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| The Picketty Witch pub, Yeovil |
In the area where I live, there used to be a pub called
The Picketty Witch. It has recently been
sold and a large chain of supermarkets is planning to convert it into another
of their stores. The sign outside the
pub showed a witch on her broom. Looking
into the history of the area, however, I discovered that the name has nothing
to do with a witch. The word ‘picketty’
comes from the old English word ‘piccede’ or ‘piked’ as in a very sharp
point. There is a particular spot that
used to be a very sharp corner until the 1950s when it was rounded more for
traffic to be able to manoeuvre more easily.
The word ‘witch’ is mis-spelt and should be ‘wice’ or ‘wych’, another
name for an elm tree. A late 14th
century document refers to the spot as ‘Pycit Cross’ and it was later referred
to as ‘Pyked Weech’ which in turn became ‘Picketwitch’. In maps dating around the middle of the 1800s
there is evidence of elm trees growing in the area and one in that particular
spot. So Picketty Witch is nothing
sinister nor does it have any connection with the occult but just a gross
distortion of its original meaning of an elm tree in a corner plot of
land. What a difference!
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| Old English document |
I guess not many people could read the real old English
as written centuries ago and even if they could, the meanings of words often
change over the years. When I was a
child, ‘gay’ meant ‘happy’ – we used to dance ‘The Gay Gordons’. Now of course it has a completely different
meaning. Hardware meant buckets and
brooms and shovels – implements for cleaning and scrubbing not something to do
with technology. Other words that come
to mind are cool, hot, wicked … … and so we could go on. And so even in my lifetime, words have changed
their meanings. Often sayings cannot
easily be translated from one language to another, at least not word for
word. Such idioms are peculiar to a
language or even a dialect within a language.
There used to be a programme called ‘Call My Bluff’ when
team members would give three different definitions of a strange word and the
opposing team had to guess which explanation was the correct one. There were words that were peculiar to a
certain region or taken from some old dialect, now forgotten. If they can make several series of such a
programme, then it shows just how much language can change, be forgotten or
misinterpreted. If all that I have
written so far applies to simply the last few hundred years, then how much more
change would there be over the past 2 millennia? Much was handed down verbally rather than
written. Indeed it wasn’t until years
after the crucifixion and resurrection that the gospels were put down in
writing. Taking all this into account, I
find it amazing that there are many who are so dogmatic about their
interpretation of particular Bible verses to be the only truth. The Old Testament goes back even more
millennia.
Much of the Bible is written in symbolic language. Jesus spoke much in parables, stories,
figurative speech and picture language.
It seems unwise, therefore to take every verse of the Bible literally,
as many fundamentalists tend to do. Sometimes,
because of the passage of time, we really need to look more deeply at Bible
narrative and seek to answer the question ‘What is God really saying here?’ and
not jump to the wrong conclusions influenced by our 21st century
mindset and 2000 years of church history and tradition and also take into
consideration local expressions and changing words. Paul Leader posted a good example of this on
his blog here.
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