`Darg'

My grasp of English geography is limited but as I read Theodore Dalrymple’s latest bemused report of an outrage in his homeland, I recognized the dateline: Bromsgrove is the birth place of Geoffrey Hill. A perfunctory search online uncovered the information I sought about Bromsgrove:

“Nail making was introduced by the French Huguenots in the 17th century and became a thriving industry. At one point Bromsgrove was the world centre of nail making. Mechanisation quickly put the industry into decline.”

This helps gloss an autobiographical digression Hill worked into Mercian Hymns (1977). In Section XXV he refers to Fors Clavigera, the peculiar and wonderfully readable series of letters John Ruskin addressed to the workers of England in the eighteen-seventies. Here’s Hill:

“Brooding on the eightieth letter of Fors Clavigera, I speak this in memory of my grandmother, whose childhood and prime womanhood were spent in the nailer's darg.

“The nailshop stood back of the cottage, by the fold. It reeked stale mineral sweat. Sparks had furred its low roof. In dawn-light the troughed water floated a damson-bloom of dust –

“not to be shaken by posthumous clamour. It is one thing to celebrate the
'quick forge', another to cradle a face hare-lipped by the searing wire.

“Brooding on the eightieth letter of Fors Clavigera, I speak this in memory of my grandmother, whose childhood and prime womanhood were spent in the nailer's darg.”

Darg is a marvelous word meaning “a day’s work.” It appears the burglars of Bromsgrove are busy earning their darg.