Forms: also 7 baite, 7–9 bait, 8–9 bate. [Of doubtful phonetic form, and unknown origin. The modern Devonsh. pronunciation is (bēt), variously spelt bait, bate, beat. Although bait occurs constantly in Gervaise Markham, beat(e was the spelling of the vb. with Fitzherbert in 1534, Carew in 1602, and of the sb. with Worlidge in 1681, and is apparently the proper form. The vb. is found nearly a century before the sb., and may thus be its immediate source, but on general grounds, the converse is more likely.
The suggestion that beat is another form of PEAT, is incompatible with the history of the latter, q.v. The ON. beit ‘pasturage,’ beiti ‘pasture,’ also ‘heath, ling,’ would barely do for the sense, and phonetically would give bait, not beat. See BEAT v.2]
The rough sod of moorland (with its heath, gorse, etc.), or the matted growth of fallow land, which is sliced or pared off, and burned (at once to get rid of it and to make manure), when the land is about to be plowed. See Eng. Dial. Soc. B. vi. p. 70. To beat-burn, also BURN-BEAT: to treat land in this way. To lie to beat: to lie fallow till covered with a matted growth of grass and weeds which may be thus pared off and burned.
1620. Markham, Farewell to Husb. (1649), 22. After you have thus burnt your baite and plowed up your ground. Ibid., II. xxi. (1668), 115. To break up Pease-earth, which is to lye to bait.
1796. W. H. Marshall, Econ. W. Eng., I. 323. Beat, the roots and soil subjected to the operation of ‘burning beat.’
1830. Mrs. Bray, Fitz of F., II. 106. The burning of bate, as it is called; a mode of manuring land, known elsewhere by the name of denshiring.
1864. Capern, Devon Provincialism, Beat or Bate, the spine of old fallow lands.
1885. F. T. Elworthy (in letter), A field is described as ‘all to a beat’ when it has become matted with weeds, especially couch-grass or twitch.
Comb. Beat-ax (in Devonsh. dial. bidax, bidix), the ax or adze with which the beat is pared off in hand-beating: see BEATING-AX under BEAT v.2 Beat-borough, beat-hill, one of the heaps in which the beat is collected and burned; beat-field, a field in which the beat is being burned.
1602. R. Carew, Survey of Cornwall, 19 b. A little before plowing time, they scatter abroad those Beat-boroughs … upon the ground.
1813. C. Vancouver, Agriculture of Devon, 92. It is utterly impossible, at a distance, to distinguish a village from a beatfield.
1885. F. T. Elworthy (letter), The operation is performed with a bidiks (beat-ax), or more commonly with a breast-plough called a spader.
