“HUSBANDMAN”

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 August 1928, Page 9

“HUSBANDMAN”

OUR CHANGING VOCABULARY. “What we to-day call a farmer would two centuries ago, be termed a husbandman,” writes Mr Edward Shoosmith, in the “Sussex Magazine.” “This ancient description is said to be a composite Viking-Saxon word, indicating ‘the man who dwells upon lands of his own tilling.’ It is essential, if that be so, that we should also have been in occupation of the Saxon ‘bus’ as well as ‘buandi,’ dwelling, and ‘bauen,’ to till. The writer is personally of opinion that .the word ‘husbandman’ may have been a corruption (vox populi) of a Saxon word meaning protector in a. broad sense. This would appear to have been the opinion of Lombard©, who was a -well-read Saxon scholar in Elizabethan days. Our modern word husband may, perhaps, stand for ‘keeper’ oi* ‘protector,’ rather than a householder. It is a pity that the ancient use of the beautiful word ‘husbandman’ has quite dropped out of our present-day language. Husbandman conveys so much. It suggests the love and protection and infinite care of the land-dweller for the soil of England. It conveys an idea of thrift. It presents Io us, in one single word, all these, with industry and honest toil. The old word ‘husbandman’ affords so many abstract things to live up to. It is one of the beautiful words of the English language.