its Value to the Archeologist. 345 
process. There is sometimes an interval of three weeks between 
sheep-washing and sheep-shearing. 
Mr. Cruse, the eminent surveyor of this town, among others, 
has always maintained that Sheerwater means pure clear water, 
and Anglo-Saxon lore abundantly confirms this opinion. In 
Bosworth’s Dictionary we find the meaning of scir (pronounced 
skeer) to be sheer, pure, clear, white, bright; and it is commonly 
used in Saxon as an epithet of water. So in the Saxon Chronicle, 
A.D. 656, we have, in the description of some boundaries, these 
words: “ And fra Graeteros thurh an seyr waeter Bradan ae hatte,” 
“and from Great Cross through a clear water called Bradan ae,” 1.€., 
Broadwater. 
The Collocation of the same adjective and substantive occurs in 
the spirited poem, “ The Battle of Maldon, or the Death of Byrt- 
noth.” The poet is describing the wild rush of the Danes when 
challenged by the Saxons from the other side of the river Pant, in 
Essex, afterwards called the Blackwater. I will give the modern 
English first, in order that all may be the better able to follow the 
Saxon :— 
‘s Rushed the slaughter-wolves, 
For water they recked not. 
Of pirates the host, 
West over Panta, 
Over sheer water 
Their shields they poised ; 
Seamen to land 
Their bucklers bore.” 
‘¢ Woden tha Wael-Wulfas, 
for Waetere ne murnon. 
Wicinga Werod, 
West ofer Pantan, 
ofer Scir Waeter 
Scildas Wegon, 
Lidmen to Lande 
Linde baeron.” * 
- The like use of sheer as a special epithet of water is found both 
in Spenser and Shakspere :— 
_ 1 Cf Saxon Chronicle, ed. Thorpe, vol. 1, p. 52, note, and vol. ii., p. 27, note. 
ie ** Grein’s Anglo-Saxon Poetry, First Part,” p. 356. ‘Cf Thorpe Analecta, Anglo-Saxonica,” 
p. 134. Sweet’s ‘‘ Anglo-Saxon Reader,” p, 136, 
