thought to function through schools and schools alone: this is not their only outlet. Every sphere of educational progress must be within their purview; and, rightly understood and used, the cinemas can be made a force second only to the schools themselves for the dissemination of education to young and old alike. We submit that, outside the school, rather than in it, is the real place for the cinematograph in education. Our conclusion, reinforced by that of a number of others familiar with the problems of educational administration who have been associated with us in endeavouring to examine the whole question, critically and dispassionately, is that the introduction of cinematography in ordinary schools would be a financial and educational mistake. This conclusion-which challenges recent tendencies-is noteworthy at least by reason of the fact that each of us started off with opinions to the contrary.

A. C. COMFORT & E. A. HARTILL

ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES

1. The Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham. By ALLEN MAWER. Cambridge University Press. 1920.

2. The Place-Names of Lancashire.

Society. 1922.

By EILERT EKWALL.

Chetham

3. English Place-Name Society. Vol. I. Edited by ALLEN MAWER and F. M. STENTON. Cambridge University Press. 1924.

Part I. i. Methods of Place-Name Study. W. J. Sedgefield;
ii. The Celtic Element. Eilert Ekwall; iii. The English Element.
F. M. Stenton; iv. The Scandinavian Element. Eilert Ekwall;
v. The French Element. R. E. Zachrisson; vi. The Feudal
Element. James Tait; vii. Place-Names and English Linguistic
Studies. Henry Cecil Wyld assisted by Mary S. Serjeantson;
viii. Place-Names and Archæology. O. G. S. Crawford; ix. Per-
sonal Names in Place-Names. F. M. Stenton.

Part II. The Chief Elements used in English Place-Names. Allen
Mawer.

I
would be difficult to mention any branch of philological or
historical science which has, in recent years, made such real
progress as the study of Place-Names. It is not a new subject.
Medieval scholars and chroniclers played with it. Antiquaries
of the Renaissance did much useful work, rather marred by their
predilection for such etymologies as "Trent from its thirty
tributaries." Much earlier is Prior Fossour's theory, recorded
immediately after the battle of Nevill's Cross (1346), that Findon
(Durham) was prophetically named from the fin donnée to the war.
Camden published in 1586 his " Britannia," a monumental survey
which no modern writer on the subject can afford to neglect.
This was "Englished" in 1610 by Philemon Holland, and few
volumes supply more delightful browsing for the reader who
knows something about our countryside. The serious philo-
logical study of the subject, as far as this country is concerned,
began with Isaac Taylor's "Words and Places," first published
in 1864 and frequently reprinted up to the present day. Of this
epoch-making work no student can speak without deep respect,
though modern scholarship must smile at the attempt of one man
to survey the world from China to Peru. It is now recognised
that results that will stand the test of time and criticism can only
be obtained by the collaboration of those skilled in many branches
of knowledge-Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Anglo-French,

archæology, history, topography, even botany and geology, and finally, aeronautic photography as practised by Mr. Crawford. Even with such collaboration there will always remain that last indecipherable element of the palimpsest, the pre-CelticOnly perchance some melancholy stream

And some indignant hills old names preserve,

When laws and creeds and people all are lost.

The many recent monographs on individual countiesinaugurated in 1901 by Skeat's "Place-Names of Cambridgeshire "-often suffer from lack of such collaboration. A problem that is insoluble in one county may become easier when the material of the surrounding region has been analyzed. A theory based on an isolated form may be invalidated by the evidence of similar forms occurring elsewhere. In Wyld and Hirst's "Place-Names of Lancashire" (1911) Hambledon is explained as containing a supposed Anglo-Saxon personal name Hamela. Professor Mawer, in a paper read to the British Academy (Jan. 26, 1921) pointed out that the same element occurs in about a dozen place-names scattered about England, and practically always in combination with the ending don, a hill. We can hardly suppose that an Anglo-Saxon of conjectural existence, and bearing an otherwise unrecorded name, spent his life in going about the country annexing hills. Evidently we have to do with a descriptive epithet related to Middle High German hamel, steep, abrupt cliff, and to Anglo-Saxon hamelian, to mutilate. The exact English sense can only be determined when all the Hambledons, Hambletons, etc. have been topographically described.

By the year 1924 no fewer than twenty-four of our counties had been dealt with, some by more than one hand. To these volumes, varying considerably in fullness, method and resultant value, may be added such more general surveys as Johnston's "Place-Names of England and Wales " and McClure's "British Place-Names in their Historical Setting," in both of which much useful material is accumulated. Special problems of Place-Name study have been handled by Scandinavian scholars in Ekwall's "Scandinavians and Celts in the North-West of England," Lindkvist's "Middle-English Place-Names of Scandinavian Origin," and Zachrisson's " Anglo-Norman Influence on English Place-Names." Last, but not least, may be mentioned various

articles and reviews from the hand of that great scholar, Henry Bradley, who unfortunately did not live to pen the general introduction to the subject which he had promised for the new-born English Place-Name Society.

One result of all this spade-work is that the more recent books devoted to particular counties, such as those of Mawer and Ekwall, show a great advance both in fullness and certainty. Professor Mawer deals with about 2,000 Northumberland and Durham names, including some which have now disappeared from the map. He is handicapped by the poverty of the region in early records and has further limited himself by the wise decision to say nothing about names of which no forms are extant previous to the year 1500. Both he and Professor Ekwall have combined the phonological and topographical methods, i.e., they have not followed the severe phoneticians, who sometimes give, from purely linguistic data, solutions which are obviously at variance with the physical features described.

The Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham are predominantly Anglian. The characteristic Scandinavian endings, such as -by, -garth, -toft, -thwaite, are almost entirely absent, and the use of the Scandinavian beck for a stream is a comparatively recent introduction from Yorkshire, substituted in some cases for an earlier burn. The river-names, except for small streams, are as usual, Celtic. One really old beck is Bulbeck; but the curious explanation is that it represents Bolbec, at the mouth of the Seine, the home of a Norman knight to whom Henry I gave a Northumbrian barony. Thus the Old Norse word reached England in this case by a very roundabout route. A few examples may be taken at random to illustrate the difficulty of the task which Professor Mawer has so successfully carried out and the impossibility of explaining Place-Names by their modern forms. A local legend derives Jesmond from Jesus mound. It really means the mouth of the river Yese (now the Ouseburn). The second element of Overgrass was originally gares, the plural of gare, triangular patch, which we have in the southern Kensington Gore. Filbert Haugh was once, incredible though it may seem, Hildeburh's Haugh, and Dingbell Hill is simply a corruption of Thingwell, representing the familiar Old Norse thing-vellir, fields of assembly, whence we have also Thingwall (Chesh.), Dingwall (Ross), and the Tynwald Hill of the Isle of Man. It is not likely that a Scandinavian thing

was ever held on Dingbell Hill. More probably its shape reminded some Scandinavian settler of a conference hill in his home-land. Haltwhistle is an odd compound of old French halt, high, and Anglo-Saxon twisla, a fork in a road or stream. School Aycliffe bears the name of the Viking chieftain Scula, to whom King Rægenwald gave part of the patrimony of St. Cuthbert. Westernhope was a hope, or small upland valley, from which whetstones were excavated.

In the Place-Names of Lancashire Professor Ekwall has to deal with much more heterogeneous origins. Both Celtic and Scandinavian names are numerous in certain localities. It is perhaps for this reason that the author has grouped his material under the various hundreds of the county, instead of adopting the purely alphabetical arrangement. Interesting names which are probably Celtic are Haydock, from Welsh haidd, barley, with the suffix which appears in Welsh as -og (cf. Welsh Clynnog, from celyn, holly, and Ceirchiog, from Welsh ceirch, oats) and Culcheth, containing Welsh cil, back, and coed, wood. The latter name is thus identical with Kilquite and Colquite (Cornwall) and Cilcoit (Monmouth). The Scandinavian element is chiefly Norwegian, the Danish thorp being rather rare in comparison with the most familiar Norwegian endings. One of the most interesting of the latter may be called Celto-Scandinavian, viz. the -ergh or -argh so strongly exemplified in the county and often reduced to -er (Anglezark, Grimsargh, Docker, Salter). This is Irish airghe, a shieling or a pasture, brought over by Vikings who had been settled in Ireland long enough to adopt the Celtic word. It is curiously disguised in Arkholme, earlier Erghum, which, like Lathom (from Old Norse hlatha, a barn) is simply a dative plural. Professor Ekwall does not settle the long dispute as to the origin of Liverpool, though he puts forward tentatively the new theory that the first element may be related to Anglo-Saxon lifrig, clotted. His book is undoubtedly the most masterly contribution that has yet been made, not only to the topographical history of Lancashire, but to the whole subject of Place-Name study.

The first issue of the Transactions of the English Place-Name Society represents the sort of collaboration that all students now find to be necessary, if solid results are to be obtained. The contributions will vary in attraction according to the taste of the reader. Many will turn at once to the fascinating article on