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Between language and folklore: “To hang out the broom”

We know even less about the origin of idioms than about the origin of individual words. This is natural: words have tangible components: roots, suffixes, consonants, vowels, and so forth, while idioms spring from customs, rites, and general experience. Yet both are apt to travel from land to land and be borrowed. Who was the first to suggest that beating (or flogging) a willing horse is a silly occupation, and who countered it with the idea that beating a dead horse is equally stupid? We will probably never find “the author,” even if we catch the earliest citation in print or dispose of such idioms as so-called familiar quotations (a great wit may have coined one or both of those sayings or used the phrases already current and thus made them famous). Who in the past kicked the bucket and when? Who sowed wild oats, and why just oats? Occasionally I discuss such matters. Raining cats and dogs, pay through the nose, no room to swing a cat, whip the cat, and a few more have turned up in this blog.

While dealing with the numerous phrases containing the word Dutch, I ran into the expression to hang out the broom (what Dutch has to do with this phrase will become clear later). In England, a broom was sometimes hung out of the window to signify a family quarrel. However, one wonders whether the idiom to hang out the broom “to have fun while the master is away; to announce being cuckolded by the wife, etc.” goes back to this custom and even whether it exists in Modern English. At one time, it certainly did (borrowed from Dutch?) but was not widespread. Similar questions have been asked and occasionally answered about many sayings. For instance, in bird hunts, some people’s work is to beat about the bush. The birds fly from the bush, so that the rest of the company can catch them. With time, this practice was understood as a sign of evading the real work and prevarication, the birds were forgotten, and all that is left is the idiom, despite the fact that the time-honored practice has survived.

The same holds for hanging out the broom. For comparison: when we say that we succeeded in cutting the mustard (once mentioned in passing in this blog), we are aware of only the ultimate meaning of the phrase rather than of its origin, as also happens when we use separate words (for example, cut, the, and mustard). Whether to hang out the broom exists as an idiom depends on whether anyone still uses it as such, forgetting about the broom (compare show the white feather, throw the gauntlet, throw in the towel, and the like). Below I will only say what I have read about the practice of hanging out the broom, so that, if the antiquated idiom again comes to life, our readers will have an idea of how it might have originated.

Van Tromp, a famous Dutch admiral, who was fond of broom symbolism.
Van Tromp, a famous Dutch admiral, who was fond of broom symbolism.

A correspondent to Notes and Queries wrote in June 1850:

“This custom exists in the west of England, but is oftener talked of than practised. It is jocularly understood to indicate that the deserted inmate is in want of a companion, and is ready to receive the visits of his friends. Can it be in any way analogous to the custom of hoisting a broom at the mast-head of a vessel which is to be disposed?”

At the moment I am especially interested in the question asked at the end of the note. Half a year later, the custom was described in more precise terms: it was, we are told, “applicable to all ships and vessels for sale or hire, by the broom (an old one being generally used) being attached to the mast-head.” Those letters were followed by a report, according to which the custom originated from the period of English history when the Dutch admiral Van Tromp (he was actually Tromp, not Van Tromp) appeared with his fleet on the English coast. This takes to 1652 or 1653. The rest is a popular legend whose authenticity is dubious. Tromp allegedly hoisted a broom as indicative of his intention to sweep the ships of England from the sea. In answer to this insolence, the undaunted and eventually victorious English admiral hoisted a horsewhip.

Even if such an exchange occurred under the circumstances described, it does not explain why a broom attached to a mast signifies that the ship is for sale or for hire. According to a rather plausible theory, it had been customary since very old days for servants who looked for employment to wear a hat with a piece of broom on it (broom here means “bramble”; the two words are related). The navy supposedly took over this custom, so that, although the horsewhip is indeed the distinguishing mark of English ships of war and can be traced to the engagement with the Dutch, it fails to account for the practice of announcing that the ship is for sale. In any case, the civil use of the phrase, in at least one situation, may go back to its use at sea (“for sale” or “for hire”). In 1895 an author characterized hanging out the broom as a well-known (!) cant (!) phrase to express the husband’s unwonted enjoyment and hospitality to his friends during his wife’s absence. We note that, although the idiom was understood as low slang (“cant”), it referred to an outwardly innocent pastime (a man is a temporary bachelor and would like to spend some time with his companions while his wife is away). He is not “for hire” (or “sale”) as far as other women are concerned. But the Dutch say zij [she] steekt den bezem uitshe hangs out the broom [besom],” and that means “she wants a new husband.”

This is a besom, and that is a broom
This is a besom, and that is a broom.

Sidney O. Addy, a distinguished folklorist, whose books are interesting to read but whose reconstruction of myths should be taken with a sizable grain of salt, wrote as early as 1895 that, if in the neighborhood of Sheffield (South Yorkshire) a girl strides over a broom handle, she is said to give birth to a child out of wedlock. Addy continued: “Now it is evident that we have here an instance of sympathetic magic, the broom representing the phallus. This being the case, the object of the husband in hanging out a broom in his wife’s absence was to give notice that he could be happy with another whilst his lawful charmer was away.” I won’t discuss how “evident” this conclusion is, but I notice that, according to one version, it is the woman who displays the (phallic?) broom, while according to the other, it is the man. And, returning to the naval metaphor, we observe that a vessel is for hire or sale when an asexual broom is attached to the mast. These pieces of information do not cohere too well; at least they don’t do so at first sight. As in the history of words, facts clash and confuse rather than elucidate the initial hypothesis.

I’ll finish with a short passage, dated 1896, on marital bliss and conjugal felicity:

“I have seen the broom hanging out many times in Derbyshire villages [the East Midlands, England]. But on these occasions the broom was always a besom—pronounced bey-som—the old sort made out of heather, the only rough brush [so not a real broom or a broomstick] known in those days, when I was a boy. To put out the beysom was the climax of a quarrel, and a sign of the utmost contempt on the part of the woman who did it. The beysom never came out except at the end of right royal word combats, and either out of window or reared outside the door was a defiance which sometimes lasted days long. […] I never knew the besom thus used in men’s disputes—only in those carried out by the women folk.”

Well, a ship is also a she, but this is probably beside the point. Other than that, who would say that the study of idioms is a quiet academic pursuit? It looks more like a tempestuous marriage.

Image credits: (1) Sharing their pleasures by Eugenio Zampighi. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, 1597–1653, after an engraving by Jan Lievensz. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Віник. Photo by teteria sonnna from Obukhiv, Ukraine. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (4) Broom. (c) Antagain via iStock.

Recent Comments

  1. Stephen Goranson

    Might it–mere wild guess–have something to do with Isaiah 14:23 (KJV)?
    “I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts.”

  2. J. E. Robinson

    Jumping backwards over a broom handle together was (I think) believed to constitute a betrothal.
    And on a slightly different tangent – is the phrase “accidentally on purpose” of sixteenth century origin? It was in use in the seventeenth century.

  3. Paul Nance

    The Wikipedia article on Jump the Broom gives many examples of the phrase’s use (dating from the 17th century) to mean a marriage of doubtful validity.

  4. Sharon Krossa

    Is any of this perhaps related to the practice of late medieval brewsters hanging a broom outside to indicate they had ale available for sale?

  5. Stephen Goranson

    From 1725: “After this, the Dignity of his Family and the Greatness of his Soul not permitting him to soil his Blood with any Trade, he built him a Hovel on the Side of a Ditch by the Highway, and hanging out his Besom, sold Ale and Tobacco; in this Station he liv’d in great Repute to his dying Day.” The Humourist, [Thomas Gordon] [supposedly concerning a Welshman], (London) vol. 2 p. 3.
    At Google Books:
    http://tinyurl.com/jez758e

  6. Tulika

    This was an interesting piece of writing!
    I teach folk literature and I often get puzzled when I have to discuss certain examples taken from the folk. This article will help me in getting a few examples.
    Thanks

  7. […] A few husbands did not fare much better. In Scotland, a henpecked husband is called John Thomson’s man. John is an absurd alteration of Joan. I know the phrase from an 1849 letter to The Gentleman’s Magazine (a wonderful periodical), but the OED has an early sixteenth-century citation! Some such phrases show enviable longevity. How do you make your husband happy? Have no illusions and feed the brute (1904). Yet women could defend themselves quite well. Unhappy unions and violent quarrels are as old as Adam (and Eve). Read the post on hanging out or putting out the broom (February 10, 2016). […]

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