Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/58

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. vn. JAN. 19, 1901.

fell on the field of Tewkesbury, and was not barbarously done to death, after the battle, by the royal brothers of the White Rose fac- tion. A. R. BAYLEY.

IPPLEPEN, CO. DEVON.

(9 th S. vi. 409.)

THE etymology of this place is an outcome of that peculiar phase of Jewish dispersion to which we owe some of our most valuable national characteristics, notably our fitness for colonization and trade.

The decaying village of Ipplepen, upon the trackway from Hamoaze and Tatnai's to the East, is one unexplored mass of antiquity. Over 200 names of Phoenician places, and of people even now of strong Levantine type, with strange interconnexions between them, centre in or near it, while the stone axe, unique-shaped celt, and copper cake found in or near my own grounds indicate its life- history at over forty centuries. During some fort} 1 years' residence near the weird old place these considerations have pressed on me until, with the help of a moderate knowledge of Semitic, so as to sort out the fossils of speech, and the aid of some kindly scholars hailing from the British Museum among them a chief rabbi I have ventured to give (much condensed) an outline of hoar, yet, I submit, tolerably continuous, antiquity.

After the Exodus the tribes of Dan and Asher fell into line with the Syrian shorefolk who had for ages carried on the tin trade between Tyre and her daughter-namesakes Ha Maoz, now Plymouth, and St. Mawes now Fairaouth, still Kerek Roads. Wher Tyre fell, Gaddir, now Cadiz, came in. From these centres ships laden with corn, wine, oil pottery, and tools, as barter for wool anc skins, traversed both sides of the Britisl Isles. Like the Hudson Bay folk, they pu. in shore every night, and thus at the mouth of every river (whether it were a Nore o Yare) sprang up a factory (?nishal) or ini (Inn) to shelter and feed the crews and stor up inward and outward freight. Tents (ohel the Cornish wheal} were used up stream.

We have thus permanent residents, t whom came women and children, with som kind of religion- in fact, Jews could no dispense with circumcision and the Sabbath however dark they might keep them. Bu the religion was somewhat mixed, for up t the time of Hosea Baal had apparently been permitted to flourish, and at Elijah' sacrifice the people had passed from th

alse to the true without change of position. Here too, in England was there confusion, or with us at Ipplepen are the 'remains of a great Baal temple under Baal lor, with its lustration rock-cut tank, anci its boundary still known as Edgelands Lane. Nay, there still exists in the place the nona- genarian descendant of the Baal priest who, ill forty years ago, held the temple site by descent ; and he bears his ancestral name, hardly altered to Ballhatchet from its original form Baal-achad-Baal only, or Baal is one. The false here again parodied the true, tor this s a blasphemous allusion to " Hear, O Israel, declared by the holiest lips which ever spoke on earth to be the first and great command- ment. The name of the prophet Joel (Jo-JU, Jahweh is El) shows that Baal-achad is a variation to suit the jingle dear to the Semite, and a frequent Hebraism.

And now to the name of Ipplepen, its first syllable. In Joshua, chap, xvii., are the names of various Syrian towns with their suburbs the word is naphath (A.V., towns ; Sept., villages; Heintz, "daughters")- Among them is "Dor," a royal city, which Ezekiel, chap, xxvii., classes with Aradus (now Kuad, with us as Hyde) as supplying Tyre's stoutest rowers and warriors. This district was called Naphath Dor, and under this style her people brought four daughters to our shores : Apple- dore in Devon and Kent and on the borders of Somerset, and Appuldorcombe in that Phoenician sanctuary the Isle of \\ight. This corruption to Apple occurs many times ; funniest of all in a stormy place in the west of Scotland where apples will not grow, and Applecross means Naphath Rosch, the district of the headland, like Ross-shire.

We have found Ipple ; we have yet to find the last syllable of Domesday Ipplepina, Baal and Ashtoreth were worshipped jointly, the lady's pet name on Maltese steles being Pen Baal, the face of Baal. She has a temple a mile from Ipplepen, called on the Ordnance map Pen Ball. The whole district was prac- tically consecrated to the pair of deities, and was thus called Naphath Pen the district of the Face (i.e., Baal), from which the Ipple- pina is taken.

One of the strange interconnexions may, if your space permit, be noticed. There are several copper oaks oaks of cobr, the grave. A weird survival of one, pulled down two years ago, overlooked a field called "Kennion." Now, we learn from Genesis xxiii. 18 that Machpelah was Abraham's "kennion," his purchased possession.

To show that this interconnexion is common to Ireland as well, may I append a few Irish