33 



%$t 2£tgmologp of some Scropsfjtre 

 piact^amcs. 



By Frederick Davis. 



HE local nomenclature of a county is the language in 

 which its autobiography is written ; and in no other 

 record is its nascent history stamped in characters so 

 indelible or authentic. 



To the question — " What's in a name ? " we might truly answer 

 — the geography and topography and physical conditions of the 

 district, the historical events, the national and tribal immigrations 

 and settlements, the ethnological and patronymical polity, the 

 constitution of society, the manners and customs of the name- 

 givers, their traditions, their mode of worship, and much latent 

 information of a kindred nature, for which we might in vain seek 

 elsewhere. 



River and lake, impenetrable forest and impassable marsh 

 have disappeared, the very ocean has receded and left beaches 

 and bays miles inland, and nothing remains to determine the 

 period of such mutations but the local names ; — philological 

 fossils — as stable as the rocks, and as enduring. 



Anglo-Saxon nomenclature very greatly preponderates in the 

 topography of Derbyshire, but the Celts and the Danish and 

 Norse settlers have left their foot-marks, which doubtless will still 

 be legible when, in the remote future, the sites of York Minster 

 and St. Alban's Abbey shall have become the scenes of excava- 

 tions for the discovery of the traces of ancient buildings, surmised 

 to have been contemporaneous with the "age of steel." 

 4 



