By Nevil Story Maskelyne, M.A., F.R.S. 97 
that coins were struck. Of the coins minted at Cricklade the 
larger number known are in collections at Copenhagen and 
Stockholm—originally carried over the sea as part, probably, of the 
humiliating Danegelt. A description of these coins is given by 
the Rev. W. Allan in vol. xix., p. 283, of this Magazine. 
_ The various forms in which the name of the town appears on 
them have an interest in connection with the pronunciation in 
those two centuries of the first syllable of the name. Cracg/, Croc, 
Crocg-lad, Crog, Cro, Cre, Cerog, Crec, Ceroila, Cricla (time of 
Canute), Cri, Crecli (Edward’s reign), and Cricela, Crecela, Uricgelad, 
Orecca, Crice, are some of them. We need not, perhaps, attach too 
much importance to the sound of a vowel in the eleventh century 
as a guide to its pronunciation in earlier Celtic times. But the 
letters forming the syllable Crick must, nevertheless, be the vestiges 
of the Celtic term. Of the initial Cr there can be little doubt ; 
the /, too, is a significant letter, echoing an original guttural, 
further commemorated in the double ce, g, or cg of the coins. 
We thus have a syllable cracg, crecg, or crog, in which the vowel 
ay have been a, e, 7, 0, or a diphthong. 
In order to trace this syllable to a Celtic origin it might be asked 
thich of the two chief branches of the Celtic tongue will be the 
most promising to investigate—the Goidhelic (surviving in Erse 
md Gaelic) or the Brythonic (represented by the Breton, the extinct 
Jornish, and the Welsh). Without entering on the discussion 
wolved in this choice, it may be accepted as the result of ex- 
erience that many of the Celtic place-names are largely drawn 
rom the former of these groups of dialect: but in fact more or 
oss similar words are usually found in all the Celtic dialects, and 
ith analogous meanings. 
In Erse and Gaelic Crich has the meaning of a limit or boundary, 
d would at first sight seem the word just adapted for a town on 
river where it is crossed by a road, and where either river or road 
ay have marked the limits of two adjoining territories. But 
other syllable recognizable in different forms in Brythonic as 
all as Goidelic vocabularies seems to be echoed more aptly in the 
onunciation of Oricklade as given by the rude spellings of the 
