We still speak of a ‘tilt’ when referring to the cover of a cart or wagon, or to any small awning of a boat. It is quite possible, therefore, that the name has originated in the manufacture of such canopies as these. Admitting this, I would merely suggest ‘Tilewright’ as requiring but little corruptive influence to bring it into the forms in which we at present find the word.[271] Should this be the case, we must place it with ‘le Tyler,’ of whom we have but recently spoken. ‘Arkwright’ I mention last as being worthy of more extended notice. In this is preserved the memory of a once familiar and all-important piece of cabinet furniture—that of the old-fashioned ark. Much store was set by this long years ago by the north-country folk, as is shown by the position it occupies in antique wills, often being found as the first legacy bequeathed.[272] Shaped exactly like the child’s Noah’s ark, it seems to have had a twofold character. In one it was simply a meal-bin. Thus in the ‘Tale of a Usurer’ we are told:— When this corn to the kniht was sold, He did it in an arc to hold, And opened this arc the third day. In the other it was more carefully put together. The trick of its secret spring, known only to the housewife and her lord—sometimes I dare say, only to the latter—it contained all the treasure the family could boast. Here were kept what parchments they possessed; here lay stored up fold on fold of household linen, venerated by the female inmates nearly as much as the grandmothers themselves, whose thrifty fingers had woven it in days long past and gone. We see thus that upon the whole the wright _wrought_ his manufacture out of his own more specific material, seldom, at any rate, poaching upon the preserves of his friend the smith. The smith worked in iron and the metals. This good old Saxon name, with the many quaint changes that have been rung upon it, deserves a whole chapter to itself. How then can we hope to do justice to it in a few sentences? We do not know where to begin, and having once begun, the difficulty at once arises as to where we can end. How few of us reflect upon the close connexion that exists between the anvil and the smith himself, and yet it is because he _smote_ thereupon that he got his name. As old Verstigan has it:— From whence comes Smith, all be he knight or squire, But from the smith that forgeth at the fire? Putting in all the needs which in this agricultural age his occupation would be necessary to supply, still we could scarcely account for the enormous preponderance he has attained over other artisans, did we not remember that his services would also be required in the production of warlike implements. Sword and ploughshare alike would be to his hands. Chaucer speaks of:— The smith That forgeth sharpe swords on the stith.