Miscellaneous Words. 261 



Avon.' Possibly Lide-waj,'^ a name occurring near Urchfontj 

 may be similarly explained, though here also the neighbour- 

 ing stream has no special designation. 

 LiDiAKD. The name of two villages in the north western part of 

 the county. In the charters we have the name as Lidgeard? 

 In Domesday it is spelt Lediar and Lidiarde. The Welsh 

 word llidiart is defined by Davies, in his Welsh and 

 Latin Diet. (1632), && porta agrestis. A gate, or entrance 

 to a field or enclosure, is in Welch llidiart-clwyd, literally, a 

 '' hurdle-opening.^^ The original meaning of the word would 

 seem to be an " expanding " or " opening." Admitting the 

 correctness of Dr. Guest's views on the boundaries between 

 the Welsh and English races after A.D. 597, it is, to say 

 the least, very interesting to find local names with such a 

 signification, evidently of Celtic origin, so near what he 

 conjectured to have been the probable border-line. See Arch. 

 Journ., June 1859. 

 Mere. >. The first of these names is that of hundred forming a 

 Marden. >• portion of the south-west boundary of the county. This 

 Imbbr. ) is from the well-known word which is almost exclusively 

 used in charters to denote the boundaries of estates— ge-mcero, 

 a neuter plural, the singular of which is ge-mcere. Kemble, 

 after well weighing the matter, comes to the conclusion that 

 it is a word borrowed by the English from their Celtic neigh- 

 bours, and that an ancient British compound cym-mer, denoting 

 a "junction " or " union," is the origin of it. In its simple 

 form we have it as Mere. Its compounds are numerous : 

 every Wiltshireman is familiar with the term "Mere-stoned' 

 by which on the open downs one plot of land is divided from 

 another — indeed the name Marston (originally Mfsrstdn) 

 occurs on the north-east boundary of the county. Mar-den 



* Collinson's Somerset, iii., 370. 

 'In a charter of A..D. 931 relating to Ewelme (now Ewen) near Kemble, 

 we have amongst the points of boundary "Inde usque Lyde-welle et ab illo 

 fonte us^ue stratam quae Tccatur Foste" &o. See Cod. Dipl. 355. 

 » Cod. Dipl., 328, 897, 1076. 



