Countryman's Diary; Watching a crow behaving oddly

I experienced a simple example during this morning's walk.

As I climbed the hill, I noticed a carrion crow perched in the middle of the road. That in itself was not unusual - quite often, the road is littered with the carcases of traffic casualties, especially rabbits and sometimes small birds. Consequently, the presence of birds like the crow is most beneficial. They, and others like magpies and even foxes, do a wonderful cleaning job for us, removing carcases with impressive speed and efficiency.

As I approached the crow, I realised there was no carcase and so its presence was puzzling. Then a car came down the hill and the crow did not shift from its position, forcing the driver to make a slight detour to avoid running it over. By this time, I was very close to the bird and even then it did not fly off. With the car out of harm's way, I approached the crow and it simply sat and stared at me with its bright eyes. Had there been a carcase nearby, or even a young crow, I could have understood the bird's determination not to be denied its pleasure, but the road was clear.

I then wondered if the bird was injured. Perhaps it had been hit by a vehicle and was dazed?

But it looked lively enough, there was no sign of injury or blood on the bird, and no evidence of discarded feathers which is so often the result of an impact from a vehicle. Intrigued, I went closer. The crow waited until I was some 5ft from it, and then it took lazily to the air with slow wing flaps. It flew off without any sign of urgency or panic and disappeared over the hedgerow, leaving me pondering its behaviour. Unless, of course, it thought I was behaving oddly.

Burgh-breche

My Norwegian correspondent has pointed out the number of occasions that the word burgh, or variations of burgh, appear on the maps of Yorkshire and other northern counties. He refers to a similar Norwegian term meaning small castle, and comments on this link between his country and ours.

In the north of England, there are many variations of burgh, eg burh, burg, burgh, borough and brough, along with village name endings like -ber, as in Dowber, or in other names like Burton. An associated word is burghan, an old name for a secure burial place, while civic officials were known as burgesses. The original meaning of burgesses indicated tradesmen but it also referred to the inhabitants of a township or borough, generally indicating a walled town or a place of safety.

In thinking of burgh, therefore, we should consider its ancient reference to a walled enclosure, often built on a hilltop, for it was within such enclosures that the people lived in what they hoped would be safety and security. Gradually, these small burghs grew into larger communities with the suffix burgh following the name they had acquired, or sometimes serving as a prefix.

A few local examples, ancient and modem, include Brough, Middlesbrough, Scarborough, Goldsborough, Aldburgh, Burrill, Beningborough, Guisborough and others, but it is easy for us to connect burgh, in one or other of its forms, with a castle. Furthermore, the term borough, meaning a township which is not a city, also stems from borough, meaning a place of safety.

The act of breaking into one of those burghs was known as burgh-breche, or burgh-breach, and in fact the term burgh-breche was used to identify the fine imposed on people who broke the peace within a burgh. In modern terms, however, the word burgh-breach has come to us in another form - it is the origin of the term burglary.

Until 1968, burglary was the crime committed when someone broke into the dwelling house of another person during the night hours, ie between 9pm and 6am, with the intention of committing felony inside. A felony was then the name given to a serious crime, such as stealing, rape, murder and so forth. Breaking into a house during the daytime hours was called housebreaking, regarded as a lesser crime, while there was a range of similar crimes such as garage breaking, schoolhouse breaking, shopbreaking, factory breaking, warehouse breaking and so forth. In 1968, however, the law changed so that every offence of breaking into buildings became known as burglary. Whereas burglary had once been a fairly rare crime, suddenly it became very common. Even so, its name is a reminder of those ancient burghs which were supposedly secure place in which to work and live.

In contemplating burghs, however, there is a similar word which is spelt barugh, or baugh.

This is not pronounced as borough, however, but is pronounced as barf. This refers to a ridge of countryside, or perhaps the long crest of a hill, and it did appear in some local names such as Langbaurgh, the name given to a district. That was, and still is pronounced as langbarf, but whether the similarity of its spelling to that of burgh means that the words have an identical source is a matter for the experts to discuss. It is interesting, however, to think that an original word for burial place was burghan, but that our moors are rich with barrows - which sounds so like a variant of the burgh under discussion.

Good news

I have to thank a caravan driver who had the courtesy to pull into the side of the road to permit the tail of traffic behind him to overtake. We were heading into Wensleydale when we found ourselves at the tail-end of a long queue with the inevitable caravan acting as leader. But, unlike so many others in this situation, the young driver in question eased into the roadside to allow us all through, and then followed. He was a rare person - almost without exception, others behind whom I have found myself in such situations have stubbornly declined to offer this small act of courtesy.

It was with this in mind that I spotted a note which says that in recent years, sales of touring caravans have slumped. That is good news for most of us who live and work in the countryside, especially those whose homes are along caravan routes, or those who have to travel the lanes and byways in the course of their work. It does mean that fewer of these dreadful things are on the road.

In 1972, sales of new caravans reached 95,000; by 1990, the figure had dropped to 38,900 and last year it had again fallen, this time to 21,300. One manufacturer says he is going to cease building touring caravans; instead, he will concentrate on static vehicles.

I know that the Caravan Club does not accept that caravans clog our roads but perhaps some of its officials should study traffic using, say, the A64 near York during peak holiday periods. I went through one series of roundabouts recently, with traffic at a standstill en route to the coast, and counted a line of 24 touring caravan units, one immediately after the other in the nearside lane, all waiting to join the carriageway. They occupied an awful lot of road.

'One of each'

My letter bag this week (or perhaps I should say my e-mail file) contained a note from. a reader who refers to my pieces about slape, meaning cheap beer. He recalls that this word was widely used in the Malton area during the 50s and early 60s. He used the term himself and tells the story of going to a Leeds pub while attending university, to ask for a pint of slape. The bar tender had never heard the term - nor had a chip shop attendant heard the phrase "one of each" as an order for fish and chips.

Such problems continue to delight us as we struggle to understand the dialect and language of others. This was shown to good effect by The Two Ronnies in that lovely television sketch in a hardware shop when one of them asked for fork handles - or was it four candles