Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/175

 (218–222); although Thompson Watkin argues (see Roman Lancashire, p. 79) it must, from internal evidence, be attributed to the former. The British stronghold and its name was, of course, in existence long before its compilation and probably even before the Christian era. The spelling of the names—the work of many successive scribes, Romans and maybe even non-Romans, and men more or less ignorant of the genius and phonology of the British tongue, who obtained them from soldiers, traders, and travellers, not to mention errors and omissions of copying—must even by that time have undergone a certain fluctuation or vitiation. An attempt to treat this analysis on strict and rigid philological lines seems to be futile. To ask, or hope to find in such place-names the retention of all the inflectional subtleties from the pen, or in the mouth of Roman writers, not natives, is the same as to expect modern travellers in Central Africa or Asia to preserve or bring home native place-names in their true and correct form. We need only take modern parallels and compare the spellings of the old English road guides when we come to Welsh place-names and the northern counties! Take also such purely local instances as Kersall (twenty-four spellings), Crumpsall (eleven), Ordsall (seven), Ancoats (eight), Ardwick (seven), even within the space of one or two centuries. Amongst which we find, almost to irrecognition, forms such as these:—

Kyrsaw, Kirksagh, Kerstaw, Hereshall, Karsey;

Curmisale, Cormshale, Cromshall;

Oardsall, Urdsal, Hordeshale;

Anekotes, Annecote, Antecotes;

Aderwyk, Erdwyke, Herwic.

To return to our subject. Of the many variations, found in the twenty-one different MSS., reduced to their