Wormwoodiana blog browses through an old copy of Mysterious Cheshire from the Earth Mysteries era of the late 1970s and early 1980s and finds a Welsh Marches author…

the ‘Philip Rickman’ who wrote or co-wrote these booklets went on to write, as Phil Rickman, many highly-regarded supernatural fiction novels, including the Merrily Watkins series about a Church of England exorcist and psychic sleuth in the Welsh Border country around Hay-on-Wye.

It’s suggested there was a possible connection between the timing of an antiquarian paper on the ‘Biddlemoor’ population on Biddulph Moor, and Arthur Machen who at that time was musing on relic populations of the Little People. Although such things had been ‘in the air’ for several years before that, re: the establishment of a serious fairy research society and suchlike.

Update: Mysterious Cheshire is now on Archive.org.

Interesting news on the ‘airborne particulates’ front, which I’ve blogged about here before in historical context.

Cars and their supposedly ‘eco-friendly’ diesel fuel (unleashed by Gordon Brown, under Labour in 2002) are not the only culprit, we now find. New research shows that a key culprit in the UK is now, ironically, the trendy wood-stoves of eco-worriers…

“domestic burning is the single largest contributor to the UK’s harmful particulate matter emissions. PM2.5 emissions from domestic burning accounted for 43% of total PM2.5 emissions in 2019.”

Who knew? But they pump out nearly half of the UK’s tiny PM2.5 airborne particulates, which are the ones said to have the worst impacts on human health. These days “domestic burning” overwhelmingly means wood-fired stoves and heating, with lesser seasonal contributions by garden bonfires (mostly in the early autumn), and barbeques (mostly in high summer). Eurostat estimate such trendy stoves cause some £14 billion a year in health-related problems in the UK and EU, albeit basing their figures on a 2013 WHO estimate.

The newer UK research was done in 2019, so the particle percentages were not skewed by the reduction in car travel during the lockdown. And so few people now have coal delivered for home fires, and most of those use clean coke, that one can’t sensibly blame coal either.

The news comes along with the banning of sales of “wet wood” (from 1st May 2021, it’s reported). You’ll no longer get wet bags from any-old-where, and will have to get supplies properly pre-dried from a wood fuel merchant. That’s could be a bit hard on the owners of small woods, as they’re presumably now denied the immediate public sale of the thinnings and fellings, other than to a registered wood dealer. But I guess that may already have been the way of doing such things.

Also to be banned from being installed in homes are the smokiest types of home wood-stove, though only from 2022. Presumably that’s to allow dealers time to sell off their old stock. Beware of what you’re buying then, as you could find that the use of the old type will also banned sometime in the 2030s — when you’ve only had a few years of use from it.

Presumably canal-boaters will still be allowed to burn dropped wood that they’ve dried, after being found free in the hedgerows etc.

Update: Country Life reports a backstep by the government. Council Inspectors will now not actually be ripping out the older stoves from your home, come 1st January 2022. The Stove Industry Alliance, who presumably know about such things, tells the magazine that… “there will be no requirement to remove” existing open fireplaces and older stoves.

A new linguistics paper by Andrew Breeze (University of Navarra, Spain) challenges the usual interpretation of the river-name Trisantona (the Trent, as named by Tacitus) as ‘trespasser’. This meaning has been very plausibly assumed to refer to the river’s frequent flooding and bank-breaking, and shifting ox-bows, in pre-modern times. The new suggested meaning is slightly different and by implication more libidinous…

“… reconstructed *Trisuantona (from *Tresuantona) would thus … mean ‘she of great desire, she who is much loved.’ [The new interpretation works from] the basis of Old Irish sét (‘treasure’, Modern Irish seoid) and Welsh chwant (‘desire’, from hypothetical Common Celtic *suanto-).”

Despite appearing to be in Russian and appearing in a Russian repository, the PDF is in fact in good English.

Some interesting news from Burton-on-Trent, where a local expert has carefully spent many years tracking down the likely location of an Ancient Roman marching fort. He remarks on the Roman practice of placing auxiliary ‘marching’ forts, at a day’s march or 15 Roman miles apart. This means 14.167 modern miles. There were then some slight adjustment to ensure access to two clean water sources, one for the baths and one for drinking.

So it would be interesting to plot that on a map from the marching camp at Chesterton along the Rykeneld Street. That camp was a 2 acre site at the far eastern end of Loomer Road, Chesterton, near St. John the Evangelist (R.C.) and Chesterton’s main road roundabout. Nearby was a larger fort under what is now Chesterton Community Sports College. These two sites are about 300 yards apart, so a point between them seems the best starting point for measuring, and makes little difference to the outcome.

So one can take the road out from there on a map, and along the most likely route. It’s known it went across Wolstanton Golf Course, and reached the current site of Stoke Station, then went on to Blythe Bridge and to Uttoxeter. It thus seems to me that there was most likely a marching fort about a mile or so east of Tean, most likely more or less at the the small modern village of Checkley — when you have several streams feeding down to the nearby River Tean.

On then looking for corroboration one finds that “there is evidence of a Roman road about a mile north of the village”, but also there is the known Roman fort at nearby Rocester, a few miles further on. This is now under the eastern part of the town.

However, if one goes the ‘other way’ from Rocester toward Chesterton, then at 14.1 modern miles you reach the vicinity of Heron Cross and Mount Pleasant, Fenton. Again, a short distance above the river (the Trent in this case) and well-watered and a likely spot.

Of course, it may be that both notions are more or less correct and that you had ‘one-way’ marching forts? Those headed north-west from Uttoxeter might then use Mount Pleasant, those headed south-east from Chesterton might use Checkley or thereabouts. Or visa versa. Because presumably the Army would not want squabbles about beds and food, which might occur if two or more marching companies both arrived at the same fort for the night, each going different ways. But I can find no information on such practices. Perhaps an expert reader can tell me if that was the way of such things, or not?

The MeadesShrine, collecting all those wonderful Jonathan Meades documentaries about curious provincial architecture and grandiose foreign monstrosities. He’s still around, and currently has a regular column which enlivens the worthy-but-dull magazine The Critic. Of course, he’s too dangerous to allow on the telly these days. But at least he can be enjoyed at the MeadesShrine and on YouTube.

His new 1988-2020 writing collection is out as as the book Pedro and Ricky Come Again, which is a shelf-companion to his previous essay and article collection Peter Knows What Dick Likes (sadly not in ebook).

A local poem of Trentham by Annie Keary, “Fairy Men”, written when living in Trent Vale, Stoke-upon-Trent in the mid nineteenth century. In the second half she has “Cobbolds” = Kobold work-fairies, which I have looked into here in relation to Tolkien.

FAIRY MEN

In Trentham woods […] I spied the fairy men.

[Various very conventional fairy troops are seen passing by, for five verses]

Last the sad stooping cobbolds came,
  Through earth-holes small they creep;
With patient steps they struggle up
  The under ways so steep:
For sins they are condemned to work
  While other fairies sleep.

They carry tiny water-pails
  Upon their shoulders small,
Toilsomely in the under world
  Work they to fill them all:
Catching each raindrop as it drips
  Through their dark cavern wall.

All night through fields and lanes they go,
  And deftly as they run
They slip a dewdrop in each flower,
  On each grass-blade hang one,
Yet dare not wait to see them turned
  To diamonds by the sun.

The literary Keary family had a home (homes?) somewhere around Trent Vale / Penkhull, Stoke-on-Trent, and Annie Keary’s children’s novel Sidney Grey: A Tale of School Life (1857) was said to have… “dealt with their [north] Staffordshire region and its brick-kilns” in the 1850s. This fact is also mentioned in a childhood memoir, Memoir of Annie Keary…

“On the other side a shady road [at Trent Vale], a church almost opposite the gate; beyond the church the village, and beyond the village, to give the needful inferno element, one or two brick kilns, whose ministers (the ‘ultimi Britanni’ [ancient Britons] of our [childhood] world) were evil-looking, dark-faced boys, terrible to speech or thought. These brick-kilns were introduced into one of the stories Aunt Annie wrote for us, which was afterwards published under the title of Sidney Grey.”

This is the novel Sidney Grey: A Tale of School Life (1857). Still no sign of this novel online, but there is now her novel Sidney Grey: A Year from Home (1876). This is mostly set in “Dunstall, Staffordshire”, after the first few chapters, but with no mention of the brick yards. There is a short melodramatic episode of a rescue of some stray tots from a Hanley bottle-kiln, but that is clearly a ceramics factory. For this reason I suspect Sidney Grey: A Year from Home is a sequel.

No local colour in Sidney Grey: A Year from Home, apart from the brief rescue from a pottery kiln. But half way through we do get an interlude in which there is something better than brick kilns… a long imaginative children’s fairy-tale from Annie Keary, “Through the Wood”. Here it is, extracted in PDF and OCR’d…

Download: keary-through-the-wood-ocr.pdf

This is not the same “Through the Wood” as the story in her collection Little Wanderlin, and other fairy tales.

The Yates’ 1798 map of Staffordshire, here the section from Barlaston to Leek. And also the route from Red Street (the old Roman road rising up off the Cheshire Plain) across to the ridge-following ‘Earslway’ that once led to Alton Castle.

For those unfamiliar with the area, the towns “Burslem” and “Handley”, the various hamlets of “Fenton” and the outlying “Lane End” later become Stoke-on-Trent. “Totmanslow” is the Hundred. Alveton (bottom right) is now Alton.

Gawd, Amazon just gets worse and worse and worse at search results. I’m an expert searcher and it gives me results that are utter rubbish. It’s now almost impossible to get a forward look at what’s coming or what’s been published recently in books. Something is very badly wrong with their algorithms, if it isn’t just down to cynical ‘confusion marketing’.

What’s the alternative? Hive.co.uk, on sorting for books / release dates, gives the searcher a better result, though still not perfect and without dates on the results themselves.

There’s a new three-year national and funded curlew survey, ‘Curlew LIFE’, recruiting staff and starting up now. It’s paired with a major new…

“England Curlew Recovery Partnership … set up with government support, which will explore opportunities to embed curlew recovery within Defra’s new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS), which will reward farmers and land managers for environmental work.”

The measure of a “league” occurs many times in the speech of those in Middle-earth. What was Tolkien’s “league”, and how many miles did it have in it?

The league used in Ancient Rome was defined as 1½ Roman miles, a Roman mile being 5,000 feet or a thousand paces for a Roman pacer or legion. Thus a league would be 1,500 paces or about 1.4 miles today. A typical day’s journey of six Roman miles on foot would thus be two leagues in the morning, and another two in the afternoon. The traveller would then have covered 5.66 modern miles. It should also be noted that the Roman mile continued in use in England until changed in the year 1593 under Queen Elizabeth I.

However, buried in a deep appendix is the information that the Numenorians effectively used a standard three-mile measure for their league. “5,277 yards, two feet and four inches, not the modern 5,280 yards”, according to Middle-earth Distances Table (2007), with the slight difference making little difference. Thus the modern ‘three modern miles’ measure and Middle-earth measure appear to agree. This can be somewhat tested with reference to “The Riders of Rohan” chapter of LoTR…

Aragorn smiled. ‘Keen are the eyes of the Elves,’ he said.

‘Nay! The riders are little more than five leagues distant,’ said Legolas.

[Waiting for the approaching horseman, who are “riding like the wind” when on the firm downland track…] The time passed slowly and heavily.

Eomer and his Eored are thus spied by Legolas when they are some 15 miles distant, and they are not coming on in quite a direct line. They are climbing a rising track from a wide open river valley and then coming on fast across open downland, easy riding country. The horses are male, which go faster at speed and tire less than mares, but they carry heavy gear and large men.

At a fast trot and with a good stride a lone modern horse might take 100 minutes to cover a 10 mile course, or ten minutes per mile.

If we assume the highly-trained Eored with powerful horses is making an average of six minutes per mile, then it takes them about 90 minutes to reach Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas. This seems about right, and feels more right than if the Roman league were assumed, which would put the Eored at seven miles distance when first seen by Legolas and thus arriving in just 40 minutes or less.

The league is a natural and human measure, either way. In pre-modern times a burdened traveller might hope to make six miles a day, and thus a Numenorian league was either a morning or afternoon’s walking and a natural distance to ‘think in’. A day would then involve two leagues of travel, more or less. Similar was the Roman ‘two leagues’, or some 2.8 miles. An army could also cover distance at about the same speed. For instance when Marlborough’s Army of 1704 covered 250 miles from Bedburg to Ulm, they made six miles a day. Compare this to a Roman legion, light-marching efficiently on good Roman straight roads with supply stations along the route. They were expected to be able to make 20 miles a day, for several days at a time.

Thus, when one reads “league” in LoTR perhaps the easiest way to translate it is as “a half day of walking”. If something is “two leagues away”, it could take a day to reach it on foot. If it is “ten leagues” away then one should allow about a week to walk there, assuming reasonable tracks and not getting lost or stopped. The three companions (Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli) are, however, running fast across open unwooded terrain in the wolds of Rohan.

There is another test, one for walking when speed is absolutely essential. When Faramir reports to Denethor, he uses “leagues” as measurement, and Gandalf also comments on the speed and distance…

“I parted with them in the morning two days ago,” said Faramir. “It is fifteen leagues thence to the vale of the Morgulduin, if they went straight south; and then they would be still five leagues westward of the accursed Tower. At swiftest they could not come there before today, and maybe they have not come there yet. [Gandalf then comments] ‘The morning of two days ago, nigh on three days of journey!”

So three long days of journey, on relatively good paths (and some road) through Ithilien to the cross-roads and beyond, going as fast as possible and with a cunning and swift scout, equals twenty leagues or 60 miles. They are being expect by Faramir to make 20 miles a day at the very fastest, in relatively easy country. If he assumes 12 miles is more likely for a day’s average in Ithilien, then the average would be two three-mile leagues in a morning and another two in the afternoon. Really pushing themselves they might actually do three in the morning and three in the evening, which would then be 18 miles, plus another two miles by night. That would give the 20 miles that Faramir offers. They do indeed make that on the first day’s long march (“seven leagues”) at least.

Slightly earlier, on the journey down to Ithilien, Gollum also gives a clear indication of travel times… “By his reckoning it was nearly thirty leagues from the Morannon to the cross-roads above Osgiliath, and he hoped to cover that distance in four journeys.” So that would be seven and a half leagues (just over 22 miles) per night, travelling over country slightly away from the road but parallel to it, fed with sustaining lembas and with an experienced and swift guide to follow.

The Shire, with the Westmarch added, was 50 leagues from end-to-end and north-south, or about the same area as modern England if measured from the Isle of Wight up to the Yorkshire Moors. Or from Norwich on the east coast across to Aberystwyth in the west, adding England to Wales. It would thus take some five weeks to walk across the Shire at medieval speeds, depending on how much time was spent supping in inns and hearing news from travelling dwarves. However, the ‘Ithilien’ speed suggests it might be done fairly pleasantly at three leagues a day by foot travellers in a hurry, which means perhaps a journey of three weeks.

As for fathoms, this is another sensible and human measure. A fathom is about the distance of two arm-lengths for a grown man, or six feet. For many this would also have been about the height of a man, maybe a little less. However for hobbits this would be less, perhaps three feet, since they have small bodies (to the tall and strapping men of well-fed Gondor, Pippin looks like “a lad of nine summers or so”). Thus, when Frodo peers over the edge of the sharp cleft in the Emyn Muil, and estimates the drop at “about eighteen fathoms” he may mean about 50 feet or a bit less. Since hobbits never miss when throwing stones and shooting arrows, we can assume they are also excellent at judging distances by eye. However, when a tall man like Strider estimates a distance in fathoms, he would probably be referencing man-lengths.

Greening up nicely. At this point on the path you almost expect to meet Gimli the dwarf coming around the corner…