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The Serpent's Tale (History)
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aurelius



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Hatty wrote:


The current name -- Yewtree Headland -- is unambiguous but 'Iwes' seems open to interpretation.

For instance, is it referring to 'ewes' or even Ives, as in St Ives also with a tidal island/headland and an important crossing point albeit overland (St Ives Head is due north of St Michael's Mount).


Thanks for that Hatty, but just to be clear this Yewtree Headland is on a promontory loop of the Wye opposite Tintern and not as one may think south of Beachley and opposite to remains of St Tecla's Chapel on the island (the 1903 OS map refers to the ruins). I have not found a name for this 'headland'.
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Ishmael


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Funny. A decade ago, I posed to the group the question of whether there was perhaps some esoteric meaning to the riddle, "As I was going to St. Ives."
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Boreades


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aurelius wrote:
Thanks for that Hatty, but just to be clear this Yewtree Headland is on a promontory loop of the Wye opposite Tintern and not as one may think south of Beachley and opposite to remains of St Tecla's Chapel on the island (the 1903 OS map refers to the ruins). I have not found a name for this 'headland'.


Not to be confused with Saint Twrog's Chapel?

(Not to be confused with The Troggs in Somerset or Woger)

The good citizens of Citizan were on the telly a few nights ago. Bigging-up Saint Twrog's Chapel as a hermitage and a beaconage.

https://www.citizan.org.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Twrog

http://www.roughwood.net/ChurchAlbum/Gloucestershire/Beachley/BeachleyStTwrog2004.htm
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aurelius



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Thanks.

Not to be confused with St Tryak who is not to be confused with St Triaculus or indeed St Tereudacus, St Terendake. Or St Treacle.

Treacle is not particularly close to Tecla but when you translate it into Latin - theriaca, the voicing of the word barely sounds the 'h' and is quite close to Tecla.

Wee doe hereby sett downe declare & appoint the Extents Bounds & Limmits of the sd port of Cardiff & Members to Extend and be acountd from the point of Land called St Treacles point or Chappell on the East Side of the Mouth of the River Wye in a Supposd direct line South Westwards into the Sea to ye point of land calld Gold Clifft point & soe continued into the Sea to the point of land calld Sully point & Returnd & continud westwards in a Supposd direct line to Nash point and from there continud into the Sea West North Westward to Wormshead point and noe farther.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cardiff-records/vol2/pp368-381

...refers to the bounds of the city of Cardiff in 1714.

There is no clue as to the identity of the dedication-saint. St. Triaculus occurs on one Patent Roll. William Worcester refers to Sanctus Tiriacus anachorita, and to Rok Seynt Tryacle. Leland speaks of S. Tereudacus Chapel. Modern maps complete the confusion by printing St. Tecla.

http://www.historyfish.net/anchorites/clay_anchorites_one.html

Sailors wrapped their local accent around all these possibilities and came up with 'treacle'. (Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century ..., Volume 4).
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aurelius



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Ishmael wrote:
Funny. A decade ago, I posed to the group the question of whether there was perhaps some esoteric meaning to the riddle, "As I was going to St. Ives."


I followed this up as you mentioned it. The forum focussed closely on the significance of the symbolism of seven, yet the Opies claim through Wiki that:

The earliest known published version of it comes from a manuscript dated to around 1730 (but it differs in referring to "nine" rather than "seven" wives).[1] The modern form was first printed around 1825.[1]
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aurelius



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Indeed cats are associated with 'nine lives'.
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Ishmael


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What is the total if nine is the number?

Isn't the math 9x9x9x9 ?
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aurelius



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Last time you worked out the figure based on sevens:

By the way...the total number of "kits, cats, sacks, wives" is 2800


Maths not my strongpoint but I think it would be one man plus

9 wives.
9 wives with 9 sacks = 81
9 sacks each with 9 cats = 81 x 9 = 729
729 cats each with 9 kits = 729 x 9 = 6561 altogether, a much bigger figure.

But of course, none of them are going to St. Ives.


If anyone wants to find the entire discussion it was under

As I was going to St. Ives (British History)
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Mick Harper
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And goes even further back to our previous site (the Quest Group) in which Ishmael (or M J Harper as he was calling himself at the time) introduced the subject. I daresay somebody with access to this old site might do some excavation and post the results up here.
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Ishmael


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I think Dan Crisp has the archive. I'd like to get it one day. I'm sure there's material there that can be mined. I've learned a great deal in the past decade. Might be able to make more of some of my early thoughts, now forgotten.
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aurelius



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Hatty wrote:


French for yew is if
French for Jew is juif.

I was going to call one of my post headings The Wandering Yew...

12345679 × 9 = 111111111
12345679 × 18 = 222222222
12345679 × 81 = 999999999


Now in Norse mythology the Universe is divided into 9 worlds, all connected by the world tree Yggdrasil, which I am hoping to pursuade you is most likely a yew. And that yew, within its range, could easily have other venerated specimens, including the sacred tree at Uppsala in Sweden, which Adam of Bremen describes,

Near that temple is a very large tree with widespread branches which are always green both in winter and summer. What kind of tree it is nobody knows. There is also a spring there where the pagan are accustomed to perform sacrifices and to immerse a human being alive.


With the majority of the U.K.'s ancient yews being in churchyards (72%), and an impressive proportion of them in Welsh churchyards we are an important gene pool for the yew, with the vast majority of stands in Asia, North America and Europe severely depleted.

The area of Gloucestershire around the Severn and Wye is still an area relatively rich in yew; not just on the cliffs opposite Tintern (where the roots of one has infiltrated the layers of stone of the Devil's Pulpit)



but also at iwdene in Tidenham, eow cumb in Stoke Bishop and historically they gave their name to Uley. Robert Bevan-Jones adds Eow Rhyc (yew ridge) from a charter concerning Upton-on-Severn and a cumuleu iriuenn ('yew barrow') at 'Manaur Troumur' near the wandering Wye.
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aurelius



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Hatty wrote (On AE On Telly News):

Beachley doesn't sound at all Welsh nor does Chepstow


Wiki makes no reference to this but it seems to have become Beachley early in the eighteenth century. Thus on the Ordnance Survey map of 1828 (railway additions 1862) it is definitely Beachley, and Chapel Rock is marked as St Tecla's Chapel. The course of the ferry is marked out and there is a speck of an island
further south called Charstone Rock.

In 1724 Beachley still appears to have the same spelling, however the cartographer marks Charstone as Sherston.

The 1610 maps of John Speed are interesting in that the details on the Gloucestershire map are slightly different from the Monmouthshire one. In both Beachley is shown by its former name of Bettesley. On the Gloucestershire one 'Charston' rock is the name of the lump between Aust and Sudbrok (sic) whereas on the Monmouth one it is 'Sherston'. Gloucestershire has 'St Treacle Chapel' whilst Monmouth has 'The Treacle'. On Gloucester Charstone rock is much larger than on later maps and 'The Treacle' is not shown as a rock at all; on Monmouth, St Treacle Chapel is perched on a rock as big as Denny Island and Charston rock is about a sixth of its size.

The earliest map I have found of this area is Saxton's of 1577 which shows proportions similar to Speed's Gloucestershire, with the appellations 'The Treacle' and 'Bettesley Passage'.

Chepstow is shown by its modern spelling throughout. The orthodox position on 'Chep' is that it represents 'market' as in Eastcheap, Cheapside etc.
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Mick Harper
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Well, now we know 'treacle' is important. Surely there cannot have been such a thing as treacle as early as 1610. To get 'treacle' into popular discourse means molasses and that means a sugar industry and there wasn't one at this time. Was there?
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Hatty
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When they went to investigate the island (at low tide) the presenters found the mud was quite an obstacle and the river was just a trickle. Treacle-like, in fact.

The usual etymology of treacle is something about anti-snake bites and the like. Perhaps mud was considered medicinal but it's tricky. There was surely a need for on-site assistance for people and boats in a tight spot. (This came up in The Megalithic Empire with 'bogey-men' and the need for guidance on various difficult terrains.)
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Mick Harper
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boats in a tight spot.

Presumably twice a day boats couldn't get past so needed anchoring (hence anchorites) but more generally the Severn estuary is a very weird place for boats so (presumably) they were held here to await more clement conditions of wind and tide. Also there is the question of pilots which we occasionally encounter. Don't tell Ishmael, he'll have them condemning messiahs.
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