Folklore: weirs -finally!

Subject: RE: Folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 09:42 PM

Everyone knows about the weir on Rattys' beloved river in Wind in the Willows!

Leena and Joe. Columbus, OH laid a large ( must have been a 32 incher ) storm drainage pipe in the Olentangy River about a half a block from my house. One day after a storm a canoeist, his boy, and their dog decided to shoot the weir. They hit at a VERY SLIGHT angle and got caught in the undertow behind the weir. All had PDFs on, even the dog. They were experienced canoeists. Only the dog survived. My unit was called out to the rescue and we lashed up ourselves with heavy rope, sling belts, and heavy blocks and pulleys on each side of the river. The rescuers had instructions to pull like hell on the pulleys should one of us go down. I went down and, thanks to trained rescuers, was pulled back up. We got the dad out of his death roll and put him on our floating sled to be pulled to shore. His son had gotten caught on a submerged log and we couldn't get him out until two weeks later. The poor dog was in a panic, nudging his owner trying to revive him. We had to tie up the Lab as he tied a number of times to swim out to his other owner. As long as I live, I'll never forget that day.

SRS, If you get BEHIND your weir to clear trash, your nick name should be 'Silly' instead of Stilly. Maybe yours isn't very big. It certainly isn't round like a drainage pipe, so you are somewhat safer. But why mess with things? We'd like to have you on the 'cat for a long while. We like you too much to have something like this happen to you!

Subject: RE: Folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 08:33 PM

;~)

Actually, they never did find Cal and my real memory is of the small raft of flowers that was launched at his memorial service.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Folklore: weirs -finally!
From: kendall
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 07:24 PM

Charlie, I'll do the jokes.

Subject: RE: Folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Gareth
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 06:49 PM

But I suspect true !

Reminds me of an incident at the Upnor Sailing Club some years ago. I was acting as duty bosun, and keeping an ear on the VHF Radio whilst sitting in the bar.

It was one of those days when it was better to be in the Club House wishing that you were at Sea, rather than at Sea, wishing that you were in the Club House.

Over the VHF " Upnor etc. This is XXXXXX - I'am diverting to Queenborough, its bad out here !"

" Upnor Club, This is AAAAAA - If XXXXXX don't make it can I have his dinghy parking space ?"

Sorry for the drift !

Gareth

Subject: RE: Folklore: weirs -finally!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 06:24 PM

Charley, that is AWFUL :)

Subject: RE: Folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 03:31 PM

This query reminds me of what happened in my village in Maine back in the 1940's.

When one of local fishermen disappeared one night many years ago, the neighbors all expected that he had drown tending his fish weir. Cal was also known as a drunkard and everyone one knows that messing around with a skiff and drinking is looking for trouble. When Cal didn't show up the next day the neighbors began the search, looking for his skiff which was eventually found up the cove and grounded on the far shore. But there was no sign of Cal except for a half empty wine jug. Well, some continued to search along the shore while another group began dragging grapples through the weir. Long about evening Agnes, Cal's wife, heard a gentle knock on her back door and when she opened it there was a crowd of her neighbors standing there looking glum. She asked them if they had found Cal and the crowd parted down the middle and there was Cal stretched out on the cellar door drown dead, his body covered with starfish, crabs and one big lobster. So Agnes looks down at Cal, then looks at the crowd around her and says, "Well, boys, I guess we better strip off the take and set him again."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Folklore: weirs -finally!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 03:07 PM

Yes, the dictionary also has "weir" meaning a device for trapping fish. I didn't mention it because I don't know a song with that meaning in it.

"Weir" meaning "levee" is not usual, but it does occur. That's the meaning that makes the most sense in "Salley Gardens." A levee is abank that runs roughly parallel to a river and holds back floodwaters. Where I live, all the levees have grass growing on them.

The idiots who wrote "drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry" probably come from somewhere like L.A. and have never seen a levee. Levees are SUPPOSED to be dry.

As for riding a canoe over a weir, that's stupid. Canoes aren't safe boats to begin with, and there could be big rocks or a hunk of water-logged tree beneath the weir. Or a stolen car...

Subject: RE: Folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 01:01 PM

My neighbor across the creek took his bulldozer down in the creek and has built up a weir over the last couple of years. We have a pond back there now, with a lot more birds and fish than in the past. It'll serve nicely for my pump for watering the lawn this year. Trash washes up along the weir and we go pick it up after rains.

SRS

Subject: RE: folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 10:28 PM

Kendall, the natives had them on the west coast and Alaska as well. Salmon were a target in the west. Didn't see "Fence in the Water," but I wonder if eastern salmon also were a target in the northeast.

Subject: RE: folklore: weirs -finally!
From: kendall
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 10:08 PM

In the northeast, a weir is a big circular fish trap made from poles and netting that is used to trap herring that come into the bays to spawn. It is an ancient method, and in recent years, the remains of such weirs have been found near Boston that were built by the native Americans thousands of years ago. Some years ago, I narrated a film called FENCE IN THE WATER. It was produced by Peg Dice at the University of Michigan. Bodacious Films, she called her company.

Subject: RE: folklore: weirs -finally!
From: michaelr
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 10:06 PM

It's a fairly common last name, I believe (Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead comes to mind).

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 07:47 PM

There is a weir on the Bow River within Calgary (Canada) that is very dangerous. The water flowing over it is fast, and death is fairly certain to anyone swept over it.
There are several types of weirs (as posts above show). In Alaska, fish weirs (an enclosure set in the stream) are used to catch fish. The type I have mentioned in Calgary constricts the flow where it is installed, often there is a small diversion at the weir to divert water for some purpose- agriculture, mining, etc. I believe that the diversion at Calgary has been abandoned, but not sure.

Weir is one of the weird words in English that do not follow the rule- i before e except after c.

I have not seen 'weir' used for a levee in the US, but I suppose it is possible.

Subject: RE: folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Cattail
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 07:20 PM

Hi all

Weirs were also used to oxygenate and clean the water passing over them, as in the case of rivers or streams that had cotton mills or dye
works etc situated on them. The water tumbling over the edge and
rushing down to the bottom where it hit the stream again would take
in oxygen as it went, thus helping to keep the weed and other natural
cleaning elements alive.

This is why you occasionally see weirs which have stones embedded
in the down-slope of them, which again helps to aereate the water more
effectivly.

Most of these types of weirs, (which don't appear to do anything),
are to be found in the more industrialised areas.

Cheers for now

Cattail !

Subject: RE: folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 03:12 PM

A weir isn't so much a dam as the overflow from a dam. A couple of examples would be :-
1) A watermill has a dam to hold back the water of a stream, so it can give a "head" to the wheel which powers the mill. Once the dam has filled with water, it needs to escape from the system, A weir was built, usually returning surplus water to the original course of the stream or river. With the industrial revolution, in many places (particularly in the North of England) woollen mills and cotton mills were powered by water turbines. These needed more than just a small stream, so a weir was built across the whole width of a decent sized river, giving a powerful force of water through a small inlet to the turbines.
2) Many of England's canals were built in a course which parallels a river. Some were "Navigations" which means that locks were built in a river, to "flatten" out the downward flow of the water. At a lock, there was the need to allow excess water to return to the next level of the now canalised river. If it flowed over the lock, it could prevent the lock being used. The solution was to divide the river into two channels. One goes to the lock, the other to a weir, which water flows over to the next level.

Back to your songs / stories.
At Bath, if the river is flowing slowly, the water running over the weir will not have had much force behind it, so floating debris such as branches (and corpses) will be caught by the lip of the weir. At high flow - they wash over.
In the Sally Gardens, you refer to grass growing on the weir.
In one sense a grass covered weir is a sign of dereliction. If it was built power a mill, and was still functioning, it would not be covered with grass, the water would wash any seedlings away. If, however, the mill had closed down, the water turbines would have been dismantled and part ot the weir might have been dismantled or broken away, so water runs through the gap left, and does not go over the weir. Hence it becomes covered with grass.
In the song, (originally a poem by William Butler Yates - I believe) the grass on the weir is more likely to be growing on the edge of a weir on a slow flowing river - hence taking life easy. (strange people, these poets...).
Hope this makes our use of weirs in literature a bit more obvious.

Joe - weirs are commonly used over here by the nutters who paddle canoes. They use them on rivers which do not have white water rapids - probably don't have rapids because somebody dammed the river and built a weir - ironic eh!

Quack!!
Geoff the (aquatic correspondent) Duck.

Subject: RE: folklore: weirs -finally!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 12:47 PM

Hi, leeneia - in this part of the U.S. (California), a weir is a low dam that often has water flowing over the top. I had a friend who liked to "shoot the weir" with his canoe on the Kings river near Fresno. I thought he was crazy to want to go over the top of the dam in a canoe, but he was an Okie country boy who liked that kind of thrill.

That was in the mid-1970's. I wonder if there still are people in the Central Valley who speak with pride of their Okie heritage. I enjoyed my five years there, walking in the footsteps of Steinbeck and Saroyan and Woody Guthrie.

I still think he was crazy.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: weirs -finally!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 12:34 PM

Two days ago I read a mystery story (see the acronymn thread in BS) where a TV producer's corpse bobbed up against the weir in Bath. Today I downloaded a copy of "Salley Gardens," where grass grows on the weirs. What is it with Brits and their weirs?

(I use the terms "Brits" to cover all inhabitants of the British Isles, a geographical entity.)

Today I looked up weir in the unabridged dictionary. My fellow Americans, a weir can either a dam or a levee. So the producer came up against a dam in the book, and grass grows on the levees in the song.

Finally, I can sing that rhyme with a clear conscience!