Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/509

 Correspondence. 485

Minchinhampton; but I would urge that an effort should be made to discover it. It is probable that a little enquiry would establish in this and many other cases the basis of the story. The student of folklore should not be satisfied with the mere record of such a tradition. To discover its origin would very often be to throw light upon the working of the mythopoeic propensity of the human mind.

Lastly, I venture to question whether it is probable, as Miss Partridge suggests, that the form Denatva\\ meaning Danes' Way, really preserves the O.E. genitive plural (p. 340 n). The etymo- logy is, of course, tempting. But in the dialect of Gloucestershire the termination -way in names often assumes the form -away where it is not thus explainable. For instance, Greenway becomes Green- away, Blakeway becomes Blakaway, and so on. Denaway may, therefore, only be the dialectal form of Daneway.

E. Sidney Hartland.

]\IoDERN Folklore to Explain Structures of Forgotten

Origin. (Vol. XX., p. 218.)

In the Presidential Address for 191 2 Mr. Crooke remarked (supra, p. 17) on the extreme vitality of the lore of the folk, and in no way does this appear more vividly than in the creation of fresh explanations of structures when their real origin has been forgotten. This may be illustrated by the following fresh example. An obelisk near Watford formerly served to mark the boundary within which the City of London coal dues were levied. It is close to the river Colne and on the \\'atford side of the London and North-Western (Main Line) Railway Bridge across the river. It is about eighteen feet high, and has no inscription except Domine dirige nos on the City arms cut on the side away from the river. Although the real purpose of the obelisk has been explained in the local newspaper, and is now known to many, the proximity of the structure to the Colne has induced others to associate it with some drowning fatality, and during the past