DIGGING FOR FIRE: THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF PEAT
Petra N. Jansma, student of English Language and Culture
University of Groningen
Faculty of Arts
Department of English
Postbox 716
9700 AS Groningen
The Netherlands
E-mail: petra_nellie@hotmail.com
Summary: The diachronic interdisciplinary semantic-field study of words that have, or have had, the
denotation ‘decomposed vegetable matter used as fuel’ in medieval and early Modern Britain indicates
that the changes in the denotations of the lexical item flagge reveal the backgrounds of peat-digging
and the use of peat in East-Anglia. It confirms the assumption that, prior to the 15 th century, great
amounts of peat were dug in East Anglia, both for home-use and for use in the industries, while, after
that, people started to cut sods and use them for fuel instead, due to flooding of the deep turf-pits.
Keywords: Semantic field, turf, peat, flagge, peat-digging, Great Britain
Peat as a source of fuel has been as important in Great Britain, from early times onwards, as in the
rest of Northern Europe. However, although scholarly attention has been paid to the practice of peatdigging and to the use of peat as fuel in medieval and early modern Britain, much is still unknown. A
linguistic approach, in the form of an interdisciplinary diachronic semantic-field study, is an excellent
way to study the use of peat in Britain. A semantic-field study presupposes that different notions form
networks of meaning. These notions, or units, interlock while at the same time they are not static.
Through time, the individual units that make up a semantic field undergo changes in form and
meaning, as well as changes in the relations between the different units, thereby revealing changes in
the use of these units. Moreover, the interdisciplinary approach implies that the changes within the
semantic field should be placed in a historical and cultural context by means of evidence from outside
the realm of linguistics.
The diachronic semantic field of peat encompasses the words peat, turf, flagge, and the Old English
(the English language from before c. 1150 AD) term ād `funeral pyre', which from this point on will be
called lexical items. The first three of these lexical items have all, at some point, had the meaning
‘decomposed vegetable matter used as fuel’, while the item peat still has that denotation. Written
attestations of the lexical items peat, turf, and flagge are found from the 12th century onwards, while
most diversity is found in Scotland, Northern England and Eastern England. Their distribution and use
indicate that, in the last eight centuries, most activities concerning the digging and use of peat
occurred in these areas. Moreover, a closer investigation of the lexical items may shed more light on
developments and changes in the cultural aspects of the use of peat.
The use of flagge in East-Anglia
For example, the changes in the form and meaning of the lexical item flagge, and its interaction with
the lexical item turf, point out the importance of peat as a fuel in Eastern England, or East Anglia to be
more precise, and the changes in the use and digging of peat in this area. The lexical item flagge is
found in the eastern dialects of Middle English (the English language between c. 1150 and 1450) and
denotes ‘a sod’, ‘a block of peat’ and ‘a flat stone’ (Murray 1989). It originated from the Old Norse
loanword flaga ‘slab of stone’, ‘thin layer of earth’ (Murray 1989). The root of Old Norse flaga is the
reconstructed Germanic form *flagô, which is a derivative of the reconstructed Indo-European *plăk
meaning ‘thin layer of earth’ (Torp 1992). They are ultimately derived from the Indo-European root
*pelə- ‘broad and flat’, ‘to spread out’, ‘to make flat’ (Pokorny 1959). In Modern English, it is written as
flag and has the meaning of ‘a flat stone’ (Murray 1989). It is predominantly found in the dialect of
East-Anglia (Murray 1989).
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At the time of borrowing (presumably between 850 and 950 AD), the Old Norse item flag had not yet
obtained the meaning ‘a peat’. Only later did it acquire this extra denotation, as can be seen in EastAnglian documents from the 15th century onwards. By the time flagge had obtained the denotation
‘vegetable matter used as fuel’, it was used side by side with the lexical item turf, which also had the
meaning ‘vegetable matter used as fuel’. However, from the documents that have both flagge and turf,
it becomes clear that they did not have exactly the same meaning, even though they were both used
to denote ‘vegetable fuel’. In 1691 John Ray’s A Collection of Words not Generally Used refers to flags
as ‘the surface of the earth, which they pare off to burn; the upper turf’ (Murray 1989). In 1830 the
English Dialect Dictionary mentions flag as ‘a portion of the surface of heathy land turned up by the
spade, and heaped to dry for fuel’ (Wright 1900). This shows that flagge was, in fact, used to mean the
upper layer of turf, i.e. ‘the grassy top layer of the earth’, while turf was used to signify the substance
immediately underneath it, the ‘peat proper’. So, the denotation of Middle English flagge was widened
from ‘a sod’ to ‘a sod’ and ‘a peat’. This widening is caused by a change in the use of the material,
because the need arose to use not only slabs of decomposed vegetable matter as fuel, but also the
upper grassy layer. Therefore, it can be concluded that the denotation ‘a peat’, beside ‘a sod’ for
Middle English flagge is not quite correct, and that the actual denotations for flagge should be ‘a sod’
and ‘a sod used as fuel’.
Changes in the digging and use of peat in East-Anglia
The shift in meaning of flagge from ‘a sod’ to ‘a sod used as fuel’ in East Anglia confirms suggestions
by, for instance, J. M. Lambert et al. in The Making of the Broads, that the use of fuel in this area
underwent a change, from large-scale deep peat digging up to the 15th century, to home-cutting of
‘surface peats’, or flagges, as well as the increasing use of other types of fuel such as wood and coal,
in the following period (1960). During the Middle Ages, East-Anglia was one of the most densely
populated areas of England, while, at the same time, wood was scarce. It is therefore not surprising
that the local population turned to peat as a domestic fuel, which was readily available in the marshes
and fenlands. Not just ordinary households in East-Anglia were in need of peat as fuel, but also the
active salt industry, as it needed fuel for the boiling of brine. Moreover, the cloth industry in this region
may also have been a consumer of peat. As a result, great quantities of peat were dug and used in
East Anglia, so that by the 12th century much of its peat-resource had already been utilized. Still,
documents state that peat continued to be dug in quantities, in East Anglia, until the 16 th century
(Lambert et al. 1960).
However, during the 15th and 16th centuries, references to peat-cutting in East-Anglia become rarer,
while, at the same time, the first references to former turbaries as watery and marshy areas show up.
A period of storminess and flooding in the North Sea basin had already begun in the second half of the
13th century, and in the 14th century continuous flooding as a result of high tides made it impossible to
maintain the turbaries. In the 16th century many of the turbaries had become flooded, creating the area
that is now known as the Broads. Because it had been general practice to dig up the deeper peat, as
these were high in calorific value, the turf-pits were quite deep, which made them vulnerable to
flooding. Once the deep turf-pits were flooded, it became impossible to dig peat. The turbaries were
abandoned in the post-medieval period, and, at the same time, salt production in the East-Anglian
marshes largely died out (Lambert et al. 1960).
The flooding and abandoning of the turbaries in East-Anglia coincided with the shift in meaning of the
East-Anglian lexical item flagge shifted from ‘a sod’ to ‘a sod used as fuel’. This indicates that the
people of East-Anglia started using the upper grassy layer as fuel, after the rise of the ground-water
level and sea-level made it increasingly difficult to carry out deep peat-cutting. Yet, because the
previously flourishing industries died out, the cutting and use of these surface-peats was carried out
only on a small scale. The alterations in the use of flagge bring to light that its shift in meaning was
brought about by a change in the use of sods and peat in East-Anglia. The digging of peat proper and
its use as domestic fuel diminished drastically, while the surface peat--in fact, the sods--were used as
fuel, instead.
To conclude, an investigation into the changes in the use of the lexical item flagge in East-Anglia, and
its interaction with the item turf, shows that a historical-linguistic investigation of a group of words that
have (at some point) had the same denotation can be a powerful tool for establishing the sociohistorical and socio-cultural backgrounds to peat. It also points out that by analyzing the etymology
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and semantic development of the words in the semantic field of peat, and by placing the outcome for
each of the individual words in context, a wealth of information on the practice of peat-digging and the
use of peat as fuel may be disclosed. Likewise, the investigation into the use and changes of the
lexical items peat, turf and ād, which I am currently completing in my MA Honors Dissertation at the
University of Groningen (the Netherlands), will shed more light on this significant aspect of daily-life in
British history.
References:
Jansma, P.N. MA Honors Dissertation, University of Groningen, the Netherlands (in progress)
supervised by Dr. C. Dekker, Department of English, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Lambert, J.M., et al. (eds) (1960) The Making of the Broads: a Reconsideration of Their Origin in the
Light of New Evidence. London. 153 pp.
Murray, J.A.H. et al. (ed) (1989) Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford. Vol. 5. S.v. flag, sb.², p. 989.
Pokorny, J. (1959) Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bern. Vol. 1. S.v. pelə-, pp. 805807.
Torp, A. (1992) Nynorsk Etymologisk Ordbok. Oslo. S.v. flaga 1. pp. 113-114.
Wright, J. (ed) (1900) English Dialect Dictionary. London. Vol. 2. S.v. flag, sb.², p. 378.
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