178 The Names of Places in Wiltshire* 



of the great roads." Thorpe (Dipl. Anglic., 654) shows that 

 many entries in the charters are quite inconsistent with such 

 explanation, and holds that it " signifies a tumulus, or barrow, 

 and is akin to the Welsh carnedd, a cairn, or heap of 

 stones. 



A suggestion has been made to me, that the name after all 

 is from the Welsh crwnn 1 (Lat. rotundus Engl, round), the 

 two latter synonyms seeming to imply a dropped " d 33 in the 

 first word. In Old Irish we have cruind and crund, in 

 American krenn, in Cornish cren, in Gaelic cruinn. (Com- 

 pare the Latin corona.) This would quite fall in with Thorpe's 

 opinion, though derived from another source, and denote the 

 " round 33 barrows, or circles, or dolmens, that were so com- 

 mon in England in early times. Kemble, in his paper on 

 "Notices of Heathen Interment 33 (Arch. Jour,, xiv., 119), 

 observes how "strange and unintelligible it is that there 

 is such a very rare notice, in the charters, of the stone - 

 beds, circles, and dolmens." The interpretation now given 

 would make it possible that in the crundels we have these 

 missing monuments. It is certainly more consistent than 

 any other with such descriptions as "Crawan crundel on 

 WereSanhylle/'' (= Crow's crundel on Weretha's hill,) Cod. 

 Dipl., v.13. — or " stan crundel 33 (=stone crundel,) Cod. Dipl., 

 iv., 66 — or " se pryscyta crundel 33 (=the triangular crundel}) 

 Cod. Dipl., v., 374 — or many others that might be quoted 

 from the Anglo Saxon charters. 

 Cricklade. Spelt in the Saxon Chronicle Creacc-gelade and called 

 by Florence of Worcester, in a parallel passage, Creccan-ford. 

 The termination of the former is the Anglo-Saxon ge-ldd 

 (=a water-course). The principal portion cf the word has 

 been derived from Crecca, a creek or bay, but the term is 

 hardly pure Saxon, and only to be found in a few dictionaries. 



1 The word is thus given in Davies' Welsh and Latin Dictionary (1632). In 

 modern Welsh we have Crwn as an adjective, meaning round, circular. Com- 

 pare the English Crown* 



