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On some Place-Names near Malmesbury . 



Celtic river-names, whatever their precise meaning may be, come 

 such place-names as Cors-ton, and Coes-ham, and Cole-Park. 



In the name Idover, though now I believe applied only to a 

 village near Dauntsey, you have simply the Celtic expression " y 

 dwfr," i.e.., " the water " The name " Dover " is an Anglicised form 

 of it, and in a Malmesbury Charter relating to Dauntsey, a brook 

 is called " Ydoure." In the course of this same stream you have 

 " Dores-b ridge, the former portion evidently a corruption of the same 

 word, and shortly afterwards " Thunder -brook," which, as a learned 

 Celtic scholar has ingeniously suggested to me, may mean " dwnn- 

 dwr," that is "a dark or turbid stream/' 



There is little doubt moreover of the former portion of Crick- 

 lade being the name of a stream, though that name is now lost, 

 and of the whole word meaning " the water-course of the Crec." 

 The spelling of the name in the Saxon Chronicle — Creace-gelade — 

 can hardly admit of any other interpretation. There are streams 

 in Lancashire called the " Crake," and in Kent the " Cray," — on the 

 latter is Cray-ford — which would seem to be slightly modified forms 

 of the same original river- name. 



Then you have such names as Wire-^oxt, Swill-brook, the Berry, 

 (clearly from ^r=water), close by Ashton Keynes, all of which 

 have the Celtic element in them. I should not be surprised if" Cow- 

 bridge," as regards its former portion, were a corrupt and disguised 

 form of a river-name more familiar to us as the " Wye." 



But you have this Celtic element not only in river-names, and in 

 places called after them, but also abundantly in other place-names. 



For example, — close by Bradenstock is Clack. This is clearly 

 nothing else than the Celtic "cleg" which means a "hill," and the 

 situation of the place alluded to verifies its name. In Clegg, by 

 Rochdale, you have the term almost in its original form. The 

 English found the same appellation given to a high eminence close 

 by Warminster, but, not understanding it, added a synonym of their 

 own and called it Clay-hill ; it is however simply a reduplicative. 



Then, a large number of names are compounded with the Celtic 

 term coed or coit (=a wood). In Coate, near Swindon, you have it 

 in almost an original form; in Goat- acre, near Lineham, it is 



