Sidney Oldall Addy

“ The names Revill, Ibbotson, Eyre, Shaw, Ronksley, Morton, and others show that it was in and about Bradfield, and in no other part of Hallamshire, that holly rents were taken. I can hardly imagine a more striking picture of old country life, I might almost say of patriarchal life, than that of the shepherds feeding their sheep in winter on the evergreen trees with which the steep and rocky sides of the Loxley valley were clothed. ”

“ By five or six in the morning, Scotland-street, which is not very wide, has the appearance of a grove. And soon, from ropes stretched across it, three, four, or five superb garlands delight the eyes, and dance over the heads of the feast-folk. These garlands are composed of hoops, wreathed round with foliage and flowers, fluttering with variously coloured ribands, rustling with asidew, and gay with silver tankards, pints, watches, &c. Before the door of the principal alehouse, the largest tree is always planted. ”

“ This superstition cannot, however, have been general at the time when man himself made and used these stone axes; but must have been a subsequent idea, which, to judge from the peculiar occurrence of hatchet-shaped objects in the bogs and grave finds, doubtless had its origin in the faft that the axe and the hammer were, in the Stone Age, sacred to the mighty divinity of thunder and lightning, who not only inspired terror, but greatly contributed to the increase of the fertility of the earth. ”

“ The names of places in England ending in tún, wurð, etc., show that the enclosed or protected homestead was common here, and what protection could have been better, when stone buildings and castles were not, than an encircling mound of earth and a big ditch?
It seems to be almost an instinct in an Englishman to surround himself, if not with a great earth mound, at all events with a big garden wall. ”

“ If therefore we may apply the customs of the Norsemen to this village situate in a Danish part of England we may infer that near to the house of the village chieftain was the seat whereon he administered justice or gave advice, the place where the people met both to worship and to deliberate in council. And as in early Christian times there was no church without an altar, and no altar without dead men's bones, so we may infer that amongst the heathen there was no mound or high place of worship which did not contain the bones of the village chief, or founder of the settlement. ”

“ In so long a period the bones of a little child would hardly escape dissolution, and all that can be said is that there is no evidence whether the coffin was placed there as a symbol of the foundation sacrifice, or whether a child was actually buried there alive. But one of these two things must have happened, and if such sacrifices had ceased to be made at the time when the church was built, the position of the coffin nevertheless shows that children were once built in alive in England to ensure the stability of churches or other buildings. ”

“ I think we may say that the inhabitants of Hallamshire who burnt their dead on the funeral pyre, who pierced the cup, and twisted the poniard were of the same race as those dwellers in Scandinavia, or on the shores of the Baltic, who, in obedience to religious custom damaged the weapons and broke the cups which they laid in the grave mound. In Scandinavia these broken chattels are found along with splendid remains of northern art—remains which show that side by side with fantastic burial customs and creeds there existed a high degree of civilization. ”

“ In the eye of the populace, though not of course in the contemplation of law, the landowner who was hanged had done wrong in becoming absolute owner of the land at all, for folkland ought not, according to popular notions, to have been taken away from the folk or freeholders holding land in common. ”

“ This old emblem of religion, once standing where the roads met, is interesting not only as being the only example of its kind which has been preserved in this district, but as a relic of the cross-worship which must at one time have prevailed here as well as amongst other northern peoples. In the Icelandic Sagas one meets with sentences as "to go to worship at church or cross," or "he comes neither to cross nor church," [6] just as one hears people nowadays say "he goes neither to church nor chapel." ”

“ THERE is one industry, if I may call it so, which has left its mark on our local maps and terriers; I mean the occupation of bee-keeping or bee-farming. The bee-keeper (beó-ceorl) was an important man when honey was used instead of sugar, and we may be sure that those hamlets in Hallamshire which lay near the moors had their bee-keepers, and their bee-farms. The bee was then of far more importance than the grouse, and the busy insect sucked the flowers of heather and wild thyme to the great profit and advantage of the people who lived on the edge of the moors. ”

“ THE NAME HATHERSAGE.
On p. 260 I have said that Stanage may be Stein-eg, stone-way, paved way, and it will be seen that the Roman road between Stanage Pole and Hathersage is known as Giant's Causey. Now if that were so, it may be that the termination eg occurs also in Hathersage, anciently Hathersegg, which we may divide as Hathers-egg, meaning Hather's way. The O. N. Höðr, genitive Haðr, was a mythical being of tremendous power, who seems to be identical with the Hotherus of Saxo, and with reference to him Grimm asks us to consider such place-names as Hadersleben and Hothers-nes. ”

“ A squatter, if I may so call him, had built hastily by the road which crossed the waste, the word westen being Old English for a waste or desert, and "Western Bank" being merely a popular and erroneous way of explaining a forgotten word. ”

“ It grew up, as many old corporations have grown up, with the tacit consent of the Crown, from a body of men who once held their lands in common, and of their own free will devoted a portion of those lands to the public service. ”

“ In this neighbourhood, as in many other places, there are traditions about underground passages between one big house and another, between a castle and a church, a church and an abbey, and so on. For example it is said that there is an underground passage between Fulwood Hall and Bennett Grange. One is accustomed to laugh at such things, and to treat them as mere nursery tales. But they merely afford proof of the value of tradition. ”

“ We know not how many remains of great villas yet lie buried in the ground. Even when we find them, or know about them already, we do not always explore them. It is only on a few rare occasions that some zealous antiquary succeeds in kindling enough enthusiasm to raise a few pounds for exploring, for instance, such a place as Templeborough.
Pegge has already traced the Bath-gate from Brough to Buxton, and we cannot do better than quote his account:
"Brough," he says, "was certainly once a place of consequence, and probably very populous. ”

“ If we examine books on witchcraft we shall see that late in the seventeenth, or even in the eighteenth, century, witches continued to hold their meetings, and practise their orgies, in secret by night. The ancient religion had been dying for centuries, yet in spite of persecution and contempt the "wise women" had not ceased to assemble on the hill top, on the lonely heath, in the green place, or the fastness of a forest. ”

“ Although, as I have said, the existence of a free class necessarily implies the existence of an unfree class, yet the traces or remains of such a class are not now to be found, except, indeed, in the copyholder or tenant in pure villenage, who, in the manor of Sheffield, holds his land "by the straw," and "at the will" of the lord, the freeman only being capable of holding real estate in fee simple. ”

“ If we find an abundance of Old Norse field-names existing in any district; if such a word as "storth," not found in Anglo-Saxon or Old English, is common everywhere in that district; if the dialect of that district still retains a flavour of Danish influences; if traces of Scandinavian mythology can be found in the place-names, and in the folklore, of that district—if, I say, we find all these things existing together, the conclusion is inevitable that the language of the Norsemen was once spoken there. It is not at all necessary to suppose that the Norsemen occupied the whole district ”

“ There is no reason, however, why a Roman should not have hidden his treasure in the earthworks of a conquered or foreign people.
The proximity of the ridgeway to a now well-known Roman town will be noticed, and it might on that ground be supposed that the builders of Templeborough were also the makers of the ridgeway and the camp. We have here the same problem as that which presents itself in the earthworks adjacent to Hadrian's wall. Whether the earthworks adjacent to the great wall are of Roman construction or not, the ridgeway and the camp at Wincobank show few signs of Roman origin. ”

“ In seeking for the origins of our local history the first thing we have to do is to look about and see whether we cannot find a few scratchings on the soil, a few old bones, pots, earth-works or stone-works which will tell us something of that far-off time, and of men and women whose ways were very unlike ours, but from whom, with an intermixture of races, we are descended. ”

“ And I noticed that a piece of land called "the Isle," at the foot of Lady's Bridge, is described as the property of "The Burgesses and Free Tenants of Sheffield." To one possessing an acquaintance with the origin and development of village communities an inspection of these plans would at once suggest that these "town lands" are pieces of land which were set apart in very early times by a community of freeholders for the public benefit of the "town," meaning the whole body of freeholders. ”

“ I have borrowed my last two examples from a parish which forms one of the boundaries of Hallamshire on the south, but they are near enough to be used as arguments in favour of the Scandinavian influence which prevailed in this district.
In the town and neighbourhood of Sheffield the student of dialect will sometimes meet with words of Scandinavian origin, as for example "wheelswarf." Every Sheffield man has heard of Jack Wheelswarf, the local alias of a grinder. Wheel-swarf means wheel-dust, or dust from a grinding wheel, svarf being the Old Norse word for file dust. ”

“ And so Landin Stone, though not creeled for a boundary stone, marked a boundary—namely the boundary between the liberties of Loxley, Wadsley, and Owlerton. It appears to have been usual for the place of assembly to be upon a boundary, for Kemble says "on the summit of a range of hills, on the watershed from which the fertilizing streams descended, at the point where the boundaries of two or three communities touched one another, was the proper place for the common periodical assemblage of the freemen." ”

“ Where wood-work, and indeed almost every other relic of neolithic life has perished, the flint implement, imperishable in its hardness, may well lie scattered over the earth in which the softer and less durable works of early man have long since been dissolved. ”

“ A few old buildings, a pinfold, a triangular piece of ground surrounded by roads, give an appearance of age to this place, and we may, with some show of probability, take it to be the site of the old palace of the lords of Hallamshire. ”

“ THERE may still be seen in Hallamshire a few survivals, more or less interesting and complete, of the old way of building; survivals which unmistakeably suggest the house built from forest trees, and with roofs and walls made watertight by wattle and daub. One of these was first brought to my notice by Mr. William Furness of Whirlow Hall. He told me of several old barns or other farm buildings near Sheffield, which were originally built of wood, and which still retained their old wooden framework. ”

“ The only seeming exception is the ditch of Barber Balk at Greasborough, which is forty feet in width, but is not so deep as the ditch is in other places. The quantity of earth cast up there was, however, as nearly as possible the same as the quantity cast up at Wincobank, and along the ridgeway. Either, then, a uniform width was understood and maintained by the makers of these earthworks, or else they were dug out by gangs of men of equal numbers, and working the same number of hours each day over a given space. ”