By Nevil Story Maskelyne, M.A., F.R.S. 



97 



that coins were struck. Of the coins minted at Cricklade the 

 larger number known are in collections at Copenhagen and 

 Stockholm — originally carried over the sea as part, probably, of the 

 humiliating Danegelt. A description of these coins is given by 

 the Rev. W. Allan in vol. xix., p. 283, of this Magazine. 



The various forms in which the name of the town appears on 

 them have an interest in connection with the pronunciation in 

 those two centuries of the first syllable of the name. Cracgl, Croc, 

 Croeg-Jad, Crog, Cro, Cm, Ccrog, Crec, Ceroila, Cricla (time of 

 Canute) , Cri, Crecli (Edward's reign) , and Cricela, Creccla, Cricgelad, 

 Crecca, Crice, are some of them. "We need not, perhaps, attach too 

 much importance to the sound of a vowel in the eleventh century 

 as a guide to its pronunciation in earlier Celtic times. But the 

 letters forming the syllable Crick must, nevertheless, be the vestiges 

 of the Celtic term. Of the initial Or there can be little doubt ; 

 the k, too, is a significant letter, echoing an original guttural, 

 further commemorated in the double cc, g, or eg of the coins. 



We thus have a syllable cracg, erecg, or crog, in which the vowel 

 may have been a, e, i, o, or a diphthong. 



In order to trace this syllable to a Celtic origin it might be asked 

 which of the two chief branches of the Celtic tongue will be the 

 most promising to investigate — rthe Goidhelic (surviving in Erse 

 and Gaelic) or the Brythonic (represented by the Breton, the extinct 

 Cornish, and the Welsh) . Without entering on the discussion 

 involved in this choice, it may be accepted as the result of ex- 

 perience that many of the Celtic place-names are largely drawn 

 from the former of these groups of dialect : but in fact more or 

 less similar words are usually found in all the Celtic dialects, and 

 with analogous meanings. 



In Erse and Gaelic Crick has the meaning of a limit or boundary, 

 and would at first sight seem the word just adapted for a town on 

 a river where it is crossed by a road, and where either river or road 

 may have marked the limits of two adjoining territories. But 

 another syllable recognizable in different forms in Brythonic as 

 well as Goidelic vocabularies seems to be echoed more aptly in the 

 pronunciation of Cricklade as given by the rude spellings of the 



