How a town got the goat
QUESTION Does the name Gateshead refer to a particular gate?
Gateshead was originally noted by the Venerable Bede, an 8th-century monk and scholar, as ad Caprae Caput, meaning ‘at the goat’s head’ in Latin. In the early Middle ages, the area was known as Gatesheued, or goat’s head, a headland frequented by wild goats.
There is a second theory that the town had been at the head of an important road or ‘gate’ from the south that was located at the point where the road reached the River tyne.
The town’s coat of arms featured a goat’s head. In 1974 the old Gateshead council was incorporated into a new metropolitan borough, with a new symbol made up of a portcullis and helmet. there was once a Goat Inn near the river, so for most Gateshead folk, the goat theory is the one that stands the test of time.
It’s nice to think, though, that the town could be regarded as the gateway from the south to the great city of Newcastle — both in the past and present.
QUESTION North American Inuit peoples once ate pemmican as a survival food. How was this made?
The word pemmican is derived from the Cree word pimikan, meaning rendered grease. the Cree are a North american indigenous people. they live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country’s largest First Nations.
Its preparation involved drying and pulverising lean meat, typically buffalo, but caribou, elk or deer were also used. this was then mixed with melted fat and sometimes dried berries. It was cooled, cut into cakes and sewn into hide bags.
Pemmican was a high- protein, high-energy food that could be stored for up to half a year and shipped with ease to hunters.
It was famously unpalatable to Western explorers. sir William Francis Butler, an Irish 19th-century British army officer, writer, and adventurer, recounted his adventures in Canada in the Great Lone Land (1872).
he thoroughly disliked pemmican but understood its usefulness. he gave the following recipe: ‘It can be made from the flesh of any animal, but it is nearly altogether composed of buffalo meat; the meat is first cut into slices, then dried either by fire or in the sun, and then pounded or beaten out into a thick flaky substance; in this state, it is put into a large bag made from the hide of the animal, the dry pulp being soldered down into a hard solid mass by melted fat being poured over it.’
Jacob Allen, Ross-on-Wye, Hereford.
QUESTION What are the best examples of ‘back slang’ used by Victorian criminals?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, I used to work at a wet fish shop in dalston, London, that was owned by the brother of alfred hitchcock. Fish that wasn’t as fresh as it could be was referred to by us as ‘DLO’ rather than old.
Roy Smith, Romsey, Hants.
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