340 On the Study of Anglo-Saxon and 
over the highest hills” is “and thaet waeter waes fiftyne faethma 
deop ofer tha hehstan duna.”’! 
In the Anglo-Saxon gospels, the Mount of Olives is “ Olivetes 
dun ” (S. Matt., xxiv., 3). 
We have also in the Anglo-Saxon period plenty of examples of 
the transitional forms “ ofdune” and “ adune.” 
If we suppose the abstract notion of the word “dun,” which ex- 
tends beyond the Teutonic languages, to be a wide spreading hill, 
this may help to account for the sand-heaps between Calais and 
Boulogne being called ‘“ Dunes,” and possibly the celebrated road- 
stead off Deal in Kent may be called “The Downs” from “ dunes ” 
submerged, or from downs still existing on the coast. We have not 
in this immediate neighbourhood any celebrated dike so called, like 
Wansdike on the other side of Devizes, or Grims Dike, but we have 
at Battlesbury Camp some of the same sort of work, previous 
possibly to Anglo-Saxon times, but Anglo-Saxon lore throws much 
light on the mode of its performance. I expect many an Englishman 
would be puzzled to explain the difference between dike and ditch. 
The truth is that the Saxon verb “ dician,” the origin of our word 
dig, meant to excavate, in the navvy sense of the word. What we 
call digging, our forefathers in the Saxon period, and long after the 
Conquest, called delving. In the Saxon gospels the unjust steward, 
for “I cannot dig,” says: “ne maeg ie delfan.” S. Luke, xvi., 3. 
In Piers Ploughman, for ditchers and diggers, we have “ diceres 
and delveres;” and in the early days of King Richard II. the ery 
of the Communist rabble led on by Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, John 
Ball, and others, was :— 
‘When Adam dalf and Eva span. 
Where was then the gentleman?” 
Mr. Kemble, in the very useful little glossary prefixed to the 
third volume of his codex, explains clearly the history of these two 
different forms of the same word. He says, “The eye measures 
things differently from the understanding; it sees in the dike and 
1“ Grein’s Anglo-Saxon Prose, First Part,” p. 38, Cassel and Gottingen, 
Wigand, 1872. 
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