Marshes
Marshy land has given the names Carr or Kerr (Scand.) and Marsh, originally an adjective, merisc, from mer, mere. The doublet Marris has usually become Morris. The compounds Tidmarsh and Titchmarsh contain the Anglo-Saxon names Tidda and Ticca. Moor also originally had the meaning morass (e.g. in Sedgemoor), as Ger. Moor still has, so that Fenimore is pleonastic. The northern form is Muir, as in Muirhead. Moss was similarly used in the north; cf. moss-trooper and Solway Moss, but the surname Moss is generally for Moses (Chapter IX). From slough we get the names Slow, Slowley, and Sloman (also perhaps a nickname), with which we may compare Moorman and Mossman. This seems to be also the most usual meaning of Slack or Slagg, also used of a gap in the hills
“The first horse that he rode upon,
For he was raven black,
He bore him far, and very far,
But failed in a slack.”
(Ballad of Lady Maisry.)
Tye means common land. Platt is a piece, or plot, of level country—
“Oft on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off curfew sound”
(Penseroso, 1. 73); and shape is expressed by Gore, a triangular piece of land (cf. Kensington Gore), of which the older form Gare, Geare, also survives. In Lowndes we have laund or lound—
“And to the laund he rideth hym ful right,
For thider was the hart wont have his flight
(A. 1691)—
a piece of heath land, the origin of the modern word lawn. In Lund and Lunn it has become confused with the Old Norse lundr, a sacred grove.
Laund itself is of French origin—
“Lande, a land, or laund; a wild, untilled, shrubbie, or bushie plaine”
(Cotgrave).
Its relation to land is uncertain, and it is not possible to distinguish them in such compounds as Acland (Chapter XII), Buckland, Cleveland, etc. The name Lander or Launder is unconnected with these (see p.186). Flack is Mid. Eng. flagge, turf. Snape is a dialect word for boggy ground, and Wong means a meadow.
A rather uncouth-looking set of names, which occur chiefly on the border of Cheshire and Lancashire, are compounded from bottom or botham, a wide shallow valley suited for agriculture. Hotspur, dissatisfied with his fellow-conspirators’ map-drawing, expresses his intention of damming the Trent so that
“It shall not wind with such a deep indent
To rob me of so rich a bottom here.”
(1 Henry IV, iii. 1.)
Familiar compounds are Higginbottom, Rowbotham, Sidebottom. The first element of Shufflebotham is, in the Lancashire Assize Rolls (1176-1285), spelt Schyppewalle- and Schyppewelle-, where schyppe is for sheep, still so pronounced in dialect. Tarbottom, earlier Tarbutton, is corrupted from Tarbolton (Ayrshire).