344 | MR. CARR ON COMPOSITE NAMES OF PLACES. 
had reference to artificial tumuli or barrows erected in memory 
of particular events or transactions: as, Ludlow, perhaps, as Lye 
thinks, the mount of the people ; if it does not allude to the name 
of some distinguished men there interred. Winslow, the mount 
of the battle. 
The term law, as a separate word, is still in common use 
among the Northumbrians, as signifying a hill, generally of some 
size and elevation; and, near to the Cheviots at least, is applied 
chiefly to hills of conical form. I am unable to say whether 
this is an essential characteristic or not, but am disposed to think 
so, or at least that hills so denominated, are never mere ridges, but 
must have a well-defined summit. Thus they speak of Shepherds’ 
law, Sheep-law, Greenlaw, Houndlaw, Hindlaw. When the first 
member of the compound is not distinctly intelligible alone, and 
the name is not so clearly significant to the popular ear, or again, 
where the composition is more intimate and complete, and the 
accentual stress has been thrown back upon the first member, then 
has commenced a process of corruption, by which daw has been con- 
verted intoJley, and thus confounded with an element of very different 
signification, which we shall have to examine in its turn. Thus 
Brislaw, in Huln Park, a very lofty eminence, commanding the 
whole district about it, is vulgarly called Brisley, as if it were 
mere ordinary lea-land. Throcklaw, which was, in all likelihood, 
so denominated from a law or barrow in honour of some Danish 
warrior, (Thorcytel being a well-known personal name,) has be- 
come Throckley, as if the lea-land would be sohonoured. Crau- 
law, a township and tower in the Parish of Eglingeham, and 
occupying the commanding site of a Roman fort (still very pro- 
minent) which overlooked the whole country, is too often de- 
graded into Crawley. From the existence of the Roman fort, 
(and Watling-street within a bow-shot,) together with the old 
documentary orthography of Crau-law, it is impossible to doubt 
that the late Mr. Smart and Mr. Hedley were right, when they 
referred the derivation to caer and law; caer being the ordinary 
term applied, by our ancient British ancestors, to Roman forts ; 
of which Carlisle, Caernarvon, and very many other instances 
might be cited. This element, not being an Anglo-Saxon one, 
