Paul Carbuncle

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High Peak ahoy!

Poster for The Sherwood Shessions on Sunday 7th September, 5pm, at The Drinkery, 71 Haydn Road, Nottingham, NG5 2LA, hosted by Paul Carbuncle, with Nick Morland, Jeremy Galgut, and Michael Howard. Free admission. The picture is a black and white photo taken in Sweden in 1925, showing a young girl in a spotty frock sitting beside three fluffy owls perched on a length of wood. She may well be about to juggle them.

Let's party like it's 1925.

Image: A small, pretty English village. A girl with a bag on her shoulder runs towards a van on the other side of the village green. She says to herself "I've got to follow my heart and leave this sleepy village behind. A new life awaits on the open road, touring from town to town in a merry band of brilliant eccentrics!" Title: “Rebecca runs away to join the travelling library”

My cartoon for this week’s Books pages in @theguardian.com

An impressive offence to be sent off for.

Innit.

That's the spirit! Merry Christmas, one and all.

Also:

one Larg grate & Creepers; with fire-shovel & tongus, gallow-tree & Runing hooks, & other fire Ireons – 15s. (1690), p. 148.

[2/2]

Photo of a large old red-brick fireplace containing a gallows-like framework from which to hang a cooking pot. Nothing's cooking at the moment.

#oedantedatings

3-year antedating of gallow(s)-tree (sense 2) ‘iron support for a pot over a fire’ (in #OED from 1590)

Item one gallowtrye one pare of howkes & one landyron – 20d. (1587)

Old Place, New Perspectives: a History of the Manor House of Old Sleaford, Lincolnshire (2020), p. 102

[1/2]

... Rats Castle Farm in/near Cadbury (Somerset). For Rats Castle in Lechlade (PN Gloucs 1·43) Hugh Smith says "probably a jocular name of a derelict building". Different explanations may suit different cases. I think we can at least say that a recognisable type exists: bird or small animal + castle.

... Somerby (PN Leics 2·227), recorded in the mid-18th century - the earliest so far. Barrie Cox comments "castle presumably used in the sense 'a high safe place'". NB Crow not Crows, whatever that may or may not tell us. There are more rats too: Rats Castle Farm in Battle (Sussex) and ...

... doubt a term of contempt". And there's a Sparrow Castle in Cockburnspath (Berwicks). The s-less sparrows are remarkably consistent! Owls are harder to spot. In Sussex there's Owls Castle in Ticehurst and Owlscastle Farm in Rusper. One other bird I've spotted is the crow in Crow Castle in ...

... Sparrow Castle to be of a type in which sparrow denotes smallness. His examples, from Teversal (Notts) and Cridling Stubbs (West Yorks), both have Sparrow (not Sparrows) just like the Kent names - a notable difference from the Owls, Rats, and Spiders. The editors of PN Notts (p.137) say "no ...

... Rats Castle (8 instances) in Biddenden, Frittenden, Hackington, Langley, East Malling, Nettlestead, Tonbridge, and Wrotham; Spiders Castle (2 instances) in Eastchurch and Wye. These names look jocular and/or disparaging to me. In "A New Dictionary of English Field-Names", Paul Cavill takes ...

Please pardon the delay! Examples from Kent (which I have to hand as it's the county I'm editing) are all first recorded late, there's nothing before the 19th century: Owls Castle in Meopham; Sparrow Castle (3 instances) in Acol, Ash next Sandwich, and St John the Baptist alias Margate. Compare ...

... in stand-alone genitival names like those 14th/15th-century "Ruddokes" forms, which typically contain tenants' surnames, often relating to identifiable families. I'll dig out Owls + Sparrows Castles (NB not medieval names) as soon as I'm back from the Great North Folk Festival - must dash now!

Yes, you could argue that e.g. Redstone in Bratton Clovelly (PN Devon 175–6), recorded as Roddekeston in 1330, contains the bird-name rather than a hypocoristic form of the OE personal name Rudda; genitive singular doesn't preclude animal names at all. But that's as qualifiers in compounds, not ...

"Rudokes" 1369 in Oulton (PN Norfolk 3:97), Ruddocks Gore ("Ruddokkes" 1479) in Anstey + Barkway (PN Herts 297), Redoak Wood ("Ruddokes" 1403) in Theydon Bois (PN Essex 83) - all plausibly contain the surname. Place-names like Sparrows Castle and Owls Castle look good parallels for the Gloucs name.

Smith's analysis in the EPNS volume is open to interpretation. Other "Ruddock" place-names do seem to contain the surname (examples to follow), but this one's different, it's the full "Robin R" form. Ruddock has never been a Gloucs surname. Reddock forms with a front vowel are Scottish and locative.

There's "Robin Reddocks Castle" recorded in 1628 in King's Stanley (PN Gloucs 2, p. 200), which nicely fits the pattern of bird-name + castle, but yep, I can't find any other robins. A most curious absence.

Great North Folk Festival this weekend, 11th–13th July, Botton Village, North York Moors, YO21 2NJ. I’m on at 6.30 and 10.50 on Friday evening (Foyer Folk both times), 2.10pm on Saturday (Joan of Arc Hall), and 3pm on Sunday (Joan of Arc Hall again). Sunshine and real ale forecast.

#oedantedatings

32-year antedating of burling-iron 'pincers for extracting knots from wool' (in #OED from 1530)

all the stuffe that longyth to my shope as wele the Walkers erthe as handylls and burlyngs yrnes (1498)

Will of William Halowton, fuller, in Early #Northampton Wills, 214

I beg your Parbery? substack.com/@paulcarbuncle

Photo of about twenty ewes grazing in a large lush green field, with rolling wooded countryside in the distance. There is, of course, one black sheep among the otherwise white flock.

#oedantedatings

63-year antedating of ewe-lease 'pasture for ewes' (in #OED from 1874)

Wolverton Ewe-lees (1811) [in Charminster]

#EPNS Place-Names of #Dorset 1, p. 342

#oedantedatings

42-year antedating of post-house (sense 1) 'inn or other building where horses are kept for the use of travellers' (in #OED from 1611)

le posthowsse ten’ voc’ clavelles (1569) [in Piddlehinton]

#EPNS Place-Names of #Dorset 1, p. 314

Worrow and Macro, together at last. substack.com/@paulcarbuncle

Critten! substack.com/@paulcarbuncle

Vodden? substack.com/@paulcarbuncle