Reflections on Life at Netherton

[Maggie/915]

Someone has been kind enough to loan me this book by Jack Black

It is written in verse and brings back so many memories.

However I have to admit to odd words that I do not know:-

A Canny Cyevule?

Wi knaa there'll be nee flaas? (Banner)

Maybe flaws not sure.

Clagger men and cleaky mats?

Blaa maybe smoking/ tobacco.

Words that I loved to read included :-

Little Guddin.

Tanky toots.

Spent your wack.

Couped his creels.

Sowkin.

Dunderheads

Owld chep.

Pit claes 'dadded' on the waall.

Eyes stuck out like organ stops.

Then there is talk about gypsy's selling pegs.

So many memories.

Thank you Palance

[Smudgeinthebudge]

Better if I knew the context of the use of the words but as a Netherton lad that remembers Jack I feel obligated to have a go.

A canny Cyevule - The place on the coal face allocated to a hewer (pillar and board mining) I remember it as kyebble which could be translated to Cable. "Ya fethers got a bad kyebble so wi hevn't got much moneyâ€

Flaas - normally floors

Not sure about Clagger men

Cleaky mats - clippy mats

Blaa could be rest eg "lets have a blaa, Blow, - get your breath backâ€

[Canny lass]

I don't know about the mining term Cyevule but when you write it down as kjebble (Which we pronounced as 'shebble') it means 'chat'. A canny kjebble, a canny crack they both meant a good chat. My mother could also use it to us kids when we were arguing - stop your kjebble/kjebbling this minute!

Edited March 29, 2015 by Canny lass

[Canny lass]

Not to be confused with tjebble! The kitchen table.

Edited March 29, 2015 by Canny lass

[Smudgeinthebudge]

Or stebble where they keep the gallowas.

[Maggie/915]

Thanks

Could the 'clagger men ' be men collecting money.

'Clagging' meaning on 'tick'.

The context for flaas :-

The Day Netherton Won the Picnic Cup

The verse goes

The lads have got the banner oot

Last night arooned the raas

Collecting for "The Miners' Homes"

Wi Knaa there'll be nee flaas.

Relevant today another verse is :-

Who laboured in the common cause

Of "Social Evolution"

Seeking without a pause

A sensible solution.

I'll not dispute, the good intent

Of successive Local Government

But if their talents they'd employed

Built things up and not destroyed

We'd not have had this sorry day

And seen the last house swept away

Netherton is seen as s place where

Philanthropy was common law

Kindness an Ideology.

Must give the book back, I could go on with the quotes forever.

[Canny lass]

Flaas - flaws maybe?

[Smudgeinthebudge]

I remember my dad telling me about me grandad often getting bad kyebbles that were harder to work. It seems that the men drew lots for the kyebble they got for the quarter. Flaas I think in this context it did mean flaws.

[Canny lass]

Just had Another Think about 'cleaky mats'. Could wor Jackie be talking about 'clicky mats'? I remember two sorts of mat making in my home. Proggy mats, using small 'clippings' and a 'progger', and clicky mats using long strips of cloth and a special tool that knotted the strip to the backing - usually hessian.

[Newbedders]

Just had Another Think about 'cleaky mats'. Could wor Jackie be talking about 'clicky mats'? I remember two sorts of mat making in my home. Proggy mats, using small 'clippings' and a 'progger', and clicky mats using long strips of cloth and a special tool that knotted the strip to the backing - usually hessian.

My mam used to make mats with cloth strips and she called them clooty mats.

[Canny lass]

I've Heard that name as well but I've no idea what a clooty mat is. Clooty dumplings I remember only too well!

[Vic Patterson]

Face cloot, dish cloot, floor cloot but favorite cloot was the clooty dumplings, still love the suet dumplings.

making clippy and proggy mats was definetly a family get together.

[Canny lass]

There was also the occasional 'cloot roond the lugs'. They weren't so nice!

[Pete]

There was also the occasional 'cloot roond the lugs'. They weren't so nice!

Phew, that brought back some memories I could almost feel the pain.

[Maggie/915]

According to Steven Martin's book on Netherton the name comes from :-

Nithe bottom of the hill and Ton habitation.

In the 'Curio Regis' 1207 it was Neterton.

Nethesington in the 18th Century estate map.

I wonder where the name 'netty' came from.

[Canny lass]

Netty = cabinetti. The Roman's name for closet.

[Smudgeinthebudge]

A more obvious reason why they were called nettys was the fact that when they were earth closets people used to hang nets around them to keep the flies out, but there again maybe the Romans did the same.

[Canny lass]

Nothing to do with nets I'm afraid. The diminutive suffix in latin is 'ette'. It Changes with noun gender and becomes 'etti'.The diminutuve, as I'm sure you know,  implies the meaning 'little' - so cabinetti, Little cabin.

[Smudgeinthebudge]

Nothing to do with nets I'm afraid. The diminutive suffix in latin is 'ette'. It Changes with noun gender and becomes 'etti'.The diminutuve, as I'm sure you know,  implies the meaning 'little' - so cabinetti, Little cabin.

I remember a whole debate about this years ago in the chronicle I think that it was also on the tv, Look North I think. After all the possibilities had been mentioned (apart from nets) a historian came on and gave his theory about cabinetti as a possibility. My dad saw it and I quote, "What a load of ------- a remember the fly nets in the netties, iverybody had thim when aah was a laddie. Yi could buy thim in the store." Of course he may have been wrong about the name's origin, but he was adamant about the nets. I was undecided but tended to lean toward the nets idea. 

[Maggie/915]

I was going towards the name Netherton.

Nether regions

Bottom of the hill.

Neterton as in Steven Martin's book Curio Regis 1207.

I like the association with the Romans too.

Basically anything that makes Bedlington district special.

[Smudgeinthebudge]

I've just done a little bit of research on Roman sanitation this afternoon and I've found that the Romans used mainly communal toilets even in their houses and in bigger towns they had large public toilets. I'm afraid there was nothing little or cabinet like about them. Plenty images on google. the Roman names for toilets are as follows;- cultus, latrina, latrinum, lavabrum, lavacrum, lavatio, lavatrina, ornatus, secretum  of which you can see there are a lot of English words derived from these but no mention of little cabinets. Also the word netty was used all over the northeast coalfield area not just around Bedlington. Bedlington district is special but perhaps not in the Roman sense. A lot of archeology has been lost over the years because of opencast mining especially around Netherton colliery so it's unlikely that anything survives but you never know.The small areas that haven't been touched may one day give up something special but I tend to think it may be neolithic, iron age, or anglo saxon. However wouldn't it be lovely if they found the remains of a roman villa at the village built on the remains of an iron age hill fort.

[Maggie/915]

Brilliant work Smudgeinthebudge.

When do we start digging.

[Smudgeinthebudge]

I think the problem with this area is the fact that there's been too much digging already and I haven't heard of anybody making any Roman finds around Netherton but people digging a bell pit probably wouldn't have recognised a post hole. Netherton is quite a commanding height except for one problem.

Before the advent of shire horses and steel plough shares the area may have been deeply wooded and difficult to crop with the prevalence of boulder clay on the surface. I mean Netherton for Nedderton as the village changed it's name with the advent of the postal system during the 1840s so as not to be confused with Netherton in north Northumberland. Anything I know about archeology is from years of watching the time team. 

[Canny lass]

Netty may not be native to Northumberland. I've Heard it used in both Yorkshire and Wales - but there can be lots of explanations for that. When we try to decipher the meaning of Words today it's all too easy to break the Word down into its modern day morphemes (Components of meaning). However, if we want to get anywhere near the truth we have to go back to the origins of the Word and look at the morphemes as they were when the Word was taken into the language.

 

To give you an example let's take 'Bedlington'. If we break it down into modern day morphemes we'd get Bed,ling and ton and we can read whatever we like into that - hypothesizing wildly we could get something as rediculous as a resting Place for Heavy fish. If we break it down into old English morphemes (700-1100 BC) we get something quite different - Bedl, ing and ton. Then our hypothesis could also be very different. For example, the 'farmstead belonging to Bedla'.  Bedla was a well used name during the period, ing was known to be a form of the genitive and ton was a very small plot of land.

 

Language Changes all the time and ton as in Bedlington is, today, most often given to mean Town but when it first came into the English langauge, as tun, it simply meant an enclosure, a garden, or a yard. Over the following centuries it Went on to mean the houses and Buildings on that piece of land. Later its meaning changed to encompass the inhabitants and even later it changed again to include the administrative system in use with that particular piece of land, it's dwellings and it's inhabitants. 

 

A similar thing happened with the English Word cabin. If we trace it's origins we find that it has had all sorts of meanings - many of them now obsolete. According to the  Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology,it started out as the Latin capanna/cavanna (spellings with -in appeared first in the 16th Century) and it meant, among many other things, cave. By the 14th Century it was being used in the meaning of a ships compartment.and in the 15th Century a rude habitation. First in the 17th Century  was it being used when referring to that which we today call a cabin . 

 

In the case of our beloved 'netty' and its etymology, much depends on when it came into the English language or one of its many dialects. The net theory, I find hard to accept - but don't rule it out. Earth closets have been around for centuries. So has net. However,  I'm doubtful if the two entities were ever to be found in one establishment. They belong to two different social classes, unless of course the Word 'netty, is relatively new.

 

My own theory is still a loan Word from Latin, possibly via French, followed by abbreviation - in this case initial clipping (using the last part of the Word to serve as the whole).

 

Just one Little question - why would anybody add a diminutive ending to the Word net?

[Smudgeinthebudge]

Lovely stuff Canny Lass. That's certainly more convincing than anything I've heard before on the subject. So what we've really got to try and do is find out when the word was first meaning toilet. I will strive on the web during the next few days. I'm a little worried about why I find the subject so fascinating