196 TEESDALE PLACE-NAMES. 



have a common origin with wall, a wave ; A.-S. weall-an ; Ger. 

 wall-en, to boil, to bubble up ; u-allen des meers, the swelling of 

 the sea. It must be observed however that Teut. wiel seems the 

 same with the term corresponding to our wheel.'''' Jamieson. 



'•'■Weel, a whirlpool, Caitlm., same o.^ ivele. Wheel, a whirl- 

 pool or eddy. Angus." lb. Supplem. Skeat does not give ^(;ee/. 



Example : — 



The "Wheel, or Weel, is that part of the river Tees just above 

 Cauldron Snout. Locally it is called ' T]te Wheel,'' but in the 

 Ordnance Map, Weel, which is the south country pronunciation 

 of wheel, and is nearer than the northern form to the A.-S. name, 

 both in spelling and pronunciation. This is one instance of the 

 propriety of leaving out the h, which we northerns are fond of 

 using, and the southerns love to drop. 



Mr. W. J. "Watson, of Barnard Castle, informs me that ' The 

 Weel ' is a straight tract of smooth water flowing for a long dis- 

 tance to the head of Cauldron Snout, and that there is no boiling 

 up of the water in its course. Weel, therefore, cannot in this 

 case mean a whirlpool, but a quiet straight flow of water. 



In Murray's Handbook of Northumberland and Durham, 

 .1873, the "Wheel is thus characterised: — "The Weeld, a ghastly, 

 serpent-like lake, \^ mile long, in the moorland, backed by the 

 heather-covered heights of Harwood Fell!" •'" 



* " The Weel is, under ordinary conditions, a smooth sheet of water, gliding and 

 gimmering along between comparatively low banks for about a mile in length, from 

 Weel^head, where the Tees takes a sharp turn to the south, to the head of Cauldron 

 Snout. Here it makes a series of rushes and leaps through a deep chasm it has cut 

 for itself out of a very thick bed of basalt, into a deep pool below. During ' a spate,' 

 after a heavy thunderstorm, the Weel would present a very different appearance, as 

 the ' spate ' is a roll or rush of water two or three feet high, which comes rushing 

 down during the storm with incredible rapidity, filling the wide bed of the stream with 

 whole water from bank to bank for a day or more, and this sudden flooding of the 

 stream extends sometimes to the tidal part of the river in a most turbulent manner, 

 rolling on at first in a ' spate,' and filling its rocky channel till it reaches the deeper 

 winding pools cut into the alluvial deposits of its lower reaches below Yarm." Howse. 



Mr, Howse believes that at the part of the river, just above the Cataract, there was 

 once a lake, into which the water from the so-called Wheel discharged itself before 

 tumbling down the rocks. If this were so there would be, especially in rainy and 

 stormy weather when ' the spate' came down, a very turbulent boiling up of the water, 

 which would justify the name Weal, WceU, or Wheel (which last is a corruption of Wsell) 

 being applied to the lake, but in the lapse of time the name has been extended to the 

 smooth tract of water above the falL 



