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Town Crier
A town crier, also called a bellman, is an officer of a royal court or public authority who makes public pronouncements as required. Duties and functions The town crier was used to make public announcements in the streets. Criers often dress elaborately, by a tradition dating to the 18th century, in a red and gold coat, white breeches, black boots and a tricorne hat. In English-speaking countries, they carried a handbell to attract people's attention, as they shouted the words " Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!" before making their announcements. The word "Oyez" means "hear ye," which is a call for silence and attention. ''Oyez'' derives from the Anglo-Norman word for ''listen'' (modern French, ''oyez'', infinitive, ''ouïr'', but has been largely replaced by the verb ''écouter''). The proclamations book in Chester from the early 19th century records this as "O Yes, O Yes!" History Europe Prior to widespread literacy, town criers were the means of communication with the people of th ...
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Town Crier, Provincetown, MA
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an origin with the German word , the Dutch word , and the Old Norse . The original Proto-Germanic word, *''tūnan'', is thought to be an early borrowing from Proto-Celtic *''dūnom'' (cf. Old Irish , Welsh ). The original sense of the word in both Germanic and Celtic was that of a fortress or an enclosure. Cognates of ''town'' in many modern Germanic languages designate a fence or a hedge. In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed, and through which a track must run. In England, a town was a small community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, and built a palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, mor ...
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