Letters to the Editor - June 2009

Your lovely article on wild daffodils (March) set me thinking linguistically. If a flower is as widespread and common as these once were, and is native to Britain, why are we using a name we are told comes from Greek ‘asphodel’ via medieval Latin ‘affodile’? It makes no sense.
Moreover the Greek asphodel is a very different plant, and their name for daffodil is narkissos (Latin narcissus), related to nariotic, showing us they used narcissi for an anaesthetic in early medicine. Narcissus is the name for them throughout Southern Europe.

Resorting to Geoffrey Grigson’s remarkable Englishman’s Flora, I discovered among the pretty names of the Jane Austen period ones like ‘sun-bonnets’ and ‘hooped petticoats’, three names that went straight back to our Iron Age immigrants.

As modern archaeology shows, immigration was long and continuous from the continent during the first millennium BC. These names were ‘Lent-lillies’, ‘Lent-roses’ and ‘Lent-cocks’. Lent means spring (the season).

Our dictionary compilers always look south and east when seeking word origins, never west. A great mistake, as much of Britain spoke a language like old Welsh in Roman times. I believe our daffodilly, to give its more authentic form, is Welsh ‘tafod y llew’ or ‘lion’s tongue’. As the flowers face forwards, they do give the impression of having manes.

Another lovely name collected by Geoffrey Grigson is ‘gracies’. Also Etruscan, it is related to Italian ‘graziosa’ and Lithuanian ‘grazus’, both meaning beautiful, and to Russian ‘krasa’ meaning beauty. Beauties they most certainly are.
Felicity Crow, Stroud

‘Return of the Red Squirrel’ (Feb) brought back a childhood memory.

I was at boarding school in 1948-50, the Convent of The Assumption, Richmond, Yorkshire. My classroom was on the first floor, with the exterior walls covered in Virginia creeper. My desk was very close to the window and of course I was supposed to be paying attention when out of the corner of my eye I saw sitting on the windowsill, a beautiful red squirrel nonchalantly munching on a hazelnut.

We quietly studied each other for quite some time. The lovely little creature showed no fear. I was really engrossed, that is until the teacher reprimanded me for not paying attention. I still get a lovely warm feeling recalling that brief encounter.
K Campbell, New Zealand

Having read Jack Watkins’ article, Worthy of Record, on Arthur Mee (March), I felt compelled to write about the effect that worthy man has had on my life and my brother’s life.

In the late 1920s, my mother saved what little spare money she had to buy for her sons, Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia. My brother was ten years old and I was five. Each night at bedtime a cry went up from both of us, “may we take the encyclopedias to bed?” She always allowed us to, and as we shared a double bed, I persecuted my brother to read to me from the encyclopedias, with the result that in exasperation he taught me to read, for sheer peace and quiet.

We devoured those books and I can still recall pictures and articles from them, and I am quite certain that it was because of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedias that we both have had successful careers.

My mother’s care for her sons, with the help of Arthur Mee, gave us the incentive to learn and do the best we could — what finer endorsement could he have for his life’s work?
Tony Hagyard, york

Oh what a splendid cover for March Countryman. I have been floating around on memories of Wiltshire in the 1950s.

So sorry about the editor’s disappointing trudge around to find ‘Owly’. Should you ever be in Wiltshire, try on a lovely summer’s day to walk on Fyfield Down near Mariborough. On one of our ‘exploring the country days’ — so peaceful in these days before we all became so busy — we were walking on the tops on the edge of the tree line under the hill, sloped down to the valley, all was so quiet and I just happened to glance up into a sizeable tree when I was brought to a halt.

There smugly perched on a large branch was a long-eared owl fast asleep within arm’s length. We stood for a few moments, those huge eyes were gazing at us, just like your picture. Then he was gone, but certainly never forgotten.

Thank you for reviving the memory — just one of so many of those special spots we got to know entirely on our own. Oh happy days.
Mrs Audrey Padgham

‘The trig hunter’ (April) brought back old memories for me. In the first years of ‘our’ war, I was a member of a Royal Artillery Survey Regiment (Territoral Army) and our job was counter-battery work, pinpointing enemy gunfire by flash-spotting and sound-ranging and passing the information to our guns for them to engage the enemy.

In 1940-41 we were practicising our basic survey skills in Wales and it included triangulation, using theodolites mounted on two trig points with known co-ordinates to establish the co-ordinates of a new third point.

Achieving this desirable aim involved much climbing to the top of various hills and mountains carrying theodolites slung on our backs in heavy wooden boxes. After a few months of this, I think we could claim to be reasonably fit.
Tom Hetherington, Canterbury

I write to add to the debate raised by Robin Page on the sea eagle. I have a treasure of a book, British Birds and Their Haunts, by the Rev C A Johns printed in 1874, and I delve into it often when I am watching the birds in my garden.

Under the heading ‘The white-tailed eagle, Haliaetus albicilla’, the entry is as follows:

“The white-tailed eagle, known also by the name of the sea eagle, is about equal in size to the golden eagle, but differs considerably in character and habits: for while the latter has been known to pounce on a pack of grouse and carry off two or three from before the very eyes of the astonished sportsman and his dogs, or to appropriate for his own special picking a hunted hare when about to become the prey of the hounds, the white-tailed eagle has been observed to fly terror-struck from a pair of skua gulls, making no return for their heavy buffets but a series of dastardly shrieks … the White-tailed Eagle feeds principally on fish, water-fowl, the smaller quadrupeds, and offal, whether of quadrupeds, birds, or fish.
“This eagle is a northern bird, inhabiting Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Scotland and the North of England, where it frequents the vicinity of the sea and large lakes. In winter it appears to leave the high latitudes and come farther south, not perhaps so much on account of cold as because its ordinary prey being driven to seek a genial climate, it is compelled to accompany its food.
“Consequently it is more abundant in Scotland during winter than summer, and when seen late in autumn is generally observed to be flying south, in early spring northwards. It builds its nest either in forests, choosing the summit of the loftiest trees, or among inaccessible cliffs overhanging the sea.”

It is refreshing to read a description based on observation. Who on earth decided that Suffolk or Norfolk, or for that matter any location among the flat parts of the country, was a suitable place to introduce the sea eagle?

The ideal location would be vast areas, close to the sea and/or large lakes with inaccessible cliffs or forests with lofty trees and an abundance of nest material and food.

Of course there lies the problem: the sea eagle needs an isolated location with little access to humans. No humans, no money, no re-introduction of the sea eagle. For myself, I would prefer the young were left where they are to face their fate. Bringing them to locations in East Anglia is nothing short of putting them in an open zoo for us humans to gawp at.
Sue Wallace, Brackley, Northants

My daughter recently witnessed a most unusual sight. This is her account:

“One late March night this year Alfie, my terrier, and I left home for the last walk of the day.
“Suddenly, my eye was caught by a small eruption of the dead, wet leaves on the ground, vigorous enough to make me think that a mouse must be burrowing for food.

“However, on looking more closely I saw it was caused by a worm twisting and straining upwards in a good imitation of the Indian rope trick. It was, in fact, working with the leaves in the process of pulling them down into the earth. The energy and purpose of the little creature was striking as was the sense of shared experience and underground nature.”

What my daughter saw reminds me of a recent TV programme about Darwin and his experiments with earthworms, although I do not recall his saying that he actually saw them operating at night.
Kenneth Tabor, Malton

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