LANDMARKS . by Robert Macfarlane . ( Hamish Hamilton £20 ) At University College London in the Sixties , one door in the English Department was marked The English Place Name Society . During my three years as a student I never saw anyone enter or leave that room , and imagined mountains of dusty books and documents , rambled by spiders , forgotten maps of a dead world . A ciste : Gaelic for burial chamber . Because the original meanings of place names are largely forgotten and ancient local names for hills , streams and bogs have fallen out of use , Robert Macfarlane performs a miracle of resurrection in his new book . Reviving a fascinating archive of old terms from Anglo-Saxon to Old Norse , he dances through the closed door of the past — a labour of love as well as learning . Original meanings of place names are largely forgotten and ancient local names for hills , streams and bogs have fallen out of use . For years he ’ s been passionately engaged with the work of men and women who have written about the natural world , such as Richard Jefferies , Barry Lopez , Jacquetta Hawkes and Roger Deakin . These are his spiritual guides to the landscape he loves . For , as well as the milestones of the mind ( those books and encounters which shape us ) , there are the landmarks all around us : from the smallest tussock to trees , rocks , beaches and hidden valleys . All of these were named by our ancestors with particular , peculiar and poetic terms which probably fell out of common use in the last 100 years . So , each chapter describes the work of one or two writers who have shaped Macfarlane ’ s thinking , and takes us on an imaginary walk into their worlds . And then comes a ‘ glossary ’ , lists of names for things specific to one aspect of landscape . These lists are fascinating . For example , eit : a tiny word from the Isle of Lewis with a huge meaning : ‘ The practice of placing quartz stones in moorland streams so they would sparkle in the moonlight and thereby attract salmon to them in the late summer and autumn. ’ People in Essex used to call you ‘ watery-headed ’ if you were anxious about rain . And how about the glorious list of words for icicle : aquabob ( Kent ) , clinkerbell and conkerbell ( Dorset ) , daggler and dagglet ( Hampshire ) , ickle ( Yorkshire ) and shuckle ( Cumbria ) . Macfarlane says : ‘ This is a book about the power of language — strong style , simple words — to shape our sense of place. ’ He begins and ends this impressive and unusual book with children — which is as it should be . For who else will inherit the Earth ? Like many of us , he was deeply shocked when the new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary left out words no longer seen as ‘ relevant ’ to modern childhood , including acorn , bluebell , buttercup , catkin , conker , dandelion , fern , heather , heron , ivy , lark , mistletoe , newt , otter , pasture and willow . That ’ s why Macfarlane ends by describing a thrilling project with primary school children given free access to explore a park in winter . Their writing about this experience , over months , turned the ordinary park into a place of wonder where ‘ new stories seethed from its soil ’ . To deprive children of that natural birthright Robert Macfarlane celebrates in all his work is to cut out an essential part of their hearts .
Original meanings of place names have been largely forgotten . MacfarlaneRobert Macfarlane has resurrected the past with his research into this area . Robert Macfarlane believes the power of language can shape our sense of place .