The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

by Melvyn Bragg

I was brought up in the far north-west of England, a few miles outside the Lake District, a place of more than four hundred mountains and thirty-three lakes deeply settled by Norwegian Vikings, most of whom came across from their stronghold in Dublin. The words they brought were bedded into the local dialect for more than a thousand largely undisturbed years. To use “-by” as an example: within a few miles of the town in which I grew up, Wigton, there are Ireby, Thursby, Wiggonby, Corby, Lazenby, Thornby, Dovenby and Gamblesby; more widely known examples would be Derby, Naseby and Rugby. The “-thorpe” ending, which denotes a village, is seen in Scunthorpe, Althorp, Linthorpe. The “-thwaite” ending, which denotes a portion of land, is again all over the north, and in the Lake District alone you have Bassenthwaite, Ruthwaite, Micklethwaite and Rosthwaite; “-toft,” which means a homestead (the site of a house and its outbuildings), can be seen in Lowestoft, Eastoft, Sandtoft. And there are less popular but still extant Viking names: the word “valley” was “dale” in Old Norse, and the Lake District is furrowed with them — Borrowdale (a valley with a fort), Wasdale (a valley with a lake), Langdale, Eskdale, Patterdale. Sometimes there is a blend as in the Cumbrian village of Blennerhasset, “blaen” being Celtic top of hill, and the Old Norse “heysætr” — hay pasture. And Keswick, one of the prime towns in the Lakes, is a hardened form of the Old English name “cesewic” meaning chees...