A Hierarchy of Respect Among Craftsmen

An artisan. Someone who creates any handiwork. An artist.

"Many craftsmen did not possess extensive capital resources; a study of Cairo has shown that a considerable proportion of the shops and workshops were owned by large merchants or by religious foundations. They could enjoy prestige, however, as a stable population pursuing honourable trades in accordance with generally accepted codes of honesty and decent workmanship. There was a hierarchy of respect in the crafts, ranging from work in precious metals, paper and perfume, down to such 'unclean' crafts as tanning, dyeing, and butchering."

Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (1991).

Poetasters

A bad poet. A dogged composer of doggerel.

"How these authors magnify their office!
One dishonest plumber
does more harm than a hundred poetasters."

--Augustine Birrell.

Ropers and the Well-Woven Rope

Someone who makes or looks after ropes.

"Money stored up is every man's master, or slave. A well-woven rope ought to follow and not lead the way."

Horace, Epistle to Aristius Fuscus (21 B.C.)

Colet

An acolyte.

"Fyrst benet, than colet, subdecon, deacon, and than preest."

William Caxton, The cronicles of Englond (1480).

Story-tellers

Someone who recites stories, legends, and romances, publicly, for money.

"I have always felt that the art of telling a story consists in so stimulating the listener's imagination that he drowns himself in his own reveries long before the end. The best stories I have heard were pointless, the best books those whose plot I can never remember, the best individuals those whom I never get anywhere with. Though it has been practiced on me time and again I never cease to marvel how it happens that, with certain individuals whom I know, within a few minutes after greeting them we are embarked on an endless voyage comparable in feeling and trajectory only to the deep middle dream which the practiced dreamer slips into like a bone into its socket."

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi (1941).

Mudlarks

Someone who scavenges in the mud for salvageable material.

"Mudlarks, so called from their being accustomed to prowl about, at low water, under the quarter of West India ships under pretence of grubbing in the mud for old ropes, iron, etc., but whose chief object was to receive and conceal small bags of sugar, coffee, etc. which they conveyed to such houses as they were directed, and for which services they generally received a share of the booty."

Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (1796).

Expensive and Conceited Exorcists

“Blood is adhesive. In a hotel it is like a curse. It is a taint that never goes away. For selfish reasons I was glad that the murder of Amo Ferretti was not committed in my hotel. Murders leave a sweetly poisonous smell that lingers, and any hotel unlucky enough to be the setting for a murder ceases to be a hotel and is known only as the scene of the crime, vicious and provocative, attracting all the wrong people, photographers and thrill seekers. The hotel never gets its reputation back, even after the charade of the most elaborate and noisy purification ceremonies, the howling monks, the gongs, the firecrackers, the tossing of salt, the prayers, the expensive and conceited exorcists.”

Paul Theroux, Hotel Honolulu (2001).