Grain and Chaff from an English Manor Part 24

FILBERDS--filberts; _Tempest_, Act II., Scene 2.

TO LADE--to bale (liquid); _3 King Henry VI._, Act III., Scene 3.

TO LAP--to wrap; _King Richard III._, Act II., Scene 1; _Macbeth_, Act I., Scene 2.

BITTER SWEETING--an apple of poor quality grown from a kernel; cf.

"bitter sweet"--the same; _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II., Scene 4.

VARSAL WORLD--universal world; _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II., Scene 4.

MAMMET--a puppet; cf. "mommet"--scarecrow; _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III., Scene 5.

TO GRUNT--to grumble; _Hamlet_, Act III., Scene 1.

TO FUST--to become mouldy; _Hamlet_, Act IV., Scene 5.

DOUT--do out; cf. "don"--do on; _Hamlet_, Act IV., Scene 7.

MAGOT PIES--Magpies; _Macbeth_, Act III., Scene 4.

SET DOWN--write down; _Macbeth_, Act V., Scene 1.

TO PUN--to pound; _Troilus and Cressida_, Act II., Scene 1.

NATIVE--place of origin; cf. "natif"; _Coriola.n.u.s_, Act III., Scene 1.

SLEEK--bald; cf. "slick"; _Julius Caesar_, Act I., Scene 2.

WARN--summon; cf. "backwarn"--tell a person not to come; _Julius Caesar_, Act V., Scene 1.

BREESE--gadfly; _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act III., Scene 8.

WOO'T--wilt thou; _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act IV., Scene 13.

URCHIN--hedgehog; _t.i.tus Andronicus_, Act II., Scene 3.

MESHED--mashed (a term used in brewing); _t.i.tus Andronicus_, Act III., Scene 2.

All the above words and phrases the writer has frequently heard used in the neighbourhood in the senses indicated, but to make the list more complete the following are added on the authority of Mr. A.

Porson, in the pamphlet referred to:

COLLIED--black; _Midsummer Nights Dream_, Act I., Scene 1.

LIMMEL--limb from limb; cf. "inchmeal"--bit by bit; _Cymbeline_, Act II., Scene 4.

TO MAMMOCK--to tear to pieces; _Coriola.n.u.s_, Act I., Scene 3.

TO MOIL--to dirty; _Taming of the Shrew_, Act IV., Scene 1.

SALLET--salad; 2 _King Henry VI_., Act IV., Scene 10.

UTIS--great noise; _2 King Henry IV_., Act II., Scene 4.

Place-names everywhere are a most interesting study; as a rule, people do not recognize that every place-name has a meaning or reference to some outstanding peculiarity or characteristic of the place, and that much history can be gathered from interpretation. In cycling, it is one of the many interests to unravel these derivations; merely as an instance, I may mention that in Dorset and Wilts the name of Winterbourne, with a prefix or suffix, often occurs; of course, "bourne" means a stream, but until one knows that a "winterbourne" is a stream that appears in winter only, and does not exist in summer, the name carries no special signification.

One hears some curious personal names in the Worcestershire villages; scriptural names are quite common, and seem very suitable for the older labourers engaged upon their honourable employment on the land.

We had a maid named Vashti, and she was quite shy about mentioning it at her first interview with my wife. In all country neighbourhoods there is a special place with the unenviable reputation of stupidity; such was "Yabberton" (Ebrington, on the Cotswolds), and Vashti was somewhat reluctant to admit that it was her "natif," as a birthplace is called in the district. Among the traditions of Yabberton it is related that the farmers, being anxious to prolong the summer, erected hurdles to wall in the cuckoo, and that they manured the church tower, expecting it to sprout into an imposing steeple! There is a place in Surrey, Send, with a similar reputation, where the inhabitants had to visit a pond before they could tell that rain was falling!

But perhaps the best story of the kind is told in the New Forest, where the Isle of Wight is regarded as the acme of stupidity. When the Isle of Wight people first began to walk erect, instead of on all fours, they are said to have waggled their arms and hands helplessly before them, saying, "And what be we to do with these-um?"

Cla.s.sical names are very uncommon among villagers, but in my old Surrey parish there was one which was the cause of much speculation.

The name was Hercules; it originated in a disagreement between the parents, before the child was christened. The mother wanted his name to be John, but the father insisted, that as an older son was Noah, the only possible name for the new baby was "Hark" (Ark). They had a lengthy argument, and there was no definite understanding before reaching the church. The mother, when asked to "name this child,"

being fl.u.s.tered, hesitated, but finally stammered out, "Hark, please."

The vicar was puzzled, and repeated the question with the same result; a third attempt was equally unsuccessful, and the vicar, in despair, falling back upon his cla.s.sical knowledge, christened the child Hercules. A few days later the vicar called at the cottage, and the mother explained the matter, relating how indignant she was with her husband, and how on the way home, "Hark, I says to him, ain't the name of a Christian, it's the name of a barge!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

IS ALDINGTON (FORMER SITE) THE ROMAN ANTONA?

"Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!"

--_Hamlet_.

One of my fields--about five acres--called Blackbanks from its extraordinarily black soil, over a yard deep in places, and the more remarkable because the soil of the surrounding fields is stiff yellowish clay, showed other indications of long and very ancient habitation. Among the relics found was a stone quern, measuring about 21 inches by 12 by 7-3/4, and having, on each of two opposite sides, a basin-shaped depression about 6 inches in diameter at the top, and 2-3/4 inches in depth; also a small stone ring, 1-1/4 inches in diameter, and 3/8ths in thickness, with a hole in the centre 1/4 inch across; the edges are rounded, and it is similar to those I have seen in museums, called spindle whorls. The quern and the ring I imagine to be British. This field and the fields adjacent on the north side of the stream formed, I think, primarily a British settlement and area of cultivation, afterwards appropriated by the Romans in the earliest days of the Roman occupation of Britain, and inhabited by them as a military station until they left the country.

Among other relics found in Blackbanks and in the fields to the north, called Blackminster, between Blackbanks and the present line of the Great Western Railway, aggregating about a hundred acres, there were found large quant.i.ties of fragments of pottery of several kinds, including black, grey, and red, and among the latter the smoothly glazed Samian. Many pieces are ornamented with patterns, some very primitive, others geometrical; others are in texture like Wedgwood basalt ware, and similar in colour and decoration. The Samian is mostly plain, but a few pieces have patterns and representations of human figures.

The fields, but especially Blackbanks, contained quant.i.ties of bones, the horns of sheep or goats, pieces of stags, horns, iron spear and arrow-heads, horses' molar teeth, and flint pebbles worn flat on one side by the pa.s.sage of innumerable feet for many years. A millstone showing marks of rotation on the surface, a bronze clasp or brooch with fragments of enamel inlay, the ornamental bronze handle of an important key, a gla.s.s lacrymatory (tear-bottle), numerous coins--referred to below--and other objects in bronze and iron, were also found.

Only centuries of habitation and cultivation could have changed the three feet of surface soil in Blackbanks from a stiff unworkable clay to a black friable garden mould, and it is probable that the British occupation had lasted for a very long period before the Romans took possession. The settlement must have been a place of importance, because it was approached from the north by a track, still existing though practically disused, probably British, from a ford over the Avon, near the present Fish and Anchor Inn. This track pa.s.ses to the west of South Littleton, on through the middle of the Blackminster land, and immediately to the east of Blackbanks, joining what I believe to be the Ryknield Street at the bridge over the stream on the South Littleton road. Near the present Royal Oak Inn it formerly crossed the present Evesham-Bretforton road, and became what is still called Salter Street. It appears to have given access to two more sites on which Roman coins and relics are found--Foxhill about 9-1/2 acres, and Blackground about 4 acres--and pa.s.sing east of the present Badsey church, proceeded through Wickhamford, and by a well-defined track to Hinton-on-the-Green, and on to Tewkesbury and Gloucester.

The occurrence of the name Salter Street gives a clue to one of the original uses of the road, at any rate in Roman times, for salt was an absolute necessity in those days, as may be gathered from a pa.s.sage in _The Natural History of Selborne_, written in 1778:

"Three or four centuries ago, before there were any enclosures, sown gra.s.ses, field turnips, or field carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for winter use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead months; so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring.

Hence the vast stores of salted flesh found in the larder of the elder Spencer in the days of Edward II., even so late in the spring as the 3rd of May." A note adds that the store consisted of "Six hundred bacons, eighty carca.s.ses of beef and six hundred muttons."

It is not difficult to trace the route over which the salt was carried from Droitwich. Starting thence the track can be approximately identified by the names of places in which the root, _sal_ (salt), occurs, and we find Sale Way, Salding, Sale Green, and, further south, Salford. Crossing the Worcester-Alcelster road at Radford, and proceeding through Rouse Lench and Church Lench, we reach Harvington, from whence the track takes us across the low-lying meadows to the ferry and ford over the Avon, near the Fish and Anchor Inn mentioned above.

In recent times it has been a.s.sumed that the road from Bidford to Weston Subedge, known as Buckle Street, is identical with Ryknield Street, but I should prefer to call Buckle Street a branch of the latter only, for the purpose of joining Ryknield Street and the Foss Way near Burton-on-the-Water. I consider the real course of Ryknield Street to be as described in Leland's _Itinerary_ (inserted by Hearne), Edition III., 1768, in which he quotes, from R. Gale's _Essay concerning the Four Great Roman Ways_, that "from Bitford on the southern edge of Warwickshire it (Ryknield Street) runs into Worcestershire, and taking its course thro' South Littleton goes on a little to the east of Evesham, and then by Hinton and west of Sedgebarrow into Gloucestershire, near Aston-under-Hill, and so by Bekford, Ashchurch, and a little east of Tewksbury, thro' Norton to Gloucester."

Such a course for Ryknield Street would make it the connection between the north, running through the Roman Alauna (Alcester) to Glevum (Gloucester). It must be remembered that there was, in Roman times, nothing at Evesham to take the road there, for Evesham did not exist as a town until long after the Romans left. Leland says that there was "noe towene at Eovesham before the foundation of the Abbey," which took place about A.D. 701, about 250 years later, and there was no road from Alcester to Gloucester except the one we are following.

Another important road pa.s.sed the northern extremity of Blackminster and crossed the road just referred to so that the Blackminster area was situated at the junction. This was the old road from Worcester, pa.s.sing the present site of Evesham a mile or more to the north, crossing the Avon at Twyford, and the Ryknield Street at Blackminster, and going onwards through Chipping Campden towards London.

The following pa.s.sage in the _Annals_ of Tacitus, Book XII., chapter x.x.xi., _Ille (Ostorius) ... detrahere arma suspectis, cinctosque castris Antonam et Sabrinam fluvios cohibere parat_, which refers to the fortification of the Antona and Severn rivers by the Roman general P. Ostorius Scapula, has been the subject of various readings and controversy about the word _Antona_, no river of that name having been identified. The reading given above may not be good Latin, but the names of the rivers are quite plain. Another reading subst.i.tutes _Avonam_ for _Antonam_; but probably Tacitus avoided the use of the word Avon because it was then a Celtic term for rivers in general, and confusion would arise between the Avon which joins the Severn at Tewkesbury and the Avon a little further south which runs into the Severn estuary at Bristol. To make his meaning quite clear he did exactly what we do now in speaking of the Stratford Avon (_i.e._, river) and the Bristol Avon(_i.e._, river) when he prefixed _Antonam_ (_et Sabrinam_) to the word _fluvios_.