I can't seem to get a hold of an online BRITISH English Dictionary.
So, I was wondering, are these words included in the British English Oxford Dictionary? :
sheaving
sleaving
I've managed to find those on merriam-webster's and dictionary.com but they are mainly American English sites, so I just need verification.
Thank you!
Jess
here's a quote from the Times; it doesn't appear to be in current use:
1893 Times 20 May 11/5 Thatching,..fence-building, mowing and sheaving are, we are assured, becoming lost arts.
edit:
sleaving - rare. Now dial.
[f. SLEAVE v. Cf. SLAVING n.]
A slip taken from a tree by splitting or pulling.
c1440 Pallad. on Husb. III. 163 Yf thow sette a plaunte or a sleuyng, Putte in a lytel moysty molde amonge. 1839 SIR G. C. LEWIS Gloss. Heref., Sleaving, a twig sleaved off.
[OED2]
Have you tried this one, Jess? Nice to see you posting, BTW.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/Here's another possibility:
http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dict.html
Hey! :o)
I've tried the first one already. Am looking at the second one. I'm glad to be back too. I was away TOO long! Kinda missed the "action"! :o)
Jess
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OK, the second didn't have any answers for that. :o(
So, does that mean sleaving is a real word or has it not been in use for a long time?
I wonder if it would still appear in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, 6th Edition. I think that's the latest one.
>So, does that mean sleaving is a real word or has it not been in use for a long time?
OED says it is rare and dial. I guess whether this makes it "real" is entirely up to you.
also, it looks like the 1913 Webster's (the dictionary.com source) has a different, but perhaps related, def'n; I didn't look that closely.
Well, here's what I got from dictionary.com (and surprisingly, NOT from merriam-webster, didn't find anything for that)
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sleaving
Sleave \Sleave\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sleaved; p. pr. & vb. n. Sleaving.] To separate, as threads; to divide, as a collection of threads; to sley; -- a weaver's term.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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and as for sheaving :
sheave1
tr.v. sheaved, sheav·ing, sheaves
To collect and bind into a sheaf.
[From sheaf.]
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Still, how can I verify it in British English? Hmm.....
re: sleaving
OED: A slip taken from a tree by splitting or pulling.
Webster's: (this is the 1913 ed. with updated copyright):
To separate, as threads; to divide, as a collection of threads; to sley; -- a weaver's term.
coincidence? prolly not
OK, that makes "sleaving" an "official" word, but what about sheaving?
sheaving in the brings, sheaving in th.....
oops. not quite right...
My copy of the Compact OED (which is the full text but reproduced micrographically - these days I need a magnifying glass to read it) gives two meanings for the verb 'to sheave'. The first, which I would have said was *relatively common usage to a UK national of a certain age(!), is:
To bring together, collect, gather or put up (corn etc) into a sheaf or sheaves.
The second is new to me:
To back a boat, to work the oars backwards. I have done this, but never guessed there was a word for it!
Regarding the first meaning; when the crop had been cut the reapers gathered and tied it, stem downwards, into large bundles, sheaves, or stooks, and left the bundles standing in rows of golden yellow pyramids across the field. A cart followed behind and the sheaves were picked up using a hay-fork and tossed onto the cart. The cart then took the crop to a suitable area for storage where, if it was for animal fodder, it was piled into haystacks. These were solid stacks of hay perhaps fifteen feet high and fifteen by thirty feet in plan and shaped like a house with a shallow sloping roof formed from the top layers of hay to shed the rain. I haven't seen this done since I was a boy; in fact I remember the first time I saw a field with rolls of hay across it, instead of the usual stooks, and being amazed at the mechanisation of the process.
Regarding the first meaning; when the crop had been cut the reapers gathered and tied it, stem downwards, into large bundles, sheaves, or stooks, and left the bundles standing in rows of golden yellow pyramids across the field.
They're called stooks, and a field was done this way this summer outside a Northamptonshire village called Isham (which has a very nice pub called The Monk and Minstrel, of which I am an habitue). It was done because the straw was going to be used for - goddammit - thatching. I had a drink with the gang who did the deed, and they done told me so. They are sheavers, and one of them is also a thatcher. So, sheaving comes full circle ...
RE:I remember the first time I saw a field with rolls of hay across it
Are they called 'swiss rolls' there too?
and if so does anyone know why-
The do look like a snack cake called 'swiss rolls' (among other things) but i was told the machine to roll hay and not bale it, was originally of swiss manufacture.
I have never see real sheaves, (i have seen decorative ones at restoration villiages, but what little i know about farming comes from 1) watchin 'Modern Farmer' in my very early childhood (it came on very early, before early morning cartoons) and 2)looking out car windows, and reading.
if it was for animal fodder, it was piled into haystacks
Perhaps I can just add a small amount to dixby's evocative description since there are a few other associated terms of art... and there is a distinct difference in the handling of hay and grain crops.
Hay was never gathered into stooks (other regional forms of this word include stoops and similar variants) - it was cut loose, originally by hand with sickle or its larger cousin the scythe, latterly in Victorian times by finger-bar mowers drawn by horsepower. The resulting swathes were laid to dry in windrows, turned occasionaly, then raked into heaps and pitched onto carts for transport to the storage area close to the livestock buildings - this area was sometimes known as a fold amongst other things. As horse-drawn mechanisation came in to force the pace, the turning and the side-raking became mechanised too.
Grain crops were as dixby describes: initially the crop was cut by similar manual means to the hay crop, but then by finger-bar mowers and later by binders - these latter were enormously heavy pieces of machinery and were known as 'horse-killers' since they often required three horses in a unicorn hitch (one leading, then two in a side-by-side harness). These resulted in ready-tied sheaves dropped in a neat line, rather than the previous manually tied versions bound with a twist of straw. In both cases the sheaves still had to be gathered into stooks, which sometimes needed to be turned and re-ordered in order to dry enough to make safe in a compacted stack. If the crop was not pre-dried enough, the rick could catch fire from the exothermic reaction of a close-packed stack, or the grain could go mouldy. Whereas hay was best stacked as soon as it was sun-dried, corn crops always needed further wind conditioning, and hence it was stooked in the fields for a while. After transport they were built into an enormous circular stack known typically as a rick, which gives the alternative name of a rickyard. To keep rats from devouring the grain, the ricks were often built on a platform raised from the ground on staddle stones ~ imagine large stone mushrooms and you're close! The overhang was to prevent the rats climbing aboard.
Once in the stacks and ricks the job was only half done. Both forms of material needed a thatched roof to keep the weather out, and they were characteristically decorated at the apex with a corn dolly. Hay had to be cut from the stack with a massive blade - think of something like a large spade with a tee-handle, with one straight edge and one curved sharp edge meeting the straight edge at a point. Sawing down through dense-packed hay with one of those was really some job. By contrast, ricks storing oats, barley or wheat would typically be taken down in one 'all-hands' operation, and the sheaves fed through a thresher, which varied widely in scale, power source and output. When the smaller kits were used there might be a seperate winnowing operation, which tumbled the grain through a fan-box to separate the grain from the chaff. The straw would then be built back into a haystack-type stack, unless it was one of the more specialist kinds as used for Capfka's thatching.
I have worked with Shire horses on all of these tasks, and I can assure you it is murderous hard work :)
maverick, I...I... wow. I am SO privileged to know you! That was wonderful!
For a picture of one kind of corn dolly, go here:
http://www.wicstun.com/corndolly/ and run your cursor over the box that reads Corn Dollies; I think it would also be worthwhile to click on The Guild of Straw Craftsmen, too.
Maverick ~ thanks for adding that amazing detail to my mental rewind! That is good stuff. I have copied it off and saved it to study later.
Staddle stones are still around, usually serving as garden decorations. A few weeks ago in a market in Horsham I came across a guy who was casting new ones in concrete and selling them. I don't think I could bring myself to buy such a fake - maybe no one else would know, but I would! Now, I look at more closely at the ones I see and wonder...is this one real? Perhaps most are not!
When I was a child ( or a smaller child
) I read a wonderful book called 'The Vandal' by Ann Schlee. There is a long discription of haymaking in it, all bound up in ritual and lore. I can't seem to find out how factual it was. Has anyone read the book ( I do recommend it) and can they shed some light as to the accuracy of the description?
dxb--thank you for your post: it made me realize I had read saddle, for staddle. [shame e] I'm going to put a site with pictures of them; it is a commercial site--sorry, but I somehow doubt that too many of us are going to just rush the place to buy one, and dxb did mention it. Here you go, my friend--a place where you can buy the genuine article; even get a matching pair for the low, low price of £495.00.
http://www.english-garden-antiques.co.uk/staddlestones.html
Wow! I'm speechless! hehehe.....
But after all this talk about sheaves, sheaf and sheaving, what about sleaving? Any news about that?
Sleaving:
Nothing more than tsuwm's pieces from the OED and Webster's up above. The OED quotes some early usages, but that's all.
Amazing, you can keep rats outta the grain but not squirrels outta bird feeders.
Mav, why did they make those corn dollies? I can't imagine it is just for decoration. After all that hard work, who wants to be making dollies just for the hell of it.
> what about sleaving?
Sorry, Jess, no can help (apart from a scurrilous story in a novel called
Merlin by Robert Nye)
> why did they make those corn dollies?
I’m sorry to say I cannot remember properly, Bel ~ I once read summat about a pre-Christian mystical foundation to the practice but cannot remember any detail at all. I’m sure you’re right – it must have had more significance than merely decorative.
I went to a local National Trust property a few weeks back btw, called Llanerchaeron: it has a fabulous set of traditional agricultural buildings from the Victorian high days of agriculture which includes a particularly impressive set of staddle stones. A feature I had not previously seen elsewhere was the difference of those plainly designed as rat-proof (hence for grain ricks) and others which
would have allowed rodent access so must have been to simply keep the foot of haystacks out of the wet.
You can see a brief tour of the Nash house in the first link (though not anything of the farmstead and estate buildings).
http:////www.worldwidewales.tv/index2.php?mid=286http:////www.nationaltrust.org.uk/scripts/nthandbook.dll?ACTION=PROPERTY&PROPERTYID=219
In the Authorized (King James) Version, Psalm 126:6 reads "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."
Doubtless inspired by this verse, an American, Knowles Shaw (1834-1878), wrote the following hymn text in about 1865:
Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;
Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Refrain
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,
Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,
Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze;
By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Refrain
Going forth with weeping, sowing for the Master,
Though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves;
When our weeping’s over, He will bid us welcome,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Refrain
Corn Dollies are a form of straw work associated with harvest customs. Primitive communities believed that the corn spirit lived amongst the crop, and the harvest made it effectively homeless. Therefore, they fashioned hollow shapes from the last sheaf of wheat or other cereal crop. The corn spirit would then spend the winter in their homes until the "corn dolly" was ploughed into the first furrow of the new season. "Dolly" is a corruption of idol.http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_dolly At Jericho, where excavations dated a settlement around 6000 BCE, female figures have ben found suggestive of a worship of a Mother-Goddess. This perhaps represents one of the earliest recorded fertility vegetation cults.The regular cultivation of the crops was observed to be a cycle of events. Such cycles could be unpredictable, especially in times of drought. Around this cycle it seems a cult of death and resurrection developed. […] In Scotland two dollies might be made. The first would be the young maiden, 'maighdean bhuana', the second the hag or 'cailleagh'. These are more typical pagan symbols, the hag representing the crone of winter.http://www.celticmist.freeserve.co.uk/corndolly.htmSome more quite interesting mythological and Celtic lore (of which this is a brief extract) on this site…
The harvested crops may feed us over the harsh winter months but, in order to renew them at the end of this time, we must be sure to collect and store the seeds for their eventual rebirth. Contained within them is the mystery of Life in Death in the image of the Wicker Man, the Corn Man or John Barleycorn. In some cultures the last sheaf of grain to be harvested became the Barley-mother, the Old Woman, the Maiden, to be honored until spring and then re-planted. One of the most widespread traditions is the corn dolly made out of the last sheaf of wheat cut. Known variously as the Wheat Bride, Kern Baby, Old Woman, Wheat Mother, etc. it was kept carefully throughout the winter, then either plowed into the fields the following spring, or burned and the ashes scattered over the fields. Each district also had their own customs concerning the making of the dolly. Some simply made the doll from the cut stalks (averting their faces so that the Grain Goddess couldn't tell who had struck the killing blow) while others left a tuft of wheat uncut, plaited it , and then had the men throw their scythes at it until it was cut. Some places made the carrying of the Corn Dolly to the house a kind of game where one man tried to run back with it without anyone else taking it away from him. This could be an early form of "football" and where the tradition of this game began. The embodiment of the Spirit of Vegetation, the dolly was put in a position of honor in the home. Sometimes a communal dolly was kept in the church and a large feast took place after the last of the harvest was in.http://www.crystalforest3.homestead.com/Mabon.htmlFor a picture of the stooks in a field, scroll down this page…
http://www.strawcraftsmen.co.uk/resource.html
Took out a couple of lines, Sweetie:
http://www.strawcraftsmen.co.uk/resource.htmlFascinating, about the corn dollies--thank you! It makes perfect sense. Hmm--might be worth another mention that your 'corn' is our 'wheat' (or whatever). We have cornshuck dolls, here, made from the shucks on ears of what you-all call maize. I've not heard these referred to as corn dollies, however.
Thank you Mav. That's really interesting. I'm doubly glad you gave us the brief descriptions though, cause I can't open any of your links.
Ooo, even I know that one Father Steve. It must be pretty common to have made it all the way here.
oops, sowy ~ the demerits of putering late at night! Links fixed as suggested by J.
I'll forgive you this time, you wascally wabbit. And, I like it when you're 'putin' late at night! :-))