1) Casual labour, paid for the day.
When an east-Yorkshire farmer wrote about hay-making in 1642 he described how it was usually done in teams of three, that is two men and a woman. There was a loader, a forker and a raker. The loading and forking was hard physical work, done by the farmer’s own servants or day-taile-men whoe have for that labour vjd. a day. That was twice what the rakers earned. Given the casual nature of their employment it is not surprising that day-tale men are often mentioned in settlement or vagrancy cases. In 1682, John Wood was said never to have had any setlement within Hipperholme but as a daytall man from weeke to weeke
in 1733 John Waterworth lived at Middop as a daytale man or common labourer. Daytal and daytaler were in widespread dialect use into the nineteenth century 1781 Robert Heccles, datleman, York.