Lime-fingered

LIME-FINGERED as a phrase, is committed to print in C16th England – already suspicious enough by today’s standards it is defined in the oed as given to pilfering or thievish propensities. However, before this, in the Old English of the C8th, lime, lim, lyme, or lym was a neutral term used for any adhesive substance such as cement, glue or paste. In Ælfric's Grammar, the oldest surviving textbook written in English, we have:

"Swaswa lim gefæstnað fel to sumum …" "[So that lime fastens many to some …]"

This use of the word may well be a generalisation of a cognate term loam, which – although archaic now – was a common Old English word for clay or earth. As an aside, it is through this term that we often read of clay as the base material of the human body – such as in shakespeare’s Richard II:

"And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord, The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation; that away, Men are but gilded loam or painted clay."

Shakespeare, given to archaisms, was however also aware of the more current lime, meaning to cement, as is present (albeit here with bloud) in his History of Henrie the Fourth of 1594:

"I will not ruinate my fathers house, Who gaue his bloud to lime the stones togither."

Whence then comes the theivish propensities of such lime and its anthropomorphisation in lime-fingered? It is perhaps interesting to speculate that the supposed sticky, base-material of anthropos (a miraculous birth present in many faiths and cultures) lends one to a deceitful or pilfering nature – but, in reality, the connection most likely arises from the practice of birdliming.

Birdlime – in a noun-verb formulation typical of English – is used to birdlime, it is at once an adhesive material made variously of Holly bark or Mistletoe berries and the practice of trapping birds using this sticky substance. An ancient material practice common across the world, it has been passed down most often by word-of-mouth; in writing we see the term emerge in the C15th – common enough to be used as a metaphor – as in gilbertus anglicus’ Pharmaceutical Writings:

"Þe watir þat flowiþ on nyȝtis-tyme fro þe yȝen is viscouse as bridlym."

In recent years, legislators – particularly in the eu – have sought to ban this practice. In 2021 the ecj deemed birdliming illegal in the eu, despite a 2020 ruling in France which saw chasse à la glu as compatible with the eu Birds Directive. A surprise for anglophones perhaps, as Annex ix of the directive – which is, in fact, the oldest piece of eu environmental legislation (written in 1979) – specifically prohibits ‘snares, limes and hooks’ as a means for “the large-scale or non-selective capture or killing of birds...”

Throughout even its historic use birdliming appears to have taken on unsavoury connotations, in his 1934 book Biology for Everyman Scottish naturalist john a. thomson disparaged such viscid glue in the strongest possible terms:

"The drying remains of the viscid glue (used in making that atrocity called ‘bird-lime’) draw the [mistletoe] seed close to the bark."

Working backwards, such negative readings are strengthened in the cockney-rhyming slang of Victorian London, in which Bird Lime translates to Time – as in to do time in prison – as identified by ducange anglicus in his Vulgar Tongue of 1857. This sense was in fact so widespread that it shortened simply to do bird, adding to the criminal aviary of jailbirds, dicky-birds, skipper-birds, &c.

Earlier than this still – again in the Middle English of the C15th – figurative uses of the term give the powerful sense of an ability to ensnare without chance of escape, such as that most terrifying force of fleshly love:

"Ho so wille not be snacled with such bridlyme of flesshly loues, lete him lif in fredom of chastite."

These unfavourably sticky senses, materials and practices then coalesce to give us the bizarre phrase ‘to have fingers made of lime-twigs’ – presumably a consequence of liming – present in writing from 1590 at least but well articulated in elizabeth cellier's Malice Defeated of 1680:

"Before he was Seven years of age, his Fingers were such Lime-twigs, that he could not enter into any House but something would stick to them."

So then at last, to our point of departure: we can see clearly how thievish propensities make for lime-fingers. Such a concise configuration is evident in a fascinating C17th sermon given by Deane of Worcester

Joseph Hall, absolving lime-fingred servants of their troublemaking under the chastising rule of a too strict master:

"Let the question bee who is the great make-bate of the world; begin with the family: Who troubles the house? [...] Not carelesse, sloathfull, false, lime-fingred seruants, but the strict master, that obserues and rates, and chastises them; would he hold his hands, and tongue, there would bee peace."

Indeed Mr. Hall! And in similar spirit time appears to have forgiven or at least forgotten the lime-fingered (as is so often the case for words of a supposedly criminal class).

In their stead we are left to make do with either the light-fingers of pickpockets or those more direct inheritors... the sticky-fingers of children, thieves and publishers.

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This article was written for a monthly column – The Remainder – in the Sticky Fingers monthly mailout