REVIEWS.

The Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham. By ALLEN MAWER. Cambridge University Press. 1920. 8vo. xxxviii+271 pp. 20s.

Various articles, reviews and notes dealing with place-name studies, as well as an address recently delivered before the British Academy by Professor Mawer, have led those interested in the subject to look forward to his long promised book on the local names of Northumberland and Durham. Other scholars have turned their attention to this field of study for a while and then returned to their earlier pursuits, whereas Professor Mawer continues to take place-name investigation very seriously and is pressing for wider recognition of its necessity and value. Impressed by the scale and thoroughness of the place-name surveys carried out in recent years in the three Scandinavian states he would urge upon our learned societies and even upon the Government to undertake a similar survey in this country.

A residence of over ten years in Northumberland has given Mr Mawer special facilities for the investigation of the place-names of the region north of the Tees, and it is evident that he has neglected no source and spared no pains to make his work exhaustive. In dealing with so large a number of names, some 1500 at the very least, for few of which does the record go further back than the twelfth century, it was inevitable that a good proportion could not be satisfactorily explained. Professor Mawer recognises this, for in his preface he remarks 'the comments should perhaps have been seasoned with "probably" and "possibly" a good deal more frequently than they have been.' We could have wished that he had given some indication of what he judges to be the degree of probability of each of his offered explanations. As is usual in place-name books, a choice of two or even three explanations is in many cases put before the reader, who must often be puzzled and even irritated by the want of certainty. Wideawake and well equipped as he undoubtedly is, Professor Mawer is not altogether free from a tendency to indulge at times in somewhat fanciful and even picturesque explanations. Thus for example in dealing with Snape Gate, where the earlier forms show -gest instead of gate, he says:

A personal name is out of the question, as we cannot believe that four Snapes happened to possess a gest, whatever that might be. There is a North. M.E., and Mod. Engl. dial. sneip, snayp, snape meaning 'to be hard on, rebuke, or snub,' and the suggestion may be hazarded that a piece of land which made no response to cultivation, or a farin which was notoriously inhospitable, might be dubbed 'Snape-gest.'

Again, in regard to Thirston, Professor Mawer says:

The first element is M.E. *thrastere, *threstere....It must have been used as a nickname, perhaps in the sense of a pushful person, a ‘thruster.'

Under Ousterley occurs the following puzzling note:

There is a house-leek tree or tree-house leek, a plant which grows on walls and roofs of houses. It is just possible that this may have been called, for short, House-tree, and the place named from it. Alternatively, we may note such compounds as doortree...and roof-tree. There may have been a word house-tree, and the farm have been so called from a conspicuous piece of timbering.

Of Prudhoe Professor Mawer says:

Pruda's höh....Alternatively, the first element might be L.O.E. prud<O.F. prúd, prōd, 'proud,' 'gallant,' descriptive of its proud position above the Tyne.

In his writings Professor Mawer has rightly protested against uncritical acceptance of early forms of personal names for which the evidence is either very slender or non-existent. He has, we seem to remember, warned investigators against putting too much faith in Searle's Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum. Yet in his book he not only cites names of doubtful authenticity but even invents names which might have existed.' For example, of Sheddon's Hill a single early form, Shedneslawe 1382, is given. Professor Mawer's comment runs:

Possibly 'Sceldwine's Hill.' The name is not found in O.E. but is a possible formation.

In a list of O.E. names of persons (p. 243) about 60 are marked with an asterisk to denote a hypothetical restoration of a lost name.' This number does not include many creations, plausible enough it is true, of diminutives or ' pet-names.'

Our author insists on the strict observance of the 'laws' of phonology, and in most instances he gives a reference to a valuable appendix (pp. 255– 266) in which the phonology of the Northumbrian dialect based on the place-names is systematically treated. In a number of instances, indeed, his discussion of details of sound-change, with imposing sequences of hypothetical stages, seems to us out of place in a book of this kind. The disquisitions to be found in connection with Glantlees, Darlington and Birchope are examples of this. Of the more serious defects on the purely philological side, which arise, when the offered explanation is not supported by the early forms there are, as might have been expected, very few in this book. Of Gamelspath (the old Roman road) the early forms are: 1380 Kenylpethfeld, 1411 Kemylespathe, 1456 Kemblepeth, 1473 Gamyllespeth, 1542 Kemlespeth, c. 1580 Kemblespeth, 1724 Gemblespeth. On the evidence of a solitary instance in a Runic inscription of kamal for gamal Professor Mawer thinks the first element of the name may have been the M.E. name Gamel, from O.W.Sc. gamall, 'old.' Apart from the question of the initial consonant, we note that the earliest form has Kenyl-, and Professor Mawer should have accounted for the e and the n coming from an earlier a and m respectively. In explaining Riddlehamhope as the 'hope by the ridded or cleared ham' he does not explain the l which occurs in all the early forms. There is a Hredles sted in BCS. 741. The early forms of Widdrington show Woder-, Wuder-, wider-, and weder-, which, it is suggested, represent a (hypothetical) Wuduhere or Widuhere, but this does not account for Weder-.

We are not altogether satisfied with Professor Mawer's treatment of O.E. and M.E. words. His preference for W. Saxon forms (eald for ald etc.), and for phrases such as (æt þæm) niwa(n) husum (Newsham) is not likely to mislead students, but his assumption that in a number of instances the O.E. word forming the second element of a place-name was used in the dative plural and that the inflection -um underlies the modern endings -ham, am and em, is open to question. It is very doubtful whether the ending -um survived anywhere in England in the eleventh century; it must have been represented by -an, -en, -e, or it may have disappeared, according to the dialect. Professor Mawer is inconsistent in his treatment of this point; for example, all the early forms of Bolam and Crookham end in -um (-om), or -un (-on), which represent, he thinks, an earlier -hām; whereas in a number of other cases, i.e. Hoppen, Hulam, Kilham, Newsham, Summerhouse, Cowpen, Coatham etc., he refers the ending to the O.E. inflection -um. At the same time in Appendix A (p. 269), he admits that some of these may be examples of original unstressed -(h)am written as -um.' It would have been better if in each of the above cases he had at least mentioned both possibilities, as he has done in the case of Downham and Carham. Of Cowpen, whose early forms end in -um, -un, -oun, and which he derives from O.W.Sc. kúpa, he remarks 'The name is clearly a dative plural,' yet in connection with Crookham he says 'it is difficult to believe that a Scandinavian loan-word would be thus inflected.' We subjoin a few further notes taken from a number which we have set down in looking through this book. The early forms of Outchester show ul-, ule-. Professor Mawer suggests 'owl(haunted) chester as the original meaning, from O.E. üle, owl. We suggest the name Wulf or Ulf for the first element. For Trickley perhaps the pers. name Thirkel, a shortened form of Thurcytel, may be accepted in place of Professor Mawer's suggestion 'trickle' = sheep's dung. Whittonstone, 1292 form le Whystan, is, we think, better explained as hwit-stan 'boundary-stone' than ashwetstone.' Perhaps Cowden, earlier Colden, meant originally 'coal-valley,' O.E. col-denu, rather than cole-denu 'cool valley'; cf. 1255 Colpittes. Aldin (Grange) may be from Aldwine rather than from Ealdinga

In general a preference in this book is given to hypothetical names +ing, rather than to the common O.E. -wine names. Surely Professor Mawer cannot be serious when he suggests the word 'slave' as the first element of Slaley, earlier slaveleia, slaveley etc., adding that 'the clearing may be so called because cultivated by serfs'! He himself notes that no example of 'slave' is given before 1290 in N.E.D. The first element may be a pers. name such as Slavin, Sclavyn (cf. Weekley, Surnames, p. 151), which, like ‘slave,' seems to have meant originally 'Slavonic.' The explanation of Bensham as derived from Beornic seems to us fanciful. Several of the early forms of Overgrass, 1255 Oversgare, 1250 Overisgar, 1272 Eueresgares, are clearly the possessive case of a pers. name. We suggest the pers. name Eofor instead of Professor Mawer's guess, O.E. ofer shore' or O.E. ufere upper,' with what he calls 'pseudo-genitival s in certain forms.' We doubt his explanation of Dewley, earlier Deue

lawe, Dewillawe, as 'Dew-hill.' We doubt still more his explanation of Emblehope as 'caterpillar-hope,' and Embleton as 'caterpillar-hill'; is not Emble' a name? An early form of Emsworth, Hants., is Emelesworth. How is the name Foulbridge 'self-explanatory'? And is 'Coldcheer-hill' a satisfactory explanation of Catcherside, earlier Calcherside? Of Yarnspath a single early form Hernispeth is given; on this evidence Professor Mawer explains the name as Eagle's path,' from O.E. earnes pæð. We prefer to regard the first element as a pers. name, possibly Herewine. None of the three or four suggested originals of Redmarshall seems to us satisfactory; once more we prefer a pers. name as the first element. The key to the original of Roddam lies, we think, in the 1207 form Rodenham; the first element is the name Hroðwine; cf. Rodington, Salop..

As regards the considerable number of names to which Professor Mawer assigns a Celtic original we do not pretend to have an opinion; the difficult question of Celtic survivals still awaits a thorough largescale treatment by competent scholars.

In a number of cases we should have been glad to know that the suggested explanation was confirmed by the local features, e.g. in connection with Aycliffe, Cronkley, Boulmer, Hefferlaw, Nookton, Redhills, Sharperton, Carham etc.

We have noticed very few misprints and omissions. On p. 7, 1. 63 Auc- and Alc- should be transposed; on p. 14 O.E. should be O.F.; on p. 258 [in] should be [iu]; on p. 65 doe-peth should be doe-path.

In the course of a fairly close examination of this book we have come to the conclusion that many seeming defects are in reality due to a failure to remove the scaffolding of the work, or, to change the metaphor, to make the final ruthless purge which all place-name books should receive before being printed off. We are sure Professor Mawer is only too conscious of this and that he, like others who have challenged criticism in this field, feels that there are things in his book he would rather not have said or at any rate would have expressed differently. We fully realise what zeal and hard work have gone to the making of this valuable study, which contributes a large amount of fresh material towards the ultimate goal of those interested in these studies, namely, a synthesis of all the labours of individual workers into a complete survey on a national scale of the place-names of England. W. J. SEDGEfield.

MANCHESTER.

Donne's Sermons. Selected Passages. With an Essay by LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1919. lii + 264 pp. 6s.

From the one hundred and sixty sermons we possess by John Donne Mr Pearsall Smith has made a selection of one hundred and fifty extracts. The original punctuation of the early published quartos and the three collected folios has been preserved, as also the original spelling, except in the use of 'i' for 'j,' of 'u' for 'v' and vice versa, and of contractions for 'm' or 'n.' The arrangement is not chronological but the

various passages are placed in a certain sequence according to their subjects. First we have the autobiographical extracts; next follow the scanty allusions to contemporary history, the death of Queen Elizabeth, the accession of Jaines I, the Gunpowder Plot, the new settlements in America, the great plague of 1625, the death of King James; then come observations and remarks upon the more secular side of life, poverty and riches and the like; next we have religious faith and the revelation of that faith through the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church. Finally we are given the passages of his most burning eloquence upon the sinful state of the world, the fear of death, the hideous pageant of the Day of Judgement, the agonies of the damned, the everlasting joy and glory of Heaven. The book appropriately ends with extracts from the last sermon he ever preached, his own funeral sermon as it proved, delivered before the King at Whitehall in the beginning of Lent 163. Death's Duel, for so this discourse is called, has imperial and sonorous periods. which-as Mr Gosse has admirably said—are adorned with fine similes and gorgeous words as the funeral trappings of a king might be with gold lace. The dying poet shrinks from no physical horror and no ghostly terror of the great crisis which he was himself to be the first to pass through....Our blood seems to turn chilly in our veins as we read.'

In spite of the modern interest in Donne's poems the immense body of his theological writings has received but scant attention. In the first place sermons are something out of fashion. The collected editions of the great seventeenth century divines rest unopened upon the topmost shelves. Many of Donne's discourses are of enormous length and must have taken two or three hours to deliver. And yet there is every reason to believe that huge congregations thronged around his pulpit and listened hour after hour with rapt attention broken only by a hum of applause as the preacher rounded off some stately period of impassioned exaltation.

Again Donne's sermons are not easily procurable. Three folios were published, the first in 1640, the second in 1649, and the last in 1660. In 1839, Henry Alford, afterwards Dean of Canterbury, printed 157 sermons out of the 160 contained in these three folios. They occupy about 3000 pages of an edition which he intended should include all Donne's works. This plan was finally abandoned and only the sermons, the Devotions, the poems, and the letters were included. Alford has shamelessly mangled the poems, the letters are most carelessly given, and he openly admits that he bowdlerized some of the earlier sermons. Yet with all these drawbacks Alford's edition is the one most accessible to modern readers.

In 1840 Pickering published a beautifully printed volume Devotions by John Donne D.D. which contains two sermons 'Death's Duel' and the sermon on the decease of Lady Danvers. The little volume is rare.

When we take these difficulties into consideration we are all the more grateful to Mr Logan Smith for having made this admirable selection, for having prefaced it with a most interesting introduction and for. having added such ample and reliable notes.