Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/131

 n s. i. FEB. 12, mo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

123

representing the Crown, were obliged to give personal attendance on the judges during the sitting of the Court, and provide the requisite accommodation for carrying on the business. In the Royal Burgh of Jedburgh the Provost and magistrates went out in state, generally as far as Ancrum Bridge, to meet the judge and escort him to the town ; and on their arrival at the hotel door the burgesses were summoned, under the tenure by which they held their property of watching and warding to form a guard to his lordship and the magis- trates. A letter from a judge on circuit may be quoted. It is addressed to the Pro- vost, Dr. Lindesay (father of Isabella Linde- say, the friend ."of Burns on his Border tour), and the magistrates :

Galashiels, Monday,

,8th May, 1780.

GENTLEMEN, I have got this far on my road to Jedburgh to hold the circuit there. I shall be at Merton this night, and pass to-morrow at that place, and shall be at Jedburgh on Wednesday about half-an-hour after twelve, and I shall go to Court about an hour after. I thought it my dxity to give you this information, and am, with great regard, Gentlemen,

Your most humble Servant,

THO. MILLER.

The duty of guarding the Courthouse and the prisoners was in the hands of the Crowner, who was an official of the Crown. The family of Cranstoun, to one of whom reference has already been made, owned property in the village of Lanton, nigh to the Royal Burgh, which carried with it the rights and duties of the Crowner. These lands have now been sold, and the duties have been commuted on a monetary pay- ment.

Since, in recent years, there has been so much concentration in legal administration, some of the circuits have not been held. In the interests of economy perhaps this may be necessary, but the pomp and ceremony 'incident to the occasion impressed the multitude with the absolute impartiality in the administration of justice, and the freedom of approach on the part of the lieges if any complaints had to be made. J. LINDSAY HILSON.

Public Library, Kelso.

"WIOGORA CEASTER": WORCESTER.

THE etymology of the name of the city of Worcester has not yet been thoroughly elucidated, and I beg leave to advance the inquiry a step or two.

The oldest English form of the name we know of is to be found in Hat ton MS. 20

in the Bodleian Library. This MS., which was written about A.D. 895, is the actual copy of King Alfred's translation of Pope- Gregory's ' Pastoral Care 5 that was sent by Alfred's order to the Bishop of Worcester. A reproduction of its first lines is given bjr Prof. Skeat, Plate I. in his 'Twelve Fac- similes of Old English Manuscripts, 5 1892. The head-line runs : " )eos Boc sceal to Wiogora ceastre, 51 i.e., " This book is to go to Worcester.' 5 * The syllables -ora here have not yet been correctly explained : they represent wara, the genitive case of the plural noun ware, people. The disappear- ance of initial w from the second element of compound words is a frequent phenomenon in A.-S. Compare hwUende=*hwll wende, transitory ; hldford=*hldf weard, lord ; and for other instances see Dr. Joseph Wright's ' Old English Grammar, 5 1908, 267. A close parallel is afforded by the treatment of wara in the French form of the name Cant- wara-byrig, sc. " Cant-or-bery.' 5 If, then, we may argue from analogy, we may say that " Wiogora ceastre " equals *Wiog-wara- ceastre.

But " Wiog, n with breaking of i into io- before g, is not pure West Saxon. It is probably Kentish. In that dialect the- breaking of i is regularly caused by an o or an a coming in the following syllable : cf. Wright, u.s., 101, where the Kentish forms siocol (sickle) and stiogol (stile) are set side by side with the West-Saxon and Anglian forms sicol and stigol. For this reason we must revert to the common form given in the Chronicles, and that is Wigera-, Wigra-, Wigre-. This shows that the true form is Wig-wara. The appearance of ware is rare when compared with that of scete, and its use here, as in " Cantwarabyrig," suggests that * Wig- wara- ceaster was the chief city of a mixed Celtic and Anglo- Saxon population, which, like the Centings, was known by a modified form of the name of the dispossessed Celtic tribe. What the actual name of that tribe was is unknown.

There is an antiquarian belief that the Hwiccas were originally called " lugantes."' If that belief has no other foundation than the reading euigantum ciuitate in the second Medici MS. of the ' Annals ' of Tacitus (XII. xl., ed. H. Furneaux, 1907, p. 109), it may be dismissed at once, because that is an error which can be easily explained. The editors of Tacitus in many editions hava emended it to " e Brigantum ciuitate,"

in Anglo-Saxon,' 1884, p. 10.
 * For the idiom see Earle's ' Book for the Beginner