Talk:Drovers' road

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Contents 1 Cleanup 2 Welsh numbering 3 Drove Road? 4 what should this article cover?

[edit] Cleanup

At the least, this needs formatting, subheadings, punctuation, and some phrasing work. Elf | Talk 01:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced about subheadings unless there are going to be more than two paragraphs per section. I have wikified a bit. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but there is something about the tone of this article which makes it very hazy to me. I know what a drover was and did, but I don't think I would learn that from the article as it stands. Perhaps it needs a "what the typical drover did" before launching into history and evidence? I'll have another go when I have some time. I have a booklet about drovers, one of those Shire ones you get in museums. I'll try to work some of the info in. (The Drovers, Shirley Toulson, ISBN 0-7478-0630-6) --Telsa 15:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welsh numbering

I'm not terribly clear what this means, and have moved it to here for now: The influence of Welsh sheep drovers is shown by the distribution of counting schemes for sheep throughout England which are based on Welsh. Does this refer to the numbers used? Like the counting rhymes with "Hickory, dickory, dock", "yan, tan, tethera" and so on? (I bet at least one of those is not really a counting scheme at all now, but you know what I mean, I hope.) Ie, the words used were based on the Welsh names for the numbers? Or does it refer to the traditional way of counting in Welsh, where after 10 it starts getting interesting, "one on ten", "two-ten", "three on ten", "four on ten", "fifteen", "one on fifteen", "two on fifteen", "two-nines", "four on fifteen"... "two on fifteen on twenty"..? Or does the sentence refer to a combination of both? (See Welsh_language#Counting_system for the complete run-down.) --Telsa 15:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Drove Road?

Wouldn't 'Drove Road' be a better title for this article? Colin4C 11:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes - in the south of England "drove" alone is the normal term, and arguably "drove road" is tautologous GBH 19:21, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Drove road works for me. I don't think it's necessarily tautological, because "drove" on its own can refer to the drover and livestock on the move. But if we have problems with ambiguity, perhaps drove route might be less ambiguous? I had a quick look in Shirley Toulson's The Drovers (one of those little Shire publications) and she uses "droveway" and "drove route" in the text. But - to complicate matters :) - she also has a section called "Walking drove roads" which refers to the Harling Drove and the Hambleton Drove (which are roads/paths/routes rather than the whole affair on the move). Oh, "drove roads" crops up in book titles in the reference section, too. I didn't see any mention of "drovers' road", though. Telsa (talk) 15:18, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have a sneaking suspicion that 'Drover's Road' is an original coinage for the wikipedia...Colin4C 10:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

There is a long tradition in Wales of calling them Drover's Roads or more correctly Drovers' roads. I.e those road used by Drovers for moving their animals to market. See this [1] as an example but there are numerous other references. Velela 18:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

That ref is a BBC news item headline, not an example of old Welsh tradition! And wouldn't the Welsh use the Welsh language? Colin4C 19:06, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

It is the accepted local usage that is being reflected by the BBC, not the BBC inventing a usage. This is only one of many references that can be brought to bear. I am also sure that the 30% of Welsh people who speak Welsh do indeed have an appropriate Welsh word for Drovers' road. I don't speak welsh and this isn't the Welsh wikepdia so I guess we stick with the English language version. Velela 20:22, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

See also this published by the University at Aberystwyth [2] " If you take the drover's road from Aberystwyth, where they drove all the sheep to the London market: it softly winds up the hill. And if the Germans had had to do it under Hitler, they'd have built a bloody autobahn, jah" and the reference now added to the main article. Velela 20:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm quite relieved about this. I had intended to say "no, drovers' road is the name" until I actually looked in the nearest useful book and found all the names without the 'r'! Now I know I wasn't imagining things. I'm in Wales, so that must be why I think it's drovers' roads. Thanks, Velela :) Telsa (talk) 22:29, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] what should this article cover?

I think this article should focus on the roads, as the title would lead you to expect. The historic banking infrastructure is not relevant here. The separate articles on droving and drovers are thin, and could do with material from here being moved over. Then this article could, if desired, remain geographically restricted to Britian, signalled as such, and the activities (which still continue in some countries) could get the worldwide focus they deserve. ANy opinions? I'll leave this a couple of days and then be bold. BrainyBabe (talk) 12:29, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, the title of this article is drover's road (ignoring capitals), so I think that it should talk about roads, but it shall also explain why they are specifically regarded as drover's roads; and that leads on to such things as the specific needs of the drover's, why a particular road goes from A to B and what is special about A & B, etc. At this stage I would not necessarily rule out finance, there is probably little harm in the information about banking for the Welsh drovers, provided that it is correctly referenced and that it is kept in focus. At the moment the article includes information about the Welsh end of droving and its passageway through Wessex towards London. I was intending to add some information in the fairly near future about droves starting in Scotland. It also appears that some droves came across from Ireland, via Wales and/or Scotland. Droves in e.g. the USA and/or Australia, are not within my knowledge, but the US is mentioned in a section and Australia is mentioned in the 'See also' section. If the information is to be included then it needs knowledgeable editors to add it. Droving has been adopted by WP Australia, and at present it is directed at the new world (the UK being old world presumably). drovers is a disambig page at present, are you intended to convert it into an article?Pyrotec (talk) 21:53, 5 February 2008 (UTC)