A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins. Johann Beckmann

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TURF.

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The discovery, that many kinds of earth, when dried, might be employed as fuel, may have easily been occasioned by an accident in some place destitute of wood. A spark falling fortuitously on a turf-moor during a dry summer often sets it on fire, and the conflagration it occasions generally lasts so long that it cannot escape notice573. Of the earth taking fire in this manner there are many instances to be found in the ancients. One of the most remarkable is that mentioned by Tacitus, who relates, that not long after the building of the city of Cologne, the neighbouring land took fire, and burned with such violence that the corn, villages, and every production of the fields were destroyed by the flames, which advanced even to the walls of the city574. This remarkable passage is not to be understood as alluding to a volcanic eruption, but to a morass which had been set on fire. In the duchy of Berg and around Cologne there are very extensive morasses, from which turf is dug up for fuel, and which undoubtedly serve to confirm this idea.

That the use of turf was well known in the earliest periods in the greater part of Lower Saxony, and throughout the Netherlands, is fully proved by Pliny’s account of the Chauci, who inhabited that part of Germany which at present comprehends the duchies of Bremen and Verden, the counties of Oldenburg, Delmenhorst, Diepholz, Huy and East Friesland. Pliny says expressly, that the Chauci pressed together with their hands a kind of peat earth, which they dried by the wind rather than by the sun, and which they used not only for cooking their victuals, but also for warming their bodies575. I explain also by turf a short passage of Antigonus Carystius, quoted from Phanias, in which it is said that a morass in Thessaly having become dry, took fire and burned.

The account therefore given in some Dutch chronicles, that turf and the manner of preparing it were first found out about the year 1215, and that about 1222 it had become common, is certainly false576. This information may be applicable to certain lands and districts, and correct as to the introduction of this kind of fuel in those parts; for the use of it was not extended far till a late period; and even yet turf is neither employed nor known in many places which possess it, even though they are destitute of wood577. Some improvement in the manner of preparing turf may have also been considered as the invention of this fuel, which is undoubtedly of greater antiquity. What induced Monconys to ascribe the invention of turf to Erasmus, or who first propagated that error, I can as little conjecture as Misson578.

Scaliger has erred579 no less than Monconys, whose account was doubted by Uffenbach580. According to the first-mentioned author, turf had been used in the Netherlands only about three hundred years before his time, and he adds that he did not know that this kind of fuel had ever been mentioned by the ancients.

Those however are mistaken also who believe that it is to be found in the Salic laws and those of the Alemanni. It is true that the word turpha occurs in the former, and that Wendelin and others have declared it to mean turf; but the assertion of Eccard, that it signifies a village, called in German Dorf581, is more probable. Still less can the doubtful word curfodi, in the laws of the Alemanni, be supposed to allude to this substance, though we are assured by Lindenbrog that he found in a manuscript, in its stead, the term zurb582. It is also not credible that turf should be employed at that period, as wood was everywhere superabundant.

The oldest certain account of turf in the middle ages with which I am at present acquainted, is that pointed out by Trotz583, who says that it occurs in a letter of donation of the year 1113. He has given the words in the Dutch language, as if they had stood so in the original. But he has quoted his authority in so careless a manner, that I have not been able to conjecture what kind of book he meant. I have however found a Latin copy of the letter of donation in a work pointed out to me by Professor Reuss584. An abbot Ludolph, in the year 1113, permitted a nunnery near Utrecht to dig cespites for its own use in a part of his venæ, but at the same time he retained the property of these venæ. Now there can be no doubt that vena signifies a turf bog, and cespites turf. The former is the same word as Fenne or Venne, which occurs in the old Frisic and the present Veen585 of the Dutch. The nuns also could make no other use of the turf but employ it as fuel. This passage however proves nothing; though Trotz says that a great trade was carried on with turf in the twelfth century, and that the abbot wished to interdict the nuns from using it.

It is worthy of remark that the words turba, turbo, turbæ ad focum, turfa, occur for turf, in the years 1190, 1191, 1201 and 1210, as is proved by the instances quoted by Du Cange. Turbaria for a turf-moor is found in Matthew Paris, who died in 1259; Turbagium, in a diploma of Philip the Fair in the year 1308, signifies the right of digging turf, as turbare does to dig up turf. The word mor also is found in a document of the year 1246, quoted by Du Cange; who however has not introduced it into his dictionary586. It seems to be the same as mariscus and marescus. Brito, who lived about 1223, describing the productions of Flanders, says, “Arida gleba foco siccis incisa marescis587.” That the last of these words signifies a turf-bog is proved by a passage of Lambert, who lived at Ardres about the year 1200: “Quendam similiter mariscum, ut aiunt, proprium perfodi fecit, et in turbas dissecari.”

The assertion of Winsem and others, that the practice of digging turf first became common after the year 1215, is undoubtedly founded on information obtained from Sibrand Leo’s Vitæ Abbatum Horti Divæ Virginis seu Mariengard588; but this writer died in 1588, and can by no means be adduced as an evidence: he even says himself that turf-digging in 1212 was a new occupation.

The conjecture that the Netherlanders, who in the twelfth century established themselves as colonists in some districts of Germany, and particularly Lower Saxony, first made known there the preparation and use of this kind of fuel is improbable, or at any rate not proved589. It is improbable, because the Chauci, the oldest inhabitants of that country, burnt turf before that period.

It is related by the Icelanders that Einar, Count or Earl of Orkney or of the Orkney islands, discovered turf there, and on that account was named Torffeinar. He was the son of Raugnwauld, or Rognwald, earl of Mören, Sued and Nordmör in Norway, in the time of the celebrated Norwegian King Harold, commonly called Haarfager or Pulcricomus, on account of his beautiful hair590. He must have lived therefore in the middle of the ninth century; but on so trifling a subject I shall enter no further into the labyrinth of the Icelandic Saga.