310 



The Ancient Wiltshire T)yJces. 



that such an hj^pothesis would agree well with expressions we often 

 find in charters, such as grim-setan, which can only be rendered 

 the " dwellers on the grim } or boundary." 1 



I must confess, that, with the deepest respect for Dr. Guests 

 learning, and the weight of his opinion, there does appear to 

 me in all this to be a little hyper-criticism. For (1) we have in 

 charters the very form he demands — thus Griman-ledh is the Anglo- 

 Saxon name of what is now Grimley in Worcestershire ; then (2) 

 we all know how the process of " phonetic decay 33 is ever busy with 

 names, and especially shews itself in dropping inflexions, or sub- 

 stituting the more common for rarer forms, just as the old forms 

 of the plural housen and shoon, which you may still hear from 

 Wiltshire villagers, are now dropped for houses and shoes ; and then 

 (3) the name is too common for such a supposition to be tenable. 

 Thus the Norwegians had their Foss-grims, and no one would be 

 venturesome enough to say that they were indebted for the name to 

 Roman surveyors. So that I have not the least doubt that the 

 word is connected with that root which we still preserve in our word 

 grim, and bears testimony to the superstition of our ancestors, who 

 always connected with wild dismal places and large works the names 

 of grim and fabulous creatures. 



As to the purpose served by the Grimsdykes, I conceive them 

 to have been boundary - lines, not indeed of territories, but of 

 much smaller extent of land, of tribes, or clans, or, it may be, of 

 families. Two points in connection with them are, to my mind, 

 conclusive against their being regarded as Belgic dykes. (1) They 

 are very much smaller than Bokerley, which, if any be so, is un- 

 doubtedly a Belgic work ; aud then (2) with regard to the two 

 nearest Old 8 arum, one has its foss to the south, which seems to 

 imply that it was the boundary of lands belonging to owners on the 

 north, and not of people pressing up from the south ; and, more- 

 over, it intersects Bokerley Dyke, and is therefore a more recent 

 work. As to the other, that runs just to the north of Old Sarum, 

 to suppose it a Belgic work implies that a people strong enough to 



'-See Archaeol. Journ. (Salisb.) p. 29. 



