80 
THE SEVERN BORE. 
April, 1892. 
length by a hundred yards wide, and during our ramble 
there an old house is pointed out to us as having been the 
birthplace of the ill-fated “ Fair Rosamond.” 
On our return journey to the “ Nautilus,” in passing along 
a lane, about eight o’clock, in the fine, still evening, our 
attention is suddenly arrested by a peculiar rushing sound, 
uniformly sustained—a curious compound of the wind sighing 
among the trees, the noise of the waves on the sea-shore, the 
rush of a waterfall, but distinct from all these, and having a 
peculiar music of its own. “ Hark ! ” said my friend, “ that is 
the Severn bore !” The river is half a mile distant, and we 
listen attentively to the “ voice of many waters,” the first 
manifestation to us of what has been termed by that enthusi¬ 
astic naturalist of the old school, the late Frank Buckland 
(in an interesting paper in his “ Log Book of a Fisherman 
and Naturalist”), the greatest natural phenomenon in the 
British Islands. 
Before I venture to describe what I subsequently saw of 
the bore of the Severn, it may not be uninteresting to seek an 
explanation of its derivation. Frank Buckland, when editor 
of Land and Water , invited the opinions of his correspon¬ 
dents on the subject, and the following are among the most 
notewortliv which were offered :— 
Bore, from “ Boreas,” the north wind. 
Bore, from Barh, Indian for a flood, the same phenomenon 
occurring in the Hoogly River. In the south of India it is 
called Poor , a flood. 
Bore, from Barre, Norman-French, the dash of a wave. 
Bore, from Celtic vawr and mor, the letters v and b being 
usually interchangeable. 
In the River Trent the same phenomenon is called the 
eager. Eger , is German for wild boar, the first e being pro¬ 
nounced as a. 
Higra, eygre, and eagre are old English words. Bailey 
has “ Higra, the raging of the River Severn below Gloucester.” 
So much for different views as to the etymology of bore. 
The bore occurs best at the extreme high tides about the 
time of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes ; but there is a 
bore at every spring tide, though it is only occasionally, 
under favourable circumstances of wind and tide, that it is 
seen to perfection. Locally it is maintained that in the 
autumn the night bores, and in the spring the day bores, are 
“ higher, heavier, and make a greater noise.” 
The explanation of the bore appears extremely simple, as 
the interpretation of every natural phenomenon is when it 
is submitted to scientific investigation, and freed from the 
“survivals” of tradition and superstition. 
