An Old Geezer's Gazetteer

Every book should contain at least one list

and

every blog should have one too.

So...

...here's a list of East Anglian place-names 

that an ageing old fool

finds amusing or interesting...

Ugley, Cold Christmas, Good Easter,

 Pixie Green, Foxearth, Wormegay, Shelfanger,

 Westley Waterless, Stratton Strawless, Winfarthing,

 Blo' Norton, Pudding Norton, Puddledock,

Saddle Bow, Queen Adelaide, Melton Constable

and,

rather unexpectedly,

California.

Onehouse, Bumbles Green,

Margaret Roding, Kenny Hill,

Apes Hall, Bacon End,

Matching Tye, Matching Green,

Manea, (which is unfortunately pronounced Main-ee rather than Mania)

Hoo, Wix, Eyke, Steeple Bumpstead,

Rishangles, Rattlesden, Woolpit, Sweffling, 

Messing, Shellow Bowells,

and the rather tricky to pronounce

Happisburgh (HAZE'bro), Wymondham (WIND'em), Braughing (Braffing),

 Deopham (DEEP'em), and Belaugh (BEE'lo),

not to mention those sign-writers' nightmares,

Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin 

and 

Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen

 Nasty, Great and Little Snoring, Six Mile Bottom,

Ramsey Forty Foot, Kettlebaston, Prickwillow,

Wangford, Shipmeadow,  

Yelling, Sloley, Seething, Pidley, Three Holes,

as well as the quite beautiful

Walsham Le Willows, Gamlingay, Shingay-Cum-Wendy, 

Saffron Walden, 

Silverley and Layer de la Haye. 

Given a following wind we may visit some of them one day,

until then,

Take care.

The Colloquial Carman

My grandfather was a Cockney, a true Londoner. He ran his own coal delivery business, operating from King's Cross station to which coal was delivered from the mining areas of the north by train. On census records his occupation is recorded as a carman. And what, pray tell, might that be?

The word car predates the automobile or motorcar by many centuries and just means a wheeled vehicle, so is related to cart and carriage. A carman was someone who owned and made his living from a horse-drawn cart and by my grandfather's time this mainly meant distributing goods, which had been brought into the railway stations, to all parts of London. Although he delivered coal as his main occupation he would swap to transporting fruit and vegetables during the summer.

Interestingly, although "car" is used for an automobile in most of England, in London it's often referred to as a "motor". Which brings us on to the subject of language and the fact that you might also hear a car being called a "jam jar" in some parts of London, an example of Cockney rhyming slang ( car = jam jar). 

A car like Granddad's

So here, in no particular order, are some more examples of Cockney as-she-was-spoke. I never met my grandfather as he died before I was born but these are all phrases he used as I learned them from my mother.

Some make a kind of poetic sense: if you were going out to one of the major fairs (as Granddad and family are doing in the photo at the top of this post) then you'd want to look your best, so it makes sense that Barnet fair is the rhyming slang for hair, though it's often shortened to just Barnet, which then gives no clue as to its origin. If you really wanted to get whistled at you'd wear your whistle and flute (suit). There's something comical about the sedate progress of frogs and toads so frog-and-toad became the slang for road.  I'll only get myself in deep water if I try to explain why it's trouble-and-strife for wife. Or alternatively she might be the love-and-kisses (Mrs). And the finest of all of them is dog-and-bone to mean telephone; old-fashioned phones really did look a bit like a dog sitting with a bone held in its jaws.

Skin-and-blister for sister suggests something very close to you, while north-and-south for mouth gives a picture of someone with a very large mouth indeed. Elephants trunk means drunk and creates an image of something or someone who could take up a vast quantity of liquid. Tiddly also means drunk and that's rhyming slang too, coming from tiddly-wink for a drink. There are quite a lot of these unexpected examples of rhyming slang, phrases in everyday use which no one ever considers to have a Cockney origin.

How many gangsters or hippies knew that when they were using the word bread to mean money, they were using the language of London street-traders - bread-and-honey means money. Using your loaf, on the other hand, comes from loaf-of-bread for head. And how many elderly aunts have amused children by blowing raspberries without realising that it's derived from raspberry-tart meaning fart? 

The word to scarper, meaning to run away from the scene of the crime, is sometimes said to come from Scarpa Flow (up and go). If you up and go it maybe because you just haven't got the bottle to fight - that's rhyming slang too, bottle-and-glass = class.

Your mate might be referred too as your china (china plate for mate) or else you might call them my old fruit (fruit gum instead of chum). If you haven't got any friends you'd be on your tod (probably from Tod Sloan an American jockey who famously rode 5 consecutive winners at Newmarket in 1898 - he was quite literally out there on his own!). 

Here's a few more:

                  daisy roots = boots

                  apples and pears = stairs
                  Rosie Lee = cup of tea
                  tea leaf = thief
                  I should coco = I should think so (used sarcastically to actually mean 'Not likely!' as in "Work all day for no pay? I should coco!" It probably originates from Coco the Clown.
                  brown bread = dead

                  mince pies = eyes

                  Joanna = piano

                  boat race = face

                  kettle = pocket watch, that's from kettle-and-hob for fob, a fob watch. Would you Adam-and Eve it?

Take care.



                  
                  

Name That Pub

That's rather a lot of pictures of pub signs. So here are some anecdotes about pub names for you:

• Until the 1950s there was a pub in Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire, that was known as The Exhibition. However a colony of bees set up home in the wall of the pub which then changed its name to The Bees In The Wall, by which name it is known to this day.
• In 2007 both The British Beer And Pub Association and The Campaign For Real Ale carried out surveys into the most common pub names in England. The BBPA makes the 1,2,3 - The Red Lion, The Royal Oak and White Hart while CAMRA reckons it's The Crown, The Red Lion and The Royal Oak. Possibly alcohol influenced their mathematics.

• On Cambridge's Madingley Road their used to be a pub called the Man Loaded With Mischief. The sign depicted a man carrying a woman.
• While we're being politically incorrect, there's a pub in Scotland called "The Black Bitch", which is apparently named in honour of a famous greyhound.
• The Cambridge Blue, in, naturally enough, Cambridge, used to be known by the dreadfully punning name of The Dewdrop Inn - Do drop in - while in Brecon in Wales is The Cwm Inn. Cwm is Welsh for valley but it's also a pun, Come In of course.

• The two Irish pubs in Mill Road, Cambridge, The White Swan and The Earl Of Beaconsfield, are known respectively as The Swimmer and The Beaky by many drinkers in the area.
• My home village of Meldreth once boasted six pubs, one of which went by the remarkable and completely inexplicable name of The Dumb Flea. It may have once been either The Dun Fleece or The Earl Of Dumfries. Why on earth a pub in Cambridgeshire should be named after a Scottish earl is another question entirely. The road in which it stands is known as Chiswick End, in the 1881 census it was mistakenly recorded as Cheesecake End!

Perhaps my favourite pub name.

Take care.     

Shiners

As many of my friends will testify it's a mistake to ask me question if you're in a hurry; the answers can sometimes be longer than you were expecting. But, as two readers have asked me about a plant shown on this blog recently, I feel justified in giving you the details - whether you want them or not!

Where
It's a common enough plant in England and tends to grow in damp places. The little wood alongside the River Mel in my home village is ideal.

Name 
I called this plant Cuckoo Pint but Lords-And-Ladies is an equally common name for the flower. It has lots of other names too: Jack-In-The-Pulpit, Devils-And-Angels, Adam-And-Eve, Arrowhead, Snakesmeat, Cows-And-Bulls, Red Hot Poker, Starchwort, Fairy Lamps, Willy Lily (!), Naked Boys, Kitty-Come-Down-The-Lane-Jump-Up-And-Kiss-Me and indeed Shiners.
Why Cuckoo Pint? First of all you need to know that "pint" in this case rhymes with "mint" and is probably an abbreviation of "pintle" which was an old word for "penis". The erect structure in the centre of the flower might well be the inspiration for that part of the name. Cuckoos were birds with a bad reputation from their habit of fooling other birds into bringing up their offspring. The word "cuckold" also derives from cuckoo.
Many of the other names with male and female components refer to its resemblance to male and female genitalia. The derivation of some of the other names will become clear later.

Posh Name
This superabundance of folk names caused much confusion and was one of the reasons why all plants were given Latin names. In this case Arum Maculatum. "Maculatum" means maculate, one of those strange English words which only usually exists in its negative form - immaculate, meaning unblemished. Far from being immaculate the leaves of Cuckoo pint are often, but not always, spotted...

...with black spots!
You'd expect there to be a folk tale about the spots and indeed there is: the plant has drops of Christ's blood on it, so they say. It is occasionally depicted in church carvings or painting and was apparently used as a funeral flower by Methodists.

The Real Sexy Bit

This morning I went out to try to find some more of these plants to photograph. I didn't find any in prime condition as they tend to wilt quickly (no sexual references here, please!) but I did come across one that had been trampled so I was able to break it open to show you the male and female parts of the flower which are otherwise hidden. I did this very carefully as the plant is poisonous and the sap is an irritant. The male flowers are the small, dark-red spheres while the female ones are the larger, yellowish ones beneath. Pollination is aided by small flies which become entrapped in the lower part of the plant having been attracted there by its urine-like smell. Oddly this is one of the few plants which produces heat as well as scent.

Poison
Later in the year the plant produces some bright red fruits which might be very tempting for children to taste. This stage of the plant's growth gives rise to the name Bloody Man's Finger.

There are very few reported cases of death through poisoning, probably because they are so disgusting that no one would persevere to eat enough to do any serious harm. Despite this rodents and insects often give it a nibble. I imagine that's why it's sometimes called "snakemeat", though I doubt it's often a snake that does the nibbling.

Uses
The roots of the plant contain high amounts of starch and they were once ground up to make a powder that was used to stiffen ruffs and collars, hence the name starchwort. The roots are every bit as nasty as the rest of the plant and washerwomen suffered from blistered hands as a result of using it. Amazingly there are records of it being used for culinary purposes but no one now seems to know how to make it palatable. Equally bizzarely the ground-up roots were used for cosmetic purposes by the fashionable ladies of eighteenth-century Paris to whiten their skin. All of these suggestions come with serious health and safety warnings - Do Not Try This At Home!

Legend

The River Little Ouse, pictured above on a suitably misty and mysterious morning, is the setting for an ancient tale about this humble flower.

The plant was originally brought over from France by nuns who came from Normandy to settle in Thetford. When the monks from Ely stole the body of St Withburga from East Dereham they moored their boats and rested at Brandon. The Thetford nuns came down to the river and covered the saint's body with the flowers. During the remainder of the journey some of the flowers fell into the river and were washed to the bank where they put out roots and grew. Within an hour the river was lined with flowers all the way to Ely. What is more the flowers glowed in the dark.

All rubbish of course, except that, as the old fenmen knew well, the pollen of the flowers does glow faintly at dusk, which accounts for the names Fairy Lamps and Shiners.

Take care.


In writing the above several books were consulted, the most useful of these being Richard Mabey's "Flora Britannica". 
I also checked out a few websites including http://wildflowerfinder.org.uk    http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/   http://www.forestforaging.com/     http://www.plantlife.org.uk/    and of course Wikipedia

"Wheyoop, Buh!"

"Hello", "Hi", "How do you do?"

But while out walking a few days ago a strange and half-forgotten word came into my mind. A word my father used nearly every day when I met him about the farm where we both worked. I never gave it a second thought at the time but now it sounds anachronistic and odd. So let me greet you with a hearty "Wheyoop!". It means, roughly translated, "Hello, how are you, I'm delighted and perhaps a little surprised  to see you here at this time". Or, more succinctly, "Wheyoop!"

My old dad with some old pigs

In the neighbouring village of Bourn the farm-workers were even more economical with their breath as they shortened it to "Whoop!", a habit noted by two boys at my school who set about making it the fashionable greeting in the playground, much to the annoyance of the teachers. In Childerley they wasted no breath at all and just made a small sideways movement of the head in acknowledgement as they cycled past one another.

They addressed pretty much every male person as "Boy" (usually pronounced "Bor" or "Buh") regardless of their age. This became more complicated since they used "old" as a term of endearment as well as a description of a person's age. So this could give rise to such impenetrable information as this:
   " I saw old Bob the other day, nice old boy. Anyhow he were movin' some of his pigs and he only had his old boy helpin' him. They were havin' all sorts of trouble, but then the old boy come and give 'em a hand."
 
And everyone would understand that the first old boy was Bob himself, being helped by the second old boy who was Bob's son, while the final old boy who gave extra assistance was Bob's father. Slight changes of emphasis made it clear to those in the know. To make things worse they were all called Bob!

Of course you will have realised by now that in the caption to the photograph above - My old Dad with some old pigs - "My old dad" means "My dear father" while "some old pigs" means "some despicable swine". You've got that, haven't you?

It was all crystal clear to anyone in the village. As one old man (and I mean that he was getting on in years, not that he was dear to me, or despicable) told me quite seriously, "People down in London talk funny, and up north they got a funny haccent, but round 'ere we in't got no haccent at all!"

Take care.