Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/264

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. SE:- T. 14,1007.

" DOWB " (10 S. vii. 509 ; viii. 54. 135). The reply at the last reference shows how much a " Society for the Preservation of Jokes " is required. No one would dream of telegraphing " Take care of Dowb," or of asking for the safety of an officer on active service ! The story at the time was that Lord Panmure, wishing to get his relation some good post, ordered a telegram to be sent to head-quarters in the Crimea to take care of Dowbiggin. The cable, a very crazy one, was said to have broken down after getting as far as " Dowb," and the staff were left for some time in much anxiety, their efforts to find some explanation making the matter public when the message was eventually completed. R. W. P.

The reference in the query is incorrect. seventh line of ' General Summary ' in Rudyard Kipling's ' Departmental Ditties,' not in the introductory poem to ' Barrack. Room Ballads.' ROBERT PIEKPOINT.
 * ' ' Dowb,' the first of all his race," is the

THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS (10 S. ii. 441, 516 ; iii. 18, 114 ; vii. 238, 291 ; viii. 53). Had I foreseen that MR. MORLEY DAVIES was likely to regard Cilt-ena and Chilt-ern as different forms of the same word, I would have been more explicit at 10 S. vii. 291. The O.E. name " Ciltern " occurs in annal 1009 in the Laud MS. of the ' Chronicle.' It is made up of the head- word " Cilt " and the infrequent end- word " ern," which is found in the names Malv-ern, Wald-ern, Walk-ern (explained by Prof. Skeat in ' The Place- Names of Hertfordshire,' 1904, p. 34), Whit-ern, and a few others. The form " ern" represents the O.E. word hyrne, " a corner." Compare " In som hurne of the lond," Robert of Gloucester (c. 1280), p. 178. " Hyrne " is cognate with " corner," the obsolete " cornyer," Fr. cornier e, Low Lat. corneria (from cornu), and with the Welsh corn, pi. cyrn, which is employed with the same intention as "ern," viz. v to indicate land jutting out. But in Welsh names of dis- tricts corn nearly always means land jutting out into the sea, and is never an end-word in composition. In English herne appears to denote land jutting out into a neigh- bouring locality, and particularly hilly land. Cp. Herne Hill (Surrey), Malvern, and Chiltern itself. Hwit-ern, Whit-ern, Whit-horn, is an exception to the rule.

The head- word " Cilt " is allied on one hand to the continental Teutonic Celto, Celta, which is found in Celtan-hom, and on the other to the Welsh Gild-as (cf. Welsh gid=]tid, and dau = two, which, like " Gild-

as," offer the mediae in place of the Teutonic tenues, according to ru'e^. It survived in Mercia to the year 798 at least ; vide Birch, ' Cartul. Saxon.,' No. cclxxxviii., vol. i. p. 398, where may be found " Cildas Minister CoenulS regis." (Cf. " Penda " for "Penta.") The sib-name of the Cilts, or Ciltas, may have been Ciltan, which would make its genitive Ciltena. The form Celtan-(hom) appears to be due merely to the weakening of i, and the name of the Chelt may show that the Ciltas called it after their eponymous ancestor, and mingled stream- and ancestor-worship together.

The form " Ciltre " in the records named! by MR. DAVIES can only represent ciltre r i.e., Ciltren, and parallels to the metathesis shown therein appear in the Domesday form Walchra, miswritten for Walchrd, i.e., Walchran, and in tho East-Sussex names Waldron (modern) and Wauderne (four- teenth century). " Ciltern " was, probably,, a part of the region of the Ciltena-saete, which, according to the ' Nomina Hidarum/ comprised 4,000 hides. Its neighbours " Noxgaga " and " Lindisf arena " had 5,000' and 7,000 hides, respectively.

ALFRED ANSCOMBE.

THE RACIAL PROBLEM or EUROPE (10 S. viii. 145). May I express my thanks to MR. ACKERLEY for pointing out that the peoples speaking Celtic languages are nofe racially homogeneous ? This has long been known to scholars, but it is an unconscion- able time filtering down to the general public. For instance, all the papers which have described the Eisteddfod at Swansea have- called the Welsh Celts, yet there are practic- ally no Celts in Wales. The following passage from Rhys's 'Welsh People' (1900, p. 32) should be committed to memory by every student of British history :

" Should it then be asked what the Welsh of the present day are, Aryan or not Aryan, the answer must be, we think, that, on the whole, they are not Aryan, that, in fact, the Aryan element forms, as it were, a mere sprinkling among them. This is by no means suprising, as will be seen on comparing, the case of France, to which we have already alluded. For the French of the present day are, in, the main, neither Gauls nor Aryans of any descrip- tion, so much as the lineal representatives of the- inhabitants whom the Aryans found there."

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

[Reply from MR. WHISH next week.]

FRENCH CAMP AT SANDGATE (10 S. vi.

208). I am able to answer my own query.

The camp alluded to was at Sangate, or

Sandgatte, on the French coast r near Calais.

HAROLD MALET, Col.