162 The Names of Places in Wiltshire. 



Ebbe, or Ebel. The name of a river in the south-western part of 

 5. Wiltshire. The word would seem probably to be derived 

 from the same Sanscrit root ap, or ab, which is found in the 

 Gothic as ahva, and in the obsolete Gaelic as abh. The ter- 

 mination of the second form is possibly a diminutive, for el has 

 this force in Welsh. Thus crib means a summit, crib-el a cock's 

 comb : — cog means a stout piece of wood such as is used in 

 the cog of a wheel, cog-yl a short stout piece such as is 

 implied in our word cudgel, which is its present form in 

 English. Hence Ab-el, or Eb-el, would mean " little river.'' 

 There are two villages which derive their names from this 

 stream, on which they are situated. 



Ebbesbourn (or Eblesboubn) Episcopi") The meaning of this 



Ebbesbourn Wake J name is the " stream of 



the Ebbe" (or Ebel). The former of these villages is now 

 usually called Bishopston, from having belonged to the Bis- 

 hops of Winchester as trustees for the church of St. Peter 

 and Paul in their cathedral city. 



6. Deverel. a small river in the south-west of the county. The 

 root of this word is without doubt the Celtic dubr, or dur, in 

 Welsh dwfr, which signifies " water.'' Places are to be met 

 with in Domesday, called simply Defer^ (written Devre), 



' Compare the names, in Hants, of Myccl-defer (Micheldever) and Cen- 

 defer (Candover). — See Leo on Anglo-Saxon Names, p. 70. 



The late Sir R. C. Hoare hazarded the conjecture that the name Deverel, 

 which he was fain to spell Deve-ri/^ was" originally Dire-rill " from the 

 circumstance of a spring which afterwards assumes the name of the Wyly diving 

 under ground for a considerable distance till it reached Kingston Deve-rt<7 

 where it became a permanent stream." As there are streams of the name of 

 Deverel elsewhere, in Dorset for instance, his pleasant conceit, even if it were 

 grounded in fact, could not suflSciently account for its derivation, and it would 

 be hardly worth alluding to, had not the strange notion met with a supporter 

 in iiotei and Queries for May, 1872. But surely in any case the theory im- 

 plies what may be called an etymological anachronism. The word rill, which 

 is supposed to form its termination, is, I conceive, a contracted form derived from 

 the Latin rivulut, and is certainly not to be found, as far as I can learn, in any 

 dialect spoken in this country till many centuries after the grants made by 

 Anglo-Saxon kings in the valley of the Devrel (as it is always spelt in ancient 

 charters) to the monks of Glastonbury, 



