Phil Quinn Beggars Bush: A study of liminality and social exclusion
Phil Quinn takes a look at the ubiquitous place name of Beggars Bush and finds darkness at the edge of town
Quinn Beggars Bush 3rd Stone 1999
(Right Click to open in a new tab)
Origins
As the purpose of this website is to put up for examination research into the place name Beggars Bush I felt I should include this article because it prompted my researches. Quinn’s hypothesis was that these were liminal sites on boundaries where begging or beggars were tolerated.
The attached article was in the magazine Third Stone described as “The Magazine for the New Antiquarian” – sadly now itself an antiquarian item and difficult to find.
Phil Quinn’s article interested me because it was plausible, and based on a systematic analysis of place names sourced primarily from Tithe Surveys for north Somerset & south Gloucestershire. It also identified several sites around Frome where I live, which I could investigate and visit by mountain bike.
But now . . .
I projected an article on Beggars Bush to 3rd Stone which wasn’t published before the magazine closed in 2003. I asked in that “Can we say whether the name was given because the people on the land were beggars already or because it had a reputation that those who owned it would themselves end up at “beggars bush”?” I’m now confident that we can, and that Phil Quinn’s hypothesis is wrong.
The accepted source of the name in most place name studies is that is means poor land. I will post the positive case for the literary explanation for that elsewhere. I will also offer and reject other explanations that are even less likely, but I should summarise the negative case against Phil Quinn’s hypothesis here. Read his article and make up your own mind.
Lack of evidence that the sites were “liminal”
Quinn suggests that the sites were psychologically and socially marginal – places of burial, spirits, suicides, magic and outcasts. Crossroads were used for the burial of suicides, but apart from one Beggars Bush with a dubious ghost (Wadhurst) I haven’t been able to find evidence of any of these things at any actual Beggars Bush site (or indeed any beggars).
Location near boundaries isn’t probative
There is good evidence that the sites at Frome, Oldford & Berkley, Lullington and Laverton were poor land. This also fits the marginal location of many of the sites; parishes were centred on manors, which would be located near the best land. Land close to the edge of a parish was more likely to be marginal for agricultural production, less productive, more affected by the variations of weather, and give a poor return per input. I accept that temporary use by travellers might also be more likely to be tolerated on land that was not intensively cultivated.
Are they located near boundaries?
Although Quinn found many sites were within 200m of a (usually parish) boundary I’m not convinced that this is statistically significant or probative. Because of the size and shape of parishes in Quinn’s survey area I think that a high proportion of fields would qualify. Place names identifying poor land or given to land claimed from forest would also be likely to be nearer the boundaries. Also, as Keith Briggs has shown, there may be statistical correlations between a place name and a feature that cannot possibly arise from a causative relationship between them.
Roads are often on boundaries
Quinn suggests that the location near roads and cross roads allowed easy escape if toleration broke down. However, roads before turnpikes were developed often followed field headlands and boundaries.
Beggars Bushes are Early Modern
The word “bush” in its modern usage to mean a low shrub can be traced to Leland and Chaucer; OED gives references for “beggar” back to 1225. However, the two are not put together to make Beggars Bush before 1526. It is true that there are fewer records before this time, but the absence of any record before then, especially given the frequency of the name after that time.
Early Modern beggars didn’t sleep under bushes
The first uses of the name coincided with the great growth in the Tudor & Elizabethan periods both in the numbers of vagrants & vagabonds but also literature about by them. However imaginative some of this may have been, periodically there were large numbers of people with no fixed home. However, Elizabethan writers normally refer to this travelling underworld using buildings, such as isolated barns. Using actual testimony from early modern records Beier records that up to 20% of vagrants reported sleeping rough, which means that more than 80% must have slept in some structure. Without shelter many of the sites are inhospitable, on high exposed ground, with little cover. Near each site are woods, and valleys which would offer better shelter, sources of game, and more discreet.
Early Modern beggars weren’t tolerated
The period during which the place name becomes common was one when vagrants were anything but tolerated. The Early Modern period is marked by repeated legislation against travellers, under which it was an offence punishable by banishment or execution to even pretend to be an “Egyptian”. Vagrants were to be whipped and returned to their home parishes, and there were “General Searches” for vagabonds. David Mayall points out this is a very difficult area to research, as while persecution produces paper, tolerance and inactivity leave no record. The place name is widespread – there is no evidence of widespread toleration.
The sites were not suitable for begging
Begging needs footfall. Most of these sites are and were isolated. There are places where begging has become tolerated, for instance, as Penniless Porch in Wells which has a lengthy history as a sanctuary for beggars. They are pinch points in town centres, or portals. Remote sites were more suitable for robbing than begging; a letter in Daily Bristol Times and Mirror, 18th August 1891, complaining about the state of the Beggars Bush Lane at Long Ashton, Bristol said “a more unpleasant place to encounter a resolute and importunate tramp I cannot imagine”.
The sites wouldn’t be called Beggars Bush
Finally, if land was used by travellers, would they be called beggars by the local population? Most legal records refer to vagrants or vagabonds, being the words used in the numerous Acts passed to control them. Travellers were diverse, and were divided by the settled population into groups. Commonly they were called gypsies, whether or not they were by descent or culture “Egyptians”, or Rom.
Thanks
Phil Quinn and Neil Mortimer, editor of Third Stone, for permission to reproduce the article
Quinn, P., Beggars Bush: A study of liminality and social exclusion,3rd Stone, issue 33, 1999, p.13-15
Further Reading
Place Name Distribution
K. Briggs, ‘The distribution of distance to Roman roads in England’ Nomina 32 (2009) 43-58 (early version at <http://keithbriggs.info/distance_to_roman_roads.html>)
R. Coates, ‘Coldharbour – for the last time?’ Nomina 8 (1984) p.73
Agriculture
Bailey, M. (1989), The concept of the margin in the medieval English economy. The Economic History Review, 42: 1–17
Vagrants
F. Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (London, 1913, reprinted New York, 1967)
A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640 (London, 1985)
A. L. Beier, ‘Vagrants and the Social Order in Elizabethan England’, Past & Present, LXIV (1974) p.3-29
J .J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, (London, 1889, 3rd ed. 1925)
D. Mayall, English Gypsies and State policies, (Hatfield, 1995) p.22-24
P.A. Slack, ‘Vagrants and Vagrancy in England 1598-1664’ Economic History Review 2nd Series XXVII (1974) 360-79
L. Woodbridge, Vagrancy, homelessness, and English Renaissance literature, (Baltimore, 2001)
Posted: March 17th, 2011 | Filed under: Speculations | Tags: Berkley, Frome, Gloucestershire, Laverton, Lullington, Oldford, Quinn, Somerset, Wadhurst, beggars | 3 Comments »
I wish to thank and congratulate Neil for this remarkable website, the product of years of careful research and thought.
It is clear from the earliest recorded dates for the occurrence of Beggars Bush place-names that they pre-date the earliest known literary references, although it is curious that none is known to date earlier than the 16th century.
It is my personal contention that the ultimate origin of the place-name is the bush under which beggars and other wayfarers could shelter from the weather, similar to the Shepherd’s Bush (also a widespread place-name) described by Barclay Wills: ‘I then asked asked Mr. Humphrey whether he had ever used a cave, or shepherd’s bush. ‘Yes,’ he said, […] I once had another place near Selsey [West Sussex], in a thorn bush. I cut some of the bush away and put dry fern and straw and stuff inside, and some sacks. It was a handy place on wet days. I could get in it and look out at the flock. It would have taken three days’ rain to wet it through.’ Barclay Wills’ The Downland Shepherds, S. Payne & R. Pailthorpe (eds), Alan Sutton Publishing, 1989.
Early Modern beggars may not have slept under bushes, though this may be too sweeping an assertion, but if specially prepared bushes were good enough shelter for shepherds, why not for beggars?
Dear Neil
Came across your fascinating site when checking something I often comment on as a tourist guide in the southern English countryside.
I haven’t read it all but here is my tuppence worth.
I’ve always made a point of drawing attention to the fluffy vine you see in winter and spring on the edge of woods, usually called Old Man’s Beard. I then say how it was used by beggars arriving in a settlement – they used to rub the leaves into their faces and hands to create horrible sores in order to attract the pity of their targets. I do half my guiding in French, and in France, this plant (clematis vitalba) is known as “Herbe aux gueux”, or approximately, “Beggar’s Bush”, and all French tourists seem to be familiar with the origin of the French name.
I have always assumed that the French name was a very old usage, and hundreds of years ago when most travellers in England (or at least in the south, where most Beggar’s Bush placenames seem to be concentrated) would have been French speaking, their use of the French name would have given rise to a cognate English name for the same plant. It would have been a common feature of the landscape, especially found at the entry of towns and villages, where stories and warnings of beggars using the plant would be current, thus giving rise easily to local landmarks called Beggar’s Bush.
QED? Whatever, I won’t be changing my story…
Richard Bartelot
Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide
Tel/mob +44 (0) 333 444 1066
Fax +44 (0) 333 444 1966
email: info@southernguide.co.uk
web: http://www.southernguide.co.uk
Thank for your thought provoking comment.
I have considered the relationship between Beggars Bush and the gueux tradition in the Low Countries, which is consistent with the early modern literary usage, of honourable people brought to penury. It is something I intend to investigate further, particularity in the context of the Fletcher and Massinger play, as they had previously written a play about the Low Countries.
https://www.beggarsbush.org.uk/433/
However, I had not considered a possible French connection. My immediate reaction is that the development of the phrase in English and the precursors make any French original unlikely/unnecessary. See
https://www.beggarsbush.org.uk/anthologies-–-why-the-oed-and-brewer’s-dictionary-are-wrong/
I am aware of several recipes for sores, though not one using this plant. Thomas Harman A Caveat for Common Cursitors (1566) cites the use of “an herb called spearwort, either arsenic, which is called ratsbane”, and Thomas Dekker [?] in O per se O says “crowfoot, spearwort and salt” were used by artificial clapperdudgeons. In Ralegh’s Last Journey a fictionalised but well-source book by Paul Hyland he gives another recipe used by Ralegh’s physician to create a skin rash.
I would also tend to discount a French connection because I can find no mention of the connection in The English Wayfaring Life (1884) by J J Jusserand, who was the French Ambassador in Washington DC and an Anglophile.
From my analysis of the sites I can locate precisely with any confidence very few are in or at the entrance to towns or cities. Most fit the early modern usage being marginal land which was unproductive, and possible uneconomic to improve – the beggars were those seeking to cultivate or improve the land.
If Old Man’s Beard was connected with Beggars Bush as a place name it would be more likely to be from is invasive habit. I have considered whether, if there is a plant, it may be Hawthorn, which is invasive of disturbed or open ground. Some Beggars Bushes are close to white~ place names which may be from OE for clean/clear ground. However, this is a speculative possibility.
I hope this is of interest. None of this is absolutely conclusive, so I can’t stop you if want to carry on with your story.