200 Edington or Yatton the Ethandun of Alfred’s Victory ? 
remarks will be made in a subsequent part of this paper,) and some 
foreign words such as Ikenild-street, which is often spelt Hikenild. 
Other apparent exceptions will resolve themselves into transitive 
forms in h of neuter verbs, or nouns, with an unaspirated vowel, as 
hacean, hack, from zex an axe, hedan, feed, from ede flock, haermian, 
injure, from earm, wretched, hyran, hear from ear, the ear, &c. 
Of the Anglo-Saxon derivations of the word, that occur to me, 
the likeliest philologically is the above from 2%, and I suspect that 
this word is connected with ‘x’ water, and may imply /eve/ like the 
Latin ‘eequus,’ ‘eequor,’ which, no doubt, are connected with ‘aqua’ 
water, and represent a smooth water-levelled surface. 
I think, however, that every reader will agree with me that the 
Welsh word ‘aeth,’ a furze-bush, pl. ‘eithin,’ offers a far more pro- 
bable explanation of the name. I will here quote what Kemble 
remarks upon this adoption of British names by the Saxons. 
“Before we proceed to notice these words in detail, it will be 
desirable to remark one circumstance which throws considerable 
difficulty in the way of their explanation: this is the extremely 
corrupt manner in which they are too often written, and which 
coupled as it frequently is, with peculiarity of dialect, sometimes 
renders it impossible even to settle their true form, a fortiori to 
decide upon their meaning. Nor is this the only difficulty which 
meets the inquirer. It cannot be doubted that local names, and 
those devoted to distinguish the natural features of a country, pos- 
sess an inherent vitality, which even the urgency of conquest is 
frequently unable to destroy. A race is rarely so entirely removed 
as not to form an integral, although subordinate, part of the new 
state based upon its ruins: and in the case where the cultivator 
continues to be occupied with the soil, a change of master will not 
necessarily lead to the abandonment of the names by which the 
land itself and the instruments or processes of labour are designated. 
On the contrary, the conquering race are apt to adopt these names 
from the conquered; and thus after the lapse of twelve centuries and 
innumerable civil convulsions, the principal words of the class 
described yet prevail in the language of our people, and partially 
in our literature. Many then of the words which we seek in vain in 
