Page:A Glossary of Words Used In the Neighbourhood of Sheffield - Addy - 1888.djvu/36

 I have said that the river Sheath is the dividing line of the counties of York and Derby, as it was of the two ancient kingdoms. Its proper spelling is Scheth or Sheath, and it is so found as late as the seventeenth century. To shed hair, as is well known, is to separate it. Shed and sheth are both found with the same meaning. The meaning of the river name is, then, certain and plain. It is the divider or separater, and its etymology is found involved in the very word used by the chronicler—'scadeЪ.' The river was the dividing line, but the village formed a division also. It was the door, the pass, the gate, the entrance into the kingdom of Mercia.

Another piece of evidence, moreover, remains to show that here was the frontier line which divided two hostile peoples, and which defined for the Northumbrian the limits beyond which he must not go. Contiguous to Dore, and to the south of that village, is a hamlet called Totley. This hamlet stands on the summit of a steep hill, which descends very abruptly towards the north. In the Domesday Book it is called Totingelei. There can, I think, be little doubt that this was once a place of defence from which the men of Derbyshire repelled the attacks of the enemy. Toot hills, tot hills, and toting hills are often met with in our early literature. In Lord Londesborough's pictorial glossary of the fifteenth century 'a