Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/37

 and the name Harrow is the Old English heargas, heathen temples.

Many names that now belong to towns or villages were originally not names of inhabited places, but of some natural or artificial landmark. The names ending in tree are examples in point. A man named Oswald planted a tree, perhaps for some commemorative purpose; or perhaps the tree was planted by somebody else in commemoration of Oswald. When people came to live near this tree, they said that they lived 'at Oswald's tree'; and this is the origin of the name of Oswestry. In the same way, Folkestone was anciently Folcan stān, meaning a memorial stone erected by or after a man named Folca.

One curious group of these landmark names is formed by those ending in head: Hartshead, Sheepshead, Swineshead, Farcet (anciently Fearreshēafod, bull's head), Gateshead (meaning goat's head), Oxnead (Oxanhēafod, ox's head), Thickhead (Ticcenhēafod, kid's head), and Manshead. I suspect that these names point to a custom of setting up the head of an animal, or a representation of it, on a pole, to mark the place for public open-air meetings. Some of them are names of hundreds. Now the hundreds into which our counties are divided are often called, not like the counties themselves, from their chief town, but after some place that has always been quite unimportant. The explanation of this curious fact is that it was customary to name a hundred from the spot, most likely in the middle of an uninhabited moor, where the men of the hundred assembled for deliberation. It was necessary to have some landmark to point out the place of meeting; and this is why so many hundreds have names ending in tree, such as Longtree, Edwinstree, Becontree. A Berkshire hundred anciently bore the name of Nakedthorn; a Gloucestershire hundred is called Brightwell's barrow, showing that the rendezvous for the hundred-meeting was at the mound containing the remains of a man