The Event

A wayz­goose is a print­er’s fair. It was ini­tial­ly held at the end of August around St. Bartholomew’s day (24 August) with a sug­ges­tion that this end-of-sum­mer point was the time at which print­ers replaced paper win­dows, or start­ed to work less hours in the day reflect­ing short­er hours of day­light.

It is also cus­tom­ary for all the Jour­ney-men to make every Year new Paper Win­dows, whether the old will serve again or no; Because that day they make them, the Mas­ter Print­er gives them a Way­goose; that is, he makes them a good Feast, and not only enter­tains them at his own House, but besides, gives them Mon­ey to spend at the Ale-house or Tav­ern at Night;

These Way-goos­es, are always kept about Bart­hole­mew-tide. And till the Mas­ter-Print­er have giv­en this Way-goose, the Jour­ney-men do not use to Work by Can­dle Light.

Joseph Mox­on, Mechan­ick Exer­cis­es on the Whole Art of Print­ing (1683–4)

The event was usu­al­ly fund­ed by the employ­er, and might cov­er talks or lessons; social gath­er­ing; feast­ing and drink­ing. Today we use the term for any event where print­ers get togeth­er and talk about and share admi­ra­tion of our craft.

The Word

Mox­on’s 1683 ref­er­ence was thought to be the first time the word had been print­ed, but Bar­ry McK­ay has found an ear­li­er ref­er­ence in local research in Apple­by, where there is ref­er­ence to a 1594 event offer­ing one shilling towards a ​‘ser­van­t’s wayzgease’.

There’s an ele­ment of retro-fit­ting the ​‘z’ in to the word. It’s ini­tial­ly spelled ​‘way­goose’, as above, but by 1713 a dic­tio­nary list­ed this as ​‘wayz­goose’ per­haps to back­wards-engi­neer the mean­ing of the word to mean a goose fed on stub­ble.

An 1847 arti­cle in the North­ern Star and Leeds Gen­er­al Adver­tis­er sug­gests a goose feed­ing on stub­ble was the dish fed at a ​‘fra­ter­ni­ty of print­ers’, but this CPHC arti­cle makes clear that geese don’t feed on stub­ble, and there is no evi­dence of this type of feast, so it’s like­ly that the ini­tial spelling — way­goose — is cor­rect.

As an aside, Samuel Dyer’s Dialect of the West Rid­ing remarks: “…that this word is not a York­shire word at all, but sim­ply a com­pos­i­tors’ and print­ers’ term for an annu­al out­ing. I insert it in my book because, if it is not York­shire, it ought to be.”

Wayzgooses Today

Look­ing at the major UK gath­er­ings, of any type, and their rough dates and con­tact details, we have a short cal­en­dar of UK Wayz­goos­es.

• March: Baskerville Wayze­goose, Hay-on-Wye
• March: Stroud Wayz­goose, every oth­er year
• May: St Bride Wayz­goose, St Bride’s Library, Lon­don
• June: Ship­ley Wayz­goose, Ship­ley, York­shire

Please let me know of any oth­er print­ers’ fes­ti­vals that hap­pen reg­u­lar­ly.

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Location

Local and cur­rent wayz­goose: Ship­ley Wayz­goose, Kirk­gate Cen­tre, Ship­ley, West York­shire

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Head­er Image: Ship­ley Wayz­goose Poster, 2018 by the Print Project