Swallets or meres?

 Monday Morning:  Andrew (at 7.0 clock) has gone swimming.  The new rage in the household, not me of course but it is the new exercise.  Andrew is a great walker as well, and my daughter is getting there ;)

Well I found this video online (Map Reading Company) about how to walk up hill and down by this guide.  In actual fact I had come across another video of his about a Yorkshire field and he had given a talk about the history of the field and how it had accumulated its bumps and hillocks.  And to be honest after reading about Shake holes, potholes and coal mining holes I am not sure I want to put a foot on much of the Yorkshire landscape.  And the wisest words - do not go on the uplands of Yorkshire in the dark, or you may fall down a hole.

Well I have decided I am too old to do much walking so I will just write about it.  The first thing I noticed in this second video was different words to describe the naming of place.  How a word would take on an Anglo-Saxon meaning, then later a Viking sub word would be added and then the word would meld into what we call medieval.  Though I still do not understand how the word 'goblin' formed itself from Robin.

But I squeaked slightly when he described a clay dewpond as a 'mere'.  These ponds along the trackway he was walking were made for the cattle driven down from Scotland to the markets in Yorkshire and further South.

Interesting fact;  The dogs who would drive these animals, when their job was finished would be sent back home by themselves to Scotland and the inns and drinking houses would feed them as they passed through.

Local names are fascinating and in my part of the country which was Wiltshire/Somerset, the sink holes or shafts you found were called 'swallets' and were seen by the people of the Iron Age as portals into the underworld. (I wrote so much about this in 2008 that I will give just one link.  And finish with one of my bad videos....