The Hall of Waltheof/Chapter XXIX

HERE is one industry, if I may call it so, which has left its mark on our local maps and terriers; I mean the occupation of bee-keeping or bee-farming. The bee-keeper (beó-ceorl) was an important man when honey was used instead of sugar, and we may be sure that those hamlets in Hallamshire which lay near the moors had their bee-keepers, and their bee-farms. The bee was then of far more importance than the grouse, and the busy insect sucked the flowers of heather and wild thyme to the great profit and advantage of the people who lived on the edge of the moors. The fieldnames tell us all this, and they tell it in an interesting way. There are several Honey Fields in Ecclesall, and there was a Hive Yard in Ecclesfield in William Harrison's time. There are places called Honey Sick near Kiveton Park; Honey Spots, a field of two acres between Hope and Pindale in Derbyshire; Ben Croft a field in Stannington, and Bean Yard at Ashover in Derbyshire, Honey Poke at Lydgate, Cross Pool, and the Honey Poke in Bradfield. Just outside Dore and opposite "Abbeydale Park" I notice Poynton Wood. There is a place in Hucklow, Derbyshire, called Pointon Cross, and right in the middle of Bradfield moors, where no land is cultivated, I notice Pointon Bog at the end of Cogman Clough. And then we have the surnames Pointon, Boynton, and Benton. I think each of these words means bee-farm (*beóna-tún) The old plural of bee—Old English beó—was beón, with which the modern German biene may be compared. Dr. Murray in the New English Dictionary refers the word to an Old Teutonic biôn, not found. If Pointon on Bradfield moors means, as I think it does, bee-farm, or as we moderns would say, bee-establishment, it is evident that the beócere or bee-master purposely squatted right in the middle of the moors in order that his bees might visit the bloom of the heather. In addition to numerous place-names, we have historical proof that bee-keeping in Hallamshire was carried on upon a large scale so late as the seventeenth century, for Hunter observes that hives of bees are no infrequent subjects of bequest in Hallamshire wills, and he relates that one Nicholas Broomhead of Thornsett in Bradfield in 1638 "left one-sixth of his whole apparatus of beehives to each of his three nephews whom he names." Förstemann gives Binegarden, Pindorf (but as a conjecture), from ancient documents, and with these we may compare our Pindale and Pointon. I need not here enlarge upon the ancient value and importance of bee-keeping. It may be enough to remember that Virgil devoted the whole of one of his Georgics to the subject, and that a "land flowing with milk and honey" was the highest praise which a sacred writer could give to any country.

Roads in England appear occasionally to have derived their names from the traffic in honey, for Lèo mentions Hunigweg (honey road) at Clere in Hampshire. "In olden times," says Vigfusson, "and throughout the Middle Ages, honey was one of the chief exports from England to Scandinavia." In the game called "honey pots," which is still played in this district, boys "roll themselves up and are pretended to be carried to market by others as honey."

It is possible that some of the field-names in which the word "honey" occurs are to be explained by the fact that rents were sometimes paid in honey. It was a common practice to hold lands in consideration of the payment of so much honey to the lord, or to the village community.