I was thinking along the same lines as Linda, but maybe referring to uneven or rolling rather than swampy ground.
However, maybe a daft question, but does wambling necessarily refer to a piece of land? Given that the reference is in a Kalender, could it not be more time-related and refer to an event or a process or a thing, living or otherwise? For example, (pure conjecture) could a wamb (womb)-ling mean a new born Ox or denote the birth of some such? Is there more context available - the time of year? Was it the wambling season (early spring?) perhaps? Then again, back to land, might it be a place where wambling (whatever it may be) takes place?
Perhaps the Abbot had difficulty pronouncing his ‘r’s? Rambling? A place for oxen to ramble or roam?
Stephen
> On 29 Sep 2020, at 12:14, Jeremy Harte <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Well, looking at it the other way, is a bos ever anything other than a plough-ox? I had thought that when grazing was measured by reference to abstract individuals, they were not boves but vaccae: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2593288?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents <https://www.jstor.org/stable/2593288?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents>. But they may do this differently in Suffolk.
>
> Jeremy
>
> From: The English Place-Name List <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Keith Briggs
> Sent: 29 September 2020 12:08
> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: What is a wambling?
>
> Was this really arable, when it is stated to be land in parco? That term in medieval Suffolk seems to always mean a deer-park [*].
>
> Keith
>
> [*] Nice new book: Deer parks of Suffolk 1086-1602 by Rosemary Hoppitt (http://www.suffolkinstitute.org.uk/books <http://www.suffolkinstitute.org.uk/books>)
>
> From: The English Place-Name List <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Jeremy Harte <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Sent: 29 September 2020 12:00
> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Subject: Re: What is a wambling?
>
> The 2 bovines are I think units of account, not actual individuals Daisy and Buttercup. Cf. the semibos, otherwise an eight of a carucate and not, as Finberg suggests, ‘the nightmare figure of a beast with one foreleg, one hindleg, and a single horn’.
>
> The unit being measured is arable acreage, and seething or roiling swamps are probably not likely to have been put under plough.
>
> Jeremy
>
> From: The English Place-Name List <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Linda Corrigan
> Sent: 29 September 2020 11:34
> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: What is a wambling?
>
> Are we sure that this isn’t just another word for bog or swamp. There is a ME term, ‘wamble’ which refers to as feeling of nausea, a seething or roiling, and to a gait occasioned by such a sensation. Couldn’t this be simply a transfer of the term to unstable, swampy ground which may well have still supported the 2 bovines?
> Linda
>
> Dr. Linda M. Corrigan
>
>
>
>
> On 29 Sep 2020, at 10:45, Jeremy Harte <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
>
> How are we to understand quod est? Does it mean ‘A wambling, or as we might put it, 2 bovates’, or does it mean ‘A bit of land called Wambling, which measures up as 2 bovates’?
>
> In the latter case, we have only the name to go on. Those who know could advise us on the possibility of an appellative *wamble with –ing ‘place of’, or some diminutive of the name Wamba as Wambel. In the latter case, he would of course have remembered what a Wambel he was; but we’re not so sure.
>
> Jeremy Harte
>
> From: The English Place-Name List <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Keith Briggs
> Sent: 29 September 2020 10:26
> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: What is a wambling?
>
> None of this says what a wambling is! OED records † wombling, adv. 'on the belly' once.
>
> Keith
>
> From: The English Place-Name List <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Richard Coates <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Sent: 29 September 2020 10:15
> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Subject: Re: What is a wambling?
>
> Loosely for two bovates???
>
> RC
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The English Place-Name List <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Anthony Appleyard
> Sent: 29 September 2020 09:59
> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [EPNL] What is a wambling?
>
> Keith Briggs wrote:-
>
> > A twelfth-century description of land in Assington (Sf) has quoddam
> > wambling in parco de Asintone quod est terra duorum boum (Kalendar of Abbot Samson, ed. Davis p.68).
> > So there's a connection to two cows, but what exactly was it? Keith
>
> "A certain Wambling in Asintone Park which is land of 2 oxen".
>
> Perhaps, the land referred to may have been enough to graze two oxen ("cow" = 'vacca'.), and was known as "The Wambling". Perhaps someone grazed his pair of haulage oxen there.
>
>
>
>
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