Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/25

 9* s. vm. JULY e, i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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member of the family of Mackenzie of Gair- loch recorded arms previous to Sir Alexander, the second baronet? What was the date of such grant, and the blazon ? What arms did Alexander Mackenzie, seventh of Gairloch, bear (he was father to Sir Kenneth Mac- kenzie, first baronet, and grandfather to Sir Alexander who recorded arms in 1723)? He was Baron of Gairloch, had in 1681 his rights and titles ratified by Act of Parliament, and died in 1694 at the age of forty-two, as appears from his general retour of sasine. He was buried in Gairloch.

W. G. PENGELLY, F.S.A.(Scot.).

IOKNIELD STREET. Can any one interpret this name ? It is borne by two distinct roads, one, clearly Roman, starting out of the Foss Road (Bath to Lincoln), three miles south of Stow-in-the-Wold, passing through Alcester, Birmingham, Lichfield (near), Burton-on- Trent, Derby, Alfreton, and Chesterfield, where it appears to end. The other, which has none of the characteristics of a Roman way, commences apparently at Avebury, in Wilts, passes by "Way land Smith's Cave" (Welandes smidthan=W "eland's Smithy, in a charter of 955) and the White Horse, through Wallingford (there crossing the Thames), Watlington, Dunstable, Royston, and so into Norfolk. Both these roads are frequently mentioned in Anglo-Saxon and mediaeval charters, and, though the spelling varies, the prevailing and, I think, correct form may be taken as Icenhilde strete or Icenhilde weg (way). The latter road, like most British trackways, frequently bifurcates, and is locally known in Berkshire as the Upper and Lower Icknield Street, Ickleton Street, the Ridgeway, and the Portway. It was up to the advent of railways a great cattle road from Wales to London, and it is curious that in a charter of 957 relating to Mackney, near Wallingford (through which the road passes), the Ridgeway (Hrycgwege) is mentioned as one of the boundaries, and (continuing) the charter says " swa oxa went " (so as the oxen go). Of course cattle used all roads, but the words point to a road specially frequented bv cattle, and I have never met with such a phrase in any other Anglo-Saxon charter. Can it be possible that in 957 the Welshmen were driving their cattle to London as they did up to sixty years ago 1 The name Wal- lingford (Wealinga-ford), the ford of the strangers (foreigners or Welshmen), points to the road being used by a strange race. Were they Welshmen, or the Iceni who lived in Norfolk ? And if Iceni, why did they need and frequent such a long and lonely road,

and what connexion had they with Avebury? If the road is named after the Iceni, what does hilde mean ? And why was the Roman road first mentioned (having no connexion with the Iceni) also called Icenhilde Street ? This way in some mediaeval charters is called Ryknield Street, but the early form is Icenhilde, later Ykenhild. I think the R is intrusive. W. H. DUIGNAN.

Walsall.

[The meaning has been much debated, and many explanations are offered. See 7 th S. xii. 446.]

ST. CLEMENT DANES. (9 th S. vii. 64, 173, 274, 375.)

THE following quotation from 'Cham- bers's Encyclopaedia,' ed. 1890, vol. v. p. 323, 'Goths,' may be of interest, as showing the existence of a Teutonic race from the shores of the Baltic in the Crimea, and therefore in the immediate neighbourhood of Kherson, the scene of St. Clement's martyrdom, up to a very late date :

"The last portion of the Gothic race to disap- pear as a distinct community was that branch of the Ostrogoths (known in the sixth century as Tetraxitse) who inhabited the Crimea from the time of Ermanaric (who in the middle of the fourth century had established a powerful Ostrogothic empire extending from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Bothnia). In the reign of Justinian these Goths received a Catholic bishop from Constantinople, and in the official language of the Eastern Church 'Gothia' continued to be the name of the Crimea down to the eighteenth century. In 1562 the famous traveller Busbecq met at Constantinople with two Crimean envoys, and wrote down a long list of words of their language, which he recognized as having an affinity with his native Flemish. The words are for the most part unquestionably Gothic. It is possible that in the Crimea the Gothic speech may have survived to a far later time ; in 1750 the Jesuit Mondorf learned from a native of that region, whom he had ransomed from the Turkish galleys, that his countrymen spoke a language having some resemblance to German."

When we remember (1) that the Gothic language is classed with the Scandinavian languages as belonging to the East Germanic group of the Teutonic languages ; (2) that it is only of comparatively late years that his- torians have discovered that the Goths were not originally natives of Gothland in the Scandinavian peninsula, which took its name from the Gautas, the Geats of the * Traveller's 3ong ' ; (3) that the Scandinavians settled at Kieff were christianized from Constantinople, and were in constant relation with the rimea ; (4) that Adam of Bremen and lis contemporaries systematically confused