4 TEESDAXE PLACE-NAMES. 



The northern ea is clearly older than the southern eau. 



" Many names of places in Britain commencing or ending with 

 o, or its varieties, accuse a Scandinavian origin, and are names 

 of rivers ; and the Scandinavian names -of rivers foreign to Scan- 

 dinavia end in a, as Hvita, white river; Hita, hot river; Tempsa, 

 the Thames water; whence we get our pronunciation of the 

 name of that river — The Terns, the a and. the p being dropped. 

 The Dona, Icel. ; the Donau, Ger. ; the Danube." — Cleasby. 



Thus we have four groups of words for water or river indiffer- 

 ently : — 



1st. a, .Icel. ; a, Dan. ; aJiva, Goth. ; aJia, Hel. and O.H.G. : 

 e&j A.-S. ; eau^ Fr. ; aw, avon, a/on, Wei. and other dialects ; 

 Sansc, apnas, from ah, to go, to move ; amnis, Lat. 



2nd. TFasser, Ger. ; water, Eng., Dut., Flem. ; vatten, Sw. ; 

 vand, Dan. 



3rd. Biofr, dur, Wei. and other Celtic dialects ; vScap, Gr. 



4th. Aqua, Lat. ; acqua. It. ; agua, Sp. and Port. ; agha, 

 Moeso-Goth. ■. which closely resembles the 1st group. 



The examples of rivers whose names end in a in our district 

 of Upper Teesdale are : — 



The Greta, the rocky water, or river. See Greta. 



The Tutta, the sounding water or beck. See Tutta. 



In Cumberland there is The Eamont river. 



Bat, Batt, oe Batts. 



Bat may be supposed to be from the Icelandic leit, pasturage, 

 heita, mordere facere, to graze, feed cattle, or sheep, or the 

 Moeso-Gothic latJian, inescare, to bait, or the A.-S. latan, to 

 feed, to bait fish, &c., hence the old English word to latten, or 

 it may mean a piece of waste ground to which formerly any one 

 might take his cattle to bait or feed. 



Most probably, however, it also means simply a low-lying bit 

 of ground near a river, and corresponds to the Fr. has lieu, or 

 lasses terres. It. hasso ; Sp. hajo ; Port, haixo; Ger., nederlande, 

 marschland, Dut., laagland, laag; Flem., nederlande, zandhanhen. 



Thus in Halliwell's Diet, of Archaic, &c. Words, and in 

 Brockett's Glossary of JSTorth Country Words, we find, 



