258 embleton: notes on ancient coal mining. 
Whether the meaning of the Saxon word is coal, as now under- 
stood, is subject to some doubt. The original words are " twaelf 
fothur Grsefan" (ie. 12 fothers of coal, about 15 c^i:s. each). In 
A.-S. this word (Grsefa) may mean anything that is dug up. It is 
evident that Grsefa was a different fuel from peat. There is no A.-S. 
for peat which is English only. The old British name is said to be 
Glo; the Welsh has Pwll Glo, Pit-coals. In Bosworth's A.-S. dic- 
tionary, Grsefa is coal. 
Coal is in Middle Eng., Col; Dutch, Kool; Icel. and Swed., 
Kol; Dan., Kul; Old High Germ., Choi, Cholo; Middle High Germ., 
Kol; Mod. Germ., Kohl. The French houille, only wants an aspirate 
to assimilate it to the northern word. 
From Pennant's Tour in Wales, he states that a flint axe, the 
instrument of the aboriginals of our islands, was discovered sunk in 
certain pieces of coal exposed to day in Craig y Lare, in Monmouth- 
shire, and in such a situation as to render it very acceptible to the 
unexperienced natives who in early times were incapable of pursuing 
the seam to any material depth. 
Whittaker, in his History of Manchester, is of opinion that the 
primaeval Britons used coal. This is evident, he says, from its appel- 
lation amongst us at present, which is not Saxon but British, and 
subsists amongst the Irish as their Guel, and amongst the Cornish in 
their Kolan to this day. In the great survey (the Domesday Book), 
carried out by William the Conqueror, there is no mention of coal or 
any other minerals. No instructions were given to the Commissioners 
to enquire into the extent and value of the mineral property of the 
central or northern counties. Strutt states that in opening some 
mounds in 1773, near Maldon, in Essex, bones, cinders, and charcoal 
were found; this he relates in his Book of Manners and Customs, 
Vol. 1, p. 60. 
Marston, in his Natural History of Northamptonshire, speaking 
of the ruins of a castle at Castle Dykes, a high, entrenched hill, near 
Farthingstone, says he saw some huge lumps of cinder. This castle 
is supposed to have been built by ^thelfleda, about 913, it was 
destroyed by the Danes in 1013. and he concludes that there were 
stores of coal kept there. St. Augustine says, "is it not a wonderful 
