THE PROBLEM OF LYNCHEIS. 69 



6. The term lynchet is from the A. S. hlinc, a masculine noun 

 of the first declension, which Bosworth renders "a linch, balk, 

 ridge of land, high land"; and Lye, "agger limitaneus, 

 quandoque privatorum agros, quandoque paroechias, et alia 

 loca, dividens, finium instar. Hodie Linch " ; and Somner, 

 " agger limitaneus." The A. S. poem about the Phoenix 

 says " Beorgas j^a^r ne muntas, hlcewas ne hlincas," neither 

 hills nor mountains, neither mounds nor ridges, in that blest 

 abode. 



Galfrid's glossary, a.d. 1440, gives linke as the equivalent of 

 the monkish hilla and hi'niar' Kemble gives for hline " rising 

 ground." Wright's Dialect Dictionary, now being issued, says 

 that linch means (i) rising ground, a raised bank of untilled 

 ground dividing or bounding a field, a bank covered with 

 copse ; (2) a ledge, especially the narrow ledges running along 

 the steep face of downs ; (3) an inland cliff. While for lynchet 

 the meaning assigned by the same authority is (i) a strip of 

 untilled land dividing ploughed fields ; and (2) a narrow terrace 

 on the escarpment of downs. 



Linch and lynchet, then, are nearly synonymous. They both 

 have a dividing and a delimiting connotation, and they are both 

 applicable to the terraces we are about to consider. The latter 

 term, lynchet, is not confined to Dorset, Hampshire, and Wilts, 

 where it is most used, but occurs also in Kent, Gloucestershire, 

 Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. It seems to be a diminutive of 

 linch, a more widely used word. It is not found in any Anglo- 

 Saxon charter, although hlinc, or linch, is frequent. Indeed, the 

 suffix et is not of Anglo-Saxon affinity, but came into use after 

 the Conquest, no doubt with a diminutive intention. In a 

 trilingual charter of Hants, a.d. 959, the words "J^onne 

 bufan Sam hlince" are rendered "tunc desuper monticuli 



* Hern means a horn, projection, angle : A. S. an-h;irn dcor = unicorn ; 

 O.X. hiirna = the peak of a moimtain, a horned ewe is hcrna, and dtt-hurning 

 = octagon. 



