(no subject)

[undyingking]

I was reminded last night of a summer evening a few years ago when I was sat out in a meadow with friend M (who grew up in Suffolk), and a huge ungainly great beetle came buzzing into us out of the darkness.

"Waah! A billywitch!" exclaimed M.
"A whattywitch did you say?" I asked incredulously, once it had safely blundered on its way.
"A billywitch! What would you call it then?"
"A cockchafer," I said.
The unspoken which is a perfectly sensible name, unlike 'billywitch' hung heavily in the air between us, not so much fluttering as floundering.

So a similar thing happened last night, although these days I'm surrounded by people from Suffolk so it's not such a surprise. And I wondered if it's just a Suffolk name, and how it arose. Maybe from unhappy memories of the Batttle of Sole Bay, when the English Navy were defeated by the Dutch under the leadership of William of Orange? Come to that, how did the name cockchafer arise? I dread to think.

So, if you saw one of these flying towards you...


[Poll #746506]

Comments

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

It seems to be the other way around - cockchafer is the common name while billywitch is the regional one. See link in below comment.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Yep, I realised that later, after seeing your comments.

However, regional variations rarely neatly follow official county boundaries, so it still provides a data point of where billywitch isn't (to my knowledge) used, on the Norfolk side of the border...

Watton is here

Annoyingly, I can't fnid the useful scale of multimap that shows county boundaries....

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I grew up in south and west Essex, and it's not used as far north as Chelmsford. But the north of Essex has quite a bit in common with Suffolk, so it wouldn't surprise me if they had billywitches in eg. Braintree.