Also 9 flo(w)e. [? a. ON. *flówe (Icel. flói) of same meaning, related to flóa FLOW v.]
1. ‘A watery moss, a morass’ (Jam.).
16[?]. in Symson, Descr. Galloway (1823), App. iv. 140. The English, upon the pursuit of K. Robert, were incamped in Moss Raploch, a great flow on the other side of Die.
1773. Walker, in Phil. Trans., LXII. 124. The Solway flow contains 1300 acres of very deep and tender moss, which before this accident were impassable, even in summer, to a foot passenger.
1835. ‘Stephen Oliver’ (W. A. Chatto), Rambles in Northumb., iv. 164. Dreading every instant that he will sink over head into the flow, he crawls out on his hands and knees; and after liberating his horse, which is no less alarmed than his rider, he thinks it will be safer not to mount again until he shall reach something like firm ground.
1852. Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc., XIII. II. 290. The levels, running ‘far as the eye can reach,’ were, till lately, dangerous ‘flowes,’ or shaking bogs, producing little but heath and peat, and tenanted only by red grouse and wild fowl, it being unsafe to put cattle on them.
1895. Crockett, Men of Moss-hags, xxxiii. 300. It was at least fairly dry, if not warm, and had been roughly laid with bog-wood dug from the flowes, not squared at all, but only filled in with heather tops till the floor was elastic like the many-plied carpets of Whitehall.
b. (See quots.)
1808–80. Jamieson, s.v., The term flow is applied to a low-lying piece of watery land rough and benty, which has not been broken up.
1886. G. A. Lebour, Geol. Northumb. & Durh. (ed. 2), 11. For some distance the bog overflows along the outlet or outlets, and that part of it which thus dips away from the bog proper is aptly called the ‘flow’ of the bog.
2. A quicksand.
1818. Scott, Br. Lamm., xvii.
| He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie’s flow, | |
| And his name shall be lost for evermoe! |
1882. Stevenson, New Arab. Nts. (1884), 210. The wind was driving the hat shoreward, and I ran round the border of the floe to be ready against its arrival.
3. attrib.
1831. Loudon, Encycl. Agric., Gloss. (ed. 2), 1243/2. *Flow bog, or flow moss, a peat bog, the surface of which is liable to rise and fall with every increase or diminution of water, whether from rains or internal springs.
c. 1565. Lindsay of Pitscottie, Chron. Scot. (1728), 130. He, being a Stranger, and knew not the Gate, ran his Horse into a Flow-Moss.
1818. Scott, Rob Roy, xxviii. ‘There wasna muckle flowmoss in the shaw, if we took up our quarters right.’
