Lo, the Mighty Mole-Catcher!

While Thomas Tusser's Five hundred pointes of good Husbandrie (1580) is a treasure house of information about daily life on the Tudor farm, getting at it requires patience. Reading early modern English is an acquirement. Spelling and grammar were irregular. The written word and thought process behind the written word were much more highly idiomatic than the centuries since. The works of even so highly educated a writer as Shakespeare are notorious for often being impentrable by the modern reader or theater-goer.

Section 17 of the Five hundred pointes ̶ “A digression to husbandlie furniture” ̶ for just one example, informs us of the tools and equipment owned by the farmer. Those who know that the true character of historical times is to be found in the details of the daily life associated with various employments and trades, love this kind of list for all that it can teach them.

1. Barne locked, gofe ladder, short pitchforke and long,

flaile, strawforke and rake, with a fan that is strong :

Wing, cartnave and bushel, peck, strike readie hand,

get casting sholve, broome, and a sack with a band.¹

To learn the vocabulary is to learn the times. A gofe was a hay-rick or hay-stack. A gofe-ladder, then, was a ladder used to climb to the top of hay-stacks. Cartnave is so obscure that it takes a great deal of effort to uncover that it was a board laid down behind or beside a cart to give workers footing in soft terrain. The words “ bushel, peck, strike” refer to the different size measuring bins or baskets to be filled in the cart. The sholve (“shove”) teaches us where our word “shovel” comes from.

A short distance down the section, is another of a great many fascinating stanzas.

18 Long ladder to hang al along by the wal,

to reach for a neede to the top of thy hal :

Beame, scales, with the weights, that be sealed and true,

sharp moulspare with barbs, that the mowles do so rue.

Here the terms are much more in line with modern usage. Except, that is, for “moulspar” which is a mole-spear. This item is particularly interesting as farmers constantly hired the services of mole catchers.

Like all farmers, Tusser constantly had moles on his mind. They pop up throughout the Five hundred pointes. They generally appear under the month of February:

Get mowle catcher cunning-lie mowle for to kill,

and harrow and cast abrode euerie hill.

This is the month that Tusser brings in the mole catcher to clear his farm of the destructive little beasts. But he also has a mole-spear which he considers to be essential to the proper operation of a farm, suggesting that he or his laborers do their own catching between visits.

The mole catcher was a common skilled tradesman from the Middle Ages until the early 20^th century. Every farming area had several competing for the business. According to Thorold and Rogers's A history of agriculture and prices in England (1866) at least one mole-catcher was paid by a standard two-day rate of 5-6 pence in 1542. In 1586 one or more got one shilling a dozen by body-count. Each was a moderately high rate of pay for the time.

In the 1710 edition of Tusser, entitled Tusser Redivius, the anonymous editor provided his readers some commentary from his own experience.

There are many Country Fellows very dexterous at Mole catching: Some have a way of setting them with a little Dog, very neatly and diverting, to look on; perhaps, a Gentleman’s or a Farmer’s time may be as well fpent to follow those Fellows, while they are catching for him, as to hunt after a Pack of Dogs, or a setting Dog for Partridges, for they are dexterous at catching both ways; and, without looking after, you may pay for Moles that never hurt you, and belong to their yearly Customers.²

Both we and the editor suspect that the trade wasn't much changed between Tusser's time and then. The mole-catcher in 1710 seems generally to have been paid by the body-count. While Tusser does not mention it, it seems likely, knowing Tudor times, that some catchers kept the corpses, then, as well, from earlier catches to add to the tally of those that followed.

The mole-catcher was not only a feature of the Tudor England landscape. The texts of various language and dialect dictionaries inform us as much. By language:

Latin:

Talpicidus -i (m.) = mole catcher

talparum venator = mole catcher

captor taliparum = mole catcher

grumus, grumulus = mole hill

French:

taupier = mole-catcher

German:

maulwurf = mole. fanger = mole catcher

Dutch:

val = mole trap. vanger = mole catcher

Welsh:

gwazwr -wyr s. m. = molecatcher (also tyrçewr -ewyr s. m.) The Welsh surname Wonter, Wantur, Wontner means mole-catcher.

Isle of Wight:

want = mole. want ketcher = mole catcher

Scotland:

Mowdy, Mowdie, Moudie, Mowdie Wark, Modywart s. A mole. Moudy-Hillan, s. A mole-hill.

Mowdie-Hoop, s. A mole-hill (from Mowdie, a mole, and Teut. hoop, a heap.)

In certain areas of England both the mole and mole-catcher were called a “moudy”. The mole was also called moudy Rat. A moudy-hill was a mole-hilL This is particularly curious as the part of a plow that digs up the ground is called a “moldboard” to this day.

Period didactic verse, it is clear, is by no means the historian's only cherished tool. Etymological dictionaries are also a vital resource. The words of languages are storehouses of all kinds of information.

1  Tusser, Thomas. Five hundred pointes of good Husbandrie (1580, 1878). Payne and Herrtage, ed. 35.

2  Anon. Tusser Redivivus: Being Part of Mr. Thomas Tuffer's Five Hundred Points Of Husbandry (1710). 11.

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Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

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