202 
ANTIQUITIES OE SELBOIINE 
very agreeable set of features, which probably resembled that lady, who 
was more celebrated for her beauty than for her virtues. The medallions 
in general were of a paler colour than the coins. To pretend to 
account for the means of their coming to this place would be spending 
time in conjecture. The spot, I think, could not be a Roman camp, 
because it is commanded by hills on two sides ; nor does it show the 
least traces of entrenchments ; nor can I suppose that it was a Roman 
town, because I have too good an opinion of the taste and judgment of 
those polished conquerors to imagine that they would settle on so 
barren and dreary a waste. 
LETTEE II. 
That Selborne was a place of some distinction and note in the time 
of the Saxons we can give most undoubted proofs. But, as there are 
few if any accounts of the villages before Domesday, it will be best to 
begin with that venerable record. Ipse rex tenet Selesburne. Eddid 
regina tei^uit, et nunquam geldavit. De isto manerio dono dedit rex 
Radfredo presbytero dimidiam hidam cum ecclesia. Tempore regis 
Edwardi et post, valuit duodecim solidos et sex denarios ; modo octo 
solidos et quatuor denarios." Here we see that Selborne was a royal 
manor : and that Editha, the queen of Edward the Confessor, had been 
lady of that manor, and was succeeded in it by the Conqueror, and 
that it had a church. Besides these, many circumstances concur to 
prove it to have been a Saxon village ; such as the name of the place 
itself,^' the names of many fields, and some families,i" with a variety of 
words in husbandry and common life, still subsisting among the country 
people. 
* Selesburne, Selehurne, Selburn, Selbourn, Selborne, and Selborn, as it has been 
variously spelt at different periods, is of Saxon derivation ; for Sel signifies great^ 
and bwrn torrens, a brook or rivulet: so that the name seems to be derived from the 
great perennial stream that breaks out at the upper end of the village. — Sel also 
signifies bonus, item fcecundus, fertilis. "Sel jsejijr-tun : foecunda graininis 
clausura; fertile pascuum: a meadow in the parish of Godelming is still called 
Sal-gars-ton." — Lye's Saxon Dictionary, in the Supplement, by Mr. Manning. 
t Thus, the name of Aldred signifies all-reverend, and that of Kemp means a 
soldier. Thus we have a cliurch-litton, or enclosure for dead bodies, and not a 
church-yard; there is also a Culver-croft near the Grange-farm, being the enclosure 
where the priory pigeon-house stood, from culver a pigeon. Again there are three 
steep pastures in this parish called the Lithe, from Blithe, clivus. The wicker-work 
that binds and fastens down a hedge on the top is called ether, from ether, an 
hedge. When the good women call their hogs they cry sic, sic,'^ not knowing that 
sic is Saxon, or rather Celtic, for a hog. Coppice or brushwood our countrymen 
call 7'ise, from hris, frondes ; and talk of a load of rise. Within the author's 
memory the Saxon plurals, housen and peason, were in common use. But it would 
be endless to instance in every circumstance : he that wishes for more specimens 
must frequent a farmer's kitchen. I have therefore selected some words to show 
how familiar the Saxon dialect was to this district, since in more than seven 
hundred years it is far from being obliterated. 
1 lizct, porcus, apud Lacones ; un Porceau chez les Lacedemoniens : ce mot a 
sans doute este pris des Celtes, qui disoent sic, pour marquer un porceau. Encore 
aujour'huy quand les Bretons chassent ces animaux, ils ne disent autrement, que 
sic, sic. — Antiguite de la Nation et de la Langue des Celtes, par Pezron. 
