Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/388

 352 Reviews.

available evidence, the dialects of the period, the surviving customs, or those known to have existed, and the comparison of place-names with those of ancient Germany and Scandinavia, point to the same conclusion, that the English race had its origin in many parent sources, and arose on English soil, not from some great national immigration, but from the commingling here of settlers from many tribes " (page 393). It was Mr. Shore's purpose in the present book to find traces of these tribes on English soil, and there can be no question of the industry with which he prosecuted the search, nor of the wealth of illustration which he brought to bear upon it : a fact which makes it only the more to be regretted that the result of such great labour should be of such small value to the historical student.

For Mr. Shore's attempt was hopeless from the outset, quite apart from any criticisms which may be passed upon his treatment of the materials which he collected. The local nomenclature of England, to name the source from which Mr. Shore's conclusions are in the main derived, has never yet as a whole received such scientific treatment as would make it available for purposes of historical generalisation. It is only in regard to five or six counties that the early forms of the local place-names have systematically been collected : elsewhere in England the student is at the mercy of the idiosyncrasies of the scribes of Domesday Book, from which he may only in rare instances appeal to Kemble's inadequate index to the Codex Diplomaticus. Under such circumstances no certainty of interpretation is possible, but it must be added that Mr. Shore is no safe guide even in those parts of this vast subject which have been explored by previous scholars.

In regard to a work of this kind, depending for its effect upon the accumulation of numberless isolated facts, no detailed criticism can be attempted here, but attention may be called to a few points upon which Mr. Shore's conclusions are peculiarly inacceptable. Such are his interpretation of the -hope terminal in place-names on the Welsh border (page 375) ; the extraordinary extension given on page 339 to the Dore-Whitwell-Humber boundary of Mercia, and the impossible derivation of the place-