Shambles: From Bloody Stools and Stalls to a Messy Bedroom

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Yanni, and I’m calling from Bradford, Vermont.

What’s on your mind today, Yanni?

Okay, so several months ago, my husband and I were with a friend of ours that we’re doing a writing project with.

And we were about to sit down to the writing table, and our friend said, oh, wait, wait, wait, this is in shambles.

I have to, you know, I have to organize it.

So I looked at him clearly and I said, I started laughing because my association with the word was completely different from the way my buddy was using it.

Kind of just described his mess on the table.

Because my first encounter with shambles was when I lived in England in the late 70s, after art school.

And my employer said to me when she saw that I like to write, I like to draw rather, she said, you need to go up to York to the marvelous shambles.

And that’s the first time I ever heard shambles.

And I did go up to York and I did do some drawing.

And they were just they were just beautiful.

And so I’ve never thought of the shambles as a mess, as meaning a mess.

So that’s the word.

So the marvelous shambles?

Well, my employer described it like that.

She said, the marvelous shambles.

And I thought, oh, my gosh, what’s that?

And what was it?

The shambles is an area in York, very narrow streets.

It’s in the center of York.

And it’s where there’s lots of tea houses and shops.

And the buildings are sort of hugging each other and pouring into each other.

So it reminds me of Frank Gary’s architecture.

Things are moving and dancing.

And it’s just really lovely.

It’s a great place to draw.

So charming.

Oh, wow.

Yes.

This may surprise you to learn, but before it was a lovely little tourist down with shops and tea shops and little places to get a bite to eat, it was an abattoir, a place filled with butcher’s stalls, and the blood and flies and the smell and the noises that go with that.

For about a thousand years, that particular street in York was well known as the flesh benches or the flesh shambles, where people sold meat.

An open-air market for selling meat.

And shambles meant a stool or a bench.

And over the years, this idea of a place covered with blood and carnage came to be used for war.

What happens that people do on a battlefield to each other when they slaughter each other for the sake of some victory.

And then, of course, it was reduced through some kind of semantic bleaching, we call it, where the grossness of it, the disgusting part of it was kind of bleached away.

And now we just think of a mess or a ruined area as a shambles.

But it all stems from that exact street in York being a place with lots of animal bodies being butchered.

Oh, my gosh. Wow.

It was very different then.

There are other descriptions in there.

As a matter of fact, that street is mentioned in what’s called the Doomsday Book, D-O-M-E-S-D-A-Y.

So that’s how old it is.

It is very old and lots of descriptions of it exist from when it was something else entirely.

Well, I had heard people using it to describe a mess.

I didn’t quite understand how bad of a mess.

So I’m like, wow, so it’s quite an old word.

Yeah, and there are other, historically, there have been other shambles, other streets that took, or areas of towns that took the name of the benches used to butcher.

And now it’s a beautiful marketplace.

Right, right.

And you can go shambling along, right, and looking at all the places.

It’s thought that this term for table or bench, shamble, has to do with the verb to shamble.

It may be the splayed legs of the bench or the way that the person sits astride it.

You’re shambling.

Oh, my gosh.

I like using it that way, shambling along.

Okay.

Oh, thank you so much.

I love your show.

It’s really lots of fun.

Oh, it’s our pleasure.

And it was our pleasure to have you with us today.

Thank you for your time, Yanni, and for your question.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Yeah.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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