Folklore/language: Of snickets and ginnels

Subject: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Arnie
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 11:03 AM

When I was a kid in the West Riding of you know where, we called the passageway between two houses a snicket. In Yorkshire dialect books I've seen the same thing called a ginnel (maybe S.Yorks?. Now that I'm in Kent no-one knows what a snicket is, but they refer to it as a twitten (god knows where that originated!) It occurs to me that there must be a few more variations to describe an alleyway around parts I have not visited, like East Anglia and most of the rest of the world. Any offers??

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Drumshanty
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 11:16 AM

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: bill\sables
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 11:18 AM

In County Durham it was called a "Lonnen"

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Drumshanty
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 11:20 AM

Sorry! 's been a long day.

They are called 'closes' in Edinburgh and we call them that in Elgin too although I am sure there is another older name that I will have to look up. My da, on the other hand, says he's going 'up the entry'. He's from Belfast.

Tracy

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 11:43 AM

'Gulley' in parts of the Midlands ... in other parts. a gulley is the little hole in the ground where the water from the sink or the drainpipe goes. I never knew hoe to tell which part I was in, but it's OK as long as no-one asks directions! There's a 'ginnel' that runs down from Mellish Road to the Arboretum (I think) in Walsall.

Steve

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 11:54 AM

When I were a nipper in Brummagem we called them "entries".
RtS

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Mountain Dog
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 11:57 AM

Narrow passageways between buildings are called "opes" in Cornwall.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Susie
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 01:35 PM

Where I live now in Cumbria we have a ginnel, but when I lived in Nottinghamshire, it was called a gennel (still with a hard "g"). I've always wondered whether the name is derived in some way from "tunnel". A "lonnin" here is just a narrow lane, ususally not suitable for vehicles and certainly not with a roof, which a ginnel always has - one of the houses on either side making use of the floor space above! We have swallows nesting in our ginnel every year - lovely, but they dive at us alarmingly every time we go through. Regrettably for them, we can't be discouraged as it's the only way to our back door! Susie

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 02:09 PM

tenfoot

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 02:11 PM

In Oxford we called them Cracks.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 03:22 PM

Gennel or Ginnel in South Yorkshire, as Arnie suggested; usually with a soft G.  Sidney Oldall Addy (A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield, 1888) gave the word, mentioning that it appeared in Lancashire as ginnel, and around Leeds as ginnil, with a hard G; in that case it was "generally understood to mean a passage between a wall and a hedge, or between two walls".

He also referred to Gin-Hoil, "a footpath in Dore with a wall on on each side and a post at the end.  Probably the same as gennel... A[nglo] S[axon], gin, a gap, an opening."

"Hoil" is "Hole", of course.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Penny S.
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 06:48 PM

They're twittens in Sussex, too. I think they have a rural origin as small tracks giving access to fields off the road, rather than the urban meanings in some of the above. Isn't there another word somewhere - I used to know quite a few of these words, all two syllable with a diminutive sound, collected as we holidayed around the country.

Penny

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Penny S.
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 06:53 PM

Vennels, I think, somewhere. Scotland?

Penny

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Snuffy
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 08:21 PM

We always called them ginnells (hard g) in cheshire, but here in Warwickshire (Alcester), a passage between two walls without a roof is called a 'tuery'

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: RangerSteve
Date: 17 Jul 01 - 11:32 PM

G.B.Shaw was right: We are two nations divided by a common language. But thanks for this thread. If I ever get to the UK and have to ask directions, I'll have a slight idea what people are talking about.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Sooz ( at work )
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 03:38 AM

Eightfoot, or twitchel in the area of Nottinghamshire where I grew up.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: IanC
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 05:33 AM

We have a Twitchell here in Ashwell, Herts. I don't think the terms are entirely mutually exclusive, though my Bradford relatives always seem to call them Snickets.

Has anyone noted down Ullet for one of the Yorkshire versions of the term?

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Gervase
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 05:44 AM

In Lowestoft the narrow alleys running from the High Street down to the shore are called Scores (from the Anglo Saxon scorean meaning 'to cut', I think)

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 06:14 AM

Arnie, ginnel (hard G) was the word in my part of the West Riding: Leeds. Or Crossgates to be more precise. Maybe it depends on whether you call the gathering of combustibles for Bonfire Night "chumping" or "progging" - or even whether it's not Bonfire Night but Plot Neight. In my experience, five or ten miles could make all the difference.

On the other hand, "lonnin" for farm lane, as mentioned by Suzie, seems to hold good all over Cumbria, or at least from Wetheral to Egremont. Though if we're reviving the Ridings, I should perhaps be saying Cumberland.

Entries, Belfast style, are not quite the same thing as ginnels. In residential areas of Belfast an entry runs between two terraces of houses, at the rear of both, on to which backyards open (known as back streets in northern England, and actually named as such, as in the Liverpool song, Back Buchanan Street). In the city centre an entry is more likely to be a bustling alleyway, maybe containing a shop or two, or a bar (eg the Morning Star). A ginnel (in Crossgates, Leeds, at any rate) would typically be a pedestrian-only link between two roads, passing between a couple of houses and their gardens. No roof.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 08:59 AM

In Newcastle the ones that run down to the Tyne are called Chares.

"He cam oot the bottom of the chare eatin a brick ye knaa"

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: KitKat
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 09:02 AM

I too remember them as 'entries'. I have heard that the Shropshire/Welsh border area word for them is 'entanies'. Presumably from the same root.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Ringer
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 09:44 AM

Twitchell in my native village in Nottinghamshire, but squitchell in the neighbouring village (whence hove my mother).

Sooz: is "eightfoot" native to Notts, too? I've never heard that usage.

Snuffy: how is "tuery" pronounced? (too-er-ie?) Is it related to "tuyere", the tapping hole in a steel furnace?

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 09:52 AM

When I grew up in Bradford we had both snickets AND ginnels. I would say that the ginnel went between houses, as in Fionn's definition a couple of postings up. A snicket as I recall was longer and went somewhere. It was often the part of a footpath which was bordered on both sides by a hedge or fence, often a shortcut between one part of an estate to another.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Snuffy
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 04:36 PM

Bald Eagle - yes, 'too-er-ee' (or sometimes choo-er-ee). And going by Geoff the Duck's definitions, a tuery is really a snicket, but the end of it is often a ginnel.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Arnie
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 05:05 PM

Many thanks to all who replied. It really is comforting to know that despite 'estuary English' , BBC English and all the rest, dialect is still going strong....but for how much longer???

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Vectis
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 06:03 PM

Twitten down here in Sussex.
Alley in South London.
On the Island they were just paths or side paths. Lanes were longer and went somewhere other than between houses.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 06:27 PM

I was amused by an entry in the OED about gennel (ginnel). 1613- "Robert Charnocke has newly erected a privie, the ffilthe whereof ffalleth into a certen gynnel or gutter." The first published use of the word for a long, narrow passage is 1669. Of course, these are the earliest dates found by the editors; they could be much earlier. Any songs about gennels? I have heard a lot of dialect on the BBC lately. BBC English was very useful in the days when radio reception was poor, and it was also a link that bound the far-flung empire.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: LR Mole
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 02:38 PM

You guys are making all this up, right? And you're all in a room together? "OK, we'll tell them the word for saucepan is...smorclet!!"

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: MMario
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 03:02 PM

mole - everyone knows a "saucepan" is a "soppippin"

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Sooz
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 03:45 PM

Bald Eagle- I don't think I heard about eightfoots until I moved to Hull. I always though they were the poor man's tenfoot! I'm resisting the temptation to start a thread about the different regional names for bread rolls (cobs, baps, breadcakes................)

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Penny S.
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 03:51 PM

I think we've been there - Kentish huffkins, I remember. And we ain't makin' it up, 'onest. Just don't get us started on children's truce words, or the words for what you do with the tea after pouring in the boiling water and befoe pouring it out. We've got diversity over here, and then some.

Penny

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Penny S.
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 03:56 PM

Eh bien: ici un(e) vennel en Normandie.

French Vennel

Other references are to sites in Cromarty and Glasgow

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Penny S.
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 04:05 PM

Other references I found are to .....

And this one

Scottish Vennel (with links)

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Penny S.
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 04:20 PM

I've run Google on twitten, vennel and ginnel, all of which come up - haven't tried the others yet, but here's a discussion on snickets and ginnels.

Yorkshire discussion

By the way, I think the French vennel comes from Looking-glass land.

Penny

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Lizzy
Date: 20 Jul 01 - 03:28 AM

My recollection is in accord with Geoff the Duck. Having lived many years in Bradford and before that in North Yorkshire I understand a ginnel to be a snicket with a roof. So a ginnel is, for example, the passageway through a row of back-to-back houses. A snicket is, as Geoff says, a longer path or lane but open to the elements. In Leicester, where I now live, both are called jittys or jittyways.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: RoyH (Burl)
Date: 20 Jul 01 - 03:44 PM

I grew up in the Notts/derby border area. The word there was 'twitchell'. I assume that is how it's spelt, I never saw it written down. Our word for pavement was 'corsey', derived from 'causeway' I should think.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Jul 01 - 04:30 PM

Twitchel is a very old word for a narrow passage between walls or hedges (Old and Middle English- see OED). It is interesting to see that it and some of the other words mentioned here survive locally. Twitten is old Sussex, as noted by Vectis. Twitting is another word for the same thing. Not all words mentioned here are considered dialect, by the way, they are just seldom or locally used now. Long may they survive! Television and computer English are removing much of the flavor of the English language.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,jack the lad
Date: 20 Jul 01 - 04:33 PM

has anyone heard of a "finkle"? I heard it as a lad in Yorkshire- my teacher said it was a ginnel. Jack The Lad

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Jul 01 - 11:16 AM

Amazing. Wonder if we have any equivalent esoterica? Other than 'poke' for 'bag' or 'sack' in the American South, I can't think of a single one in U.S. English.

On a less exotic note but still distinct from us, an English couple the other day told me that over there our 'sidewalk' is your 'pavement' and our 'pavement' is your 'tarmac'. Our 'tarmac' is the concrete or asphalt-surfaced idling section of a runway for a plane about to take off- what do you call that?

Ebbie

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Arnie
Date: 21 Jul 01 - 02:52 PM

Ebbie,

Dead right! Sidewalk is pavement over here and tarmac is the road and also the airport runway. I won't bore you with the other differences as you no doubt know them already! None of which is to do with snickets, ginnels and all the rest - it's a wonder we Brits understand each other let alone your lot!!!

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Les from Hull
Date: 21 Jul 01 - 04:09 PM

Jack the Lad - there are still many Finkle Streets in Yorkshire, but I'm not sure of the derivation.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Penny S.
Date: 22 Jul 01 - 04:45 AM

Actually, Arnie was the first to mention twittens

Penny

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Neil B
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 08:00 AM

I have just returned from a walk around Alcester and Googled 'Tuery'. This gave me this thread which I have just read out to my wife and mum and it has provided great interest and amusement. Thank You!

We have heard of so many of the different words, as between the three of us we have connections to Yorkshire, Leicestershire, The Midlands and Sussex, but as a Scouser I generally knew of them as 'entries'. However, many years ago I did some research and discovered that in Liverpool they were known as 'jiggers' and 'me mum' has just confirmed the same.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 08:55 AM

There's a Finkle Street in Kendal.
Apart from closes, in Scotland, we also have wynds.
Poke mentioned above is common parlance in the west of Scotland, for a paper bag. Think, 'Buying a pig in a poke'
Weakness was described as, not being able to punch your way out of a wet poke.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: theleveller
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 09:08 AM

There's a Finkle Street in Selby. And I'm reminded of that Yorkshire description of a bow-legged person..."'E couldn't stop a pig in a ginnel."

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 09:29 AM

Scotland has wynds, but Lancashire has weinds in
Preston; Main Sprit Weind, Anchor Weind
Garstang; Thomas's Weind
Great Eccleston; The Weind

I think we'd call them ginnels today.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: selby
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 09:49 AM

FINKLE comes from the Old Norse meaning elbow, bend or even dog-leg. There was also an old Danish word, vincle, which meant a corner, angle or short, winding street. Finkle St inSelby has a bend in it.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: ian1943
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 11:38 AM

Here in the city of Durham we call them vennels.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 12:42 PM

With regard to RoyH, "causeway" is derived from "Causey way" (however you spell it), not the other way round. I looked it up once, but can't remember where1 Might have been Chambers' dictionary.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 01:09 PM

In Salford we called them entries

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 02:11 PM

Yes, these are twittens in Sussex and Lewes has a network of them, like a secondary nervous system. When we have our own social medium it should probably be called Twitten, in fact. Getting round the town on the main streets is inevitably slowed down by meeting people you know, but if you're in a hurry you use the twittens because they are always empty. Most of them have flint walls stitched with brick courses.

I'm told that the name is related to the German word 'zwischen', meaning 'between'.

There are some splendid pictures of Lewes twittens among these by the local artist Peter Messer.

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,BrendanB
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 04:16 PM

Never heard of a ginnell with a soft 'g', 'though I have heard it used in Northumberland, Yorkshire and Coventry. Loads of Fenkle streets in Northumberland and Tyneside, I'd love to know what it means.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Rumncoke
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 07:03 PM

The ways called ginnells, g as in good, around my first home in Barnsley now in South Yorkshire, were the ways between double hedges, often worn down with use so they were in effect an 0 shape, with the branches meeting overhead, or any narrow lane with the same over arching.

A snicket was a way through - as in - Tut School? Well - if thas driving its up t'ill, reight at top and on a bit tut gates, but if thah's walkin tha goes straight on that way and there's a snicket bit'ween t'ouses, wi rails on't coursey edge, tha can't miss it. It cums art ut side on't school, and tha gooes rand tut left.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 07:43 PM

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 07:53 PM

I was trying to log in.



new android tablet not behaving on mudcat

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: ripov
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 08:16 PM

If ginnels have a roof perhaps there's a connection with kennels?
In the midlands "twitting" is making fun of people. Don't know how this could fit.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: foggers
Date: 02 Jan 13 - 08:32 PM

Ooo good thread! I mainly grew up in N Derybshire where the term for the tunnel between two terraced houses was gennel with a soft G. Then I went to be a student in Sheffield and encountered the term ginnel with hard G. In mid Derbyshire only a few miles south of my home town the term twitchell was used, which others on this thread associate with the neighbouring county of Nottinghamshire.

Now, what about generic terms for sweeties? In Chesterfield I grew up calling them "spice" but just a few miles south in Tibshelf/Alfreton its "tuffees".

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 03 Jan 13 - 02:38 AM

Snickets and ginnells where I'm from (near Cleckheaton). But both were passageways rather than lanes...ginnell with a hard "g" and roofed or covered, snicket not.

They were both narrow....you could invariably touch both walls (of both types) with your arms outstretched (even as children). Many of the twittens I've encountered down here since moving to the Kent - Sussex borders are too wide to be called either ginnells or snickets where I'm from....they'd just be lanes, back alleys or "dubbel raws" (narrow back or side lane between two rows of houses).

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 03 Jan 13 - 02:44 AM

Foggers: sweets were "spice" in and around cleckheaton. Except for licorise, which was always called "spanish".

And a VERY local term for "cowshed" was "mistall". Never heard of anyone from outside the Cleckeaton-Wyke-Halifax triangle who had any idea what it means.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Colin Holt
Date: 03 Jan 13 - 03:08 AM

Hi
My recollections coming from Morley near Leeds, A Ginnell was a kind of alleyway between houses, usually covered. A snicket was more a pathway usually between rows of hedges etc, and more often than not a short cut somewhere.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Jan 13 - 04:07 AM

Snicket in my native Lancashire - ginnel when I lived in Leeds - twitten down here in West Sussex.

Do "lokes" count? Many years in Norwich, in the Bere Street area, there were narrow passages of the street, and these opened out into central courtyards, often with workshops overlooking the yards. An elder brother of of one of my Suffolk great-grandparents had a coach works in one of these lokes in the late 19th century.

Any other places have lokes?

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Michael
Date: 03 Jan 13 - 05:18 AM

Where I grew up in North east Derbyshire it would have been written 'jennell' and was (and still is) the passageway between blocks of terraced houses.

Mike

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jan 13 - 12:38 PM

'Lokes' presumably from latin 'locus'=a place. A couple of them in Walsham, also Norfolk, e.g. 'Bank Loke'. In the Midlands this might be 'Bank Passage'.

'Loke (loc?)' is in common use on the railway for the site of trackside equipment, probably here short for 'location', but ultimately from the same source.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 03 Jan 13 - 02:20 PM

In Leicestershire the word for a footpath in a town / village (ie between buildings)is "Jitty"

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: ripov
Date: 03 Jan 13 - 04:12 PM

And "Wynds" in Scotland and the North becomes "Wents" in Kent and Suffolk.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 04 Jan 13 - 07:33 AM

'Wantz' in parts of Essex/East London but we're told it means 'way'.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,ripov
Date: 04 Jan 13 - 08:59 PM

As does "gate", from Norse "gata", (and I imagine related to German "gehen", to go) which only later acquired the meaning of the thing that closed the (passage)way

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 05 Jan 13 - 04:01 AM

Hence the street names common in towns and cities that were once part of the "Danelaw": Highgate, Towngate, Coppergate, etc....uit's amazing how many northern dialect words come from Old Norse....when I moved to live and work in Norway for a few years in 1983 I found it relatively easy to pick up Norwegian, as so many of the words, and grammatical constructions, were familiar.

Words like "beck" and "fell" immediately come to mind, but then "shaw" meaning woodland, as in "Birkenshaw", a village near where I was born...any Norwegian would translate that as "the birch wood". although Norwegian for "woodland" is now probnounced "skog", most would jknow that the Old Norse pronunciation was close to "shaw". Then there's "laik" as in "is thy Robert laikin' aht?", directly from "lek", "to play", in Norwegian. It gets more obscure when talking about it "silin' dahn" (raining hard in Yorkshire) but understandable when you know that Norwegian for pouring something through a sieve is "sile"!

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 05 Jan 13 - 04:03 AM

As a totally irrelevant aside, I was amused to discover that "gift", the Norwegian word for "married" also means "poisoned"!!!

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: redhorse
Date: 05 Jan 13 - 11:06 AM

I grew up in Worcester, and recognise "snicket" as a narrow cut-through between streets.
I suspect it has a common root with "sneak": any etymologists out there?

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,John Foxen
Date: 05 Jan 13 - 12:42 PM

I'd not come across the word snicket (except in the Lemony Snicket books my kids used to read) until my musical partner Margaret used it. She's from Ilford and had picked up the word from her sister who lived for a time in Selby where it seemed to be used in the same way that redhorse mentions. Like redhorse Margaret hthought it sounded like a "sneak-it" and now uses it to refer to any little short cut. When we're driving to a gig if I'm told to "take the snicket on the left" I know I have to look out for a little alleyway rather than a main road.
I find this thread so intriguing we might have to work it into one of our songs: "Through snickets and through ginnels/I lately took my way..."

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: redhorse
Date: 05 Jan 13 - 05:10 PM

I think if you could get a car through, it's too wide to be a snicket (:-))

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,John Foxen
Date: 05 Jan 13 - 06:01 PM

Down south we have a better class of snicket ;-)

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 05 Jan 13 - 10:38 PM

Jitty seems to prevail over ginnell/snicket in north Notts villages. John, in Norn Iran a poke is an ice cream cornet. (An ice cream wafer sandwich is a slider.)

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 06 Jan 13 - 02:37 PM

My Grandmother referred to the one next to her house as a 'cut' but then she was from Jersey so I guess she had an excuse. We called them tenfoots. This was in HUll in the 1950s and 60s.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Michael
Date: 06 Jan 13 - 05:43 PM

And they still are tenfoots in Hull Paul.

Mike

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: selby
Date: 06 Jan 13 - 06:06 PM

I always thought Cuts where Canals

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 06:44 AM

I asked around in Whitby over the weekend. Snickets and ginnels are pretty much interchangeable there whether covered over or not.

Tone

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 06:56 AM

"And 'Wynds' in Scotland and the North becomes "Wents" in Kent and Suffolk."

Lancashire also has 'weinds', though I think they'd be called ginnels today.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,SID
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 04:36 AM

In Chorley, Lancashire, "entries" are narrow 4ft wide passages between terraced houses which then split left & right to give access to half a dozen back yards. They are regarded as private and are entered through a door from the street. Ginnels, snickets, alleys (and jiggers in Liverpool) are public footpaths / shortcuts. To add to the confusion, we have a "Peter Wink" in Chorley town centre which is a flight of steps linking Market Street and Peter Street. The "Wiends" in Preston are wide enough to get a vehicle (horse & cart)down.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: ripov
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 07:50 AM

Maybe, in the days when obstructions to movement were woodlands and heath rather than houses and car-parks, paths, or snickets, were cut (or nicked) through them with snickersnees, which, like vorpal blades, went "snicker-snack"?

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Seayaker
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 12:29 PM

Where I was brought up in Kenilworth, Warwickshire they were called "Jetties"

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 12:41 PM

Also in Whitby there are 'yards', narrow footpaths between terraces of houses leading off at right angle to the main street

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Dave Hunt
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 07:59 PM

In the part of the Black Country where I came from, the passageway between houses was 'the entry' I now live near Broseley in Shropshire, and it's the only place round here that has Jitty's (Tilers Jitty, Old Jitty, etc)

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Rumncoke
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 10:13 PM

Wider ways are alleys - there are side alleys and back alleys.

When my family were on holiday in Whitby over 50 years ago there was a storm and the harbour was full of fishing boats and other vessels which had taken shelter there. At the age of seven I went off alone to the harbour to see them all lined up wall to wall.

I think that they were probably mostly dutch, and the town was full of burley men in ganseys (woolly jumpers). They spoke to the locals in their own speach, and the locals spoke English, and both sides were able to understand the other well enough - at least to be able to buy foodstuff and find an engineer for a broken engine.

I suppose that over the years a few words were picked up, not enough to speak the other language, but to be able to get the sense of what was said to them.

When I went to the sweet shop and found it crowded with fishermen I was rather shy, but when one said to come in, I understood - 'comb innen misie' no trouble.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 04:56 AM

I wonder if there might be some connection between 'snicket' and 'cut' - perhaps representing the concept of a passage cut through housing...

To snick something with a knife is to cut it.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: ripov
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 03:44 PM

I think there's definitely a connection, Will. Quick googling revealed a "snicker-snee" or large knife, so perhaps these snickets were cut through the english jungle of olden days, by a "snicker-snee" going "snicker-snack" and maybe accidentally rendering the Jabberwock extinct?

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Paul Reade
Date: 10 Jan 13 - 01:08 PM

Where I grew up in Lancashire I remember some ginnels / alleys had street signs like "Passage no. 3" and seemed to lead into a courtyard of back-to-back terraced houses, long-since demolished.

The council here has been erecting gates across ginnels / back streets as a security measure. They call them "alley gates" which raises an interesting question ...



Are the people who erect them "Alligators?"

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Jan 13 - 12:28 PM

in nottingham they were called twichells

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Michael
Date: 11 Jan 13 - 06:04 PM

'Alleygater' is a scheme operated by many local councils to do just what you describe Paul.

Mike

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Bodian
Date: 15 Aug 13 - 02:26 PM

Lonning - Cumberland & Westmorland (or lonnin)
Loaning - further east towards the Pennines (or loanen).
Lane in old north Lancashire (now Cumbria).

All mean the same thing - an old vehicular / cart track between walls or hedges.

Tickleberry Lonning is one I remember....

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,eldergirl
Date: 15 Aug 13 - 07:20 PM

Peter K, the ice cream cornet called a "poke" would have been bought from the "hokey-pokey man" who was probably Italian, and said "ecco e poco" as he handed you your little glass dish of ice cream..(see Oh, oh, Antonio, that ancient music hall ditty.) My old English teacher was a whiz on word derivations.
And our route to school from the bus station went through a twitten.

Subject: RE: Of snickets and ginnels
From: IanC
Date: 16 Aug 13 - 03:36 AM

The woolly jumpers called "ganseys" (almost universal round the English coast) are Guernseys.

:-)

Subject: RE: Folklore/language: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Morrisman68
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 10:00 AM

I grew up in Witney in Oxfordshire, where older folk would speak of 'chewries' instead of alley-ways. I never saw the word written down and suspect it has fallen out of use there. I theorised that it might come from an uneducated English rendering of tuyere, a 'nozzle'.

So I was both startled and delighted to discover a tuery in Alcester. A local thought that the local history society had suggested a connection with abbatoirs, but I thought not. So I was very interested to search on tuery and find this thread.

Ben

Subject: RE: Folklore/language: Of snickets and ginnels
From: IanC
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 10:24 AM

Guest: Tuyere (pronounced Tweer) is commonly used in English to denote the pipe through which air is blown into a blacksmith's forge. An uneducated english person would almost certainly know this and so wouldn't make that mistake.

The word itself is, anyway, specifically used for a pipe or nozzle from which air is blown.

:-)

Subject: RE: Folklore/language: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Anne Lister
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 04:35 PM

And the word "tuyere" comes, sans doute, from the French word "tuyau" meaning a pipe.

Subject: RE: Folklore/language: Of snickets and ginnels
From: GUEST,Morrisman68
Date: 26 Apr 14 - 01:57 PM

That is very interesting and thought-provoking. But I am still at a loss to explain Alcester's tueries and Witney's 'chewries', other than as corruptions of tuyere. It wouldn't be the first case of mispronounced French, would it?

Didn't someone eminent once remark that English was largely badly pronounced French? Oh, someone eminent and French, naturally!

Subject: RE: Folklore/language: Of snickets and ginnels
From: Anne Lister
Date: 27 Apr 14 - 06:31 AM

You pronounce tuyau as twee-oh, so no that wouldn't explain chewries or tueries.