Craftsmen. 157 



or indeed wholly, by the aid of stout wooden pins 

 driven into wimble holes. Even when slates came into 

 use as a roofing material, they were attached to the 

 "sarking" not by iron nails but by hardwood pins. 

 And in the construction of a box bed, or the hanging 

 and fixing of a door, the resort to iron was wonderfully 

 minimised. In the case of the barn implements, in- 

 cluding flail and thrashing floor, it could be dispensed 

 with altogether. The ingenious business of wheel- 

 wright, in which the turning-lathe was called into use, 

 did not necessitate resort to iron work to any noticeable 

 extent. And the cooper or mugger, who manufactured 

 wooden cogs, caups, and ladles, articles of very essential 

 use in the domestic life of the time, was still less in- 

 debted to it as a material. 



Apart from the smith and wright, the two other 

 indispensable craftsmen were the shoemaker and the 

 tailor ; and of these the tailor was the most important. 

 During summer a good part of the population did not 

 much trouble themselves about shoes ; or if they did, 

 were content with brogues of untanned leather, fashioned 

 by themselves. But clothing of some sort for the main 

 part of the body was a necessity at all seasons, and a 

 " stan' o' shapit claes" could not be had without the 

 tailor, who pursued his craft after the peripatetic mode, 

 travelling from house to house, and fashioning suits for 

 the goodman and his grown up sons off the blue or grey 

 woollen web, spun by the women of the household, and 

 woven by the weaver driving his loom in the " mid- 

 house" or other section of his dwelling, to the order of 

 his customers. 



A far from unimportant member of the community 

 was the chapman, or " pack merchant," who supplied 

 the wants of the people in so far as cloth and other 

 articles not of home manufacture were needed. With 

 his pack slung over his shoulder, and a big pack it often 

 was, and his ellwand in his hand, the chapman travelled 

 on his round day by day. He was known to his con- 



