164 The Names of Places in Wiltshire. 



or Guar-dour, whicli is the same as the one we are now 

 considering, and which he explains as meaning' "the summit 

 near the water." 



7. Wylt. The name of a river, and also of a village situated upon it 



in the south of Wilts. This no doubt is a British name, 

 for in Caermarthenshire you have a river Gwili, which is 

 evidently the same word, and possibly its original form. 

 There is in Welsh a word gwili, which signifies full of turns, 

 e.g., winding.! Welsh scholars however tell us that its root 

 is the word gwy,^ which signified a " flow or flood." We 

 have the word itself in the river Wye. The name Con-wflj^ 

 is said to mean Cjn-wi/e (=chief river). In Hants and 

 Dorset, the word takes the form of wey, and gives names 

 respectively to ^ey -bridge, and Wey-raoMih.. From the 

 name Wyly we have Wil-ton formerly a chief place in the 

 county, and Wil-inn-schire (now Wiltshire) . We meet also 

 with the name Wyly-bourn, e.g., literally the " stream of 

 the Wyly," denoting a portion of the county in its im- 

 mediate vicinity, though strictly applicable to the branch 

 stream that flows through the Winterbourns and joins the 

 main stream at Stapleford. 



8. NoDDER. A natural derivation of this word would seem to be from 



the Welsh neidr (the word is in Anglo-Saxon as nceddre), 

 which means a snake or adder, — no inappropriate name for, a 

 winding stream. But there are several rivers in England 

 that seem to be derived from a root similar to that from which 

 Nodder (or Nadder) may have originally come. The Ni/dde, 



* In like manner the Cam is said to be so termed because "crooked" or 

 ** winding " in its course, from the Sansc. kamp, and the Gael, and Welsh cam, 

 signifying to htnd, 



^ Other derivations have been suggested. Some for instance have traced it to 

 Anglo-Saxon loylig a willow ; whilst Spencer, in his Faery Queene, has a 

 pleasant conceit respecting it, far more suited to poetry than prose : — 



" N ext him came, Wylibo'irBe ■with passage sly. 

 That of his wilineste hit name doth take 

 And of himself doth name the Shire thereby." 



There is a paper in the first vol. of the Philological Societt/'» Magazine by 

 Walters, on the deritation of the Welsh word Gwy. 



