SC - My birthday present
snowfire at mail.snet.net
snowfire at mail.snet.net
Wed Feb 17 15:41:46 PST 1999
- -Poster: Jean Holtom <snowfire at mail.snet.net>
>>And we also had a "peg man" who whittled "dolly pegs" (clothes pins).
>> Usually "peg men (or women) were tinkers.
>An interesting usage there...in the British Isles, tinkers are what most
>of the world calls gypsys, and it seems to be a mostly pejorative term,
>as far as I can tell. Whether or not it refers to the actual profession
>of a tinker (or whether these tinkers are actually tinkers by
>profession) is another question.
>A tinker, of course, is someone who comes to your door to see if you
>have any pots that need mending, and is, in theory, a perfectly
>honorable profession.
Actually, the tinkers who sold pegs might have been either tinker or gypsy. I think you're
right in that their being labelled as tinkers was because of a general "muddiness" people
seemed to have about the difference between the two groups of people. I don't think it was
meant to imply that they were tinker by trade though, they were just called "tinkers" because
they were of the gypsy/tinker ilke. And yes it was used as a pejorative term by some people.
Elysant
P.S. Some of my ancestors were Tinkers.
No I don't sell pegs.
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