mixen

plural mixens

1. A compost heap or dunghill.

   [I]f we have fish at all / Let them be gold; and charge the gardeners now / To pick the faded creature from the pool, / And cast it on the mixen that it die.

   1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 36

   4 more examples

   Something of this occurred to him even in his wrath with me, for he spoke very softly to the filly, who now could scarce subdue herself; but she drew in her nostrils, and breathed to his breath and did all she could to answer him. 'Not too hard, my dear,' he said: 'led him gently down on the mixen. That will be quite enough.' Then he turned the saddle off, and I was up in a moment.

   1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, chapter X, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC

   "I reckon that's the size o't," said Coggan, working along without looking up. "Well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor," said Laban Tall, turning his sheep.

   1874, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXII, in Far from the Madding Crowd. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC

   =To the chest they came, for the keys asked; manifest was their grudge, when therein they looked. Of those children he the heads cut off, and under the prison's mixen laid their bodies.

   1907, Benjamin Thorpe(translator), Sæmundr Sigfússon (original), The Elder Edda of Saemund Sigfusson and the Younger Edda of Snorre Sturleson, The Lay of Volund

   Close by the door stood the mixen, a collection of every abomination streams from which, in rainy weather, fertilized the lower meadows, generally the lord's pasture, and polluted the stream.

   1933, David Marshall Brooks, The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks)/Chapter XVI, Chapter XVI