What about Powdykes on Westray in the Orkneys? Does anyone have an etymology for that?

 

Jeremy

From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Keith Briggs
Sent: 27 September 2010 10:03
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Subject: Re: Powdyke

Perhaps it got into OED because it was in Richardson’s Dictionary.   But OED's definition implies that it is a proper name:

 (The name of) any of three ancient dkes or embankments in Norfolk, raised to keep out fen water.

and the earliest spellings are

Pokediche 1293
Pokedyk 1349
Pokediche, Pokedyke 1423

Keith________________________________

From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeremy Harte
Sent: 24 September 2010 19:07
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Subject: Re: Powdyke

Theoretically, yes, given that there are compounds of puca with dic in Herefordshire (Banister p158) and Warwickshire (Signposts to the Past p150). But isn’t powdike a vocabulary word? Richardson’s Dictionary (1839) defines it as ‘a pow or pool… dug for draining the ground’. And there’s an act of 1530 which classes as a felony ‘every perverse and malitious cutting down and breaking up of any part of the new… Powdike in Marshland in the county of Norff’. Presumably if this feature was new it would have been given a name with some appellative force.

None of this stops the etymology of the word (rather than the name) being ‘ditch of the puca’ or rather, given that they seem to have surrounded fens, ‘ditch to keep those pesky pucas in the marshes where they belong’. I’ve wondered if the Dorset word puxey for a wet spot originated as ‘puca’s water’.

Jeremy Harte

________________________________

From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Keith Briggs
Sent: 24 September 2010 11:09
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Subject: Powdyke

OED (Draft revision Sept. 2010) has an entry for powdyke, defined as the name of three in Norfolk.   (They even give a separate US pronunciation /{sm}po{shtu}{smm}da{shti}k/ - why would there be one?)   The earliest form (1293) is Pokediche.  The name survives as Podike at TF554054 on current OS maps.



I don't recall any discussion of this name in the place-name literature.   Could it be yet another named from a mythical being, in this case a pūca?



Keith