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everything looking simple. It is always necessary, if you are able, 

 to trace the word back to some very old spelling. This work entaUs 

 great labour, and it is often much easier to make a guess at a word 

 than laboriously follow it to its early source. You may depend 

 that place names reveal to you the real circumstances which existed 

 at the time of naming. Those circumstances and surroundings 

 may not exist to-day, they may have changed, or disappeared 

 altogether, but on that account the derivation of the word may 

 be all the more interesting. I must warn you that the present 

 way of spelling is often misleading, the pronunciation also will 

 often mislead you, sometimes you must trust a little to the spell- 

 ing and sometimes to the sound, at other times you must throw 

 both overboard and then comes the opportunity for great differ- 

 ence of opinion amongst men learned in words. The battle of 

 the meaning of some words will last for all time. Old deeds, old 

 histories, and particularly old manuscripts will often solve the 

 problem when otherwise all would be confusion and doubt, take 

 an instance of the well-known name Shotover in Oxfordshire. 

 Some long time ago a person built a good house there, and 

 because the grass and trees about it were very green he gave it 

 the French name of " Chateau Vert," the green villa. The rustics 

 unacquainted with French words, gradually turned Chateau Vert 

 into Shotover, and if you ask the meaning of the word they tell 

 you somebody was at one time in the habit of shooting over this 

 particular land. Now if you will dissect the sounds in Chateau 

 Vert and Shotover, you will find a close relationship in sound 

 but not in letters, but when you come to the clear meaning of 

 the two words there is no relationship whatever. The way prim- 

 itive meanings can be traced by closely scrutinising and dissect- 

 ing the word and showing how frequently we can see and use a 

 familiar word without understanding its significant meaning, and 

 how words give out their original meaning when properly inter- 

 rogated, is shown in the word neighbour, this can be dissected 

 into two words, the first syllable neigh, may be spelt nigh, or 

 near, or next, or as they would say in Trawden or Pendle Forest, 

 neighst, you may spell it nee if you like. All these words mean 

 in modern English near or next, you can pronounce the neigh 

 either ni, or nee, or na, they are all correct, mean the same thing, 

 and are so pronounced in different counties to-day, we then come 

 to the second syllable hour, you can write this boor, or bur if you 

 like, and can pronounce it many different ways, so that if you 

 ring the changes on the difterent spellings and pronunciation of 

 the two syllables, you may get a great variety, and yet, if the 

 word be traced back to its original meaning they have all been in 

 common use, but the present standard is neighbour (nabur,) now 

 the meaning of the first syllable is next, and the second Boor, or 

 peasant farmer, the word Boor is common in Holland, we say a 



