I am, no doubt, with many others, obliged by the information contained in your Every-Day Book, especially in giving the etymology and origin of things of old and present practices.
But being a dabbler in etymology myself, I was disappointed in finding none for the present season of the year, autumn; and as many of our names of places were, no doubt, given by our Saxon ancestors, we in the north retain more of that language, and consequently more familiar with the names of places than you in England.
Perhaps there is not one hundred persons in Langbourn ward know any meaning to the two words by which the ward is called; but to any child in Scotland the words are significant.
Will you then allow me to give you my etymology of the seasons?
Spring makes itself familiar to almost every one; but summer, or as we would say in Scotland, means an addition, or “sum-more,” or “some-mere;” viz. if a person was not satisfied with his portion of victuals, he would say “I want sum-mere.”
And does not this correspond with the season, which in all the plants and fruits of the field and garden, is getting “sum-mere” every day, until the months of August and September, when according to the order and appointment of the great Lawgiver, they are brought to perfection, and gathered in?
Then comes the present season, autumn, or as we would in the north say, “ae-tum,” or “all-empty,” which is the present state of the gardens, trees, and fields; they are “ae-tum.”
The last season brings with it its own name by its effects, “wind-tere.”
If these observations will add any thing to your fund of information, it will not diminish that of
Your humble servant,
A North Britain.