Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/445

 9th S. IV. Dec. 9, '99.] 481 NOTES AND QUERIES. pare the hidage: twenty hides the assess- ment of the whole in Ceadwalla's grant, which included Cumnor, while in the time or Eadied Cumnor alone was assessed at thirty hides, a circumstance also pointing to the pro gress of settlement and a greatly increased cultivation. Would a thirteenth - century forger look back so accurately at what the state of the land must have been in Cead walla's time, compared to what it was 270 years later ? Again, hundreds or liberties of some kind for administrative purposes existed before the later shires. The large island at the mouth of the Cherwell, as given to the abbey by Ceadwalla, has continued to be part of the Berkshire Hundred of Hormer to our own time, although geographically in Oxfordshire, a circumstance pointing to a grant of some kind of a very early date before the boundaries of the shires had been fixed. The early grant of Ceadwalla affords a reasonable explanation of this anomaly. The supposed thirteenth- century forger who wrote in Anglo-Saxon was evidently a careful arclueologist. In his paper on the ' Dialects and Prehis- toric Forms of Old English ' (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1875-6) Mr. H. Sweet has shown that the peculiar e sound in the word kenn is one of the special characteristics of the old Kentish dialect, and replaces the O.E. ?/ sound. I have already traced the ken place-names up the Thames from Kent to Gloucestershire. In North Berks and Oxford- shire they occur from Wacenesfeld ('Cart. Sax.,' i. 224), now Watchfield, and Kencot on the west, to Chenore (Domesday Book) and Lewkenor on the south-east of Oxford. The eccen and eoccen names along the line of the present river Ock occur often in the A.-S. charters in these forms, and only twice as eoccan, so that it is not improbable that name was a tribal boundary name before the name Ock became applied to the stream itself. Eccen or eoccen also occurs in South Berks near Newbury, in Worcestershire, and near Chertsey. Ichenilde, or lkenild, is also the name of the old east and west road from East Oxfordshire to West Berks. These ken or eoccen people appear to have swarmed up the Thames valley, and it is not surprising to find their chief passage over the Thames from east to west was called Eoccenford. The country round Oxford,including the Hormer Hundred of Berks, is classed by Mr. A. J. Ellis as closely akin in dialect to the Kentish orsouth eastern. These Kentish people brought with them not only their dialect and some of their customs, but some of their personal ornaments. In the Anglo-Saxon collection of the British Museum are a large brooch found at Abing- don, and a smaller one found at Iffley, both of the peculiar Kentish type. Mr. Stevenson says of the Cherwell (Cear- wylla) " wherever that was." Except for the new cut across the " micclanige" or large island at its mouth, it is where it always was. close to Oxford. As regards " geafling lace, unless Mr. Stevenson can show that "geafl- ing" has no connexion with " geafl," a fork, Nature is against him, for there is a fork- shaped channel round the island south of St. Ebbe's bathing-place. " Up be streame " can only mean "up stream." There are people who still use such expressions in country places near Oxford. If the supposed thirteenth-century forger who wrote in Anglo - Saxon intended the perambulators to reach Abingdon after leaving the mouth of the Cherwell, he gave some very extraordinary instructions for this purpose by directing them to go " up be streaine " twice, this being the last instruction of the kind given. They could only get to where Osney Bridge now is, i. e., Eoccen- ford, the ford of the increased ken or kin- dred, a name which is partly a colonial name derived from people of Kentish or Frisian descent. T. W. Shore. 105, Ritherdon Road, S.W. Apropos to the derivation of the place- name Oxford, there is a curious section in the learned Dr. Hyde's ' Mandragorias seu historia Shahiludii' (Oxford, 1694), to be found at the beginning of the volume (un- paged), following the elaborate directions " pro Bibliopego," and entitled ' Monitio de corrupto Nomine Oxonii.' It is too long to copy out, but commences thus :— " Ut recepto errori obviam eamus, prcemittendutn est, quc'id Nominis Oxford plane nugatoriaet fabulosa interpretatio (prout ignaris sonare videtur) Bourn radum,ex pravavulgi pronuntiatione ortaest. Cum autem in Oxonio olim pnecipuse notne fuerit Ccutel- lum sen fortalium ad Inidem iluvium, vulgo otwe, dictum Fortalitium (una cum urbe) onginitns nominatum est ouse-fort quod vulgari incuria (Normanorum ut videtur tempore) degeneravit in Oxford." In short, with other similar instances, Hyde derives ouse from the Irish usque, and Oxford from the town by the water : " ut' in variis orbis partibus et Unguis mos est ut particulare flumen generali Nomine emphatice vocetur to vS(i>p, the water." R. B. S. No. 17, Fleet Street (9tb S. iv. 395).— The late Mr. Q. A. Sala wrongly identified the "Rainbow" Tavern, No. 15, with "Nando's," No. 17, a mistake apparently founded on a