450 Report of Meetings. By the President. 



Secondly, in tlie current No. of our Proceedings, there is a 

 spirited little posthumous paper by the late lamented Mr Carr- 

 Ellison, in which he seeks to demonstrate that in Anglo-Saxon, 

 the mother tongue of our vernacular English, the islands were 

 called •' The islands of the Pilgrims " ; and that " Lindisfarne " 

 signifies "Pilgrims or Travellers of the Lin." 



Next comes the theory of our learned and esteemed member, 

 the Eev. William Green well, which, to my mind, appears to be 

 so likely, that at first sight it appears to carry conviction with it, 

 and I beg to introduce it as " Grreenwell's Glory." ^ 



The two streams which flow into the sea at Beal and Budle 

 respectively, are the Lin and the Waren, or as it now appears 

 on the map, the Warn, which discharged itself on Warnham 

 Flats. 



These are the ancient names of the streams ; and what is 

 more conceivable and likely than that the islands lying off the 

 mouth of the river or brook Waren should be named the Waren 

 Islands? The **w" easily became "f," producing Faren 

 Islands, because it is well known that " f " and " v '' — the latter 

 being practically the same as " w " — were interchangeable 

 between Anglo-Saxon and cognate languages. From Faren to 

 Fame the transition is easy enough. 



As regards "Lindisfarne," Dr Greenwell suggests that it 

 may simply have been " Lindisfarnensis Terra," or the land 

 adjoining the streams Lin and Fame. This may have superseded 

 the ancient British title which it is known to have possessed. 

 An inspection on the map, of the relative situations, will, I 

 think, strengthen our disposition to receive the reverend gentle- 

 man's simple explanation as a very likely one. 



Lastly, we have the interesting hypothesis of our learned 

 secretary, Mr Hardy, which is the result of his latest investiga- 

 tions. It is quite as likely as the others. 



" We can sometimes conjecture the position of some of the 

 settlements of the Celtic monks of the old Scottish Church by the 

 names of localities still embodying Gaelic elements, or by the 

 names of the saints to which their sacred edifices or kills were 

 dedicated. In the name Lindisfarne there is at least a presump- 

 tion that some Celtic ingredient might be identified. The small 

 colony of monks from lona, to whom the island was presented as 



* This is the name of a celebrated artificial fly, invented by Canon 

 Greenwell, well-known to Border Anglers. 



