As I came through Sandgate

Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 is Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain which the BBC has shortened to the pithier, and less dry-sounding, Black Gold by Jeremy Paxman. In the first episode he explained why they needed a special kind of boat to get down the Tyne (as usual, this quote is from the book, and may not be a verbatim record of the radio version, but the gist – if not the text – is the same):

What they 'hardly had' was a keel, explained by Etymonline as the

"lowest and principal timber of a ship or boat," mid-14c., probably from a Scandinavian source (compare Old Norse kjölr "keel," Danish kjøl, Swedish köl)

 and I suspected that this was an instance of what linguists call a homonymic clash (but 'new presbyter is but old priest writ large' as Milton said; it's a pun), like 'let' with its various meanings (discussed here)

When the Great Vowel Shift made the impeding sort of "let" and the allowing sort of "let" uncomfortable bedfellows, one of them had to go; so now "let" almost always means "allow" (except for fossils like the ones ... on passports, say – even on the red-covered pre-Brexit ones).

And Etymonline goes on to say:

OED and Middle English Compendium say this word is separate from the keel that means "a strong, clumsy boat, barge" (c. 1200), which might be instead from Middle Dutch kiel "ship" (cognate with Old English ceol "ship's prow," Old High German kiel, German Kiel "ship"). But the two words have influenced each other or partly merged, and Barnhart calls them cognates. Keel still is used locally for "flat-bottomed boat" in the U.S. and England, especially on the Tyne.

I looked at Collins, which at first seemed to be  fixated on the wrong sort of 'keel'. But after scrolling down for a bit I came to this:

The question that now arises is What, if any, relation is there between Middle Dutch kiel and Old Norse kjölr?  "For further study" (but don't hold your breath).

Another one of these words is 'gate', which in southern English place-names (like "Aldgate") refers to a gate but in Northern place-names can mean 'thoroughfare'; I wonder if the Newcastle road that sprang to mind unbidden when Paxman mentioned 'keels'...

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As I came through Sandgate....I heard a lassie sing:
Well may the keel row...that my laddie's in.

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... is that sort of gate. When I was in Newcastle for the choir tour mentioned here I happened on the road of that name. And there had been an archway there (built on sandy foundations), so I suspect the two sorts of gate cross-fertilized and reinforced each other much as the two sorts of 'keel' did: in the words of Etymonline 'the two words have influenced each other or partly merged'

But, speaking of the choir, I must do some note-bashing in preparation for this:

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And it's not just the choir's 70th Anniversary; it's also mine. So I'd better do it justice. I'm sure we will. Anyway, as I said here,  Bach is Knowles-proof.

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It's a marvellous piece. Be there (and come early for the pre-concert talk).

b

Update: 2022.06.01.12:40 – Fixed an embarras de typos, and added an <inline-ps />.