Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/520

 MISCELLANEA.

Dorset Folklore collected in 1897.

1. This investigation was made for the Ethnographical Survey Committee of the British Association. The compiler, in all matters beyond his own personal ken, has thought it essential to append, when possible, the name of his informant. Cerne was selected as the centre of inquiry.

2. Cerne was formerly a great mart for leather and skins. The men were tanners, and tawers, and parchment-makers. Over one shop-window a man is still described as a tawer, or whitener of leather. Dowlas was woven here. The flax was grown in Somerset, and the warp came from Bridport. All these trades are gone, and the place is in decay.

3. A Saxon name in Dorset for a quickly flowing stream was Pidele. This is still the name of that which runs, not far from Cerne, through Piddletrenthide, and Piddlehinton, and Piddle- town, to join the Frome at Wareham. The name Piddletrenthide suggests that the Piddle was anciently called the Trent. It was certainly called Terente at Wareham, and Trendle Hill, which over- looks Cerne, has a name that is probably a corruption of Trent Hill.

Eyton, in his Dorset Survey^ observes : There was a common name for the numerous estates that happened to stand on the same stream. Thus there are thirty-five Winterbornes, fifteen Tarentes or Treats, and many Fromes, Pideles, Cernes, Weys, Stours, and Iwernes.

4. Close under Trendle Hill, is a cluster of mounds enclosed by a ramp and ditch. Immediately above the " giant," on the top of the hill are the vestiges, hitherto unexplored by the spade, of a square fort or camp, such as General Pitt-Rivers assigns to the Bronze Age. It measures about 120 feet across. Over 200 yards in its rear, cutting at right angles across the ridge of the tongue of land on the extremity of which the camp stood, is a defensive work, a vallum and fosse, that secured the only assailable point, for the