THE EDDYSTONE : FACTS AND FICTIONS. 
213 
Eadig = saint, or happy, or fortunate. Ideas like these are the 
last that would have been connected with such a place in those 
early times. 
Moreover, I believe there does not exist on the British coasts 
any instance of a rock or uninhabitable island similarly situated — 
that is to say, standing isolated and far away from land — the 
name of which can be, with any certainty, derived, by corruption 
or otherwise, from a personal name. We have, indeed, the Bishop 
and his Clerks, and Queen Elizabeth's Eock ; but these, besides 
the difference of their situation to that of the Eddystone, are 
named from fancied resemblances in their shapes. 
If any member can point to a single instance of such a rock as 
the Eddystone being named after some person, he will confer a 
favour by mentioning it, for I have failed to find any. And I 
have made diligent search for such a case, both on my own part, 
and by enquiry in the columns of Notes and Queries, and also 
direct of such philologists as Professor Skeat, Dr. J. A. H. Murray, 
Sir J. A. Picton, and the Rev. Isaac Taylor, for whose assistance 
in this matter I must here return my hearty thanks. 
My contention then is, that in spite of the varying forms under 
which the name has appeared, it was in its earliest, as well as its 
latest, simply the Eddy-stone, or Rock of the Eddies. 
But in order to show this I must now deal with the word 
Eddy = a swirl or whirling of the waters. It used to be thought 
that this word was derived from two words, Ed = back and 
ea = water, but this idea is now exploded, and Professor Skeat, 
in his Etymological Dictionery (second edition, 1884), considers 
it to come "[either from a lost A. S. word with the prefix 
ed = back, or more likely modified from the Scandinavian by 
changing Icel. r<5 to the corresponding A. S. ed.] Icel. i<5a, an eddy, 
a whirlpool ; cf. = i^a, to be restless, whirl about = Swedish dial. 
r3a, ida, an eddy ; Dan. dial, ide, the same (Rietz)," &c. 
In the Book of the Houlate, by Sir John Holland, about 1453, 
it is written ydy. 
Then I find the word as Edd/e in Purchas, his Pilgrims. 5 
Describing the whale, he says, (His foode) " is grasse and weeds of 
the Sea, and a kinde of water-worme like a Beetle, whereof the 
Finnes in his mouth hang full, and sometimes little birds ; all 
which striking the water with his Tayle, and making an Eddie, he 
5 London, 1617, fo., 8th Bookc, ch. iii, p. 923, 1. 39, &c. 
