Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/235

 MS. I. MARCH 5,1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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that of 253 " lows " noted in Mr. Bateman's list only 25 contain the genitive sign.

Not unfrequently in the Peak it was customary to add to -low the full name of the adjoining place or village, as for example Chelmorton low. There may be cases where a long prefix was contracted, but I know of none at the present date. This is one reason for believing Tidslow to be a contraction of Tideswell low ; and the fact of the latter term being employed by Rhodes serves to corro- borate it (' Peak Scenery,' 1824, 72). In connexion with this view I have been informed by an old Derbyshire literary antiquary, who was well acquainted with the locality fifty years since, that the low was customarily termed " Tidsor topping" by the natives. In P. P. Burdett's map of the county, " made from an actual survey," and published by Pilkington in 1789, it is called " Tidslow top."

The doubt I expressed as to any "pre- historic'^ individual being recorded in Mr. Bateman's list of barrows is regarded by MR. ADDY as incorrect, and he cites twenty examples from it, each (or nearly all) of which "contains a personal name." The derivations of nine of these, as well as of several others, are given by him in detail, and are demonstrated by him to belong to the A.-S. period. But the whole tenor of his remarks is beside the question at issue, as all his examples are of the historic, as dis- tinguished from the "prehistoric," period, to which latter alone, as I distinctly stated, uiy remarks applied. This he must have overlooked, unless (which I can hardly suppose) he included the latter in the historic one.

That some occupants of the barrows enumerated by him bore the family or tribal name is likely enough, and future examina- tion of the grave-mounds may corroborate it. This was satisfactorily proved in one instance, not mentioned by him. The " Brushfield barrow" opened by Mr. Bateman in 1850 contained a Saxon sword and other relics of the same age. As the place-name Brush- field is simply a contraction of Brihtricfeld, the interment was, in his opinion, that of a Brihtric, the owner of the local manor. Another example of the same family patronymic occurs in the case of Brixton, in Devonshire, the original one as noted in Domesday being Brictrichestone.

The following barrows examined by Mr. Bateman are comprised in MR. ADDY'S list Browns (should be Brown) low, Ladmans low, Larks low, Taylors low, and probably Hawkes low and were found to be of the Neolithic

ige ; while the contents of three at Kenslow belonged respectively to the stone, bronze, and iron periods. Is it possible or probable that any of these embodies the name of an individual ?

That the suffix -well denotes a spring of water, and does not represent, in MR. ADDY'S opinion, "a field or paddock," is clearly shown oy PROF. SKEAT to be erroneous.

The earliest notice of Tideswell yet found is recorded in the ' Survey of Devon ' by Tristram Risdon (1580-1640), who collected materials for his work between the years 1605 and 1630 (not published till 1714). It is described in his account of a sub-manor in bhe parish of East Budleigh in that county in these words :

" Tidwell .Here is a Pond or Pool maintained

by Springs, which continually welm and boil up, not unlike that wonderful \Vell in Darby-shire which ebbeth and floweth by just Tides, and hath given Name to Tideswell, a Market Town of no mean Account." II. 83-4.

Defoe's 'Tour through Great Britain,' 3 vols., was issued in the years 1724-6, the later editions being edited by S. Richardson, a Derbyshire man, and the well-known author of ' Pamela,' &c. The following quotation is taken from the 1748 edition :

" At Tidwell, alia* Tideswell [Devonshire], is a pond or pool, which boils up like that of the same name at Weeden in Derbyshire." I. 366.

It is to be regretted that MR. ADDY did not examine other authorities than Da vies, other- wise he would scarcely have committed the grievous error of asserting, " The story about the tides of an ebbing well appears to have been invented by Charles Cotton." The extract from Risdon's work shows " the story " to have been well known long before Cotton was born. Again, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who published his ' De Mira- bilibus Pecci,' in Latin, in 1636, of which an English translation was issued in 1678, employs the term "the ebbing and flowing well " (p. 56) three years prior to the appear- ance of Cotton's volume.

'The Wonders of the Peake,' by Charles Cotton (1630-87), issued in 1681, contains a similar account of the well of the "tides" to that of Hobbes.

It is here necessary to mention that writers allude to two intermitting springs separated some miles from each other, one at Barmoor Clough and the other at Tideswell. Notices of each are quoted by MR. ADDY from the work of Davies, and he then adds, " Barmoor Clough is six miles from Tideswell," implying (as far as I can understand him) that the same well is referred to under the two titles. But