guttle when I hear me shuttle

Subject: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 12:56 PM

possibly I did know at some point what guttle means - but I've forgot....

terrible when you're getting older.

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Reinhard
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 01:06 PM

Chumbawamba's sleeve notes on Poverty Knock:

And yet the continual knocking of the shuttle was at least a surety that you'd be able to eat—“guttle”—in a time when unemployment still meant virtual starvation and misery.

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: RTim
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 01:06 PM

: to eat or drink greedily and noisily.

Tim R

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 01:12 PM

More detail here: Help: 'GUTTLE' (word)

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Raedwulf
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 02:05 PM

Sorry, folks, but this is a word of VERY tenuous provenance. I tend to disbelieve the "shuttle" theory. It sounds more to me as though people down the years have jumped on the continual knocking of the shuttle was at least a surety that you'd be able to eat explanation; of Reinhard's post & Nigel's link; as "it sounds right, so it must be right". The more likely explanation would be that since guttle only seems ever to appear in that song as a RHYME...

Except that... ;-)

Consulted a dictionary or three. According to Partridge's Dictionary of Slang, guttie has more than one definition. The obvious one, well known to history or anyone with a knowledge of golf, is that golf balls were originally made from gutta-percha & therefore referred to as 'gutties', probably long after they stopped being made from gutta-percha. But Partridge also give a definition of 'glutton', presumably a glutton being someone that is "gutty".

"But the word is guttle!", I hear you cry. The following entry in Partridge is guttle-shop. AHA! A 'guttle-shop' is a tuck shop. For those of you, probably non-UK (or Oz) not familiar with 'tuck', it refers to food. A tuck shop, loosely, was/is a shop in a public (i.e. fee-paying) school where you can buy provender additional & supplemental to the school menu. These days, most folk think of tuck (if they think of it at all) as being sweets & snacks, but the food at a public school could often be pretty basic (reference Kipling's oblique comments about the diet at Westward Ho!), so it wasn't necessarily just "sweets" in regards to food, and might include non-food items too (many do today).

The fly in the humbugs, potted meat, whatever, is that Partridge gives 'guttle shop', very specifically as being slang of the 19thC from Rugby School (AHA!). The obvious question now is, how old is Poverty Knock (Chumba's notes as given above being no indication of anything)?

The cautious conclusion (and it is always wise to be cautious where etymology is concerned) is that we definitely have provenance that 'guttle' is a genuine word, not something invented to rhyme; either dialect or slang; that refers to food & to eating. However, it would seem difficult and/or unlikely to form a connection between Public School slang & dialect referring specifically to weavers. Why would it have passed from one to the other, either way?

It looks like it's a real word referring to food / eating; any direct connection to weaving very much appears to rely on the fact that it rhymes with shuttle. If you see what I mean... ;-)

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 02:29 PM

Subject: RE: Help: 'GUTTLE' (word from Poverty Knock)
From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Date: 18 Jul 12 - 09:54 AM

I'll just add the OED dates for them:
guttle (= to eat/guzzle food) 1654
skinny (= miserly) 1833 (So, it got that definition just in time!)

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 02:38 PM

Not sure what all the fuss is about. It’s not “guttle” but a northern pronunciation of the words “go ‘til” (go until).

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Raedwulf
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 02:57 PM

Henry - well done, sir! :) I missed that in skimming through Nigel's link. However! My caution remains - it's proof that the word is a word. There's nothing to link it to weaving, except the convenient rhyme with shuttle...

Ray - No, it's not. Besides the fact that the evidence is there that guttle is a word in its own right,

I know I can guttle when I hear me shuttle go
Poverty poverty knock

makes absolutely no sense whatsoever in your translation of

I know I can go until when I hear me shuttle go
Poverty poverty knock

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 05:03 PM

http://www.yorkshirefolksong.net/song.cfm?songID=14http://www.yorkshirefolksong.net/song.cfm?songID=14

My attempt at a blue clicky with apologies.

The sole source for this song is Tommy Daniel of Batley. See the notes to the song in the above link. Tommy wrote and glossed the word himself in his published typed booklet. There is also the possibility that Tommy wrote the song as there are no other proven sources, some hearsay, but little evidence.

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 05:09 PM

Chambers Scots Dictionary:
Guttle, v. to gorge, guzzle; to reach to the guts.

Scots dialect often overlapped further south into the northern counties.

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Gurney
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 09:11 PM

I tend to go with guest Ray up there. I always supposed that the shuttle goes clickety-clickety-clonk as it stops flying across, which makes it that operator can "Go 'till her shuttle stops hissing across the loom. Knock-off time."

Just can't see how she can eat and work at the same time.

Suppose it could mean that she can afford to eat while she has a job, though.

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Gurney
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 11:54 PM

I did most of my industrial time in western Coventry, at the Jaguar, where we were ably supplemented by workers from Birmingham and sometimes from the Black Country. I still remember the first time that I heard one of them express astonishment with the phrase "Well, I'll gutter the futter rah stairs!"
I understand that this translates as 'Well,I will go to the foot of our stairs!'

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: r.padgett
Date: 28 Dec 20 - 02:07 AM

Hudleston Glossary of Nth and East Yorks words has Gutlin as ~ horse always eating at work

To my mind the word Guttle is both associated with the ability to pay for food and it rhymes with Shuttle

Ray

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: Mo the caller
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 06:41 AM

"
skinny (= miserly) 1833 (So, it got that definition just in time!)"
The word skinflint has a longer predigree - origin-of-skinflint
The phrase to skin a flint is first recorded in one of the poems introducing the 1656 edition (London) of The Legend of Captain Jones. ....
Jones was one
Would Skinne a Flint, and eat him when h’had done.

Next question, what or who is a flint? I'd always imagined a flint for striking a light, but would you call that 'him'?

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: r.padgett
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 07:42 AM

Yes I think the word "flint" is the one used for striking a light ~and it has no fat oil or anything else on it!

So to skin a flint would result in "nothing"

Skin [a ]flint is simply saying someone is "tight fisted" in this context

Skinny and pinny rhyme ~ skinny is used as "being thin" in the other context of course

Ray

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Aug 21 - 03:31 PM

We used skinny for miserly in Lancashire when I was a lad and I up Guttle meaning for eating

Subject: RE: guttle when I hear me shuttle
From: ripov
Date: 11 Sep 21 - 02:42 PM

Sounds similar to"cuttle"cuttle bone is still fed to cage birds