Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/609

 ii s.v. JUKE 29, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

501

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 2V, 1912.

CONTENTS. No. 131.

KTOTES : Dowles, 501 -The Centenary of Sainte Genevieve 502 A "Mysticall Man" at Sturbridge Fair, 503 Epitaphiana, 504 Francis Palacky, Historian and States- man, 505 Norse Myths illustrated on Ancient Manx Crosses " Chaz in " " Cynical " " Vieing " Rhetorique Family Destruction of a Library at Garge by Welling- ton's Army, 506.

QUERIES : Caraccioli on dive Hyat of Jamaica " Credo quia impossible" "To set daggs" Schaak, an Artist Succession to Hanover and Brunswick Liscombe : Robinson Current Encycjopsedias Daniel, Cromwell's Porter, 507 Barnard Family Ryan : Lord Cardigan at Balaclava J. Newell Gordon Queen Anne's Nurse, 508 Biographical Information Wanted Sanskrit and Welsh' Pishoken ' King Engle and his Sons T. Camp- bell, 1729 ' The Chamber over the Gate ' William Knight, 509.

REPLIES : County Bibliographies, 510 Charles Dickens and Dissenters, 511 Nottingham as a Surname " March- ing Regiment "Execution of Lord Russell ' The Shot- over Papers,' 512 Hancock as a Place-Name -St. Wilhel- mina, Patron Saint of Nursing Mothers, 513 Vortigern Yedding Bullock's Museum, Piccadilly, 514 Henry Seymour 'Long Ago' Stones' End, Borough Meso- Gothic Diseases from Plants Signs of Old London Dinner-jacket, 515' Rule, Britannia 'Logan, Laughan Frances, Duchess of Suffolk Casanoviana : Edward "Tiretta, 516 Jockey Doctors Mary Wollstonecraft Poet's Road, Canonbury Dogs in Churches Names terrible to Children Milgrove Regent's Park Centenary 'A White Hand and a Black Thumb' " Skivvy "- day " Undertaker's " black ladder " Bell Authors Wanted Women as Churchwardens Haberjam Family Pausanias, 518.
 * Commonwealth Mercury," 517 " Our life is but a winter's

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' In Praise of Oxford ' ' Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Jiafcs.

DOWLES.

THIS is the name of a parish on Severn in an intrusive portion of South Salop, one mile north-west of Bewdley, from which it is divided by a small stream, called also Dowl or Dowles, which forms the boundary between Shropshire and Worcestershire. The name is unique as a place-name. Whether the parish derives its name from the stream, or confers it, it would be difficult to say, and doas not, perhaps, concern us.

Dowles was one of the seven berewicks appurtenant to Stottesden in Salop, about eight miles to the north, and bore the name of Achisey or Hakieshey, by which name it was granted by Henry I., in 1127, to the Priory of Great Malvern, a cell to the Abbey of Westminster. The fir t known subsequent record relating to Dowles is in 1292, whe e it is mentioned as " his [the Prior's] manor of Dowlzs " (Eyton's ' An- tiquities of Shropshire,' iv. 160). Of course,

this is a complete change of name a not uncommon occurrence in early days. When precisely, and why, this took placs we do not know. Dowles is not apparently Welsh or Anglo-Saxon, and as it was introduced into our language in the twelfth or thirteenth century by monks doubtless well acquainted with Norman-French, we naturally turn to that language. Prof. Skeat, in 'Notes on English Etymology ' (Clarendon Press, 1901). p. 72, sub ' Dowle,' writes very fully on the history and etymology of the word, which he traces to Old French ; but the only meaning he assigns to it, applicable to a place-name, is ' a wool-bearing tree or cotton tree which is said to have wool or dowl on it." The females of all poplars have their seeds enveloped in abundance of cottony down like cotton-wool in appearance and quality. The female of the Old English black poplar is most prolific in the produc- tion of these seeds, which in late summer cover the ground like a carpet, and in some localities the species is called the cotton or cotton-wood tree. Dowles is situate in the Forest of Wyre, and it is not unlikely that a group of these trees in the forest, or on the course of the stream, may be the origin of the name. The ' New English Dictionary' gives dowl as an obsolete dialectic word, meaning (inter alia) " down, fluff." NorthaH's ' Warwickshire Word- Book,' English Dialect Society, No. 79, gives dowl as " the downy particles of

feathers the fluff that wears off fabrics,

any fluff -like substance " ; and gives a quotation (of 1661), "The wool-bearing

trees in Ethiopia, which Virgil speaks of

are not such trees as have wool or dowl upon the outside of them." Halliwell's ' Dic- tionary,' under Doul, gives " down, feathers." and also under Doide, " thick, dense," quoting as authority a passage from MS. Ashmole, " As in the wodde's for to walke under dovle schadis." This last meaning is another view, and would be a likely root for the name of the river, as it flows through the forest ; but the authority is unsupported, and the quotation a solitary one. ' The English Dialect Dictionary,' under Dowl, gives, among other meanings, " down, soft feathers, fluff, dust," and "such trees as have a certain wool or dowle upon them, as the small cotton " (quoting Nares). Worces- tershire is also given as one of the counties in which the word circulated.

There is, I think, only one other possible root for the place- or river-name. The ' New English Dictionary,' under Dool, Dole dou-l(e) being one of its forms gives the