Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/48

36 most remarkable one I have to mention as bearing it or a compound of it formerly, is the river Humber which by the Geographer Ptolemy is called. Now as it is probable that the ancient Greeks pronounced their as a v, as the modern Greeks do, this name is evidently composed of Avon and tros which in Cymric signifies beyond or exceeding over or above, and hence the great estuary seems to have been described to the ancient Geographer as something more than a river without any particular appellation.

In our times this great estuary is not known by the name given it by Ptolemy but only as the Humber, for which there have been suggested several derivations. One has fancied it came from the Huns, of whose coming into the island however we have no authentic information, and the antiquarian Baxter fancies it from the German Hummen because it makes a loud humming noise. In Cartes' History of England Vol. i. p. 17, an authority which we cannot hesitate in taking, it is expressly stated that this name was originally written and pronounced Chumber, as evidently the Cymric river, as the North-Sea I have before shown was called the Cimbric Sea.

But not only was the river Humber so called from its inhabitants the Cimbri or Cymri, but the whole country North of it was called North Cumriland, though that name has now been discontinued for any other part of the North except the country of Northumberland. It is however preserved in the name of the country of Cumberland, where the Cymri often being driven from other parts of the island seem to have made their last stand, previous, to taking their final refuge in Wales. But that they had penetrated much further into the North is clear from the names they have left there, of which it will be sufficient for us to instance the word Aber. This word so common in the East of Scotland in compound names as Aberdeen, Abernethy and others means in Cymric the conflux of a small stream with a larger, and therefore we have it perfectly intelligible as used in Wales. But the word is not Gaelic, in which language the equivalent word is Inver as in Inverness, nor is it known in the West of Scotland, where the Cymri never seem to have entered as occupants. Whence the conclusion seems decided that the Cymri, having first occupied the whole Eastern shore of the island, had been driven first by the Romans and afterwards by the Saxons and even by the Gael eventually from their different refuges to their present habitations in Wales.

Independently however of the names of places, we may