Mind your language
'ONLY MUGS choose a horse by its name,' Jeffrey Bernard once told me after one of his each-way choices, Celi- bate, well and truly belied its name by getting, well, not exactly laid, but 'arriv- ing home a good deal later than any well-bred horse with a sense of shame has a right to.
Anyway, it was off for a day at the races on Whit Monday for Veronica, my husband and me, at least almost. It was rather blowy and not entirely warm and, while my husband developed a sudden interest in the leaves of Southwell Min- ster, Veronica and I alternated between a flapping marquee and the bracing Midland air.
Racecourses are far from all the same, but, perhaps not surprisingly, some of their names have similar con- notations. Southwell is an exception: named after a well dedicated to Our Lady. (North-east of Southwell is a place called Norwell.) And Uttoxeter is nothing to do with 'a good archer', as a Grecian might sup- pose. It comes from Wittuc, a personal name, and an old word for heather. When it comes to Cartmel, Eilert Elcwall, the Scandinavian editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Place Names, becomes, for him, almost lyrical. The Cart element obviously comes from the Old Norse kart 'a sand bank', this being a Nordic bit of England — unless it comes from the Old English ceart (mod- ern dialectal chart), meaning 'rough common overrun with gorse, broom, bracken etc'. I like the 'etc'.
Anyway, you get the pattern — race- courses are often on open, rough ground. Redcar comes from the word for reed and the (Old Norse) kiarr 'marsh'. Hereford is pretty straightfor- ward, being a river ford where a here or army could cross. Leicester is named after the river Legra, according to William of Malmesbury (1080-1143), though it stands in fact on the river Soar; but if they used to call it the Legra, then its name is related to the Loire, a pleasant thought.
The great surprise was Chepstow, for which the modem Welsh name is Cas Gwent. Gwent is also the old name for Winchester; Ptolemy records it as Ouenta as early as A1150.
In the 2.45 at Southwell, Veronica put her pocket-money on Walk in the Wind, for obvious reasons; it is still walking. What's in a name?
Dot Wordsworth
Previous page
