Morgan, Peadar

Morgan, Peter

English

CLOG (Univ. of Glasgow)

REVIEWSStan Beckensall, Place Names and Field Names of Northumberland, Stroud: Tempus, 2006. 160 pp. £17.99. ISBN 978-0-7524-3647-0The launch of Scotland’s own onomastics journal reflects the need and desire for a national perspective on the history, development and politics of names as they impact on our geography. A negative justification might be that we have for too long represented a vacant space in the jigsaw of national studies around us.But we must remember to look beyond our present concept of Scotland and to draw on the comparative onomasticons of the wider historical cultural spheres that overlap here more than in most nations. Nowhere is this more true than over our only land border, into the northern counties of England. Peoples, languages and administrations have flowed back and forth until relatively recently, both east and west of the upland spine of this narrow neck of land, and, as a guide to earlier onomastic developments, the modern border is only an approximate tool.So the publishing of a book on Northumberland place and field names should be seen as being of significance to the study of Scottish toponymic patterns and as a useful comparative tool, even if based on two existing works by the same author (Northumberland Place Names, 1975, with two later editions, and Northumberland Field Names, 1977). England has benefited greatly from the multi-volume county studies of the English Place-Name Society (EPNS) which have been steadily building up an in-depth picture of the toponomy of that country. In 1950 it reached the former Cumberland, with two volumes of place and field names, and a further volume of discussion in 1952. But Northumberland still awaits such attention.Not that it has failed to benefit from any academic attention (Sir Allen Mawer, The Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham, Cambridge University Press 1920), or suffer from more recent popular treatment (Godfrey Watson, Northumberland Place Names: Goodwife Hot & others, Morpeth: Sandhill 1970, reprinted 1986, 1995). Stan Beckensall – a well-kent name in Northumbrian archaeological circles and internationally for his work on rock art – brought together the fruits of Mawer and Eilert Ekwall’s English-wide studies (culminating in the 1977 fourth edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Place Names) and published them in an accessible and cheap booklet format. But the place-name section of the present work still relies heavily on these older studies, usefully leavened JSNS 1, 2007, 169–74170with the 2004 Cambridge Dictionary of English Place Names (CDEPN ) edited by Victor Watts (a work not without its criticisms though – see Carole Hough’s 2004 review in Nomina 27, 133–42).The present book serves to update and expand the author’s earlier collections, and makes them more widely available. It has not attempted to merge them in any way, however, nor to discuss fully the inter-relationship or otherwise of field names and other toponyms. The introduction does reinforce the points, though, that field names are ‘intensely personalised’ (p. 8) and that they often only come to our attention ‘by the accidental retention of documents or legal retention in estate and other offices, or at farms themselves’ (p. 9). Both estates and farms have informed the field groupings collected by the author from various parts of the county.The introduction also prefaces the general discussion of the historical factors which produced the oldest place-names. Beckensall appears to suggest that much of the toponomy is written on a clean sheet after the arrival of the Normans. ‘After William the Conqueror had devastated the North [of England] there was little left to record,’ he says, then immediately goes on to state to the contrary that the ‘other notable feature is that all the elements are Old English. The Normans stuck approximately to place names as they heard them from local people’ (p. 14). Likewise he even records pre-English elements in names such as Corbridge from Cor Burn, itself from the Latinised settlement name of Coria (pp. 19, 55), and Ross Castle, which is compared to Welsh rhos ‘moor’ and ‘Irish’ (i.e. Gaelic) ros ‘hillock, promontory’ (p. 68) – how Gaelic might be encountered, off the route to Lindisfarne, is never explained.Neither are the terms Old and Middle English explained, and the implication is there that names with elements marked as OE date back to this period. In this Beckensall follows EPNS. The practice might not be the best, as etymological origin does not of itself indicate date of application or meaning at this date, but at least the EPNS volumes are aimed at a restricted readership who should know better than to assume age and interpretation from such categorisation. Ridiculously, Daveyshiel (Davisel 1344) is given by Beckensall as OE ‘Davy’s shieling’ (p. 55), in conflict with the ME origin given for the element schele ‘shiel, hut, shed’ (p. 27); and the name of the Roman fort of Vindolanda is said to be authenticated by the contemporary tablets recently retrieved from the site, as Brittonic vindos ‘white’ + landa ‘lawn, enclosure’ (p. 19), but Vindolanda is also given as an example of ME launde ‘glade, pasture, lawn’ (p. 26).The impression given is that the structure of the place-name section has been dictated by the original booklet format, without time spent on Peadar Morgan171a fundamental reorganisation of the material. It smacks of having been cobbled together to meet a publisher’s request rather than an author’s reappraisal of his material – and after all, Beckensall has now supplied Tempus with no less than five books since 2001.This earlier work bequeaths us two tables of core detail. First is a list of common elements giving meaning(s), examples from local names, and occasionally a brief discussion. It is a useful introductory list, but, in addition to the problems indicated above, one not always up to date with the latest scholarship (e.g. OE wíc (p. 28), more specialised than just a dwelling or farm, see Richard Coates, Nomina 22 (1999), 75–116), and sometimes parochial in approach. Not only in Northumberland did OE halh ‘corner’ (the alternative healh, also given, only belongs to Southern English dialects) develop as haugh ‘flat, alluvial land’ (p. 25), but in Scotland also. Sometimes the table gives only part of the story, as in Old Norse land, but forgetting OE land (p. 26), and treating thorp exclusively as OE þrop rather than potentially Old Norse þorp (p. 27).The second table presents all the place (i.e. settlement) names in alphabetical order, with first recorded form (dated but without source) and a proffered interpretation. Guidance to location in Northumberland, or the modern interloper Tyne and Wear, is limited to a cross-reference to the 62-square grid over a small map, reprinted from the earlier editions. Some names, presumably those presenting the greatest trap to the unaware and unwary, are given with a non-phonetic but useful pronunciation guide. For example, Bellingham (-injm), Cambois (kammus), Cheswick (chizik), Ewesley Burn (oozly), Moledon (moezden), Redesdale (ridz-), Snapdaugh (snapduf ), Ulgham (uffm).There is awareness here of some of the other pitfalls of place-names. Blanchland ‘white glade’ is recognised as being an early transfer-name from Normandy (pp. 46, 51), and Kirkley is not what the modern form implies but from Crikelawa 1176, possibly ‘Crick’s mound’ (pp. 47, 63) – this is better expressed elsewhere as a ‘burial mound called Crick’ (p. 46), where confusion with a personal name is avoided.However, the latest scholarship is again not always reflected, as in Lindisfarne (pp. 46, 63), where the traditional ‘settlers from Lindis (North Lincolnshire)’ has been challenged with Early Gaelic ‘domain at  / of (the local English place-name) Lindis’ by Richard Coates in Celtic Voices English Places (Coates, Breeze and Horovitz, Stamford: Shaun Tyas 2000, 241–59). There is also at least one transcription error: Shotley (p. 26) has been correctly reinterpreted (after Watts CDEPN  ?) in this edition as OE sceot-leah ‘pasture on a steep slope’, as opposed to the interpretation in at least Beckensall’s Reviews1721992 edition as OE scotta-leah ‘Scots’ clearing’. But the 1242 early form, which had been correct as Schotley, is now incorrectly given as Shotley.Apart from these tables, this section contains the grouping and discussion of names in eight categories of elements based on the referent, and one for those of French origin. Only meanings without discussion are given in these listings, and cross-reference to the tables is therefore required.The most valuable, but frustrating, of the two sections is that on fields. Field names are here defined as exactly that – names of fields – in contrast to the EPNS practice of including in this category all names below river or place, i.e. habitation, level. Beckensall’s strict use is refreshing, and the division of the book, if nothing else, prompts thinking on categorisation. Perhaps the emphasis has in the past been too much on a distinction between settlements and topographical features. Perhaps the significant factor is whether or not a name is attached to a feature shared by the mental maps of more than the immediate community – not the naming for the traveller that Margaret Gelling and Ann Cole would imply (The Landscape of Place-Names, Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), but more the adoption into a macro-toponomy by dint of utility, whether as a waypoint – settlement or otherwise – or a destination.Field and house names can be elevated from the insecurity of the micro-toponomy, but presumably this most often occurs through re-categorisation when the name is lent to some commercial or other major physical intervention. Otherwise, as Beckensall points out, they are subject to a dynamic renaming process (p. 78). In part this is due to the eradication of landscape features, but also because ‘[t]hose who farm have become a very small minority of the working and dependent population; the countryside is seen by some as an outlet for leisure rather than a productive asset.’ Indeed, the field name section serves well to illustrate how important the oral tradition and process is to such names, and how they are at their most vulnerable and variable when entrusted to a numerically small population. This must be all the truer when that population is a proportionally tiny one of declining status.Not that change in field names is inevitable. Despite comment from the 1330s that much of Thirston ‘lay utterly waste and uncultivated through the poverty of the neighbourhood destroyed by the Scots and lack of tenants and animals,’ Langelands in 1250 survives as Long Field, The Leys as Birk Lases, Ebrocks as Brock Letch, and Beneacres as Benacres in 1772 then as Binnacle Close (p. 87).But the dynamic of change is well illustrated by the overlay of the maps of Tughall fields in 1620 and in the mid-19th century (p. 117). However, Peadar Morgan173this also demonstrates one of the great disappointments with the publishing of the book – the outline maps and map reproductions (some in colour), which illustrate the location and (two-dimensional) relationships between fields, require squinting and / or magnification to read. Tempus have reduced the maps simply to fit on one page, rather than taking the effort and space to spread over the fold. A further service would have been to have added maps showing the areas delineated in their topographical and geographical contexts. The very valuable collecting by Beckensall – albeit poor on source detail – has been sold short.Again, the field name section has a table of elements, this time without even a partial key to abbreviations. Place and field elements could surely have been combined in a more accessible appendix rather than being lost mid-text. The field element table could be more explanatory in its occasional comments, such as the intriguing ‘Cot, coat OF, ME enclosure. OE cot = cottage, animal house. It seems also to mean ‘land on the border’ in local examples’ (p. 83), and similarly ‘ON myrr = bog, swamp, boundary’ (p. 85). It could also incorporate all the elements discussed in the text, such as lazy ‘producing little’ (p. 81) (more strictly ‘untilled’, as in the former lazy-beds of Hebridean agriculture), and floores ‘areas between ridges in the open-field system’ as found in Mowdie floores 1620 ‘muddy floores’ (p. 102) and the strangely inverted South floorehavers 1624 ‘lands on which oats are grown’ (p. 108).Once more there are groupings of names by element categories; more extensive in breakdown and in number, being conducted separately for each estate. Consistency in categories would have aided comparison, and the assumption is annoyingly made that the listings will be read consecutively, so element meanings are not repeated. There would have been merit in discussing the material thematically, as might have been expected from the book title, though dispensing with the comparison of local and contemporary data would not have been without loss. Either way, acknowledgement and discussion of the impact of, and processes behind, toponymic analogy would certainly have been welcome, for example with Blow Wearie and Blawearie (p. 96) and their many Scottish cousins.There is at least a combined, concluding table of the field names discussed, with interpretations. But incredibly there are no cross-references to either location or discussion. In the absence of an index to the book, this is a near-fatal flaw (and certainly the final straw) for the academic reader.Nevertheless the field names must be the most stimulating section for the Scottish reader. It gives comparative material and extends our knowledge of cross-border patterns. It should also shake us out of being Reviews174too one-dimensional in our linguistic analyses of names – without chance oral recording, lateral thinking alone would not have been sufficient to indicate that March Brown and Seagull Field commemorates, respectively, a Colonel Brown of military gait, and a one-legged bird famed for surveying the fieldwork from a favourite vantage point on a gate (p. 78).PEADAR MORGAN, University of St AndrewsGeorge Broderick, A Dictionary of Manx Place-Names. English Place-Name Society: Nottingham, 2006. 234 pp. £14.00. ISBN 0-904889-71-8For the non-academic interested in Manx place-names, or anyone without several hundred pounds to spare, the much shorter Dictionary of Manx Place-Names is a concise version of the seven-volume Placenames of the Isle of Man series (see pp. 157–68 of this volume). It has an excellent series of introductions to the main corpus of the dictionary, with brief discussions of the various linguistic strata, a bibliography and parish maps of Man. The main weakness here is the pronunciation guide. Whilst the multi-volume series uses the International Phonetic Alphabet, the approach here is somewhat ad hoc. For instance the vowel represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [:] is represented as ‘ar’, intuitive for a speaker of Southern English, but surely confusing for most other readers.The main body of the book comprises the dictionary, which is divided into general names, treen names, and parish names. I found this decision slightly puzzling, since the average user of this book would not know into which category any particular name fell. Within these sections, each entry is listed in strict alphabetical order, giving the head-form, parish, four-figure OS grid reference, pronounciation, old forms, derivation and discussion, and type of place signified. The old forms, presumably for reasons of brevity, are only given with dates, not sources, greatly reducing the usefulness of this book for the more serious researcher. It is to be commended, however, that, as with the seven-volume series, the cognates of many of the Manx elements are given in Scottish Gaelic or Irish Gaelic orthography; for instance, under the entry for AWIN BALLOO (p. 5), the derivation is given as, ‘Manx (Mx) awin ny balloo, Gaelic (G) abhainn nam balbh, ‘river of the deaf people’.’ As to the selection of a name from the larger corpus for inclusion in this one-volume work, it would seem to be heavily biased towards the Manx and Scandinavian names and away from later English names.The parish sections are usefully introduced by a short parochial history and a discussion of the relevant patron saints, and enhanced by illustrations dating from 1830 of each parish church.Jacob KingJSNS 1, 2007, 174–75

Stan Beckensall: Place Names and Field Names of Northumberland

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Stan Beckensall: Place Names and Field Names of Northumberland

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