Names relating to religious Worship. 



97 



place, within a few miles of which indeed he died. William 

 of Malmesbury tells us a story, by way of accounting 1 for the 

 name, at which we may perhaps smile, but which no doubt 

 has a substratum of truth in it. " Aldhelm, once, when 

 preaching','" he says, " fixed his ashen staff in the earth : it 

 grew miraculously, putting forth boughs and leaves, and 

 numerous ash trees afterwards sprang from it, hence the place 

 was called Biscopes-trewe." 1 Is it not possible that the 

 word treoio ( == tree) is used here in its secondary sense as 

 equivalent to " cross/' as ia Acts, x., 39, " Whom they slew 

 and hanged on a tree ?" So Oswestry, as has been men- 

 tioned (§ %)j means Oswald's tree (or cross), its equivalent 

 in Welsh being Oroes-Oswallt. And Dr. Guest interprets 

 Aeiles-treu (a name also given as iEgles-ford, and iEgeles- 

 thrip), as equivalent to Church-mm. Archseol. Inst. Journ., 

 (Salisb.) p. 47. If so, the old chronicler gives us a glimmer- 

 ing of the truth, veiled though it may be with fable. Here 

 no doubt the good Bishop preached the truth to the semi- 

 christianized, if not at that time heathen, people of Wessex. 

 Probably, like Augustine and other early missionaries, he 

 carried with him a cross, the symbol of our faith, and planted 

 it in the ground beside him, as he proclaimed the doctrine of 

 the cross. Anyhow the name is a memorial of one of the 

 holiest and most devoted of missionary bishops, and so of our 

 early Christianity in Wessex. 

 Christian Malford, near Chippenham; originally Cristes-mmU 

 ford. The Anglo-Saxon word mcel signifies a mark, or sign > 

 or image, so that the whole word means the ford by Christ 1 s- 

 sign ( = the cross), or Christ's image ( =a crucifix, or rood). 

 The wovdiCriste-mcel often occurs in Saxon charters byitself,and 

 also in composition, as descriptive of points of boundary. Thus 

 in a grant of Grimanleage to Worcester, we have, " tip 

 ondlang fes hearpoftes to 3sem Criste-nisele" (up along the 

 high-way to the Christ-mal i.e., the cross). Cod. Dipl., 266. 



1 Gest. Pontif. (Rolls Series), p. 384. 



