242 Etymology of some Names of Places, by R. Carr-Ellison. 



striking effects when those curtains are partially withdrawn. 

 Then we know that these same Cheviot Hills, of remotely 

 ancient porphyry rocks, igneous and eruptive in their 

 origin, but ground down and rounded off, as we see them, by 

 glaciers of the great ice-epoch, thicker and heavier perhaps 

 than now oppress the surface of Greenland, possess a geo- 

 logical history that entitles them to regard the Alps and 

 Pyrenees as overbearing upstarts. Is it not, then, worth a 

 little inquiry to arrive at the reason why our own Anglo- 

 Saxon and Early English forefathers came to adopt such an 

 evidently composite and special designation for the hill 

 before us. The name, clearly, is not British, that is to say, 

 Cymric, like that of Cheviot. It has occasionally been 

 written as "Headsope," or "Heidsope," or "Hedshope." And 

 if it had been simply " Headhope," the meaning would have 

 been sufficiently intelligible. Hope is an Anglian term 

 occurring in many counties ; in Shropshire, in the Peak of 

 Derbyshire, in Yorkshire, Durham, and on the confines of 

 Westmoreland, in Northumberland and Cumberland, Rox- 

 burghshire, &c, It signifies a short upland side-dale, tra- 

 versed in general by a burn, but not always, for sometimes 

 in moorland regions we come upon little dells denominated 

 Dryhope. In the Scandinavian regions, a word of kindred 

 sound and origin is applied to small and narrow openings of 

 a coastline, affording space for a sheltered recess, or inlet. 

 But the term has not the same extensive application inland, 

 as our Anglian usage assigns to it among our northern 

 English moorlands ; where also there is evidence to show 

 that it had preceded the introduction of terms belonging to 

 the Danish and Norse nomenclature, which became after- 

 wards so prevalent in Yorkshire, Durham, and Cumberland. 

 The Hopes seem to have been named by the earlier Anglian 

 settlers in those vales. In the Mid-Anglian region of 

 Shropshire, Derbyshire, and even in Herefordshire we find 

 villages and towns denominated simply Hope ; and always, 

 I believe, with reference to their situation in snug little 

 dales — a circumstance especially true of Hope in the North 

 Riding of Yorkshire. It must have been thoroughly estab- 

 lished as a native term among the North- Anglians of the 

 Northumbrian Earldom, where it is of continual occurrence 

 and quite unmingled with any of the terms of either Danish 

 nomenclature from Yorkshire, or of Norse from Cumberland 

 or Dumfriesshire. The name of Headgehope cannot be 



