306 THE TYNE, THE LOUT BUEN, THE SKEENE. 



also from the fronts, of some houses bordering on it, and that 

 the name has been perpetuated down to the present day. It is 

 curious that it did not receive the appellation of the Lort Beck. 



III. The Skeene. 



Like the Lort Burn, the little river Skeme, which runs through 

 the lowest part of the town of Darlington to the Tees, near Croft, 

 has an ancient name, one that has come down from Anglo-Saxon 

 times, but which has nothing Danish or Scandinavian in it, 

 though it has much the same meaning as Lort, and was, in all 

 probability, applied for the same reason. 



Scearn, secern, seem, or sciern, in Anglo-Saxon, means dung, 

 and is derived from sceran, to shear, divide, separate, part. 



In local Durham dialect cow-share is cow-dung. 



Skcera in Icelandic means purgare, to purify. 



In olden times the inhabitants of most if not of all towns that 

 had the advantage of a stream running through them, availed 

 themselves of its scavenging capabilities, for its current, aided 

 by occasional showers and storms of rain, would from time to 

 time carry off to the river the scearn or lort (or dort, mod. New- 

 castle) more or less imperfectly ; at any rate that part of it which 

 was left by the dogs, pigs, and poultry, which in those days 

 were allowed, except in Plague times, to roam at large through 

 the streets for exercise, and for picking up a part of their daily 

 sustenance — an insanitary condition of municipal affairs well 

 adapted for rendering such towns excellent hotbeds for the gen- 

 eration of fevers, and almost every variety of endemic and epi- 

 demic disease, the Plague being the worst. 



The modern appellation of the Lort Burn is Sewer, a term 

 scarcely so applicable to the Skerne, as it still runs in the light 

 of day. The Tyne is the separating river. 



