Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/100

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92


NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. FEB. i, 1902.


(2) Roger.

(3) Agnes, who married Thomas Gordon ot Dumfries, and was served heir to her father and her brother Roger 29 March, 1794.

(4) Elizabeth, who married Lieut.-General Geo. Fead, of the Royal Artillery. Mrs. Fead died on 17 January, 1836, in her eighty-sixth year, and was buried in St. Mary's Church- yard, Woolwich. J. SCOTT.

STAUNTON, WORCESTERSHIRE (9 th S. viii 383, 510 ; ix. 11). MR. MATTHEWS may find some information in a book published in 1883 at Bristol, by the late Sir John Maclean, entitled 'History of the Manor and Advow- son of Staunton in the Forest of Dean.' I cannot trace the paper to which MR. JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS refers in the volumes of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society during the last ten years.

T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A.

Lancaster.

Permit me to amplify my reply. Sir Wil- liam Whittington, of Pauntley, Gloucester- shire, married the heiress of Staunton in the same county. Sir Richard Whittington, Mayor of London, is believed to have been their fifth son. The society to whose Trans- actions I referred MR. HAWKINS is the Glou- cester Field Club.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

THE WEST BOURNE (9 th S. viii. 517 ; ix. 51). I cannot follow COL. PRIDEAUX to his con- clusion about this name. He doubts whether " in early times the stream had any specific name." Very possibly it had not, but the absence of any such name from early maps seems to me insufficient proof thereof. Here is a case which seems to be in point. Some years ago I was fishing in the river running through Cassiobury Park. After a good morning's sport I asked the keeper what was the name of the river. "Well, sir," said he, "it's got a name right enough, but dang me if I can remember un. We just calls it ' the River.' " Presently, a respectably dressed man coming by, the keeper stopped him and asked whether he could remember the name. He, too, was sure the stream had a name, but he could not call it to mind. An hour or two later the same person returned and said to me, 1 found what you wanted to know, sir. ihere is an old fellow in the village tells me that this is the river Gade ; and 1 remember now hearing that name when 1 was a boy" Ihmks I to myself, Here is a case of Avon and fcsk over again ; the specific is for- gotten, the generic remains. When English


peech shall have passed away this stream will perhaps retain its name as " the River."

Well, on reading COL. PRIDEAUX'S interest- ing note I turned up the only map of Hert- fordshire which happened to be at hand- hat in vol. xi. of the 'Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica.' I find the river in Cassiobury Park without any name given, although Gaddesden and Gadesbridge are marked on its course, and although the nearest stream on the east is duly marked the Ver and the nearest on the west is marked the Chess, neither of them of greater volume than the Gade.

Assuming, then, that the suffix of West- bourne is " bourn, burn," a stream, A.-S. burne, and not "bourn," a boundary, French borne, is it not the case that this term for a stream has entirely dropped out of the Southern English vernacular, although it is retained in common use in Northern English and Scots'? Before it so dropped out of use, the West Bourn may have given its name to the manor of Westbourne, where it remained fixed, although the stream the eponymus of the manor lost its title through the meaning thereof having become hidden from the people on its banks.

I will offer another illustration from my own name. In the twelfth century Maccus, the son of Undewyn, obtained a grant of land near Kelso, now called Springwood, from David I. of Scotland. Included in this grant was a salmon pool in the Tweed, which thence- forward was known as Maccus' Wiel, the pool of Maccus. From this pool the neighbouring land got the name of Maccuswel or Maxwell (Maxwellheugh is just above Springwood Park) ; then the family became known feudally as De Maxwell, and conferred their name on other and distant places Maxwell- ton, &c. To this day the salmon pool is known as Maxwheel (it is the first below Kelso Bridge). Its etymology very likely has been forgotten, but the important industry of salmon fishing has preserved the name in constant use for eight hundred years ; whereas the Westbourne, it seems, has been diverted to the purpose, and received the inglorious name, of the Ranelagh Sewer.

Instances of the disappearance of a river name, coupled with its retention in the ad- jacent topography, might be given in num- bers far exceeding the dimensions of a "note"; but I may be permitted to adduce one from the remote end of the kingdom, in a district very well known to me. The river running parallel with the north-eastern boundary of the county of Sutherland was known of old in Gaelic speech as Amhuinn Ullidh, the river Ullie, and its valley as Strath Ullie ;