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25. N'OTES AND QtJEEIES OX THE ElTEK CoLNE, "WaTFOED. 



By Alfred T. Brett, M.D. 

 [Read llth January, 1877.] 



CnArjTcr says: "The Colne, which springs forth near Tittenhanger, 

 thence passeth the Road at Colny -street, and running above two 

 Miles in length, meets the Verlume near Park-street, but tho' the 

 Verlume is much the greater Stream, yet the Colne usurps the Glory 

 of her own Name, and floweth thence to Watford, (a large Market 

 Town)."* And if Chauncy had lived now, I think he would have 

 added, "where there is a good Public Library and a floui-ishing 

 Natural History Society and Hertfordshire Field Club." Two 

 thoughts suggest themselves to me in tho above passage. Firstly : 

 A\Tiat is the meaning of the word Colne ? Secondly : Why should 

 the Ver, being the larger stream, lose her name, and the smaller 

 stream Colne give the name to the river ? Firstly : What does the 

 word Colne mean ? As my friend, the Rev. N. Price, very early 

 in life distinguished himself as a philologist, I asked him, and he 

 kindly wrote me this letter : — 



" Not having a satisfactory account to give of the word Colne as a river name, 

 I have put the question to others, and here is the result. 1. Mr. Furnivall 

 says, ' Unless Colne is colonia, as in Lincoln, Colchester, I don't know what it is. 

 The rivers Colne are all over the country.' 2. A fi'iend of Mr. Furnivall's 

 thinks it is a word of Celtic origin, meaning water or some atti-ibute of water. 

 3. Dr. Gee quotes from Newcome's Histoi-y of St. Albans. Newcome says 

 colonia in Colchester, Colne, is a latinized form of the British word collen, which 

 signifies hazels. I only give you a summary. I retain the opinion that it is a 

 word like many other names of natural features, sui-viving from a prae-Celtic 

 language spoken in this country, which word meant water or some attribute of 

 water. The root might possibly be found in the Euskarian or Basque language. 

 What in my opinion makes Newcome's derivation doubtful is that there are so 

 many rivers Colne, a fact which seems almost to prove that the word means water. 

 It is remarkable that all the derivations given may be reconciled, if you put it in 

 this way : Colne is fi-om colonia, which, however, is a word used by the Celts, but 

 simulating a Latin origin, and meaning hazels (or water)." 



It thus seems probable that the Hertfordshire men during the 

 Stone Age called our river the Colne ; and what were the manners 

 and customs of that remarkable race no one in Europe is so well able 

 to tell us as our learned President. Secondly : Why called Colne 

 rather than Yer? Mr. Waghome (who has lived at the junction of 

 the river Colne and the Yer at the Nether Wyld nearly all his life) 

 tells me that some forty years ago a scheme was proposed to form 

 a lake or reservoir from the water of the Yer in order to supply 

 London with water, and that the engineers were much struck with 

 the relative size of the two rivers, the Yer having much more 

 water and also being a trout stream, which the Colne is not till it 

 joins the Yer. I have not given much thought to the names of 

 rivers, yet it seems to me to be most natural that the larger stream 

 should retain the name ; or if the two streams should be nearly 

 equal, that some name should be found combining the two. 

 * ELst. Antiq. Herts., p. 2. 



