Sc. and dial. [app. f. TINKER, with different suffix: cf. pedder, peddler, pedlar.] A tinker, a worker in metal; in Scotland, north of England, and Ireland, usually a gipsy, or other itinerant mender of pots, pans, and metal-work.
c. 1175. Carta Willelmi Regis, in Liber Ecclesie de Scon (1843), 30. [Terra] que iacet inter terram serlon incisoris et terram Jacobi tinkler.
1484. Nottingham Rec., II. 346. Christolerus Tynkeler… tynkeler.
1570. Levins, Manip., 77/12. A Tinkler, [sartor ærarius].
1572. Satir. Poems Reform., xxxii. 49. We Tinklaris, Tailȝeouris…. We wait of nocht bot mekill cair and cummer.
1605. N. Riding Rec. (1884), I. 3. Joh. Jackson, tinkler.
1681. O. Heywood, Diaries, etc. (1881), II. 228. Her mother brought a panne to a tinkler’s house.
1785. Burns, Jolly Beggars, Air vi. My bonnie lass, I work in brass, A tinkler is my station.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., xlix. This fellow had been originally a tinkler, or ‘caird,’ many of whom stroll about these districts.
1825. Brockett, N. C. Words, s.v., The celebrated Wull Allen was for many years the king of the tinklers in the North.
1847. C. Brontë, J. Eyre, xviii. She looks such a tinkler.
1911. 19th Cent., Sept., 546. These wandering cairds or ‘tinklers’ had four separate languages at their command.
attrib. 1786. Burns, Twa Dogs, 18. Ev’n wi’ a tinkler-gipsey’s messan. Ibid. (1787), ‘When Guilford good,’ v. An’ Charlie Fox threw by his box, An’ lows’d his tinkler jaw, man.
