Pin, firkin, kilderkin, barrel, puncheon, tun, hogshead and butt

When I was at school, on the back of our exercise books were tables of measurements, and I used to turn my book over and read them, bemused and entranced by the old-fashioned names. I was reminded of this when we went to Otter Brewery the other day, and Luke our guide mentioned the size of the barrels they use for the beer. I got to thinking about those measures and had to look it up as I couldn’t remember!

So, a pin is a small beer cask containing 4½ gallons, and it takes two pins to make a firkin, then it goes up by twos through firkin, kilderkin, barrel, puncheon, and then three puncheons make a tun and a tun is 216 gallons! Imagine that! Hogsheads and butts are between the other sizes, I suppose a butt (108 gallons) is most famous for being the container for the Malmsey wine which  drowned the Duke of Clarence!

These nice old names don’t just extend to barrel size, every other measurement has its interesting sub-divisions. Most people are familiar with drams, often associated with whisky, as in ‘a wee dram’; it can also be spelt drachm.  Gills – 1/6 pint is still  a not uncommon term, and what I found out while looking all this up that gills, or jills, feature in a famous nursery rhyme, ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’

The gill is sometimes spelled jill. There is an explanation of the nursery rhyme:
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. 
When Charles I scaled down the ‘jack’ (a two-ounce measure) so as to collect higher sales taxes, the jill, by definition twice the size of the jack, was automatically reduced also and ‘came tumbling after.’

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/volume.htm

Eight furlongs make a mile, but if you want to measure less, use – in decreasing order chain, link, rod (pole or perch) measurements of small lengths were based on body parts (often using the King’s body as a standard) so feet, span, hand, palm, nail and finger… all were used as measurements. There are so many fairy stories and tales associated with leagues, from the seven-league boots, to ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’ by Jules Verne, to ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Tennyson’ Half a league, half a league, half a league onwards, all in the Valley of Death, rode the six hundred!’

There were names for measuring particular things, like cloth (cloth-yard, ell, bolt) wood (cords) hay (rick)… wonderfully varied words for every conceivable thing you might want to measure! Our literature, songs, poetry and drama is full of measurements, and here is a little verse from ‘The Tempest’ by Shakespeare:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong,
Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.