What's In A Name?
| NORTH YORKSHIRE |  | | | CLEVELAND | | | | COUNTY DURHAM | |
|
|
|
Thringarth, a very thorny subject indeed
THRINGARTH, near Middletonin-
Teesdale, just to the north of
the Grassholme Reservoir, has a
name that recalls one of the most
important weapons in the Dark
Age farmer's armoury.
To get to that meaning though, we
have to leave behind the modern
spelling and turn back the pages
of history to the original Thyrnegarth:
thryne meaning thorns and
garth meaning enclosure - our
earliest record dates from 1251,
but the name could be several
hundred years older.
Now thorns to us may seem a simple
annoyance, a little like wasps
and traffic wardens. But to the medieval
inhabitants of Britain they
were one of the fundamentals of
life.
Thorn-bearing trees such as
hawthorn and blackthorn were
used in medical remedies - blackthorn
bark especially. And thorny
trees were employed, as this name
suggests, as barriers to keep cattle
in and rustlers and thieves out:
thorns also being placed on top of
walls, the medieval equivalent of
the jagged glass that intruders encounter
today.
Indeed, the hedges around modern
gardens are a strange, suburban
memory of the thorny barriers
that our ancestors grew to
defend themselves at places like
Thringarth.
It is no accident then that thorns
were a preoccupation of one of the
earliest recorded English poets,
who wrote a thousand years ago:
"thorns are sharp for all/ Fighting
with them is agony for the warrior/
And they are most cruel to
those who live among them."
Pity then the peasants who were
given the task of preparing the enclosure
and repairing it: cutting
themselves on that infernal organic
barbed wire; and all this in a
time when infected splinters could
kill.
12:05pm Friday 28th March 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
