Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/435

Rh mouth where the town squats. Plym is the contraction for Pen-lynn, the head of the lake, and was given originally to Plympton, where are the remains of a castle, and where are still to be seen the iron rings to which vessels were moored. But just as the Taw-ford (ridd) has contributed a name to the river Torridge, above the ford, so has Pen-lynn sent its name down the stream and given it to Plymouth. Pelynt in Cornwall is likewise a Pen-lynn.

What the original name of the river was is doubtful. Higher up, where it comes rioting down from the moor, above the Dewerstone is Cadover Bridge, not the bridge over the Cad, but Cadworthy Bridge. Perhaps the river was the Cad, so called from caed, contracted, shut within banks, very suitable to a river emerging from a ravine. A witty friend referring to "the brawling Cad," the epithet applied to it by the poet Carrington, said that it was not till the institution of chars-a-bancs and early-closing days in Plymouth that he ever saw "the brawling cad" upon Dartmoor; since then he has seen a great deal too much of the article.

Plymouth as a town is comparatively modern. When Domesday was compiled nothing was known of it, but there was a Sutton—South Town—near the pool, which eventually became the port of old Plymouth.

It first acquired some consequence when the Valletorts had a house near where is now the church of S. Andrew.

There was, however, a lis or enclosed residence of a chief, if we may accept the Domesday manor