1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 295 topographical research is no less essential than the correct application of linguistic methods. His industry in the collection of early documentary forms of names may perhaps once or twice have been equalled, but can hardly have been surpassed. Moreover, as the latest investigator of English place-names, Mr. Mawer has had the advantage of being able to profit by the suggestions contained in the work of his predecessors, and by the criticism which it has received. It must, however, be confessed that this book contains a smaller proportion of absolutely certain results than some of the other works that have been written on the place-names of English counties. This is not the author's fault, but the fault of his subject. The etymologist has a comparatively easy task in dealing with the names of a county that happens to be especially rich in documents of early date. But Northumber- land and Durham are worse provided in this respect than any other county in the kingdom. Very few of the places within their boundaries are mentioned in records older than the Norman Conquest. Domesday Book, which next to the Old English charters is elsewhere the local etymologist's most valuable aid, is for this area not available at all. 1 As most of the Durham and Northumberland names are not recorded before the thirteenth century, certainty on their explanation is often unattainable. At the same time, the evidence of even very late-recorded forms is occasionally as unambiguous and trustworthy as that of earlier forms ; and a considerable number of Mr. Mawer's etymologies admit of no reasonable doubt. Very few of them are absolutely inadmissible, though now and then it might be possible to suggest a preferable alternative. Several names of late formation are intelligible enough in their earliest spelling, though they are strangely disguised in their modern shape : thus Bear Park was originally Beau Repaire, and Butterby Beau Trouve. The author has made good use of local history for the explanation of the name Fugar House ; the early forms might have given rise to erroneous guesses, but the place was granted in 1269 to William de Feugers, a member of a known Breton family. It is satisfactory to note that Mr. Mawer has not, like most other writers on place-names, omitted to record the early documentary forms of the names of rivers and streams. As he claims no acquaintance with Celtic philology, he usually leaves these names without any further remark than that they are ' Celtic ' or ' pre-English '—which, no doubt, is almost always correct. The existing materials for the knowledge of early Celtic are so imperfect that the etymology of the majority of river- names may always remain unknown, even if they do not (as some of them 1 Mr. Mawer does indeed quote it under Dinsdale-on-Tees, but, as he points out, the place referred to is not Dinsdale in Durham, but Over Dinsdale, which lies opposite to it on the Yorkshire side of the river. It may be remarked that he errone- ously gives the Domesday forms as Di(g)neshale ; they are really Digneshale and Dirneshala. The Durham Dinsdale appears in 1197 as Ditleshale, and from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century in such forms as Ditneshale, Dittensale, Diddensell, &c. (with either * or d). Probably the two villages were not originally named alike, but had names both ending in -hale, compounded with different personal names. That the two names ultimately assumed the same form may be due merely to the contiguity of the places.
