202 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



very agreeable set of features, which probably resembled that lady, who 

 was more celebrated for her beauty than for her virtues. The medallions 

 in general were of a paler colour than the coins. To pretend to 

 account for the means of their coming to this place would be spending 

 time in conjecture. The spot, I think, could not be a Roman camp, 

 because it is commanded by hills on two sides ; nor does it show the 

 least traces of entrenchments ; nor can I suppose that it was a Roman 

 town, because I have too good an opinion of the taste and judgment of 

 those polished conquerors to imagine that they would settle on so 

 barren and dreary a waste. 



LETTEE 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. 



* Sdesburne, 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, item fcecundus, fertilis. "Sel gaejij"-tun : fcecunda 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 Aldred signifies all-reverend, and that of Kmip means a 

 soldier. Thus we have a church-litton, 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 thei-e 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 hris, frondes ; and talk of a load of rise. Within the author's 

 memory the Saxon plurals, housen 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 

 how familiar the Saxon dialect was to this district, since in more than seven 

 hundred years it is far from being obliterated. 



1 "Stxct, porcus, apud Lacones; un Porceau chez les Lacedemoniens : ce mot a 

 sans doute este pris des Celtes, qui disoent sic, pour marquer uii porceau. Encore 

 aujour'huy quand les Bretons chassent ces aiiimaux, ils ne disent autrement, que 

 sic, sic. Antiguitd de la Nation et de la, Langue des Celtes, par Pesron. 



