Pieman

Someone who bakes quantities of pies for sale. A pie vendor.

“While constructing St. Petersburg, Peter was naturally afraid of relying on people who regarded Moscow as their hereditary nest. He made Alexander Menshikov his right-hand man; he, rumour has it, previously earned his living as a peddler of hot pies. Menshikov’s luxurious palace still graces the banks of the Neva and the Czar often used to spend the night there after friendly drinking sessions. He also sometimes thrashed his host, who was enterprising and intrepid but also rather light-fingered, evidently as a legacy of his childhood peddling.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “The City with Three Names,” Insight Guide: St. Petersburg (1994).

Goatherd

Someone who tends a herd of goats.

“In the spring mornings I would work early while my wife still slept. The windows were open wide and the cobbles of the street were drying after the rain. The sun was drying the wet faces of the houses that faced the window. The shops were still shuttered. The goat-herd came up the street blowing his pipes and a woman who lived on the floor above us came out onto the sidewalk with a big pot. The goat-herd chose one of the heavy-bagged, black milk-goats and milked her into the pot while his dog pushed the others onto the sidewalk. The goats looked around, turning their necks like sightseers. The goat-herd took the money from the woman and thanked her and went on up the street piping and the dog herded the goats on ahead, their horns bobbing. I went back to writing and the woman came up the stairs with the goat milk. She wore her felt-soled cleaning shoes and I only heard her breathing as she stopped on the stairs outside our door and then the shutting of her door. She was the only customer for goat milk in our building.”

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1960).

Waferer

A baker who specializes in thin, light, crisp cookies or crackers--the inessential and unsubstantial.

"Or again, if the Prince have proclaimed his purpose of setting out for a certain place with the morrow's dawn, then will he surely change his purpose; doubt not but that he will lie abed till mid-day. Here wait the sumpters standing under their loads, the chariots idly silent, the outriders asleep, the royal merchants in anxious expectation, and all murmuring together: men flock round the court prostitutes and vintners, (a kind of courtiers who often know the palace secrets), to get tidings of the king's journey. For the king's train swarms with play-actors and washerwomen, dicers and flatterers, taverners, waferers, buffoons, barbers, tumblers, and all birds of that feather. Oftentimes have I seen how, when the king slept and all things were in quiet silence, there leapt down a word from the royal quarters, not almighty indeed, yet all-awakening, and naming that city or town for which the court must now set out."

Peter of Blois, 14th Letter (12th century).

Epigrammist

A writer of wit and brevity.

"The epigrammatist's belief

Is that he pleases since he's terse.

But what's the use of being brief

At length--the length of a book of verse?"

Martial, The Epigrams (85 AD).

A Miller on the Joiner

A woodworker who specializes in more ornamental work, such as making furniture, than does a carpenter.

"Wherever we went we were sure to be joined by some of his numerous friends. In this ambiance the discussion developed to fantastic proportions; the newcomer was fitted into the architectural pattern of his talk with the ease and dexterity of a mediaeval joiner or mason."

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi (1941).

Pillager

A plunderer. Soldiers who take advantage of the chaos of war to steal whatever they can lay their hands on.

“Protracted warfare had changed men into wild beasts; now it was necessary to change these brutalized creatures into men again, into Christians, into obedient subjects. A great transformation, and difficult! Some of those Armagnac captains were perhaps the most ferocious men that ever lived. One name is enough, a horrendous name: that of Gilles de Retz, the prototype of Bluebeard. Yet there was still one way of acting upon those dark souls; they had sunk below humanity, below nature, but they had not completely discarded religion. The brigands, it is true, managed to reconcile in the most bizarre fashion their religion and their brigandage. One of them, the Gascon La Hire, made this startling remark, ‘If God became man, He would be a pillager.’ And when he went after loot, he offered his little Gascon prayer, without saying too explicitly what he wanted, trusting that God would take the hint: ‘Sire God, I pray Thee to do for La Hire what La Hire would do for Thee, if Thou wert a captain, and La Hire were God.’”

Jules Michelet, Joan of Arc (1841).

[Translated by Albert Guèrard.]

Monarch

A single, absolute ruler. A king, queen, emperor, or empress. Someone occupying an equally advantageous spot in the pecking order.

“MONARCHS, IN PARTICULAR, ROYAL ALLIANCES: Essential to the development and spread of rich desserts.

Catherine de Medici arrived in France with macaroons. Marie de Medici was energized by the sugar injections of her Neapolitan pastry chef, who brought such hometown specialties to Paris as the millefeuille. The absorption of Normandy by the French kings helped to popularize the northern habit of combining vast quantities of butter and cream with something sweet. King Stanislaus Leszinski of Poland poured rum on his baba for the first time in 1736. The Hapsburgs sponsored endless variations on the trinity of bitter chocolate, cream and cake throughout their vast empire. Emperor Franz Josef’s favourite was the Ischler Toertchen from Zauner. It has the deceptive appearance of a large double cookie, but the butter-crumbly cake is filled with a chocolate-and-vanilla cream, apricot marmalade on top, bitter chocolate covering that, and sprinkled with crushed pistachios.

That the utility of royal families was coming to an end could be seen in late nineteenth-century Vienna, where so much good work had been done, when Franz Josef’s wife, the Empress Elizabeth, had a personal gymnasium installed in her royal apartments and began to watch her figure as if she were an actress. From there to a commoner-become-Princess of Wales who suffered from bulimia has been an unfortunate direct line.”

John Ralston Saul, The Doubter’s Companion (1994).

Retiarius

A Roman gladiator armed with a trident and a net to entangle his adversary.

"As Retiarius he attacks his foe;

First waves his Trident ready for the throw,

Next casts his net."

Stopney in John Dryden's The Satires of Juvenal (1693).

Steersman

The sailor responsible for steering a ship. A pilot.

"Nothing is nobler than a good king, nothing better, nothing nearer God; equally, nothing is worse than a bad prince, nothing viler, nothing more like the devil. There is something divine about a beneficent prince, but no wild beast is more destructive than a tyrant. And a tyrant is whoever wields power for himself, whatever name his paintings and statues give him. It is not for us to pass judgement, as it were, upon the great ones of the earth, but yet we are obliged--not without sorrow--to feel the lack in Christian princes of that high wisdom of which we have spoken. All these revolutions, treaties made and broken, frequent risings, battle and slaughter, all these threats and quarrels, what do they arise from but stupidity? And I rather think that some part of this is due to our own fault. We do not hand over the rudder of the ship to anyone but a skilled steersman, when nothing is at stake but four passengers or a small cargo; but we hand over the state, in which so many thousands of people are in peril, to the first comer."

Erasmus, Adages ("Aut fatuum aut regem nasci oportere") (1515).

[translated by Margaret Mann Phillips (1967)].

Cheese Maker

As the French would have us believe, a country such as France's endless variety of cheeses (and, therefore, of cheese makers) confirms its ultimate ungovernability.

"I ain't Calf enough to lick your chalk'd Face, you Cheese-Curd you."

William Congreve, Love for Love (1695).

The Old Bamboo Cutter

Someone who harvests bamboo for an infinity of uses.

"The whole sequence of events was as singular as the story of the old bamboo cutter and the moon princess, and the nun was uneasy lest a moment of inattention give the girl her chance to slip away."

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (10th Century).

[Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.]