626 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 19L 



Or, in modern French : 



" Restez : qui par ici passerez 

 Pour riime de Warel priez : 

 Que Dieu par sa grace 

 Vraie merci lui fasse. Amen." 



Cheveeells. 



BURN AT CEOTDON. 



(Vol. vii., pp. 238. 393.) 



The bourne at Croydon is one of the most re- 

 markable of those intermitting springs which issue 

 from the upper part of the chalk strata after long- 

 continued rains. 



All porous earth'beds are reservoirs of water, 

 and give out their supplies more or less copiously 

 according to their states of engorgement ; and at 

 higher or lower levels, as they are more or less re- 

 plenished by rain. Rain percolates through the 

 chalk rapidly at all times, it being greatly fissured 

 and cavernous, and finds vent at the bottom of the 

 hills, in ordinary seasons, in the perennial springs 

 which issue there, at the top of the chalk marl, or 

 of the gait (the clay so called) which underlies 

 the chalk. But when long-continued rains have 

 filled the fissures and caverns, and the chinks and 

 crannies of the ordinary vents below are unequal 

 to the drainage, the reservoir as it were overflows, 

 and the superfluity exudes from the valleys and 

 gullies of the upper surface ; and these occasional 

 sources continue to flow till the equilibrium is re- 

 stored, and the perennial vents suffice to carry off 

 the annual supply. Some approach to the full en- 

 gorgement here spoken of takes place annually in 

 many parts of the chalk districts, where springs 

 break out after the autumnal and winter rains, and 

 run themselves dry again in the course of a few 

 months, or maybe have intermissions of a year or 

 two, when the average falls are short. Thence it is 

 we have so many " Winterbournes " in the counties 

 of Wilts, Hants, and Dorset ; as Winterbourne- 

 basset, Winterbourne - gunner, Winterbourne - 

 stoke, &c. (Vide Lewis's Topog. Diet.) The 

 highest sources of the Test, Itchen, and some other 

 of our southern rivers which take their rise in the 

 chalk, are often dry for months, and their channels 

 void of water for miles ; failing altogether when 

 the rains do not fill the neighbouring strata to 

 repletion. 



In the case of long intermissions, such as occur 

 to the Croydon bourne, it is not wonderful that 

 the sudden appearance of waters in considerable 

 force, where none are usually seen to flow, should 

 give rise to superstitious dread of coming evils. 

 Indeed, the coincidence of the running of the 

 bourne, a wet summer, a worse sowing-season, and 

 a wet cold spring, may well inspire evil forebod- 

 ings, and give a colourable pretext for such appre- 

 hensions as are often entertained on the occurrence 



of any unusual natural phenomenon. These Inter- 

 mittent rivulets have no affinity, as your corre- 

 spondent E. G. R. supposes, to subterraneous 

 rivers. The nearest approach to this kind of 

 stream is to be found in the Mole, which sometimes 

 sinks away, and leaves its channel dry between 

 Dorking and Leatherhead, being absorbed into 

 fissures in the chalk, and again discharged ; these 

 fissures being insufficient to receive its waters ia 

 times of more copious supply. The subterraneous 

 rivers of more mountainous countries are also not 

 to be included in the same category. They have 

 a history of their own, to enlarge on which is not 

 the business of this Note : but it may not be ir- 

 relevant to turn the attention for a moment to the 

 use of the word bourne or burn. The former mode 

 of spelling and pronouncing it appears to prevail 

 in the south, and the latter in; the north of 

 England and in Scotland; both alike from the 

 same source as the brun or brunen of Germany. 

 The perennial bourne so often affords a convenient 

 natural geographical boundary, and a convenient 

 line of territorial division, that by an easy meto- 

 nymy it has established itself in our language iu 

 either sense, signifying streamlet or boundary-line, 

 — as witness the well-known lines : 



" That undiscovered country, from whose bourne 

 No traveller returns." — Sliakspeare. 



" I know each lane, and every alley green, 

 And every bosky bourn from side to side." — Milton. 



M. 



•) 



CHEISTIAN NAMES. 



(Vol. vii., pp. 406. 488, 489. 



Tlie opinion of your correspondents, that in- 

 stances of persons having more than one Christian 

 name before the last century are, at least, very- 

 rare, is borne out by the learned Camden, who, 

 however, enables me to adduce two earlier in- 

 stances of polyonomy than those cited by J. J. H. : 



" Two Christian names," says he ( Remaines con- 

 cerning Britaine, p. 44.), "are rare in England, and I 

 onely remember now his majesty, who was named 

 Charles James, and the prince his sonne Henry Fre- 

 deric ; and among private men, Thomas Maria Wing- 

 field, and Sir Thomas Posthumous Hobby." 



The custom must have been still rare at the 

 end of the eighteenth century, for, as we are in- 

 formed by Moore in a note to his Fudge Family 

 in Paris (Letter IV.) : 



« The late Lord C. ( Castlereagh ? ) of Ireland had a 

 curious theory about names ; he held that every man 

 with three names was a Jacobin. His instances in 

 Ireland were numerous ; Archibald Hamilton Ilowan, 

 Theobald Wolfe Tone, James Napper Tandy, John 

 Philpot Curran, &c. : and in England he produced as 

 examples, Charles James Fox, Richard Briusley She- 



