PETUARI A FED WARLLECH BEVERLET . 1 1 



life and language in Great Britain, the Beaver has been 

 known by his present English name or some combination 

 of letters closely equivalent. Beofer, Baver, Boever, 

 Bcever, are some of the forms by which our Saxon and 

 Danish progenitors have designated what the Scandinavians 

 like to call the "boss-master-builder," "erke-bygmeister." 

 This was enough for the average etymologist. He made 

 light of the fact that there are no beavers in the Hull river. 

 They might have been there once, and when there they 

 might have dammed the stream and made a lake of it, and 

 these conjectures saved him further trouble. Beverley 

 must be either Beaver-lake or Boever-elv, the Danish for 

 Beaver River, and there he rested. 



There is every reason to think that, in connection with 

 their extended operations about York, some twenty-five 

 miles away, the Roman invaders established themselves on 

 the Hull river at Beverley. The Itinerary of Antoninus 

 completed before the Christian era (Theodore Parker's copy 

 of it is in the Boston Public Library) indicates this and 

 seems to show that the Roman name for the place was 

 "Petuaria." Ptolemy, the Alexandrian, who wrote in 

 Greek about the geography of these islands in the second 

 century, spells it mrooapta, and the theory is that the name 

 was derived from the familiar words for stone, TT^O?, 

 petrus, ad that within the limits of this camp or town four 

 Roman milestones were brought near together from the 

 crossing of the ways, and so the place was called "Cross 

 Roads" or "The Milestones." The native Britons, the war- 

 riors of Boadicea and worshippers in Druid groves, called 

 the place "Pedwarllech" and whether this be assumed as 

 the original form which the Romans adopted and softened 

 into Petuaria, of whether we conclude that Romans first 

 settled Petuaria and named the place and rough British 

 throats corrupted the smooth, mellifluous latin into "Ped- 

 warllech" and later comers into "Beverley," no one familiar 



