More Slypes
A little while before going to the West Indies I complained on this page that the dictionaries had not done justice to the rural as well as ecclesiastical word, slype. A constant reader of The Spectator greeted me with the news that there was a well-known " slype " in Kingston, Jamaica! A little pile of correspondence on the word awaited me on my return ; and its witness should be worth the attention of the next lexicographer. The more essential points appear in the following quotation from the letter of a Lincolnshire
correspondent.
" The slipe is the name of a long narrow field at Wickham Bishops, Essex, which I have known for a long time—it is supposed to describe its shape—it was not level but ran down a slope.
" It is used in several counties, including Somerset, for ' a long narrow strip.'
" It is regularly used for a monastic corridor, but was probably a word in ordinary mediaeval use adapted to that special sense by the monks."
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