Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/542

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. iv. DEC. so, 1011.

for Witham, the ancient gibing tale that the good people of Little Witham were witless enough to put a frog into a cage, under the impression that it would prove an agreeable songster, shows by implication that the place was formerly Little Wit-ham.

Some words now ending in ham ought properly to be written um. Housham, otherwise Howsham, was anciently Husum. To a Lincolnshire labourer it is 'Oozum to a person who " talks fine " How-sham. According to Streatfeild's 'Lincolnshire and the Danes,' 1884, p. 224, " Um is the Danish form of the German heim, English ham." Perhaps Danish influence told on names which are evidently English, such as Mess- ingham and Burringham, in which the final syllable is pronounced um ; but possibly the sound merely comes from the syllable being unstressed ; or, again, the clashing of English with Norman-French may have had some effect.

When did it become a sign of good breed- ing to sound the h in English ? Was it restored to favour when James I. and his Scots came into England, or at a later time ? To judge by the spelling of people in high position, there was great carelessness of diction under the Tudors.

T. E. G.

" Grant " being, according to PEOF. SKEAT, and as we know in connexion with Grantabrig, now Cambridge, the name of a river, Grantham is probably Grant-ham, the homestead on the Grant, as the Witham was apparently called originally.

I remember Grant-ham (the h dropped) as a surname about 1850, and also as the name of the town, pronounced in the same way by Canon Worsley, many years rector of the neighbouring parish of Little Ponton, and by his family in 1882. If, as is stated at the last reference, " Grantham people, gene- rally say Grantum," they preserve the traditional pronunciation. " Gran-tham " is, I have no doubt, a modern corruption.

J. T. F.

Durham.

Might I submit a further solution as to the origin of the name of Grantham ? Eight miles north of Grantham is Brandon, on the River Brant ; four miles further north is Brant Broughton (probably the Brunanborgh where King Athelstan the Saxon defeated King Anlaf the Dane in 938), also on the River Brant (i.e., Brunt or Brun). Near Lincoln are Bransby and Branston ; near Frodingham is Brumby ; near Louth is Bonby ; near Stamford is Bourne all named

Brun, Brunby, Brunnby, or Brunston on old maps. In Suffolk is Brantham ; and in Mercia alone over fifty places perhaps owe their origin to the name of Brun. Brun was the surname of all the kings of Mercia from Crida, 495 A.D., to Leofric, the husband of Lady G odiva of Coventry, sister of Thorold, High Shrive of Lincoln. Leofric was the [ast Earl Brun, and Hereward was his son, slain at Bourne, Brune, or Brun, in the Bruneswold (Forest), his ancestral home, n 1071. Crida was eighth in descent from Woden, probably through Brond, the grand- son of Woden.

Close by Grantham are Marston and Syston, the seats of the Thorolds, the kins- men of the Bruns. I submit that at one time Grantham was Great Brantham, as distinguished from Brandon (Brun's Hill) on the River Brant (i.e., Brun's River) ; Brant Broughton (Brunanborgh), also on the River Brant ; and Brantham, near Manningtree, in Suffolk.

Supposing it received its name about 1,400 years ago, one can easily understand that Great Brantham could have become changed to Grantham in the course of time ; brevity alone would account for it, as also would the effacement of its derivation locally.

CHARLES LANSDOWN.

"WRITES ME" : "STAND IT" (11 S. iv. 465). I think your correspondent has not given us the true history of writes me. It was once perfectly common, and has been in use for a thousand years. In Anglo-Saxon no other phrase was known, because me was used as a dative as well as an accusative. And even now we use me without to when a true accusative follows. Surely no one would be so pedantic as to say : " He wrote to me a letter about it." The alternative phrase "He wrote a letter to me " requires to nowadays, because the governed pro- noun is so far from the verb ; but it would have been quite incorrect in the days of ^Ethelred. The A.-S. version of Luke i. 3 has : " Me gethuhte writan thee," it seemed good to me to write thee.

There are some interesting examples in Shakespeare : " Will you then write me a sonnet?" ('Much Ado,' V. ii. 4.) " He writes me here" ('1 Hen. IV.,' IV. i. 31). " Since I wrote him" (' Cymb.,' IV. iii. 36).

Briefly, the phrase "he writes me" is becoming obsolete merely because we are ceasing to recognize the fact that me was once a dative. But it will long survive in such a phrase as |" give me the book," in spite of protests. WALTER W SKEAT.