154 



DISCOVERY 



In tlie first place it is important to realise that, 

 thoiigli work has already been done on some twenty 

 counties and on one of the Yorkshire Ridings, much 

 remains to be done c\'cn here, and mainly for two 

 reasons. First, the books published deal in the great 

 majority of cases with only a small proportion of the 

 names that call for explanation. Secondly, quite apart 

 from any individual weakness or idiosyncrasy on the 

 part of their authors, each of these books suffers from 

 a weakness entirely beyond their control — viz., that it 

 is impossible to deal satisfactorily with the evidence 

 for any single county until that for all other counties 

 is available also. For these reasons alone it is clear 

 that much fresh work will have to be done on these 

 counties before anything like finality can be attained, 

 and there are still some eighteen counties and two- 

 thirds of Yorkshire untouched. 



F'or the proper treatment of the old and new areas 

 alike, new and extended lines of work arc gradually 

 suggesting themselves. In the first place, a much more 

 thorough and exhaustive study than has hitherto been 

 attempted must be made of local pronunciations, so 

 far as they have survived. Often the ultimate solution 

 of the history of a place-name depends upon a know- 

 ledge of such a local pronunciation, and it is becoming 

 increasingly hard to discover the existence of such. 

 False ideas of what constitutes an educated way of 

 speech in this matter are tending to drive them out 

 in favour of forms based on the written word. Here 

 much help may be obtained from a study of sixteenth, 

 seventeenth, and eighteenth century Parish Registers, 

 many of which have been reprinted, and many more 

 of which are available in typewritten or MS. transcripts. 

 Luckily for us, the average parson of those days did 

 not travel far, could not study ordnance maps, and 

 was not a pedant in matters of spelling. When a 

 marriage took place at Corbridgc, and the bridegroom 

 came from Alnham, the Vicar wrote what he heard, 

 viz. that the bridegroom came from Yeldham ; or when 

 a child born at Coniscliffe was baptised at Newcastle, 

 his birthplace was recorded as Cunsley. Again and 

 again the first trace of such local pronunciations has 

 been found in entries such as these and suggested grounds 

 for further inquiry. That the ultimate solution of a 

 name may often depend on a knowledge of such a 

 pronunciation may be illustrated from the history of 

 HaUwhisile. From 1240 onwards we find spellings such 

 as Hatdwisel, Hawtetwysill, and it is not till 1479 that 

 we find one with /, such as HaltcwesyU. This com- 

 pletely puzzled the present writer until in the Corbridge 

 Parish Register for 1655 he came upon the form 

 Hoalewhisle. This put him on the track of the still 

 existing local pronunciation, " Hoatusle," and it was 

 at once clear that here, as in Ault Hucknall, Derbyshire, 

 the first element is Old French haut, high, with later 



intnision of /, due to learned folk who knew its con- 

 nection with Latin altus. Soon, as in the common word 

 fault, earlier faute, the new spelling form prevailed, 

 and, except on the lips of the people of the countryside, 

 ousted the linguistically correct form. HaUwhisile is 

 " the high ground at the tKisle or forking of Haltwhistle 

 Bum and South Tyne." 



For these reasons it is much to be desired that all 

 existing records should be ransacked for such phonetic 

 spellings, and that those who have had the requisite 

 phonetic training should, in the course cither of their 

 work or play, make note of all local pronunciations with 

 which they come in contact, and get them placed on 

 exact record before it is too late. 



Further, England is incomparably rich in historical 

 documents which provide early forms for the study of 

 place-names. For our Old English charters we are still 

 almost entirely dependent on the eminently unsatis 

 factory editions of Kemble and of Birch. The fact 

 that there is no good edition is not, however, any excuse 

 for the comparative neglect of these fundamental 

 documents by many of our writers on place-names, 

 and it is sincerely to be hoped that ere long those 

 possessed of the necessary philological and palaeo- 

 graphical knowledge maj' give us the editions we so 

 sorely need. 



The lengthy series of Calendars of Charter Rolls, 

 Patent Rolls, and other documents issued under Govern- 

 ment authority are unluckily marred, especially in 

 the earlier volumes, by lack of local topographical 

 knowledge. Students of local history working through 

 these volumes could do much to help the writers on 

 place-names by tackling the problem of the identifica- 

 tion of many of them. The indexes of these volumes 

 are full of unidentified names and of names that have 

 been wrongly identified. 



Finally, one of the great difficulties in English place- 

 name study is the fact that we have to deal with names 

 given by a succession of settlers of varying race and 

 language. Knowledge is needed not only of English 

 in all its stages of development, but also of Anglo- 

 French and of the various Scandinavian and Celtic 

 languages. No single scholar can hope to deal with 

 all these problems. Hitherto a certain amount of 

 help has been received from specialists in Anglo-French 

 and Scandinavian, but no one has attempted to deal 

 with any of the Celtic problems which clamour for 

 attention, except Ekwall, in his recently published 

 Scandinavians and Celts in the Norlh'-West of England. 

 At present writers on place-names must of necessity 

 either omit these difficult names altogether, or give 

 their forms with no word of comment of explanation. 



Such arc three only of the many new vistas of study 

 which open up before us if we once begin to think 

 how to carry through the work that still remains to 



