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Earsh (noun) (Old English: ersc) was used in South and West England to describe a stubble field in which a grain crop — wheat, barley or rye — had been harvested, leaving short stubble or short stalks.[1][2] The field is prepared for seeding by ploughing the stubble into the ground, or burning. As the earsh decomposes, nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are released back into the soil. It is frequently pronounced "ash". It is written also as arrish, arish, eddish or ersh.[3]

Etymology

The word as a description for a stubble field is found in medieval tithe maps and their apportionments,[4] and is Saxon in origin.

Place names such as Earsham, Winnersh and Wonersh derive from their situation in an earsh field.[5] Hazlehurst means earsh (arable) land overgrown with Hazel.[6]

Noah Webster describes earsh as a plowed (sic) field linking it to arrish, but also to eadish which is described as latter pasture of grass that comes after mowing or reaping, called also eargrass, earsh, and etch.[7]

Literary references

Fires oft are good on barren earshes made, With crackling flames to burn the stubble blade Thomas May 1628[8]

It can wait another day, today I will do like Tarka, and gallop joyfully through the arrish. Henry Williamson 1927[9]

The hay was gathered from the fields, and the cattle turned onto the eddish. D H Lawrence 1913 [10]

References

  1. ↑ History and Antiquities of Horsham, Dorothea E Hurst, Farncombe & Co., Lewes, (1889)
  2. ↑ Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect, W D Parish, 2nd Ed, (1975), p. 39
  3. ↑ The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, The Century Company, USA (1891)
  4. ↑ A Glossary of the Provincialisms in Use in the County of Sussex, William Durrant Cooper, 2nd ed. (1853), p. 43
  5. ↑ History of Wonersh, Wonersh History Society
  6. ↑ Medieval Clearances in The East Sussex Weald, P F Brandon pp. 135-153
  7. ↑ Webster’s 1828 Dictionary
  8. ↑ Translation of Georgics by Virgil, Thomas May, 1628
  9. ↑ Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter: His joyful water-life and death in the two rivers, illus. C.F. Tunnicliffe, Harmondsworth, Puffin Books, 1976 (1927), p. 188
  10. ↑ D.H.Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd, (1913) chapter 1
  • A Dictionary of The Sussex Dialect on-line
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