Names relating to religious Worship. 97 
place, within a few miles of which indeed he died. William 
of Malmesbury tells us a story, by way of accounting for the 
name, at which we may perhaps smile, but which no doubt 
has a substratum of truth in it, “ Aldhelm, once, when 
preaching,” he says, “fixed his ashen staff in the earth: it 
grew miraculously, putting forth boughs and leaves, and 
numerous ash trees afterwards sprang from it, hence the place 
was called Biscopes-trewe.”! Is it not possible that the 
word ¢reow ( = tree) is used here in its secondary sense as 
equivalent to “cross,” as in Acts, x., 39, “ Whom they slew 
and hanged on a tree?” So Oswestry, as has been men- 
tioned (§ 2), means Oswald’s tree (or cross), its equivalent 
in Welsh being Croes-Oswallt. And Dr. Guest interprets 
Aeiles-treu (a name also given as Mgles-ford, and Aigeles- 
thrip), as equivalent to Church-cross. Archzol. Inst. Journ., 
(Salisb.) p. 47. If so, the old chronicler gives us a glimmer- 
ing of the truth, veiled though it may be with fable. Here 
no doubt the good Bishop preached the truth to the semi- 
ehristianized, if not at that time heathen, people of Wessex. 
Probably, like Augustine and other early missionaries, he 
carried with him a cross, the symbol of our faith, and planted 
it in the ground beside him, as he proclaimed the doctrine of 
the cross. Anyhow the name is a memorial of one of the 
holiest and most devoted of missionary bishops, and so of our 
early Christianity in Wessex. 
Curist1an Matrorp, near Chippenham; originally Cristes-me/- 
ford. The Anglo-Saxon word mei signifies a mark, or sign, 
or image, so that the whole word means the ford by Christ’s 
sign ( = the cross), or Christ’s image ( =a crucifix, or rood). 
The word Criste-me/ often occurs inSaxon charters by itself,and 
also in composition, as descriptive of points of boundary. Thus 
in a grant of Grimanleége to Worcester, we have, “ up 
ondlang ®Szs hearpoSes +6 Sem Criste-mele” (up along the 
high-way to the Christ-mal 7.e., the cross). Cod. Dipl., 266. 

1 Gest. Pontif. (Rolls Series), p. 384. 

