The Commodities of Husbandrie
Thomas Tusser and the art of keeping house
Thomas Tusser (c. 1524–1580) was a popular church singer, a farmer, a student at Eton and Cambridge — and a poet: a much-read Elizabethan. He was, in fact, as close to a bestselling poet as his age knew, with his 1557 A Hundred Good Pointes of Husbandrie (expanded in 1573 to Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie) printed in at least thirteen editions before 1600.
As it happens, “poet” may be too strong a word for the genial, perpetually poor man. The Pointes of Good Husbandrie is metered and rhymed, with some interesting eccentricities, but Tusser’s collection of didactic poetry sold so well because of the advice it conveyed. The book is probably best characterized as a guide to home economics joined to a self-help book and a farmer’s guide: an archaically spelled merging of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management with The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Cato’s ancient Roman De agri cultura.
Along the way Tusser filled the book with pithy sayings, putting into print for the first time versions of dozens of the homely proverbs that would pepper pages down to the days of the American Farmer’s Almanac: “Sweet April showers, / Do spring May flowers,” for example (in modern spelling).
For Today’s Poem, we offer Chapter 6 of Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie: “Let house have to fill her. / Let land have to till her.” A call to develop family virtues, to labor, and to practice thrift, the poem’s three quatrains are formed from two couplets: two feet in the first two lines and four feet in the next two lines. The image that emerges from this homely advice is very much Tusser’s picture of successful matrimony — the farmland the husband’s domain, the household the wife’s: “No husbandry used, how soon shall we starve? / Housekeeping neglected, what comfort to serve?”
The Commodities of Husbandrie, Chapter 6
by Thomas Tusser
1 Let house haue to fill her, Let land haue to till her. No dwellers, what profiteth house for to stand? What goodnes, vnoccupied, bringeth the land? 2 No labor no bread, No host we be dead. No husbandry vsed, how soone shall we sterue? House keeping neglected, what comfort to serue? 3 Ill father no gift, No knowledge no thrift. The father an vnthrift, what hope to the sonne? The ruler vnskilfull, how quickly vndonne?
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I love this. I probably won't buy the album but it's a great single.
Love this poem! So simple, and yet profound.