A coney island is a manmade construct that is to rabbit what a dovecote is to doves and pigeons.
It derives from the form of defensive structure used by the Normans when they invaded and conquered our island; it was called a ‘Motte and Bailey’ castle. These were quick and easy defences and particularly quick and easy if you had limitless number of enslaved Anglo Saxons whom you would kill if they didn’t do your biding - and spades.
What they did was to mark out a piece of land that was big enough to hold the number of soldiers, camp followers and other ancillaries. This land would eventually hold a large building, the ‘Keep’, built on top of a large mound of earth (the ‘Motte’) and a flat area where people could circulate, feed sheep, cook and fight when necessary.
They then dug a wide and deep trench around the circumference of the delineated area and they as they dug they threw the earth into that area so that around the area there was a moat that would ultimately fill with water and the area itself became higher by virtue of all the earth that was thrown in from the digging. So, after much Anglo-Saxon sweating a defensive position was created. Building the Keep would come later. Meanwhile they had a moat that was known to be off-putting to attackers particularly after they had been living on the inner part for some weeks and making sure that their effluent all went into the water. Defenders would also be able to fire their arrows downwards which is known to be a favourite way of deterring invaders.
It is estimated that the Normans built more than 1000 of these defensive positions in England.
So, let’s return to rabbits.
The notion of a coney island is almost the exact opposite of a Motte and Bailey castle although it was designed and created on exactly the same principles. One marked out an area of land and one dug a moat, throwing all the soil into the middle. One took great care to ensure that the trench held water and to this end a farmer, for example, who was building a coney island might very well buy in several cartloads of blue clay which would be used to line the moat or ditch. The moat or ditch didn’t have to be very deep because all it had to do was deter rabbits from escaping. Oh yes, rabbits –‘coney’ is an old English word for rabbit. When the central island was built and when the moat or ditch was filed with water the farmer would colonise the island by putting three or four pairs of rabbits there. Rabbits being what they are and doing what they do there was in short order a colony of rabbits that was stuck there for as long as the farmer liked.
And then, when the family wanted to change their menu someone would go to the coney island where a long, strong plank had been left on the outside and armed either with a gun or a ferret and a big stick would cross over the plank and obtain a couple of rabbits.
No comments:
Post a Comment