David Evans, a member of Wimborne Community Theatre, did some research into why the Bullhead Fish, which lives in the River Allen, is sometimes known as the Miller’s Thumb. The little fish was featured in WCT’s production Timeless Stream at Walford Mill on October 21st, 22nd and 23rd.
I tend to prefer the ‘common’ names which we give our plants, trees, and species and in this case, fish, over their formal and often difficult Latin ones.
The garden plant Stachys Byzantina grown together to form a ‘Silver Carpet’ for example, will always be known as ‘Lambs Ears’ or sometimes more regionally ‘Lambs Lugs’ to me, making them warmer and more friendly somehow.
But our aptly named little Bullhead Fish – Cottidae Sculpin with its strong resemblance to a thumb and still very happily living in the clean stony waters of The Allen, made me wonder why it should specifically have become the ‘Miller’s Thumb’?
Why, I wondered, wouldn’t a more obviously ‘thumb prone’ tradesman’s first digit be more appropriate ?…Surely many a mallet wielding Carpenter’s thumb must have become flattened over time…Or the Bricklayer, Blacksmith or Stone Mason all must have suffered considerable thumb deformities in the past ?
One somewhat ‘tongue in cheek’ folk etymology of the phrase refers to millers giving short weight by ‘tipping the scales with their thumbs.’
But I imagine that the specific origin of the fish’s title lies within the traditional Stone Millers skilled role. Balancing the mill’s wooden gears and grinding stones, regulating and directing the grain’s output into flour or feed and certainly employing his thumbs in the process considerably.
This is well described by John Constable, our esteemed English artist, whose father was a wealthy mill owner and corn merchant…. “It is well known,” he says, “That all the science and tact of a miller is directed so to regulate the machinery of his mill that meal produced shall be the most valuable description that the operation of grinding will permit, when performed under the most advantageous circumstances. His profit or loss, even his fortune or his ruin, depend upon the exact adjustment of all the various parts of the machinery in operation. The miller’s ear is constantly directed to the note made by the running-stone in its circular course over the bed-stone, the exact parallelism of their two surfaces, indicated by a particular sound, being the first consequence; and his hand is constantly placed under the meal-spout, to ascertain by actual contact the character and qualities of the meal produced.
The thumb, by a particular movement, spreads the sample over the fingers; the thumb is the gauge of the value of the produce, and hence has arisen the sayings of ‘Worth of a miller’s timnib*,’ and ‘An honest miller hath a golden thumb,’ in reference to the amount of profit that is the reward of his skill. By this incessant action of a miller’s thumb, a peculiarity in its form is produced, which is said to resemble exactly the shape of the head of the fish found constantly in the mill-stream, and is obtained for it the name of the Miller’s Thumb.”
David Evans
October 2021
*Colloquialism