![]() Lidl is selling three lettuces for the price of two, but hurry or they’ll all be gone. Some sites talk about a city or town having a town crier, which makes it sound less like a casual job, and one site talks about town criers proclaiming ads. At at least some times and in some places, town criers were paid by the proclamation. The string puller(s) would probably have varied with the period we’re talking about. Sprinkle a bit of salt over it, would you? I haven’t found a direct answer, so I’m patching this together as best I can. So the town crier would ring their bell or blow their horn or pound their drum, gather people around, and bellow out the news, proclamations, bylaws, thou-shalt-nots, thou-shalts, and whatever else the person pulling their strings felt was important. As if being illiterate wasn’t bad enough, they couldn’t read either. As Historic UK explains, “most folk were illiterate and could not read.” Also the newspaper, the radio station, and the TV set. At a time when most people were illiterate, word of mouth was the social media of its day. With the medieval period we can pick up more verifiable information about town criers. Go eat a cookie or something and I’ll move us along while you’re distracted. A lot of interpretation is involved.Ī third site ducks the issue by saying the town criers’ position was formalized after the Norman invasion. That’s the trouble with drawing your history from visual art. Well, I’m the person who stumbled into the Windsor and Maidenhead Town Crier site, which also mentions the tapestry but says its town criers came into the country with the Normans. If the loyal company is right and the town criers in the tapestry were Anglo-Saxon, then the tradition predated the Normans.Īnd who am I to question a loyal company? Harold? He’s the guy who not long after sending out news of an invasion lost the battle, the war, and his life. Because, loud as they were, a bell was even louder.Įven today, town criers open their cries by ringing a hand bell, although historically some used drums or horns.īut in spite of their Frenchified call, it wasn’t the Normans who introduced the town criers–at least not according to the website maintained by the Loyal Company of Town Criers, which says the town criers in the tapestry were Anglo-Saxons carrying King Harold’s news about the Norman invasion to the populace. You can pick out the town criers because they’re carrying hand bells, which they rang to gather people around them. The reason we can trace town criers back to the Norman invasion is that two of them were woven into the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the tale of the invasion in–um, yeah–tapestry. ![]() Whatever they say after that, they’re supposed to end with “God save the queen.” Or king. Okay, it’s French for “Hear ye, hear ye,” which is English for “Listen up, you peasants.” And it’s pronounced, “Oh yay,” for whatever that information may be worth. ![]() The reason I mention their language, though, is that roughly a thousand years later town criers still start their cries with “Oyez, oyez,” which is French for “Listen up, you peasants.” While they were at it, they also took over the land, the government, and anything that was left after that was parceled out. In England, we can trace town criers at least back to 1066, when the Normans invaded the country and put themselves in charge, adding an overlay of the Old French they spoke to the Old English that everyone else did. Doesn’t everything trace back to the Normans? The pandemic dictated that this year’s Town Crier Championships had to be held in silence, so this might be a reasonable time to stop and ask about town criers’ history in England. ![]()
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