Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/40

 improved upon a fiction of much earlier date. A wellknown thirteenth-century map of England contains the remark that 'as the Jordan is formed by the union of two rivers called Jor and Dan'—a myth of early travellers in Palestine—'so the Tamyse is formed by the two rivers Tame and Yse.' The name of the Thame being genuine, the supposed analogy from the Holy Land naturally suggested 'Yse' as the name of the Thames above the point at which it receives that river. Leland seems to have been the first person who gave to the name the quasi-classical form in which it is now current.

Although, as has already been mentioned, the Angles and Saxons nearly always adopted the names for rivers, and even small brooks, which they found used by the native population, there are one or two of our river-names that are of English and not of British etymology. The names Manifold and Blackwater tell their own story. Less transparent is the name of the Wensum at Norwich, which seems to be identical with Wantsumu, applied by Bæda to the Kentish Stour. This is probably an otherwise unrecorded feminine adjective wændsumu (agreeing with ēa, river), which would mean 'winding', from the verb wændan (later wendan) to turn.

Some Old English names which are compounds of two words still in common use are nevertheless unintelligible in their modern form, because the changes that have taken place in English pronunciation have operated differently in the compound and in the simple words. When a word is part of a compound (especially of a proper name, where the literal meaning is of no practical importance), it is spoken more quickly than when it stands alone, and therefore the vowels are shortened. The Old English ác survives as 'oak', and the Old English tūn as town; but the place that was called Āctūn is now not Oaktown but Acton. Similarly, the many places with names containing the word strǣt, now 'street', which indicates that they stood on a Roman road,