Page:Notes and Queries - Series 7 - Volume 5.djvu/20

12 economic laws of to-day are wholly different from the human nature and the economic laws of fifteen centuries ago.”

But the question of probability need not be considered until the philological objections to etymologies are removed. He cannot raise the slightest objection to my derivation from personal names, for he cannot deny the existence of the personal names nor the fact that es is the regular genitive of these names. Even if etymologies were as philologically unobjectionable as those I have put forward, he would not be able to claim that they were anything more than alternative etymologies. Before we can accept such conclusions as his etymologies involve, the local names upon which these conclusions rest must be absolutely incapable of any other reasonable explanation. cannot claim that his etymologies fulfil these conditions. The derivation of these names from personal names is perfectly unobjectionable. It involves no historical improbabilities, it transgresses no philological laws, and I strenuously deny that it disturbs the harmony of English history and archæology with “the results of all the best modern research in anthropology, ethnology, and natural science,” and that it “subverts the whole order of the sciences.” And I venture to claim that phonology is quite equal to anthropology as “a ratiocinative process,” for it has at least an equal right to be considered an exact science. I cannot admit that there is any necessity to consider anthropology at all in this matter. It is purely and simply a question of philology, which must be settled without reference to any anthropological theories whatever. Anthropology, if it step out of its own domain for its facts, must rely upon better foundations than a philologically inadmissible explanation of a handful of local names.

Other conflicts come to an end: that between the Saxon and the Celt goes on for ever. It is a perpetual Armageddon of philology. But an inch of charter is worth at least an imperial acre of disquisition. The existence or non-existence of Welsh survivals all over England must be decided upon firmer ground than place-names, which, though valuable as corroborative testimony, will not do as proof in chief. Is there any trace of such survivals in Anglo-Saxon charters? Documents of that kind, frequently by slight incidental allusions, give valuable racial indications; for example, an old charter (Norman, not Anglo-Saxon) of lands in Cumberland gives one of the boundaries as “the fosse of the Galwegians.”

Regarding French I may add one fact. In Annandale there is an estate called Frenchland. The lands were held in farm by William French (Franciscus) in the beginning of the thirteenth century under Sir Robert de Brus, who afterwards, about 1218, granted them by charter of excambion to Roger French, the son of William French. The family of French possessed the estate for many generations, and it was certainly from them, and not from a colony of Frenchmen, that the property derived its name.

In his first note upon this subject disputes the thesis that tribal influences and tribal designations are apparent in English local names, and asserts (p. 3) that “local names in Weales-, Swǽfes-, Húnes-, Denes-, Wendles-, &c., are simply derived from men named Wealh, Swǽf, Hún, Dene, Wendel, &c.; or, to put it more accurately, from men whose full names began with those stems.” There is a story in the printed Latin edition of the ‘Gesta Romanorum’ which narrates “how a certain knight named Albert fought with a spirit and overcame him, and captured his steed, which, however, disappeared at the sound of the cockcrow” (ed. Herrtage, E. E. T. Soc., 1879, p. 525). On this story the editor supplies the following note:—

I have drawn attention to this note from no wish to enter the lists of controversy, but merely to show that the tribal derivation of local names is not a “fad” of modern philologists, but has the sanction of early tradition. The legend of the knight who meets an elfin foe upon a haunted bill is a very widespread tale, and is known far beyond the limits of Cambridgeshire.

(7 S. iv. 447).—St. Enoch is St. Thenew, 514. Her festival is observed in the Aberdeen Breviary on July 18, “Thenevve matrone.” “The popular name of her church in Glasgow at the time of the Reformation,” says the Bishop (A. P. Forbes) of Brechin, “was San Theneukes Kirk; afterwards, by a further corruption, St. Enoch’s.” Bishop Forbes abridges her history from the Aberdeen Breviary:—

“S. Thenew, daughter of the King of Laudonia, brought up in the faith of the Church, but uubaptizedunbaptized [sic],