accusations made against him was that ‘he fedes nete and schepe, and bredes nete and schepe … uppon the seid grounde’. It seems to be plural in that case, as it does in a Richmond inventory listing ‘40 heade of yonge neate’ (1541).

When John Kaye of Woodsome put his ideas on husbandry into verse for the benefit of his heirs, inspired no doubt by Tusser, he referred frequently to his ox-house but there is no mention of neat-house. Nevertheless his advice was ‘thy yong neat see abroad thow kepe … unto yll wether make them meke’ (c.1580) - plural again. The place-name Neat House referred to a locality which had been a market garden, near Chelsea Bridge, but it must originally have been a cattle shed.

In fact the term ‘neatherd’ was almost as frequent as ‘shepherd’ in the past. John Coy of Azerley near Ripon was listed as a ‘netehird’ in the poll tax of 1379 and several individuals in the same township bore the by-name or surname Netehird. The surname does not seem to have survived, but the occupational term certainly did for, in 1606, at the North Riding Quarter Sessions, Christopher Pressick had ‘sundry misdemeanours proved against him … being late neathird of Carlton’.

We should not be surprised to hear that neat’s tongue was formerly a delicacy, but so apparently were the feet which also provided the oil. In the seventeenth century the variety and the amount of food eaten by the Saviles at Thornhill was recorded in their kitchen accounts, and Barbara Nuttall’s transcription for 19 January 1629 includes ‘23 neates tongues’ and ‘7 neates feet’ - not to mention quantities of mutton, veal, beef, rabbits, turkeys etc.

There was, though, a dialect alternative to ‘neat’, derived from a Scandinavian word. It was written ‘nowt’ or ‘nawt’ in Yorkshire and gave rise to the by-name Nouthird. Henry the ‘nouthirde’ and German the ‘nauthyrd’ were tenants of Wakefield manor in 1307-9 and, in Pontefract, the market-place was referred to as ‘the nawte market steade’ in 1552. Inventories contain such references as ‘twynternawt’ (1442), i.e. ‘two winter nawt’ or animals into their third year, and there was a ‘nawtehouse’ in Highburton in 1610.

A particularly interesting reference occurs in the court rolls of Wakefield in 1539, in a complaint made by the saddlers of the town. Their claim was that ‘dyvers persons byeth nawtte herre [hair] of ye tannerrs and sells it to Cendell [Kendal] men to blend it with woile and make cloth of it callyd pawmpillzon cloth’. I think that this word, which I have not otherwise encountered, might be connected with ‘pampilion’, a rare kind of fur according to Halliwell.