What Is The Origin Of (135)?…
But and Ben
One of my all-time favourite restaurants is the But’n’Ben which is to be found in the little hamlet of Auchmithie, near Arbroath in Scotland. Apart from the restaurant, Auchmithie’s claim to fame was that it was where the Arbroath Smokie comes from. The smokie is haddock which is smoked in a pit inside a half of a whisky barrel. Hessian sacking is used as a cover to trap the smoke inside. The fishwives who perfected the technique moved to Arbroath at the start of the 20th century and so the delicacy bears the name of the larger town which is now the centre of its production.
Naturally, it was delicious as a starter and the seafood platter never disappointed. On one of my visits the house next door was for sale and I was for a moment tempted, although it was an awfully long way to go for my supper. The houses in the row were all single storey affairs and I often wondered what the story behind the name of the restaurant was. Well, a but and ben north of Hadrian’s wall is a type of house, the characteristics of which are that the dwelling is single storey, has one external door and consists of two rooms, one in front of the other.
The Scottish novelist Samuel Crockett described the arrangement in his novel, The Dew of their Youth, published in 1910, thus: “the cottage had originally consisted of the usual but-and-ben, that is to say, in well regulated houses (which this one was not) of a kitchen – and a room that was not the kitchen. The family beds occupied one corner of the kitchen…” The room that was not the kitchen, to adopt Crockett’s clunky description, was often kept for best, entertaining visitors and the like, and usually boasted a better standard of furniture and décor than the kitchen which was used for daily living.
As for the origin of the two words, we need look no further than Old and Middle English. The but component is a derivative from the Old English word be-utan which meant without, except or outside. Ben is a regional variant of the Middle English word binne which meant inside or within and which itself owed its origin to the Teutonic binnen. So the but was the outside room (the kitchen) and the ben was the inner room.
So far, we have restricted our understanding of the phrase to the layout of a modest Scottish dwelling place but it is clear from Robert Burns that in the Scottish dialect it had a wider meaning. In Blithe Was She, included in his collected works of 1800, Burns wrote “blithe, blithe and merry was she/ blithe was she but and ben:/ blithe by the banks of Ern,/ and blithe in Glengurit glen”. From the context we can take it that the lassie was being blithe everywhere, not just in two rooms of a small house. Going but and ben meant going backwards and forwards, perhaps initially from one room to the other but then figuratively as going to and fro. And those whose houses were two roomed apartments separated by a common passage were said to be living but and ben.
Gastronomy and etymology – a perfect mix in my book.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Arbroath smokies, Auchmithie, going but and ben, living but and ben, origin of but and ben, Robert Burns, Samuel Crockett, the But'n'Ben restaurant
