General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

It’s Maru’s, laaaaike, raaaaight?


“There was a Pemberton farmer who had a habit of addressing everyone he spoke to by the name 'Marru', a shortened version of 'marrow' the slang word for 'friend', 'pal' or 'mate'. As in 'Alreet Marru'! And he became known in the locality as 'Marru'.
Anyhow, one day, Marru' took two short planks of wood and layed them across a brook that flowed across his field in order to herd his sheep across. Very soon, the planks were being used by other locals to cross the brook without getting their pants wet and this annoyed the farmer, so he put up a sign saying 'Private bridge, Do not use, Trespassers will be shot'. Word soon got round about this, people saying to each other, 'We'd best not go across 'Marru's two short planks'. Which soon became, 'We'd best not go across 'Marru's Bridge'. And, in time, that part of Pemberton became known as 'Marus Bridge'.
It is also where the term 'thick as two short planks' originated, bolstered at the time by the writings of one Ellen Weeton, who described the area around Wigan as ‘a place of mental barrenness, where ignorance and vulgarity are their boast, and literature has scarcely dawned’. “

Probably.