Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Saturday 14 July 2018

Hooptedoodle #306 - A Rumination on the Other River Tyne

Hailes Castle
Yesterday the Contesse and I went for a pleasant walk along the River Tyne. We started at the village of East Linton (which was once quite an important toll-bridge crossing on the road from Edinburgh to London), walked upstream along the river bank for a couple of miles until we reached the first footbridge, crossed over to Hailes Castle, then walked back along the public road (more of a track really) into the village to collect our car. Very enjoyable, and an easy walk to suit a rather humid day.

Some photos from yesterday's walk - the water level is quite low, with the current
dry spell, and these streamers of weed and algae are not what we normally see

View from the footbridge at Hailes

The bridge on this new (2003) section of the A1. Traffic running between the capitals
of England and Scotland sweeps over the valley of the Scottish Tyne without even noticing.
Everyone knows of the River Tyne. It is a major river on which stands the mighty city of Newcastle, and it has a long, hardworking tradition of shipbuilding. When we mention that the River Tyne is near us, visitors assume we must live close to Newcastle (which is about 100 miles away - 2 counties away), or that we must mean the North Tyne (which runs into the Northumberland Tyne, and is also a long way from here), or that we must be mistaken (no comment on that one), or that the Scots are obviously so bloody stupid that they have named a river after a more famous one which is not so far away, or that by some peculiar coincidence the rivers were independently given the same name.

The last of these is probably closest to the facts, but I've always been intrigued that the situation exists. So I did a little (trivial) research, and I find that these rivers have existed, within a hundred miles of each other, with the same name for a very, very long time. Hmmm. Our River Tyne, you see, rises somewhere to the west of Pencaitland (a town most famous these days for the manufacture of Glenkinchie whisky) and flows 30 miles through the county of East Lothian, passing through the county town (Haddington), then through East Linton, and Tyninghame (yes, yes, that's right), emerging into the North Sea somewhere between North Berwick and Dunbar.

River Tyne at Haddington
So why "Tyne"? In fact the answer is laughably simple, and I'm sure you either know or have guessed the truth already. Both rivers appear to get their name from an ancient word, tin, meaning river. This may be Brythonic, or may be some older, pre-Celtic word, but neither of our rivers seems actually to have been known as Tyne until Anglo-Saxon times. Interesting. Gradually, the word for river is handed down from a defunct language until, by default, it becomes the name of the river. One imagines some medieval incomer - maybe a tourist or some sort of bureaucrat from whatever new lot are taking over - and he asks, "what's this, then?", and the locals say, "oh, that's the river" - in fact, they may already be using the old word as a name, without realising - and the newcomer takes note that this is what the river is called.

This must have been fairly common. The River Avon must also, I guess, be named "river"; certainly the modern Welsh word afon is a close relative, you would think. So I am building a picture where the unsophisticated locals, who didn't have that many rivers to worry about, just called the thing "the river" in their own language, and eventually the language changed but the name had stuck.

Tantallon
It doesn't necessarily suggest a lack of creative imagination - they must have had other things to worry about; coming up with some more decorous (or pretentious) name for the river might have seemed unnecessary. Locally, we have another example of this sort of thing. Next door to the farm where I live is the ruin of an ancient seat of the Douglas family, Tantallon Castle, on which topic I have posted before. "Tantallon" has a splendid, wild sound - in keeping with the rugged appearance and setting of the place. The name, however, has a fairly mundane pedigree. Around 1300, it is referred to on a map as "Dentaloune", and later in the same century the Earl of Douglas writes of his castle at "Temptaloun", and both these names are now thought to come from the Brythonic din talgwn, meaning "high fortress". So the romantic Tantallon just means "big castle" in an older language. Right. That could be disappointing, but I find it interesting enough as it stands.

I'd like to leave the last word with one of the greatest 20th Century philosophers - possibly the greatest: Gary Larson.



7 comments:

  1. Beautiful countryside.

    Perhaps the names started as an early attempt at standardisation? A sort of ancient EU (after all they did keep popping over to add to the gene-pool)?

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    1. Hi Matt - you could well be right. At times, and in places, a tradition seems to have grown up that anyone with a vocabulary of more than (say) 12 words was a flake, and to be treated with suspicion. This may have been an early attempt to cut down.

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  2. More of the same - I note that the Brythonic word "isca", meaning water, is the reason why there are a number of rivers in the North called Esk - there is one in Yorkshire, one in Cumbria, and at least 4 in Scotland.

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  3. Excellent pics and commentary, and this has now cleared up many doubts with regard to what I might call my next set of home-brewed wargames rules.
    I shall simply call them 'the rules'.
    Then, when the 'yoof' adopt them for their boutique games, and using their unique (if somewhat circumspect) vernacular, they shall become knwon as 'da rulz'.

    But you now have me thinking quite seriously about the naming my local River Lagan. There must be an Irish connotation, where this translates simply as 'stinking river'.

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    1. Da Rulz is good. It may even be dope.

      There are too many words around, just generally - we have to accept this, I think, and cut down a bit. I am sad enough to have started looking up the River Lagan, and duly noted that it's name seems to mean "river in a low lying area" in some appropriately ancient tongue. That is interesting, but now I come to think about it it is the sort of explanation we might expect. Everything has a reason - sometimes we don't know the reason, sometimes we may never find out, but it must become simpler if we just assume that most things have a reason, and don't bother finding out what it is. That's useful in a couple of ways - it means I won't have to bother remembering (or knowing) anything, since I can find it on Google if I really need to, and it frees up quite a lot of time so I can concentrate on gawping at what everyone else is doing on Snapchat.

      Yes, I'm liking it already.

      My mum, who is 93, has devised a useful system whereby a lot of things are referred to as "the thingy-o" (this is accompanied by a vague circular, pointing movement in the air) - which means "the thing I would be thinking about if I could just focus". This is pretty handy too. Worth consideration.

      In a dark cave somewhere, long ago, someone must have come up with a vocal noise that came to represent "danger", and maybe they had another one that meant "food", and so on. That's all very constructive - I can see that, but beyond that I can also see what an awful lot the human race has lost, getting sidetracked into grammar, and Shakespeare, and military history, and comparative religion, and Jilly Cooper. We could have eaten a lot more smaller animals if we had been less distracted. I see it all now.

      Thank you for helping me to understand.

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  4. Very interesting sir...
    I rather enjoy the sometimes strange history of names and words...
    My favourite at the moment...and in a similar vein to yours is...
    Breedon on the Hill... Which means...

    Hill,Hill on the Hill... definitely a hill then.

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Aly, that is indeed a belter - I am very impressed with that one - best yet, I think. For no obvious reason (apart from the fact that it's Sunday morning), in the context of saying the same thing more than once, in languages that were "passing through" or superseding each other, I am reminded of the old "legal doublet" usage which occurs a lot in English, and which has always interested me - though, predictably, I know very little about the matter.

      Phrases like "hue and cry", "assault and battery", "goods and chattels", even "law and order", plus a mass of much better examples I can't think of at the moment were, apparently, adopted in times of change so that the language of right and wrong (or whatever) could be understood by both Norman toffs and Saxon scruffs. There are also examples which commemorate times when the language of the courts (or the church) was changing from Latin to something else.

      There are also a number of placenames which seem to come from mispronunciation or confusion about meanings of old Norman or Latin names. A few in Durham, for some reason.

      Anyway, have to get back to Snapchat now. Regards - MSF

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