Page:A Glossary of Words Used In the Neighbourhood of Sheffield - Addy - 1888.djvu/63

 in the glossary, has not been softened to mains, but has retained the hard g.

The word 'low'—M.E. hlâwe—is a common component, or rather suffix, of place-names in this district. I believe that in all cases it denotes a barrow, or other burial-place of the dead. If more barrows have not been found or explored in this district, the reason is that nobody has the courage or the taste to take the thing in hand. The field-names are eloquent of the historic remains which lie hidden beneath their surface. Three of these may be mentioned here. The first is Dead Man's Half-acre, which occurs in 1637 as a field-name in Bradfield. The second is Dead Man's Lode, i.e. Dead Man's Lane, adjacent to the Roman camp at Templeborough. The third name which may be mentioned is Ringinglow, or the Ring Meadow Barrow. There must have been at this place a wold-barrow with a circle round its base. Again, What can be said of such a name as Stumperlow? What else can it mean but a monolith, copstone, or other erection upon or near a barrow, to mark the last resting-place of some hero or chief? It is true that our word stump is not found in the Anglo-Saxon records which have come down to us. Yet stumpr occurs in Old Icelandic, and Norse place-names are plentiful in this district. many words belonging to the language once spoken have obviously not been recorded. Amongst the Romans it is well known that the warrior's arms were laid on the pyre, thence to accompany him to the world of spirits. So the builders of the splendid pyre of Mesenus heaped up a pile of cloven oak and pine, interweaving its sides with dark leaves and cypress—
 * Decorantque super fulgentibus armis.

The word Stumperlow, and the ideas which it suggests, may remind the reader of the oar set up for a memorial on the burial ground of Elpenor in the Odyssey. Odysseus, in describing the burial of