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Toseland, R
Product details
Publisher : Pearson; 7th edition (February 3, 2011)
Language : English
ISBN-10 : 0205820042
ISBN-13 : 978-0205820047
The settlers builded great chimneys with ample open hearths, and
to those hearths the vast forests supplied plentiful fuel; but as the
forests disappeared in the vicinity of the towns, the fireplaces also
shrank in size, so that in Franklin’s day he could write of the big
chimneys as “the fireplaces of our fathers;” and his inventions for
economizing fuel had begun to be regarded as necessities.
The kitchen was the housewife’s domain, the chimney-seat her
throne; but the furniture of that throne and the sceptre were far
different from the kitchen furnishings of to-day.
We often see fireplaces with hanging cranes in pictures illustrating
earliest colonial times, but the crane was unknown in those days.
When the seventeenth-century chimney was built, ledges were left
on either side, and on them rested the ends of a long heavy pole of
green wood, called a lug-pole or back bar. The derivation of the word
lug-pole is often given as meaning from lug to lug, as the chimney-
side was often called the lug. Whittier wrote:—
And for him who sat by the chimney lug.
Others give it from the old English word lug, to carry; for it was
indeed the carrying-pole. It was placed high up in the yawning
chimney, with the thought and intent of its being out of reach of the
devouring flames, and from it hung a motley collection of hooks of
various lengths and weights, sometimes with long rods, sometimes
with chains, and rejoicing in various names. Pot-hooks, pot-hangers,
pot-hangles, pot-claws, pot-cleps, were one and the same; so also
were trammels and crooks. Gib and gibcroke were other titles. Hake
was of course the old English for hook:—
Niddy-noddy,
Two heads and one body.