Layovers for Medlars

A Hindolveston Connection

We heard a very old saying for the first time at the Norfolk Show. A visitor to the stall, a native of the county, was intrigued to see that Jane was growing medlars. As a child, when she asked what was for dinner, her grandmother from Hindolveston would often say something which sounded to her ear like, “Tha’s Larrow’s medlars.”  She wondered whether we knew what it meant, but we had to admit that it was new to us. 

          Intrigued, we reached first for our books on East Anglian dialect. Edward Moor’s Suffolk Words and Phrases (1823) made no reference to a larrow, but it did contain the phrase “lay-overs for medlers [sic]”. It was easy to see how our local habit of contracting words in speech might turn a lay-over into a larrow. Moor described this as: 

“A reproving reply to an ill-timed curiosity or inquisitiveness on the part of a child – in answer to ‘what’s that?’ ”

                We were on the right track. 

          He went on to say that in Suffolk, an apple-jack or turn-over was sometimes called a lay-over. All these terms described the same sort of dish: “sugared apples, baked without pan, in a square thin piece of paste, with two opposite corners turn’d-over the apple, or flapped, so as to form a three-square.”     

           Moor then cited Francis Grose, who compiled A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, first published in 1785. Describing the process for making a turn-over, Grose wrote: 

          “Medlar tarts were probably so made in former times.” 

          It’s clear that, when our visitor’s grandmother spoke of larrows and medlars, she was using a saying that had been around since the late eighteenth century. Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Catch Phrases, claims to have found it recorded as long ago as 1668. It’s hardly surprising, then, that its meaning has been long forgotten, and variations (lareovers and layoes) have been heard as far apart as Lancashire and Alabama. 

So why would a medlar tart be a suitable riposte to a nosy child? I wonder whether it’s a way of rebuffing them by suggesting it’s something which is not immediately useful. Newly-picked medlars take several weeks to blet before they can be eaten in a turn-over. Another possibility is that it’s a pun. Some writers have assumed that the saying refers to meddlers and not the fruit, but it could be a double-entendre. As for the word lay-overs, it might imply that an inquisitive person will have to be patient. 

Nall’s Glossary of East Anglian Dialect defines a “layer-over” as “a gentle term for an instrument of punishment”. I’m also struck by the fact that to larrup in East Anglia is to beat or thrash. Perhaps a larrow (or larrer) for medlars suggests that children risk a thick ear if they pry. 

          We’ve turned up a surprising amount of debate about the saying. In Notes and Queries in 1859, E S Taylor, Vicar of Ormesby, near Great Yarmouth, firmly dismissed any connection with the medlar fruit. This erudite gentleman insisted that lare-over came from the Saxon word laepe, meaning lore or learning. In other words, there were teachers for those who meddled with what they ought not. That’s not inconsistent with my theory of a pun. But, as Edward Moor concluded: “I have nothing better to offer.”