Both words mean the
same thing, the power of the hand to seize, hold, shape, match, carve,
paint, dig, bake, make, or weave. Neither form is in fashion, as we know
very well, for people choose nowadays such Latin words as "technical
ability," "manual labor," "industrial pursuits," "dexterity,"
"professional artisanship," "manufacture," "decorative art," and
"technological occupations," not one of which is half as good as the
plain, old, strong term "hand-craft."
An aid to hand-craft is rede-craft--the power to read, to reason, and to
think; or, as it is said in the book of Common Prayer, "to read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest." By rede craft we find out what other men
have done; we get our book learning, we are made heirs to thoughts that
breathe and words that burn, we enter into the life, the acts, the arts,
the loves, the lore of the wise, the witty, the cunning, and the worthy
of all ages and all places; we learn, as says the peasant poet of
Scotland,
"The song whose thunderous chime
Eternal echoes render--
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
And Milton's starry splendor!"
I do not pit rede-craft against hand-craft. Quite otherwise, I call them
not foes (as some would), but friends.
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