Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/479

 9 th S. I. JUNK 11, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

471

den there was a "lonyng" or lane called Raton Raw, and that the lane gave its name to the open field, or campus, which adjoined it.

In my ' Sheffield Glossary ' I have men- tioned Rotten Spot as the name of a small field at Greystones, near that city. This must have been the site of a ruined house or cottage, or what the surveys call " cotagium vastum " or " toftum vastum." References to " cotagia vasta" may be seen in the 'Feodarium Prioratus Dunelmensis ' (Surtees Society),

(p. 67. It appears, therefore, that the word rotten or ratten in these place-names is the Icel. rotinn, decayed. S. O. ADDY.

P.S. I have just met with the following phrase in Hexham's 'Nether Dutch Diet.,' 1675: "A rotten or ruinous house ready to fall." This will be found under the word for the people who spoke of a "rotten" house must also have spoken of a " rotten " street.
 * House,' and it makes the etymology certain,

PROF. SKEAT says, "No English dialect turns the true Teutonic a into t" May I point out that this statement is too sweeping ? It needs qualification. Under certain conditions this change does certainly occur. For instance, the original d becomes t by assimilation when it immediately precedes an unvoiced sound. The " Radcliffe " of Stow's * Survey of London ' has become the "Ratcliff" of the present ' Post-Office Guide.' Again, in many Scottish texts as, for example, in Barbour's ' Bruce ' the original d of the past participle appears regularly as t for instance, amendit (amended), anoyit (annoyed). A. L. MAYHEW.

Oxford.

My red rag has unduly provoked PROF. SKEAT, the exercise of whose careful and characteristic methods is here quite thrown away. He has "plentifully declared the thing as it is," and painfully proved that whicn nobody doubted. His poor opinion of me might perhaps justly be poorer ; but I certainly neither thought nor wrote that red could turn into rotten. Nevertheless, is it not possible that if rothen can exist as rotten in the name of one English place (Rotten- herring-staith) it could equally remain in the same form in the name of another English place, Rotten-row ? Some of us are too ready to guess ; even that mighty malleus conjecta- torum, PROF. SKEAT, may be too ready to guess that we are guessers. W. C. E.

PATTENS (9 th S. i. 44, 336, 413). Two dif- ferent kinds of foot-gear are being spoken

of under one name, and confusion is the con- sequence. There are (1) the clogs I wrote about, overshoes consisting of wooden and, if I rightly recollect, jointed soles, with leather toe-caps and heel-pieces, secured to the wearer by straps connected with the heel- pieces and buckling over the ankle. The heel should be raised from the ground by a little bit of ironwork fixed in the sole beneath it. (2) There are the clogs W. C. B. describes and varieties of them ; not overshoes, but shoes proper English substitutes for sabots. I shall never forget first hearing " the clang of the wooden shoon " in the streets of Barnard Castle. In the new number of the ' English Dialect Dictionary ' Prof. Joseph Wright observes : " The clattering noise made by two or three hundred people when they loose from the mill and run through the streets is very peculiar."

For five guineas one may buy a pair of Turkish clogs, said to be for the use of a bride on her way to the bath, and thus described : " Of wood, covered with red leather, red leather straps, all overlaid with pierced, chased, and engraved silver in floral arab- esques of Armenian workmanship ; length of footboard 9j in., heels 3j in. high."

I feel sure that patten has no etymological connexion with any sweet Patty of them all. It is akin to pad, pied, and topatin=& high- heeled shoe. ST. SWITHIN.

"STRIPPER" (9 th S. i. 287). In Halli well's ' Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words' we find :

" Strip. To strip a cow is to milk her very clean, so as to leave no milk in the dug. In the dairy districts of Suffolk the greatest importance is attached to stripping the cows, as neglect of this infallibly produces disease. It is the same as the Norfolk strocking. Forby's ' East Anglia,' p. 330."

Halliwell also gives :

" Strippings. The last milk drawn from a cow in milking. Var. died."

H. ANDREWS.

Wright in his 'Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English ' says strip is equivalent in Norfolk to milking a cow dry, with which explanation Annandale, in the 'Imperial Dictionary,' and Brockett, in his ' Glossary of North -Country Words,' agree.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

This term, or its equivalent "stripping cow," will usually be found in the newspaper report of the Carlisle Saturday cattle market. Thus, in the Standard of Monday, 4 April, on p. 10, the report begins : " The supply of Irish store cattle consisted of between 500 and 600 heifers