’Tis true we only ‘grave’ in stone now, but it was not always so. Thus in the ‘Legend of Good Women’ mention is made of—
A little herber that I have
That benched was on turves fresh ygrave.
We still call the last resting-place of the dead in our churchyards a grave, though dug from the soil. I have already mentioned ‘de la Graveshend’ occurring as a surname. Our ‘Hargreaves’ hail from the grove where the hares are plentiful; our ‘Congreves’ representing the same in the coney. Our ‘Greeves’ we shall have occasion in another chapter to show belong to another and more occupative class of surnames. Our ‘Thwaites,’ too, belong to this category. Locally the term is confined to Cumberland and the north, where the Norwegians left it. It is exactly equivalent to ‘field,’ a felled place, or woodland clearing. The compounds formed from it are too numerous to wade through. Amongst others, however, we have, as denotive of the substances ridded, ‘Thornthwaite,’ ‘Limethwaite,’ ‘Rownthwaite,’ and ‘Hawthornthwaite;’ of peculiarity in position or shape, ‘Brathwaite’ (broad), and ‘Micklethwaite;’ of contents, ‘Thistlethwaite,’ ‘Cornthwaite,’ and ‘Crossthwaite.’ The very dress of the majority of these compounds testifies to the northern origin of the root-word.
Our ‘Slade’ represents the ‘de la Slades’ of the Hundred Rolls. A slade was a small strip of green plain within a woodland. One of the numberless rhymes concerning Robin Hood says—
It had been better of William a Trent
To have been abed with sorrowe,
Than to be that day in the greenwood slade
To meet with Little John’s arrowe.
Its nature is still more characterised in ‘Robert de Greneslade,’ that is, the green-slade; ‘William de la Morslade,’ the moorland-slade; ‘Richard de Wytslade,’ the white-slade; ‘Michael de Ocslade,’ the oak-slade, and ‘William de Waldeslade,’[[115]] the forest-slade (weald); ‘Sladen,’ that is, slade-den, implies a woodland hollow. As a local term there is a little difference betwixt it and ‘launde,’ only the latter has no suspicion of indenture about it. A launde was a pretty and rich piece of grassy sward in the heart of a forest, what we should now call an open wood, in fact. Thus it is we term the space in our gardens within the surrounding shrubberies lawns. Chaucer says of Theseus on hunting bent—