140 RURAL PLACE-NAMES 



Saxon settlers had good cause to name the place ' befer 

 lea' the beaver meadow. Beverley in Yorkshire, 

 Beverburn or Barbon in Worcestershire, Beversbrook 

 in Wilts, are a few out of many ancient haunts of an 

 animal which still survives in the Elbe, identical with 

 the North American beaver, and of which bones and 

 skulls have been exhumed in many English and 

 Scottish counties. In Welsh this animal was known as 

 llostlydan, or broad tail, and was specially abundant in 

 the Teifi when Giraldus Cambrensis visited Cardigan- 

 shire in 1188. Another name for it was afange, or 

 afanci the river dog, but this term seems to have 

 been interchangeable with dyfrgi the water-dog or 

 otter. 



Long after the last beavers had been hunted down 

 for their valuable fur and the glandular secretion so 

 highly prized by primitive physicians, many parts of 

 the British Isles continued to be infested with wolves. 

 King Edgar (958-975) has credit for having been the 

 first monarch to take systematic measures for clearing 

 them out, which he did, over a great part of the country 

 at least, by commuting the money tribute due by the 

 Prince of North Wales into a tale of 300 wolves 

 yearly, to be delivered at his palace in Winchester. 

 To this day that ancient building bears the name of 

 Wolvesey i.e., wolf island standing as it does amid 

 the labyrinthine branches of Itchen. Plenty of other 

 English places remind one of the shepherd's scourge. 

 Wolmer Forest, for instance, stands for Wolfmere, or 

 Wolfmoor ; but some of the names, such as Wolfham- 

 cote in Warwickshire, probably denote the dwelling- 



