Tuesday 12 February 2019

Fieldwork



Some names recorded for fields in England, with explanations.

Eight Day Math - meadow requiring eight days to mow.
Pasty Crust - field with brittle soil.
Handkerchief - small field
Seldom Seen - remote field
Australia - ditto
Happersnapper - 'enclosure with a wicket gate'
The Psalms - 'land on which the psalms were recited during the bound-beating ceremony'
Rumps and Buttocks - 'alluding to convex configurations'

And a selection from my favourite category: 'Derogatory names for unprofitable or unfertile fields.'

Famish Acre
No Man's Friend
Labour in Vain
Purgatory
Raw Bones
Rats' Castle
Bare Arse
Thin Porridge
Terrible

All these from the excellent dictionary 'English Field-Names', by- in a piece of extraordinarily on-the-nose nominal determinism- John Field.