In past entries I've written about gnomes that have mysteriously disappeared from
gardens and
peepshows. Now I think I know where the gnomes have gone. They've travelled to the secret
gnome garden that lurks beneath the waters of Wastwater in the Lake District. Authorities report that a gnome garden (which even had a tiny picket fence) was removed from the bottom of the lake a few years ago after some divers died while spending too long searching for it. Now the gnome garden has reappeared, but even deeper beneath the lake, beyond the reach of police divers. Obviously the police are worried that once again divers will be unable to resist the siren call of the gnome garden and perish in the search for it. I think this must be the underwater version of
Midgetville. (via
The Anomalist)
Update: I managed to find a picture of the underwater gnome garden in
this recent article from Cumbria Online.
Comments
This kinda reminds me of the movie "Amelie". Amelie steals her father's garden gnome and then send him postcards from the gnome with the gnome in pictures all over the world, from his travels, living the life that he never dared to.
Good movie, BTW.
BTW, how do those gnomes breathe underwater? I don't see any little scuba masks, and they couldn't surface for air from that depth without getting the bends. Have they made a breakthrough in diving technology?
http://www.lakesnw.co.uk/lakes/lakes4.htm#Wastwater
it is claimed that Wastwater is 270m deep, rather than the 80 mentioned in the original article.
And I just found this:
"The name of the lake and the name of the valley have been merged. Wasdale' means 'the valley with the lake'- the lake itself was therefore superfluously described as a 'water'.
O.N. vatn + O.E. waeter.
Wassewatre 1294. "
Sorry.
80 meters would be around 270 feet, so maybe they said meters when they meant feet.
If that etymology is correct, the name of the lake means "Water Water," which you've got to admit is not a very distinctive name for a lake. That puts it in the category of geographical names like "the Sahara Desert" ("Sahara" means "desert").
Shoulda thought of that.
And yes, it is a pointless name.
I think this is the one.
"Cumbria's Torpenhow hill is listed in The Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names as: "the ridge of a hill with a rocky peak", and gives the following etymology: tor (OE) + penn (Celtic) + ho'h (OE). All of these words can be traced to a root word having to do with a hill. The story goes that as each wave of invaders discovered the hill, they took the existing name and appended their word for "hill" on to it."
Plus, like most of Britain, the area was occupied by successive groups of people with different languages. Quite often in these cases the later people add their word for eg hill or lake to the name for the feature they hear from the natives.
I wanted to point out that Amelie is not original as there have been groups that 'liberated' (stole) garden gnomes (in France mainly) for years now and many did also send photos of the gnomes 'travelling', or free in their natural environment, the forest. This began long before the film Amelie was made.
If you look at other areas the size of Cumbria you will likely find a lot more than 2 pleonasms, there is plenty of inventiveness in Cumbrian place-names.
[Place names, I still think Terry Pratchett is correct where explorers rename something from the local language, ask the local guide "what's that hill called" and getting the answer in local language "its a hill you fool" or "yep thats your finger".]