I learned the word midden from the late archeologist David Starbuck. Some thirty years ago he was excavating a camp used by Rogers’ Rangers during the French and Indian War on Rogers Island, adjacent to Fort Edward in upstate New York. The Melvillean-named Starbuck unearthed a hospital, blockhouse, barracks and huts. What excited him most was the kitchen-midden – a 230-year-old trash heap, including animal bones, shells from edible shellfish, potsherds (another good word, meaning crockery and ceramic fragments) and utensils. I shared some of his thrill when a student pulled from several feet underground a shard of eighteenth-century dinner plate.
This use of midden reflects
the word’s modern sense, dating from nineteenth-century archeological studies. It
entered English from Danish five hundred years earlier and meant, according to
the OED, “a dunghill, a dung heap; a refuse heap. Also: a domestic
ash-pit.” The modern usage confers value on something that was otherwise only
worthy of being discarded – an interesting distinction. In my personal lexicon,
a midden is a store of interesting or valuable stuff previously thrown
out, which is precisely how I think of the English language. I happened on midden
again in “Finding the Word,” a poem about language by Diana Mary Sitek in the
March issue of New English Review:
“Our specie of words is
profaned
In deviant lexicon.
Skites of verbiage at the
troughs of power
Mutilate each word, poke
mockery at wit
In cloven footnotes of
malign annotation.
“Ditch the word-midden.
The fabled city on the
hill still shines
Among the riches of our
ancient etymons.
Preserve the tongue's
response
And bring to light the
word that's hidden.”
The “word-midden” / “hidden”
rhyme is delicious. Skite is new to me and has many meanings: “a sudden,
vigorous stroke or blow,” “a trick; a skit,” “a person who on some account or
other is regarded with contempt,” “boasting, boastfulness; ostentation, show;
conceit.” Any or all might apply. “Our ancient etymons,” our birthright, are the richest bounty, a precious midden.
I once reviewed a novel called "The Midden" by the British author Tom Sharpe. The title reflected Sharpe's apparent belief that his country and its traditional culture were a moral trash heap that deserved violent destruction. Although it came out in 1997, "The Midden" would fit very well into our modern tide of angry, hate-driven literature. Needless to say, the publisher did not mine my review for blurbs.
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