92 The Names of Places in Wiltshire. 



Wures-byrgylse. This name, which means simply " Wur's burial- 

 place/' occurs in a charter which seems to relate to Fifield, 

 near Everley. Cod. Dipl., 592. I do not remember the 

 name in "Wilts, simply or in composition, as that of a person 

 or place. An old Bishop of Lichfield (721 — 731) is called 

 by Simeon of Durham, 1 Aldwine alias Wor. The 

 latter was his birth-name and is evidently of Celtic origin, 

 the former was his assumed name, when, like some of his 

 imitators of other ages, rising in the social scale, he adopted 

 one taken from the language of the ruling class. Such an 

 expression as Wures-leage might well account for the name 

 Wors-ley. 



Hoces-byr gels. This expression is found in the boundaries of 

 Bed win (Cod. Dipl., 1266). In those for Witney, in Oxford- 

 shire (Cod. Dipl., 775), we have Hoces-low, that is, the low 

 of Hoce. It may be that the personal name Hook is a 

 modern form of this ancient name, and possibly Hux-ley 

 may be the same in composition. Kemble suggests (Arch. 

 Journ., xiv., 127) that Hoce may possibly be a mythical 

 personage, probably the heros eponymus of the Frisian tribe, 

 who figures in Beowulf and the episode of whose cremation is 

 one of its finest passages. Still, he adds — and in this I am 

 quite inclined to agree with him,: — " it may be the name of 

 a private individual." 



56. Other personal names are in like manner prefixed to 

 hloew ( 3±= low) j which means a mound, either natural or arti- 

 ficial, and often of a sepulchral character. Thus Cwichelmes- 

 hlcew (Cod. Dipl., 693), is the well-known tumulus now called 

 Cuckhamslow, near Wantage, in Berks. In Wiltshire, 

 we have amongst others the following : — 



^on. H. B. 659. The name Wtje or Woe (it occurs also in the Saxon 

 Chronicle — Anno 800 — as Woee, in the name of an ealdorman of Wessex), 

 may, as a learned friend suggests to me, be connected with the Welsh gwer 

 (= that which is superior, or uppermost). Thus Yoetigebn is the Welsh gwr- 

 theym (or teyrn), and means simply the " eminent prince " or chieftain. The 

 good Bishop need not have been ashamed of his birth-name, Celtic though it 

 might be. See Philol. Transact, (1857,) p. 57. 



