116 TEESDALE PLACE-NAMES. 



KvpiaKov was, however, used frequently for church in early- 

 Christian times. See Skeat. 



" The word which we now write kiric, was anciently ciric or 

 ci/rc (the c hard), and this spelling leads us to hirruch, a word of 

 the "Westmorland dialect, which according to Ferguson (North- 

 men) is applied to rude enclosures formed with large stones, 

 after the mode styled Druidical, which were the places of wor- 

 ship of the heathen Angles." Halliwell says, that '■'hirochs are 

 the same as kairns^ rude heaps of stones generally found on 

 hills, and supposed to be funeral monuments." 



" It seems to me that the word Icirruch, or IcirocTc, is merely an 

 Anglian corruption of carreg, Brit., a rock, and that the Angles 

 adopted both the places of worship and the name. The transition 

 from carreg to hirruch, and thence to ciric and cyrc, which last 

 word was Danified into hirh, is quite natural. 



A parallel case is afforded in the mutation of carreg into craig 

 dim^carrich, in the Anglian districts north of the Tweed. 



I have shown ante that the British word llan, after meaning 

 any enclosure, came to designate, first, a heathen sacred enclo- 

 sure, afterwards a Christian place of worship ; and in the same 

 way the heathen ciric seems to have become the Christian hirh, 

 a word which was probably carried into the middle and southern 

 parts of England by the Anglian missionaries from Northumbria, 

 who preached to heathen Saxons and Jutes in the sixth, seventh, 

 and eighth centuries." (See Bede's Eccles. Hist.) 



" Trees were worshipped by the ancient Celts, and De Brosses 

 (Du culte des Dieux Fetiches) even derives the word hirh, now 

 softened into church, from quercus, an oak ; that species being 

 peculiarly sacred." (Orig. of Civiliz. and Prim. Condit. of Man. 

 Sir J. Lubbock. 1875.) 



The Latin is evidently from the Greek, and the It., Sp., 

 Port., and Pr. from the Latin. The Wei. eglwys is in the 

 same case, whilst the A.-S., Scand. and Icel., the high and 

 low Ger., may well have been derived from the Celtic carrich, 

 or hiruch, or carreg, disseminated by the Northumbrian mis- 

 sionaries. 



