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Names of the Fame Islands and of Lindisfarne. By the 

 late Ralph Cakr-Ellison, Esq., of Dunston Hill. 



The name of the Fame Islands was pronounced distinctly in 

 old English as Fame, the final e being sounded as in a multitude 

 of instances where it is now mute. It is, however, of the utmost 

 importance to the orthography, being in fact the key to the sense 

 of the term. It represents the Anglo-Saxon a in Farna for 

 Farena, the genitive plural of Fara a traveller or pilgrim. So 

 that in that mother-tongue of our vernacular English Farena 

 ealande signified Islands of the Pilgrims, peregrmorum insula. 



This appellation is obviously not more ancient than the Anglo- 

 Saxon and Christian epoch in Northumbria. It must have been 

 preceded by a Cymric-British appellation, but all trace of this is 

 lost.* In the name of Lindisfarne, however, we have a remnant 

 of Cymric nomenclature, for it is plainly only a variant spelling 

 of Linnesfarne, the d being introduced to add emphasis to the 

 power of the n, which is better conveyed by doubling the n it- 

 self. There is no such word as Lind in Anglo-Saxon, except in 

 the sense of the lime-tree; but Llyn, (pronounced hlyn,) is the 

 ordinary Welsh term for a lake or any considerable sheet of 

 water. The lake of Bala in North Wales, the only lake of much 

 magnitude in the Principality, is denominated Zl^n tegid in Welsh, 

 that is Lake-clear. And the mountain ** tarns " (to use a Norse 

 term prevalent in Cumberland) are all known as Llyns. Water- 

 falls and rapids are designated Rhaidr, so that it is probable that 

 when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors applied the Celtic term lin to 

 waterfalls, they rather mistook its original sense in the British 

 Cymric tongue, which would embrace the pool above or below 

 the cascade, and not merely the waterfall. 



Lindisfarne is often thought to be so called from the Lind-Burn, 

 which falls into the so-called slake or slack-water of Beal, 

 (between the mainland and the Isle) near its north-western end, 

 and traverses its bed at low water in a southerly direction till it 

 falls into the haven at the low end of the slake to the southwards. 

 But undoubtedly the Lind-Burn, which is but a very humble and 

 insignificant feature, was itself so designated from the Lin or 

 Lake or Slake which it traverses at low-water almost from end 



• The author had forgotten that Lindis-farne was called by the Britons 

 Inis Medicmte. Gibson's Camden, fol. 1502.— J. H. 



