RootsChat.Com
England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Lancashire => Topic started by: Yvonne Donnellon on Saturday 10 April 21 13:17 BST (UK)
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Hi
does anyone know what a cast owner was?
Thank you.
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Are you 100% that's what it says?
Where does the reference come from?
Can you provide a URL?
Pauline
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Apologies, just gone back to it with fresh eyes and now see it says Cart owner!
https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/8978/images/LANHO107_557_557-0431?pId=5783558
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Yvonne -- that is SO funny. I had just written a reply - but yours arrived first.
I had looked on the Index of Old Occupations site
https://rmhh.co.uk/occup/c.htm
and found the following;
Caster / Castorer Made small bottles for sprinkling salt, pepper, sugar etc. (never heard of that one, so learnt something.)
Hence I had wondered if it might be Castorer with the word split up by the enumerator. Clearly not.
(You never know when you may get that one in a quiz!)
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Yvonne -- that is SO funny. I had just written a reply - but yours arrived first.
I had looked on the Index of Old Occupations site
https://rmhh.co.uk/occup/c.htm
and found the following;
Caster / Castorer Made small bottles for sprinkling salt, pepper, sugar etc. (never heard of that one, so learnt something.)
Hence I had wondered if it might be Castorer with the word split up by the enumerator. Clearly not.
(You never know when you may get that one in a quiz!)
Lol! Every day's a school day! Thank you for your efforts! x
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Does "caster" explain the name of caster sugar - sugar fine enough for sprinkling through a vessel with small holes? Interesting. What a pity he was just an everyday carter, after all. :)
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Gill -- I have never given any thought as to why caster sugar was so called.
For that matter I have never known that people who MADE salt and pepper pots had a particular job title. Being simple minded I would have just thought they were called salt and pepper pot makers!
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On the subject of sugar and casting it over things my Dad who was from the Midlands used to say
‘shither (rhyming with wither) some sugar on my strawberries’ or ‘shither some soil over those seeds’
I used the expression once to a friend, who coincidentally was English but we both live in Scotland, and she had no idea what I meant.
I tried to look it up in a dictionary but couldn’t find it. Searching online gave me some questionable answers due to the spelling at the beginning so I gave up.
How common is this word and is is local to the Midlands ?
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I am from the North West and I have never heard of it. However I do love these local variations of words (and dialects).
Wonder if that word would be said as 'sliver' elsewhere?
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On the subject of sugar and casting it over things my Dad who was from the Midlands used to say
‘shither (rhyming with wither) some sugar on my strawberries’ or ‘shither some soil over those seeds’
I used the expression once to a friend, who coincidentally was English but we both live in Scotland, and she had no idea what I meant.
I tried to look it up in a dictionary but couldn’t find it. Searching online gave me some questionable answers due to the spelling at the beginning so I gave up.
How common is this word and is is local to the Midlands ?
Based on Joseph Wright's Dialect Dictionary, it looks like a variant of a word that's almost identical except for having '-tt-' in the middle rather than '-th-, local to the north and midlands of England.
It's used of animals with diarrhoea (as a verb), but can also be used when referring to dry substances to mean something like spill - with a bit of rustic hyperbole, I can imagine it being used for more deliberate sprinkling or scattering too.
Joseph Wright's definition is at https://archive.org/details/cu31924088038421/page/n403/mode/2up
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arthurk
You worded that very delicately, whilst at the same time reminding us of a word that's all too familiar these days! Just above the entry you mentioned is the dialect word "shither", which apparently means shudder or shake in Durham, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire. Maybe this ties up with ofg's father's use of shaking sugar over strawberries, etc.
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I wondered about that 'shither', but it appeared to be an intransitive verb (one that doesn't take an object, as in 'he was shivering'). But who knows? 'Shake' can be either transitive or intransitive, so maybe a dialect word meaning more or less the same was thought to behave in the same way.
I didn't make notes, but while looking at this I saw cross-references to some similar words with a cluster of similar meanings: from memory, these included shutter, scutter and skither, as well as the more standard scatter and slither. I suspect some or all of them tended to merge into each other.
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I have my mother’s caster sugar caster ,I treasure it, mince pies with a dusting of caster or icing sugar.
It dates from at least 1933 when she got married but possibly her mother’s who married in 1885.
So precious I hardly use it but always at Christmas.
Viktoria.
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I also have one which I think was a present for my parents' wedding in 1931, Viktoria. It's shaped like a lighthouse and is made of pewter and is a bit Art Nouveau in style, so I think it may have been from rather earlier in the century. Actually the holes are rather too big for caster sugar, unless you want a generous helping. :)