What`s in a name?

 I promised in my last to explain the origins of the odd name our little hamlet has. La Mort Limouzin. Or La Mort Limousin  as it appears in the Michelin and on some of the panneaux around the lieu-dit. I prefer the Z spelling, myself.  It`s a tiny settlement of about 10 homes mostly stone-built, roman-tile roofs Some 3 k from the nearest town, Loubille. Utterly ordinary but we love it, it`s home.

  The name.then. There are in fact two alternative explanations but I prefer the first told to me by an inhabitant. You will remember that in the years 700 AD the Arabs had conquered Spain and Southern France and had penetrated as far North as our region the Poitou. It must at that time have been a real front-line area as instanced by other local names such as La Bataille. Eventually Charles Martell defeated the Arabs in 732AD at the battle of Poitiers and they were driven out of Europe.
  It was at that time that some soldiers from the Limoges region,the Limousin, came west to fight in the campaign and met their deaths here, hence the place-name La Mort Limousin, the place where the Limousins died.
 The second explanation is more prosaic. We saw an old map on which the hamlet was called La Motte Limouzin, the castle mound of the Limouzin family. There are a number of towns and places locally called La Motte. As I said.  it was a frontier region and the easiest form of fortification is a motte and bailley. You dig a circular ditch throwing up the earth in a high mound ( the motte ) in the middle. On this motte you erect a wooden fort ( the bailley ) The wooden buildings soon disappear but the motte lasts for ever. I pin my rejection of this superficially more probable explanation on the fact that there is no local motte remaining.