BY A. TAJIK SIDE. 11 



them or not, it is certain they attached great impor- 

 tance to it. Their early towns a mere collection of 

 huts were surrounded with a strong hawthorn fence, 

 so that, in the terminal syllable of many of our 

 English village names, we have a reference to this 

 fact. Ton or town as we have modernized it is in 

 allusion to the forked branches of the quickset fence 

 and in the tine of an antler, and in the tine of a fork 

 we have the original word still applied. Ton is 

 merely a syllable from the same root, and is a silent 

 but expressive testimony to the ancient thorny and 

 forked character of the defences adopted by our 

 Saxon forefathers. Other village names end in sett, 

 as " Hethersett," from the Anglo-Saxon ssetan, to 

 plant. In such cases the name is derived from the 

 ancient swine pastures, which were enclosed with 

 thorn fences, nothing else being capable of arresting 

 the migratory impulses of the " porkers." To this 

 day we call a hawthorn hedge, par parenthese, a 

 " quick-serf " fence, showing what vitality many of 

 these old words possess, and how much of genuine 

 history is silently locked up in their almost for- 

 gotten meanings. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon student, 

 on his first introduction to the language, is sur- 

 prised to find how largely the use of the hawthorn 

 has entered into the composition of our English 

 village names. Thus the old enclosures for the 

 purposes of the chase, made with this hedge, were 

 called " baighs " or " heys." In Lancashire, the 

 fruit or drupe of the hawthorn is still called 

 " haigh," whilst elsewhere it is termed " haw," and 



