Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/183

 9 th S. III. M

AB.4,m] NOTES AND QUERIES.

177

beach and King's Lynn, in Norfolk, lies beyond the ancient sea-wall from which the landward villages of Walton, Walsoken, and Walpole take their names. Walworth, Surrey, called in a charter Wealawyrth, was an estate be- longing to Welshmen or Britons (weala, gen. pi. of wealh). In some cases, as in Suffolk and Northants, Walton may be the tun enclosed by a wall. Wallasea, Essex, is an island surrounded by a sea-wall or embank- ment ; and at Wallbury, Essex, there is a great earthwork enclosing thirty acres.

ISAAC TAYLOR.

Walton, generally from Latin vallum, "a wall," sometimes associated with Roman re- mains ; otherwise oil the coast, as a sea-wall. Each case should be studied on its own merits ; for instance, Walsall has a subdivision known as Walsall "foreign." Can MR. DUIGNAN define a Walsall colt ? A. HALL.

' THE ROMANO-BRITISH CITY OF SILCHESTER (9 th S. iii. 100), In your review of Mr. Davis's book on Silchester you remark that the author's statement that " not a single Roman place-name has survived" is "surely going much top far." I think most antiquaries will agree with you. I am not skilled in place- names, but does not Billericay, in Essex, six miles beyond Brentwood, still preserve, with the addition of the final y, the name that the Romans gave it ? R. CLARK.

Walthamstow.

In answer to the quotation that "not a singular Roman place-name survives," there are two in Kent only, Deal and Reculver, from Dola and Regulbium. Again, Gloucester is held to be Claudius's camp or castrum. E. L. GARBETT.

PLACE-NAMES (9 th S. iii. 105). Will MR. CHARLES WISE be so kind as to tell the sub- named whether he has found the place Wetewong, as it becomes a family name in Oxford mediaeval history ? A day or two ago the name Kysseblancpayn was rnet with in the Godstowe cartulary, English version, a resident in St. Edward parish. The name William - beyond - Nightingale - hall - lane is even more surprising, and probably has a bit of history attached to it ; the lane, in St. Peter's parish, Oxford, abutted at its east end upon a bit of the royal way under the walls, and this William had probably squatted there, and really lived in no street at all. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries these dwellers under the wall bore the title " Sub- muro"; their descendants the Underwalls either diminished in numbers or dropped a surname which was perhaps not very dignified.

An Alegood or Alegod family was of some re- pute here in early days. From the discovery of Haliwell, Hale well, and Ale well, used for the present Holywell, and of Halegod and Aligod as the surname, I suspect Holy-god (to match Bigod) was the original form, so that he was a swearer of oaths rather than a brewer of good ale. H. HURST.

Oxford.

"UNSPEAKABLE TURK "(9 th S. iii. 68). Mr. W. S. Walsh, in his ' Handy Book of Literary Curiosities,' attributes the origin of this now frequently used phrase to Carlyle. He tells us that the expression came into general use at the time of the Bulgarian agitation of 1876, on its appearance in a published letter of Carlyle's to George Howard, M.P., dated 24 November : "The unspeakable Turk should be immediately struck out of the question, and the country left to European guidance." But this was not the first use by: Carlyle of the term. Nearly fifty years before to be exact, in 1831, in an article on the * Nibelungen Lied,' in the Westminster Review, No. 29, and now to be found among his * Miscellanies ' he makes mention of "that unspeakable Turk, King Machabol." C. P. HALE.

The phrase occurs first, I think, in Carlyle's essay on the 'Nibelungen Lied,' published in 1831. I quote from the Library Edition, vol. viii. p. 154, "How they [i.e. Kaisir Ottnitt and little King Elberich] sailed with Messina ships into Paynim lands ; fought with that unspeakable Turk, King Machobol." Mr. Gladstone quoted the phrase, but applied it to the Turkish nation, not to an individual as in the original. E. R.

The expression was used by Carlyle in a letter to the Daily News of 28 Nov., 1876. I am not aware that he borrowed it from Mr. Gladstone. EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

ALARIC AND THE CHIEFS OF THE URUA (9 th S. iii. 69). This story, of burial under the bed of a stream, occurs also in the 'Toldoth Jeshu,' or Hebrew account of our Lord. When He has been stoned to death, and afterwards hanged on a tree, Judas, the hero of the tale, turns aside a brook in his garden, and buries Jeshua under it, then restoring the brook to its old bed. The queen Alexandra (or rather, as the Hebrew spells it, Helena), when she hears that nobody knows where Jeshua is buried, exclaims, "Then He was the Son of God, and has ascended to His heavenly Father, as He predicted ! " The Synhedrion assures her there is no ground for any such belief. She insists on having His body produced, and