The English law defines a peddler as “any hawker, pedlar, petty chapman, tinker, caster of metals, mender of chairs or other person who, without any horse or other beast bearing or drawing burden, travels and trades on foot and goes from town to town or to other men’s houses, carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares or merchandise immediately to be delivered or selling or offering for sale his skill in handicraft.” In the Bible, the term ‘peddler’ was used to describe those who spread the word of God for profit. In London, more specific terms were used, such as costermonger. In England, the term was mostly used for travellers hawking goods in the countryside to small towns and villages. A peddler, in British English pedlar, is also known as a chapman, packman, cheapjack, hawker, higgler, huckster, costermonger, colporteur or solicitor. A peddler or pedlar is a door-to-door and travelling vendor of small items of goods. They are peddler and pedlar the former being used mostly in the United States of America and the latter in the United Kingdom. Peddle, the definition to the clue of 24a, reminded me of the two spellings of peddler. Literally, an ideal translation of geisha would be a ‘performing artist’. Etymologically, the word ‘geisha’ is the clubbing together of two kanji words: gei meaning ‘art’ and sha meaning’ the performer’. This term directly translates as ‘woman of art’ and is part of the Kyoto dialect spoken by geisha in Kyoto and Western Japan. Geiko is a regional term used to describe geisha in Western Japan, including Kyoto and Kanazawa. The traditional hairstyles and oshiroi make-up fascinate them and they are mostly dressed in long, trailing kimono. They entertain at parties known as ozashiki, often for the entertainment of wealthy clients as well as performing on stage and at festivals. The net further brushed up my knowledge about these female performing artists and entertainers trained in traditional Japanese performing arts styles such as dance, music and singing, as also being proficient hostesses. Much later, during my late twenties, I got to know more about the geisha when I was studying Japanese at a Japanese language evening school. Geisha was also one of the many words that I learnt through that novel. I got to know about a lot of things through it that were till then unknown to me. Reading that novel was a kind of novel experience for me. A classmate had lent me a novel by Harold Robbins entitled ‘The Pirate’. Geisha, the answer to the clue of 23a, took me to my teenage life of 1973 when I was in Class VIII and I reminisced that I came across this Japanese word for the first time in one of those days. Once again, a friendly and straightforward Saturday puzzle from Cephas that I enjoyed solving and thereafter writing a review of the same for your kind perusal and valuable feedback. This puzzle was published on 13 th Aug 2022īD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment *** Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30065 A full review by Rahmat Ali
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