SAXON PLACE-NAMES 13 



Our Saxon progenitors, also, gave appropriate local 

 names ; but with a sturdy self-assertion, and prosaic 

 regard for plain fact, they chose to couple their own 

 cognomina with them. If a settler fenced in his own 

 inclosure he called it his ' ton ' or his c ham.' If he 

 felled the trees of the primeval woodlands and made his 

 own clearance, it became his c fold.' If he built himself 

 a mud cottage, it was his ' cote,' or if he attained to the 

 dignity of a farm, he called it his £ stead.' As he and 

 his brethren increased their holdings and drew their 

 houses together for companionship and protection, the 

 village kept their family name. But besides these 

 patronymic epithets, which are of such value in tracing 

 out the early settlement of the country, the English 

 gave more or less descriptive local names. In their 

 ' holts ' and ' hursts,' ' wealds ' and ' shaws,' we can still 

 tell where their woods lay. In their ' leighs,' ' fields,' 

 and ' royds,' we can yet trace the open clearings in 

 these woods. But for the broad landmarks, rivers, and 

 larger natural features of the country, the Saxons were 

 generally content to adopt, in some more or less cor- 

 rupted form, the names already given by the Celtic 

 tribes who had preceded them. 



(3) As another but less reliable source of information 

 regarding alterations in the surface of the country, I 

 would make brief allusion to the subject of local 

 tradition. In these days of education and locomotion, 

 we can hardly perhaps realise how tenacious, and on 

 the whole faithful, the human memory may be in spite 

 of the absence of written or printed documents. Even 

 yet we see the unbroken and exact record of the true 

 boundaries of a parish or township handed down in the 



