By the Sev. W. BARNES. 



|OUT HILL, Somerset ' Toot.' The meaning of Tout or 

 Toot has often, I believe, been asked or sought, and 

 some writer has found a religious mystery in it in the 

 belief that the Touts were chosen hills for the worship of a Celtic 

 God, Teutates or Mercury. I cannot make out of that word, in 

 Celtic, anything but Tew-tat, in Welsh of our time Dew-dad 

 "God the Father;" the one God, not Mercury. The Touts 

 were pretty clearly spy-hills or outlook-hills. The old English 

 word Toten, or Tote is to spy, to look, out. "To toten all about" 

 "To spy all about," Peres, the ploughman's Crede, about 

 A.D. 1394. 



" How often dyd I tote 

 Upon her prety fote (foot)." 

 (John Skelton, A.D., 1522, edited by Skeat). 

 And we have the word still in use in the verb "To tout," and 

 Touters are sent out from inns, or to steamboats, and,- I 

 believe, from shops, to tout, look out or spy for customers. There 

 are two, if not three, Touts in Portland, and we have Nettlecomle 

 Tout, and there is one called Cleve Tout, in Somerset, and most 

 likely Tothill or Totton may be by a tout. 



In some old depositions which I have on trials for witchcraft 

 it is said by a witch that she and others of her craft sometimes 

 met by night near Marnhull and on Leigh Common, and, ere the 

 doing of some stroke of witchery, they had the warning " Tout, 

 tout, tout, out and about ; " " Look out, look out, look out, out 

 and about." We can well believe that in times of trouble there 

 were touters on the touts, 



