APRIL 87 



perhaps lucky for the prelate that he is not now expected 

 to conduct visitations throughout the whole of his nominal 

 diocese. 



Names of Norse origin seem peculiarly liable to receive 

 a totally erroneous interpretation by assimilation with 

 English vocables. Encountering the name Fairfield in 

 the environs of a modern town, one may safely assign 

 their literal English value to the syllables, but it is far 

 different when you come upon it as the title of the hill 

 next to Helvellyn. The Norsemen had long sway over 

 the Lake Country, and Fairfield here is a corruption of 

 their name f(x,T fjaU, sheep-fell, just as Faroe (without 

 the pleonastic 'Islands') represents Fcer-eyjar, sheep- 

 islands. Again, the title Biggar conferred on a town 

 in Lanarkshire conveys no hint of comparison in size 

 with its rivals, but is plain Norse bygg-garth, barley- 

 field, as may be easily seen by noticing the better pre- 

 served forms Biggarts in Dumfriesshire and Biggart in 

 Ayrshire. 



To go further into the origin of place-names — to follow 

 the glimpses they afford of bygone races and their habits, 

 of wild animals, now rare or extinct, which once peopled 

 the forests carved by civilisation into farms — would lead 

 me to intolerable length. Let me wind up with three 

 cardinal principles to which he who embarks on a 

 somewhat fascinating study should ever hold fast. 



First, let the simplicity of origin be assumed before 

 taking up the wild and poetical explanations which have 

 so much attraction for some minds, but which generally 

 have no foundation. When primitive, or at least im- 

 perfectly civilised, people settle in a new country, they 

 don't sit down and invent names for the different 



