Deal two

The second deal of the week is rather different from the first (reference 1).

It all started with BH coming across the word in a bit of light ladies' fiction and unwisely thought to ask me what it meant. I explained that I thought that it used to be the name of a cut of timber from large pine tree, from where it became the name of white wood generally. Timber merchants in towns would carry deals, from which they would cut whatever it was that one wanted. This in the days when you did not have a Black & Decker but when you did walk into a timber merchant's carrying a cutting list.

Figure 1 - one way of rendering a log into timber

Being of a sometimes careful mind, I thought to check this later in the day, asking both Bing and Google, neither of whom seemed to know the word, although one of them did turn up the diagram above. Right sort of thing, but not quite right.

Figure 2 - the Hewitt village web site

I then came across a speciality timber merchant in Hewitt, Wisconsin (reference 2), who was very helpful, replying very quickly to my email. His story was that a deal was a plank of softwood timber, such as fir or pine, or such planks collectively or the sawn wood of various coniferous trees, such as that from the Scots pine (red deal) or from the Norway Spruce (white deal). At which point I thought to do what I should have done in the first place and look in the dictionary (reference 3).

This offered eight columns of stuff about the various meaning of deal, including making deals, dealing cards, drug dealers and horse dealers. All in all, a rather low class word. But also:

A slice sawn from a log of timber (now always of fir or pine), and usually understood to be more than seven inches wide and not more than three thick; a plank or board of pine or fir-wood. In the timber trade in Great Britain, a deal is understood to be nine inches wide, not more than three inches thick and at least six feet long. If shorter it is a deal end ... In N. America … The word was introduced with sawn boards from some low German district, and, as those consisted usually of fir or pine, the word was from the first associated with these kinds of wood.

I think I knew the word from a carpenters’ pocket book, chock full of the sort of pictures and diagrams (engraved in the wood, as such books were in those days) that boys love, sadly now lost. A book which included a diagram which was along the same lines as Figure 1. Abebooks does not oblige. Google knows about such things but has not got around to digitising one. DPLA not help at all, turning up some oral history which does not help at all.

Figure 3 - old style diagram, engraved somehow

But at least I now have what I am fairly sure is the right answer. And just to round things out, I asked Bing about the difference between fir trees and pine trees, on which matter Wikipedia obliges at reference 4. The pines generally are a family of trees and shrubs, a family made up of a number of sub-families and genera, including the speciality pines (confusingly), the spruces, the larches, the firs and the cedars, among others.

Later that day, I had picked up Middlemarch (reference 5) again, and came across the word 'tomahawk', a fact which I am easily able to check now by searching the text version of the novel offered by the Gutenberg Project. From there I associated to a similar search to that for 'deal', except that this earlier search failed, when I was a child, probably around 11 or 12 years old. My parents had just taken proud delivery of the twelve volumes or so of Chamber’s Encyclopedia (reference 6), which had arrived and was still largely in a large cardboard box. Keen to demonstrate the worth of their new possession, my father invited me to suggest something to look up. Still being of an age to play cowboys and Indians (a game then played outdoors, in the woods, a game which is presumably no longer around), I suggested ‘tomahawk’. Sadly, despite valiant efforts, they failed to find anything about tomahawks at all. Much disappointment all round.

Figure 4 - a tomahawk

Nor did they own a proper copy of the OED, having to make do with the Shorter Oxford, whereas my OED (Volume X, Part I (TI-U)) includes more than a column and a half on the subject. And for a different take, I turn to DPLA (reference 7) which also knows all about the things, turning up the one illustrated above, amongst many others. Made in France for trade with the Indians of the north east of North America. Maybe this one more ceremonial than anything else, it looks a bit too flimsy to me to be used in battle, or even in skirmish.

The things we OAP's get up to.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/deal-one_7.html.

Reference 2: http://www.millcreekmouldings.com/.

Reference 3: A New English Dictionary - Volume III, Part I (D) - James Murray - 1897 (aka OED).

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinaceae.

Reference 5: Middlemarch - George Eliot - 1971/2.

Reference 6: Chambers's Encylopædia - George Newnes Ltd. - 1959. Note the use by Newnes of the apostrophe, a use which I do no recognise. I would have omitted the terminal 's'.

Reference 7: https://dp.la/.