Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/91

 io» s. iv. JCLY 2U905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 71 on to say that the term is used for "a narrow inclosed way, leading from a town or village, sometimes from one part of a village to another"; and finally adds that "in some towns it is used to denote a narrow street." At the present time, it is quite commonly applied to the road leading from the high- way to a farm steading. In his 'Eminent Men of Fife" Conolly tells how one sea- captain once hailed another in tropical •waters, and asked whence he had come. The answer given was ''Foul-hugger," which indicated an inland farm of East Fife, and it straightway brought the response, "What was your weather as you came down Auld Leys loan?" The interlocutors were from the ame hilly district of the East Neuk, and they vere playing with the names of rural scenes iiniiliar to them from boyhood. THOMAS BAYNE. In her exquisite elegy ' The Flowers of the f>rest' Jean Elliot has invested the word "oaning" with enduring vitality and charm. T'ice, in her poignant lament for her contrymen who were slain at Flodden, there ocurs to the Scottish ear the haunting phase " on ilka green loaning." The use of theterm "loaning" is entirely confined to the sou them district of Scotland ; north of Edinburgh one would never hear the word, whtti is peculiar to the Borders, colloquially used "Loaning" is not therefore "a synoiym for lane in North-Country dialect." A pah between fields is so designated in some .f the southern counties of the northern kingdra. The outskirts of the Border towns and vllages change but little, and these "greet" lanes, where lads and lasses have for genrations kept tryst and plighted their troth, stain, though a hedge or wall may be on one f both sides, the old-time designation of the "oaning." In 'The Antiquary ' Scott alludes j» " the lang dike that gaes doon the loaning.' Jean Elliot's "green loaning," from its etting in her poem, was, no doubt, the grastr plot on which the cows were milked, n Mr. Quiller-Couch's 'Anthology of Englin Verse,' "loaning" is vaguely defined as-. " field-path." Daring (visit to Dumfries some years ago I asked a ad how I could get to a certain point of te river that flows close by the town. Tnr. down so-and-so, he said, " and gang alongUie loanin' " ; and the accent of my instruclr, as well as my walk in the " loanin'" — renounced thus — that fine summer day I shall never forget. For the first time in my life I heard "loaning" spoken in theuusical Doric of the Scottish Border, and fo the first time I had personal — L experience of the significance and meaning of the word. J. GRIGOR. 105, Choumert Road, Peckham, S.E. This word is used several times by Robert Anderson in his ' Cumberland Ballads,' and is thus explained in the glossary : " Lonnin, a narrow lane leading from one village to another." Anderson was born at Carlisle in 1770, where he died in 1833, as I learn from the collected edition of his works published at Wigton. The volume bears no date, but must have appeared about the middle of last century. From 'The Bundles ov Oddities' (p. 6), in which a young woman describes her sweethearts, I give the following example :— The neist was a Whaker, cawt Jacep, He turnt up the wheytes ov his een, An talkt about flesh an the spirit— Thowt I, what can Gravity mean ? In dark winter neeghts, i' the lonnins. He 'd weade thro' the durt buin his tnee ; It cuilt his heb heart, silly gander! And theer let him stowter for me ! The word is used in Northumberland ; and I can almost fancy I see the amorous Quaker stumbling and trudging through the mire of " lonnins that I knew fifty years ago. To the volume from which I have quoted are appended " Cumberland Ballads, by John Rayson of Aglionby," one of which is entitled 'Charlie M'Qlen,'a notorious thief, of whom it is said :— At neets i' the lonning he's seen at aw teymes. The word is also Scotch. JOHN T. CURRY. This word (or " loaning "), signifying a lane or narrow road, is in common use all over the north of England. See ' English Dialect Dic- tionary,' p. 633, where numerous examples are given of its use in Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, York- shire, and Lancashire. At Alston, in Cum- berland, where I spend great part of the summer, we have "The Loaning" and "Loaning Foot," and at Garrigill, an adjoining village, " Lonning Head." The latter is thus described in Palmer's 'Tyne and its Tributaries,' London, 1882, p. 89 :— " Lonning Head means Lane head, by which latter name it is now becoming generally known. It stands at the top or head of a steep lane leading up from the south-east corner of the village—not such a lane as we may see in Surrey or Kent, shaded by thick hedges of hazel and sweet briar; instead there are here stone walls, and the roadway is like nothing so much as the stony bed of a torrent." See also Heslop's 'Northumberland Words, Atkinson's ' Cleveland Dialect,' Ferguson's ' Dialect of Cumberland,' and ' A Glossary of Provincial Words used in Teesdale,' in all of