Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 October 13

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October 13

Leueming Stream near Crakehall?

I'm reading a case from 1313, Crakehall v. Anon (can be found at 36 Selden Society 76), discussing a dispute over a mill run in Crakehall. Some details of the case are lost, but one of the reports describes the stream as being called Leueming (this is the same spelling in the Norman French record). Is there still such a body of water, or is it known by a different name? —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 15:09, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

The only watercourse of any note near Crakehall is Bedale Beck (which is called Crakehall Beck when it's in Crakehall). You can follow the course of the beck on the Environment Agency's map (which is an overlay over the OS map). North of Crakehall is the Wassick Beck and south of it is the Rand Beck, both of which join the Bedale Beck before it gets to Aiskew - but these are tiddlers, and it's hard to imagine either sustaining a mill. The Bedale Beck drains eastward through Bedale and then Leeming, before it joins the River Swale east of RAF Leeming. Again rather parochially, Bedale Beck is called Leeming Beck when it's flowing through Leeming. The best I can suggest for you is that Leueming is a corruption (or just plain typo) of Leeming. Street names in Leeming suggest there was a mill there at one point and there definitely was a watermill in Crakehall (it's now a B&B, still with the mill wheel) on the Bedale Beck. But I can't show that Leueming is an old spelling of Leeming. A.D Mills' Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names says of the name Leeming (formerly Leming) that it may have an Old English origin meaning "bright stream". -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 15:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense. I bet that's it. The nature of records of oral pleadings in that period means that corrupted spellings and errors with the facts are common (these were all unofficial and recorded in year books by members of the inns of court). In cases like these where the official case record is lost, mistakes become even more problematic. Thank you for your help! —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 16:05, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Cars in Israel

Which cars are mostly driven in Israel like Toyota, Nissan, KIA, Hyundai, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Skoda? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.33.235 (talk) 15:19, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

It's hard to tell which cars are most driven - but this article has a table showing the number of new car sales in Israel by manufacturer and by individual car type. The number of each brand that you'd find on the street would depend (for example) on how long each type of car lasts before heading off to the car crusher - so a high-selling car that is typically junked after 5 years/150,000 miles is going to be less 'driven' than a car that lasts 10 years/250,000 miles. SteveBaker (talk) 15:30, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

In contrast, the Hamasmobile has sold very poorly. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:05, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Please note that Subaru was the only Japanese automobile sold in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s - as the other manufacturers chose to comply with the Arab League boycott of Israel. Toyota, Mitsubishi and Suzuki are now seen on the roads. Israel has no domestic automobile industry. -- Deborahjay (talk) 19:21, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Question

Can anyone tell me what the name of the background music/song is called in this (ignore the voices) ? 197.87.47.84 (talk) 15:31, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I have moved this to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Entertainment#Music_ID_request which is the normal place for such questions, and gets more attention, please answer there. μηδείς (talk) 20:27, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Driving a team of horses.

I'm doing some reading on Chariot racing - and a lot of emphasis goes to how hard it was to master driving a team of four horses, running side-by-side (as opposed to the usual, more modern way of having two pairs of horses) - versus the more usual two-horse team.

I didn't think that four horse chariots would be any faster than the more usual two-horse kind - so the interest in four-horse races presumably must have been that it required more skill.

Can anyone explain the nature of the skills required, and the kinds of thing that might go wrong if you weren't very good at it? Does one have to treat each horse as a separate 'unit', controlling speed and direction for each with a hell of a lot of reins - or do they know to move as a team (since they've presumably been trained for that?

Our article describes a rare kind of race there TEN horses were run together by a single driver as a show of skill - so evidently, there is additional work to be done per-horse...but yet there seems to be no way to have individual reins controlling all ten of the beasts - so control must have been of a more general nature.

What's going on here?

SteveBaker (talk) 15:39, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

The horse enthusiasts I know are constantly making audible commands to the horses, squeeks, clicks, whistles, words, sounds I don't have words for, etc. Theoretically a skilled driver could have a different lexicon for each horse, allowing for individual commands. So part of the skill of running large teams must depend on the skill of training several horses, and having the opportunity to keep the same large team intact for long enough to do such training.

There's also a level of physicality of the driver, knowing how to shift weight etc. to keep from tipping. This is purely a driver skill, but having more of it would allow you to keep a multi-horse chariot upright in a situation where a lesser driver might capsize.

Finally, it's not clear to me that 4-horse teams are not faster than 2-horse teams. I will readily grant you diminishing returns on more horses, but it doesn't seem odd to me that a horse can run faster if pulling 1/2 the load. Isn't that why a two-horse team is faster than a single horse? SemanticMantis (talk) 16:42, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree that there is a reduction in per-horse load - but those racing chariots were stripped to the bone, not much more than a plank with a couple of wheels and a leather piece wrapped around the front half - and with just one guy on board. Since the weight of the chariot is born by the wheels - you'd expect the number of horses to affect the acceleration - but not the top speed. Compared to a horse having to carry a guy on it's back - this seems like it should be easier. But I can't find hard data on that. I kinda imagine the issues of each horse having to moderate it's speed to the lowest member of the team being a more serious limiting factor...but that's one of the things I'd like to know.

I also wondered whether it would be possible to use audio signals to the horses. It's good to know that people really do that. But thundering around with 20 chariots, 80 horses and (estimated) 100,000 screaming spectators...I find it hard to believe that the horses could hear you.

SteveBaker (talk) 18:19, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

WAG here, but it seems to me likely that a horse will be willing to run a little faster if there isn't another horse closely in front of it. If that's so, a 4x1 team (using notation I just made up) might potentially run faster than a 2x2. Doubtless there were classical-era manuals on these matters, but my recollection of Xenophon's On Horsemanship is that it deals only with single, ridden war-horse training. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 12:59, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The engraving shown in the troika article seems to show the left three reins being held in one hand (the left rein of the center horse and both reins of the left horse) and the three right in the driver's other hand. Which would seem to make it hard to signal the left horse to turn right. Rmhermen (talk) 13:31, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Assuming that the artist who made the engraving had accurately observed all of that stuff.... SteveBaker (talk) 16:37, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Further research says that they tied the reins around the waist(!!) and steered predominantly by moving their bodies from side to side - using the left hand to make finer adjustments...so the Troika is evidently driven entirely differently...I'm going to have to find someone who actually drives a multi-horse carriage or something.