writes that she remembers it being sung to her in her childhood by a nurse, "probably a Cambridgeshire woman, and almost certainly from the Fens."
III. The moorlands of Staffordshire—high, bleak, thinly-populated hillsides—provide two traditional place-names of great interest.
Mr. John Clark, for five years resident at Waterhouses, a village on the turnpike road from Macclesfield to Ashbourne, pointed out to the writer some few months ago a road with what struck him as a peculiar name. It is the length of road running almost due south from the Crown Inn at Waterhouses until it is turned abruptly right and left by the sheer side of the Weaver Hills, This road—it is scarcely more than a lane—is known as "Earlsway." When Mr. Clark first came into the district the pronunciation was "Yarlsway," and on the six-inch O.S. it appears as "Yelsway Lane." The insertion of the consonant Y before vowels and in place of aspirates is a common feature of midland and north country dialects.[1]
The value and interest of this survival seem to be that it can be tested while so many can not. Taking it at its face value, the advocates of the historical faithfulness of folk memory will claim that this place-name will indicate the ownership or the user (at any rate the close personal association) of some historical person with the rank of Earl. Their opponents will, no doubt, urge that the name is a corruption proving nothing at all. In the majority of survivals of this class proof one way or the other is never obtainable. Here, however, a solitary documentary record which I came across entirely by chance decides this issue at least triumphantly in favour of the traditionalists.
It occurs in the Chartulary of Burton Abbey.[2] A deed
- ↑ Thus Yarnfield in 1266 was written Ernefeld and in 1379 Ernefen. Cf. Falstaff in Henry IV., Part I. (Act i. Sc. 2), "Hear ye, Yedward, if I tarry at home and go not, I'll hang you for going."
- ↑ The original is at Beaudesert. I have used the only transcription, that published by the Salt Archaeological Society in Staffs Collections, v. pt. I.
