From: Year of Wonder, by Geraldine Brooks

after Sam the miner dies, the narrator comments:

..but they nicked his stowe the day they brought his body out of the mine. ...Jonus has the seam now... he feels he has choused me... its hardly a swindle when the law here time is very plain that those who can not pull a dish of lead from a mine with three nicks may not keep it.


nick i know, (it mean to steal) but stowe and chouse(d) are new!

choused - stole a march on

nick i know, (it mean to steal)

Ok, that is a meaning of 'nick' and we still use it, but it doesn't seem to fit in with the last bit:

the law here time is very plain that those who can not pull a dish of lead from a mine with three nicks may not keep it.

Nicks also means to whack. It would appear to mean that if you can't get a small amount of lead with three whacks of your pick, you're no good as a miner.

Sam, the narrators husband, is a the miner has died in a cave in. the other miners help to dig him out, and at the same time, one has stolen ore (nick it). the law (english)is that if one person can steal three 'dishes'-a measure of ore- from a mine, he has, in fact, 'claimed the mine' a stowe is what in california/US west would call a claim.

Miner can stake a claim(US english!) by finding ore, and paying a tax in ore to the crown, and keep the mine as long as they can work it. but if someone else can steal three dishes of ore, and the 'owner' doesn't challenge (by producing his own ore dish,) the person can 'nick the stowe'.

the meaning of the words is often made clear by the narritive, but there are many words in the book that i have never encountered!

The OED is very wordy and rather obscure (to me at least) about ‘stowe’. It could be the various parts of the frames that shored up the mine and that belonged to the individual miner, who moved them from place to place with him as he worked. But the stowe also acted, when set up on the surface, as an indication of the ownership of the mine (like staking your claim?). That seems to be what is referred to in the quotation.

There is an interesting and dreadful quote given in the OED dating from 1661:

“He that stealeth ore twice is fined, and the third time struck through the hand with a Knife unto the haft into the stowe and is there to stand until death, or loose himself by cutting off his hand.”

Ah, yes, just at the beginning of the reign of Charles II of course, that Merry Monarch!

RE: . It would appear to mean that if you can't get a small amount of lead with three whacks of your pick, you're no good as a miner.


to nick the stowe, you have produce 3 dishes of ore, and a dish is defined as the amount one man can carry out of a mine (later, defined as about 40 pounds) at time.

there is a local governing 'board'.. The Miners Board, that has the 'offical dish', and that monitors claims, and collects the taxes. its not just 3 swings of an pick ax!

Yes, this custom He that stealeth ore twice is fined, and the third time struck through the hand with a Knife unto the haft into the stowe and is there to stand until death, or loose himself by cutting off his hand.”
comes up in the course of the story.

the book is about a town that is suffering from the effects of an outbreak of plague, and one of the former miners becomes a gravedigger, who overcharges, after the sexton has died of plague.

at one point, he takes a man who has gotten the plague, but has actually survived, and feeling cheated, the miner buries him alive, and steals his fee for gravedigging!
the surviver escapes (the grave was shallow) and the gravedigger is hauled before the mining board, the only authority left in town (alive!) and his pushiment is as decribed..

the narrator claims that most often, a family members came after nightfall, and removed the knife, (but the miner would be left crippled by the events) and it was not really a death sentence.

It sounds a cheerful little tale!

Re:It sounds a cheerful little tale!


the book Year of Wonders takes it title from John Dryden's Annus Mirabilis as all the action takes place in 1666. it is based on the true story of Eyam, in Derbyshire, which had an isolated outbreak of plague the same year London did.

it is a very interesting time; the restoration of the throne, cromwell and the puritans, the great fire of london.. so many changes, so that even a small town in the remote country side, experience new and wonderous thing, (and the plague is not always seen by the villager as a punishment, but at an opportunity for purification..) it its a time of great change..

I wonder if "stowe" could be a corruption of "stope":
stope
n.
5< MLowG stope, akin to STEP6 a steplike excavation formed by the removal of ore from around a mine shaft
vt., vi.
stoped, stop4ing to mine in stopes

The OED doesn't identify any connection with stope. Both being mining terms I suppose there may be some common roots.

I saw a fascinating documentary on Discovery about the great plague of 1666 and Eyam just before Christmas. Eyam is still fairly isolated and there are a lot of people living there now who are descended from the survivors of the plague outbreak. Geneticists and immunologists have studied their genes and found a particular gene which may be responsible for their ancestors' survival. Those with one copy of the gene from a parent caught the plague but recovered, while those with two copies, one from each parent, were immune and did not catch the plague at all. This gene apparently is present in about 14% of people of European descent because of the repeated plague outbreaks but very rare in people originating from elsewhere. The same gene also gives immunity from AIDS in the same way. If you have one copy you get HIV but survive much longer than other people, if you have two copies you don't get HIV.

Bingley

the book is a fictionalize account, paying attention to some details, and changing others.. for instance the pastor who suggest the quarrenteen, in truth, had two daughters, that he sent away before it started, in the fictionalized story, he and his wife are childless.

likewise, the pastors wife dies of plague, but in the fiction, she gets it, surrives, and its later killed in an accident.

the bit about the man who was burried alive is a true, but there is no record of who the gravedigger was, or what was done to him, in the fiction, the gravedigger is the miner who has his hand impalled with a knife an a stowe.

since all the 'thoughts and emotions' are made up anyway, (most of the town was illiterate, and there are very few written records of the goings ons.) the author made the whole thing a work of fiction. Still its very good.

at times, the characters seem to modern, but then again, they did live in times were even in small village, they would know what was happening in the greater part of brittin, (Cromwell would have been hard to miss!) so for many, things were changing, and as the auther has said, in time of change, great characters can emerge.

the narrator is the rectors part time housemaid (who according to the pastors records, survived) who is a new widow, (Sam, was her husband and killed in his mine) who is forced to do new things just to survive (like go out to work as a housemaid, and take in borders) the book is as much a record of her journey from frightened young girl, to capably woman as it is the story of the town.

I know this is very late, but I just read the book. Check this link: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Citations:stowe Essentially, and I'm paraphrasing, a "stowe" is used to claim possession of a mine/seam. A "stowe" preserves a miner's possession for three weeks. The barmaster sets his "nick" on the spindle of the "stowe", thereby formally granting ownership for three weeks. If the barmaster nicks it 3 times (3, 6, or 9 weeks) the claim can be removed from the miner. If the claim remains for a certain period unwrought, unless by wind or water, the claim can also be removed from the miner and granted to another. Hence the author's sentence "I told them they did not need to wait again, for three weeks, six weeks, or nine" and "those who cannot pull a dish of lead within three nicks may not keep it" - three nicks being the equivalent of nine weeks.