THE Anglo-Saxon name for this month was Seremonath, which means the dry month and the time of haysel, an old word reflecting the time of hay-making. The Dutch used to call it Zomer-maand, the summer month, while yet another name was Lida serra, joy time. All these are quite apt in their own way, so how did the month come to be known as June?

It might stem from the Roman clan name of Junius, which is linked to juvenis, which in turn means young. The son of Marcus Junius and Tarquinia was called Junius and when his family was attacked and his father murdered, the young Junius pretended to be insane and thus saved his own life. The people thought he was genuinely insane and stupid, and so gave him the name of Brutus. Junius Brutus was not stupid, however and later became one of the first consuls of Rome, somewhere around 509 BC. It is possible the month was named in his honour. He was later condemned to death by his own sons for taking part in a conspiracy to restore his cousin as emperor.

Another possibility is that June is named after the goddess Juno, who was Queen of Heaven. It was the fourth month of the Roman calendar, but around 700 BC, the emperor Nuna removed it to number six where it has remained. It was Julius Caesar who determined that June should have thirty days.

Although June has earned itself the title of Flaming June in this country, this was not achieved because of the heat of the sun; June is not the hottest month of the year. Records show, however, that it is the sunniest and probably the driest - on average. In a typically English manner, we cannot rely on that, however, because there can be very wet Junes and rather chilly ones, some of them even producing overnight frost.

For all the vagaries of our weather, therefore, we should enjoy June, the month which, in spite of everything, brings us summer.

I HAVE received a fascinating letter from a reader living near Coxwold in which he records a wealth of information about ploughing with horses and oxen, now largely forgotten due to the passage of time and to the adaptation of more modern farming methods.

The technicalities of ploughing are quite astonishing, not only because of the design of the ploughs but also because of system of gee breaks and wharve breaks coupled with the commands issued to the horses and oxen. The word wharve is an old dialect term meaning swerve, and it seems that the River Wharfe preserves this word in its name, for it does swerve its way down through the dale.

In ploughing, however, the command "wharfe" was more generally uttered as "arve", albeit elongated into "aa-aa-rve....-aa-aa-rve...-aa-aa-aa-rve", the entire command taking as long as five or ten seconds to complete. It was this command which instructed the horse or horses to turn left. The order to turn right, however, was delivered quickly and that was "gee back" taking only a moment or two. If the horses did not respond immediately, the command would be repeated, but always in a short, crisp manner.

My correspondent has undertaken some research into the difference of delivery between these commands and in fact, while he was a ploughman over a period of several years, experimented with a shortened version of "arve" which, it seems, had the desired effect. In his research, however, he has produced a fascinating suggestion, which is supported by earlier writers.

In medieval times and indeed much later, a good deal of ploughing was done by teams of oxen. The general change-over from oxen to horses seems to have occurred around the middle of the nineteenth century and in some cases a horse and ox would worked together as a pair while in other instances, two horses would lead a team of five or six oxen. Oxen were slower than horses but were able to work for longer periods in tougher conditions.

It was the slowness of a team of oxen which led to that long-drawn out command of "aa-aa-aaa-rve" which was spread over several seconds. It was done to keep the team turning to the left while they were ploughing.

My correspondent tells me that when a long team of eight oxen was hauling a swing plough, they could not bring it anywhere near the field boundary unless the team began to turn slowly left before the plough reached the headland. And so it may be likely that the long medieval teams of oxen never turned to their right.

Their system of ploughing, and the ploughs they used, demanded that every swerve or turn had to be towards the left, which in turn meant they ploughed exclusively wharfe breaks. There is no doubt sharp left turns were virtually impossible with oxen - and there was also the question of their long horns jabbing their team-mates if they made a sudden turn, so it seems the command of "gee back" arrived on the scene only when horses hauled the plough. Horses, with a changed type of plough, could turn both right and left and so produce gee breaks and wharfe breaks.

My correspondent is not stating categorically that long medieval teams of oxen never turned right, he is merely raising the question, but to obtain an answer one must study the complexity of the various types of plough and the method of ploughing a field.

Finally, he provides a lovely anecdote. He attended a ploughing match some years ago where the replica of a seventeenth century plough was on display. A pair of dales farmers were looking at it. The first one said: "That's a rum contraption, it wouldn't make a very good job. However did they manage with a plough like that?"

His pal responded: "They'd manage with no trouble at all!" to which the first one repeated: "Yes, but how did they manage?"

His pal then said: "Easy, they just had to put up with a bad job."

And so my correspondent has raised the question of whether teams of oxen ever turned right when they were ploughing, and he also wonders how the command "gee back" came to be used to order horses to turn right while ploughing. It's a world few of us know anything about!

THERE are two Gillings in the North Riding of Yorkshire and to distinguish between them one is called Gilling West and the other Gilling East, even though they are some 40 miles apart. Gilling West is near Richmond in Swaledale and Gilling East is not far from Helmsley in Ryedale.

Each has its own historic association, Gilling West once being regarded as the capital of Gillingshire, which was the centre of the northern fee of the Earls of Mercia. Fee is an old word suggesting an estate or property, from which fief has probably derived. Gilling's position declined when the Normans established their seat of local government at the then new centre of Richmond.

This Gilling has often been regarded as the place where Oswin, the King of Deira, was murdered in AD 651 by Oswy, the King of Bernicia. According to the Venerable Bede, it was then known as Ingetlingum, although there is a suggestion that Ingetlingum was really near Collingham in the West Riding. It is said that, to honour the murdered Oswin, Queen Aeanfled built a monastery at Gilling so that prayers could be offered for the murder victim and murderer alike and it has been suggested that this building was near Collingham, not at Gilling West.

Gilling East near Helmsley is known for its castle, which belonged to the powerful Fairfax family of Civil War renown. Within the castle is a magnificent panelled Great Chamber dating from Elizabethan times, but the castle is in private hands, now administered by the Abbot of Ampleforth as a preparatory school, but open to the public on occasions. Also of interest in Gilling East is the parish church whose tower dates to 1503. In all, a splendid brace of Gillings!