98 The Place-Name Cricklade : a Suggestion. 



coins, and in the guttural of the last letters in them. This term 

 is in Gaelic and Erse Croc (in an early form Cnoc, or Knock), in 

 another form Cruach and Cruachan. It is pronounced with the ch 

 as a guttural, and it implies a hill or rising ground. 



In Breton this word takes the form Kretfh or Kreac'h (Krac y h 

 in the Vannes district) , Cornish Krec'h, and has also the meaning 

 of an eminence or rising ground, as the French lexicographer 

 translates it, " ce qui va en montant," " tertre." The term survives 

 in many Gaelic and Irish place-names and in some English ones, 

 as Creech Hill, in Somerset, and in Creeg Barrow and Creech, near 

 Wareham. 



The word is not to be confounded with the Erse Carraic, Gaelic 

 Creag, Welsh Carreg, and Breton Carrek, which are the terms for 

 a rock or " crag," without the guttural. 



The gradual rise from the river of the little Roman station of 

 Cricklade may be represented by this Croagh or Krec'h. 



As regards the final syllable, lade, common to Cricklade and to 

 the riverine town a few miles further down the Thames, Lechlade, 

 and also to Chicklade, a little place in a valley north of Tisbury, 

 we have again to search for some apt word among the vocabularies 

 of the Celtic language. 



The Irish tongue gives us one so closely similar in its form as 

 almost to arouse our suspicions, as in the case of Crich. This 

 word is lad, a watercourse or canal. The term for an artificial 

 watercourse, familiar in the west as a water-leet is evidently a 

 survival of this term. The Wiltshire Longleat is a case of its use 

 as a place-name. It is related to the Gaelic lod and lodan, a pool 

 of water, and again to log and lag, a hollow lock, lough, or lake ; 

 the a and o often being interchanged in Celtic terms. 



The Brythonic form of the word would seem to be Llared, a 

 shallow in a river, a ford (from a root Llaer, a rippling) . Liz is a 

 Breton term for the sea shore, connected with lezen, a fringe to a 

 stuff — in another form it is beven ; but neither Liz nor the Welsh 

 Llez, a plain or flat surface, seem related to the words in question. 

 I would, then, suggest that the place-name Cricklade is made up 

 of two Celtic words, Goidelic in their form, implying a ground 



