By R. C. Alexander, Esq., M.D. 199 
But let us try what can be made out of it from Anglo-Saxon before 
having recourse to a foreign language. 
Dun is an open hilly pasture, a down. ‘pan’ would seem to 
be an adjective, whose simple form is «ep. This we do not meet 
with, but there is a common form of ead easy, namely xd. The 
letters p and 8 are so frequently confused, that perhaps there need 
not be much importance attached to whether one is used or the 
other. Indeed most editors of Anglo-Saxon works print } at the 
beginning of a word, and 6 at any other part of it, without regard 
to the manuscript. But beside this slight difference of spelling 
there is the objection, that we do not, I think, ever find e% applied 
to a hill, or bearing any such sense as ‘easy of ascent,’ or like its 
compound eadfere ‘easy to travel on.’ With regard to the use of 
% and } it is likely that the confusion has arisen from dialectic 
difference of pronunciation, and that words which in Wessex were 
correctly spelt with the one letter, would in another part of Eng- 
land be as correctly spelt with the other. In Alfred’s will the 
words Se and dat are thus written agreeably to the modern sound, 
but in Iceland the corresponding words are written and pronounced 
p, as bessi ‘this’ for instance. It is also probable that the 6 at the 
end of a word may, like the Spanish d, take the sound of p. This 
derivation of AXpandun from #%, is, grammatically, the most ob- 
vious and easiest. The doubt is whether «% ever bears a meaning 
applicable toa down. There are several other conjectural deriva- 
tions that have occurred to me, but, having no confidence in them, I 
will not occupy the pages of this Magazine, or tire the reader, by 
detailing them. Of the word ‘heen’ a pagan, a term that might 
be thought singularly appropriate to the camp of an ezercitus 
paganorum, as Asser calls them, I will only remark that the import- 
ance of the letter in all Germanic languages forbid us to think 
of it. From the oldest specimen of German in the Mzso-Gothic of 
Ulphilas to the modern dialects of England, Holland, and Germany, 
there is not I believe a single instance of the / being either omit- 
ted or adopted contrary to ancient usage, or occurring in the same 
word in one of those languages and not in the other, except in the 
ease of the personal pronoun of the third person, (upon which some 
