74 



he wrote : " I was at Stone Raise, on the hill near Addle- 

 borough, the week before last . . . You know the Cumberland 

 Raises, I assume. Have you ever come across the ancient form 

 of the name or term ? Among Lord Bolton's deeds the other 

 day we came on that of the Raise I refer to, and it is such as 

 to set me speculating." Two days later he wrote : " I have 

 been familiar with the word Raise and its application for more 

 than 40 years, and it was but ten days ago I got what may prove 

 to be a hint as to its origin or derivation. You know nothing, I 

 take it, about the interior structure or fabric of the Raises, or 

 even if there were any ? A very great deal may turn upon this 

 point, and I do not make the remark without reason on observa- 

 tion and fact." 



During his visit to Bolton Hall he became also specially 

 interested in the word "rein." In his letter of June 15th, 

 189], he writes: "I was also examining some, as I thought, 

 very evident and correspondingly interesting traces of ancient 

 terrace-cultivation, or linces. Mr. Seebohm [' The English Village 

 Community,' p. 381] states that they occur in Bilsdale, Bransdale 

 and Farndale, and that in Nidderdale they are called 'reins.' Do 

 you know of these terraces in the Dales named, or in Ribblesdale, 

 or Wharfedale, or of the word rein ? M'^ith the word itself, and a 

 varying application of it in this Cleveland District, 1 am 

 familiarly acquainted, as well as with still another application 

 and sense of it in Wensleydale, while in the old documents in 

 the Muniment Room at Bolton Hall, it occurs in the forms 

 rana, reina, very frequently. But it is more with the evidence 

 of ancient terrace culture that I am at present interested." 

 Writing two days later he says, "The latinized form of the 

 word was in continual use in the formal grants or convey- 

 ances of five or six centuries ago . . . Some learned man 

 found the word rana in such documents as I have referred to, 

 and looking in his Latin Dictionary found rana = ' a frog, 

 a paddock,' whence he translates rana in his old deed by 

 ' paddock = enclosure ' ! " 



He says " You will see the local interest of the Reins or 

 traces of ' Terrace cultivation ' from the following passage, by 

 her brother, extracted from Miss Ashley's translation alluded to 

 in my letter: — 'Mr. Gomme has hazarded the supposition that 

 our later rural organisation is in part derived from the Iberian 

 race. He maintains that the traces of • terrace cultivation,' 

 which we come across here and there in England and Scotland, 

 point to a primitive Iberian hill-folk, whose agricultural system 

 ' in some unexplained way ' became incorporated with the agri- 

 cultural system of the later Aryan ' village community.' His 



