238 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1903 
follows, in ‘Cheltenham as a Holiday Resort,’ 1897, 
PB: 933s | 
“Concerning the name of the range of hills it may be 
remarked that two spellings exist—‘ Cotteswold,’ which, 
having been adopted by the County Field Club, is in con- 
sequence usually found in scientific works, and ‘ Cotswold,’ 
which has perhaps a more popular acceptance. But the 
natives of the hills usually speak the word as Cotsul, which 
it is always advisable to note. As to the derivation it 
cannot come from the Anglo-Saxon Cé¢e, a cot, a cottage, 
because this makes genitive céfan. The derivation given 
in Chambers’ [Etymological| Dictionary is Welsh coed, a 
wood, and Anglo-Saxon wa/d, with the same meaning, so 
that the word is claimed to be an example of bilingual 
naming. But it may be conjectured that the Anglo-Saxon 
wald was based upon something in the prior Welsh name, 
and was an example of popular corruption to give meaning 
to the unintelligible.... Perhaps then, the native pronuncia- 
tion may preserve the original name, and it suggests a 
Welsh (British) coed sw/, the wood of the plain. Sw/ is 
explained in a Welsh dictionary as ‘a flat space, a ground’ 
and the flat plain-like appearance of the top of the 
Cotteswolds—away from the western escarpment—is 
particularly noticeable. If anyone, standing on the top of 
Broad Blunsdon Hill, just south of Cricklade, surveys the 
stretch of the Cotteswolds around and to the north of 
Cirencester, he will understand the aptness of the descrip- 
tion. One fact we may certainly learn from the different 
names—that in British and Saxon times the Cotteswolds 
were very wooded; and we know that the beech—‘ the 
weed of the Oolites, as it has been called, would have 
covered them, for it would soon do so now were it not for 
cultivation.” 
In a later paper I suggested a modification—that the 
original was really coed y sw/,’ not merely coed sw/. this 
1 Cleeve Hill Plateau, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., Vol. liii., (1897), p. 626. 
