This example is unusual because it contains a naming story that is almost contemporaneous, and very close to first hand. It illustrates how place names may be given through trivial incidents. Although this one did not survive into official records, such naming by landowners or those associated with them could easily transfer into and be perpetuated by paper records. It is also unusual as it occurs during a period when there were few uses of the phrase in literary works. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Places | Tags: Coldharbour, Embleton, Izaak Walton, Northumberland, bush, derogatory, naming story | No Comments »
This site is recorded, so far as I can ascertain, only in a modern song referring to a local landmark. Although this site is close to the very early Beggars Bush at Philipstown, County Offally, it does not appear to have any connection with it. It may demonstrate the survival of the phrase is the region. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 24th, 2011 | Filed under: Places | Tags: Ballybrittas, County Offally, Ireland, Philipstown, bush, songs | No Comments »
By a Deed of Exchange dated 28 Nov 1679 Thomas Box acquired “land by the beggars bush, 1 land on long broome 1 eyes, other land on Thurnscoe Field east, 2 single lands on Carnaby field, all in Gt. Houghton”. The earliest entry used the definite article which suggests an actual bush, though it doesn’t prove anything about whether there was a beggar under under it. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 24th, 2011 | Filed under: Places | Tags: Great Houghton, Yorkshire, bush | No Comments »
“Newes from Jack Begger under the Bushe, with the advise of Gregory Gaddesman his fellow begger touchinge the deare prizes of corne and hardnes of this present yere” is the title of a pamphlet entered in The Stationers’ Register for 28 December 28, 1594, licensed to R. Jones.
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Posted: March 26th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Adam Foulweather, Gregory Gaddesman, Jack Begger under the Bushe, John Taylor, Literary, Poor Jack, Thomas Nashe, bush | No Comments »
Saxton’s county maps were the first national cartographic survey of England. They, and later maps based on them, were very important for the preservation and distribution of the place name & literary phrase Beggars Bush. They may have contributed to the mistaken connection of beggars with the site at Godmanchester near Huntingdon.
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Posted: March 20th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Christopher Marlowe, Christopher Saxton, Godmanchester, Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire, bush, early sites, maps, proverb | No Comments »
This is an unusual entry as it refers to an actual bush. It doesn’t refer to any beggars. Inevitably, this being Stratford upon Avon, William Shakespeare must be mentioned. He didn’t use ‘beggars bush’ as a literary phrase, although he does refer to being “married under a bush, like a beggar” in As You Like It (Act III, Scene 3). However, he may have known this actual bush.
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Posted: March 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Places | Tags: Godmanchester, Stratford, Warwickshire, bush | No Comments »
“I have here made bold to present to your illiterate protection, a beggarly Pamphlet of my threed-bare invention . . . I thought to have dedicated it to Beggars Bush, neere Andever, or to his Hawthorne brother within a mile of Huntingdon; but I considered at last, that the laps of your long Coate could shelter me as well [o]r better than any beggarly Thorne-bush.”
The Fool
Taylor’s mock dedication from the introduction to his pamphlet was directed towards Archy Armstrong, King James’s Fool, and refers to his coat of motley, the symbol of the Fool. Taylor despised Armstrong, who was renowned for his illiteracy and venality. He refers elsewhere to Armstrong’s “nimble tongue, to make other mens money runne into your purse” and called him “the bright eye-dazeling mirrour of mirth, adelantado of alacrity, the pump of pastime, spout of sport and Regent of ridiculous Confabulations”.
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Posted: March 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers, The Play | Tags: Andover, Ben Jonson, Brian Twyne, Elector Palatine, Godmanchester, Huntingdon, John Fletcher, John Taylor, Philip Henslowe, Saxton, beggars, bush, errors, proverb | No Comments »
A Perambulation of West Woodlands, 1605-1606 has Beggars Bush as a location on the boundary of West Woodlands. (SRO D.615, copy Frome Museum). The perambulation records going up the Broadway towards Cottles Oak, turning at White Cross “along the Way that leadeth Southwards towards Marston and so along the said Way unto Beggars Bush and then along the Way South cross the way that goeth over to Tytherington”.
Many of these locations are identifiable today; White Cross must be the junction of Broadway with Portland Road, so Beggars Bush must be somewhere along Portland Road, Dommetts Lane, Green Lane and Marston Lane, which form a continuous route across the headland of the West Field. The location was probably at Dommetts Lane.
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Posted: March 13th, 2011 | Filed under: Places | Tags: Frome, Oldford, Quinn, Somerset, West Woodlands, bush, early sites | No Comments »
