PLACE AND FIELD NAMES OF DERBYSHIRE. 79 
extraordinary superstition an interesting and exhaustive account 
is given by Bullon in his Superstitions Anciennes et Modernes. * 
_ CaLLeNGE Low (Monyash) is derived from the Cymric celyn, 
the holly-tree. The Anglo-Saxon /oleyn gives us the more 
obvious forms of HoLLEYHURST, HOLLINGATE, HOLLIN KNowL, 
Hotuurst, and Horsprook. There was no peculiar sacredness 
in the holly in early days; the lavish use made of it in this 
country in the decking of churches at Christmastide is simply to 
be attributed to the splendour of its berries. From an old ballad 
of the time of Henry VI., quoted by Brand, in which the holly and 
the ivy humorously contend for superiority, it would appear that 
the latter in those days did not penetrate into the Church or Hall, 
but merely clung to the outside, and was used at funerals. The 
following are the opening stanzas :— 
** Nay, Ivy! nay, it shall not be I wys; 
Let Holy hafe the maystry, as the maner ys. 
““Holy stond in the Halle, fayre to behold ; 
Ivy stond without the door; she ys full sore a cold. 
“Holy and hys mery men they dawnsyn and they syng 
Ivy and hur maydenys they wepyn and they wryng.” 
In Cornwall the holly is still sometimes called the holm-tree, 
though the more general application of /o/m at the present day is 
to the Ilex, otherwise called the holm-oak. Skinner, in his 
Glossary Botanicum, mentions: the word as applicable to both 
trees, and adds that, as both the holly and the ilex flourish 
more especially near water, the name is probably of the same 
derivation as o/m, an island. If this is the case some of the 
‘placenames of which fo/m forms a part, enumerated in a 
preceding chapter, may be derived from a tree, instead of from 
the watery situation. The holly is a favourite wood for the 
== 
fi a = ke — = 
* Bullon, Superstitions Anciennes et Modernes, Amsterdam, 1733, folio. 
Baring Gould, in his first series of ‘Myths of the Middle Ages,” coolly uses 
one of the plates from this scarce volume as a frontispiece. The belief in the 
_ divining rod was so widely spread even to a comparatively modern date, and 
was considered of such importance that we find it discussed in the Philosophi- 
cal Transactions of the Royal Society, for the year 1666. ‘‘Utrum virgula 
divinatoria adhibeatur ad investigationem venarum propositarum fodinarum, 
et si sic, quo id fiat successu ?” 
