Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/115

 s.i. JAN. so, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

91

Dolphin and eldest son and apparent heir to Henry, King of France."

" On the twentieth day of April, 1558, the jfian<*ailles of the young Prince Francis and Marie, Queen-Heritrix of Scotland, took place."

With regard to MR. PEACHEY'S question, I may inform him that only the spellin "Stewart," and not "Stuart," is mentione in M. E. Gumming Bruce's learned work. HENRY GERALD HOPE.

119, Elms Road, Clapham, S.W.

TIDES WELL AND TIDESLOW (9 th S. xii. 341, 517 ; 10 th S. i. 52). Is it not a mistake to attempt to explain these names without having any regard to Anglo-Saxon grammar ?

The A.-S. for " intermittent well " might have been (id-well, i.e., tide-well ; but it could not possibly have been tides-well ! We never say tide's waiter, but only tide-waiter. Con- sequently, Tides is the genitive case of a man's name. We are told that it is the genitive " of Tid, or whatever the right form of the personal name may have been." Well, the right form was Tidi in early spelling, snd Tide in later spelling. The gen. of Tidi or Tide was Tides, just as the gen. of Ini or Ine (in Latin spelling Ina) was Ines. For the gen. form Ines, see ' A.-S. Chron.,' an. 718. Mr. Searle's ' Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum ' gives two examples of Tidi. Besides this, Tid- was very common as a first element in names, as in Tid-beald, Tid-beorht, Tid-burh, Tid-eume, Tid-frith, &c. And Tida (occurring six times) was the form of a pet-name ; only the gen. case was Tidan. It is surely obvious that Tides- welle can only mean " Tidi's well " ; and Tides-low, A.-S. Tides-hldw, can only mean "Tidi's burial-mound." It is worth while to add that A.-S. tld, time, is feminine, with the genitive tide !

At the last reference we are told that low is " the well-known word for a hill or mound, having nothing to do with a burial." Why has it "nothing to do with" it? If your correspondent will only take the trouble to look it out in an A.-S. dictionary or in 'H.E.D.,' he will find that low is applied both to a natural hill and to an artificial tumulus. Why are these hardy statements made 1 Low, as a funeral mound, occurs in ' Beowulf.' The name Tidi occurs in the ' Liber Vitse ' of Durham, and again in Beda, but not later. So the mound may be as old as the eighth century, or even earlier. The O.N. vo'llr is not represented in English by -well, but by -wall. WALTER W. SKEAT.

There is one difficulty about DR. BRUSH- FIELD'S suggestion that Tideswell means the Well of the Tide, namely, that it does not account for the s. His etymology might have

passed if the name had come down to us in the form Tidewell. DR. BRUSHFIELD forget that the old English word for tide wa feminine. COMESTOR OXONIENSIS.

It is certain that Tideswell has nothing to do with " an ebbing and flowing well," and the sooner DR. BRUSHFIELD abandons this popular fancy the better. If the word meant what he says it means, it would have been written Tiduuelle, not Tidesuutlle, in Domes- day Book,, and Tidewell at the present time. The prefix both in Tideswell and Tideslow is the genitive case of a personal name.

Finding himself in a difficulty about Tides- low, which, as he sees, has no connexion with "an ebbing and flowing well,"_ DR. BRUSH- FIELD invokes a list of tombs in Bateman's 'Ten Years' Diggings.' "It is doubtful," he says, " whether this list contains a single example of the name of a prehistoric indi- vidual." The list, however, includes, among others, the following lows :

Bottes-low Ravens-low

Browns-low Rains-low

Culverds-low Swains-low

Dars-low Swans-low

Hawkes-low Taylors-low

Herns-low Thirkell-low

Kens-low Tids-low

Ladraans-low Totmans-low

Larks-low Wars-low

Pars-low Yarns-low.

It is possible that every one of the twenty tomb-names which I have cited from the list in question contains a personal name ; it is certain that some of them do so. For instance, Totmans - low contains the A.-S. personal name Tatmonn or Tatmon, which occurs three times in the Durham ' Liber Vitae.' Ladmans-low also contains a personal name, and it is just possible that it is identical in meaning with A.-S. Iddmann, guide, leader. The modern form, however, of that word should be lodeman. Nevertheless, we have Stan-low, for Stone-low, in the district. The prefix in Hawkes-low is the personal name which is familiar to us in Old Norse as Hauk-r ; and Ravens-low contains the A.-S. name Rafan, O.N. Hrafn, which also occurs in the 'Liber Vitse.' Swains-low, and pos- sibly also Swans-low, is the tomb of Swegn, O.N. Sveinn a very frequent name of a man. In Culverds-low it is probable that we have to do with a name which ended in heard, as did many A.-S. personal names. In Thirkel-low we may have the well-known D.N. masculine name Thorkell. I have not found Tid in the 'Liber Vitse,' but it may occur elsewhere. Tida and Tidi, however, are there, and also the following names in which Tid- occurs as a compound : Tidcume,