NPPF: Canto Two -- Grimpen

[T]

     In Chapter Seven of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Mr.
Stapleton of Merripit House, a naturalist carrying a butterfly
net and specimen box, addresses Dr. Watson with a laugh: "'That
is the great Grimpen Mire,' said he. 'A false step yonder means
death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor
ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for
quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him
down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it,
but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can
find my way to the very heart of it and return alive.'"
     Stapleton turns out to be the villain of the story. As
Watson reports in Chapter 12, "All my unspoken instincts, my
vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the
naturalist. In that impassive, colourless man, with his straw
hat and his butterfly net, I seemed to see something terrible--a
creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and
a murderous heart." *


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The entire entry from the OED, 2nd Edition:

grimpen
[Etym. uncertain.]
A marshy area.
1902 A. Conan Doyle Hound of Baskervilles vii. 153 Life has
become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches
everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point
the track.
1940 T. S. Eliot East Coker ii. 10 In a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold.
1968 W. S. Baring-Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes II. xxxvi. 47
As is well known, Watson's "Great Grimpen Mire" is Grimspound
Bog, three miles to the north and west of Widecombe-in-the-Moor.

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First post -- thanks!

~ T





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*
>From the note to line 402 of _Dark Ice_, 1993.