short-stories – The Countryman's Daughter

To name but a few

Dad was very good at coming up with quirky character names in his novels

Back in 2018 I wrote a column about unusual names inspired by an archive piece I’d found by my dad from April 1978 in which he explained that he’d had a schoolfriend called Septimus thanks to the fact he was his family’s seventh son. He was unique because his father was also a seventh son, and so he was in the auspicious position of being the seventh son of a seventh son. These fortunate humans were supposed to have been blessed with supernatural powers, but Dad observed that his friend, whom everyone called Sep, displayed no discernible mystical talents.

Dad was good at coming up with quirky names for the characters in his novels. His best-known was the loveable rogue Claude Jeremiah Greengrass who appeared in many of his Constable books that inspired the TV series Heartbeat. According to Dad, that was a genuine name he had come across as a young bobby and he stored it away in his memory bank until it resurfaced many years later on the pages of the first ‘Heartbeat’ novel (Constable on the Hill, published in 1979). Other fun names he conjured up included Detective Inspector Montague Pluke, Detective Sergeant James Aloyisius Carnaby-King, Sergeant Oscar Blaketon and Constable Alf ‘Volcano’ Ventress.

Brian Reader got in touch via my Countryman’s Daughter web page and informed me: “Two of my grandfather Rocious’s sisters were named Fera and Ellengor! So far I haven’t found the origins.”

I’ve never heard of Rocious, Fera or Ellengor. The only reference I came up with for ‘Rocious’ was in a dictionary of slang where it means ‘amazing’ or ‘cool and trendy’. I wonder if his parents had those traits in mind when naming him? The nearest known name I got to was the Spanish ‘Rocio’, a gender neutral name meaning ‘dew’. The Spanish have used it to refer to the Virgin Mary – ‘La Virgen del Rocio’ (Mary of the Dew).

The next nearest I could get to was ‘Roscius’ which online dictionaries say was a noun first used in Englsih in 1607 to mean ‘actor’. It links back to a famous Roman thespian called Quintus Roscius Gallus, whose reputation in the theatre was legendary, and thus the word ‘Roscian’ became commonplace in the 1600s to refer to someone who had delivered a particularly fine stage performance.

I found a bit more on the name Fera. It is a feminine name derived from the Latin ‘ferus’ which means ‘wild’ or ‘untamed’, and today the Italian word ‘fiero’ means ‘fierce’ or ‘fiery’. ‘Fiera’ as an adjective means ‘proud’ and as a noun means ‘a fete’ or ‘a fair’. In the Calabrian dialect of Italy ‘Fera’ means ‘dolphin’. Fera is also used in Arabic regions and means ‘brave’. It is close to the Irish ‘Feara’ too, which means ‘truth’. I wonder if Brian’s great aunt Fera possessed any of these characteristics?

As for Ellengor, I can find very little in terms of its history as a name or its etymology as a word in any language, never mind English. To me, the name sounds like a character from Arthurian legend, or a queen from Viking mythology. I have found a few mentions of women called ‘Ellengor’, most of whom came from the Northallerton area and one of which might well be Brian’s great aunt. We have Ellengor Barker (1862-1955), Ellengor Bramley (1871-1965), and Ellengor Barker Rollins (1889-1977) all from Northallerton and who might well be related. My guess is that Ellengor Barker Rollins is the daughter of Ellengor Barker.

There are also a couple more: Ellengor Kimberley (b.Boynton) who was born in either 1889, 1899, or 1900 and died in 1961, and her daughter Ellengor Collins (1922-2015). Both of these women came from the Bedale area. I wonder if all the Ellengors are related and named after one original family matriarch?

I’d love to know if any of you have interesting names or do you have a relative who has or had a quirky name? Get in touch with me using the methods below.

(Thanks to Brian inspiring this week’s column, and I hope readers will forgive this public personal message, but it’s the only way I will know that he will see it! Brian just to let you know that I replied to you by email, but have a feeling they may have ended up in your junk folder!).

Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Get in touch with me using the ‘Contact’ button on the top right.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 19th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 17th Sept 2025

Friend thrown a life jacket

Stefan’s expensive work jacket was accidentally sold at the school fair

Last year I wrote several columns about things people had lost, things they had found, and about St Anthony to whom the faithful pray if they need help finding a misplaced item.

That subject cropped up again recently when I was on a ramble with my friend Jane and she told me a couple of remarkable stories that I felt I had to share.

Jane and her neighbour Aisling get on with each other very well, attend each other’s parties, exchange birthday gifts and such like. They also swap items of clothing, if they find they are not wearing something but think the other might like it. One such item was a jacket that Aisling gave to Jane several years ago. Although Jane liked the jacket and placed it in her wardrobe, it stayed there unworn for a long time. Finally, a few weeks ago while planning for a night out, Jane remembered the jacket and thought it would go very well with what she wanted to wear. She dug it out and tried it on to see if it suited. Instinctively she put her hands in the pockets and to her surprise, found there was something left inside one of them.

Pulling it out, she discovered it was a pair of beautiful diamond earrings. Astounded, she immediately took them round to show Aisling. Her neighbour was also astounded – and delighted. She revealed that they were the pair of very expensive earrings she had worn on her wedding day and which had been lost for at least 10 years.

Aisling and her family used to live in Singapore, and while there, they employed a cleaner. She explained to Jane that after a while, they began to suspect the cleaner of pilfering things. They had no evidence to prove it, but to be on the safe side Aisling began to hide her most precious pieces of jewellery in the pockets of the clothes hanging in her wardrobe. The problem was, over time she forgot what she had put where, and by the time they moved back to England a few years later, she had completely forgotten that she had hidden her wedding earrings in a jacket pocket. For more than 10 years, she had lived in the belief that her treasured earrings had been taken by the cleaner and that she would never see them again (to be fair, the cleaner had almost certainly stolen other items, so it was not an unreasonable assumption to make). To get them back after so long was an absolute and unexpected joy.

A similar story involved Jane’s husband Stefan. Jane’s and my own children went to the same primary school which held regular fairs and jumble sales. These occasions were good excuses to declutter our wardrobes and pass on any unwanted toys and bric-a-brac.

One year as one such fair was approaching, Jane had a good declutter and filled up the car with jumble, putting a pile of unwanted coats on the back seat before dropping them off at school.

A few days later, her husband was preparing to leave for a business meeting, and asked if she had seen his smart jacket.

“Where did you last have it?’ asked Jane

“I left it on the back seat of the car.”

You can imagine Stefan’s choice response when he discovered that his expensive tailored jacket had been sold for a song at the school fair. Jane had unknowingly scooped it up with the other coats on the back seat and handed it over with the rest of the jumble. They both assumed Stefan would never see his jacket again, and Jane was banished to the dog house.

But the story does not end there. Later that week, tempers having cooled, the couple were out for a walk when they noticed a stranger walking towards them. He was wearing a very familiar item of clothing.

Stefan, being a lot braver than I would have been, stopped the man and asked about the fine jacket he was wearing. The man confirmed he had picked it up from the local school fair for 50p.

With a bit of astute negotiating, and offers of giving the man back the 50p, Stefan and his jacket were happily reunited.

Do you have any stories of unexpected reunions?

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 28th Feb and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 26th Feb 2025

Drawing a curtain over the issue

Walking my niece’s husky dogs I noticed that not many houses have net curtains any more

A couple of houses that I saw with net curtains on my walk

Following my slightly ranty column referring to dog owners hanging poo bags on trees, I have discovered that there are solutions, thanks to my dog-owning readers who have drawn my attention to a couple of clever inventions.

One is a poop bag carrier that clips on to your dog lead, and you attach your full bags to it until you pass a bin or get back home. This means that you still have both hands free as you continue your walk. The reader said: “It’s not difficult or messy, so why doesn’t everyone do it?”

Another reader uses a compact neoprene pouch which you can clip on to your back pack or belt loop. You put the tied-up poo bag inside and zip it up to avoid unpleasant odours stalking you on the rest of your ramble. It also eliminates the yucky sensation of a full bag swinging from side to side as you walk. Although it is relatively expensive, it is fully washable and so can be used again and again.

With these kinds of solutions, is there any excuse for not cleaning up after your dog? I would genuinely like to hear the argument for hanging poo bags on trees because it is my duty, as a responsible writer, to understand every side of a story. Especially when you have no leg to stand on.

On the subject of dogs (which has been a fruitful topic of late!) I have been house-sitting for my niece, looking after her two gorgeous husky dogs while she is on her honeymoon. On one of our walks I couldn’t help but notice how few houses have net curtains.

The trusty net curtain used to be present in most houses because we wanted to nosey at what our neighbours were getting up to outside, without those neighbours noseying at what we were getting up to inside. We also wanted to prevent the ne’er-do-wells from seeing our immensely valuable possessions in case they were tempted to nick them.

Nets began to be seen in the 17th century after sheet glass replaced small pieces of glass set within lead frames. Initially, these large pieces were expensive to produce so were available only to the rich who kept them for their best rooms. To preserve privacy while at the same time allowing the light in, net curtains were initially made of fine cotton and silk and great skill was needed to produce delicate and intricate patterns. The modern glass industry took off after a reduction in tax in the mid-19th century and the cost of glass plummeted. Soon, sheet glass became available to the less wealthy and was being seen in smaller houses. Still, it was only after man-made fabrics like nylon and polyester emerged after World War II that we began to see mass-produced net curtains. Of course, once we commoners got involved, nets stopped being posh and instead became associated with nosey parkers covertly watching what other people were doing, and the age of the ‘curtain-twitcher’ was born.

The net curtain is considered a decidedly English eccentricity by our continental friends. Having been married to a Dutchman, I know that in the Netherlands, any form of curtain across your window is seen as dodgy, as if you are trying to hide something shameful. Houses have huge living room windows with just a few plants to screen the internal goings-on from the outside world.

I do still love a curtain, though, and will not leave them open at night for anyone to peer in. But I have moved on from net curtains, as it seems have most people these days. I did see a few on my walk, but thanks to my acute detective instincts I deduced that they were in homes belonging to our more mature residents.

So why is that? Are we less worried now about people seeing in through our windows? In a world where we share the smallest details of our personal lives online, maybe we don’t feel the need for such privacy in our own homes anymore? Or is it that more CCTV cameras and sophisticated security systems mean we are less afraid of our personal possessions being on display?

What do you think dear reader?

I’d love to hear from you about your opinions, memories and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch. This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 26th April and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 24th April 2024.