A bit of rough

And how it leads to Smithfield market

Even after the boom when many families became instantly – even catastrophically – rich and the law came to town, they were, in any estimation, as rough as guts.

Tim Winton, Dirt Music

Rough gives the English-speaking world a joyous plenitude of similes for describing people, from the more or less complimentary rough diamond to the somewhat less positive, but not too derogatory rough around the edges to rough as a badger’s arse, which is pretty low down on the social scale. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms (1848) joins in the fun with rough as the back of a hedgehog, and Australians and New Zealanders really go to town with rough as bags, rough as sacks, rough as guts and rough as a pig’s breakfast – and that’s just those that are printable.

The adjective rough is a direct descendant of Old English ruh, although its form and pronunciation has evolved a little since that time. Ruh is derived from Proto-Germanic *rūhaz, which spawned cognates that mean ‘rough’ in several Germanic languages, such as Danish ru, German rau and Dutch ruig. The Present-Day English -ough spelling indicates that the last phoneme of ruh was pronounced like the -ch /x/ sound of Scottish loch – it still is in West Frisian rûch – like the Old English forerunners of tough, enough, plough and through. Attested meanings of ruh include ‘uneven’, ‘abrasive to the touch’, ‘coarse’, ‘in a natural, unprocessed state’ (for materials) and ‘shaggy-haired’, all of which remain senses of rough today. In Middle English, further meanings developed, including ‘harsh’ (for actions), ‘turbulent’ (for seas) and ‘approximate’ from roughly 1600. Rough for preliminary notes and written draughts dates from around the same time, the central theme of all these senses being ‘unfinished’ and ‘lacking in refinement’, a bit rough-and-ready. In the same vein, we might say that someone looks rough or feels rough. A century ago, these terms meant ‘unwell’ or ‘dejected’, but they are now more commonly used when someone is looking grim as a result of a hangover, possibly brought on by excessive consumption of rough cider or the toxic concoction that I drank last Saturday, (which came back with a vengeance last Sunday).

The noun rough first meant ‘uncultivated ground’ (and is still used in this way in rough pasture and the rough on a golf course, i.e. the unmown terrain to the side of the fairway), but it may also have meant ‘rude or violent person’ for centuries. The OED refers to a pair of Norman roughs in Galfridus le Ruwe and John le Rug, but as the term rough-snout for ‘bearded face’ is from the same era, these were probably just two very hairy gentleman (though I suppose it’s just possible that John le Rug could be someone like my follically challenged friend and neighbour John, sporting a toupee). A bit of rough, on the other hand,  is sometimes used for a sexual partner, usually a man from a lower social class with unpolished manners through not having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth – think Mellors for Lady Chatterley. Roughneck is first attested as ‘uneducated or uncultivated person’ in the 1800s but was also being used for ‘ironworker’ 100 years later, and soon after ‘worker on an oil rig’. The latter definition was adopted as a nickname by Tulsa Roughnecks of the short-lived North American Soccer League (1978 – 1984), Tulsa, Oklahoma being the self-styled ‘Oil Capital of the World’ for much of the 20th century.

While roughs, roughnecks and ruffians might now seem to be peas from the same pod of loutishness, when the word ruffian first appeared in English in the 1500s, it meant ‘pimp’, coming from Italian ruffiano via French rufian ‘owner or protector of whores’. The thuggery inherent in such a role combined with the sound similarity of ruffian and rough has influenced the sense evolution of ruffian to its current meaning, ‘brutal or violent person’. This change of meaning was rapid. By the end of the 16th century, bands of assorted villains and malcontents would congregate at Ruffian’s Hall, part of Smithfield market in London, to compete in aggressive and unruly swordplay. (Smithfield market was principally a livestock market, as can be ascertained by the names of still-extant streets in the vicinity like Cowcross Street and Cock Lane – although the latter was also the site of legal brothels in the medieval period, so you could be misled by an alternative etymology.) Soon the irredeemably disreputable were proverbially declared to be ‘only fit for Ruffian’s Hall’, the Elizabethan and Jacobean equivalent of the naughty step. By fighting at Smithfield, these reprobates were literally taking the rough with the smooth, as the place-name Smithfield is a combination of smeeth, the usual Middle English word for ‘smooth’ and field. Markets in medieval England were places where lawlessness and sharp practices were rife, and Smithfield was no exception. The term Smithfield bargain meaning ‘rip-off’ or ‘swindle’ was coined by woebegone customers because of the unscrupulous actions of market-traders there. The meaning of this phrase later narrowed and a Smithfield bargain became ‘marriage of convenience’ – or as Francis Grose puts it in The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, ‘[it is] used to express matches or marriages contracted solely on the score of interest, on one or both sides, where the fair sex are bought and sold like cattle in Smithfield’. Lovely.

There was a very long tradition of organised aggro in Smithfield. In the 12th century, it was a large open space on the edge of St Bartholomew’s Priory, just outside Aldersgate of the City of London. Smithfield (or Smethefelda as it then was) hosted regular jousts and tournaments, as well as public executions – Scottish braveheart William Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered there in 1305, a particularly grisly fate, and Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasant’s Revolt, was beheaded there in 1381. It was also the site of Bartholomew Fair, notorious for its days (some years, it was weeks) of ribald behaviour, featuring strongmen, magicians, comedians, wild beasts, tightrope-walking monkeys, roasted pig meat, sausages, sweets, puppet shows, freak shows, peep shows, prizefighting, roughhousing, pocket-picking, gambling, heavy drinking and general debauchery. The fair was held every summer for over 700 years before Victorian spoilsports closed it down for good in 1855, declaring that the fair was ‘a school of vice which has initiated more youth into the habits of villainy than Newgate [prison] itself’. In one fell swoop, the city authorities had ridden roughshod over the feelings of their disappointed citizens and the rough and tumble of this riotous festival was no more.