Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/195

 s. vin. AUG. si, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

187

in the Crimea was merely intended to show the presence of Teutonic-speaking peoples whether of Low German or Scandinavian stock, in the neighbourhood of Cherson, jus where the Varangians on their way by Novgorod and Kiev to Constantinople woulc first strike the coast. We see by all th< instances of missionary enterprise in Scan dinavia in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries that Low German missionaries were the most successful in making them selves understood in Scandinavian countries whilst it is well known that Frisians, anc even Low Saxons, were to be found amongsl the Vikings. For instance, amongst the dis coverers of " Vinland the Good " was a German who had lived on the Rhine and seen grapes Consequently, if we may reason from the very similar instance of the mission oJ St. Augustine of Canterbury, we may readily imagine that the Varangians found their earliest interpreters for their intercourse with the Greek empire amongst these Goths of the Crimea. These people were naturally familiar with the name of St. Clement, patron of seamen, and, like modern Italian and Greek seamen in a storm, would invoke their patron in every part of the Euxine. Hence his name became very familiar to those Northmen who kept up an intercourse with Constantinople, as it did also to those North- men who established themselves in Lower Italy, and were well acquainted with San Clemente, the Northman's church at Rome. But St. Clement, who was not a seaman himself, had only become the "patron of seamen" because he was drowned with an anchor round his neck at Cherson in Dacia, an anchor being his symbol in all the Clog almanacs so much used in the North. Hence Dacia became inseparably con- nected with his name, and, as we have seen, a confusion with Dania was not long in arising

I am not aware if St. Peter or Our Lady was ever looked upon as the special " patron of seamen " amongst Scandinavian nations, nor can I recall any instance in England or the North where a church to either occupies the same position, as the fisherman's church par excellence, at the entrance to a harbour, which is held by Notre Dame de la Garde at Marseilles or St. Pierre at Dieppe. On the other hand, it is at least curious that the finest churches in the Danish fishing towns of Sandwich and Hastings, which in the eleventh century ranked as amongst the first ports of England, should be dedicated to St. Clement, who, however, had first gained his position as the "patron of seamen" amid

the storms of the Black Sea amongst people who inhabited the ancient Dacia, and some of whom, at least, as descendants of the ancient Goths, spoke a Teutonic tongue..

3. COL. PRIDEAUX will, however, doubtless allow that " Aid wych " may be simply a trans- lation of " Vetus Vicus" a British settlement on the road from Thorney (I forgot this -ey) to London, anterior to the Roman town, just as Old Street, St. Luke's, Clerkenwell, is said to have been a British trackway older than the Roman road. The position between the Fleet and the stream which entered the Thames at Ivy Bridge would be a very natural one for a British stockade, and Vicus is a term peculiarly applicable to a detached group of houses lying along a high- way outside the radius of a Roman city and its suburbs. Hackney Wick is undoubtedly "Vicus," not "Wych"; and Vico, Vicovaro, Vico Equense, are instances which will occur to every Italian traveller. The derivation of F^'pont from "De Veteri Ponte"=0/dbridge (there is an Old Bridge of Urr in Kirkcud- brightshire, an Oxbridge in Waterford, and an Old Ford in Essex) would be an analogy, whilst we have four Old Towns in Ireland, and one O^stead (Yorks), three Aldw&rkes or Aldw&rks (Yorks and Derby), and one Aid- worth (Berks) in England. Hence Aldwych as a name for a hamlet is not necessarily a proof of its Danish origin. H.

P.S. May I add that the modern in- habitants of Dacia, the Roumanians, speak a language of Latin not of Greek origin, so ihat to the inhabitants of Gothia the neigh- Douring continent would always have been Dacia, as it was also to the Mseso-Goths of Ulfilas ] The Genoese called the coast from Kertch to Balaklava "Gothia."

Perhaps your correspondent H. would be good enough to explain the following two extraordinary statements which he makes at the last reference but one : 1. "Clapham and other settlements with Danish names near London "; 2. "The specifically Danish termi- nation of -wich." His explanation would, I venture to think, be very interesting, and " am sure that it would be very informing.

HY. HARRISON.

THE ' MARSEILLAISE ' (9 th S. viii. 61, 126). _ am sorry if I have written a word which las offended MR. KARL BLIND ; I had no wish to do so. But one is apt to be carried away sometimes, even after the " mezzo del camin di nostra vita," by indignation at the Measure which some envious spirits seem to
 * ake in plucking the laurels from one brow