Minicast Bonus: Down Bucket

You’re listening to an A Way with Words minicast.

Grant, if I say down bucket, what do you say?

Well, I say up for air.

Yep.

That’s what Fred Russell in Marblehead, Massachusetts, tells us is the traditional response. It’s a sort of hometown password that’s used by headers. That’s what those Marblehead residents call themselves.

Yep, he’s right.

Headers in historians say down bucket. Down bucket supposedly started as a practical warning. Back when Marblehead didn’t have indoor plumbing or a sewer system, people emptied chamber pots out the window, or at least this is how the story goes. They’d shout, down bucket, to warn anyone walking below. If you were from town, you knew to yell, up for air, and dive out of the way.

Yeah, and sometimes you’d hear the whole greeting, which is, whip, followed by down bucket, then up for air, then rock’em.

Rock’em. I love that one. Whip on its own had a lot of uses. It was a greeting. It was a call for help. Rock’em could be friendly, but it also had teeth. It was used as a cheer during sporting events, but also during street fights.

Well, and Grant, I see there’s a story from the 1870s about how this boatload of rowdy day trippers who were up from Boston pushed off from the wharf there. And when they did so, Marbleheaders hurled rocks at them and shouted, rock them around the corner!

Yeah, those Bostonians always cause trouble.

There’s other charming Marblehead vocabulary. Crimmy meant cold. Grouty meant cranky, coming as it does from grout, meaning a sour apple. Cautch, C-A-U-T-C-H, was a mess or spoiled food. Wael, S-Q-U-A-E-L, meant to throw, as in throwing stones at the Bostonians.

Well, and here’s another old phrase from there, to hell I pitch it. You’d hear that one when someone was finished once and for all. If they were tired of a job or a project or a headache, you flung it aside and said, to hell I pitch it. And it could also be the response to down bucket.

Well, thanks, Fred, for your information. We are warned if we find ourselves walking the historic streets of Marblehead and we hear a window creak open above us. You’ll know what to listen for and to move fast.

If there are local expressions you’d love to share, we’d love to hear them. Drop us a line at words@waywordradio.org.

Or call or text 877-929-9673. That’s toll free in the U.S. and Canada.

Far A Way with Words, I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Bye.

Bye.