Here's an example of when pigs were allowed to roam, and when they had to be kept under control by their owners or incur a fine. Taken from an old document (1379) from Ashton-under-Lyne Manor. These customs continued for hundreds of years until enclosure. Also until Edward III imported some Flemish weavers to this country to teach locals how to produce cloth, roundabout 1350, this part of the world was known for horse breeding. Previously raw wool had been exported, now the finished products were being exported. It also seems likely that the Lord of the Manor's tenants possesed at least one cow and probably several, because the tenant's family had to give up their best beast to the Lord of the Manor, as heriot, when he died. _http://members.aol.com/gayjoliver/Covenants.htm_ (http://members.aol.com/gayjoliver/Covenants.htm) Gay J Oliver, Stalybridge, Cheshire,UK http://members.aol.com/victoroly/genealogy.htm http://members.aol.com/gayjoliver/Tameside.htm http://www.fhsc.org.uk/fhsc/dukinfield.htm

<<I am just reading about the latter years of the Civil War (1645+), when both parties regularly replaced horses killed in combat, by scouring the neighbourhoods they marched through. For work-horses, that would be - hardly cavalry steeds, I assume. How that practice must have added to the workloads of the farmers! Did they go back to oxen, for the duration? Well, they must have done, unless they pulled the ploughs themselves.>> An interesting question, Gordon. It's a bit later than my period, so I thought I'd put it to Prof Pete Edwards at Roehampton University, who knows a bit about these things, having recently published books on The Horse Trade in Tudor and Stuart England and on equiping the Civil War armies (Dealing in Death: The Arms Trade and the British Civil Wars, 1638-52). He said that he hadn't ever explored the question directly, but that from a priori reasoning one would think it quite possible that as horses were being taken away by the army the farmers had to resort to oxen. At Oxford the Royalist Council of War decided to get rid of their draught oxen in March 1644, reckoning they were not as useful as horses in the draught - a decision which would have meant fewer horses but more oxen available to local farmers. The problem is that it wouldn't necessarily have been that easy to change over to oxen suddenly. Horses and oxen were used for different purposes, ate different foods, were trained differently, made use of at the end of their working lives in different ways (ie were integrated into local economies in terms of crops grown, the process of training and selling on &c). At the very least mixed farming areas would have to lay down more land to grass and buy oxen in, perhaps from distant sources, a dangerous business (and if there weren't enough available it would have taken a while to breed them - though they could be used for draught at a younger age than horses). All in all he thinks that farmers probably did convert back to oxen in some places but that it depended on local circumstances, traditions and availability. Matt

Can anyone remember when Arab horses first came into the country? I have a feeling it was sometime in the 18th century. All thoroughbreds trace their breeding back to the first one, I think, although I may be confusing this with something else.? Horses of any sort around here seem to have been on the rare side in the 17th century. Those for riding only were very few. Someone mentioned pigs? I found that these were also for the wealthy. The richest man between 1650-1700 in three townships had two. Most had none at all. They seem to have been kept in sties, not allowed to roam loose. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eve McLaughlin" <eve@varneys.demon.co.uk> To: <OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 10:42 PM Subject: Re: [OEL] Common vs Open > > >I am just reading about the latter years of the Civil War (1645+), when both > >parties regularly replaced horses killed in combat, by scouring the > >neighbourhoods they marched through. For work-horses, that would be - > >hardly cavalry steeds, I assume. > The cavalry didn't ride any poncy delicate arabs only fit for titupping > about London streets. - they were heavily equipped and were regularly > charging across country, heavy plough, soggy valleys, so draught horses > would be ideal/ > The farmer who lived here got warning of the approach of Prince Rupert > on one of his marauding expeditions after horses and fodder. He is > sup[posed to have had a promising colt, which he his by upending a stone > trough over it. Can't see this - it could only have been a very tiny > foal and it would have yawped for its mother. He could have done better > by using trees and bushes as natural cover, and sticking his plate and > pewter in the trough. > > -- > Eve McLaughlin > > Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians > Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society > > > ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== > To UNSUBSCRIBE from list mode -- > Send the one word UNSUBSCRIBE to > OLD-ENGLISH-L-request@rootsweb.com >

>>>I came across the word "ing" the other day, claimed to be the word >>> for a meadow in East Anglia <<It is normally reckoned to be a word either for household or group, or small settlement, where said household chose to live. So Haddenham - Hadd/a/s ing's piece of real estate in a larger settlement. Bocking - Bocc/a/'s settlement; Dinton aka Donington or Danington - the Danish chap's settlement. I have not come across it as just a single field - only in relation to a person and his lot.>> I'm afraid that's a different kind of ing, Eve, not itself a word but only ever found added as a suffix to a proper name or noun to form Anglo-Saxon placenames of the sort you describe (and also personal names). This ing is a word in its own right, one which entered the language in northern England after the Danish and Norwegian invasions (for all I know they still use it up there - I'm a southerner, me). Leigh Yeager has given some examples of its use as a word. In northern English it changed from eng to ing in the 14th century (compare the way we pronounce England as Ingland). The Danish ing doesn't get mentioned much in books on place-names, as for some reason it was hardly ever used in the formation of major place-names, but it is relatively common in the names of fields and farms and small places like that, and for that reason is probably mentioned in Field's book on Field Names (I don't have a copy to hand, so I can't be categorical, though I do know that it definitely is discussed in the English Place-name Society's dictionary of English Place-name Elements). On the south bank of the Humber estuary the 1:50,000 map shows some low-lying meadows called Winteringham Ings, which neatly illustrates the two kinds of ings. Gordon asked if the word is still in use in Scandinavia - the answer is Ja, you will find in 'eng' meaning meadow in any Danish directory (I'm not sure about Norwegian, though). Matt

There are many good mediaeval Latin word-lists on the web, the following is taken exclusively from manor deeds, so contains Latin words for farm animals, crops, etc: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/hi/resources/manor_courts/voc03c.pdf. About 3000 words on 26 2-col pages. John Barton

I don't know how I did this but I have a new email address by accident. Gary Subscribe

In a message dated 09/08/2004 22:15:32 GMT Standard Time, eve@varneys.demon.co.uk writes: ah eng, yes - but ing? > Could it have been 'ling' or an abreviation of it? Makes sense for East Anglia - although Genuki has this for the parish of Duffield, Yorkshire: "About 300 acres on the Ings and Carrs are laid down in meadow. This land, which lies low, is frequently flooded in winter, and sometimes in summer in wet seasons, when considerable damage is done to the hay crops." Genuki also has this written in 1892 by the Rev M C F Morris about Yorkshire dialect "Nearly every parish in the district that has a river flowing through it possesses its ings, which is the same word as the Danish enge, eng being a generic word signifying low ground, flooded now at times or not as the case may be, but always near water, and divided by ditches into fenner varying considerably in size" I have not found a more recent definition however.. I know I've seen "ings and carrs" referred to in my research for Brandon, Suffolk and always wondered what they were! Regarding 'open' arable and 'common' arable which started this thread off - I have since discovered that Joan Thirsk in her work on Midlands farming systems made the distinction between the open fields which had no evidence of common rights ever having been attached and those which had - the former she described as 'open fields' and the latter as 'common fields' - however since then only a few have followed her in the usage of these terms because the meaning of 'open fields' and 'commons' has already become so generally used that to change to her definitions would become confusing - certainly confused me. Kind regards Leigh

>I am just reading about the latter years of the Civil War (1645+), when both >parties regularly replaced horses killed in combat, by scouring the >neighbourhoods they marched through. For work-horses, that would be - >hardly cavalry steeds, I assume. The cavalry didn't ride any poncy delicate arabs only fit for titupping about London streets. - they were heavily equipped and were regularly charging across country, heavy plough, soggy valleys, so draught horses would be ideal/ The farmer who lived here got warning of the approach of Prince Rupert on one of his marauding expeditions after horses and fodder. He is sup[posed to have had a promising colt, which he his by upending a stone trough over it. Can't see this - it could only have been a very tiny foal and it would have yawped for its mother. He could have done better by using trees and bushes as natural cover, and sticking his plate and pewter in the trough. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

snip intere > > ><<When it came to horses around our way in the 17th century, it seems that these >were more like the Range Rover or the Ferrari of their times. Only the more >wealthy had them and particularly those for riding were highly valued and mostly >mares.>> > > >Well, that's true as far as riding horses goes, but in fact peasant-owned >draught horses, used for ploughing, harrowing, carting etc, were common in most >medieval villages, and very common by the early modern period. In the early >medieval period oxen were the most common draught animals in most parts of >England, but they were gradually replaced by horses, a process that was largely >completed in most parts of the country by the 17th century (and much earlier in >some parts - the Chilterns, for example, were using all-horse teams as early as >the 14th and 15th centuries. One of the reasons for turning to horses for ploughing (on appropriate lkand) was that oxen apprently were not equipped with means for reversing, so you needed a large turning circle at the ends of plough lines - if you were ploughing boustrephedon and they tended to need a wider gap between furrows. Could have been sorted by overploughing, I suppose, but this would have messed up the neat furrows. > -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

> >It was extrememly common in the north of England, Gordon - if you look at any >1:50,000 map covering coastal, estuarine or riverine flood-plain areas in the >north you'll probably find several flat low-lying areas with names incorporating >Ing or Ings. > >I'm interested to hear that it was also used in East Anglia, but not surprised, >as the word is of Danish/Norse origin, from the Old Norse word 'eng', meaning >meadow, especially low-lying frequently flooded meadow. ah eng, yes - but ing? > -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

Matt - Thank you for your comments about 'quedam serva' - I will make sure I take a look at a copy of the original PR sometime to check! Regards - Judith Gibbons Coventry, UK

Hello All I have found the above topic very interesting especially as I have had more than one family farming in open fields one of them at Laxton Notts. If anyone wishes to have a look I have uploaded a 1735 map of Chilson Manor showing the open field system and the names of the farmers who farmed within the manor. As many of the notations were upside down I have also included an enlarged portion below the main map. Both are on the following webpage. http://www.angelfire.com/bc3/woodcom/page21.html refresh with F5 if the maps don't download completely. They are about 350 kb each. A close look at this map shows it is quite a bit different to Laxton which if I remember correctly only had four main fields. Chilson has many more fields of all shapes and sizes and the strips would not have followed any rules regarding lengths there. Also of interest is that quite a few farmers had several strips in the same field but they are not often adjacent to each other regards Chris Bartlett

Brother just bought another book called "The Celtic Realms" by Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick. He tells me it is chock full of gods and goddesses and real human beings with -oc at the end of their names or in the middle. I found an Oengus Mac Oc, Irish god. This doesn't seem to be a coincidence. The -ac and -oc may have become ap in Welsh. Like most Celtic mythology it's probably boring. Gary

I hope Judith will not object to my posting a summary of British life in 1637, from a book I have just read. As an Australian, my and my wife's British ancestors lived in widely scattered parts of Britain, and I am shamefully ignorant of the way things were in those parts. Other Listers may be too, ignorant of the general circumstances of their ancestors' lives. There are other fascinating extracts I could give, but will not do so without Judith's permission. Gordon Barlow "At least half the King's subjects derived their living directly or indirectly from the sea... The mussel beds of the Cumbrian and Scottish shores yielded pale irregular pearls... the oysters of Colchester and Whitstable... Selsey cockles... sprats and eels of the Thames estuary... eels from northern Ireland and lampreys from the Severn estuary... pilchards from Plymouth and Penzance. "Berwick had long been famous for salmon and shellfish but had recently fallen on hard times. The fisher-folk, tempted by the possibility of a record haul, had broken the Sabbath and gone out in their boats. Since that time the salmon had deserted Berwick, whose present distress was held up as a warning to all who despised the commandments. "... fisher folk came from as far north as the coast of Durham and as far west as Lyme to sell their herring on the Yarmouth quays... the Scots were discovering the Greenland whale fisheries, but the English Muscovy Company disputed the fishing rights... Fishing rights in Scotland's own waters were savagely contested, for lowland intruders were opposed by the people of the Highland coasts and the Hebrides, and the aggressive Hollanders fell upon both alike. "Where the coasts were low-lying, hundreds of salt pans... refineries at Newcastle, Colchester and Chester. Where the coast was rocky, seaweed was carted inland to enrich the soil. On cliffs and sandhills men gathered samphire and looked for ambergris among the sea-drift, to sell to the kitchens of the rich... fresh-water eels from Abingdon, Severn greyling and Arundel mullet... "Minehead and Barnstaple exchanged wares and travellers with Tenby [Wales] and the ports of southern Ireland... Fifty sail from these ports put into the Severn estuary for the Bristol fair in July... A fleet of 300 ships carried Newcastle coal to London. Dumbarton and Whitehaven sent colliers to Dublin... Ayr and Irvine traded with France; Leith, Dundee, Aberdeen & Stonehaven with Norway, Denmark and the Low Countries...Cross-Channel traffic from Dartmouth and Exeter brought in flax and hemp from Normandy and Brittany and exported it again as sail-cloth and buckram. "From Bristol, Plymouth and Southampton ships sailed for the American colonies, with supplies of malt and meal, shirts and shoes, cloth and hardware. From there they turned north to Newfoundland for fish which they sold in Cadiz, and came home with Spanish wines. Between northern Ireland and the Western Isles native coracles plied a traffic in crude liquor and fugitive criminals. "London was first and foremost a seaport. Merchantmen from Antwerp and Amsterdam, Calais and Bordeaux, Lisbon, Leghorn and Cadiz, Bergen, Hamburg and Archangel, Constantinople, the East and West Indies, rode at anchor in the Pool... Fresh water had been brought within reach by the New River Company which had diverted the river Lea to Islington; but rosemary and jasmine were in constant demand to disguise the putrid smells of streets and houses. London children suffered badly from rickets, and the various epidemic diseases vaguely defined as plague caused ten thousand deaths in the bad year 1636."

A fascinating map, Chris. Especially those furlongs with the very irregular rounded shapes. At first glance I took them to be ancient enclosures, probably cleared from woodland or other waste and never part of the open field system, but on closer inspection it turns that they too were divided up into strips. Does this reflect very broken, hilly terrain? From the different shapes of the furlongs it looks as though the southern part of the township was flatter than the northern part. Your comment about the lengths of the strips is spot on. My original posting was a bit too categoric on that point, and I should have said that while in the classic Midland open field the width of a strip was usually a pole (alias rood or perch) and the length a furlong, the length could also vary considerably, typically on account of terrain features. I'm not sure that Chilson had lots of fields, though (in the sense of open-field Fields) - most of the groups of strips outlined in black on the map are named 'something furlong', so they would probably have been grouped together into two or three (or possibly four) Fields. Maps like this often indicate how the furlongs were grouped into Fields, but as far as I can see this one has left the Field names off, presumably because with every strip marked and its owner named there wasn't any room left. Interesting too to see that Chilson seems to have had nearly no pasture or meadow or woodland, either common or private. Or does this map not depict the whole of the parish/manor, just the arable parts? Maybe they had pasture and wood rights in Wychwood. Reagrds, Matt -----Original Message----- From: Chris Bartlett [mailto:woodcom@ihug.co.nz] Sent: 9 Aug 2004 09:37 To: OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com Subject: RE: [OEL] Common vs Open Hello All I have found the above topic very interesting especially as I have had more than one family farming in open fields one of them at Laxton Notts. If anyone wishes to have a look I have uploaded a 1735 map of Chilson Manor showing the open field system and the names of the farmers who farmed within the manor. As many of the notations were upside down I have also included an enlarged portion below the main map. Both are on the following webpage. http://www.angelfire.com/bc3/woodcom/page21.html refresh with F5 if the maps don't download completely. They are about 350 kb each. A close look at this map shows it is quite a bit different to Laxton which if I remember correctly only had four main fields. Chilson has many more fields of all shapes and sizes and the strips would not have followed any rules regarding lengths there. Also of interest is that quite a few farmers had several strips in the same field but they are not often adjacent to each other regards Chris Bartlett ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== Going away for a while? Don't forget to UNSUBSCRIBE! OLD-ENGLISH-L-request@rootsweb.com

There were also as I understand it Pigs! I think they were kept in the rough woodland - rather as they still are in Southern Spain where you get the little black pigs that forage in the chestnut woods. Their ham is particularly good! Christopher Richards ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tompkins, M.L." <mllt1@leicester.ac.uk> To: <OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 10:06 AM Subject: RE: [OEL] Common vs Open > <<There were very few if any herds of cattle, nor with the exception of sheep, any livestock farming as such until after the enclosures. What few animals that were kept would have been grazed on their owners land or upon the common.>> > > Eve is absolutely right - there was plenty of livestock farming in open field regions before enclosure, and of both cattle and sheep. As always, the detailed picture varied from region to region, and from century to century, and clearly the numbers involved did rise sharply after enclosure (in those areas where enclosure was accompanied by conversion of arable to grassland - particularly common in Midlands counties such as north Bucks, Northants, Leics) but even before enclosure every farmer kept some sheep and cattle - their dung was an essential fertiliser without which the yield from the crops grown on the open field arable quickly diminished. > > They fed not only on areas of common pasture, but also on the fallow parts of the common fields and on the stubble of the cropped parts after they had been harvested (and even in the meadows at certain times). In later centuries, as the numbers of livestock rose and the pressure on grassland increased, it even became common for them to be grazed on the roadside verges. > > However many pre-enclosure open field farmers kept larger herds and flocks than were necessary just for fertilisation - ie they were raising or fattening some livestock solely in order to sell their meat or wool or hides, or for dairy farming. In the medieval period, and later in parishes with larger than normal areas of common pasture, this was done without disturbing the arable system in the open fields, but from about 1500 onwards in many places the necessary extra pasture was created by converting strips in the open fields into unfenced permanent grassland, called leys. > > In some areas, at some periods, the proportion of the open fields which had been taken out of arable farming and converted to grass became very large. For example, in Great Horwood in Bucks some 25-30% of the open fields had already been converted to grass by about 1610, and by the time it was enclosed by Act of Parliament in 1842 the proportion had risen to nearly half. (In both cases about half of the grass was in small closes, formed by enclosing small bits of the open fields, but the rest was in leys). > > (Oops, that was rather long - sorry, I've just been writing the chapter of my thesis in which I describe Great Horwood's landscape and agriculture and the changes they underwent, dealing with these very issues, and it all just poured out) > > > <<Sheep may have been more difficult as they can jump quite high. I don't know if it made the national news a few years ago but those putting fences along the M62 to keep sheep off the road held sheep-jumping trials to see how high the fences needed to be. The result was some fairly high fences. Cows and calves tend to barge their way through.>> > > > There was an amusing letter in the Times just a few days ago, describing someone's tribulations in trying to keep one particularly determined ewe out of their garden. The garden was separated from the sheep's pasture by a very high dry-stone wall and they couldn't figure out how it was getting in. Eventually they discovered that the sheep had learned to take a running jump and boost itself upwards by pushing off a couple of stones projecting from its side of the wall. > > > <<When it came to horses around our way in the 17th century, it seems that these were more like the Range Rover or the Ferrari of their times. Only the more wealthy had them and particularly those for riding were highly valued and mostly mares.>> > > > Well, that's true as far as riding horses goes, but in fact peasant-owned draught horses, used for ploughing, harrowing, carting etc, were common in most medieval villages, and very common by the early modern period. In the early medieval period oxen were the most common draught animals in most parts of England, but they were gradually replaced by horses, a process that was largely completed in most parts of the country by the 17th century (and much earlier in some parts - the Chilterns, for example, were using all-horse teams as early as the 14th and 15th centuries. > > This was proved by a historian called John Langdon, in a book called 'Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation: the Use of Draught Animals in English Farming from 1066 to 1500' (Cambridge, 1986). More detail on the varied proportions of horses and oxen in different parts of England at different periods in the middle ages than any non-academic reader could possibly ever want can be found in another more recent book, by Bruce Campbell called 'English Seigniorial Agriculture 1250-1450' (Cambridge, 2000). The latter book also provides much detail on pre-enclosure livestock farming, and indeed every other aspect of medieval farming you care to mention (you'll get the idea that it is a stupendously large and exhaustively detailed tome!) > > Matt Tompkins > Blaston, Leics > > > ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== > Going away for a while? > Don't forget to UNSUBSCRIBE! > OLD-ENGLISH-L-request@rootsweb.com > > >

<<There were very few if any herds of cattle, nor with the exception of sheep, any livestock farming as such until after the enclosures. What few animals that were kept would have been grazed on their owners land or upon the common.>> Eve is absolutely right - there was plenty of livestock farming in open field regions before enclosure, and of both cattle and sheep. As always, the detailed picture varied from region to region, and from century to century, and clearly the numbers involved did rise sharply after enclosure (in those areas where enclosure was accompanied by conversion of arable to grassland - particularly common in Midlands counties such as north Bucks, Northants, Leics) but even before enclosure every farmer kept some sheep and cattle - their dung was an essential fertiliser without which the yield from the crops grown on the open field arable quickly diminished. They fed not only on areas of common pasture, but also on the fallow parts of the common fields and on the stubble of the cropped parts after they had been harvested (and even in the meadows at certain times). In later centuries, as the numbers of livestock rose and the pressure on grassland increased, it even became common for them to be grazed on the roadside verges. However many pre-enclosure open field farmers kept larger herds and flocks than were necessary just for fertilisation - ie they were raising or fattening some livestock solely in order to sell their meat or wool or hides, or for dairy farming. In the medieval period, and later in parishes with larger than normal areas of common pasture, this was done without disturbing the arable system in the open fields, but from about 1500 onwards in many places the necessary extra pasture was created by converting strips in the open fields into unfenced permanent grassland, called leys. In some areas, at some periods, the proportion of the open fields which had been taken out of arable farming and converted to grass became very large. For example, in Great Horwood in Bucks some 25-30% of the open fields had already been converted to grass by about 1610, and by the time it was enclosed by Act of Parliament in 1842 the proportion had risen to nearly half. (In both cases about half of the grass was in small closes, formed by enclosing small bits of the open fields, but the rest was in leys). (Oops, that was rather long - sorry, I've just been writing the chapter of my thesis in which I describe Great Horwood's landscape and agriculture and the changes they underwent, dealing with these very issues, and it all just poured out) <<Sheep may have been more difficult as they can jump quite high. I don't know if it made the national news a few years ago but those putting fences along the M62 to keep sheep off the road held sheep-jumping trials to see how high the fences needed to be. The result was some fairly high fences. Cows and calves tend to barge their way through.>> There was an amusing letter in the Times just a few days ago, describing someone's tribulations in trying to keep one particularly determined ewe out of their garden. The garden was separated from the sheep's pasture by a very high dry-stone wall and they couldn't figure out how it was getting in. Eventually they discovered that the sheep had learned to take a running jump and boost itself upwards by pushing off a couple of stones projecting from its side of the wall. <<When it came to horses around our way in the 17th century, it seems that these were more like the Range Rover or the Ferrari of their times. Only the more wealthy had them and particularly those for riding were highly valued and mostly mares.>> Well, that's true as far as riding horses goes, but in fact peasant-owned draught horses, used for ploughing, harrowing, carting etc, were common in most medieval villages, and very common by the early modern period. In the early medieval period oxen were the most common draught animals in most parts of England, but they were gradually replaced by horses, a process that was largely completed in most parts of the country by the 17th century (and much earlier in some parts - the Chilterns, for example, were using all-horse teams as early as the 14th and 15th centuries. This was proved by a historian called John Langdon, in a book called 'Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation: the Use of Draught Animals in English Farming from 1066 to 1500' (Cambridge, 1986). More detail on the varied proportions of horses and oxen in different parts of England at different periods in the middle ages than any non-academic reader could possibly ever want can be found in another more recent book, by Bruce Campbell called 'English Seigniorial Agriculture 1250-1450' (Cambridge, 2000). The latter book also provides much detail on pre-enclosure livestock farming, and indeed every other aspect of medieval farming you care to mention (you'll get the idea that it is a stupendously large and exhaustively detailed tome!) Matt Tompkins Blaston, Leics

<<I came across the word "ing" the other day, claimed to be the word for a meadow in East Anglia as late as the 17th Century. Does anybody know how common that word was, in England, and for what period of time? Is it a Danish word, or Dutch, or what?>> It was extrememly common in the north of England, Gordon - if you look at any 1:50,000 map covering coastal, estuarine or riverine flood-plain areas in the north you'll probably find several flat low-lying areas with names incorporating Ing or Ings. I'm interested to hear that it was also used in East Anglia, but not surprised, as the word is of Danish/Norse origin, from the Old Norse word 'eng', meaning meadow, especially low-lying frequently flooded meadow. Matt Tompkins Blaston, Leics

GB: > <<I came across the word "ing" the other day, claimed to be the word for a meadow in East Anglia as late as the 17th Century. > > It was extremely common in the north of England, Gordon - if you look at any 1:50,000 map covering coastal, estuarine or riverine flood-plain areas in the north you'll probably find several flat low-lying areas with names incorporating Ing or Ings. > I'm interested to hear that it was also used in East Anglia, but not surprised, as the word is of Danish/Norse origin, from the Old Norse word 'eng', meaning meadow, especially low-lying frequently flooded meadow. > Matt Tompkins Sorry, Matt: my mistake. I misremembered the reference, which was to York and not East Anglia. I am intrigued by the possibility that the Norsemen might conceivably have called that country "Eng-land", as they later called North America "Vin-land" and Greenland "Green-land". Who knows? We all know - or have been assured, at least - that our England was named for the tribe called Angles and was originally Angle-land in southern Denmark, as was (reportedly) the Angles' homeland which must have been a bit confusing. Why wasn't East Anglia called West Anglia? Ah well... Thanks for the explanation, Matt. Do you happen to know if "eng/ing" is still used in Scandinavia? Gordon Barlow

Hello Gordon I'd love to know their method of counting them. Were they able to stand on higher ground and count them as they were comparatively stationery or did they drive them, one by one, through a narrow gate? Were these animals grazed on enclosed fields or on moorland? I do have to say that I do not doubt that your friends counted every one of their animals and, as you say, it must have been a labour of love, but then looking after animals is just that, isn't it. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gordon Barlow" <barlow@candw.ky> To: <OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2004 6:26 PM Subject: Re: [OEL] FORTY > > ... you didn't spend time counting each > > sheep or hen but rather made a very rough estimate. Exact numbers would > have > > been saved for taking them to market. > > Audrey > > > Not always, I think, Audrey. Friends of mine had a mixed farm south of > Hereford, with about 30 cattle and 100 sheep. They used to count them every > night, just to make sure none had strayed or gotten bogged in a ditch. > Every once in a while - sure enough - one or more did get bogged, and on one > occasion a cow was found to have died giving birth in a ditch. The counting > was a chore, but they reckoned it was worth while. > > Gordon > > > ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== > OLD-ENGLISH Web Page > http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ > >