Box Edgings 
99 
Box hedges were much esteemed in England — 
so says Parkinson, to dry linen on, affording the 
raised expanse and even surface so much desired. It 
can always be noted in all domestic records of early 
days that the vast washing of linen and clothing 
was one of the great events of the year. Sometimes, 
in households of plentiful supply, these washings 
were done but once a year ; in other homes, semi- 
annually. The drying and bleaching linen was an 
unceasing attraction to rascals like Autolycus, who 
had a “pugging tooth” — that is, a prigging tooth. 
These linen thieves had a special name, they were 
called “prygmen”; they wandered through the 
country on various pretexts, men and their doxies, 
and were the bane of English housewives. 
The Box hedges were also in constant use to hold 
the bleaching webs of homespun and woven flaxen 
and hempen stuff, which were often exposed for 
weeks in the dew and sunlight. In 1710 a reason 
given for the disuse and destruction of “ quicksetted 
arbors and hedges” was that they “ agreed very ill 
with the ladies' muslins.” 
Box was of little value in the apothecary shop, was 
seldom used in medicine. Parkinson said that the 
leaves and dust of boxwood “ boyld in lye ” would 
make hair to be “ of an Aborne or Abraham color” 
- — that is, auburn. This was a very primitive hair 
dye, but it must have been a powerful one. 
Boxwood was a firm, beautiful wood, used to 
make tablets for inscriptions of note. The mottled 
wood near the root was called dudgeon. Holland's 
translation of Pliny says, “The Box tree seldome 
