"Hedgerow Parson" Image

This is an excerpt from the article An Honest Man by Peter Lyon in the American Heritage magazine(Feb, 1959).

Daniel Drew (1797-1879) was a short, chunky man with a face as seamed and wrinkled as a prune; he walked with a stealthy tread, like a cat; his attire was downright dowdy; he affected the bland, who-me? air of a hedgerow parson. Yet for a quarter-century this man was one of the most justly feared in the financial circles of nineteenth-century America.

I am not really sure what this 'hedgerow parson' image is trying to convey? Could it refer to some dull and humorless figure?

Solution 1:

Whilst dictionaries seem to be largely silent on the subject of 'Hedgerow Parsons', they do acknowledge 'Hedge Priests' and 'Hedge Parsons'.

Hedge itself as an adjective is defined in the OED as

a. Born, brought up, habitually sleeping, sheltering, or plying their trade under hedges, or by the road-side (and hence used generally as an attribute expressing contempt), as hedge-bantling, hedge-brat, hedge-chaplain, hedge-curate, hedge-doctor, hedge-lawyer, hedge-parson, hedge-player, hedge-poet, hedge-wench, hedge-whore, etc. Also hedge-priest n.

And Hedge-priest is defined there as:

An illiterate or uneducated priest of inferior status. (contemptuous.)

There is a reference in The Peacock Lincolnshire word books: 1884-1920

hedgerow parson A local preacher In the Lincolnshire context I would take Local preacher to refer to a Methodist Lay preacher and to be a contemptuous reference to their non-conformism and in particular to Primitive Methodism which favoured outdoor services.

This suggest that there are nuances of definition; a literal one where it refer to someone who preaches outdoors and a figurative one where a person is disdained as being of low status and outside of some set of societal norms.

Solution 2:

I don't have my copy of Brewer's to hand, but it's quoted online in a discussion about the very similar "hedge-priest":

My old edition of Brewer's gives the following entry for hedge priest: "A poor or vagabond parson. The use of hedge for vagabond, or very inferior, is common; as hedge-mustard, hedge-writer (a Grubb Street author), hedge-marriage (a clandestine one), etc. Shakespeare uses the phrase, 'hedge-born swain' as the opposite of 'gentle blood.' (1 Henry VI., iv. 1)."

which appears in Love's Labour's Lost:

LLL V.ii.538

BEROWNE

The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the hedge-priest

fool, and the boy.

Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again

Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.