Re: MASTER ROGER - was Re: the 'people's sheep' factor (was UHT milk


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Previous # Next ] [ Start New Thread ] [ TarBoard ]

Posted by PeterH on December 11, 2006 at 11:31:10 from 86.130.129.74 user Peter_H.

In Reply to: MASTER ROGER - was Re: the 'people's sheep' factor (was UHT milk posted by Ed Kiser on December 10, 2006 at 05:44:49:

Thanks for the 'master' refs, Ed. I think we can take it that phrases like 'Master Jim' are not referring to being master of a vessel - that would be indicated by 'Jim Brading, Master . .'

'Master Jim', 'Master Roger' etc are the old-style polite form of address to boys by people outside the family who are not close friends. It was dying out after the 1939-45 war - in the 1950s although I was often called 'Master Peter' in writing on letters addressed to me, I was never addressed orally thus. However, as my family never had full-time domestic employees, maybe there was no one who could have called me 'Master'. We did have a cleaning lady once a week (my mother went out to work every day) and she called me 'Peter' - my memories are quite clear about that. I reckon this usage of 'Master' is completely obsolete nowadays.

Whether 'Master John' implies subservience is something I will leave for the TarBoard class warriors;-) The irony is that the everyday 'Mr' is a form of 'Master', or 'Mister', so to address boys as 'Master' only meant altering one vowel - hardly a great bourgeois crime, I would have thought. And anyway, in school, it would have been 'Walker!'


Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
Eel-Mail:

Existing subject (please edit appropriately) :

or is it time to start a New Thread?

Comments:

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL:

post direct to TarBoard test post first

Before posting it is necessary to be a registered user.


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TarBoard ]

Courtesy of Environmental Science, Lancaster

space