TEESDALE PLACE-NAMES. 3 



A valued friend writes to me — "I have observed the word 

 eau in my maps of the fen-lands of Lincolnshire, e. g. Bowm eau, 

 Heckington eau; they are water-courses, but whether natural 

 or artificial I do not know. I should imagine that this eau is 

 pronounced ee, as is the river Eau, which I learn from Mr. 

 Peacock's Glossary of Manley and Corringham, falls into the 

 Ouse, in the parish of Scotter." He also writes — " In a lease 

 granted by the Prior and Convent of Peterborough of the manor 

 of Scotter to Sir "Wm. Tyrwhitt in 1537, it is called the Ee. 

 The spelling eau is false, due to Prench notions." 



" Ee is a run of water, in JSTorth Lincolnshire dialect." Eng. 

 Dialect Soc, Vol. 32, C. 



" Ea, a river along the sands on the seashore." Tour to the 

 Caves, 1781, Eng.,Dialect Soc, Vol. I., P. 



'^ Ea, water, a genuine Saxon word unchanged. It is to be 

 found with some variety of form in the proper names of places in 

 all parts of East Anglia; but in its own proper form perhaps 

 only in the fen country, at the south western angle of the county 

 of JSTorfolk, and the adjoining part of the Isle of Ely. 



Popham's ea and St. John's ea^ are water courses cut for the 

 drainage of different parts of the Bedford level into the Ouse 

 above Lynn. Ea Irink is the beginning of a very sudden cur- 

 vature of that river, from which point a new cut was made at a 

 prodigious expense, and finished in the year 1820, to improve 

 the outfall of the fen waters into Lynn harbour, by giving them 

 a straight direction. 



It is commonly written and printed, and generally pronounced 

 by strangers, as eau, as if the word had been borrowed from the 

 Prench, which it certainly was not. 



In the country it is invariably pronounced ea, and is most 

 strictly A.-S. ea, aqua." Vocab. East Anglia, Vol. I., Eey. E. 

 Forby, 1830, Lond. 



It is curious to observe that here we have the A..-S. form 

 ea, becoming overlaid and threatened with obliteration by the 

 Prench form eau, a kind of evidence that these forms are very 

 near to each other, and not likely to show affinity to, or be 

 mistaken for, the Latin aqua. 



