unless he is cautious, mislead him. Between Beauchief and Bradway is a place now called 'Twentywell Sick,' which I have mentioned on p. xxxii. It is popularly said that the name arose from the fact that a man once lived there who employed forty workmen, and that when a 'flying sickness' was prevalent twenty of the men were well and twenty sick, &c.! Although the word was written 'Quintine-well' seven hundred years ago, somebody who did not understand it thought that it must be wrong, and changed it to Twenty Well. In this way one blunder may lead to another. Another amusing example of 'popular etymology' may be seen in a well-known and rather fashionable road in the suburbs of Sheffield now called Psalter Lane. Whatever the word means it was formerly written Salter, Psalter having first been used about forty years ago. Now such a local name as Psalter could not exist long before it excited curiosity. Naturally the first thing to be thought of was a psalm-book, and hence the Psalms of David began unconsciously to be associated with the misspelt word. But when a stranger inquired how, or in what way, the Psalm-book was connected with the lane, property-owners began to be puzzled, and the question was not an easy one to answer. However, as it was useless to stick at trifles, something had to be made of it. Someone must have sung psalms in that lane someday. Now who so likely to have done this as the monks of an abbey a few miles off in another county? This happy thought, having struck somebody, was soon received as an article of faith, and now every person with whom I have conversed believes that the monks of this abbey did sing psalms on that very lane. People really do believe it, and it is useless to laugh at them. If one ventures to express a doubt the answer is: 'I have always been told that it is so,' or, 'Nobody ever doubted it,' or, 'My grandmother told me so many a time.' I could mention many other instances, equally amusing, of the tendency to invent such explanatory stories.[1]
- ↑ I have just learnt that Stannington is Standingtown, having been so called because Oliver Cromwell, who made fearful havoc all about Sheffield, was good enough to leave this town standing! Another story described how a man was lost on the moors above Castle Dyke in the snow, and how he heard the church bells in Sheffield ringing low, and by that means found his way home and was saved! Thence we are told, arose the name Ringinglow. One is reminded of a story told by Prof. Skeat about a Cambridge undergraduate who, in examination, defined faith as 'the evidence by which we believe that which we know to be untrue.'
