gele and its neighbourhood. What was the name of the book? I want to see if Bethos-Yn-Rhos and Llanfairtalhairn are mentioned. H. G. GRIFFINHOOFE.

34, St. Petersburg Place, W.

CHARITABLE BEQUESTS.-According to Haydn, boards for their recovery were constituted in 1764 and in 1880. Would any readers of N. & Q.' direct me to obtain information respecting the same? Were they authorized by Parliament ? Did they publish any report of their proceedings? Any information respecting the said boards will greatly oblige. J. DEAN.

Hillside, Freend's Road, Croydon.

THE MANX LANGUAGE.-Can any one give me a bibliography of the Manx language? It cannot be extensive, for at Ramsay I recently was unable to obtain any book in Manx, and at Douglas was only offered one Manx Bible. The S.P.C.K., however, publishes a Manx Prayer Book, although public service is no longer continued in Manx in the parish churches. At Douglas I am informed there is a Wesleyan Manx service. Still, it would appear that the old language is not so dead as is commonly supposed. A large percentage of the older country folk, especially of the "mountainside," profess to be able to speak it, and many regret that the children are not taught Manx in the school. It is a grand sonorous Celtic tongue, of considerable interest from a philological standpoint. Probably it will follow the Cornish in the list of extinct Celtic tongues. An interesting essay on Manx by Mr. H. Jenner was published by the Philological Society not long ago.

W. S. LACH-SZYRMA.

4, Canterbury Street, Liverpool.

WELSH BARDS.-At the Welsh Eisteddfod in Liverpool, September, 1884, a prize was awarded to Owen Jones, of Gwyddonfa Pwllheli, for a Welsh translation of Shakspeare's King Lear.' There were nine other competitors for this prize-" Ap Gwilym," "Celyddon," "Grydain," "Llawfrodedd," "Farfog," "Edgar," ""Brutus," &c. Can any of your readers give me the English names of these Cambrian bards? R. INGLIS.

THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMMONS.-1. In whose possession is the Speaker's mace? John Foster, the last Speaker, is said to have retained it, so that possibly it may be in the possession of Viscount Massereene and Ferrard, or some member of that family. 2. Where is the Speaker's chair? According to the Dublin Penny Journal of February 13, 1836, where a woodcut of it is given, it "stands at present in the board-room of the Dublin Society House." G. F. R. B.

MAYORS AND BAILIFFS OF LINCOLN.-A parchment roll, containing the names of the mayors and

"ST. COLEMAN'S NECKLACE."-In a broad-sheet relating to Judge Jeffreys when he was confined in the Tower, and dated 1689, there occurs the expression "By St. Coleman's necklace." I imagine that it means the hangman's halter. "Colemanhedge" is a common prostitute. I suppose there is no connexion between this and St. Catherine Coleman, near to which Venner and some of his fifth monarchy men were hanged. There is the "Newgate fringe" and "Tyburn collar," and I think I have seen the "Newgate bracelets" for handcuffs. Is more definite information procurable? C. A. WARD.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WAnted.—
A grateful sense of favours past,
A lively hope of more to come.

CELER ET AUDAX.

She was not very beautiful,

If it be beauty's test
To match a classic model
When perfectly at rest;
And she did not look bewitchingly, &c.
H. E. WILKINSON.

Peace to his ashes! he has served mankind.
R. C. A. P.
Our critics should be our comrades; 'tis......
......ardour needs. One certainty
Shines through all contradictions, that the world
Wants mending, then whene'er the work begins,
If there be faults-and human hands we know
Do nothing perfectly-ye who perceive them
Turn not aside, but make the greater haste
To join and straighten them.

Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free.
He builded better than he knew;
The conscious stone to beauty grew,

C. E.

ANON.

Replies.

NAMES.

(7th S. iv. 1, 90, 134.)

If, as MR. ADDY says, I have "imported more feeling into this matter than befits the gravity of a scientific discussion," I can only plead that that feeling is the result of the irritation caused by a long acquaintance with the evil deeds of the local etymologists. When one is being constantly met with elementary blunders that might be avoided by simply looking at an Anglo-Saxon grammar, there is, I think, ample justification for losing one's temper. I have no doubt that an overwhelming majority of the writers who are constantly making these glaring mistakes would deem a man mad if he were to speculate in Latin or Greek etymologies without first mastering his declensions. It is only by constant protests that they will appreciate the fact that a man must be equally mad to formulate Anglo-Saxon etymologies without knowing the grammar of that tongue. In these pages constantly finding myself under the necessity of stating the most elementary principles of AngloSaxon grammar. Is not this calculated to infuse a little heat into one's protests? MR. ADDY'S letter is a case in point. I now see that I ought to have laid greater stress on what seemed to me a very obvious objection to Dr. Taylor's etymologies of local names in Sweef, Wendel, Hún, &c.

I am

MR. ADDY claims a share in whatever credit is to

be derived from these reckless etymologies. I call them reckless because they are at once put out of court by the facts that they assume a gen. pl. in s, and that no such form existed in AngloSaxon. Now this is a fact that could have been acertained by merely looking at an Anglo-Saxon table of declensions. The English gen. pl. in s does not occur before the twelfth century, and we can see from the pages of Lazamon and Orm that its use was not even then general. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to insist upon the fact that the local names in question are much older than this period. As PROF. SKEAT has well said (7th S. iv. 31), "there is really no glory to be got by making elementary blunders " like this.

MR. ADDY states that my note has simply confirmed him in his views. I hardly expected to convince him that he was wrong, for I suppose there is no instance on record of a local etymologist being so convinced. I will, however, attempt to answer MR. ADDY's arguments, even though the result be to deepen his conviction into religious belief; for this discussion raises points of great historical importance, and I am well aware that in these controversies silence is generally interpreted as a confession of defeat.

Some of MR. ADDY's arguments are rather

disingenuous. As I expressly stated that MR. ADDY "wisely let Welsh alone," it does not in the least surprise me to learn that he has never been modern Welsh. Nor did I anywhere accuse him of deriving Gestfield and Sibbfield from this source. He also challenges me to prove that he stated that these names recorded a Celtic occupation. I have read through his note again, and I must say that the only meaning I can give to his words, especially when taken with the context, is that he treated Gestfield as meaning "the field of the enemy," and that he held "the enemy" to be the Celts whom "the friends"=English found there settled.

=

MR. ADDY still clings to the idea that the "Welshman." I have surname Bright means said that it is phonologically impossible for this name to represent the A.-S. Bryt, and I have also stated that this A.-S. Bryt is a most unusual MR. ADDY does designation for a Welshman. not attempt to controvert either of these assertions. I find conclusive proof in Ordericus Vitalis that the usual A.-S. name for the Welsh was Wealas.* It is, apart from this, a pretty strong argument that the country of the Welsh is known to us by the designation Wales Wealas, and that Welsh= A.-S. Wielisc is simply an adjective formed from the noun Wealh. MR. ADDY'S main difficulty is that he cannot find a Middle-English instance of the name Bright. Now scores of Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and Norman personal names still exist as surnames. I should be prepared to justify my derivation of this surname on these grounds alone. But the occurrence of the personal name Brihct in the thirteenth century Worcester Register, ed. Hales, fo. 115 b, line 32, removes this derivation out of the region of inference to that of established facts. MR. ADDY assumes that Le Bret and Le Brit mean Welshman and represent the A.-S. Bryt. I maintain that they represent the Old French Brete, a Breton. In the English Chancery in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Brito seems to be always a Breton, the Welshman being, I believe, invariably a Walensis. Le Bret and Le Waleis, Brito and Walensis, occur side by side in so many other records as to lead one to conclude that the difference in meaning was well understood. When his nationality is given in English in our early records, the Welshman is, I believe, always a Walssheman.

MR. ADDY'S parallel between the settlement of

insula, ubi Saxoniæ metropolis est, in Britanniam * Ed. Le Prévost, vol. iv. p. 96: "Angli de Anglo venerunt, et, devictis seu deletis quos modo Gualos dicunt, occupatam bello insulam......a natali solo Angliam vocitaverunt." Ordric's birthplace and character make this evidence most valuable.

†There is a twelfth century Berct, a kinsman or servant of the great Ranulph de Glanville, in the Durham Liber Vitæ, p. 17, col. i.

the English in England and that of the Europeans in America is not a very happy one. The difference in civilization, race, complexion, habits, &c., certainly marked off the red man from the invaders more strongly than the Britons were distinguished from the English. But with certain reservations the parallel is useful. A comparison of the English local names with those of the United States proves that the Briton receded before the Angle as completely as the Red Indian has done before the European. The English in America, like their forefathers in England, have conferred local names of their own upon almost every natural feature and settlement, retaining only the native names for a few great rivers, mountains, or stretches of country. We know that the red man has, owing to the differences above indicated, kept himself distinct from the white man for more than three centuries, but I cannot imagine an isolated Welsh village on English soil retaining its Celtic character unimpaired for over four centuries. For this is what MR. ADDY'S etymology of Wales-by and Bright Holm Lee presupposes, since in both names we have a word of Danish origin.* Therefore these names cannot be older than the Danish settlement of the ninth century. The Welsh population of such a village, if it ever existed, must have become absorbed into the surrounding English population at least as rapidly as the Frank and Goth merged into the Gaul and Iberian.

MR. ADDY challenges me to disprove that the seventeenth century field-name Frankish field does not record a settlement of the Franks. He finds further evidence of such a settlement in the common compellation in twelfth century charters "omnibus hominibus suis Francis et Anglis.' MR. ADDY must surely have lost his sense of historical perspective when he can regard this compellation, instances of which are almost as common as blackberries, as evidence of the existence of a separate Frankish population at this date. William the Conqueror's charter to London is similarly addressed to "ealle pa burhwaru binnan Londone Frencisce and Englisce." So, according to MR. ADDY's views, there must have been a colony of undiluted Franks in London. I thought everybody knew that the Franci meant the Normans, who were generally called French by the English. If Frankish field be not derived from some Mr. Frankish, it must refer to the Normans, and not to the Franks. There is a Frenchgate in Doncaster and some other towns, and there was formerly a Frankish-gate or French-gate (the first is the oldest form) in Nottingham. It is called Fraunkisshgate in 1365. There

can be no doubt as to the meaning of this Nottingham street name, for it was a street in the new borough that arose after the Conquest, known as the French Borough, and this street, which is now known as "Castlegate," led from the English Borough to the Norman Castle. I have said that there is a possibility that Frankish field derived its name from a Mr. Frankish._Brittain's piece has probably a similar origin. MR. ADDY thinks that the names of common fields could not be derived from personal names. He is quite wrong in this. In Nottingham there was a town meadow known as Ingollsteneres in 1416 (Borough Record,' ii. 114). It occurs in 1435 as Yngold Stener. This can only be the O. Norse personal name Ingjaldr. I have dealt with the word stener in 7th S. i. 196. This meadow, then known as Inggerstener, was leased by the burgesses in 1450 to raise money to pay the town soldiers dispatched with the king to suppress Cade's rebellion. The burgesses subsequently borrowed money upon this meadow from the Gild of St. George in St. Peter's Church. From this circumstance this meadow acquired its present name of St. George's Close. It was also known in the early part of the sixteenth century as Easingwold Stener, a name no doubt derived from that of the Town Clerk, William Easingwold. This history suggests that fieldnames are not permanent, and proves that they were sometimes derived from personal names. There is ample proof of both these propositions to be found in the Nottingham records. In the case of Nottingham I have been able to trace the field-names from the thirteenth century downwards, and the result is that I find very few of the thirteenth or fourteenth century names existing in the seventeenth century. In the interval almost every field had been renamed, in several cases after persons that we are able to identify. I do not suppose that Nottingham was different from other places. Hence it seems to me that any historical inferences drawn from seventeenth century field-names must be as unsound as MR. ADDY'S scheme for discovering the original racial constituents of the English population from the pages of the 'London Directory.'

With regard to DR. HYDE CLARKE's note. He has clearly misunderstood the drift of my note. I was not endeavouring to trace English tribal influences, for the conclusions that I reached rather cut against any such view. I have never been able to accept Kemble's rash conclusions about gás and tribes. It seems to me that in this instance Kemble's warm imagination has dissipated his critical powers. W. H. STEVENSON.

referred to by DR. CHANCE are BLIND-HOUSE PARISH LOCK-UP (7th S. iv. 26). There are two in my own One is in the village of Waver

neighbourhood.