Classes of Celtic Names. 159 



of the old Welsh word coed (wood) or as it is found in Cornish coit, 

 and sometimes cuit. The name Clack is another instance, and is 

 probably only a modern form of the Welsh word clegc/, a hill. Some- 

 times, as is natural enoug-h, they come to us so disguised, and in a 

 state of so hopeless a corruption, as almost to defy a conjecture as to 

 their meaning, and the puzzle is the more complete from the well- 

 known tendency of such words to assimilate themselves to others in 

 which there is some appavent meaning. Thus Cats-brain is the 

 strange name of two places in Wilts, one close to North Newnton, 

 and the other by Stanton Fitzwarren. I can have little doubt that 

 the origin of the word is to be found in the compound coed-[ov coit-) 

 hryn, which would mean simply wood-hill. 



b . Those which may be called reduplicatives, in which an old 

 word of Celtic origin, having lost its meaning to the subsequent 

 settlers, has another added to it, of similar import, from the Teutonic 

 class. 



Of this Clay-hill is an example, — the former part of the word 

 is a corruption of the old Welsh clegg (=hill), to which the 

 Teutonic settlers added their own synonym. What is now called 

 Pennell's Hill (near Calne), is a yet more singular instance. The 

 first syllable is the old Welsh pen which means a " hill,^^ — to this 

 the early Teutonic settlers added their own word hull, and called 

 it " Pen-hull." In course of years it is corrupted into Pennell and 

 its origin is obscured, so that it becomes necessary in more modern 

 times to add another synonym, and it becomes Pennell Bill, in 

 Wiltshire, and in Lancashire Pendle-hill. Interpreted in modern 

 English it is simply Hill-hill-hill} 



c. — Those of which the former part is Celtic, and sometimes not 



^ It is just possible that the apparently not over complimentary epithet given 

 to Clack ia the old Wiltshire stanza : — 



«' Wiiite Cliff— Pepper Cliff— Clifif and Cliff Anstey 

 Lyneham and Lousii Clack 

 Cuss-Malford and Dauntsey " 



may be explained as a reduplicative. The Teutonic word for a mound or bill ia 

 hloew, written afterwards, in composition, as lowe, or low. Following the ex- 

 ample given above, the trausition would not be difficult to Lowes- Clack, and 

 from this form to that which it has now assumed . By the way, there is a 

 Lousi/ Oak near Westbury, on the road towards Bratton, just under the White 

 Horse hill. 



