CASTERS AND CHESTERS. 299 



members of aristocratic families, * came over with 

 William the Conqueror.' Tiie word castel is never used, 

 I believe, in any English document before the Conquest ; 

 but in the very year of William's invasion, the Chronicle 

 tells us, * Willelm earl came from Normandy into Peven- 

 sey, and wrought a castel at Hastings port.' So, while 

 in France itself the word has declined through chastel 

 into chateau^ we in England have kept it in comparative 

 purity as castle. 



York is another town which had a narrow escape of 

 becoming Yorchester. Its Roman name was Eburacum, 

 which the English queerly rendered as Eoforv^ic, by a 

 M^iy i iteresting piece of folks-etymology. Eofor is old 

 English for a boar, and loic for a town ; so our rude 

 ancestors metamorphosed the Latinised Celtic name into 

 this familiar and significant form, much as our own 

 sailors turn the Bellerophon into the Billy Ruffun, and 

 the Anse des Cousins into the Nancy Cozens. In the 

 same way, I have known an illiterate Englishman speak 

 of Aix-la-Chapelle as Hexley Chapel. To the name, 

 thus disorted, our forefathers of course added the generic 

 word for a Roman town, and so made the cumbrous title 

 of Eoforwic-ceaster, which is the almost universal form 

 in the earlier parts of the English Chronicle. This was 

 too much of a mouthful even for the hardy Anglo-Saxon, 

 so we soon find a disposition to shorten it into Coaster 

 on the one hand, or Eoforwic on the other. Should the 

 final name be Chester or York ? — that was the question. 

 Usage declared in favour of the more distinctive title. 

 The town became Eoforwic alone, and thence gradually 

 declined through Evorwic, Euorwic, Eurewic, and Yorick 



