ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 289 



LETTER II. 



THAT Selborne was a place of some distinction and note in the 

 time of the Saxons we can give most undoubted proofs. But, as 

 there are few if any accounts of the villages before Domesday, it 

 will be best to begin with that venerable record. " Ipse rex tenet 

 Selesburne. Eddid regina tenuit, et nunquam geldavit. De isto 

 manerio dono dedit rex Radfredo presbytero dimidiam hidam cum 

 ecclesia. Tempore regis Edwardi et post, valuit duodecim solidos 

 et sex denarios ; modo octo solidos et quatuor denarios." Here we 

 see that Selborne was a royal manor : and that Editha the queen 

 of Edward the Confessor, had been lady of that manor, and was 

 succeeded in it by the Conqueror, and that it had a church. 

 Besides these, many circumstances concur to prove it to have been 

 a Saxon village ; such as the name of the place itself,* the names 

 of many fields, and some families, f with a variety of words in 

 husbandry and common life, still subsisting among the country 

 people. 



What probably first drew the attention of the Saxons to this spot 



* Selesburne, Seleburne, Selburn, Selbourn, Selborne, and Selborn, as it has been 

 variously spelt at different periods, is of Saxon derivation ; for Sel signifies great, and 

 burn torrens, a brook or rivulet : so that the name seems to be derived from the great 

 perennial stream that breaks out at the upper end of the village. Sel also signifies bonus, 

 itemfoecundus,fertilis. "Sel jaertf-tun : foecunda graminis clausura ; fertile 

 pascuum: a meadow in the parish of Godelming is still called Sal-gars-ton" LYE'S 

 Saxon Dictionary, in the Supplement, by Mr. Manning. 



t Thus, the name of A Idred signifies all-reverend, and that of Kemp* means a soldier. 

 Thus we have a church- lit ton, or enclosure for dead bodies, and not a church-yard; there 

 is also a Culver-croft near the Grange-farm, being the enclosure where the priory pigeon- 

 house stood, from culver a pigeon. Again there are three* steep pastures in this parish 

 called the Lithe, from Hlithe, clivus. The wicker-work that binds and fastens down a 

 hedge on the top is called ether, from ether, an hedge. When the good women call their 

 hogs they cry sic, sic, 1 not knowing that sic is Saxon, or rather Celtic, for a hog. Coppice 

 or brushwood our countrymen call rise, from /iris, frondes ; and talk of a load of rise. 

 Within the author's memory the Saxon plurals, hmisen and peason, were in common use. 

 But it would be endless to instance in every circumstance : he that wishes for more 

 specimens must frequent a farmer's kitchen. I have therefore selected some words to show 

 h MW familiar the Saxon dialect was to this district, since in more than seven hundred years 

 it is far from being obliterated. 



1 2a, porcus, apud Lacones ; un Porceau chez les Lacedemoniens : ce mot a sans doute 

 este pris des Celtes, qui disoent sic, pour marquer un porceau. Encore aujour'huy quand 

 les Bretons chassent ces animaux, ils ne disent autrement, que sic, sic. Antiquitf de l<i 

 Nation et de la Langue des Celtes, par Pezron. 



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