Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/34

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. i. JAN. s, 1910.

insinuate what I believe to be untrue, viz., that the Icenhilde Way passed through Jckleton. This was an assumption made by former antiquaries, merely because both words began with the same two letters ; much as if we were to assume that model is derived from the Lat. monere because both words begin with mo-. The A.-S. name of Ickleton was Iceling-tun ; and, as I have already said in my '"Place-Names of Cambs,'- Ickleton has no more to do with the Icen- hilde Way than Icklingham in Suffolk has, or the Ickleford in Herts.

My contention is that this ridiculous identification of Ickleton with the course of the old way makes an utter mess of the course of that way. The theory was that a man going from Newmarket to Royston would follow the road from Newmarket towards Great Chesterford all the way to the place called Stump Cross, about a mile short of Chesterford ; and then he would get across the Cam as soon as he could (for the sole purpose of passing through Ickle- ton), and then go across country where there is no very good road even now, till he regained the Royston high road. No one would ever have done anything so tran- scendently foolish. He would quit the great road from Newmarket to Chesterford some three miles short of Stump Cross, at a point twelve miles from Newmarket, and go a little to the right to Pampisford, cross the Cam at Whittlesford by the ford there, and follow the great road to Royston. Whatever direction the old road took, it could not have been very different from this at any time, because the route is so extremely direct and obvious, and the name of the ford over the Cam is still pre- served.

I cannot believe that the idea of going through Ickleton would ever have arisen if it had not been for the unlucky accident that its name began with Ic-. But if we are to be guided by such considerations as chance resemblance, surely the road should have driven through Ickenham in Middlesex ; for this resembles the road- name in two syllables, and not in two letters only. WALTER W. SKEAT.

' BEOWULF ' : HEMMING OF WORCESTER. After a minute examination and a careful comparison in 1908 of the handwritings of the* two MSS. now in the British Museum labelle'd MS. Cotton, Tiberius, A. XIII. and MS. Vitellius A. XV., I wish to give my results to your readers for their further research and criticism.

The first MS. is the well- authenticated vellum of the " Monk Hemming," monk and afterwards Sub-Prior of Worcester, who com- piled by the command of Bishop Wulfstan a ' Chartulary of the Church of Worcester,' printed by Thomas Hearne (1728) under the title ' Hemingii Chartularium Ecclesiae Wigiorniensis.' The Chartulary is identified as the work of Hemming under his own declaration on p. 132 in folio B, in the printed edition on p. 282.

The Chartulary is written in verse arranged as prose. The handwriting is nearly all that of Hemming himself, and is in a good Norman hand. The names of persons and places which are in the Saxon characters are freely and readily written. A few of the charters have been copied for Hemming by other scribes, but all have been verified, and the signatures usually written by Hemming.

Prof. Maitland, in ' The Victoria History of Worcester,' has this to say of Hemming' s Chartulary :

" There is hardly a long series of charters which is of better repute than the line of land books which belonged to the church of Worcester. And where Hemming's work can be tested, it generally gains credit."

The Chartulary has three divisions : first in order of date are the charters of the Conquest ; next come the documents and narratives relating to the " Period of Con- quest " ; thirdly, a brief survey of the lands held by the Monastery of Worcester. Among the names of the " Charter signers " are many of the names mentioned in the poem ' Beowulf.'

The MS. of k Beowulf * was discovered in 1705, and first mentioned in Wanley's Catalogue. As this poem has been so fre- quently translated and discussed, it would be out of place to mention that it has been traditionally known to have had two scribes. The second hand is said to have com- menced at the word " moste " in 1. 1939, con- tinuing to the end (1. 3183). Immediately following 1. 1939 comes the story which con- tains the repeated words " Hemminges maeg. n

These lines are said by Thorpe to be " barely intelligible." I disagree with him, and say that these lines are the key to the author and scribe of the poem.

I identify Hemming as the scribe of the whole poem. While there are slight differ- ences in the shape of a few of the letters in the handwriting of the first and of the later part of the MS., they are, in my opinion, only the differences in the handwriting of a