Prithee, sir, I like the look of your peascod (From Worcester News)

Prithee, sir, I like the look of your peascod

9:30am Monday 20th April 2009 in Search By John Phillpott

MANY of you will be well aware of my fondness for nostalgia but this week I intend to excel myself. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to take you on a journey back to… the 17th century.

But don’t worry. We’re not going far, no further than Worcester in fact. All the same, you should be warned. For this is the Faithful City of 1643.

But you can trust me. For I’ve just had a sneak preview of what life was like in Worcester in those days, courtesy of a new work by Hay-on-Wye author Celia Boyd.

Act of Rebellion is the third book in an English Civil Wars trilogy by Ms Boyd, and once again the action starts right here on the banks of the Severn.

Tom Fletcher, the son of a Fish Street butcher, is a surgeon who finds himself caught up in the turmoil of the times. Worcester is besieged by General Waller’s Parliamentarian army and our hero needs to find a way to reach Gloucester.

There’s no shortage of blood and guts, in particular the graphic descriptions of surgical techniques. But what makes this book unique is that fact that the author builds the dialogue around the ornate speech mannerisms of the period. For example, regarding the Severn, we learn that “Sabrina Fair can become the most treacherous harlot in Worcestershire,” and green peas are as “sweet and tender as a virgin’s cry for help”. Then we are asked to picture a “bragging bellshangle of a soldier.”

Meanwhile, dialect words such as lakin, gaskins, quacksalver, peascod and base stripling fire like musket volleys from the pages.

The book reminds us that the Severn was tidal in those days, but the modern traveller would certainly recognise the account of reaching the top of Fromes Hill, and might even be able to picture the family shop in Fish Street.

We also learn that betrothals in Worcester were regarded as binding and there was much drilling of the city’s young men on Pitchcroft. And if you weren’t being put through your paces with musket and pike, then there was plenty of work shoring up the city wall near the King’s School with earth to absorb parliamentarian cannon shot.

This book makes compelling reading, especially as the pages are studded with place names that will be familiar to Worcestershire people. It’s published by Graficas Books and available from all good bookshops.