98 The Place-Name Cricklade: a Suggestion. 
coins, and in the guttural of the last lettersin them. This term 
is in Gaelic and Hrse Croc (in an early form Cnoc, or Knock), in 
another form Cruach and Cruachan. It is pronounced with the ch — 
as a guttural, and it implies a hill or rising ground. 
In Breton this word takes the form Ayree’h or Kreac’h (Krac’h 
in the Vannes district), Cornish A7vec’h, and has also the meaning — 
of an eminence or rising ground, as the French lexicographer 
translates it, “‘ce qui va en montant,”’ “tertre.”’ The term survives 
in many Gaelic and Irish place-names and in some English ones, 
as Creech Hill, in Somerset, and in Creeg Barrow and Creech, near 
Wareham. 
The word is not to be confounded with the Erse Carraic, Gaelic 
Creag, Welsh Carreg, and Breton Carrek, which are the terms for 
a rock or “ crag,” without the guttural. 
The gradual rise from the river of the little Roman station of 
Cricklade may be represented by this Croagh or Kreec’h. 
As regards the final syllable, /«de, common to Cricklade and to 
the riverine town a few miles further down the Thames, Lechlade, 
and also to Chicklade, a little place in a valley north of Tisbury, 
we have again to search for some apt word among the vocabularies 
of the Celtic language. 
The Irish tongue gives us one so closely similar in its form as. 
almost to arouse our suspicions, as in the case of Crich. This’ 
word is /éd, a watercourse or canal. The term for an artificial 
watercourse, familiar in the west as a water-leet is evidently a 
survival of this term. The Wiltshire Longleat is a case of its use 
as a place-name. It is related to the Gaelic /od and /Jodan, a pool 
of water, and again to /og and /ag, a hollow lock, lough, or lake ; 
the a and o often being interchanged in Celtic terms. 
The Brythonic form of the word would seem to be Liared, a 
shallow in a river, a ford (from a root L/aer, a rippling). Lis 1s a 
Breton term for the sea shore, connected with /ezen, a fringe to a 
stuff—in another form it is beven; but neither Liz nor the Wel 
Lilez, a plain or flat surface, seem related to the words in question. 
I would, then, suggest that the place-name Cricklade is made wu 
of two Celtic words, Goidelic in their form, implying a ground 
