|
Hi All:
Although I should tremble down to my feet if were to offer a
suggestion in oppostition to the esteemed Achivist of Orkney, might I put out
there. trembling or not, that 'Bews' comes from the ancient Norse
"Bu' meaning 'farm' as in the small B&B on Hoy called the "Bu of
Hoy". The building is so old it has Viking
foundations. Yours
Aye...................Rory
At 07:13 14/07/99 -0400, you
wrote:
>This is just a casual enquiry.Here in Melbourne the Bews and
Sinclair
>families fellowship together.Since they're both old
Orcadian names , I was
>curious if the two families have past
historical links that are known to this
>chat
group.
>Thanks
>Ross Sinclair
>natrossinc@aol.com
>[
This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@mids.org
>[ To
get off or on the list, see http://www.mids.org/sinclair/list.html
>
The
name of Bews does not appear in any of the papers in front of me,
namely:
Peterkin's Rentals
J Storer Clouston's Records of
Orkneys
The St Clairs of the Isles
but I have found references to
Bews in another book called "The Northern Isles of Orkney and
Shetland"
by Alexander Fenton from which I
quote:
"In Orkney the change from the one-stilted plough to the
two-stilted plough
(at first the Highland type but increasingly
the lowland Scottish type)
progressed through the last decade of
the 18th Century and had become
almost complete by the end of the
first quarter of the 19th Century.
Traditions have been recorded
about the introduction of the two-stilted
mould-board ploughs with
reins. When the first came to the West Mainland
of Orkney:
"The late Hugh Bews, the grandfather of the present Mr James
Bews
of Yesnaby was hired to show the West Mainland people how to
drive horses
in a plough with reins and also the way to work a
cupper or plough with a
mould-board. This man's plough had a
wooden board because the wood was
thought to be warmer for the
ground.
I have often heard the late William Allan of
Eastbigging tell of the vast crowd
of people that gathered on the
farm of Skaill the first day that Hugh Bews
yoked his wooden board
plough and to drive the horses from behind with reins"
I have
also been in touch with the Orkney archivist who tells me that it is very
difficult to find out anything about the
Bews. However, he is going
to send me the information he has. He believes the name stems from
beu which is
old Flemish for beau which
simply means good-looking, stylish - a bit of a dandy. I can't imagine
Hugh Bews being
much of a dandy behind a team of horses but, at the
end of the 18th Century, he must have been at the cutting edge
(no pun
intended) of new technology.
The mould-board plough went on to tame
the great wheat belts of middle America. It is still in universal use
but I doubt
if Hugh Bews would recognise today's steel monsters as being
the 'descendant' of his simple wooden mould-board
when men preferred wood
because it was 'warmer' for the soil. I wish we were at thoughtful
about poor Mother Earth today.
Alas, we have soiled and spoiled and
sullied the World we live in.
Niven Sinclair
[ This is the
Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@mids.org [ To get off or on the
list, see http://www.mids.org/sinclair/list.html
|