A short, easy to understand video from the UK Meteorological Office
Category: Wildlife and Nature
iLandscape.com
Tombstone at Weybourne, Norfolk via http://www.ournorfolk.org.uk
‘A dodman (plural “dodmen”) or a hoddyman dod is a local English vernacular word for a land snail. The word is used in some of the counties of England. This word is found in the Norfolk dialect, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Fairfax, in his Bulk and Selvedge (1674), speaks of “a snayl or dodman.”
Hodimadod is a similar word for snail that is more commonly used in the Buckinghamshire dialect.
Alternatively (and apparently now more commonly used in the Norfolk dialect) are the closely related words Dodderman or Doddiman. In everyday folklore, these words are popularly said to be derived from the surname of a traveling cloth seller called Dudman, who supposedly had a bent back and carried a large roll of cloth on his back. The words to dodder, doddery, doddering, meaning to progress in an unsteady manner, are popularly said to have the same derivation.
A traditional Norfolk rhyme goes as follows:
“Doddiman, doddiman, put out your horn,
Here comes a thief to steal your corn.”
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
The ‘inventor’ of ley lines, Alfred Watkins, thought that in the words “dodman” and the builder’s “hod” there was a survival of an ancient British term for a surveyor. Watkins felt that the name came about because the snail’s two horns resembled a surveyor’s two surveying rods. Watkins also supported this idea with an etymology from ‘doddering ‘ along and ‘dodge’ (akin, in his mind, to the series of actions a surveyor would carry out in moving his rod back and forth until it accurately lined up with another one as a backsight or foresight) and the Welsh verb ‘dodi’ meaning to lay or place. He thus decided that The Long Man of Wilmington was an image of an ancient surveyor.’
Source: Wikipedia
Playing out – and nature in the garden
A super couple of items from Monday’s BBC TV ‘One Show’. The first is about the new street play project in England, the following item about what nature can live in a square metre of a garden….The two items begin about 2 minutes from the start of the programme and last about 12 minutes in total.
Enjoy and share!
Old School Gardener
There are lots of poppies at Gressenhall, Scott Tampin, Heritage Gardening Trainee has been researching them.
The Poppy is a flowering plant of the family Papaverceae and many varieties can be found flowering all over the farm and workhouse site at this time of year. Ornamental Poppies are grown for their colourful flowers and some varieties are used in many cuisines around the world including European, Indian and Jewish. Some varieties produce a powerful medicinal alkaloid opium which has been used since ancient times to create analgesic and narcotic medicinal.
Poppies have long been a symbol of sleep, peace and death. Sleep because of the opium extracted from them, death because of the common blood red colour of the red ones in particular. In Greek and Roman myths time poppies were used as offerings to the dead and decorated tombstones. The bright scarlet colour also signifies resurrection from death in…
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iLandscape.com.au
ilandscape.com.au
The Fens do not appear in the theatre very often. Not having seen this piece myself just yet, but having heard an interview with the director on the radio recently, I was intrigued: ‘Ours was the Fen Country’ is a dance-theatre piece that uses words, movement, music and lights to conjure up some of the atmospheres of the Fens, some of the heaviness and also the beauty.
For Ours Was the Fen Country, Dan Canham interviewed more than 30 Fenland people, from eel catchers and farmers, to stable owners and people who spent their whole lives there.
This is how the promotional website for this work describes the piece:
For the past two years Dan Canham has been capturing conversations with people of the fens in East Anglia. Eel-catchers, farmers, parish councilors, museum keepers, molly dancers and conservationists have all been interviewed. In this etherealpiece of dance-theatre Dan and his…
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Old School Garden 