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Editor: David Long, Assisted by George Bruce. Web: Phil D.Long |
Spring 2000 |
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E-mail to the Editor
[Editor’s note: The convention when replying to emails is to do so point-by-point as you scroll down the incoming message. Thus the original posting is marked with >, and my response follows - and I’ve italicised it for easier reading]
In message Jack Cox writes:
>On behalf of Fidlers Ferry S C I would like to thank you for the regular copy of Canal Cuttings which I personally enjoy reading prior to hanging it up on our Notice Board for others to read.
You're welcome, and we're glad it gets so well read! Let us know if extra copies would be appreciated.
>The only long time irritation which re-emerges when I read it is the fact that you keep using the corrupted term "Fiddlers Ferry" instead of the correct Fidlers Ferry. Our club is the oldest sailing club on the River Mersey and has always taken the name of the area.
I don't doubt that "Fidlers" has a claim to being in widespread use as the name of the area in former times - we have the 1946 LMS Railway map of the Canal, and that spelling is used, perhaps because it was redrawn from older maps - but...
> In more recent times the power station arrived and corrupted the name by adding another 'd' and the local councils followed suit by copying the name of the power station when naming the road in front it.
... is simply not true. For instance, WE Palmer's book "The River Mersey" uses "Fiddlers Ferry", and that was published in 1944. As does Bradshaw's "Canals and Navigable Rivers of England and Wales" of 1904 in its description of the St. Helens Canal. Going back even further, to 1793, Aikin's "30 to 40 Miles around Manchester' quotes the 1761 Act which extended the Canal from Sankey Bridges to Fiddlers Ferry. I don't have a copy of the Act, but Dr. Aikin was writing only 30 years after it was passed.
> Against such high profile bodies the correct spelling is slowly being stifled by the corrupted version.
The change from 'd' to 'dd' obviously happened long before the Power Station was built, and presumably they merely adopted what had become the official version long before.
>I am surprised that a society like yours uses the newer corrupted spelling when relating it to the oldest working canal in our history.
Quite simply - if we went back to using the original spellings for English place-names we'd be thought rather strange. Practically everywhere has had a different spelling earlier in its history (Walintun for Warrington, Sonkey for Sankey, etc.), in much the same way as many ordinary English words had alternative spellings until printing presses brought in greater uniformity.
>In my possession I have a copy of a page from a book called "The Wirral Peninsula" which relates to the river freezing up in 1683; this reads (spelled as written, in old English):- "A great frost soe that people went over the pooll anywhere at any time of the tide, and it was thought by severall that a man at low water might have gone over to Liverpoole, all passage out of these parts to Liverpoole was by Warrington or ffidlers fferry, where they went over on Ise"
I know, you are probably more confused now by the two f's, but it is old English
'Nuff said, then!
>I await your comments , Best Regards, Jack Cox, Hon Sec, Fidlers Ferry Sailing Club
I think your Club is right to continue using the historic name in its title, but it is, I'm afraid, an archaism.
>P.S. I found your web site very impressive, keep up the good work
Thanks... the hardest bit is getting my son to add stuff to it as required.
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