droke

English

Etymology

As a term for a valley with a stream, or a stream itself, found in various dialects as droke, drock, or drook; in various dialects one or more of those words can also denote other clefts, coves, drainage ditches, and furrows, or part of a plough.

Perhaps related to Old Norse or Icelandic drag (“soft slope or valley”).

Noun

droke (plural drokes)

1. (dialectal, especially England, Newfoundland) A narrow valley with steep sides, sometimes with a stream.
   • 1792, George Cartwright, A Journal of Transactions and Events, page 210:

     I sent Fogarty forward to Foul-weather Droke to prepare for the night; while I walked to Condon Tickle and measured the breadth of it. I then went over Lower Table to the Droke; where I observed much old slot of deer, […]

   • 1866, William Wilson, Newfoundland and Its Missionaries: In Two Parts. To which is Added a Chronological Table of All the Important Events that Have Occurred on the Island, Cambridge, Mass. : Printed by Dakin & Metcalf, page 195:

     And how dexterously he ascended the "sculpin highlands," climbed up Job's Cove Droke, toiled through the sands at Northern Bay, waded the Northern Gut, or plodded through Short's Marsh, would furnish a theme for conversation to the weary traveller, as he sat by the cheerful evening fire, and […]

   • 1894, The Journal of American Folklore, page 288:

     I tooked her [a gun] and the powder-harn and shot-bag and starts up yander through the droke. You know the little pond at the top of the hill. When I cumed in sigh' o' un, the first thing I see is a loo' (loon) sitting about the middle uv un.

   • 1907, Norman Duncan, The Cruise of the Shining Light, Toronto, H. Frowde, page 269:

     Across the droch, lifted high above the maid and me, his slender figure black against the pale-green sky, stood John Cather on the brink of Tom Tulk's cliff, with arms extended in some ecstasy to the smouldering western fire.

2. (dialectal, especially Newfoundland) A thick grove or belt of trees, especially in (and stretching across) a valley.
   • 1980 [1888], James Patrick Howley, The Beothucks or Red Indians, CUP Archive, page 171:

     In passing through a droke of woods they came up with a wigwam which they entered, and took three Indian females, which have since been found to be Mother and her two daughters. These women they brought to their own homes, where they kept them […]

   • 1907, John Guille Millais, Newfoundland and Its Untrodden Ways, London : Longmans, Green and Company, page 277:

     […] over the range known to the Indians as the Kesoquit Hills, and to make my outside camps in a droke of woods amongst these mountains, and another still farther to the west in another droke on Shoe Hill Ridge, in the centre of Steve's trapping-ground. Steve had told me that the latter position commanded wide views for miles […]

   • 1912 11, Field and Stream, volume 17, page 714:

     we lost sight of him entirely, as he entered a droke of woods where it was impossible to follow him any further.

   • 2007, Ed Smith, The Seventh Day, Breakwater Books, →ISBN, page 64:

     […] had broken into "Moonlight Bay" [...] had crossed another field, gone through a small droke of woods, and emerged at the end of the pond where the trail met the main farm road and King was waiting with his barbecue.

   • 2011 March 29, Michael Crummey, Galore: A Novel, Other Press, LLC, →ISBN, page 38:

     […] tucked back in a spindly droke of woods above the harbor and away from the other houses around the bay. The trees were the only ones within a mile of the water that hadn't been cut for firewood or walls or stagehouse posts or oars.

Further reading

• 1997 [1937], Devine's Folk Lore of Newfoundland in Old Words, Phrases and Expressions: Their Origin and Meaning:

  Mr. Munn's identification of "droke" as a Devonshire usage is "a valley with sides so steep as to be extremely difficult of ascent."

• Joseph Wright, editor (1900), “DROKE”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volume II (D–G), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.: "[drōk.] A wrinkle, furrow; passage, groove", "Dor. In phr. to drive a droke, to make a groove in soft stone"; see also the entry for "drock", and under "wheel", the quotation "w.Cor. I call them drokes [ruts], but the old people call them wheel-drangs (M.A.C.)."
• 2016, Brindley Hosken, Cows and Catastrophes: The Flights and Fancies of a Cornish Dairy Farmer:

  Droke – small ditch or channel. A 'builders bum' can also be referred to as a droke.